The Anderson Intelligencer

The Country Press.

The following truthful article is taken from one of the ablest papers in the country:

Our duty is too often overlooked. Go into half the houses of the country, and there will be found New York newspapers, and Philadelphia magazines, and foreign literature of every kind; while of newspapers interested in advocating the interests of the State and their own county, not one can be found. This is grossly unjust. If a man has three dollars a year, or ten cents a week, to spend in information and literature for his family; his duty as a citizen is to take his own State and county paper. Let him imagine, if he can, what his State would be without a paper within her borders, and then ask himself what he is doing for their support.

But some excuse themselves for taking a metropolitan paper, on the ground that they contain more reading matter than those published at home. True enough—simply for the reason that they are supported. Every dollar sent to a foreign newspaper, by a citizen who takes no local paper, builds up that foreign paper at the expense, not of his own local paper, but of the interests of his own State and county.

We do not ask this for the local press as a matter of charity, but of justice. A good paper can do more good for any town, than any town can do for a paper. But few appreciate the local press as they ought. They overlook the fact that its conductors are the most self-sacrificing men in the country. From one year's end to another, they devote their talents and their energies to the building up of their localities, even to the neglect of their own pecuniary interests.

Yet the local press is sneered at, and given the cold shoulder, forgetting that the little pebble is as necessary for making the mountain, as the boulder or huge mass of granite. The local press holds as important a position as the rill does to the river which goes oceanward. It is bad policy to starve them to death, as it would be for the mouth of the stream to dam up the fountains from which it obtains its supply. The interests of the city press and the local press are identical, and they should be fostered alike, as each has its work to perform in its peculiar province. The conductors of the country press may sometimes err in judgment, or fail to carry out their plans to the fullest extent—but the metropolitan press is open to the same charge. We repeat that it is the first duty of every man—a duty that is imperative—to sustain his local press with a liberal hand, and not let it languish for want of that support.