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As the eighteenth century was giving way to the nineteenth, a wise Boston judge said in the January 1, 1799, issue of the Columbian Centinel, “Give to any set men the command of the press, and you give them the command of the country, for you give them the command of public opinion, which commands everything.” One month later, Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison with a similar insight. “We are sensible,” Jefferson said of the efforts it would take to put their party—the Republicans—in power, “The engine is the press.” Both writers were correct in their assessment of the role the press would play in American life in the years ahead. The press was already helping to shape the opinions and direction of America. It had been doing so for decades, but its influence would erupt following the Revolutionary War and continue into the 1920s and farther. From less than forty newspapers in 1783—each with circulations of around 500—the number of papers erupted in the United States. By 1860, newspaper circulation exceeded 1 million, and in 1898, Joseph Pulitzer’s World alone had a daily circulation of 1.3 million. By the beginning of World War I, about 16,600 daily and weekly newspapers were published, and circulation figures passed 22.5 million copies per day with no slow down in circulation in sight. Magazines grew even more impressively. From around five at the end of the Revolution, journalism historian Frank Luther Mott counted 600 in 1860 and a phenomenal 3,300 by 1885. Some circulations surpassed 1 million, and the number of magazines continued to grow into the twentieth century.
The amazing growth of the press happened because the printed page of periodicals assumed a critical role in the United States. Newspapers and magazines became the place where Americans discussed and debated the issues that affected them. Newspapers, editors, and citizens took sides, and they used the press as the conduit for discussion. The Debating the Issues series offers a glimpse into how the press was used by Americans to shape and influence the major events and issues facing the nation during different periods of its development. Each volume is based on the documents, that is, the writings that appeared in the press of the time. Each volume presents articles, essays, and editorials that support opposing interests on the events and issues; and each provides readers with background and explanation of the events, issues, and, if possible, the people who wrote the articles that have been selected. Each volume also includes a chronology of events and a selected bibliography. The series is based on the Greenwood Press publication, Debating the Issues in Colonial Newspapers. Books in the Debating the Issues series cover the following periods: the Revolution and the young republic, the Federalist era, the antebellum period, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the progressive era, and World War I.
This volume on the World War I era focuses upon the issues that affected the nation from the period just before “the war to end all wars” through its conclusion. The newspapers of this period were not the chief source of debate about this conflict. Instead, magazines were where Americans debated the issues of whether the United States should enter the war, and they were where Americans debated whether Germany was provoked into the war or whether it was the aggressor. In this volume, both media are used to demonstrate the way the press helped to shape American opinion on the issues of relevance to this global conflict.

World War I: Primary Documents on Events from 1914 to 1919 by Ross F. Collins