# History of American Journalism/Chapter 9

CHAPTER IX
FIRST DAILIES AND EARLY PARTY ORGANS
As the cities increased in size and became more commercial centers, the newspapers became more valuable as advertising mediums. The publishers soon became rivals in the matter of publishing the news of the stores and began to issue their papers more frequently,—first, semi-weekly, and later, tri-weekly. From this it was only a step to bring out a paper every day in the week save Sunday.
BEGINNINGS OF DAILY JOURNALISM
The first daily newspaper appeared in Philadelphia on Tuesday, September 21, 1784; it was entitled The Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser and was published by John Dunlap and David C. Claypoole. From 1791 to 1793 Dunlap was the sole publisher, but in the latter year Claypoole again became a partner until December, 1795, when Dunlap withdrew. From that time it was published by David C. and Septimus Claypoole, under the title of Claypoole's American Daily Advertiser, until the death of Septimus in 1798. When, on September 30, 1800, it was sold to Zachariah Poulson, Jr., it became Paulson's American General Advertiser. On December 30, 1839, the paper was merged into the present North American of Philadelphia. Such, in brief, was the history of the first daily paper in this country.
CONTENTS OF FIKST DAILY PAPER
Because The Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser was the beginning of daily journalism in America, a word or two may not be out of place in this connection about the contents of the first issue. It was a four-page sheet of four columns to the page and sold for four pence per copy. The first page and the last were filled entirely with advertisements. The third ​page con-
sisted half of advertisements and half of text. Of the two col- umns devoted to news, fully one half of the column related to information about vessels dismasted. Of the three fourths of the column in which the news of Philadelphia was given, fully one half came from the naval office and told about the entries at the Port of Philadelphia inward and outward. There was a little over a stick of type about the arrival of vessels at Newburyport, Massachusetts; three sticks or thereabouts told the news of New York. The only page which did not contain an advertisement was the second; of this "The Errors of the Press," an essay re- printed from The London Public Advertiser, occupied a column and a half; the rest of the page contained some intelligence based upon European papers just received at the printing-office. The paper was simply a development of a tri-weekly sheet of the same name, save in the place of General was the word Daily in the title. The tri-weekly, "Published on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays by David C. Claypoole," had sold for six pence a copy.
SECOND DAILY IN AMERICA
The second daily in the United States was the outgrowth of the second paper to be established in Charleston after the evacu- ation of that city by the British at the close of the Revolution. At the start the precursor was called The South Carolina Gazette and General Advertiser and appeared from two to four times each week, but not regularly on the same days of the week. Its edi- tor and publisher was John Miller, an English publisher who had been forced to come to this country because of his "defy- ing and exposing the wickedness and the folly of the cursed American war." Upon reaching Philadelphia and explaining the circumstances under which he had been forced to leave Eng- land, he was invited by the South Carolina delegation, then in attendance at the Continental Congress, to come to Charleston and establish a newspaper in that city an invitation which he accepted. From irregular publication on several days of the week it was only a step to bringing the paper out daily. This was done on Wednesday, December 1, 1784. Papers in London frequently referred to Miller as "Printer to the St ​ates of
America." This error is doubtless due to the fact that Miller had been made, immediately upon his arrival in Charleston, "Printer to the State." He continued to publish his daily until it was purchased a year or two later by The State Gazette of South Carolina, when it was merged with that paper. Miller then removed to Pendleton, South Carolina, where he published a weekly, The Merger, until his death in 1809.
NEW YORK HAS NEXT DAILY
The third daily paper in the United States was The New York Daily Advertiser, first published on Thursday, March 1, 1785, by Francis Childs. Not being the outgrowth of another paper, it was, at least in its early days, rather poorly supported by advertisers: yet its publisher made an earnest attempt to se- cure such business and offered to insert advertisements at three shillings each. It had no sooner been established than it became engaged in a quarrel with Holt's New York Journal. Colonel E. Oswald, of the latter paper, asserted that the daily had been started simply to injure Widow Holt. Philip Freneau contrib- uted to the columns of The Daily Advertiser, but was never its editor, simply a writer of political articles. The Advertiser was the special organ of the Hartford Convention; in fact, its editor, Theodore Dwight, was secretary of the Convention. In its col- umns he told rather fully the story of New England's opposition to the War of 1812. Although the first daily paper in New York, it did not lead in circulation other dailies which were later es- tablished due, doubtless, to its political beliefs. By 1820 it was credited with a circulation of thirteen hundred, but prob- ably it had less than that amount. It finally united with The Express, then a morning, but later changed to an evening, news- paper.
FIRST DAILY OF BOSTON
Boston did not have a daily paper until October 6, 1796, when The Polar Star and Boston Daily Advertiser arose on the horizon. Its editor was John Burk, who had fled from Ireland where he had become involved in trouble on account of his con- nection with a rebellious band called the "United Ir ​ishmen."
In some of his early numbers Burk published an account of his trial before the University of Dublin on the charge of Deism and Rebellionism. Shortly after, he addressed an advice "to the editors of the several newspapers in Boston" about the "vices that existed in newspaper establishments." In it he said, "The period of election is ushered in by bickerings, by personalities, by squabbles and scurrilities, by feuds, by heart- burnings and heart-scaldings, by animosity, by contentions and quarrels, which reflect a disgrace on the amiable character of Liberty, and are unworthy the literary advocates of a free peo- ple." Because of these and other criticisms, Burk became un- popular and was forced to suspend his paper early in 1797. Leaving Boston, Burk came to New York, where he helped The Time Piece, established by Philip Freneau, March 13, 1797, to keep going in a political way. Because of his political editorials in this paper, he was one of those editors arrested for publish- ing a libel contrary to the provisions of the Sedition Law.
FIRST APPEARANCE OF "THE FEDERALIST "
In promoting the adoption of the Constitution of the United States The Independent Journal, established November 17, 1783, in New York City, rendered a distinct service by printing a collection of essays advocating that measure under the general caption "The Federalist." Of these essays, eighty-five in num- ber, the first seventy-six appeared in The Journal, starting on October 27, 1787, and stopping on April 2, 1788. Signed by "Publius," they were addressed to the voters of New York, and urged the necessity of supporting the proposed Constitution. Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison were the real authors of these semi-editorial essays, though all wrote over the common name of "Publius." The series was copied in many of the other newspapers and had much to do with the adoption of the Constitution, not only by New York, but also by other States. No other one thing during the early days of the Repub- lic showed more the power of the controversial press than the appearance of "The Federalist." The essays have since been reprinted in book form and are still studied by the students of political history. In 1788 The Independent Journal became The ​
New York Daily Gazette: it was absorbed by The New York Journal of Commerce in 1840.
HAMILTON AND JEFFERSON AS JOURNALISTS
Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, though usually classified in histories as statesmen, were also journalists by proxies. Their names are associated with possibly the two best illustrations of the party press and the personal organs The Gazette of the United States and The National Gazette. The first of these, edited by John Fenno, was the leader of the Federal press and was the political organ of Hamilton; the second, edited by Philip Freneau, was the leader of the Republican press and was the personal organ of Jefferson. Both editors were employed by the Government: Fenno was "the printer" to the Treasury Department at a salary of twenty-five hundred dollars a year; Freneau held a "clerkship for languages" in the State Depart- ment at a salary of two hundred and fifty dollars a year.
ORGAN OF HAMILTON
The Gazette of the United States was the older publication, being established in New York City on April 11, 1789, when that city was still the seat of the Government. As soon as the Govern- ment removed to Philadelphia, in 1790, The Gazette of the United States followed it and appeared with a Philadelphia imprint on April 14, 1790. Hamilton was thus the first in the field with a personal organ.
ORGAN OF JEFFERSON
Jefferson, perceiving that The Gazette of the United States was, to quote his own words, "a paper of pure Toryism, disseminat- ing the doctrine of monarchy, aristocracy, and exclusion of the people," desired a paper that would be a "Whig vehicle of in- telligence," and if he did not bring Freneau to Philadelphia, he at least sympathized with the latter's ambition to start a paper which should be distinctly Republican in policy. The Gazette of the United States soon had a rival in The National Gazette which Freneau established in Philadelphia on October 31, 1791. From the start it had a national rather than a local circulation: in this ​
respect, as in several others, it followed Jefferson's plan. Nat- urally The National Gazette, being a party and personal organ, opposed Hamilton and most of the things for which he stood. At first, Hamilton let Fenno defend the attacks, but when the latter, in The Gazette of the United States, began to call the edi- tor of The National Gazette a "blackguard," " bedlamite," " faun- ing parasite," etc., Freneau, who was a master of satirical verse, replied as follows :
Since the day we attempted The Nation's Gazette Pomposo's dull printer does nothing but fret;
Now preaching,
And screeching,
Then nibbling
And scribbling,
Remarking
And barking,
Repining
And whining
And still in a pet From morning till night with The Nation's Gazette.
Instead of whole columns, our page to abuse, Your readers would rather be treated with news;
While wars are a-brewing
And kingdom 's undoing,
While monarchs are falling
And princesses squalling,
While France is reforming
And Irishmen storming
In a glare of such splendor, what nonsense to fret At so humble a thing as The Nation's Gazette!
No favours we ask'd from your friends in the east; On your wretched soup meagre I left them to feast; So many base lies you have sent them in print, That scarcely a man at our paper will squint:
And now you begin
With a grunt and a grin
With the bray of an ass,
And a visage of brass.
With a quill in your hand, and a lie in your mouth To play the same trick on the men of the south.
One National Paper, you think is enough To flatter and lie, to pallaver and puff; To preach up in favor of monarchs and titles, And garters and ribbons, to prey on o ​ur vitals:
Who knows but our Congress will give it in fee, And make Mr. Fenno the grand patentee!
Then take to your scrapers
Other national papers
No rogue shall go snacks
And the newspaper Tax
Shall be puff'd to the skies
As a measure most wise So a spaniel, when master is angry and kicks it, Sneaks up to his shoe and submissively licks it.
From this time on, political discussions in both papers became more heated. Fenno's Gazette of the United States stood for the Hamiltonian doctrine of Federal control, modeled after that of England: Freneau's National Gazette came out just as strongly for the Jeffersonian principles of popular control dictated by the will of the people. Space does not permit a discussion of these widely divergent principles of Jefferson and Hamilton principles upon which two great political parties were built.
PRESS BATTLE OF STATESMEN
While it was undoubtedly true that both Hamilton and Jef- ferson were sincere in their desire to avoid an open quarrel, it soon became evident that the newspaper articles must bring about a fight to a finish. The break came when Hamilton, in- censed by the ironical and satirical thrusts of Freneau, published in July, 1792, the following letter in The Gazette of the United States:
Mr. Fenno:
The editor of The National Gazette receives a salary from the gov- ernment. Quaere: Whether this salary is paid for translations or for publications the design of which is to vilify those to whom the voice of the people has committed the administration of our public affairs, to oppose the measures of government and by false insinuation to dis- turb the public peace?
In common life it is thought ungrateful for a man to bite the hand that puts bread in his mouth, but if the man is hired to do it, the case is altered.
Freneau's reply may be found in the following item:
Whether a man who receives a small stipend for services rendered as French Translator to the Department of State and as editor ​of a free
newspaper admits into his publication impartial strictures on the proceedings of the government, is not more likely to act an honest and disinterested part toward the public than a vile sycophant who, ob- taining emoluments from the government far more lucrative than the salary alluded to, [Fenno was printer to the Treasury Department at a salary of twenty-five hundred dollars a year finds his interest in at- tempting to poison the mind of the people by propagating and dis- seminating principles and sentiments utterly subversive of the true interest of the country and by flattering and recommending every and any measure of government, however pernicious and destructive its tendency might be to the great body of the people?
JEFFERSON DEFENDS FRENEAU
The fact must not be lost sight of that the struggle was no longer between the editors of the two Gazettes, but between Ham- ilton and Jefferson. The fight became so open that Washington found it necessary to call his two secretaries together and ask them to cease their attacks one upon the other, making his appeal that the interests of the country demanded that such attacks as were appearing in the two papers could not work for the good of the Commonwealth. Washington even asked Jeffer- son to dispense with the services of Freneau. This, the Secre- tary of State refused to do. His defense may be quoted at length as it disproved the charge so often made that Jefferson was an actual contributor to The National Gazette:
While the government was at New York I was applied to on be-half of Freneau to know if there was any place within my department to which he could be appointed. I answered there were but four clerk- ships, all of which I found full and continued without any change. When we removed to Philadelphia, Mr. Pintard, the translating clerk, did not choose to remove with us. His office then became vacant. I was again applied to there for Freneau and had no hesitation to prom- ise the clerkship to him. I cannot recollect whether it was at the same time or afterwards, that I was told he had a thought of setting up a paper there. But whether then or afterwards, I considered it a circum- stance of some value, as it might enable me to do what I had long wished to have done, that is to have the material parts of The Leyden Gazette brought under your eye, and that of the public, in order to possess yourself and them of a juster view of the affairs of Europe, than could be obtained from any other public source. This I had ineffec- tually attempted through the press of Mr. Fenno, while in New York, selecting and translating passages myself at first, then having it done ​
by Mr. Pintard, the translating clerk, but they found their way too slowly into Fenno's paper. Mr. Bache essayed it for me in Philadelphia, but his being a daily paper did not circulate sufficiently in other states. He even tried, at my request, the plan of a weekly paper of recapitu- lation from his daily paper, on hopes it might go into the other states, but in this, too, we failed. Freneau, as translating clerk and the printer of a periodical paper likely to circulate through the states (uniting in one person the parts of Pintard and Fenno) revived my hopes that they could at length be effected. On the establishment of his paper, therefore, I furnished him with The Leyden Gazettes with an expression of my wish that he could always translate and publish the material in- telligence they contained, and have continued to furnish them from time to time as regularly as I have received them. But as to any other direction or any indication of my wish how his press should be con- ducted, what sort of intelligence he should give, what essays encour- age, I can protest in the presence of Heaven that I never did by myself or any other, or indirectly say a syllable nor attempt any kind of in- fluence. I can further protest in the same awful presence, that I never did by myself or any other, directly or indirectly write, dictate, or pro- cure any one sentence or sentiment to be inserted in his or any other gazette, to which my name was not affixed or that of my office. I surely need not except here a thing so foreign to the present subject as a little paragraph about our Algerian captives, which I once put into Fre- neau's paper.
Freneau's proposition to publish a paper having been about the time that the writings of Publicola and the discourses of Davilla had a good deal excited the public attention, I took for granted from Fre- neau's character, which had been marked as that of a good Whig, that he would give free place to pieces written against the aristocratical and monarchical principles these papers had inculcated. This having been in my mind, it is likely enough I may have expressed it in conversation with others, though I do not recollect that I did. To Freneau I think I could not, because I still had seen him but once and that was at a pub- lic table, at breakfast at Mrs. Elsworth's, as I passed through New York the last year. And I can safely declare that my expectations looked only to the chastisement of the aristocratical and monarchical writings, and not to any criticism on the proceedings of government. Colonel Hamilton can see no motive for any appointment but that of making a convenient partizan. But you, sir, who have received from me recommendations of a Rittenhouse, Barlow, Paine, will believe that talents and science are sufficient motives with me in appointments to which they are fitted, and that Freneau as a man of genius, might find a preference in my eye to be a translating clerk and make a good title to the little aids I could give him as the editor of a Gazette by procuring subscriptions to his paper as I did some before it appeared, and as I have done with pleasure for other men of genius. Col. Hamilton, alias ​
"Plain Facts," says that Freneau's salary began before he resided in Philadelphia. I do not know what quibble he may have in reserve on the word "residence." He may mean to include under that idea the removal of his family; for I believe he removed himself before his fam- ily did to Philadelphia. But no act of mine gave commencement to his salary before he so far took up his abode in Philadelphia as to be suffi- ciently in readiness for his duties of his place. As to the merits or de- merits of his paper they certainly concern me not. He and Fenno are rivals for the public favor. The one courts them by flattery, the other by censure, and I believe it will be admitted that the one has been as servile as the other severe. No government ought to be without cen- sors; and where the press is free, no one ever will.
FIGHT OF FKENEAU FOE EDITORIAL FREEDOM
Freneau was extremely bitter against any secrecy on the part of national legislation. Taking as its target the act of the Sen- ate in holding its sessions behind closed doors, The National Gazette fired the following shot in an editorial in February, 1792:
A motion for opening the doors of the senate chamber has again been lost by a considerable majority in defiance of instruction, in defiance of your opinion, in defiance of every principle which gives security to free men. What means this conduct? Which expression does it carry strongest with it, contempt for you or tyranny? Are you freemen who ought to know the individual conduct of your legislators, or are you an inferior order of beings incapable of comprehending the sublimity of senatorial functions, and unworthy to be entrusted with their opin- ions? How are you to know the just from the unjust steward when they are covered with the mantle of concealment? Can there be any ques- tion of legislative import which freemen should not be acquainted with ? What are you to expect when stewards of your household refuse to give account of their stewardship? Secrecy is necessary to design and a masque to treachery; honesty shrinks not from the public eye.
The Peers of America disdain to be seen by vulgar eyes, the music of their voices is harmony only for themselves and must not vibrate in the ravished ear of an ungrateful and unworthy multitude. Is there any congeniality excepting in the administration, between the government of Great Britain and the government of the United States? The Senate supposes there is, and usurps the secret privileges of the House of Lords. Remember, my fellow citizens, that you are still freemen; let it be im- pressed upon your minds that you depend not upon your representa- tives but that they depend upon you, and let this truth be ever present to you, that secrecy in your representatives is a worm which will prey and fatten upon the vitals of your l ​iberty.
But for the attacks of Freneau the Senate might possibly be still holding its sessions behind locked doors.
END OF BOTH GAZETTES
In spite of the fact that Freneau published at the end of the first six months a most flattering notice about the success of The National Gazette, the paper on October 26, 1793, brought out its last issue and published the following notice:
With the present number (208) conclude the second volume and second year's publication of The National Gazette. Having just im- ported a considerable quantity of new and elegant type from Europe, it is the editor's intention to resume the publication in a short time at the opening of the next Congress.
Please send in subscriptions.
Printers of newspapers may no longer send in exchange until further notice.
This notice left a loophole so that Freneau might resume pub- lication of his Gazette in case he could raise sufficient funds something he was evidently unable to do. The fact that the yellow fever plague broke out in Philadelphia this same year may have had something to do with the death of The Gazette. One other thing may have been a factor in the decision : Jeffer- son at this time resigned his office of Secretary of State and automatically Freneau ceased to be the official translator of the Government.
Freneau's paper led all the organs of the same political faith. Seldom during these years did a Republican paper get out an issue in which there was not at least one quotation from The National Gazette.
The Gazette of the United States continued to be the Federal organ and was bitterly opposed to the attempt of France to in- volve the United States in war. Fenno remained editor of the paper until his death in 1798 when he was succeeded by his son, John Ward Fenno. The paper later became The United States Gazette and was finally consolidated with The Philadelphia North Amer ​ican in 1847.
POLITICAL LEADER OF PRESS IN NEW ENGLAND
Of the early political papers of the period, the most interest- ing and also the most conservative was unquestionably The Massachusetts Centinel and The Republican Journal founded on March 24, 1784, by Benjamin Russell. In the first number he printed the following conditions under which he hoped to bring out his paper : ,
(1). This paper shall be printed with a legible type, on good paper, to contain four quarto pages, demi. (2). The price of this paper (will) be Twelve Shillings, the year, one quarter to be paid on subscribing. If agreeable to the custom in the cities of London, New- York and Phila- delphia, the subscribers should choose to pay per number, the price will be Two Pence. (3). The papers in the town of Boston, shall be deliv- ered to the subscribers as early as possible on publication days. (4). Advertisements shall be inserted at as low a price as is demanded by any of their brethren in the art, and continued, if desired in Six Num- bers. (5). Gentlemen in the country may be supplied with this paper at the above price, (postage excepted) which is cheaper than any other papers, if the advantage of receiving them twice in the week is consid- ered. The publishers engage to use every effort to obtain, and the most scrutinous circumspection in collecting whatever may be thought of public utility, or private amusement: Variety shall be courted in all its shapes, in the importance of political information in the sprightli- ness of mirth in the playful levity of imagination in the just se- verity of satire in the vivacity of ridicule in the luxuriance of poe- try and in the simplicity of truth. We shall examine the regulations of office with candor approve with pleasure or condemn with boldness. Uninfluenced by party, we aim only to be just. The assistance of the learned, the judicious and the curious is solicited: Productions of public utility, however severe, if consistent with truth, shall be ad- mitted; and the modest correspondent may depend on the strictest se- crecy. Reservoirs will be established in public houses for the reception of information, whether foreign, local or poetical.
RUSSELL'S DEVICES TO ATTRACT ATTENTION In spite of this rather pretentious announcement for a paper, The Centinel increased in circulation, not because of the amount or the quality of its news, but because its publisher was the first to realize the value of dramatized and illustrated features for his subscribers. He was extremely fertile in devices and never hesitated to use pictures or mechanical arrangement in types ​
to attract the attention of readers. He fought for the adoption of the Constitution, but was bitterly opposed to the return of confiscated property to those who had left America during the War to live in England or any of the colonies. No paper in Massachusetts was more bitter toward the tax on newspapers passed by the State Legislature in 1785 than was The Centinel. Russell took special delight in printing allegories hi his paper. Of these, one of the best was entitled "The Federal Ship," pub- lished shortly after the inauguration of Washington in 1789:
Just launched on the Ocean of Empire, the Ship COLUMBIA, GEORGE WASHINGTON, Commander, which, after being thir- teen years in dock, is at length well manned, and in very good condi- tion. The Ship is a first rate has a good bottom, which all the Builders have pronounced sound and good. Some objection has been made to parts of the tackling, or running rigging, which, it is supposed, will be altered, when they shall be found to be incommodious, as the Ship is able to make very good headway with them as they are. A jury of Car- penters have this matter now under consideration. The Captain and First Mate are universally esteemed by all the Owners, Eleven 1 in number and she has been insured, under their direction, to make a good mooring in the harbor of Public Prosperity and Felicity whither- to she is bound. The Owners can furnish, besides the Ship's Company, the following materials: New-Hampshire, the Masts and Spars; Massachusetts, Timber for the Hull, Fish, &c.; Connecticut, Beef and Pork; New-York, Porter and other Cabin stores; New- Jersey, the Cord- age; Pennsylvania, Flour and Bread; Delaware, the Colors, and Clothing for the Crew; Maryland, the Iron work and small Anchors; Virginia, Tobacco and the Sheet Anchor; South-Carolina, Rice; and Georgia, Powder and small Provisions. Thus found, may this good Ship put to sea, and the prayer of all is, that GOD may preserve her, and bring her in safety to her desired haven.
