Abstract

Country Reading and Voting

The editor of one of the oldest "country weeklies" in New England, the Litchfield, New England based Enquirer, on retiring from journalism after a quarter of a century of editorial work upon that paper, calls attention to the local changes in the conditions of rural-journalism during the long period. The increase of newspapers has not been due to any stronger natal appetite for newspaper reading, but simply to the cheapening, in the retiring editor's opinion, of the relative or absolute cost of the things by, which country newspapers are produced. The political effects of the new state of country journalism are undoubtedly benign, and are showing themselves in looser party ties among the farmers, the good effects of that cheaper journalism on their moral and mental nature are less obvious.