I had supposed that your discrimination and judgment would save the readers of Liberty from such vague growls and aimless rhetoric as (I am sorry to say) appeared in your issue, March 4, under the heading, “Nobodies.” I venture to assert that “B,” its writer, is neither an editor nor a lawyer; and no one will assume that his judgment of current affairs in Boston is at all trustworthy. Why? Because his accusations and complaints are too general to be weighty and too indiscriminate to be beneficial. To my mind, no person who considers the progress of civilization can fail to see that reformers today must make specific indictments in order to command attention. And all criticism of present political or social affairs in this State or the Union, if designed to make men reflect and reform, ought to be precise, clear, and at least approximately true. Generalizations like the following, “B’s” opening sentence, ought, I say, to be studiously avoided. He declares, for example, that, “judging from the daily papers, one would infer that the great mass of the people in this community, or in this Commonwealth, are nobodies, and that only a small percentage of our population is of actual account” ask, is that true? Does any one who works for a living and moves about among men believe that it is even comparatively true? I am sure I know of no intelligent, sane person who would be so impressed by reading the daily newspapers, though “B” may have the acquaintance of such.
Then, following that sentence, he declares in the loosest possible way, as to politicians, that “the daily papers are full of their movements, sayings, and doings. When they die, a column or two are devoted to their biographies and obituaries. We are told how ’smart’ they were, and how sumptuously they lived at the public expense.” Further on “B” throws himself into this false and foolish assertion,— that “the death of a prominent man is a real godsend to the newspapers, of which they make the most by spreading it over as much space as possible. Indeed, every incident and every notorious individual are magnified and dilated by the press out of all proportion to its or his importance.”
These quotations will suffice, and, I may say, they fairly show the style of fault-finding too many careless talkers and writers follow as “reformers.” Such disciples, I submit, are not safe guides, and they certainly are not competent critics or reliable teachers.
“B” grumbles because the newspapers had considerable to say recently about Judge Horace Gray when he was named for a very high office, the bench of the supreme court at Washington; but, as long as “B” was not compelled to read the despatches or editorials printed, what ground had he for complaint? If he, “B,” is a “nobody,” whose fault is it but his own in this free country where all men can compete on tolerably fair terms for almost any elective position or any place to be reached by holiest industry? There is a legion of such snarlers as “B” in the country, men either once badly disappointed or soured by fretting over their own lack of popularity and prominence. Such persons ought not to be jealous or hasty about airing their prejudices against men like Judge Gray, who attend steadily to their daily work, and go on to the end free from corruption at least, if they are not men of originating minds and workers in the ranks of what we call reform.
I hope, therefore, that “B” will consider his words next time his indignation rises, and try to be reasonably specific and clear. Truth, equity, and justice demand it, and we cannot have Liberty without reason.
- W. B. Wright.
Boston, March 10, 1882.
[Of the substance of the above criticism we shall say nothing. If “B” desires to answer it, he will have no trouble in doing so. But, to save him the annoyance of vindicating his own personality, we may remark that he is an editor, and one of much longer and larger experience than Mr. Wright; that he enjoys an acquaintance with Boston in particular, and with the world and its public men in general, much more intimate and of much longer standing than Mr. Wright’s; that, far from being a soared and disappointed man, he is a most genial and companionable old gentleman, of liberal education, who prefers earnest work in modest retirement to the glare of publicity; and that Mr. Wright, in supposing him to be otherwise, has exhibited the very recklessnees of assumption of which he writes so deploringly. — Editor Liberty.]
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