“All the generations before this one have found it difficult to understand size, bigness. The human conception has been able only with difficulty to cope with the tremendous figures, cities, steamers, wars, rates of production, and so on, in the modern world. But I wonder if the time has not come when it is more difficult for most people to formulate an idea of smallness. Things have been big for so long now. For instance, a great many people are not only unable to imagine what a small weekly newspaper and a small town are like, but they do not even try, because they assume that anything small is simply an early and imperfect version of something big. I doubt if there are many who know that these particular small things, and of course others, are more different in kind than in size. They are not underdeveloped. They are mature, complete specimens of what they have always been and will always be.”

- “Country Editor,” by Henry Beetle Hough, 1940