THE "COMIC-PAPER" QUESTION


It is recorded of a patriotic member of the Committee of Ways and
Means, that after hearing from the Special Commissioner of the
Revenue an elaborate and strongly fortified argument which made a
deep impression on the committee in favor of a reduction of the
whiskey tax, on the ground that the then rate, two dollars a
gallon, could not be collected--he closed the debate, and carried
the majority with him, by declaring that, for his part, he never
would admit that a government which had just suppressed the
greatest rebellion the world ever saw, could not collect two
dollars a gallon on whiskey. A large portion of the public
approaches the comic-paper problem in much the same spirit in
which this gentleman approached the whiskey tax. The country has
plenty of humor, and plenty of humorists. It fills whole pages of
numerous magazines and whole columns of numerous newspapers with
really good jokes every month. It supplies great numbers of
orators and lecturers and diners-out with "little stories,"
which, of their kind, cannot be surpassed. There is probably no
country in the world, too, in which there is so much constantly
going on of the fun which does not need local knowledge or
coloring to be enjoyed, but will bear exportation, and be
recognized as the genuine article in any English-speaking part of
the world. Moreover, there is in the real American stories an
amount of suggestiveness, a power of "connotation," which cannot
be affirmed of those of any other country. A very large number of
them are real contributions to sociology, and of considerable
value too. Besides all this, the United States possesses, what no
other nation does, several professed jesters--that is, men who