On June 16, 1790, The Centinel was enlarged and the word Columbian was substituted for that of Massachusetts.
CONGRESS
One incident in the career of Russell should not be omitted. When Congress held its first session, the country was almost bankrupt. In view of this fact, Russell offered to publish in his
1 Only eleven States had then adopted the Constitution. North Caro- lina and Rhode Island are not recognized as owners of ​the Ship.
paper all the laws and other legal advertisements without pay. Toward the close of Washington's inauguration, he was asked for a bill and promptly sent a receipted account of the indebted- ness of the Government to him. When Washington learned of the fact, he remarked: "This must not be. When Mr. Russell offered to publish the laws without pay, we were poor. It was a generous offer. We are now able to'pay our debts. This is a debt of honor, and must be discharged." Russell was later sent a check for seven thousand dollars, the amount of his receipted bill.
WOKDLESS JOURNALISM
Russell, more than any other editor of the period, recognized the value of wordless journalism. He made the pictures in The Centinel serve the same purpose that the cartoon does to-day. His device of "The Federal Pillars" attracted much attention. Whenever a new State adopted the Constitution he added an- other pillar to the "Federal Edifice." In the early part of Au- gust, 1788, when eleven States had approved the Constitution, he ran in his paper a device showing conditions then obtaining. The eleven States were represented by the corresponding num- ber of perpendicular pillars. North Carolina's pillar was raised to an angle of forty-five degrees, while the one for Rhode Island appeared broken above its base. Hope for the latter was held out in the inscription at the right of the capital: "fl^" The foundation good it may yet be saved." Evidently Russell had no doubt about the final action of North Carolina, for over the pillar which represented that State was the encouraging news: "Rise it will." Written testimony shows how eagerly readers of The Massachusetts Centinel watched the rise of col- umns in the "National Dome."
THE GERRYMANDER CARTOON
It was this same Russell who printed the Gerrymander car- toon, though it was drawn by Gilbert Stuart. The struggle be- tween the Republicans and the Federalists for the control of the State of Massachusetts was extremely bitter. In 1811 the for- mer had not only elected Elbridge Gerry Governor, but also carried both houses of the Legislature. To retain this supremacy ​
in the future, that there might be no doubt about the election of a United States Senator, the Republicans remapped the sena- torial districts and divided the power of their political oppo- nents by paying no attention to county boundaries. In Essex County the arrangement of the district in relation to the town was most singular and absurd. Russell had opposed such a polit- ical move, and after it had become a law he had taken a map of Essex County and colored the towns according to senatorial dis- tricts. The strange map hung on the walls of his editorial sanc- tum. One day as Stuart gazed at the map he remarked to Rus- sell that the towns as they had been colored resembled some monstrous animal. A few touches of his pencil added a head, wings, and claws. "There," said Stuart, according to the re- port, "that will do for a salamander." Editor Russell looked at the revised map only a minute and then exclaimed, "Salaman- der? Better call it Gerrymander." In describing this incident in his "Reminiscences," Joseph T. Buckingham said: "The word became a proverb, and, for many years, was in popular use among the Federalists as a term of reproach to the Democratic Legislature, which had distinguished itself by this act of polit- ical turpitude. An engraving of the Gerrymander was made, and hawked about the State, which had some effect in annoy- ing the Democratic Party." Republicans had by this time come to be known as Democrats a term first used by the Federal- ists in ridicule.
NECESSITY OF CHANGE IN NAME
When Washington retired to Mount Vernon, The Centinel became a faithful supporter of John Adams and his policies. The term Republican Journal in the second part of the title of the paper was in a certain sense a misnomer. It was later changed to The Massachusetts Federalist. While a great Fed- eral organ, The Centinel reported European news much better than its contemporaries. Russell subscribed to the leading for- eign journals and reprinted in condensed form the more impor- tant items. This practice made the paper a wholesale distribu- tor of news for the country printers of New England. Russell did not hesitate to rebuke the sensational press because it had ​
"ejected mud, filth, and venom," in the political campaigns and had "attacked and blackened the best characters the world ever boasted." Nevertheless, being the editor of a Federalist organ, Russell was forced, much against his will, to support De Witt Clinton of New York and to oppose James Madison. In proportion as the Federalists lost in influence, The Centinel now called The Columbian Centinel lost in subscription. To- ward the close of 1828 Russell retired from newspaper work and in 1840 The Centinel became a part of The Boston Daily Advertiser.
FIRST FEATURE PAPER
Before the close of the eighteenth century, American journal- ism had a "feature" paper, the departments of which attracted more attention than its "latest intelligence both foreign and do- mestick." This paper was started, not in one of the larger cities, but in the little country village of Walpole, New Hampshire. Its promoters were Isaiah Thomas, publisher of The Worcester Spy, and David Carlisle, a native of Walpole, and at one time an apprentice in the office of Thomas at Worcester, Massa- chusetts. Taking a printing-press and type which had seen good service on The Spy, Carlisle brought out in April, 1793, The New Hampshire Journal. In this sheet may be found the precursor of the modern newspaper "colyum" in a department furnished by Royal Tyler, whose humorous squibs were headed "From the Shop of Messrs. Colon and Spondee." No paragraphers of the nineteenth century ever surpassed Tyler in skillful allitera- tion, of which he was unusually fond. Tyler had a rival in Isaac Storey, a graduate of Harvard College of the Class of 1792, who signed his political effusions, "Peter Quince." Thomas Green Fessenden, upon his graduation from Dartmouth College, be- gan, under the signature of Simon Spunkey," a series of politi- cal lampoons which in Hudibrastic style satirized the French and the Republican politics. David Everett, also a graduate ot Dartmouth College, wrote a prose department of clever es- says, "Common Sense in Dishabille." These humorous essays were so popular that they were not only republished in many of the newspapers, but were afterwards collected a ​nd printed in
a small volume. Other clever features were supplied by writers, doubtless college-bred, and were signed, "The Rural Wanderer," "The Medler," "Peter Pencil," "The Hermit," etc. The most popular department in the paper was the one which had for its caption "The Lay Preacher." For it Joseph Dennie wrote lay sermons which went the rounds of the rural press and even found their way into the columns of the city newspapers. Such was the demand of readers for these lay sermons that editors were sometimes forced to insert them even when pressure was so great on the newspaper columns that advertisements had to be omitted. For some reason, possibly because his associates were so fond of showing their scholastic attainments, Dennie went out of his way to lampoon both Harvard and Dartmouth Colleges. More and more these special features crowded out the news until the paper finally became almost a satirical weekly. Because of the popularity of The New Hampshire Jour- nal two extra post-riders had to leave Walpole in order to dis- tribute the paper.
TWO OLDEST DAILIES IN NEW YORK
Two dailies founded in New York with political backing de- serve special mention. Both papers were founded as Federal organs and were inspired by Alexander Hamilton, who was en- deavoring to strengthen the grip of his party on the City of New York.
NOAH WEBSTER AN EDITOR
The earlier, The Minerva, now The Globe and Commercial Advertiser, was established on December 9, 1793, and induced Noah Webster, the lexicographer at Hartford, to become its editor. It was published "every day, Sundays excepted, at four o'clock or earlier if the arrival of the mail will permit." Webster, in outlining the editorial policy of his paper, said that it would be "The Friend of Government, of Freedom, of Virtue, and every Species of Improvement." His editorials were undoubt- edly on the highest plane of any of the period and the paper was the ablest edited of any Federal daily. He was the first editor to advocate no entangling alliances. "I have d ​efended
the administration of the national government because I be- lieve it to have been incorrupt and according to the Spirit of the Constitution. I have advocated the Constitution because, if not perfect, it is probably the best we can obtain, and be- cause experience teaches us, it has secured to us important rights and great public prosperity. ... I have cautioned my fellow-citizens against all foreign intrigues, because I am aware of the fatal dissensions they would introduce into our councils, and because I hold it proper for us to attach ourselves to no foreign nation whatever, and be in spirit and truth Americans." In another editorial, he tried to prove that slave labor was less productive than that of freemen.
Connected with The Minerva was The Herald, Gazette for the Country, a semi-weekly paper made up of extracts from the daily and printed solely for national circulation. Webster wielded more power through the columns of The Herald than he did through those of The Minerva, just as Horace Greeley later moulded public opinion chiefly through his weekly rather than his daily edition of The Tribune. The Herald, however, also changed its name before the close of the period to The New York Spectator, but its relation to the daily continued the same. When Webster retired on July 1, 1799, Zachariah Lewis became the editor and held that position until April 11, 1820, when Colonel W. L. Stone, of The Albany Daily Advertiser, assumed editorial control.
The second was The Evening Post, which was first set up on November 16, 1801. Its editor was William Coleman. This paper must not be confused with several others of the same name. The first Post was that of the Colonial Period and was the fourth paper in the city; the second was The New York Gazetteer; or Daily Evening Post, published by Kollock, Carroll, and Patterson from August 24, 1786, until December 18 of that year, when its title was changed to The New York Gazetteer and Public Advertiser; the third was The New York Evening Post, a tri-weekly started on November 17, 1794, by L. Wayland, and discontinued May 25, 1795; the fourth was the Federal daily of ​1801. Coleman was a lawyer who had attracted the attention of the Federal leaders and had had some experience on The Gazette at Greenfield, Massachusetts. Coming to New York in 1798, he had been given an appointment in the Circuit Court, but in the political upheaval about the middle of 1801 he, along with many other members of his party, had been removed from his office.
BRYANT TELLS STORY OF "POST"
The story of The Evening Post from 1801 to 1812 was well told by William Cullen Bryant in an editorial prepared for the semi-centennial of that paper in 1851. The original prospectus, though somewhat measured in style, was well written. The editor, William Coleman, while avowing his allegiance to the Federal Party, announced that "In each party are honest and virtuous men" and expressly persuaded that the people needed only to be well informed to decide public questions rightly. He contemplated a wider sphere than most secular papers of that day and spoke of his designs "to inculcate just principles in religion" as well as in "morals and politics." He even made some attempt to carry out this intention, for in an early number he printed a communication in reply to a heresy avowed by The American Citizen, a Republican daily paper, which had been maintaining that the soul was immaterial and that death was a sleep of the mind as well as of the body. At the outset, Coleman made a sincere effort to avoid those personal controversies so common among the conductors of party papers, and with which their columns were so much occupied. In a "leader" in the first number, he expressed his abhorrence of "personal virulence, low sarcasms, and verbal contentions with printers and editors" and his determination not to be deviated from the line of temperate discussion—a resolution he found difficult to keep.
The Evening Post occasionally indulged in a comment in a lighter vein. On May 18, 1802, it answered a female correspondent, who had asked why the paper, like other papers, had not censored the style of ladies' dress then in vogue: "Female dress of the modern Parisian cut, however deficient in point of the ornament vulgarly called clothing, must at least be allowed to ​be not entirely without its advantages. If there is danger of its making the gentlemen too prompt to advance, let it not be unobserved that it fits the lady to escape. Unlike the dull drapery of petticoats worn some years since, but now banished to the nursery or kitchen, the present light substitute gives an air of celerity which seems to say—Catch me if you can." During the first decade of The Evening Post there was much discussion of public questions; its editorial articles, even when brief, seldom if ever seemed to think that it was their sphere to pronounce prompt judgment on every question of a public nature the moment it arose. The annual message of Jefferson to Congress in 1801 was published in The Evening Post on December 12 of that year without comment. Not until December 17 was there any discussion, but when it started it lasted until April 8 of the following year. Though Coleman was styled Field-Marshal of the Federal Party he was opposed to the famous Hartford Convention. Mention has been made that Coleman found it impossible because of the times to keep personalities out of The Post. By way of illustration, its editorial comment of December 2, 1803, may be quoted: "Cheetham's New York Watch-Tower [connected with The American Citizen] has recently come to hand in an entire new dress in such a strange habit, in fact, that it was almost as much unknown as the notorious swindler who disguised himself by putting on a clean shirt. But Cheetham has been cautious, while altering his manner, not to improve his matter. Falsehoods appear in the columns of The Watch-Tower as numerous as usual, with no other difference, than that they shew a face more bold." For the benefit of the lay reader, it may be said that "bold face" is a term used to designate a certain kind of type, as well as to describe the actions of individuals.
Coleman, of The Evening Post, had to defend himself not only against the attacks of Cheetham in The American Citizen, a continuation of Holt's New York Journal, but also against those of Duane in The Aurora, a continuation of Bache's Philadelphia Advertiser. This newspaper war was typical of the period. Coleman edited a Federal paper and Cheetham and Duane, Republican sheets. Sometimes Coleman attacked his rivals separately, but not infrequently he attempted to kill, editorially, ​
both editors with one stone. For instance, here is a quatrain which he once hurled at his rival editors:
Lie on, Duane, lie on for pay,
And, Cheetham too, lie thou too; More against truth you cannot say
Than truth can say 'gainst you.
LITERABY DAILY OF THE TIME
At the beginning of the nineteenth century the foremost lit- erary newspaper in New York was unquestionably The Morning Chronicle, which first appeared on Friday, October 1, 1802, with Peter Irving as managing editor. In his opening prospectus he announced that "while he intended to give the earliest com- mercial intelligences and to advocate with manly freedom genuine Republican principles, he also intended to blend the in- terests of literature with those of commerce and politics and to enrich its columns with scientific information." He asserted that "malignity, detraction and scurrilous abuse should never be permitted to stain its pages." Its literary contents comprised criticisms, letters, selections, and extracts from the literati of the day. The Chronicle was not without its lighter vein depart- ment. Irving promised in his introduction "sportive effusions of wit and humor" which materialized with a series of papers on plays and players, fashionable foolishness, and the passing humors of the hour. These were signed with the nom-de-plume of "Jonathan Oldstyle" and were thought for a long time to come from the pen of Peter Irving, but in reality they came from that of his younger brother, Washington. Another brother, John Treat Irving, contributed to the columns of The Chronicle bits of verse in which he satirized the party conflicts of the day. Still another brother, William Irving, the eldest of the family, told in the columns of The Chronicle his experiences as an Indian trader on the Mohawk and later published pungent satire about the doings of the day. James K. Paulding, whose sister had married William Irving, became a contributor of verse. The Morning Chronicle was a warm supporter of Aaron Burr and devoted much space to defending the charges brought against him in the columns of The Evening Post. The death of Hamilton ​
not only killed Burr socially and politically, but also killed The Chronicle. Its remains were purchased in 1805 by The Pough- keepsie Journal.
FIRST PAPER WITH TWO EDITIONS
The year 1796 saw an innovation in the shape of two editions, morning and evening, of the same paper. In that year Samuel H. Smith, who afterwards achieved more distinction in the field of journalism as the editor of The National Intelligencer at Wash- ington, published The New World at Philadelphia "every morn- ing and evening, Sundays excepted." In reality the paper had only one edition, for the sheet was printed all at the same time and was then divided; one half went to the customer in the morning and the second to him in the afternoon. The New World, being a novelty, attracted considerable attention for a short time, but subscribers, not satisfied with the paper, discon- tinued their subscriptions and the venture was abandoned after a few months. Nevertheless, here was the beginning of a system which, in the twentieth century, yields in some of the metro- politan cities an edition of the same paper almost every hour.
"COURIER" OF CHARLESTON
One of the most influential papers in the South during the early part of the nineteenth century was The Courier estab- lished at Charleston, South Carolina, on January 10, 1803, as a Federal organ. Its publisher was Loring Andrews, who had pre- viously been connected with The Herald of Freedom in Boston, The Western Star in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and The Sen- tinel in Albany. On the death of Andrews on October 19, 1805, The Courier passed into other hands and became one of the most enterprising newspapers of the State. In its calm discussion of political matters it set an example worthy of imitation by other papers. The Courier, though being one of the most influential papers of the State, refused to yield to the public demand for editorial support of the Ordinance of Nullification passed at the Nullification Convention, but being a real newspaper it did give its readers somewhat fully an account of the acts of the Con- vention. ​
CHAPTER X
PARTY PRESS PERIOD
18121832
THE American press commonly spoke of the War of 1812-15 as Madison's War." The newspapers of New England, where the war was unpopular, were especially bitter in personal at- tacks. The burning of the public buildings at Washington and the reward offered by British agents for scalps of Americans including women and children fanned the press to an edito- rial fury in which many of the papers, heretofore opposed to Madison, joined. As a matter of simple justice, it should be noted that both of these acts of barbarism were severely denounced and to a certain extent repudiated by the press of England.
The newspapers published west of the Alleghanies were more active in their support of Madison. By 1812 the professional press in the new settlements was already exerting considerable political influence. Some of the papers were making a sincere attempt to get the news while it had a timely interest. Among the most enterprising of these sheets was The Reporter started at Lexington, Kentucky, in 1808 by Worseley and Overton, but later conducted exclusively by Worseley. William Worseley was not satisfied with simply the news service of the weekly post- rider. On Friday, for example, he sent his negro servant commonly called " Worseley 's Man Friday" to meet the mail-carrier on the Overland Trail, then to hurry back to the newspaper office with the Washington letter and the Eastern exchanges. The Reporter was unusually active, not only in the gathering of its news, but during the War of 1812 it went out- side of merely printing the news to collect clothing, etc., which it forwarded to the Kentucky volunteers in the army. To The Reporter, therefore, belongs the credit, possibly, of being the first to be something more than a mere newspaper.
THE TOBY PRESS
Papers which opposed taking up arms against England came to be known as the Tory press and held much the same position as that of the Copperhead press during the War of the States. The Tory press was severely rebuked, not only by rival news- papers, but also by William Charles, the real cartoonist of the War of 1812. One of his cartoons had for its title "The Tory Editor and His Apes Giving Their Pitiful Advice to the American Sailors." From the Tory cave, shown in the illustration, came the editor of The Boston Gazette, who was the chief spokesman of the Tory press. His advice to the sailors was according to the cartoon as follows: "Oh! Poor Sailors: Oh! Poor Blue Jackets! Don't go to war with the mother country! Don't go to war with good old England ! You will get hard knocks on the pate ! You will spend your years in English prisons and
CARTOON BY WILLIAM CHARLES
the streets or rot in the alms house! Oh! poor sailors! Oh! poor blue jackets!" A reply from one of the sailors in the car- toon was: "We'll stick to our quarters, boys, like true hearted sailors, and may the lubber be slushed home to the gizzard, and scrap'd with a shark's tooth, who would mutiny 'gainst com- mander and desert ship 'cause a hard gale and a tough passage brings him to short allowance. Three cheers for Yankee doodle."
Some of the papers which Charles put in the Tory class and made to ape The Boston Gazette were The New-York Gazette, The Charleston Courier, The Washington Federalist, The Nor- folk Ledger, The New York Evening Post, The Boston Reporter, etc. His cartoon, though crudely drawn, presented in its dia- logue the editorial attitude of the two sections into which the American press was divided on account of the war.
PRESS ON HARTFORD CONVENTION
Republican papers made no end of fun of the Commissioners appointed at the Hartford Convention to go to Washington for the purpose of protesting against the distribution of the Fed- eral taxes and of arranging for better protection of the seaports on the Atlantic Coast. The Commissioners, reaching Wash​
ington at the same same time that the Treaty of Peace was made public, and finding that their mission had been in vain, almost immediately left the city. One newspaper, The National Advertiser, printed the following amusing advertisement under the headline " MISSING": -
Three well-looking, respectable men, who appeared to be travelling towards Washington, disappeared from Gadsby's Hotel on Monday evening last, and have not since been heard of. They were observed to be very melancholic on hearing the news of the peace, and one of them was heard to say with a sigh, "Poor Caleb Strong!" They took with them their saddlebags, so that no apprehension is entertained of their having any intention to make away with themselves. Whoever will give any information to the Hartford convention of the date of the un- fortunate and trustful gentlemen by letter (post-paid) will confer a favor upon humanity. The newspapers, particularly the Federalist newspapers, are requested to publish this advertisement in a conspicu- ous place and send in their bills to the Hartford convention.
P.S. One of the gentlemen was called Titus Gates or some such name.
The Federal press, after the Hartford Convention, steadily declined in influence. Some of its most radical organs which had opposed the war with England were forced to suspend publica- tion. Other papers, to escape a similar fate, changed parties an act which often meant a change in name, for Federalist as a title for a newspaper was almost as common at the time as was Gazette in the Colonial Period. By 1820 the Federal Party was without a single electoral vote.
NEW YORK PAPERS AT CLOSE OF WAR
At the close of the War of 1812, New York had seven daily newspapers. A statement of the circulation of these various papers will not only give an idea of how many papers the lead- ing dailies of the period were printing, but also show to what extent newspapers were being read in the city. The Mercantile Advertiser had a circulation of 2000; The Gazette, 1750; The Eve- ning Post, 1600; The Commercial Advertiser, 1200; The Courier, 920; The Columbian, 870; The National Advocate, 800. In other words, one person out of every fifteen was a newspaper sub- scriber. The small circulation of the last few papers in the list may be explained by the fact that they had been but recently ​
established in the city. The Columbian was started in 1808 by Charles Holt, after he had set The Bee buzzing first at New Lon- don, Connecticut, and later at Hudson, New York. It was an organ of Jefferson and later of Madison. The National Advocate had only just appeared. It was started by Tammany Hall in order that that organization might have an official organ. The Republican newspapers, not only in New York, but in the other cities, lost no opportunity to criticize the British practice of im- pressing American seamen into service. It is rather remarkable that a little later they should have so completely ignored the French decree about the confiscation of American goods, as this decree was only a little short of being a declaration of war.
