"And we have no weekly and no monthly and no annual. We have no
newspaper in this town."

That stumped us both. In America every town of five thousand has
its daily newspaper, and frequently two dailies, and in the West
every town of five hundred people has its weekly newspaper. With us
the newspaper crystallizes public sentiment, promotes local pride,
and tries to be the social and intellectual centre of the community. A
community of twenty-five thousand without a newspaper--and we found
that this community never had supported a newspaper--was unthinkable
to us in terms of any civilization that we knew. How do they know
about the births, deaths, and marriages, we asked; and they told
us that the churches recorded those things. How do they know about
the scandal? And we remembered that scandal was older than the
press; it was the father of the press, as the devil is the father
of lies. How do they know how to vote? And they told us that
newspapers hindered rather than helped that function. How did they
record local history? And in our hearts, we knew who had recorded
so much local history, that most of it is not worth recording and
that tradition takes care of what is left. But how did they manage
to create a town spirit, to vote the bonds for the city waterworks,
to establish the public library, to enforce the laws, to organize
the Chamber of Commerce, to get up subscriptions for this, that or
the other public benevolence? And men shook their heads and said:
Water has run down hill many years; perhaps it will keep on running,
even without a newspaper.

[Illustration: As we sat in the car he came down the street beating
a snare drum and crying official news of the sugar ration]