the power of its hold upon the public. I add this lastly, because
no such institution that ever I heard of ever yet dreamed of
existing apart from the public, or ever yet considered it a
degradation to accept the public support.
Now, what the Newspaper Press Fund proposes to do with its money is
to grant relief to members in want or distress, and to the widows,
families, parents, or other near relatives of deceased members in
right of a moderate provident annual subscription – commutable, I
observe, for a moderate provident life subscription – and its
members comprise the whole paid class of literary contributors to
the press of the United Kingdom, and every class of reporters. The
number of its members at this time last year was something below
100. At the present time it is somewhat above 170, not including
30 members of the press who are regular subscribers, but have not
as yet qualified as regular members. This number is steadily on
the increase, not only as regards the metropolitan press, but also
as regards the provincial throughout the country. I have observed
within these few days that many members of the press at Manchester
have lately at a meeting expressed a strong brotherly interest in
this Institution, and a great desire to extend its operations, and
to strengthen its hands, provided that something in the independent
nature of life assurance and the purchase of deferred annuities
could be introduced into its details, and always assuming that in
it the metropolis and the provinces stand on perfectly equal
ground. This appears to me to be a demand so very moderate, that I
can hardly have a doubt of a response on the part of the managers,
or of the beneficial and harmonious results. It only remains to
add, on this head of desert, the agreeable circumstance that out of
all the money collected in aid of the society during the last year
more than one-third came exclusively from the press.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, in regard to the last claim – the last
point of desert – the hold upon the public – I think I may say that
probably not one single individual in this great company has failed
to-day to see a newspaper, or has failed to-day to hear something
derived from a newspaper which was quite unknown to him or to her
yesterday. Of all those restless crowds that have this day
thronged the streets of this enormous city, the same may be said as
the general gigantic rule. It may be said almost equally, of the
brightest and the dullest, the largest and the least provincial
town in the empire; and this, observe, not only as to the active,
the industrious, and the healthy among the population, but also to
the bedridden, the idle, the blind, and the deaf and dumb. Now, if
the men who provide this all-pervading presence, this wonderful,
ubiquitous newspaper, with every description of intelligence on
every subject of human interest, collected with immense pains and
immense patience, often by the exercise of a laboriously-acquired
faculty united to a natural aptitude, much of the work done in the
night, at the sacrifice of rest and sleep, and (quite apart from
the mental strain) by the constant overtasking of the two most
delicate of the senses, sight and hearing – I say, if the men who,
through the newspapers, from day to day, or from night to night, or
from week to week, furnish the public with so much to remember,
have not a righteous claim to be remembered by the public in
return, then I declare before God I know no working class of the
community who have.
It would be absurd, it would be impertinent, in such an assembly as
this, if I were to attempt to expatiate upon the extraordinary
combination of remarkable qualities involved in the production of
any newspaper. But assuming the majority of this associated body
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Dickens, Charles – Speeches, Literary & Social
to be composed of reporters, because reporters, of one kind or
other, compose the majority of the literary staff of almost every
newspaper that is not a compilation, I would venture to remind you,