The darkest period in the history of American journalism was that which began at the close of the second war with England, a tune truthfully characterized as the " period of black journal- ism," when a greater depth of degradation was reached than was ever touched in the so-called "yellow" period of recent times. Those who look over the papers of this era will find that all of the customary courtesies of life were put aside; that the papers of both parties employed the vilest, grossest epithets found in the English language; that the newspapers advanced the most atrocious charges against those holding public offices and even so forgot themselves as to attack wives and sisters in their dis- graceful accounts of the personal activities of office-holders.
But the pendulum began to swing the other way. Its first push toward the legitimate function of the newspaper was given by Charles Hammond of The Gazette of Cincinnati. He refused to make his paper simply an organ for a great party leader and turned it into a medium for the discussion of the great principles of the Republican Government. In him there was an inborn love of truth for its own sake. Hammond once expressed his opinion of the violent personal journalism of the period as fol- lows: "I am afraid my quondam crony, Mr. Shadrach Penn, of The Louisville Public Advertiser, has kept a great deal of bad company since the days of our political intimacy. He seems to mistake vulgarity for wit and misrepresentation for argument; ​
errors from which, in days of yore, he was as free as most men. I am sometimes constrained, upon better acquaintance, to think and speak well of men whom I once reprobated. I have never yet felt disposed to vituperate a man that I once esteemed and commended. If such sink into vicious courses, I leave their exposure to others. I should as soon think of assassination as attacking a friend because he differed from me in politics." In- cidentally, it may be remarked that The Public Advertiser just mentioned had started as a weekly in 1818, but became on April 4, 1826, the first daily paper in Kentucky. It was then edited by Shadrach Penn, Jr.
The coarseness, the shallowness, the distortion of news, the use of the press to avenge private wrongs, all this and much more could be excused, but no reason can be found to justify the papers which so often during this period were little short of be- ing blackmailers and blackguards. But such newspapers, as dur- ing the periods which followed, were but a mirror of the times, and their editors were no better, or no worse, than the other men of the day. Even the books of the period were at times so full of scandal and untruth that they had to be suppressed or their publishers, being afraid that they would be prosecuted for libel, either removed the title-pages or cut their names from the imprint. It is important to bear in mind that no better cri- terion exists by which to judge any particular period than the newspapers published during the same era. Before hasty judg- ment is passed upon newspapers, a study should be made of the times in which they were published.
PRESS A MIRROR OF TIMES
Personal fights between editors cannot be understood to-day without a knowledge of the condition of the times. It was a period of personal encounters in the home and of fights in the streets. New York newspapers told of the fights between the Battery boys and the Lispenard Hill's : Boston papers recorded in detail the encounters between the North-Enders and the Charlestown Pigs; Philadelphia papers published the fights be- tween the Chestnut Street boys and the crowd which called themselves the Northern Liberties. Roughly speaking, there ​
was a "hot time in the old town/' regardless of where the "old town" was located. Such times were naturally mirrored in the press. In the matter of excellence, possibly the newspapers of Boston came first, those of Philadelphia second, and those of New York well down the list. For instance, James G. Brooks, who had edited The Minerva, one of the foremost literary papers of the early nineteenth century, but then editor of The Courier, publicly posted on the walls and fences of New York a bulletin which said, "I publish M. M. Noah of The Enquirer as a coward. James G. Brooks." It is an interesting comment to record that these two New York papers later became more friendly and united under the title, The Courier and Enquirer, on May 25, 1829.
CONTENTS OF NEWSPAPERS
To the party press a most important piece of news was always the report of the official proceedings of Washington. Somehow it never occurred to the typical partisan editor of this period that he might make these reports more interesting if they were pruned of less important items, but instead he gave the routine detail of Congressional debates, no matter how exciting might be the news of his local community, and evidently thought that which came from Washington had additional news value be- cause of its source. Even advertising space was sacrificed to make room for the speech of some representative at Washington who liked to hear himself talk and who was spurred on to talk the longer because his words would probably appear in print. The columns of the party newspaper were always open for com- munications from politicians of the same political faith a courtesy which was usually greatly abused both to the annoy- ance of some readers and many advertisers. In addition, there were usually long-winded editorials which often included a repetition of the matter already stated in other columns. But if it had not been for such full reporting in party organs it would have been extremely doubtful whether the deliberations of Con- gress would have been preserved for posterity.
Next to giving his readers all the political gossip of the time, the editor of the period thought he ought to provide a choice ​
miscellany of all sorts. There was more excuse for the insertion of such matter, for the magazines had not yet come into their own and books were still too expensive for purchase by any save the rich. In almost every newspaper, regardless of party affilia- tion, there was a column or more for original verse through which local poets rode wild-shod, for poets and politicians were great seekers, then, as now, for publicity. Incidentally, it may be remarked that much of the poetry of the day dealt with political topics, so that subscribers might get good measure in political matters. The most interesting reading, even in some of the most important papers, was found in the letters of old inhabitants who had left to seek their fortunes beyond the Alle- ghanies and then had written about the new settlements of the West. Letters were expensive because of the high rate of pos- tage; consequently their writers boiled down the news. Not yet had editors realized the real news value of local happenings.
FIRST HIGH TARIFF PAPERS
In spite of the fact that the press of the period was bitterly partisan in character, independent papers began to spring up in various sections of the country, chiefly in New England. Here, professing absolute neutrality in politics, they became the advocates of a strong protective policy for American indus- tries. Especially important was The Manufacturers' and Far- mers' Journal and Providence and Pawtucket Advertiser, which first issued from the printing-office of Miller and Hutchins in the Old Coffee-House in Providence on January 3, 1820. In- stead of being a party organ, it was the official spokesman for the Rhode Island Society for the Encouragement of Domestic Industries. It was at the start published semi-weekly and be- cause of its non-partisan character had a circulation among those of all political faiths. So carefully did it avoid having any connection with political parties that even when so important a matter as the Missouri Compromise was before the people it made no mention of the bill save in its reports of the proceed- ing of Congress. Its name was later shortened to The Providence Journal, and because of its constantly increasing patronage was able to appear daily on and after July 21, 1829, one day ​
later than the first appearance of The Daily Advertiser in Provi- dence.
The Journal from that time on continued to be one of the most influential papers of Rhode Island and during the great Euro- pean War which broke out in the second decade of the twen- tieth century it often " scooped" in its news items the majority of the larger papers of the metropolitan cities.
At the time The Manufacturers 1 and Farmers 1 Journal and Providence and Pawtucket Advertiser appeared, the tariff ques- tion was attracting considerable attention in the press. The papers along the Atlantic Coast, from The Argus in Portland to The Enquirer of Richmond, wece taking up in their columns the discussion of protection of industries. The Boston Courier was started with the help of Daniel Webster as a daily news- paper in Boston on March 2, 1824, to protect "infant manu- facturers and cotton and woolen clothes and all agricultural and mechanical products against foreign competition." The leading exponent in New York of protection to American indus- tries was The Statesman. These early papers devoted to pro- tection were most severely criticized, on the ground that they were advocating a Japanese system of economy and would even- tually shut out America from commercial intercourse with other nations. A few years, however, showed a very radical change in the attitude of many Northern papers toward the subject of protection. At the beginning of the period the great majority of the Republican newspapers, strange to say, was in favor of a high tariff because of political hostility felt toward Great Britain, while the Federal press was in favor of unre- strictive commerce. The "Tariff of Abominations," passed by Congress during the Session of 1827-28, brought about a very radical change in the tone of the press. Editorial policies were completely reversed: protection became popular in New Eng- land and free trade in the South. Some of the oldest papers in the country were included in this change : The Pittsburgh Gazette which had been started in a log house on the Monongahela River on July 29, 1786, and was the first paper published west of the Alleghanies, had long been a Federal organ in favor of free trade, but became an earnest advocate of a protective ​
Id8 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM
tariff and the purchase of home-made goods. This change in journalism was practically simultaneous with the change of heart on the part of many prominent statesmen of the period.
PARTY ORGAN IN MAINE
Party organs had sprung up in new territory. In Maine, for example, The Eastern Argus was established at Portland on Sep- tember 8, 1803, by Calvin Day and Nathaniel Willis to promote the interest of the Republican Party called by The Argus and many other papers the Jacobin Party after the liberalists of France. When Willis about a year later, November 8 to be exact, became the sole publisher, he was so radical in his po- litical comment that he landed in jail a circumstance that greatly added to. the popularity of The Argus. Week by week he printed in his paper: "[Such and such] week of the impris- onment of the editor for daring to avow sentiments of political freedom." With every week of imprisonment the circulation of The Argus increased. On January 7, 1808, Willis took in Francis Douglas as partner, but later, wanting to make The Argus a religious newspaper and not receiving enough encouragement from the clergy in Portland, he sold out his interest and went to Boston to carry out this idea in The Recorder, started on Jan- uary 3, 1816, possibly the first religious weekly in the country. Douglas ran The Argus from October 6, 1808, until his death September 3, 1820, when his widow took into partnership Thomas Todd. The Argus became a semi-weekly in 1824, a tri- weekly in 1832, and daily in 1835. The Argus during the Civil War Period was a severe critic of Greeley because of his dic- tatorial attitude toward the Administration. Greeley retali- ated with this editorial comment on September 20, 1862 about The Argus : "Boy: take the tongs and throw the foul sheet out of the window and never let another come into the Office." It is now the oldest newspaper in Maine.
PRESS AND POLITICS
After the Tariff of Abominations had been passed in Con- gress, some of the most bitter papers in the South urged a separa- tion from the Union and a few even recommended an alliance ​
with Great Britain. The suggestion was even made that a few seats in the House of Commons should be set aside for the Ameri- can delegates. If newspaper accounts may be believed, and there is no reason to doubt them, the suggestion was not un- kindly received in England: it was asserted that seats in Par- liament might be secured upon the condition that no formal endorsement of slavery would be demanded. This condition completely changed the editorial tone of the papers which ad- vocated the alliance.
The party organs of Jackson bitterly assailed the Adminis- tration of John Quincy Adams, on account of its so-called extravagance and waste of public funds. An " awful howl" appeared in the press when the charge was found for " payment of blacking the boots of the Indian delegates at Washington." These delegates wore only moccasins.
The papers which sprang up to support the nomination and then the election of Andrew Jackson were literally too numerous to mention. Some notice must be made, however, of a most loyal party organ, The Patriot, of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Its editor, Isaac Hill, was rewarded for service rendered to Jack- son by the nomination of Second Comptroller of the Treasury. The Senate, however, refused to confirm the nomination, but New Hampshire later retaliated by electing Hill United States Senator. The Patriot was thus placed in a strategic position, to start the war upon the United States Bank. Of this war, more will be said later in the chapter.
PAKT PLAYED BY PRESS IN POLITICS
The way party organs controlled politics in New York was fairly typical of that in other States. The political leaders would have a conclave at Albany at which they would decide upon a man to run for Governor. Some little party organ in a rural section would then be selected to be the first to suggest the fit- ness of such a man for the position. The suggestion would then be taken up by other rural organs in various parts of the State. Such a nomination would be warmly seconded, even though coming from the rural sections, by the party organs in the "up- state cities." The chief party organ at Albany would then sum ​
up the situation somewhat as follows: "From all over the state
comes a unanimous demand for the nomination of .
While he is not the first choice of this newspaper, there seems to be such an overwhelming demand that the paper is forced to yield to the will of the majority. He should get the nomination and should receive the loyal support of every member of the party at the coming election." A cut-and-dried editorial in praise of the man would then be inserted in the Albany organ. This editorial would then be reprinted with other kind words of commendation by all the party organs of the State. The party voter, thus convinced of the universal demand of the man as Governor, would promptly fall in line. The party press had done its work and done it well.
PARTY PRESS IN ALBANY
Since the newspapers prior to 1830 were political mouth- pieces and were filled chiefly with political squibs and reports of stump speeches, Albany, the Capital of New York State, was an important news center. The Albany Register, established in 1788 by John and Robert Barber, was the spokesman for De- Witt Clinton. When he left office the paper soon after "went into his big ditch," the Erie Canal. It was revived, however, in 1818 by Israel W. Clark who had previously published The Watch Tower, a Democratic paper started at Cherry Valley, New York, in 1813, but removed to Cooperstown, New York, in 1814. Under his editorship it fed once again at the State printing crib.
Martin Van Buren needed some one to preach partisan gos- pel in Albany, and so with Jesse Buel in the pulpit he started The Albany Argus on January 1, 1813. Van Buren knew whereof he spoke when he asserted, in 1823: "Without a paper, thus edited at Albany, we may hang our harps on the willows. With it, a party can survive a thousand convulsions." In that year Edwin Croswell became the editor of The Argus, and while al- ways mindful of his master's voice he succeeded in injecting a literary taste and some journalistic skill into the vulgarity of the acrimonious political journalism of the time. The Argus was a member of the famous Van Buren triumvirate; its other two ​
members were The Globe, edited by Blair at Washington, and The Enquirer, edited by Ritchie at Richmond, Virginia.
THE GREAT NEWS DISTRIBUTOR
The most important newspaper of the era was not a daily, or even a semi- weekly; it was The Weekly Register established at Baltimore, September 7, 1811, by Ezekiah Niles, an editor of The Evening Post of that city. In its pages the political and economic news of the country was reported with a fairness and fidelity which characterized no other paper of the time. It achieved a national circulation and was extensively quoted by other papers. In fact, it was a sort of general distributor of news for its contemporaries. So accurate was it that it has been quoted by historians and other writers upon American history more than >any other single newspaper in the history of this country. Niles conducted it until 1836 when it was continued by his son, William Ogden Niles, who had attempted to estab- lish The Journal at Albany, New York, not the present Eve- ning Journal of that city, in 1825, but who, upon the failure of that sheet, became associated with his father on The Register in 1827. The younger Niles conducted the paper until June 27, 1849. Its motto was, "The Past the Present for the Fu- ture." The entire series of The Weekly Register has been re- printed in seventy-five volumes and its advertisements told the truth when they asserted that no library was complete without it. The Register was discontinued because the newspapers of the country more and more performed the same service for their readers. The nearest approach to The Register which may be found to-day is The Literary Digest.
NATIONAL REPUBLICAN ORGAN
A political organ which attracted much attention in New York was The American, an evening paper established by Charles King March 3, 1819. (Its daily edition began March 8, 1820.) At the start The American was distinctly a Tammany sheet, or, what amounted to the same thing, a buck-tail paper. It was a loyal supporter of Van Buren, but later was forced to withdraw from its affiliation with the Democratic Party. A new Tarn​
many sheet, The New York Patriot, was started largely through the instrumentality of John C. Calhoun. The American then became a National Republican paper until February 16, 1845, when it united with The Courier and Enquirer. During all this time King was editor of The American and after the merger took place became associated with James Watson Webb and Henry J. Raymond in the editorial direction of The Courier and Enquirer until he was called to the presidency of Columbia Col- lege. King was an exceptionally able editorial writer, but he failed to recognize the value of news something to which the penny press was then devoting a great deal of attention. The American felt quickly this competition with the one-cent papers and on May 1, 1843, reduced its price from six to two cents per copy. The change in price, however, failed to increase the circu- lation and the paper united with The Courier and Enquirer, as has already been mentioned. At one time, however, it exerted great political influence among the more aristocratic circles of New York on account of its able editorials.
EMBREE AND GARRISON
The first abolition paper did not appear in the North, but was started in Tennessee in 1820 ten years before William Lloyd Garrison brought out The Liberator in Boston. On April 30, 1820, Elihu Embree, a member of the religious Society of Friends, started in Jonesboro, Tennessee, The Emancipator, a radical exponent of the abolition cause. One of the cardinal principles of the Society of Friends was that no member in good standing could ever hold a person in bondage. Embree was the son of a Quaker preacher and lived in Pennsylvania, before he came to Tennessee to make his home in Washington County. Of him a leading Tennessee paper said at the close of the war: "He was the stuff of which martyrs are made." After teaching and preaching the doctrine of emancipation he started The Emancipator, which he continued for eight months when sick- ness and death finally overcame him. In every possible way he sought to increase the circulation of this paper. To the Gov- ernor of each of the States he sent a copy gratis. The Governors of Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina returned their copies ​
sealed, so that Embree must pay letter postage, which, in the case of the package from the Governor of North Carolina, amounted to one dollar, the subscription price of the paper. When other men to whom he had sent sample copies turned the same trick, he gave them a free advertisement, in which, after mentioning what had been done, he concluded with "Without entering into any nice dispositions to discover whether such conduct is any better than pocket-picking, I leave my readers to judge." The South as a matter of strict accuracy has of late been more prompt to accept the honesty of purpose of this pioneer of the abolition of slavery than has been the North.
In striking contrast with the paper just mentioned was a daily started on August 1, 1831, at Charleston, South Carolina. In view of its editorial policy, it was correctly named The State's Rights and Free Trade Evening Post. It had at the head of its editorial column the following quotation from Thomas Jeffer- son, " Nullification is the rightful remedy," and was a prophecy of what the press of South Carolina was to be at a later time when it became the source of inspiration for the secession press.
In the North the most violent advocate of the abolition of slavery was The Liberator, started in Boston on January 1, 1831. Its editor, William Lloyd Garrison, was one of the most fearless men who ever sat in an editorial chair. Threatened repeatedly with applications of tar and feathers, mobbed in the streets of Boston, hung in effigy all over the country, he kept up an in- cessant fight for the freedom of slaves until victory was his. Important as was The Liberator in American history, it was not distinctly a newspaper, and its influence has been told over and over again in general histories. Such works, however, have overlooked the fact that this influence was exerted very often through the editorials in the secular press which commented either pro or con about the contents of The Liberator. The coarseness of the editors' invectives was characteristic of the period. The Liberator was discontinued on December 29, 1865.
WANDERING JEW JOURNALIST
One of the most interesting characters in the history of American journalism was Mordecai Noah, a journalist of fertile ​
imagination. He conceived the idea of bringing the scattered tribes of Israel to an American settlement; he also believed that the Indians were descendants of the lost tribes and proposed that a certain part of the land should be set aside for them. He had other idiosyncracies of which it is no editorial fib to say that they were too numerous to mention. One of them, however, de- serves special notice : he seemed to want to edit as many papers as possible. He began his newspaper career hi 1810 by editing The City Gazette in Charleston, South Carolina. When Tam- many Hall, quite a different organization from the present one of that name, repudiated its organ and established another, The National Advocate secured Noah as the second editor of that paper. In 1826, after a quarrel with the publishers, Noah started another paper with the same name. Prevented by legal steps in this attempt to have two papers of the same name, he called his paper Noah's New York National Advocate. Again getting into legal difficulties, he made another change and called the sheet The New York Enquirer. When this paper was merged in 1829 with The Morning Courier, Noah still kept up an edi- torial connection with the union as its associate editor. In 1834 he established The New York Evening Star, a Whig organ to support William Henry Harrison. When The Star united with The Commercial Advertiser, Noah became editor of The Morn- ing Star. In 1842 Noah edited a Tyler organ in New York called The Union. It lasted about a year, and then he commenced in 1843 Noah's Weekly Messenger which after a short time united with The Sunday Times. He remained editor of this paper until his death in 1851.
FIKST STAR REPORTER
Henry Ingraham Blake, the Father of American Reporting, belonged to this period. Connected with The New England Pal- ladium, a Boston paper started on January 1, 1793, as The Massachusetts Mercury, but later, in January, 1801, changed to The Mercury and New England Palladium, he was the first to go after news without waiting for items to come to the news- paper office. Though he occasionally reported local matters in and around the city, he made his reputation as a gatherer of ship ​
news. Newspaper tradition in Boston still asserts that he knew the names of the owner, the captain, and most of the crew of every boat that docked in Boston Harbor in his day. Instead of going to the coffee-houses to get the news retold there by sea captains, he would go down to the wharves, get into a boat, and often go out alone to meet the incoming vessels without regard to what the weather was or to what time of day the vessel would dock. After getting the news from the captain or some member of the crew, he would rush back to the office of The Palladium and there, with the help of his wonderful memory and by a few notes on his cuffs or on his finger nails, he would put the matter into type as he sang to himself in a monotone. If the item was unusually important he never hesitated to stop the press of the paper in order to secure its insertion. In this way he secured for the Marine Department of The Palladium a reputation which put the shipping news of the other Boston papers in the " also-ran" column. Scant justice has been done to "Harry" Blake, who was the father of reporting hi the mod- ern sense of this term. After he left The Palladium, the paper lost its most valuable asset and soon began to lose its subscribers, who no longer found its ship news worth reading. The Palla- dium passed through various hands until it became in 1840 a part of The Boston Daily Advertiser, which had been started on March 3, 1813, and was the first daily paper of any importance in New England.
POULSON OF PHILADELPHIA
The grand old man of the period was Zachariah Poulson, Jr., the editor and publisher of Paulson's American Daily Advertiser in Philadelphia. His life links the journalism of the Early Re- public with the Era of the Penny Press. In September, 1800, Poulson purchased for ten thousand dollars The American Daily Advertiser, the first daily paper in America, and gave it his own name and continued to publish it until December, 1839, when he sold it to the owners of the youngest Philadelphia daily, The North American. When his paper was merged with The North American, The Saturday Evening Post published this tribute to Poulson: "No man probably in this country has ever enjoyed so ​
undisturbed a connection with a newspaper as Mr. Poulson. Commencing at a time when competition for public favor was unknown, he has strictly pursued the even tenor of his way, without departing from the rules which he adopted in the out- set of his course. While his younger brethren were struggling and striving with each other adopting all means to secure patronage enlarging their sheets, and employing new and extraordinary means to win success he looked calmly on, and continued as he commenced, nothing doubting that his old and tried friends would adhere to him. Nor was he disappointed in this expectation, since up to the moment of his dissolution The Daily Advertiser has neither abated in usefulness, interest, or profit." Mr. Poulson's greatest contribution to American journalism was the training which he gave to a large num- ber of journalists who later went east and west to establish papers upon the sound principles learned while working on Poulson's Daily Advertiser. Though a strong Whig, Poulson had a natural propensity to look at political questions from all angles, and in his political criticism he was unquestionably honest and remarkably free both by conviction and by senti- ment from using the press to advance personal aspirations.
