New Year's Day is a time to think of important things and nothing is more important to us than our Freedom of the Press. This means that our newspapers can print the truth as they see it for all of us to read, no matter whom this may offend at home or abroad. No dictator can allow freedom of the press, or he would soon be out of business. No country can hold onto the freedoms it has gained without a free press to set the truth before the people from all angles.

In America, we sell enough daily newspapers to supply every family with one a day, plus two each day for some 17 million families. Any person can keep up with the times by reading his daily paper and a well educated person reads at least two papers a day to get different viewpoints. Sensible persons base their opinions on the facts they can gather. They act and when the time comes they vote on their opinions   and on their majority vote our land is governed.

True, there are a few dopes too lazy to read a daily newspaper and others who read no farther than the funnies. These people have opinions, to be sure, but no one can say that their opinions are based on facts or reasonable evidence. We need, for the sake of ourselves and our country, to keep up with the constant stream of facts and news items from home and abroad. We are lucky to have a free press willing and able to bring us this vital data.

Some say the first real newspaper began in Peking in 500 A.D. It was called Tsing Tao, printed at first with hand cut wooden blocks on rice paper. It was published until 1935. The ancestors of the newspaper, however, are far older than this.

One of these may have been a bulletin giving the news of the day around 60 B.C. and tacked up on the Roman Forum for all those who could to read. A news letter also was sent from Rome to statesmen and business men in faraway cities. News letters of this sort were sent between the capitals of Europe until the 18th century.

The birth of the true newspaper, of course, had to wait for the invention of the printing press, which happened in Germany. So called newsbooks were issued now and then   but the rulers suppressed them and frowned on the idea of keeping the people informed. Germanys first successful newspaper started in 1609 and England’s in 1621. The first daily newspaper in the world was started by Elizabeth Mallet of London in the year 1702.

America’s first newspaper was published in Boston in 1690. It was suppressed after one issue, for America had not yet won her freedoms. One of the earliest American papers, the New England Courant, was published by James Franklin, whose brother Benjamin helped out for a while in the shop. At the time of the Revolution, America had 35 newspapers and, you can bet your boots, they did their share to spread the news and build the morale our young country needed in order to win its freedom.