The number of daily papers was returned at 350, but it has greatly
increased, and must now exceed four hundred. Chicago, which then was a
small town, rejoices now in no less than 24 periodicals, seven of which
are daily, and five of them of the largest size. At St. Louis, which but a
few years since was on the extreme borders of civilization, we find
several, and one of these has grown from a little sheet of 8 by 12 inches
to the largest size, yielding to its proprietors $50,000 per annum, while
Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham are still compelled to depend upon
their tri-weekly sheets. St. Louis itself furnishes the type, and
Louisville furnishes the paper. Everywhere, the increase in size is
greater than that in the number of newspapers, and the increase of ability
in both the city and country press, greater than in either number or size.
These things are necessary consequences of that decentralization which
builds school-houses and provides teachers, where centralization raises
armies and provides generals. The schools enable young men to read, think,
and write, and the local newspaper is always at hand in which to publish.
Beginning thus with the daily or weekly journal, the youth of talent makes
his way gradually to the monthly or quarterly magazine, and ultimately to
the independent book.

Examine where we may through the newspaper press, there is seen the
activity which always accompanies the knowledge that men _can rise_ in the
world _if they will_; but this is particularly obvious in the daily press
of cities, whose efforts to obtain information, and whose exertions to lay
it before the public, are without a parallel. Centralization, like that of
the London "Times," furnishes its readers with brief paragraphs of
telegraphic news, where decentralization gives columns. The New York
"Tribune" furnishes, for two cents, better papers than are given in London
for ten, and it scatters them over the country by hundreds of thousands.
Decentralization is educating the whole mind of the country, and it is to