UNITED STATES BANK AND PRESS
Notwithstanding what academic historians may say on the subject, one of the worst corruptors of the press toward the close of the period was the Bank of the United States at Philadelphia. Its directors knew that its charter was soon to expire and began to count its friends in the press. In spite of its best efforts it encountered so much newspaper opposition and so little favor- able comment that it finally passed, on March 11, 1831, a reso- lution authorizing its president, Nicholas Biddle, to print what he chose to defend the Bank and to pay for the same without accountability. Between that date and the end of 1834 Biddle spent "without vouchers" $29,600 a sum that would go much farther in those days than now in corrupting the press. When Biddle was accused of using the whole press of the coun- try to aid him in his fight with President Jackson and was charged with being criminally profuse in his accommodations ​
to newspapers which favored a new charter for the Bank, he pointed to a number of papers to which loans had been made and which, when the notes were given, were opposed to rechartering the Bank. Among these were The Washington Telegraph, edited by General Duff Green, and The New York Courier and En- quirer, edited by Mordecai Manuel Noah and James Watson Webb.
At the time Green applied for the loan to The Telegraph he intimated that the accommodation should carry with it no change in the editorial policy of his paper. To this Biddle re- plied: "The Bank is glad to have friends from conviction; but seeks none from interest. For myself, I love the freedom of the press too much to complain of its occasional injustice to me." He even went so far as to indicate that he would be willing to write on the notes, "Editorial indorsement of the Bank not necessary."
Nevertheless, after the loan The Telegraph did change its policy and came out for the Bank. When word of the change was taken to President Jackson he wrote in an unpublished letter: "I have barely time to remark that the conduct of Gen- eral D. Green is such as I suspected. . . . The truth is he has professed to me to be heart and soul against the Bank but his idol" John C. Calhoun to whom Green owed his position on The Telegraph "controls him as much as the shewman does his puppets, and we must get another organ to announce the policy and defend the administration, in his hands it is more injured than by all the opposition." The new "organ" was The Washington Globe started December 7, 1830, and edited by Francis P. Blair. Political office-holders, in a none too delicate way were given to understand that they should subscribe to The Globe and to do everything in their power to promote its circulation.
No sooner was The Globe revolving nicely than one of the offi- cers of the Bank offered to pay Mr. Blair whatever might be the charge for the insertion of a report prepared by Biddle. Blair refused to accept any compensation, but did print, as a public document, the statement prepared by the Bank. Later a friend of the Bank left with a member of Presi ​dent Jackson's
Cabinet a large check to be given to Mr. Blair "as an expres- sion of the respect the donor entertained for the labors of the editor of The Globe" The check was returned and Blair con- tinued his attacks on the Bank.
In New York The Courier and Enquirer in a savage and al- most brutal attack, had charged the Bank with " furnishing capi- tal and thought at the same moment," with " buying men and votes as cattle in the market," and with "withering, as by a subtle poison the liberty of the press." After these charges had been made, the Bank of the United States continued to loan money to The Courier and Enquirer until the notes of that news- paper totaled $52,975. When the press published the figures the Bank attempted to justify its position by claiming that the loans were considered a "safe and legitimate business trans- action." In 1833 notes for part of the paper's indebtedness ($18,600) were protested by the Bank: two years later The Cou- rier and Enquirer offered to settle for "ten cents on the dollar." James Gordon Bennett, who was at the time connected with The Courier and Enquirer, once made this re'sume' of the situa- tion for that newspaper in particular and for others in general : "The Courier and Enquirer was in some financial difficulty at the period the war was made by the Bank, and Mr. Noah when he saw the breeches pocket of Mr. Biddle open, entered it imme- diately and presented the chief exemplar of inconsistency and tergiversation."
In defense of the Bank it may be said that the institution was fighting a life or death battle and was often unjustly at- tacked by a bitter and vindictive opposition press. The Bank was forced, so its defenders asserted, to fight enemies who held out to editors the appointments to office : it could only use in the conflict such means as it possessed loans and subsidies to newspapers.
Thomas H. Benton, the spokesman for Jackson in the war against the Bank, charged that the institution was criminally profuse in its accommodations to editors who favored the grant- ing of a new charter. In the newspaper war which grew out of the conflict The New York Courier and Enquirer found itself attacked for criticizing the Bank while at the sa ​me time being
a debtor. At various times, as already mentioned, it borrowed sums until its total indebtedness amounted to $52,975. To jus- tify this position The Courtier and Enquirer published a state- ment as to its financial condition. Whether the condition of the paper was sufficient to warrant such a loan is open to discussion. The statement, however, did show a number of interesting facts about publishing a blanket sheet. According to the memoran- dum compiled by Colonel Webb, there were 3300 daily sub- scribers who paid an annual subscription price of $10; 2300 hundred weekly or semi-weekly subscribers whose average sub- scriptions amounted to $4.50; 275 yearly advertisers at the flat rate of $30. The annual gross income amounted to $60,750, from which the annual expenses of $35,000, when subtracted, showed a profit at least on the books of $25,750. Accord- ing to Colonel Webb, The Courier and Enquirer was worth fully $150,000. If it were, it steadily lost in value, for at a later period it found itself unable to meet expenses and was finally absorbed by The World.
BULLETIN BOARDS THEN AND NOW
Bulletin boards on which a re'sume' of the news was posted first appeared during the second decade of the eighteenth cen- tury. By 1815 The New York Mercantile Advertiser and The New York Gazette were posting on boards nailed to their front doors brief statements of the more important items which came to their offices. Other papers in distant cities soon followed the example set by the New York papers and the bulletin board be- came an established adjunct of American journalism. The Mexican War and the War of the States increased their useful- ness. At one time most of the provincial press got its news of outside happenings from correspondents who visited these bulletin boards and then forwarded the contents to their re- spective papers first by letter and then later by wire. Not until the close of the nineteenth century did these pony reports for the smaller dailies completely disappear. The bulletin board has possibly reached its highest development in reporting ath- letic events. Because of the great interest taken by the Ameri- can public in baseball, the bulletin board has frequently blocked ​
city streets with its crowd of interested spectators who wanted the news even before it could appear in "Sporting Extras." The speed with which news has been told by metropolitan bulletin boards is one of the most remarkable mechanical achievements of American journalism. In a baseball game when the ball has been batted out into the field and has been caught by the center- fielder, this fact has been recorded on a bulletin board fifteen hundred miles away from the game before the ball could reach the home plate in an attempt to put out a man running bases after the fly had been caught.
PRINTING-PRESSES OF PERIOD
During 1822 steam was first used in America as the motive power to run a printing-press : this was seven years before steam turned the wheel of the first locomotive in England. Daniel Treadwell of Boston built the pioneer power press : its frame was constructed of wood and its mechanism was clumsy but it worked. Another Yankee, Isaac Adams, perfected the press and made it more practical. Called to New York in 1827 to repair a Treadwell press, he soon saw the possibilities of im- provement and in 1830 he successfully put his own press on the market. Later, the demand was so great that he took his brother, Seth Adams, into partnership. The Adams press differed from the hand-press in that, after the type had been put on a flat bed, "the bed was raised and lowered by straightening and bending a toggle joint by means of a cam, thus giving the impression upon the iron platen fixed above it" to quote a technical description. Isaac Adams "automatized the printing- press." Automatically his press inked the type; automatically it drew the sheet between the type-bed and the platen for the impression; automatically it took the sheet now printed from the type-bed; automatically it "flirted," after registering, the sheet to a pile by a "fly" invented by Adams and still used on cylinder presses. The various patents of Adams passed in 1858 to Robert Hoe, who by that time had made many improvements but those make a story for another chapter. About one thou- sand sheets per hour was the maximum speed of the improved Adams press. ​
Up to the close of the period the use of steam, however, was still in the experimental state. Hand-power from "crank men," who turned a large wheel, was sufficient to print the papers even of the daily journals. Frederick Koenig, a Saxon, assisted by Thomas Bensley, a London printer, succeeded in printing from a revolving cylinder in 1812. To have a cylinder roll over a type-bed was bound to be faster than to press an iron platen against it. Robert Hoe, who had started to make printing- presses in New York in 1805, saw the advantage of the changes and began the construction of cylinder presses. In the earlier models that part of the cylinder not used in making the impres- sion was "trimmed down" to allow the type to pass back and forth without touching it. The daily papers used the hand- turned, large-cylinder presses to print their editions. The old- fashioned hand variety still sufficed for provincial newspapers of small circulation.
POSTAL REGULATIONS OF PERIOD
Until the war increased the operating expenses of the Postal Department, newspapers circulated under the provisions of the first Federal Postal Act of 1793. Complaints about poor service were frequent in appearance, but nothing was done except to increase the postal routes. To increase the postage was the last thing the newspapers wanted, yet the first change made just such provisions.
From February 1, 1815, to March 31, 1816, postage on news- papers was increased fifty per cent to raise revenue on account of war expenses. In April of this year (1816), in spite of the re- duction on letter postage, it was continued with the exception that postage would be reduced to one cent on papers delivered in the same State in which they were printed even though car- ried more than one hundred miles. By an act of 1825 newspapers were required to pay one quarter of the annual postage in ad- vance.
A bill for the abolition of postage on newspapers was intro- duced in 1832. The committee on Public Offices to which it was referred reported adversely on May 19, 1832. In its report it said: ​
162 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM'
The postage on newspapers is not a tax. It is no more in the nature of a tax than is the freight paid on merchandise. It is money paid for a fair and full equivalent in service rendered, and paid by the person for whose benefit and by whose venture the service is performed. The law does not require newspapers to be distributed by the mails. It only extends to their proprietors that privilege when it becomes their interest to avail themselves of it in preference to other and more uncertain and expensive modes of conveyance. There does not appear any sufficient reason why the public should pay for transporting printers' articles or merchandise to a distant market any more than the productions of other kinds of industry. In all cases the expense must be defrayed either by a tax or by the person for whom the service is performed; and the committee cannot perceive a more equitable way than for each one to pay for the services actually rendered to himself for his own benefit and by his own order.
Considerable complaint had been made by the papers pub- lished outside of the larger cities that the postal laws discrimi- nated in favor of the metropolitan newspapers.
As newspapers increased in the amount of news printed, they did not add more pages, but simply increased the size of the sheet. The result was the publication of those mammoth news- papers which were commonly called " blanket sheets"; some of them in fact were about the size of a bed quilt. By the postal laws a small folio paper in the country paid the same rate as these larger papers printed in New York.
CONDITIONS AFFECTING PRESS
The "reign of Andrew Jackson" was an important one in the history of American journalism. The population had increased to over twelve millions more than double what it was at the opening of the century. The area was more than twice what it was in Jefferson's day. The chapter on "The Beginnings of Journalism in States and Territories" not numbered among the thirteen original colonies shows how the printing-press had fol- lowed the trail blazed by the settler to his pioneer home. The frontier newspaper was but a repetition of the early journalism on the Atlantic Coast. In spite of migration westward the popu- lation in the cities had increased, due to the development of new industries and to the extension of the merchant marine. ​
Schools and colleges sprang up to supplement the work of older institutions. Courses both in the grammar and in the high schools were lengthened. Postal routes were extended. Stage lines were numerous and even the railroads started to carry passengers. Journalism, which is ever linked with the social and economic growth of a country, was bound to be affected most materially by these changes. Education made more people readers of newspapers and improved transportation facilities permitted not only a quicker, but also a larger distribution of the papers. Popularizing the newspaper, however, came from the reduction in cost. Journalism never fully came to its own until a newspaper could be purchased for a penny. Until Jack- son's Administration only the wealthy could afford a daily paper. Till then it was a mark of distinction to subscribe to a newspaper, but after the day of the cheap press no such condi-
CHAPTER XI
BEGINNINGS IN STATES
1783—1832
Before taking up the origin of the penny press, some notice must be paid to the pioneer printers who had established newspapers in the States and Territories not included in the thirteen original colonies. Sons and apprentices of Massachusetts printers, especially from Boston, had left their cases and, taking old hand-presses and fonts of type, had founded papers in Vermont and Maine, settlements hardly yet populated enough to support such enterprises. Others, traveling along the old Mohawk Trail, had gone westward. Adventurous printers from New York and Pennsylvania had taken the Overland Trail through Pittsburgh into the Ohio Valley. Here, putting their outfits on flatboats and into dug-outs, they had floated to Mississippi frontiers. The political plum of Printer to the Territory was shaken into the leather apron of several and the rude log cabin at various outposts served, as in the Colonial Period, equally as well for a post-office as for a print-shop. Occasionally the frontier journalists were politicians who sought to repeat old tricks in new fields. Not infrequently lawyers who found their professional services not yet needed in a country, where every man was practically a law unto himself, were drafted from the bar—take either meaning of the word—into editorial chairs. In a volume of this size mention can be made only of those printers who founded the first papers. Unembarrassed by stamp taxes and unhindered by censorship of the press, they faced other problems in transporting their plants and in getting their supply of white paper equal in every respect to the difficulties of the pioneers on the Atlantic Coast. Individual hardships are given in the accounts of some papers, not because they were unusual, but because they were typical. Without these pioneer sheets to link the Territories and later the States together, ​BEGINNINGS IN STATES 165 it is extremely doubtful if a central form of government would have survived. In Florida and in Louisiana newspapers had been started when these Territories were not yet part of the United States. The beginnings of journalism in these two, therefore, may first be considered before taking the others.
EARLY JOURNALISM IN FLORIDA
Before the Revolutionary Period closed the first newspaper had already appeared in Florida. It was called The East Florida Gazette and was published at St. Augustine by William Charles Wells. No issues of The East Florida Gazette, so far as can be learned, have been preserved, but such a paper was mentioned several times by a few Southern papers of the Early Republic Period. Its severe criticism of "the good people of the States" was especially annoying to its contemporaries in those former colonies which had become integral parts of the United States. Associated later with William Wells in publishing The Gazette was, in all probability, his brother John, who had printed The Royal Gazette at Charleston, South Carolina. For this offense, he was ordered by State authorities to leave and went to St. Augustine, where he helped his brother to print books and possibly The Gazette. Florida being sparsely settled did not have another paper till late in the Party Press Period when The Weekly Floridian was established in 1828 at Tallahassee.
FRENCH AND ENGLISH PAPERS IN LOUISIANA
Among the refugees at San Domingo who settled at New Orleans was L. Puclot. After much difficulty he succeeded in getting the consent of Governor Carondelet to print in French the Moniteur de la Louisiane, which first appeared on March 3, 1794. A year later J. B. L. Fontaine became its editor and he continued to hold that position until 1814, during much of which time he was also the publisher. In 1797 the Moniteur became the official State paper and in its pages are to be found most of the facts we know about the early history of Louisiana, containing as it does "All the official documents, Spanish, French and American which relate to the changes of government and all officially issued territorial laws, decisions of the city council, ​municipal notices, consumption of flour by bakers, bills of mortality and the list of baptisms and marriages, etc." The last issue of the paper, Number 1641, was on July 2, 1814. Two days later Fontaine died. The Louisiana Gazette on July 7 of that year said of him: "He was an enemy to the revolutionary principles that so long deluged his native country in blood, and often (to his intimate friends) expressed the hope that he should live to hear of a Bourbon being on the throne of France. His hope was realized and he departed in peace, we trust to play his part in another and a better world."
Le Courrier du Vendredi was started at New Orleans on May 26, 1785, without the name of its editor in the imprint. It was the precursor of The Louisiana Courier, a tri-weekly published in French and English. Le Telegraphe, established December 10, 1803, was another weekly newspaper originally published all in French, but later a tri-weekly printed part in French and part in English. In its second issue it printed the terms of treaty by which Louisiana became a part of the United States. Formal possession of the Territory was taken December 20, 1803.
The Louisiana Gazette, the first paper in New Orleans to be printed in English, was established on July 27, 1804. Published twice a week, its editor was John Mowry. He started with only nineteen subscribers who paid an annual subscription of ten dollars. Several attempts were made to turn The Gazette into a daily newspaper: the first was on April 3, 1810. Possibly the reason that these attempts were not very successful was due partly to the fact that editors did not pay enough attention to local news and also to the large number of residents who could not read English.
THE CALL FROM VERMONT
In the rooms of the Vermont Historical Society at Montpelier is still preserved the press on which was printed the first newspaper in that State. The claim has been made that this press was the first to be used in the English-speaking colonies of North America and that it did the best work in a mechanical way, when set up in the house of Henry Dunster, the first president of Harvard College. But at any rate, it printed ​at Westminster, Vermont, on February 12, 1781, Volume I, Number 1, of The Vermont Gazette, or Green Mountain Post-Boy. From that day dates the beginning of journalism in what is now the State of Vermont. The paper, 17 × 12½, had for its motto:—
Pliant as Reeds where Streams of Freedom glide; Firm as the Hills to stem Oppression's Tide.
Printed by Judah Paddock Spooner and Timothy Green, it lasted until the beginning of the year 1783.
The second paper was at Bennington: it bore the name of The Vermont Gazette, or Freeman's Depository, and first appeared June 5, 1783, from the shop of Anthony Haswell and David Russell. On January 5, 1797, it was continued as The Tablet of the Times. In spite of numerous changes both in name and ownership it survived until 1880. Possibly its period of greatest influence was during the days when it advocated Andrew Jackson for President of the United States.
George Hough bought the press and type used to print the first paper at Westminster, took in as partner Alden Spooner, who was a brother of Judah, and brought out at Windsor on August 7, 1783, the third paper, The Vermont Journal and the Universal Advertiser. It bore the motto—
From Realms far distant and from Climes unknown, We make the Knowledge of Mankind your own;
and survived until about 1834.
Anthony Haswell printed on June 25, 1792, at Rutland the first issue of the fourth newspaper, The Rutland Herald, or Rutland Courier. Its immediate successor was The Rutland Herald, or Vermont Mercury, first published December 8, 1794, by Samuel Williams and a clergyman of the same name. It had the longest life of any paper in the State and is still published.
ORIGIN OF JOURNALISM IN MAINE
January 1, 1785, saw the first newspaper established in Maine: called The Falmouth Gazette, it was published by Benjamin Titcomb, who had learned his trade in a shop at Newburyport, Massachusetts, and Thomas B. Wait, who had been connected ​with The Boston Chronicle. Titcomb retired from the paper with the issue of February 16, 1786, and Wait changed the title to The Cumberland Gazette on April 7, 1786. When part of Falmouth was incorporated as Portland on July 4, 1786, the latter town soon appeared in the imprint, but on January 2, 1792, the title was changed, to avoid confusion with another Portland paper of a similar name, to The Eastern Herald. In 1796 John K. Baker bought the paper and consolidated it with The Gazette of Maine, on September 3, 1796. An attempt was made to make the paper a semi-weekly, but failed: subscribers would not pay the increased cost. On March 5, 1798, Baker admitted Daniel George as a partner, but left the paper himself with the issue of November 3, 1800. From December 29, 1800, till February 2, 1801 George had Elijah Russell as a partner in the enterprise, but after the latter date he ran the paper until discontinued on December 31, 1804. Such, in brief, was the history of Maine's first newspaper.
The Gazette of Maine was brought out on October 8, 1790, at Portland by Benjamin Titcomb, Jr., but was consolidated with The Eastern Herald which has already been mentioned. Howard S. Robinson started The Eastern Star at Hallowell on August 4, 1794. It had a short life, being followed the next year by The Tocsin, but not until The Kennebeck Intelligencer had been established November 21, 1795, by Peter Edes in what is now called Augusta, but what was then Hallo well. Though discontinued with the issue of June 6, 1800, it was revived as The Kennebec Gazette on November 14, 1800. A fire in the printing-office caused a suspension of the paper from February 11, to March 28, 1804. A second suspension from November 21, 1804, to January 16, 1805, was due to a lack of financial support. On August 8, 1805, Edes took in his son Benjamin as a partner, but as the paper could not support both, the son was forced to leave. Changing the character of his paper and making it more a party organ, Edes, on February 13, 1810, adopted the title of The Herald of Liberty for his paper. In 1815, probably with an issue in September, Edes suspended The Herald of Liberty and left Augusta, where he had "sunk property by tarrying so long with so little ​agement," and went to Bangor, where he brought out The Bangor Weekly Register November 25, 1815, and "could make out to live if nothing more." Like his father, B. Edes, of The Boston Gazette, P. Edes failed to secure popular support, possibly because he was too ardent a Federalist. With the issue of August 23, 1817, Edes ceased to bring out a paper and sold his plant to James Burton, who on March 7, 1817, had started The Augusta Patriot, but who had evidently failed to make the paper a successful venture. Burton, however, did not resume the publication of The Bangor Weekly Register until December 25, 1817. The space that Edes had used to advocate a separation of Maine from Massachusetts, Burton employed to advertise lottery tickets. The Bangor Register lasted until August 2, 1881.
Possibly The Tocsin, established at Hallo well in 1795 by Thomas B. Wait, Howard S. Robinson, and John K. Baker, may have antedated The Kennebeck Intelligencer, but little is known of this newspaper save that it had a short life. Incidentally, it may be remarked that it was too much to expect a Maine newspaper at this period to support three men.
The first daily newspaper in that State, however, was The Courier established in Portland in 1829 by Selba Smith, the original Jack Downing of "Jack Downing Letters" fame. The second was The Portland Daily Advertiser, first issued regularly as a daily in 1831, having as its first editor, James Brooks, who later founded The Express in New York City. Its most distinguished editor was James G. Blaine, who used journalism as a stepping-stone to politics. The first morning daily in Portland was The Times brought out in 1836 by Charles P. Ilsley.
