PROSPECTUS.
THE BREVIER reporters in all the years of its publication have been careful chiefly to make their work here a good record, and rest its claims to the cherishment of the Legislature upon that alone. They have gone before no Committee, lobbied none, received no approaches for individual favor, nor shaped their work at any time with sinister or partizan objects. It has rested solely and all the time on its merits, its integrity and fairness; and for these it has all the time received the favoring notice of the Legislature.
It is a fact also that the BREVIER REPORTS have done for the people what the newspapers are unfit and unable to do in the matter of a just and stern legislative record; and the work has been done cheaper than the newspaper charges which have been paid out of the treasury for their partial, personal, restricted and unreliable matter called Legislative Proceedings.
The work cannot be done by jobbers for the money that has been paid for it; and as to the standing contract price of the work, it carries that on its every page: for "two-thirds of a cent a page per copy" it is furnished to the proper accounting officers of the State in printed sheets, procured in every item of its cost at our own expense
Considering the difficulties and oppositions incident to such a work; the contingencies of failing health and failing purse, and failing at length to make an acceptable offering of the work, there is nothing in the offering of it on our part but hard work, and the good name of unswerving workers, much very delicate personal responsibility, and some pecuniary hazard ( - large for our means - ) and, at last and at the best, but meagre pay. We have proceeded strictly upon the presumption that the people's representatives know what is due to the country and to themselves in this matter of a record of their legislative action. And, if there is any consideration against the continuance of the BREVIER, except that of its cost, the same conceit is as much against the lobbies and open doors for the sessions of the General Assembly: and it is at least a hundred years too late for secret sessions.
In this submission of the BREVIER REPORTS we have not been mistaken as to the common and growing public demand for just and intelligent public records. We have tried to meet that demand, and to provoke parties abler than we are to supply it as it ought to be supplied. And we still suppose that the Representatives of the people know what they want in this matter - know whether it is better to do everything here at the Capitol by memory and word of mouth, than to stand upon a fair and open record for history.
As thirteen consecutive sessions of General Assembly have authorized the publication of the Brevier Reports it is regarded respectful and a duty to continue a proffer of the service that has been acceptable to every Legislature for so many years.
The Brevier Reports contain a record that is impartial - not a single partial report can be found in any of the fifteen volumes issued.
Three-fourths of a cent per page has been paid by the State heretofore for compiling the decisions of the Supreme Court which can be done as well as it ever has been by hundreds of citizens of Indiana, while none in the State are so compeled to make a Legislative Record as the protectors of the BREVIER REPORTS because the entire lives of no other Indianians have been passed in such like service As compensation should always be regulated by the skill required, there can be no question but that the pay for service but few are competent to perform should largely exceed the pay for labor that many are able to do. Nearly one half of the last volume of the BREVIER REPORTS, in each page, contains more than three times as much matter there is in one page of the Supreme Court Reports, yet the BREVIER REPORTS are furnished to the State for two thirds a cent per page, while the Reporter of the Supreme Court has received three quarters of a cent per page, besides the copy right.
The particulars of Legislative expenses for the Extra Session of 1872, itemized to the Specific Bill, approved Dec. 21, 1872, justifies our statement "that the Legislature found the cost of the newspaper subsidies for legislative reports in this city to exceed that of the authentic BREVIER.
The cost of new papers for that session above that of the BREVIER was $356 73.
The newspaper vanished, but the BREVIER is extant, with all its contributions to history.
Other comparisons might be gathered from the specific appropriation bills for the last seventeen years, which might cast even a more favoring light on the fact: that in all fair, honest work the best is always and every way the cheapest; and from the same sources whence these conclusion's are drawn there might also be more light thrown on the fact that reporting is a profession, and fair reporting is a distinction not always attainable for the highest public service by a metropolitan newspaper.
A. & W. H. DRAPIER. Indianapolis, March 10, 1875.
