THE Commotion in Moontown: UNIQUE ASSAULT ON THE NEWSPAPERS. A RARE DISCUSSION.
REPORTED BYEDWARD R. PLACE.
Thrice welcome, Truth, when genial humor flings Her lantern's magic o'er the dance of things.SAN JOSE, CAL.: PRINTED AT THE OFFICE OF THE MERCURY.
1874.PREFATORY NOTE.
THE AUTHOR of this little book freely confesses that its chief purpose may be discovered in the remarks of "A Friend of Education," and his two or three respectable opponents, rather than in any or all the half-score speeches besides.
Profoundly convinced that the great parties or movements, of the future, in this country and in the leading nations of Europe, will relate more closely than they have hitherto done to questions of a social and industrial nature, he has endeavored in this humble production to bring out and emphasize principles and truths which he regards as fundamental to any thorough and desirable reform.
Reader! are you a friend of free institutions, and do you wish to see them transmitted unimpaired to posterity? Do you desire the elevation of the toiling millions of your fellow beings, and the banishment into outer darkness of their ancient, unrelenting, pitiless foe, POVERTY? If you answer, Yes, to these questions, or either of them, the writer invites your most thoughtful and candid attention to the more serious portions of this book.
In regard to the humorous portions, he has reasons to suspect that Topsems, Clodsouls, Wilders and the rest, or a near approach to them, can be found in almost any community. In the spirit of their antipathy to newspapers, they fall little short of what he has heard from well educated people. The most marked instance of this antipathy which has come to notice, is the case of a wealthy citizen of Philadelphia, Dr. James Rush, who donated a large sum to the Franklin Library of that city, for the erection of a building, &c., coupled with the condition of the prohibition therein of the newspapers, "because they are organs of disjointed thought." The prototype of all these good people would seem to be that Colonial Governor of Virginia (Berkley) who publicly boasted that there was not a newspaper in all the Old Dominion, and he hoped there would not be one for a hundred years!