LOCAL AID GIVEN BY KENTUCKY
Although Kentucky was first organized as a part of Virginia, it had its eyes upon admission as a State by the time the Federal Constitution was being adopted. To promote its admission, Lexington, at that time the most important town, voted in July, 1786, a free lot to John Bradford, a Virginia planter who had come to Kentucky after the War of the Revolution. On the site given him by the town of Lexington, ​Bradford put up a log print-shop and on April 11,,1787, brought out the first number of The Kentucke Gazette. The delay in bringing out this paper was due to the difficulty in getting the press, type, and paper from Philadelphia. This equipment had to come by wagon over the post-road to Pittsburgh, and then by flatboat down the Ohio to Maysville, and then "by nag" over the trail recently blazed to Lexington.
In the first number, Bradford issued this apology for the appearance of his paper:—
   My customers will excuse this, my first publication, as I am much hurried to get an impression by the time appointed. A great part of the types fell into pi in the carriage of them from Limestone to this office, and my partner, which is the only assistant I have, through an indisposition of the body, has been incapable of rendering the smallest assistance for ten days past.
The partner mentioned in the quotation just given was Bradford's brother, Fielding.
The initial number of The Kentucke Gazette was a single sheet, two pages (10 × 19½), three columns to the page. Fielding Bradford retired with the issue of June 7, 1788, and from that time its publisher until 1802 was John Bradford. The peculiar spelling of "Kentucke" was changed to the modern form, "Kentucky," on March 14, 1789. An attempt was made on January 4, 1797, to make the paper a semi-weekly, but a year later, or on January 3, 1798, it changed back to a weekly again. Daniel Bradford succeeded his father as editor and publisher of the paper on April 2, 1802. General Advertiser was added to the title at the beginning of 1803. Another attempt to make the paper a semi-weekly was made on February 19, 1806, but was not successful and a change to a weekly publication was resumed on January 3, 1807. The Kentucky Gazette and General Advertiser passed out of the control of the Bradford family on October 3, 1809, when Thomas Smith became the publisher. Smith, enlisting for service in Canada in August, 1812, turned the paper over to his brother-in-law, William W. Worseley, but still kept his own name in the imprint as publisher. A month later, however, he took in John Bickley as partner, but a little over a year later sold the paper to Fielding Bradford, Jr. It was published for ​about three years by him and then sold to John Norvel & Co. The "Co." was dropped with the issue of February 7, 1818, but on March 5, 1819, the paper was transferred to Joshua Norvel & Co., which later became, on October 6 of that year, Norvel & Cavins. The latter partner, however, became the sole proprietor on July 27, 1820. The Kentucky Gazette ceased publication some time in 1848.
The second paper in Kentucky was also started in Lexington by Thomas H. Stewart, who, on or near February 17, 1795, brought out Stewart's Kentucky Herald. After ten years The Herald became a part of The Kentucky Gazette.
The family of Bradford was connected with the first three papers in Kentucky. In 1802 John Bradford was the publisher of The Kentucky Herald, just mentioned; on November 7, 1795, Benjamin J. Bradford brought out the third paper, The Kentucky Journal, at Frankfort.
OTHER PAPERS IN KENTUCKY
Other early Kentucky papers were The Rights of Man, or The Kentucky Mercury, first published in May, 1797, at Paris, by Darius Moffett; The Mirror, August, 1797, at Washington, by Hunter & Beaumont; The Guardian of Freedom, by John Bradford & Son (this paper was really a branch of The Kentucky Gazette published at Frankfort in order to advocate Bradford as State Printer); The Palladium, August, 1798, at Frankfort, by Hunter (after The Mirror at Washington was discontinued, the earlier part of that year); The Western American, in 1803, at Bardstown, by Francis Peniston; The Western World, in 1806, at Frankfort, by Joseph M. Street; The Candid Review, in 1807, at Bardstown, by Peter Isler & Co.; The Louisville Gazette, in 1807, by Joseph Charles; The Impartial Observer, in 1807, at Lexington, by Guerin & Prentiss; The Argus of Western America, in 1808, at Frankfort, by William Gerard.
EARLY JOURNALISM IN WEST VIRGINIA
Dr. Robert Henry, physician, who had come to Berkeley County in 1792, started the first newspaper in West Virginia at Martinsburg in 1789. It was called The Potomac Guardian ​and the Berkeley Advertiser and had for its motto, "Where Liberty Dwells, There's My Stand." The earliest known issue is that of April 3, 1792, Volume 2, Number 73. It was a 9 x 15 sheet and the copy is preserved at the Capitol at Richmond, Virginia. Nathaniel Willis, father of Nathaniel Willis, who published The Boston Recorder, and grandfather of Nathaniel Parker Willis, who was the most distinguished literary man of his day, founded the second newspaper of West Virginia, also in Martinsburg in 1799. Willis called his paper The Martinsburg Gazette. The third newspaper in the State, again printed at Martinsburg, was started in 1800 and called The Berkeley and Jefferson County Intelligencer and Northern Neck Advertiser. Its publisher was John Alburtis. Wheeling had its first newspaper, The Repository, in 1807. Other early papers in Wheeling were The Times, The Gazette, The Telegraph, and The Virginian. In 1819 Herbert P. Gaines brought out the first newspaper at the Capital of the State, Charlestown, The Kanawha Patriot, and in 1820, Mason Campbell brought out the second, The Western Courier. Other papers followed until by 1850 there were three dailies and twenty-one weeklies in West Virginia.
INAUGURAL JOURNALISM IN DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
   The printers of news papers in the United States are desirous to take notice that this is the only paper printed in the city of Washington, and issues from the office late the property of Mr. Thomas Wilson deceased, and since then a few weeks in the possession of Mr. John Crocker. They are requested to forward their papers to Benjamin More, or the printer of The Washington Gazette and may depend on having The Washington Gazette regularly forwarded to them.
INITIAL PAPERS OF TENNESSEE
Very often the publisher of the first newspaper in any State was also the authorized printer to the Territorial or State Legislature. Such was the case in Tennessee, where George Roulstone first brought out, at Rogersville on November 5, 1791, The Knoxville Gazette. After issuing a few numbers he moved his plant to Knoxville, where he continued to bring out the paper until his death in 1804. He remained public printer all this time and his wife was later elected for two successive terms to fill the place.
The second paper in Knoxville was The Register founded in 1798 by John R. Parrington. Another early Knoxville paper was Wilson's Gazette begun in 1804 by George Wilson, and pub- lished until 1818, when Wilson went to Nashville to begin The Nashville Gazette in the interest of "Old Hickory." Work- ing with Wilson as a journeyman printer was F. S. Heiskell, who, shortly before the former left for Nashville, started a second Register in August, 1816, which survived, though under many editors, until the outbreak of the War of the States.
The first paper in Memphis was The Memphis Advocate and Eastern District Intelligencer, which first appeared on January 18, 1827. The Times was established soon after and later the two papers were united with the title of The Times and Advocate.
Journalism began in Nashville in 1797, when The Tennessee Gazette appeared under the editorship of a Kentucky printer named Henkle. A year later the paper was sold and the name changed to The Clarion. The Hamilton County Gazette, which later became The Chattanooga Gazette, was brought from Knox- ville to Chattanooga by flatboat in 1838. It suspended in 1859, but in 1864 was revived by James R. Hood and E. A. James.
OHIO AND ITS EARLY PAPERS
The distinction of being the first paper in Ohio belongs to The Centinel of the Northwestern Territory, brought out in the village of Cincinnati on November 9, 1793, by William Maxwell. Born about 1755 in New Jersey, he had come to Ohio by way of Pittsburgh. He brought with him a Ramage press and a few ​
fonts of type which he set up in a log cabin print-shop at the corner of Front and Sycamore Streets. By way of a motto for his paper he borrowed that of The New York Chronicle, "Open to All Parties But Influenced by None."
Speaking as the printer of The Centinel of the Northwestern Territory, he said in his opening issue :
Having arrived at Cincinnati, he has applied himself to that which has been the principal object of his removal to this country, the Pub- lication of a News Paper. This country is in its infancy, and the in- habitants are daily exposed to an enemy who, not content with taking away the lives of men in the field, have swept away whole families, and burnt their habitations. We are well aware that the want of regular and certain trade down the Mississippi, deprives this country in great measure, of money at the present time. These are discouragements, nevertheless I am led to believe that the people of this country are dis- posed to promote science, and have the fullest assurance that the Press, from its known utility, will receive proper encouragement. And on my part am content with small gains, at the present, flattering my- self that from attention to business, I shall preserve the good wishes of those who have already countenanced me in this undertaking, and secure the friendship of subsequent population.
The paper, published on Saturday, was a four-page sheet and had three columns to the page. Having mislaid the subscription list Maxwell published a notice in the first issue that subscribers should call at the office for their paper and that subscriptions would be received "in Columbia by John Armstrong, Esquire; North-Bend by Aaron Cadwell, Esquire; Coleram by Capt. John Dunlap, and in New-Port by Capt. John Vartelle." At the very start Maxwell advocated the opening of the Mississippi to nav- igation and never ceased to be the pleader of this cause so long as he remained the editor. Having been appointed post- master to Cincinnati, he sold The Centinel of the Northwestern Territory in 1796 to Edmund Freeman, who changed its name to Freeman's Journal. The latter continued its publication under that title until 1800 when he followed the seat of the Territorial Government to Chillicothe and brought out Freeman's Journal in that place. Upon his death, in 1801, Nathaniel Willis pur- chased the paper and combined it with The Sciota Gazette, a paper still published at Sciota. ​
The next paper, in order of establishment, in Ohio was The Western Spy and Hamilton Gazette, first published May 28, 1799, at Cincinnati by James Carpenter. Its name was changed to The Western Spy in 1806; three years later, April 13, 1809, to The Whig, and still later, June 13, 1810, to The Advertiser. Evi- dently, the changes in names did not add to the circulation of the sheet, for it was eventually forced to suspend publication. In- cidentally it may be remarked that in September, 1810, Car- penter started The Western Spy, but early in 1819 he changed it to The Western Spy and Cincinnati General Advertiser. It united with The Literary Cadet on April 29, 1820, only to become The National Republican and Ohio Political Register on January 1, 1823. A change in name was made January 3, 1830, to The National Republican and Cincinnati Daily Mercantile Advertiser, and on July 11, 1833, to The Cincinnati Republican and Commer- cial Register.
The third paper in Ohio has already been mentioned, The Sciota Gazette. This influential sheet, so often quoted in New York, Philadelphia, and other papers, was established in Chilli- cothe April 25, 1800, by Nathaniel Willis, a family name often met with in the history of American journalism. The Gazette absorbed The Fredonian in August, 1815, and The Supporter in March, 1821.
Of the other early papers in Ohio mention may be made of The Ohio Gazette and The Territorial and Virginia Herald, the fourth paper in the Northwestern Territory established De- cember 7, 1801, by Wyllys Silliman and Elijah Backus at Marietta; The Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Mercury, by John W. Browne, December 4, 1804, at Cincinnati; The Ohio Herald, by Thomas G. Bradford & Company, July 27, 1805, at Chilli- cothe; The Fredonian, by R. D. Richardson, February 19, 1807, at Chillicothe; The Star, by John McLean, February 13, 1807, at Lebanon; The Commentator, by Dunham and Gardiner, Sep- tember 16, 1807, at Marietta; The Supporter, by George Nashee, September 29, 1808, at Chillicothe; The Independent Republican, by Peter Parcels, September 8, 1809, at Chillicothe; The Im- partial Observer, by John C. Gilkinson & Company March 25, 1809, at St. Clairsville; The Ohio Sentinel, by Isaac G. Burnett May 3, 1810, at Dayton. ​
Ohio had in 1810 fourteen newspapers and by 1819, thirty- three.
INTEODUCTORY PAPERS OF MISSISSIPPI
As in other States, the first paper in Mississippi was The Gazette. It appeared on, or near August 1, 1800, at Natchez and was called The Mississippi Gazette. Its editor and printer was Benjamin Stokes. For a year, during 1801, the paper was pub- lished by Sackett & Wallace, but later, Mr. Stokes again as- sumed control and continued publication until about January 1, 1802.
On or near August 11, 1801, the second newspaper in Missis- sippi appeared at Natchez and was called The Intelligencer. Its printers were D. Moffett and James Farrell. Its life was short, and was followed by The Mississippi Herald on July 26, 1802. This by all means was the most important paper in this State during its early period. It was printed by Andrew Marschelk. Later, it became The Mississippi Herald and Natchez Gazette. The old files, which once belonged to Colonel Marschelk, show that he conducted the paper under the following titles : Natchez Gazette, Washington Republican, Washington Republican and Natchez Intelligencer, State Gazette, Mississippi Republican, State Gazette, Natchez Newspaper and Public Advertiser, Missis- sippi Statesman, Mississippi Statesman and Natchez Gazette, and finally The Natchez Gazette.
The next paper in Mississippi was The Constitution Conserva- tor, which was founded on or near October 16, 1802, by John Wade at Natchez. On September 1, 1804, John Shaw and Timothy Terrill brought out The Mississippi Messenger at Natchez. The chief distinction of this paper was that many of its editorials were written in doggerel.
BEGINNINGS IN INDIANA
Journalism in Indiana began in Vincennes when Elihu Stout, a printer from Lexington, Kentucky, brought out the first number of The Indiana Gazette on July 31, 1804. The newspaper was produced under great difficulties. The paper was brought to Vincennes on pack-horses which traveled over the ​old Buf-
falo Trail. The plant itself had been brought from Frankfort, Kentucky, down the Ohio River and up to Wabash in what was then called "piroques." The printing-office burned out in about two years, and the paper was revived on July 11, 1807, by Stout under the title, The Western Sun. Stout was the Territorial Printer and conducted the paper until 1845 when he sold out after he received the office of postmaster.
Other early Indiana papers included The Gazette, established at Corydon in 1814; The Plaindealer, established at Brookville in 1816; The Indiana Republic, established at Madison in 1815; The Indiana Register, established at Vevay in 1816; The Centinel, established at Vincennes in 1817; The Indiana Oracle, established at Lawrenceburg in 1817; The Intelligencer, established at Charleston in 1818. The first directory of Indiana papers was a gazetteer, published in 1831 by the proprietors of The Indiana Journal, and listed for 1832 twenty-nine different newspapers.
Notices similar to the following taken from The Blooming- ton Post appeared frequently in Indiana papers :
Persons expecting to pay for their papers in produce must do so soon, or the cash will be expected. Pork, flour, corn and meal will be taken at the market prices. Also, those who expect to pay us in fire- wood must do so immediately we must have our wood laid for the winter before the roads get bad.
MAIDEN ATTEMPTS IN MISSOURI
Joseph Charless, a printer who had worked on The Kentucky Gazette at Lexington, was the founder of journalism in Missouri. Securing an old Ramage press and a few fonts of type he put his plant aboard a keel-boat on the Ohio and floated down that river to find a permanent location at what is now St. Louis, but was then only a little settlement of about one thousand inhab- itants. Here, on July 12, 1808, he, with the help of Joseph Hinkle, a former printer on a Kentucky Gazette, pulled the first number of The Missouri Gazette. In this period in American his- tory Congress had divided its recently acquired province into the Territories of Orleans and Louisiana. St. Louis was in Lou- isiana Territory, so on December 7, 1809, Charless changed the title from a local to a more general one and called his paper The ​Louisiana Gazette. When Congress, however, again set off Missouri and Louisiana each as a separate territory, Charless on July 11, 1812, returned to the original name of The Missouri Gazette. Charless retired from the paper on September 13, 1820, when he sold it to James C. Cummins. On March 13, 1822, he, in turn, sold it to Edward Charless, the oldest son of the founder, who changed the name to The Missouri Republican, as a personal tribute to his Jeffersonian doctrines. It is now published as The St. Louis Republic.
In order to counteract the influence of The Gazette the politi- cal opponents of Charless raised a fund of one thousand dollars to start a Republican newspaper in St. Louis. An advertisement in The Lexington Kentucky Reporter brought them Joshua Norbell, of Nashville, Tennessee. Early in May, 1815, he started a rival sheet called The Western Journal. Two years later he was suc- ceeded by Sergeant Hall, of Cincinnati, who issued the first number of his paper under the new name of The Western Emi- grant. Two years later the paper became The St. Louis Enquirer, which once had for its editor Thomas H. Benton, who later for- sook journalism for politics and became the United States Senator.
SPOKEN PAPER IN MICHIGAN
Journalism in Michigan began with that most interesting pre- cursor, the spoken newspaper, conducted under the auspices of the Reverend Father Gabriel Richard, a priest of the Order of Sulpice, who came to Detroit in 1798 as resident pastor of the Roman Catholic Church of St. Anne. Mention has been made in an earlier chapter of how he appointed a town-crier whose duty it was on Sunday to stand on the church steps and to tell the public in general and the congregation in particular such news as was fit to speak. Advertising had its place in this spoken newspaper which told of the things for sale, etc. For the benefit of those absent at the spoken edition a written one was publicly posted near the church. For some time Father Richard was assisted in this way of publishing the news by Theopolis Meetz, who was at the time sacristan of St. Anne's Church, but who later
FIRST PRINTED PAPER
Out of this spoken, and later written, newspaper, grew the first printed sheet in Michigan entitled The Michigan Essay, or Impartial Observer. It first appeared in Detroit on August 31, 1809. As editor and publisher Father Richard selected one of his parishioners, James M. Miller. The French section not a half, as has so often been asserted, but about a column and a half was undoubtedly written by the Father himself. An editorial announcement informed the public that the paper would be published every Thursday and handed to city subscrib- ers at five dollars per annum, payable half-yearly in advance. It stated its policy in the following words: "The public are respectfully informed that the Essay will be conducted with the utmost impartiality; that it will not espouse any political party, but fairly and candidly communicate whatever may be deemed worthy of information, whether foreign, domestic, or local."
The second paper in Michigan was The Detroit Gazette, started on July 25, 1817, by Sheldon & Reed. This was the first perma- nent newspaper in Michigan, and like its predecessor, The Michi- gan Essay, it had to serve not only the English but also the French population of the city. One page was in French and the other three in English. It had an unusually hard time to make both ends meet, for in its issue of July 14, 1820, it asserted that only ninety of its one hundred and fifty-two subscribers had paid their subscriptions and not a single advertiser had yet met his bill. In spite of this fact, however, the paper survived until April 22, 1830.
The next paper was The Michigan Herald, also of Detroit, brought out on May 10, 1825, by H. Chipman and Joseph Seymour.
RUSH FOR ALABAMA
The first paper in what is now Alabama was unquestionably The Mobile Sentinel, published by Samuel Miller and John B. Hood at Fort Stoddert, May 23, 1811. These men were so de- termined to be the first in Mobile journalism that they started south before the city was annexed, but were compelled to stop ​for the printing outside in the neighborhood of St. Stephens, where they began to print The Mobile Sentinel while under the protection of Fort Stoddert. Sixteen issues of this paper at least were brought out, but whether a single one of them was actually printed in Mobile is not known.
Mobile under Spanish rule surrendered to General James Wilkinson, April 13, 1813. On April 28, 1813, a Mobile Gazette with an account of the affair was published. Its editor and pub- lisher was George B. Cotton. Cotton, in selling out his interest, said in his farewell in the issue of June 23, 1819, that The Mo- bile Gazette was started under his management in the infancy of the town, and some have taken this assertion to mean that the paper was in existence while Mobile was under Spanish rule. This seems extremely doubtful.
The Commercial Register, the predecessor of the present Mo- bile Register, appeared on December 10, 1821. In 1823 The Register printed a brief note that it had purchased the title, interest, and property of The Mobile Gazette.
ORIGIN IN ILLINOIS
The year of 1814 saw the first newspaper in Illinois. It was called The Illinois Herald and was published at Kaskaskia by Matthew Duncan, Printer to the Territory and publisher of the Laws of the Union, 1815. Duncan was a native of Virginia and came to Illinois by way of Kentucky. The paper appeared on or near June 24, 1814, as Number 30 .of Volume I is dated De- cember 13, 1814. On April 24, 1816, the paper became The Western Intelligencer and was published by Robert Blackwell and Daniel P. Cook. On May 27, 1818, the paper became The Illinois Intelligencer and continued publication under that title until October 14, 1820, when it suspended, only to be revived on December 14 of that year at Vandalia which had become the Capital of the State.
The second paper, The Illinois Immigrant, appeared in Shaw- neetown on June 13, 1818, with Henry Eddy and Singleton H. Kimmel as editors. On September 25, 1819, it became The Il- linois Gazette.
Difficulties of printing the early papers in Illinois was illus​trated in the following editorial by James Hall, the editor of The Illinois Gazette, in 1821 :
After a lapse of several weeks (three months to be exact) we are now enabled to resume the publication of our sheet. Paper (the want of which has been the cause of the late interruption) was shipped for us early last fall, on board a boat bound for St. Louis to which place, owing probably to the forgetfulness of the Master, it was carried and has but just now come to hand. . . . High and low water it seems are equally our enemies the one is sure to delay the arrival of some article necessary to the prosecution of our labors, while the other hurries some- thing of which we stand in the most pressing need, down the current beyond our reach.
PARTY ORGANS IN ARKANSAS
Journalism began in Arkansas when William E. Woodruff printed at the Post of Arkansas the first number of The Arkan- sas Gazette on November 20, 1819. A native of Long Island, he had arrived at the Post on October 30, 1819, from Franklin, Tennessee, bringing with him by canoes and dug-outs a press and some type. Being the Printer to the Territory he ceased to bring out The Gazette at the Post on November 24, 1821, and went to Little Rock, which had been made the Capital. Here he revived his paper on December 29, 1821, and continued it as the official organ of the State until 1833. That year he refused to let The Arkansas Gazette be simply a mouthpiece for Governor Pope. Woodruff, like most of the early editors in the West, had political aspirations and used his newspaper to help in their achievement, but when elected State Treasurer in October, 1836, he sold his paper to Cole & Spooner. The latter soon retired, and going to Hartford, joined the staff of The Courant; the former continued The Gazette until about 1840, when, for political and other reasons, he had to withdraw from the paper, which came again to Woodruff, its former owner. Three years later he sold it to Benjamin J. Bordon, who changed it from a Demo- cratic to a Whig paper. Chagrined at this change in policy of The Arkansas Gazette, Woodruff started, with the help of John E. Knight, in 1846, The Arkansas Democrat. Four years later the two papers were combined under the title, The Gazette and Democrat. The paper was eventually sold to Captain Columbus ​Danley, who dropped the Democrat from the title when The True Democrat appeared. Save for its suspension in 1863-65, The Arkansas Gazette has continued publication until to-day.
