The evolution of the newspaper in Germany was slow. Between 1615, the date of the founding of the “Frankfurter Journal,” and 1798, when the “Allgemeine Zeitung” (General News) was founded by the bookseller Cotta, at Leipsic, no journals of a high order made their appearance, and it needed the inspiration of the French Revolution to beget in the German mind a desire for a livelier newspaper literature than had preëxisted. Thus, the “Zeitung” soon sprang into great popularity as a purveyor of news and as a medium of discussion, and has ever since maintained a leading place in the German political press. It not only set the style of the press at the turn of the century, but proved to be a pioneer in that wonderful journalistic march which spread over all German-speaking countries during the nineteenth century, giving to them media of news and discussion as able and influential as exist in any land. By 1870 there existed in Germany proper 3780 newspapers and periodicals; in Austria-Hungary, 700; in Switzerland, 300; not to mention the many hundreds printed in German in other countries, especially in the United States. A proportionate increase would greatly augment the above figures by the end of the century. The rise of German socialism proved to be a prolific source of journalism. The socialist seems to be a born editor and literary combatant. He is also a great reader and bold and independent thinker. Under the socialistic demand for a literature peculiar to itself, there has arisen a score of German printing-offices and perhaps fifty political journals, a third of which are dailies.