Profusion is a characteristic of the American newspaper. There is too
much of everything. And when Sunday comes with its masses of reading
matter proper to the Day of Rest one is appalled. One thing is certain--
no American can find time to do justice both to his Sunday paper and his
Maker. It is principally on Sunday that one realises that if Matthew
Arnold's saying that every nation has the newspapers it deserves is
true, America must have been very naughty. How the Sunday editions could
be brought out while the paper-shortage was being discussed everywhere,
as it was during my visit, was a problem that staggered me. But that the
shortage was real I was assured, and jokes upon it even got into the
music halls: a sure indication of its existence. "If the scarcity of
paper gets more acute," I heard a comedian say, "they'll soon have to
make shoes of leather again."
But it is not only the Sunday papers that are so immense. I used to hold
the _Saturday Evening Post_ in my hands, weighed down beneath its
bulk, and marvel that the nation that had time to read it could have
time for anything else. The matter is of the best, but what would the
prudent, wise and hard-working philosopher who founded it so many years
ago--Benjamin Franklin--say if he saw its lure deflecting millions of
readers from the real business of life?
When we come to consider the American magazines--to which class the
_Saturday Evening Post_ almost belongs--and the English, there is
no comparison.
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