The second paper in the State was The Advocate brought out at Little Rock in March, 1830, by Charles P. Bertrand, a native of New York City and a frontier lawyer of unusual ability. It was owned and edited by him until 1835 when it passed into the control of Albert Pike and Charles E. Rice. The same year that The Advocate was established, The Democrat was founded at Helena by Henry L. Biscoe: its editor, however, was William T. Yeomans. After the rupture between Governor Pope and The Arkansas Gazette Andrew J. Hunt, in December, 1833, started at Little Rock The Political Intelligencer; edited by Colonel John W. Steele, it became the official spokesman for Governor Pope until the end of his term. Later, becoming a Whig organ, it changed its name to The Times. On Hunt's death The Times and The Advocate joined forces under the leadership of Albert Pike. Charles T. Towne in 1839 called for a short time The Witness to the stand in behalf of the Demo- cratic Party. C. F. M. Noland let loose The Eagle at Batesville in 1840 to cry for the Whigs. David Lambert let The Star first shine in Little Rock the same year.
TEXAS SIFTINGS
When Commodore Aury, Colonel Mina, and Captain Perry were stationed at Galveston Island in 1816 the military orders and others news were printed on a small sheet by Samuel Bangs, a peripatetic printer coming from Baltimore. While this sheet could hardly be called the first newspaper, it was a sort of pre- cursor to journalism in Texas. Another precursor appeared in 1819 when the Long Expedition reached Nacogdoches and made that point its headquarters. During its stay Horatio Bigelow published a small sheet more or less regularly; it gave the history of the Expedition, however, rather than general news.
The first real paper of the Lone Star State was The Texas Gazette, which made its appearance September 29, 1829, and was published by Godwin Brown Gotten in San Felipe, Austin County.
CHAPTER XII
BEGINNINGS OF THE PENNY PRESS
THE precursor of the penny press was undoubtedly The Daily Evening Transcript, which was established in Boston on Saturday, July 24, 1830, by Lynde M. Walter, a graduate of Harvard. It was published the first two days of the next week, but was then suspended until August 27, 1830, since when it has appeared without a single break in its publication. While not sold on the streets at a penny a copy, it quoted the extremely low rate of four dollars per annum payable semi-annually in advance. In the preface it said that it was started to supply the "deficiency created by the surcease of The Bulletin," and asserted that it would not "mingle in the everyday warfare of politics nor attempt to control public bias, in abstract questions of Religion or Morality." Its political creed it outlined as follows:—
   We believe that Duties imposed upon Imports, for the protection of domestic industry, are necessary and constitutional; that Congress has power to appropriate the public funds to works of internal improvement;—that the Bank of the United States is expedient to the preservation of a wholesome currency, and is warranted by the Constitution;—that the union of these States was decreed by the whole people,—will be maintained by the whole people,—and cannot be dissolved but by the will of a majority of the whole people voting each for himself, either personally or by special delegation.
It had two departments which attracted attention: one was headed, "Police Court"; the other, "Marine Journal." In connection with the latter the paper published a notice of indebtedness for "Facilities afforded by Mr. Topliff of Merchant's Hall for the memoranda inserted in our Marine Journal."
Walter, the first editor, occupied the chair until his death in 1842, when his sister, Cornelia Walter, assumed the editorship. During the first few years of Mr. Walter's régime, the most important matter of moment was the anti-slavery movement. ​While The Transcript could not be called an anti-slavery paper, it did give free access to its editorial columns to William Lloyd Garrison, then a young man, who wrote a great deal over the signature of W. L. G. In 1847 Eppes Sargent, a well-known poet and author, became the editor and continued until 1853, when Daniel M. Haskell sat in the editorial chair until 1874. During the twenty-odd years that Mr. Haskell was editor, he was assisted by such men of literary excellence as E. P. Whipple, Charles Sumner, Wendell Phillips, etc. Since Mr. Haskell's death in 1874, various men have been editors of The Transcript, and each of these has kept the paper up to the high aims of independent journalism which was the keynote of its beginning.
FIRST DAILIES SOLD FOR CENT
Possibly the first daily paper which sold for a penny was The Cent, which started in Philadelphia the same year that The Daily Evening Transcript was established in Boston. The Cent has long been a lost newspaper coin of which little is known save that its circulation was small and its life was short. Its publisher, however, was Dr. Christopher Columbus Conwell, who died in 1832.
By mere coincidence the man who first conceived the idea of publishing a penny paper in New York was also a physician, Dr. Horatio David Shepard. As he walked through the Bowery and noticed how readily candy, peanuts, and other trinkets, which sold for a cent, were passed over the counter, the thought occurred to him that a newspaper sold at the same price would be successful. Enthused with the idea he went to several printers and tried to get them interested in his proposition to start a penny newspaper. At first he was unsuccessful, but finally persuaded Horace Greeley to join him in bringing out such a paper. Greeley, however, insisted that the price was too sudden a reduction from the six pennies ordinarily charged for a newspaper and insisted on doubling the proposed price. With a capital of only two hundred dollars and with a credit which was scarcely good for forty dollars' worth of type, The Morning Post started on January 1, 1833, as a two-cent paper with Dr. Shepard, Horace Greeley, and Francis W. Story as its printers and pub​lishers. The date selected for bringing out the sheet was most inopportune; a snowstorm prevented the distribution of the papers. After one week's trial, in a vain effort to dispose of a daily edition of two or three hundred copies, the price was reduced to one cent. The change was made too late, however, for financial resources had been exhausted and no printer was willing to assume the burden of continuing publication. After three weeks The Morning Post was a tombstone in the journalism graveyard, already overcrowded in New York.
FOUNDER OF PENNY PRESS IN NEW YORK
But in September of that year, Benjamin Henry Day, a practical printer, who had learned his trade on The Springfield Republican and had taken a post-graduate course in the composing-room of The New York Evening Post, did establish in New York a penny sheet to which he gave the very appropriate name of The Sun—said to have been suggested by a compositor, David Ramsey. According to Day's statement he had first planned a penny paper in 1832, when, on account of the presence of cholera in New York, he had scarcely enough business for his print-shop to pay his running expenses. In the spare time thus afforded he roughly mapped out the plans for a daily paper to keep his presses busy. In an address in 1851 Mr. Day thus told of his early venture:—
   In August, 1833, I finally made up my mind to venture the experiment, and I issued the first number of The Sun September 3. It is not necessary to speak of the wonderful success of the paper. At the end of three years the difficulty of striking off the large edition on a double-cylinder press in the time usually allowed to daily newspapers was very great. In 1835 I introduced steam-power, now so necessary an appendage to almost every newspaper office. At that time, all the Napier presses in the city were turned by crank-men, and as The Sun was the only daily newspaper of large circulation, so it seemed to be the only establishment where steam was really indispensable. But even this great aid to the speed of the Napier machines did not keep up with the increasing circulation of The Sun. Constant and vexatious complaints of the late delivery could not be avoided up to the time that I left the establishment and until the invention of the press which permitted the locking of the type upon the cylinder.
It was Day's plan to make a paper not for the classes which were already well served by the six-penny sheets, but for the masses who had no newspaper. Starting with a circulation of three hundred, The Sun rapidly prospered until very shortly it was pressing hard the old conservative sheets. True to his origi- nal plans Day turned out a paper which gave in a condensed form the mechanics and the servant-girls the tittle-tattle and the gossip of the town. To make both ends meet he had to keep down the size of his paper, which was four pages with three columns of ten inches to the page, but it is wonderful how much news he was able to boil down and print in his limited sheet. At the start The Sun was not edited with any great ability until Day secured George W. Wisner, who was one of the first American journalists to realize the value of the police court as a source of news. Al- ready Wisner had been a police court reporter for the paper, for which service he received the magnificent wage of four dollars per week. To him the "assault and battery" cases of the police court were more interesting than the attacks of Jackson on the United States Bank.
In 1837 Day sold the paper to his sister's husband, Moses Y. Beach, for forty thousand dollars. The Sun remained in the Beach family, save for a temporary eclipse when it was pub- lished as a daily religious newspaper, until it was sold to Charles Anderson Dana and his associates, who assumed control on January 25, 1868. After Day retired from The Sun he became the publisher of The True Sun, which shed its light, such as it was, first on November 25, 1842. It shone for only a brief period of two years and then set. This second paper by Day should not be confused with The True Sun started on January 22, 1835, by W. F. Short and S. B. Butler, which suffered a total eclipse after four days.
EAELY LOCAL RIVALS
The success of The Sun led to the establishment of penny papers not only in New York, but also in all the other more im- portant cities of the country such as Philadelphia, Boston, Balti- more, Albany, etc. The immediate rival of The Sun in New York
THE FIRST ISSUE OF THE NEW YORK SUN (Reduced)
(Reduced)
tors Hay ward, Lynde, and Stanley. For a while in 1834 it looked as though the new paper was going to eclipse The Sun, as it achieved the larger circulation. Day and Wisner of The Sun were once indicted for criminal libel for an attack on Attree, the editor of The Transcript, so bitter did the fight become be- tween these two papers. The Transcript then began to pay more attention to political matters than The Sun: on December 4, 1834, it devoted its entire paper to the presidential message of Andrew Jackson and did not print a single advertisement. Get- ting into the field of its six-penny contemporaries, The Transcript soon lost its lead over The Sun, and when internal trouble arose among its printers and owners it became on July 24, 1839, only an epitaph in the newspaper graveyard.
Before The Transcript, however, another penny paper, The Man, had been born in New York on February 18, 1834. It was published in the interest of trade unions and endeavored to raise the compensation for federated labor. Nothing it printed at- tracted half so much attention as the way in which the letters in its name were drawn. This unique head when it first appeared was thus described by The Transcript, on May 27, 1834:
The Man, a penny paper published in this city, which advocates the cause of the working man, has provided itself with a new head, quite characteristic of its particular objects. This head is composed entirely of farming utensils and mechanic instruments. There is a ploughshare, a scythe, a rake, an axe, a hatchet, a saw, a hammer, an augur, a square, a drawing-knife, a plane, a goose, a pair of shears, etc., etc. all arranged and joined together so as to make THE MAN.
The Man died an early death.
One or two early penny papers in New York may be briefly mentioned. Shortly after The Sun had risen in New York, The Daily Bee came from the hive (located in Masonic Hall) of John L. Kingsley on March 5, 1834. Devoted to "literature, drama, police and court proceedings, news, etc.," it had a short life, in its first appearance in 1834, and a not much longer in its second in 1836. Kingsley later, however, rendered a more effi- cient service to American journalism by improving the method for stereotyping page forms of newspapers. Women were not neglected by the penny press. An attempt to reach them was ​
made on April 29, 1836, when The Ladies 1 Morning Star, price one cent, appeared above the newspaper horizon. A brief mention of all the newspapers which started in New York from 1830 to 1870 would fill a page of this volume and would make about as interesting reading as the catalogue of ships in Homer's "Iliad."
POPULARITY OF TRANSCRIPTS
For some reason The Transcript was an unusually popular name for these early penny papers, just as The Gazette had been for the early weeklies of the Colonial Period and The Adver- tiser had been for the first dailies of the Early Republic. Mention has already been made of The Transcript of Boston and New York; reference to The Transcript of Philadelphia will be made a little later. The first penny paper in Albany was The Tran- script, started on October 12, 1835. Baltimore saw The Daily Transcript, a penny paper established on May 10, 1836. On May 17, 1837, The Sun was started at Baltimore under the edi- torship of Arunah S. Abell. Abell was present when The Sun first rose in New York and had helped make the first entry of The Public Ledger in Philadelphia. Within a year Abell's penny paper had a circulation of "more than twice as many copies as the oldest established journal" in that city. In 1842 The Daily Whig and The National Forum were established in Baltimore as penny papers to support Henry Clay in his presidential aspira- tions.
PENNY PRESS IN BOSTON
The success of The Sun in New York and that of its satellite, The Orb, in Philadelphia led to the establishment of The 12 o'clock News in Boston on March 13, 1834. Strictly speaking, the first newspaper to be sold in Boston for one cent was The Daily Penny Post which was first set up at 28 Franklin Street on Monday, August 26, 1833, with a motto of Multum in Parvo. The News, published by B. Hammatt Norton, was issued daily at twelve o'clock and after the second number appeared on March 17 the paper was printed regularly. At the start The News was similar to The Sun of New York, not only in ​its sub-
ject-matter, but also in its mode of treatment. As time went on, however, it paid less attention to the news and more to literary articles which it quoted from exchanges. Because of this fact it fell behind The Sun as a gatherer of news and became more of a literary publication for the elect of Boston.
A number of German printers who had been connected with The Boston Daily Times started in December, 1844, a morning newspaper of their own called The American Eagle. It was a penny sheet devoted, as its name implies, to the interest of the Native American Party. Successful at first, it was quietly ex- piring a slow death when its promoters decided to start a new evening daily which would be neutral in politics and to let the morning paper die unless it showed more signs of life. The new afternoon venture in Boston journalism was called The Evening Herald and first appeared with an edition of two thousand on August 13, 1846. For four months the editorial and reportorial staff consisted of only two men. Its first page was filled with literary matter and much of the other three consisted of ma- terial " lifted" from the columns of The Morning Eagle. The Herald, feeble as it was, managed to survive financial diseases concomitant with newspaper infancy, and at the beginning of 1847 it appeared with a new dress as The Morning Herald and The Evening Herald. An editorial spoke as follows about the penny press in Boston: "The competition of the penny press has caused a mental activity among all classes; rash and impul- sive it may be, but, nevertheless, far preferable to the dignified stagnation which, in times of yore, was seldom broken by the larger and more expensive journals." A little later The Boston Herald, in an editorial on the "dignity of the penny press," said, among other things :" The time has come when the respectable portion of the community no longer looks to the big sixpenny, lying oracles of politics for just notions on government, exalted piety, or pure and chaste morality. The low price of the penny papers endows their publishers with a philanthropical spirit of disinterestedness, and a regard to the purity of public morals not dependent on pecuniary considerations. A cent is but a nom- inal price for a newspaper, and, therefore, the publishers and editor of a penny print are moved only by an earnest and ​
prayerful wish for the spiritual and temporal good of their read- ers. Much diurnal good may now be had at the very low price of one cent. It would be folly to deny that a pure and refined taste has been engendered by the cheap literature of the day." This paper should not be confused with another member of the penny family of Boston which had practically the same name, The Boston Morning Herald, but which had been started earlier and was edited by William B. English.
PENNY PRESS IN PHILADELPHIA
When Day started The Sun in New York in 1833, he had in his employ three printers, A. S. Abell, A. H. Simons, and William Swain. The last printer later became the foreman of its com- posing-room at twelve dollars a week. Worn out by having to work overtime Swain was compelled to take a vacation; upon his return he was not able to make satisfactory settlement for the time he was absent, and withdrew from The Sun, taking Abell and Simons with him. The trio, convinced of the wonderful pos- sibilities of the penny press, but satisfied that New York was already well served, went to Philadelphia where they brought out, on March 25, 1836, the first number of The Public Ledger. Being practical printers, they were unable to look after the edi- torial end of the paper and secured for this work Russell Jarvis, whose work on The United States Telegraph had already at- tracted attention. The new paper adopted as its editorial policy: "While The Public Ledger shall worship no man, it shall vitu- perate none. The Public Ledger will be fearless and independent, applauding virtue and reproving vice wherever found, un- awed by station, uninfluenced by wealth." The Ledger was not quite so successful as The Sun in New York and at the start was published under great handicaps, financially and otherwise. But when it started to attack the United States Bank in the days of the "Banking War," it became very popular and grew in "stature and wisdom." The Ledger continued to be a penny paper until 1864 when it was sold to George W. Childs who ad- vanced the price to two cents on account of the greatly increased cost of white paper.
A few days before The Ledger was started, The Daily Tran​
script, edited by Frederick West and published by William L. Drane, had made its appearance in Philadelphia. The Transcript soon united with The Ledger, in September, 1836, and the union was called The Public Ledger and Daily Transcript. The Veto, a distinctly campaign publication, had been started on April 17, 1834, at one cent a copy: it had for its motto, "Old Hickory, Home Spun, and Hard Money." The Orb, another penny paper founded about the same time, soon disappeared. The Daily Focus, a rival of The Public Ledger in the penny field, attacked Jarvis, the editor of the latter paper, so relentlessly and so bit- terly that he finally brought suit against the owners of The Focus, Turner, Davis, and Balicau. The case was never reached on the docket and The Focus was hidden among the many other penny papers which attempted to dispute the supremacy of The Pub- lic Ledger for a time and then disappeared.
In New York The Sun and The Transcript were being printed in 1835 on Ann Street in the plant of Anderson & Smith. Into their shop came James Gordon Bennett from Philadelphia where he had been connected with The Pennsylvanian. The final result of this conference was that the firm agreed to add another paper to their presses. Called The New York Herald, it was published by James Gordon Bennett & Company in the cellar of Number 20 Wall Street. On May 6, 1835, the first number appeared with Bennett as editor, publisher, advertising director, circulation manager.
The assertion has often been made that Bennett started The Herald with five hundred dollars, two wooden chairs, and an old dry-goods box. But he had something more : his chief asset was his newspaper experience often bought dearly. He had been editor of a Sunday paper, The New York Courier, writer on political topics in The National Advocate, Washington cor- respondent for The New York Enquirer, associate editor of The Courier and Enquirer, and owner of The New York Globe, a two- cent campaign organ which he started on October 29, 1832, to support Jackson and Van Buren.
From the start The Herald had its own troubles. It sold for ​one cent a copy and consequently its circulation brought in only a very limited revenue. The Sun and The Transcript objected to being printed at the same plant as The Herald and soon withdrew from Anderson & Smith. A big fire on Ann Street August 12, destroyed the printing-plant and caused The Herald to suspend until August 31. But The Herald continued to grow and had to seek larger quarters. On April 6, 1836, it moved again, this time from Broadway to Clinton Hall Building. Four months later the price per copy was increased to two cents.
At the end of the year 1836 the following résumé was published:—
The surprising success of The Herald has astonished myself. I began on five hundred dollars, was twice burnt out, once had my office robbed, have been opposed and calumniated by the whole newspaper Press, ridiculed, contemned, threatened, yet here I am, at the end of fifteen months, with an establishment, the materials of which are nearly worth five thousand dollars, nearly all paid for, and a prospect of making The Herald yield in two years a revenue of at least thirty thousand dollars a year; yet I care not, I disregard, I value not money. I rise early, and work late, for character, reputation, the good of mankind, the civilization of my species. It is my passion, my delight, my thought by day, and my dream by night to conduct The Herald, and to show the world and posterity, that a newspaper can be made the greatest, most fascinating, most powerful organ of civilization that genius ever yet dreamed of. The dull, ignorant, miserable barbarian papers around me, are incapable of arousing the moral sensibilities, or pointing out fresh paths for the intellectual career of an energetic generation.
For the sake of comparison and for the purpose of showing the aim of the paper the following quotation is made from Volume I, Number 1:—
James Gordon Bennett & Co. commence this morning the publication of The Morning Herald, a new daily paper, price $3 a year, or six cents per week, advertising at the ordinary rates. It is issued from the publishing office, No. 20 Wall Street, and also from the printing-office, No. 34 Ann Street, 3d story, at both of which places orders will be thankfully received.
The next number will be issued on Monday morning—this brief suspension necessarily taking place in order to give the publishers time ​and opportunity to arrange the routes of carriers, organize a general system of distribution for the city, and allow subscribers and patrons to furnish correctly their names and residences. It will then be resumed and regularly continued.
In the commencement of an enterprise of the present kind it is not necessary to say much. "We know," says the fair Ophelia, "what we are, but know not what we may be." Pledges and promises, in these enlightened times, are not exactly so current in the world as Safety-Fund Notes, or even the U.S. Bank bills. We have had an experience of nearly fifteen years in conducting newspapers. On that score we can not surely fail in knowing at least how to build up a reputation and establishment of our own. In debuts of this kind many talk of principle—political principle—party principle, as a sort of steel-trap to catch the public. We mean to be perfectly understood on this point, and therefore openly disclaim all steel-traps, all principle, as it is called—all party—all politics. Our only guide shall be good, sound, practical common sense, applicable to the business and bosoms of men engaged in every-day life. We shall support no party—be the organ of no faction or coterie, and care nothing for any election or any candidate from president down to a constable. We shall endeavor to record facts on every public and proper subject, stripped of verbiage and coloring, with comments when suitable, just, independent, fearless, and good-tempered. If The Herald wants the mere expansion which many journals possess, we shall try to make it up in industry, good taste, brevity, variety, point, piquancy, and cheapness. It is equally intended for the great masses of the community—the merchant, mechanic, working people—the private family as well as the public hotel—the journeyman and his employer—the clerk and his principal. There are in this city at least 150,000 persons who glance over one or more newspapers every day. Only 42,000 daily sheets are issued to supply them. We have plenty of room, therefore, without jostling neighbors, rivals, or friends, to pick up at least twenty or thirty thousand for The Herald, and leave something for others who come after us. By furnishing a daily morning paper at the low price of $3 a year, which may be taken for any shorter period (for a week) at the same rate, and making it at the same time equal to any of the high-priced papers for intelligence, good taste, sagacity, and industry, there is not a person in the city, male or female, that may not be able to say, "Well, I have got a paper of my own which will tell me all about what's doing in the world. I'm busy now, but I'll put it in my pocket, and read it at my leisure."
