THEY WILL BE HEARD

The title is adapted from the quotation by William Lloyd Garrison and the book is about others like him, namely, the crusading editors of America. It starts with John Peter Zenger, perhaps the first of the breed, and goes on to Gill & Edes and Isaiah Thomas who were the trumpeters of sedition before 1776. It includes the sad story of Elijah Lovejoy, who crusaded against the practice of slavery and lost his life to an angry mob, and also the saga of James King of William, who came out against sin in San Francisco and was assassinated therefore. Physical violence and verbal vitriol abound in the lives of Edmund Ruffin and Horace Greeley, Francis W. Dawson, J.A. Cockerill and Melville Stone, William Allen White, Ralph Pulitzer and Adolph Ochs. Says Mr. Daniels: ""To be a public scold can be a lonely business in life."" Since he is the son of Josephus Daniels he should know, and by seeking out those other editors who felt it was ""time to raise hell,"" he, perhaps, draws comfort from the sum total of their lives. A book with a combined if somewhat confined journalistic-historical interest.