Early editorials hilarious, to the point.

One of my favorite weekend pastimes is to raid library sales and buy books, the older the better.

Among my many treasures is an 852-page book titled Decorum by S.L. Louis, published in 1880, which informs me of the manner in which a true lady should behave. I keep it for laughs, knowing that I would never have survived in polite society a century ago.

But my all-time favorite book is, for obvious reasons, a 1906 edition of Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers. A page at the beginning of the book says, "These articles may have some interest for the student of modern happenings, because of the fact that the newspapers publishing them have an aggregate daily circulation of two millions of copies, and are read each day by no fewer than five millions of men and women."

Some of the editorials are hilarious. They don't mean to be. Consider these titles: "Did We Once Live on the Moon?" "The Cow that Kicks Her Weaned Calf is All Heart," "How the Other Planets Will Talk to Us," "Crime is Dying Out," "Your Work is Your Brain's Gymnasium," and, the title I like best, "The Promising Toad's Heads."

The editorials are different from today's editorials in their more philosophical, even theological, bent. Many discuss the existence of God, the lessons of Jesus, and the origins of the soul - more the stuff of Sunday sermons than one would find in today's newspapers.

But others are moving, cogent, and well-argued debates of the issues of the day. How many of our editorials would hold up after nearly 90 years? Many of these do.

Some of the editorials are vigorous in defense of the union movement, then in its infancy. An editorial concerning a strike in Chicago, in which 150 contractors locked out 150,000 workers, is persuasive in its simplicity:

If Union Labor wins, 150,000 families will be able to lead at feast decent American workingmen's lives.

One hundred and fifty thousand wives will be able to dress their children comfortably and to dress themselves respectably.

One hundred and fifty thousand families of children will be brought up more nearly as American children ought to be.

Which is more important:

The welfare of 150 contractors' families? They will have enough anyhow. Or the welfare of 150,000 workingmen's families? They will have only a decent living at best. . . .

Editorials also defend more rights and education for women, although most modern women would find the rationale patronizing at best:

"Voting by women will improve humanity, because it will compel men to seek and earn the approval of women. Our social system improves in proportion as the men in it are influenced by its good women.

"The education of a girl is important chiefly because it means the educating of a future mother. Whose brain but the mother's inspires and directs the son in early years?"

In other words, as long as more rights for women improve the lives of men, they are justified. Maybe that was the best these editorialists could do.

Some themes are apparently timeless. Education was seen as the great antidote for drug abuse and alcoholism: "It would, perhaps, be worthwhile for the advocates of temperance to study the causes which have practically eliminated drunkenness from the most intelligent classes of men. Education undoubtedly is the greatest factor. . . . Make the lives of human beings more comfortable, make good food more plentiful, spread education, and you will solve the problem of excessive drinking."

Education, too, was going to prevent crime. In the editorial titled "Crime is Dying Out," the commentator argues, "Crime will diminish through education, as the mind takes control of us, and through society better organized, which shall give men a chance to develop normally. Thanks to education and to improving social conditions, crime is disappearing, NOT increasing. Even our despondency is comforting. It proves that we have progressed so far as to be horrified at that which we should have taken for granted a few centuries back."

Would that it were true.

But the editorial that I may frame and put on my wall is about, of all things, editorial writing:

"Why are we so worthless, O editorial writers? Why do we produce such feeble results? Why do we talk daily through our newspapers to ten millions of people and yet have not influence to elect a dog catcher?

"Simply because we want to sound wise, when that is impossible. . . . The best that the editorial writer can achieve is to make the reader think for himself. Suppose you stop spouting platitudes, editorial gentlemen, and try your hand at stirring up plain, everyday antagonism to existing false conditions. 'Disturb the peace,' as Ruskin put it."

Good advice, even after all these years.

Here are a few more of these timeless treasures.

NCEW member Maura Casey is associate editorial page editor for The Day in New London, Conn.