With these few words as "grace before meat," we commit ourselves and our cause to the public, with perfect confidence in our own capacity to publish a paper that will seldom pall on the appetite, provided we receive moderate encouragement to unfold our resources and purposes in the columns of The Morning Herald.
​The contents of the first issue of The Herald were in striking contrast not only to the previous work Bennett had done for newspapers, but also to the contributions he was soon to make to American journalism. Before he started The Herald he had contributed to the leading literary papers of the day; he had written heavy political editorials on men and matters of moment; he had lectured on political economy in the old chapel of the Dutch Reformed Church on the corner of Ann and Nassau Streets. Yet he made The Herald—to quote the language used at that time—"light and spicy."
NEW YORK PAPERS OF BENNETT'S TIME
His reasons for making The Herald what he did may possibly be found in the competition he had to meet at that time in New York. To sell his papers he had to bring out a publication that was different from those of his rivals already in the field. In 1835 New York had the following daily papers: The New York American, The Mercantile Advertiser and New York Advocate, The New York Daily Advertiser, The Morning Courier and Enquirer, The New York Journal of Commerce, The New York Commercial Advertiser, The Business Reporter and Merchants' and Mechanics' Advertiser, The New York Times, The Evening Post, The Evening Star, The New York Sun, The Man, The Jeffersonian, The New York Gazette and General Advertiser, and The New York Transcript. In addition to these fifteen daily papers there were eleven semi-weeklies and thirty-one weeklies in the city. New York, like Athens of old, has always been ready to hear the new thing—especially in newspapers.
FREE FIELD FOR BENNETT
No "sacred cows" browsed in Bennett's fields. He even attacked the church regardless of denomination. He wrote the first newspaper accounts of the annual meetings of the various religious organizations much to the annoyance of both pulpit and pew. He reported the proceedings of the police court with a freedom which even enlarged the time-honored freedom of the press. In relating scandal with full particulars that filled columns of his paper, he seemed to think the more he shocked ​
people the more they would read his paper. If he was assaulted either on the street or in his office, he gave a full report the next morning under the standing head, "Bennett Thrashed Again." The announcement of his engagement which he published in The Herald is one of the most interesting specimens of news- paper literature. In a certain sense, he often put his own private journals in his paper as may be found in the following editorial printed in 1836:
We published yesterday the principal items of the foreign news, re- ceived by the Sheffield, being eight days later than our previous ar- rivals. Neither The Sun nor The Transcript had a single item on the subject. The Sun did not even know of its existence. The large papers in Wall street had also the news, but as the editors are lazy, ignorant, indolent, blustering blockheads, one and all, they did not pick out the cream and serve it out as we did. The Herald alone knows how to dish up the foreign news, or indeed domestic events, in a readable style. Every reader, numbering between thirty and forty thousand daily, acknowledges this merit in the management of our paper. We do not, as the Wall street lazy editors do, come down to our office about ten or twelve o'clock, pull out a Spanish cigar, take up a pair of scissors, puff and cut, cut and puff for a couple of hours, and then adjourn to Del- monico's to eat, drink, gormandize, and blow up our contemporaries. We rise in the morning at five o'clock, write our leading editorials, squibs, sketches, etc., before breakfast. From nine till one we read all our papers and original communications, the latter being more numerous than those of any other office in New York. From these we pick out facts, thoughts, hints and incidents, sufficient to make up a column of original spicy articles. We also give audiences to visitors, gentlemen on business, and some of the loveliest ladies in New York, who call to subscribe Heaven bless them! At one we sally out among the gentlemen and loafers of Wall street find out the state of the money market, return, finish the next day's paper close every piece of business requiring thought, sentiment, feeling, or philosophy, before four o'clock. We then dine moderately and temperately read our proofs take in cash and advertisements, which are increasing like smoke and close the day by going to bed always at ten o'clock, seldom later. That's the way to conduct a paper with spirit and success.
VITUPEEATION OF TIME
But in order to understand Bennett and his newspaper, it is necessary to be familiar with the journalism of the time. Edi- tors were just beginning to find out that the pen was mightier ​
than the sword, the pistol, or the walking-stick. They filled their columns with malicious squibs and furious diatribes against each other. The vituperation of the press knew no bounds. By way of illustration the following epithets used by Park Benjamin in The Signal, by James Watson Webb in The Courier and Enquirer, and by M. M. Noah in The Evening Star may be given: "Obscene vagabond," " Loathsome and leprous slanderer and libeler," "Unprincipled conductor," "Rascal," "Rogue," "Cheat," "Veteran blackguard," "Habitual Liar," "Polluted wretch," "Foreign vagabond," " Foreign imposter," "Monster," "Daring infidel," "Pestilential scoundrel," "Venomous reptile," ad infinitum.
In answer to the charge that he was once a pedler in the streets of Glasgow, Bennett once replied in his paper as follows:
I am, and have been, a pedler and part of my name is Gordon. This I admit. From my youth up I have been a pedler, not of tapes and laces, but of thoughts, feelings, lofty principles, and intellectual truths. I am now a wholesale dealer in the same line of business, and people generally believe I have quite a run, and what is better, no dread of suspension. I was educated and intended for a religious sect, but the Almighty, in his wisdom, meant me for truth and mankind, and I will fulfil my destiny in spite of all the opposition made to me either in the old or new hemisphere. Yes, I have been a pedler, and am still a pedler of the thoughts, and feelings, and high imaginings of the past and present ages. I peddle my wares as Homer did his as Shakespeare did his as every great intellectual and mighty pedler of the past did and when I shall have finished my peddling in this world, I trust I shall be per- mitted to peddle in a better and happier region for ever and ever.
Much has been made of two articles which appeared in The British Foreign Quarterly Review and which attacked most bit- terly the newspapers of the United States in general and The New York Herald in particular. The Westminster Review an- swered these charges sufficiently when it remarked that Ameri- can journalism was no worse than English. There is every reason to believe that the articles in The Foreign Quarterly Review were not written in good faith.
INNOVATIONS OF
What really made The New York Herald, however, yet remains to be outlined. In the second number a Wall Street feature was ​
added to the paper. Irregularly at first, these articles on finance proved so popular that they became a regular department. In addition to the comment about the money market, stock quo- tations were given. According to The Herald, it was "the only paper in the city which gives authentic and daily reports of Wall Street operations, stocks, and the money market." Until 1838 the department was conducted entirely by Bennett. In reviewing the history of this department, he said in The Herald of February 20, 1869:
The daily financial report was begun by us when we started The Herald. We made it personally. Getting through that part of our va- ried labors that could be done at an early hour, we went to Wall Street, saw for ourselves what was in progress there, and returned with our report sketched out in fragmentary fly leaves of letters or other handy scraps of paper. We told the truth, for we were in the interest of the public; and the truth of that locality was not complimentary in those days any more than it would be now. War was made upon us right and left by the men whose little games were spoiled whenever the public came to know what they were at; and, strangest of all things for a war originating in that quarter, it was a "moral war." We lived through it, however.
Compelled to delegate our labor in the preparation of a financial report, we have always meant and still mean to keep that report as honest as it was in its origin; to constitute it a legitimate and exact record of what is honestly done in Wall Street, and an exposure a lay- ing bare to the eyes of the public of what is dishonestly done there. We will compound none of the villainies with the fellows who trade on public credulity to abuse public confidence. One journal shall tell what Wall Street really is and what is done there.
Wall Street had some excellent newspaper stories, as Bennett soon found out.
After the fire which destroyed the Ann Street printing-plant, Bennett announced the policy which, carried out in every detail, contributed much to the success of The Herald. That policy was : 11 In every species of news The Herald will be one of the earliest of the early." At the same time Bennett announced this policy he also said: "We mean to procure intelligent correspondents in London, Paris, and Washington, and measures are already adopted for that purpose." When the Sirius and Great Western crossed the Atlantic, with steam as the motive powe ​r, Bennett
enlarged the foreign correspondence of the paper. For years The Herald was first in foreign news. Bennett did not neglect local and national news. After he had found the value of such items to the paper he went over New York with a net and gathered in with apologies to The New York Times "all the news that's fit to print," along with some that wasn't. He developed his own news bureau for the interior. He printed "news-slips" which were sent free by express mail to the news- papers in the interior. These "news-slips," which reached pub- lishers one mail in advance of the regular issues of The Herald, took the place of the telegraph news service of the Associated Press of to-day. This free news service placed papers receiving the same under obligation to see that The Herald got all the worth-while news from their territory and got it before the other New York papers.
In building up The Herald, Bennett had the active cooperation of Frederick Hudson, who had the honor of being managing director. Of the latter, Samuel Bowles, the elder, once said, while editor of The Springfield Republican, that Hudson was the greatest organizer of a mere newspaper that this country has ever seen.
PENNY PAPERS SOLD BY BOYS
The conservative Journal of Commerce, a six-penny paper, on June 29, 1835, published an account of the penny press in New York which described not only the conditions in New York, but those in other cities which bad penny newspapers:
It is but three or four years since the first penny paper was estab- lished. Now there are half a dozen or more of them in this city, with an aggregate circulation of twenty or thirty thousand, and perhaps more. These issues exceed those of the large papers, and, for aught we see, they are conducted with as much talent, and in point of moral char- acter we think candidly they are superior to their six-penny contem- poraries. . . . They are less partisan in politics than the large papers, and more decidedly American, with one or two exceptions. The manner in which their pecuniary affairs are conducted shows how much may come of small details. They are circulated on the London plan, the editors and publishers doing no more than to complete the manu- facture of the papers, when they are sold to the newsmen or carriers at ​
67 cents per 100. The carriers distribute the papers, and on Saturday collect from each subscriber six cents, so that for each call their net income to the carriers is but one third of a cent. We wish our penny associates all success, hoping that they will grow wise, good, and great, until they make every sixpenny paper ashamed that tells a lie, or be- trays its country for the sake of party, or does any other base thing.
For some reason the owners of the six-penny political sheets did not consider it strictly ethical to sell their wares on city streets. Subscribers received their papers by carriers, and tran- sient purchasers had to go to the counters of newspaper offices. The penny press, however, did not wait to enroll annual sub- scribers, but tried to market its merchandise daily through boys. The pages of the early penny papers fairly bristled with advertisements of "Boys Wanted." The first issue of The Public Ledger in Philadelphia contained a small advertisement to this effect :
50 MEN AND BOYS can make it an advantageous business to circulate this paper. Apply at the office of The Ledger Nos. 38-39 Arcade.
Early issues of The Boston 12 o'clock News contained this ad- vertisement:
WANTED 20 boys neatly dressed and excellent deportment to sell The Daily News None need apply except those who intend to en- gage permanently. 30^ for every 100 sold.
Possibly The Sun of New York was the first to use news boys in this way. Almost at the start that paper contained a notice :
TO THE UNEMPLOYED. A number of steady men can find em- ployment by vending this paper. A liberal discount is allowed to those who buy to sell again.
For the first time journalism was brought directly to the people. By making the daily papers easy to buy, the penny press brought something of a revolution into American journalism. Its system of marketing its products undoubtedly had much to do wit ​h its success.
DIFFEEENCES BETWEEN PENNY AND SIX-PENNY SHEETS
The penny paper on account of its size was forced to give its news in small space. For example, the first issue of The Sun in New York gave an account of a revolution in Mexico in four lines which included a statement of the source of the item. For the most part, the penny sheet printed its news on inside pages: the first page was given over either to advertising or to articles usually quoted from exchanges. The Sun, to quote its first issue again, had on its front page a supposedly humorous story about an Irish captain and the duels he fought; early issues of The New York Transcript devoted their front pages to a continued story, "Edward and Julia; a Reminiscence of Forty Years Since"; page one of the first issue of The Daily Evening Transcript in Boston was composed entirely of advertisements. At the start the editor of the penny paper usually culled his material from the pages of his more verbose six-penny contemporary: later, he either went himself or sent a reporter to gather such items.
The chief distinction between the six-penny sheets and the penny papers was that the former featured the news of legisla- tive chambers and the latter that of the courts. It must be frankly admitted that in some instances the penny press went to the extreme limit in reporting criminal cases, but in so doing it showed sound newspaper psychology. What makes a short piece of fiction so interesting is its account of some struggle or "scrap," whether it be the conflict in a character study where two natures battle against each other, or whether it be the fight of two rivals for the hand of Fair Ophelia. How well James Gor- don Bennett knew this has been outlined elsewhere. In reporting the happenings of the police court the "scrap" element, which gave value to the accounts, was present in double strength: first, there was the story of the physical combat which brought the contestants to court; second, there was the legal battle be- tween their lawyers. The penny papers went on the principle of what the Lord let happen ought to be printed in their sheets. Such contentions of the penny press brought upon it the severe criticism of the more cultured in the community. It ​was not
uncommon for the subscribers of the more conservative papers to write letters similar to the following :
Your paper should take a more dignified stand; and not condescend to notice the assaults of the degraded penny press. The price of your journal is such that it is taken only by readers of the more intelligent classes; readers who despise the vulgarity of the penny newspapers, and who have cause to feel themselves affronted when you give so large a space, or any space, indeed, to a refutation of their absurdities. It seems to me, that a proper respect for your own dignity, as well as a proper respect for those into whose hands your lucubrations chiefly fall, ought to restrain you from giving additional circulation to the trash of the minor prints, which are suited only to the taste and capacities of the lower classes of people.
It was in answer to just this letter that William Leggett replied :
If it were true that the readers of the penny papers are chiefly con- fined to what our correspondent chooses to term the "lower classes," it would be no argument against them, but in their favour. Those who come within the embrace of that exotic phrase are in immense majority of the American people. It includes all the honest and labouring poor. It includes those whose suffrages decide the principles of our government; on whose conduct rests the reputation of our country; and whose mere breath is the tenure by which we hold all our dearest political, religious, and social rights. How ineffably important it is, then, that the intelligence of these "lower classes" should be cultivated; that their moral sense should be quickened; and that they should have the means within their reach of learning the current history of the times, of observing the measures of their public servants, and of be- coming prepared to exercise with wisdom the most momentous privi- lege of free-men. This great desideratum the penny press supplies, not as well and thoroughly, perhaps, as the philanthropist could wish, but to such a degree as to be necessarily productive of immense benefit to society. It communicates knowledge to those who had no means of acquiring it. It calls into exercise minds that before rusted unused. It elevates vast numbers of men from the abjectness of mere animal condition, to the nobler station of intelligent beings. If usefulness con- stitutes the true measure of dignity, the penny press deserves pre-emi- nence, as well on account of the character of its readers, as the extent of its circulation. He who addresses himself to intelligent and cultivated minds, has a critic in each reader, and the influence of his opinions must necessarily be circumscribed. But he who addresses himself to the mass of the people, has readers whose opinions are yet to be fo ​rmed; whose
minds are ductile and open to new impressions, and whose intellectual characters he, in some measure, moulds. He becomes the thinker, in fact, for a vast number of his fellow-beings. His mind transfuses itself through many bodies. His station renders him, not an individual, but a host; not one, but legion. Is this not a vocation of inherent dignity? to address, daily, myriads of men, not in words that fall on cold and inattentive ears, and are scarce heard, to be immediately forgotten; but in language clothed with all that undefinable influence which typog- raphy possesses over oral communication, and claiming attention not in the hurry of business, or amidst the distractions of a crowded assemblage, but when the thoughts have leisure to concentrate them- selves upon it, and follow the writer in all the windings of his argument. If the censures were well founded which are lavished on "The vile penny press," as some of the larger papers are prone to term their cheaper rivals, they should but provoke minds governed by right prin- ciples to a more earnest endeavour to reform the character of an instru- ment, which must be powerful, either for evil or for good. That they are so vile we do not admit. We have found, ourselves, honourable and courteous antagonists among them; and if those who apply to them the harshest epithets, would treat them instead, with respectful con- sideration, copying from their columns as readily as from those of other journals, when intrinsic circumstances presented no particular motive of preference, and contesting their errors of opinion on terms of equal controversy, they would do far more towards raising the character and increasing the usefulness of that important branch of popular literature, than general and sweeping condemnation can possibly do to degrade it. For ourselves, professing that our main object is to promote the cause of truth in politics and morals, we should consider ourselves acting with palpable inconsistency, if we were governed, in any degree, by so narrow a principle of exclusion as that which our correspondent re- commends. That newspaper best consults its real dignity which never loses sight of the dignity of truth, nor avoids any opportunity of ex- tending its influence.
SUCCESS OF NEW PRESS
Not all of the six-penny newspapers, however, were so chari- table toward their younger brethren found in the penny press. They resented the strenuous competition which they must meet in the gathering and selling of news. The aristocrats of the day thought that the newspaper was their especial property and should be published for them exclusively. It was something of an honor before the establishment of the penny press to be a newspaper subscriber; it was somewhat similar to having a piano ​
in the house; but when newspapers sold for a penny a copy, they crept into the pockets of the working-man to be glanced at has- tily at his noonday lunch and to be read religiously after his evening meal. Naturally, politicians bitterly opposed this new press, and did what they could to prevent it from feeding at the political crib of State and National advertising. Nevertheless, the new journalism, opposed to politics and independent in spirit, continued to thrive. It was said that in ten years it did more good by exposure of municipal scandals than the older press had done in twenty. In the birth of the penny newspaper may be found the beginning of the independent press in America. The new press when it discussed politics did so without taking orders from Washington: it ceased to be a minor or a servant
CHAPTER XIII
TRANSITION PERIOD
1832—1841
The penny press brought several changes in the manufacture and marketing of newspapers. Among these were the use of steam to turn the press and the employment of boys to sell single copies in addition to distributing papers among regular subscribers. The greater demand for larger editions, the competition to be first in news, the better facilities for gathering items, the deeper interest taken in civic improvement, the changes in the body politic, the expansion of the country, the increase of literacy among all classes with the introduction of compulsory education—all these things brought readjustment in the printing and making of newspapers.
These changes came gradually, however, and will be taken up more in detail as they appear. They were concomitant with other transformations of American civilization. Many reforms grew out of the agitations of the penny press. In New York, for example, The Sun advocated the installation of a paid fire department. Under the volunteer system the chief aim of fire companies was to be first at the burning building rather than to extinguish the flames. One company never hesitated to destroy the apparatus of a rival if thereby it could be first at the fire. Rival gangs which formerly fought on city streets put on the red shirts of volunteer firemen and fought their battles for supremacy as before. In securing the introduction of horse-drawn engines and the adoption of a paid department, The Sun rendered a most distinct service to the city. The Herald performed just as distinct a service when it fought for the adoption of uniforms for the city police. Previously, members of the police department had been distinguished from civilians only by the presence of a badge worn on the coat. In case of trouble, it was not uncommon for a policeman to remove his badge and with ​
the insignia in his pocket, watch the fracas as a spectator. The reforms in the police department brought about by The Herald added much to the respect for law and order in New York. Pos- sibly the penny press of Philadelphia secured even greater reforms for that city. The press was again simply a mirror of the transformations of overgrown villages into metropolitan cities and of isolated States and Territories into a Nation.
GREELEY, SEWARD, AND WEED
During the time when the penny press was being established in the larger cities, Horace Greeley was interested in various newspaper enterprises. His entrance into New York City in 1831, because of his peculiarities of dress and mannerisms, might be paralleled to that of Benjamin Franklin into Phila- delphia. From his savings as a journeyman printer, Greeley, as has already been mentioned, aided hi the publication of what became the first one-cent newspaper in New York, The Morning Post. At the time The Sun was established he was running a job office which made a specialty of the advertising literature of lot- teries, etc. In conjunction with Jonas Winchester he started on March 22, 1834, The New Yorker, in which he published the larger part of his editorial work, both original and selected writ- ings, though he continued to write for The Daily Whig. He was a member of the political company, spoken of in the press as Seward, Weed, and Greeley. This company proceeded, after the political revolution of 1837 to start, under the auspices and by the direction of the Whig Central Committee of the State f New York on March 3, 1838, a campaign paper in Albany called The Jeffersonian. Funds for its establishment were con- tributed by the leading Whig politicians in amounts of ten dol- lars each. The paper, sold at fifty cents a year, was according to Greeley established "on the impulse of the Whig tornado to secure a like result in 1838 so as to give the Whig party a Gov- ernor, Lieutenant-Governor, Senate, Assembly, United States Senator, Congressman, and all the vast executive patronage of the State," then amounting to millions of dollars. For his ser- vices, Greeley received a remuneration of one thousand dollars, but he naturally expected to get some of those offices worth from ​
three to twenty thousand dollars per year which Seward upon being elected Governor was handing out to his friends. In this he was disappointed: to quote his words, "I return to my garret and my crust."
In the Tippecanoe and Tyler campaign of 1840 known as the "Tip and Ty" campaign in the press the same political firm brought out another campaign paper on May 2, 1840, entitled The Log Cabin published simultaneously at New York and Albany. Of this sheet Henry Jarvis Raymond, when editor of The New York Times, once said, "It was the best campaign paper ever published." It was designed only for a campaign sheet and was expected to expire with the twenty-seventh number: forty- eight thousand of the first issue were sold and subscriptions came in at the rate of seven hundred a day. The Log Cabin, both by its caricatures and by its editorials, promoted the raising of log cabins, formally dedicated with plenty of hard cider, as political centers and headquarters for Harrison and Tyler men.
The Whig tornado, mentioned by Greeley, started with Jack- son's decision to remove the deposits of the Government from the Bank of the United States. Financial interests subsidized existing Whig organs and started new ones at strategic points. Democratic papers, alienated by Jackson, continued their op- position to his successor, Martin Van Buren. A group of papers, headed by The Enquirer of Richmond, was especially bitter toward Van Buren for not favoring the annexation of Texas and became even more violent in its denunciation when he accepted a nomination of a rival political organization. The sound money doctrines of Van Buren made the Whig campaign organs popu- lar with the masses which wanted "higher wages and lower prices" so readily promised by these sheets in case of victory at the polls. Log cabins were frequently erected to be used as print-shops and the office mascot was invariably a live raccoon chained to the front doorpost or to the rude chimney of the structure. The popularity of the log cabin was due to the fact that Harrison was not only born in one, but also had one attached his house. Rival campaign weeklies existed for the Democratic Party with names as peculiarly appropriate as The Log Cabin. Two favorites were The Coon Skinner and The ​
Dry Cider Barrett. Of the Whig sheets, next to Greeley's Log Cabin, came The Corn-Stalk Fiddle and The Whig Rifle. Never again did the campaign weeklies, or dailies for that matter, play so important a part in presidential elections as in the "Tip and Ty" campaign of 1840.
