Unselfish thinkers, who are concerned chiefly for the good of the community, are always the men who esteem the editor most highly. Wendell Phillips, who for more than thirty years was abused by about half the editors of the land, said, “Let me make the newspapers, and I care not what is preached in the pulpit or what is enacted in Congress.” Many years before, Thomas Jefferson, one of the founders of our government, said, “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should prefer the latter.” The editor has improved more rapidly in the past twenty-five years than the representative of any other profession. Theologians, physicians and lawyers all belong to schools of one sort or other, but of late years there has come up a new school of journalism which is called independent, and it has become so popular with readers of newspapers that the number of professors and students in it are increasing at a most gratifying rate. James Gordon Bennett, Jr., explains one difference clearly when he says: “There is one grand distinction between journals--some are newspapers, some are organs. An organ is simply a daily pamphlet published in the interest of some party, or persons, or some agitation.” But the organs are not as numerous as they used to be. Who would have imagined any time before the late civil war that in any great political campaign preceding a general election in this country there would be scores and almost hundreds of independent newspapers. The time was when a newspaper could not exist unless it were a party or personal organ. But the newspaper has gradually risen from being a mere partisan or personal mouthpiece to being the mouthpiece of its own proprietor. At the present day no properly qualified journalist need attach himself to either party for financial reasons. If he is competent to make a good newspaper he is quite free to express his own opinions regardless of whom he may help or hurt, and the position is so delightful that a great many editors rush into it apparently for the mere pleasure of expressing their own opinions. During the last general election the scarcity of strong party organs, even in the largest cities where they were supposed most to be needed, was a matter of general comment among practical politicians, and it is known that some newspapers changed hands solely for the purpose of being turned into party organs and that it was frequently so difficult to obtain control of existing journals that new ones had to be started for the sole purpose of supplying their respective parties with mouthpieces. This may be considered a compliment to the personal interest of the average journalist or to his personal ability. But, whichever it is, it is highly creditable to the profession, and it is a result which could not have been hoped for twenty-five years ago.