GREELEY AND HIS DAILY
After Harrison had been elected, largely through the Whig Campaign organs of which The Log Cabin was the leader, Greeley naturally thought that Governor Seward would ask that the position of postmaster of New York be given to the editor of The Log Cabin, but he was unable not only to get this position, but also to get anything "in the scramble of the swell mob of coon-minstrels and cider-suckers which swarmed to Washington for offices." Of the residents from New York, City "no one in the crowd," to quote Greeley's own words in a letter to Seward, had done so much "toward General Harri- son's nomination and election," as the editor of The Log Cabin. Unable to get political office Greeley started The Tribune in New York on April 10, 1841, on the very day of Harrison's funeral. The aim of this newspaper, published at one cent, was that it should be "removed alike from servile partisanship on the one hand and from gagged, mincing neutrality on the other." Though there were already numerous daily papers in New York there was still room for another local Whig paper. The Courier and Enquirer, The New York American, The Express, and The Commercial Advertiser were Whig papers, but circu- lated at the annual subscription price of ten dollars a year: The Evening Post of the same price leaned to the Democratic side of politics; The Journal of Commerce, while primarily a commer- cial daily favored entries approved by the Democrats. The Signal, The Tattler, and The Star were among the cheap papers which sat astride the political fence; The Sun had now achieved an enormous circulation, and while professing neutrality in poli- tics always shone a little brighter for the Democrats; The Herald was still independent and had raised its price to two cents.
In his preliminary notice of publication, Greeley thus out- lined the policy to be pursued by The Tribune : ​
On Saturday, the tenth day of April instant, the subscriber will publish the first number of a new morning journal of politics, literature and general intelligence. The Tribune, as its name imports, will labor to advance the interests of the people, and to promote their moral, social and political wellbeing. The immoral and degrading police reports, ad- vertisements and other matter which have been allowed to disgrace the columns of our leading penny papers will be carefully excluded from this, and no exertion spared to render it worthy of the hearty approval of the virtuous and refined, and a welcome visitant at the family fire- side. Earnestly believing that the political revolution which has called William Henry Harrison to the Chief Magistracy of the nation was a triumph of right reason and public good over error and sinister am- bition, The Tribune will give to the new administration a frank and can- did, but manly and independent, support, judging it always by its acts, and commending these only so far as they shall seem calculated to subserve the great end of all government the welfare of the people.
The success of The Tribune was immediate. The editor's per- sonal and political friends had secured subscribers by the hun- dreds before the first issue of five thousand copies was printed. Though started as a penny paper, The Tribune began its second volume on April 11, 1842, at the increased price of nine cents a week, or two cents a copy. The New Yorker and The Log Cabin Greeley merged into The Weekly Tribune. The Tribune under Greeley's editorship has been commonly classed as a party organ, but he was fairly successful in his determination to " remove it from servile partisanship on the one hand and from gagged, mincing neutrality on the other"; no better illustration of this fact is found than his own words, "The Tribune will accept the party nominee but will spit upon the platform." Though The Tribune continued to be a pulpit from which Greeley preached daily the partisan gospel, according to St. Horace, it was also a platform for the early appearance of such distinguished jour- nalists and publicists as Charles Anderson Dana, Henry Jar vis Raymond, George William Curtis, Carl Schurz, John Hay, Whitelaw Reid, Henry James, William Dean Ho wells, Bayard Taylor, George Ripley, Margaret Fuller, Edmund Clarence Stedman, Richard Grant White, Richard Hildreth, John Russell Young, Sidney Howard Gay, etc. ​
NEWSPAPER BATTLES
In the competition to be first on the streets with important news, papers spared neither labor nor expense to use a hack- neyed expression. In an age when politics attracted so much attention in the press it was natural that there should be the keenest rivalry in reporting political speeches. As these were often delivered at some distance from the place of publication, papers adopted various methods to rush the reports. If news had to come by boat, compositors and type cases were put on board, and as fast as copy was written on the trip it was put into type and made ready for the press. On the other hand, if news had to come by rail, a reporter, acting under instructions from his paper, hired a locomotive for his exclusive use and made a fast run with only the engineer as a companion. Such methods for the transmission of news were common until the telegraph proved quicker.
Such enterprises did much to develop the instinct for news, for speed soon became the distinguishing characteristic of Amer- ican journalism. Boats on the Hudson river often carried a corps of compositors who could put into type a speech delivered at Albany and have it ready to lock up in a form by the time the boat docked in New York. One of the most remarkable beats in this connection was the report of a speech delivered by Daniel Webster in Boston. Several New York newspapers sent shorthand reporters who took down the remarks of Webster, as the address was an important one. Representing The Tribune was Henry J. Raymond, who, inexperienced in stenography, was somewhat handicapped, but he had provided for the emergency by taking with him a number of Tribune compositors. The latter, with the help of a miniature printing-plant which had been put on board the night boat out of Boston, were prepared to set the speech in type as fast as Raymond could write it. Employees of The Tribune met the boat when it landed at five the next morning and in one hour carriers were distributing copies of The Tribune which contained a full report of Webster's speech delivered in Boston the preceding afternoon. Greeley's paper that morning was the talk of the town, and his rivals on that occasion were simply "also rans." ​
STEAM EXPEESSES OF " THE SUN"
In running steam expresses to obtain early news possibly The New York Sun stood first. Its publisher once asserted that the secret of its success was mainly due to its enterprise in this direc- tion. From 1842 to 1847 it spent over twenty thousand dollars in running such expresses a large sum for the time when finan- cial returns from advertising were not large. In justice to other Gotham papers it must be said that The Sun was not infre- quently eclipsed in this field by The Herald or by The Tribune. A whole chapter could be devoted to interesting accounts of races between newspaper expresses. On one occasion to get the Euro- pean news which was coming by way of Boston both The Sun and The Herald had a locomotive, but on rival tracks. The reporter of The Sun was the first to leave Boston, but he was no sooner out of sight than the reporter of The Herald sent his loco- motive to the round-house and got out a special edition of The Herald in Boston on the press of The Mail. This special edition of The Herald, sent by train to New York, was the first to give the news, for The Sun, thinking that the express of The Herald had been wrecked when it did not arrive, had not rushed the news into type as rapidly as usual. On another occasion a representative of The Tribune, in order to have the exclusive use of an important item of news, deliberately stole an engine especially chartered by The Herald and then ran away with it to New York. In those days newspapers did not bother their heads with the nice questions of newspaper ethics : it was simply a fight to get the news and to get it first in print.
EDITOKIAL COMBATS
During the days of personal journalism a large amount of editorial space was frequently given to abuse of rival editors. Some of these tilts between editors, though often unmannerly, were very interesting.
James Watson Webb, of The Courier and Enquirer, once took revenge upon Horace Greeley, of The Tribune, by attacking what he thought were some of the eccentricities of the latter. Greeley came back with the rejoinder in The Tribune which completely ​
squelched Webb at least for the time being. Webb on Jan- uary 27, 1844, published the following editorial in The Courier and Enquirer:
The editor of The Tribune would have all the world live upon bran- bread and sawdust. He seeks for notoriety by pretending to great ec- centricity of character and habits, and by the strangeness of his theories and practices; we, on the contrary, are content with following the beaten path, and accomplishing the good we can, in the old-fashioned way. He lays claim to greatness by wandering through the streets with a hat double the size of his head, a coat after the fashion of Jacob's of old, with one leg of his pantaloons inside and the other outside of his boot, and with boots all bespattered with mud, or possibly, a shoe on one foot and boot on the other, and glorying in an unwashed and un- shaven person. We, on the contrary, eschew all such affectation as weak and silly; we think there is a difference between notoriety and distinction; we recognize the social obligation to act and dress ac- cording to our station in life; and we look upon cleanliness of person as inseparable from purity of thought and benevolence of heart. In short, there is not the slightest resemblance between the editor of The Tribune and ourself, politically, morally, or socially; and it is only when his affectation and impudence are unbearable, that we condescend to notice him or his press.
Greeley, equal to the occasion, on the next day printed the following reply in The Tribune:
It is true that the Editor of The Tribune chooses mainly (not entirely) vegetable food; but he never troubles his readers on the subject; it does not worry them; why should it concern the Colonel? It is hard for phi- losophy that so humble a man shall be made to stand as its exemplar, while Christianity is personified by the hero of the Sunday duel with Hon. Tom Marshall; but such luck will happen. As to our personal appearance, it does seem tune that we should say something. Some donkey, a while ago, apparently anxious to assail or annoy the Editor of this paper, and not well knowing with what, originated the story of his carelessness of personal appearance; and since then, every block- head of the same disposition, and distressed by a similar lack of ideas, has repeated and exaggerated the foolery, until, from its origin in The Albany Microscope, it has sunk down at last to the columns of The Courier and Enquirer, growing more absurd at every landing. Yet, all this time, the object of this silly raillery has doubtless worn better clothes than two-thirds of those who thus assailed him, better than any of them could honestly wear if they paid their debts otherwise than by bankruptcy; while, if they are indeed more cleanly than he, they must ​
bathe very thoroughly not less than twice every day. The Editor of The Tribune is the son of a poor and humble farmer; came to New York a minor, without a friend within two hundred miles, less than ten dol- lars in his pocket, and precious little besides; he has never had a dollar from a relative, and has, for years, labored under a load of debt. Hence- forth he may be able to make a better show, if deemed essential by his friends; for himself he has not much time or thought to bestow on the matter. That he ever affected eccentricity is most untrue; and cer- tainly no costume he ever appeared in, would create such a sensation in Broadway, as that James Watson Webb would have worn, but for the clemency of Gov. Seward. Heaven grant our assailant may never hang with such weight on another Whig executive! We drop him.
In order to understand the latter part of Greeley's comment about Webb, some mention should be made of the latter's will- ingness to defend his opinions, not only in the columns of his paper, but also on the "field of honor." One such duel had in- volved Webb in legal difficulties and he had only escaped a jail sentence through the courtesy of Governor Seward.
For the sake of the contrast of juxtaposition, an editorial tilt of a later period, when journalism had become impersonal, may be inserted. As The Tribune had the better of it in the edi- torial controversy just recorded, an illustration may be used which reverses the honor. Long after The Courier and Enquirer had become a part of The World, a Democratic President made a very poor appointment to an office at his disposal. The Tribune, thinking that it might embarrass its neighbor, asserted that it would leave the explanation of this appointment to the official Democratic spokesman, The World. The antiphonal rejoinder of The World, after reprinting the comment, was, "It would be a great deal better for the readers of The Tribune if that news- paper left all matters to The World to explain." Nothing shows more the tremendous advance which American journalism has made than the two editorial controversies just given.
FIKST NEWSPAPER CORPORATION
William Leggett, in summing up the newspaper press of 1835, made a special plea for the corporational newspaper a prophecy of what the coming newspaper in America was to be. Mr. Leggett thought that newspapers thus established would ​
then be able to stand "the assaults of prejudice, now fatal in the unassisted hands of single and comparatively indigent in- dividuals." He pointed out that in England the principal news- papers were joint-stock property, many having hundreds and some thousands of owners whose interests are attended to by a committee of directors of their own selection. By way of con- trast, Mr. Leggett added :
Among us, the newspapers are the property of single individuals; and it is found that administering to the depraved tastes and appe- tites of the community, consulting the passions and caprice of the hour, and guiding their course by the variable breath of the multitude, is a more profitable, as well as an easier task, than steering undeviatingly by fixed principles, referring all subjects to the touchstone of truth, and addressing themselves with inflexible constancy to the judgments of men. It is not to be wondered at, however much it is to be deplored, that they adopt the readiest and most lucrative mode of discharging their functions, and forego the glorious opportunity their vocation af- fords, of effectually advancing the great interests of mankind.
The first paper to be thus published by a stock company was The New York Tribune. On January 1, 1849, a meeting was called for the purpose of distributing the stock among its em- ployees. Every one was placed on a salary from editor-in-chief down to printer's devil. This system of association ownership was especially pleasing to Greeley because of its socialistic aspect.
PRESS MODESTY OF POLITICIANS
During the first half of the nineteenth century, even the ablest statesmen delivered their speeches primarily for home consumption. They did not care to have their utterances given widespread publication. They were to be reported in the friendly organs of the political parties. Henry Clay, for example, when he was about to make a speech at Lexington, Kentucky, was told that a reporter of the Associated Press was present. The great Kentucky statesman then promptly refused to go on with his address until the reporter had folded up his paper and left the grounds. Clay was deeply insulted and did not hesitate to say so in picturesque language that a writer for newspapers unknown to him should have the audacity to report ​
his speech without first securing special permission to do so. The reporter, fortunately, was Richard Smith, who later became associated with The Commercial Gazette of Cincinnati. Being a good newspaper man, he hung around until the speech was over, and then obtained an excellent resume* of the address from a friend who knew the politics of the State and who remembered the salient points of the speech. Until the politician learned that he must speak to a larger audience than that around the stump, the reporter was regarded as an impertinent intruder.
JOURNALISM IN THE REPUBLIC OF TEXAS
When Texas, being dissatisfied with Mexican rule, revolted in 1835, its most important newspaper became The Telegraph and Texas Register which first appeared at San Felice, October 10, 1835, published by Gail Borden, Joseph Baker, and Thomas H. Borden. It was not only one of the foremost papers devoted to the revolutionary cause, but also practically the official organ of the Provincial Government : it continued to be published at Austin until March 24, 1836, when General Santa Anna sent forward an advance guard which forced the staff to take the press apart, break up the forms, pack the type, etc., and to flee to Harrisburgh, where another attempt was made to print an- other edition of The Telegraph. As a matter of fact, one issue was put into type and six sheets had been actually taken off the press when another advance guard from Santa Anna entered the place, seized the press, pied the type, and held the printers as prisoners. Later, the troops from Santa Anna threw the press and type into the Buffalo Bayou, from which they were later taken, cleaned, and used in Houston to print The Morning Star, which first appeared on April 8, 1839, and boasted of being the first daily paper in the Republic of Texas.
After the battle of San Jacinto, Gail Borden went to Cincin- nati, where he bought another printing outfit which he used in resuming publication of The Telegraph on October 2, 1836, at Columbia on the Brazos, then the temporary seat of the Government. On April 11, 1837, The Telegraph was moved to Houston, at that time the seat of the Government, where Dr. Francis Moore became its editor. On June 20, 1837, Gail Borden ​
sold his interest to Jacob W. Cruger and the publishers now became Cruger and Moore: they were also Public Printers and continued to hold that office even after the Capital had been removed to Austin. At the latter place they established, on January 15, 1840, The Texas Sentinel, but continued The Tele- graph at Houston. Gail Borden, after selling his interest in the paper, eventually returned to his native State and founded in New York City the great milk company which bears his name. Of the journalism conditions in Texas while a Republic the following re'sume* has been left by "an emigrant, late from the United States": "That the Texians are a reading people is manifested by the fact that there are now twelve newspapers published in the Republic. One of these is a daily paper pub- lished at Houston, and one or two others are, during the sessions of Congress, semi-weekly ones. In a population so small, and with such imperfect post routes, to sustain so many papers must be admitted to be an astonishing circumstance."
TOPLIFF'S ' ' NEWS-BOOM "
Possibly Samuel Topliff made the first attempt to gather news to be retailed among several newspapers. Establishing his headquarters in a "news-room" in the Coffee Exchange in Boston he made a specialty of the reports of the market and the commercial news of Boston Harbor. He kept a logbook in which captains of boats which had just arrived wrote the news they had picked up at foreign ports. This logbook was available to the Boston newspapers for a consideration. Mention has already been made of how The Boston Transcript availed itself of such an opportunity when it brought out its first issue in 1830.
PRESS PIGEONS OF CRAIG
While Topliff was busy in Boston, Arunah S. Abell, of The Baltimore Sun, and D. H. Craig were busy experimenting the possibility of using pigeons to carry news. Headquarters were established in Baltimore and here the pigeons were trained: at one tune over four hundred were kept in a house on Ham- stead Hill near the Maryland Hospital for the Insa ​pigeon express first ran—or rather flew—from Washington to Baltimore: later, Washington dispatches were carried by pigeon relays to Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. The headquarters at the last place was a coop on top of The Herald building. Incidentally, it may be remarked that it was not until the beginning of the twentieth century that The Herald did away entirely with its carrier pigeons: until fifteen years ago that newspaper had one of the best cages of these remarkable birds for exigencies.
D. H. Craig also experimented in Boston with pigeons as carriers of news. Securing a number of African carrier pigeons, he kept them in a special building near his house in Roxbury until they had become thoroughly domesticated. Upon the expected arrival of an English mail steamer in Halifax he, with his winged carriers, would go there, get the latest British papers, and then take passage to Boston. While at sea he would write on thin manifold paper a summary of the most important European news. Then when the steamer was about fifty miles from Boston he would liberate his pigeons with the news fastened to wing or foot. They would reach home several hours before the steamer docked and the news they carried would, after being promptly put into type, be published as an extra of The Boston Daily Mail. When the edition had been run off, the title of The Daily Mail was removed and that of The New York Herald Extra was substituted and the press again started. The second edition, after being promptly forwarded to New York by Sound steamers, was put into the hands of newsboys by James Gordon Bennett, proprietor of The New York Herald. Because of the intense rivalry between The Herald and The Sun, Bennett at one time offered five hundred dollars an hour for every hour that Craig could furnish The Herald with news ahead of rivals. So bitter became this fight for the honor of being first in the news that questionable methods of interference were often adopted: even the pigeons which carried the news were shot by men hired by newspapers outside the service of the winged carriers. Craig later became connected with the Associated Press of New York.
HALE AND HALLECK
In New York the first pretentious step to gather news while it was news was made by Arthur Tappan who had founded The Journal of Commerce as a semi-religious newspaper to com- bat the growing evil influences of the theater. To get the Euro- pean news he used to meet the incoming vessels with a rowboat and thus save time in getting the news into print. Later, he sold his paper to the Boston newspaper men, David Hale and Gerard Halleck. These men, familiar with the news enterprise of Samuel Topliff, built a fast news-yacht which they called "The Journal of Commerce" after their newspaper. The Courier and Enquirer, not to be outdone, promptly put into commission another news-boat, "The Thomas H. Smith." The Journal of Commerce, true to the principles of its founder, refused to collect the news on the Sabbath and appealed to the more provincial subscriber to excuse lack of news on Monday. The Journal of Commerce also built a semaphore telegraph at Sandy Hook by means of which it relayed news from its news-boat to Staten Island where items were promptly taken to its New York office. In this way the paper was able to be first in maritime news for some little time. Whenever important items arrived it got out extra editions in order that it might be first on the streets. Aroused by the enterprise of the penny press, the conservative blanket sheets called "our bed-quilt contemporaries" by the penny papers were not always beaten in the publishing of notable news.
PRIMITIVE PONY EXPRESS
While other papers shared in the honor of its development, the pony express was really started by The Sun, of Baltimore, Maryland. Local newspapers had supplied their customers with the President's messages as follows: they purchased sup- plements previously printed in Washington, but bearing the title of their papers, and then distributed them upon their arrival to their readers. In December, 1838, however, The Sim hired a representative to bring, with the help of "a Canadian pony as nimble as a goat and as swift as the wind," a copy of the message ​
to The Sun office on Light Street. Within five minutes after its arrival forty-nine compositors were hastily putting it into type and in two hours this newspaper had the message on the streets of the city. This was the beginning of the famous pony express of The Sun.
From that time forward, until the invention of the telegraph, the pony express was used to bring the messages of the Presi- dents to Baltimore; from this point they were relayed by fresh expresses to New York and other cities. Through the help of its horses The Sun was enabled to give its readers President Harrison's Inaugural Address on the same day that it was de- livered. But it was in the war with Mexico that the pony express reached its highest development.
FIRST FLIGHT OF " BROOKLYN EAGLE" When Harrison was elected President, politicians of the rival party at once began to make preparations for the defeat of the Whig Party at the next presidential election. Many papers were established for the sake of influencing votes. Among those thus founded for political causes was The Eagle, of Brooklyn, New York. For some years previous to 1841 the county in which Brooklyn is located had been Whig: the Democrats sought an excuse for being in the minority by asserting that they had no party organ to represent them. A few of the leaders, there- fore, in the hopes of wresting control of the county from the Whigs, formed a company to start a new daily newspaper : the re- sult of their efforts was the establishment of The Brooklyn Eagle and The Kings County Democrat on October 26, 1841, with Isaac Van Anden as its first editor and publisher. After the county had been swung into the Democratic ranks, most of the men who had started The Eagle thought that, as the object for which the journal had been founded had been obtained, the paper might be well discontinued. Mr. Van Anden, however, thought otherwise, and as a protest against discontinuing the sheet he offered to purchase the interest of the others in the paper. In this way he became its sole owner and conductor. Though founded as a party organ, The Eagle both in national and local campaigns has supported in its editorial columns both ​
Republican and Democratic candidates when these candidates stood for a policy that best represented the interests of the people. As Brooklyn grew, The Eagle shared in its prosperity: it has carried an amount of advertising which has been ex- ceeded by only two other newspapers in the City of New York. Among its distinguished editors has been the poet, Walt Whit- man, and the late St. Clair McKelway. In spite of the competi- tion of the penny papers of New York, The Eagle succeeded in keeping the home field to itself, even though it charged three cents per copy.
COOPER'S WHOLESALE LIBELS
The only man who has ever sued the newspapers for libel on a wholesale scale was the distinguished American novelist James Fenimore Cooper. Returning from a long residence abroad, he retired to the old homestead at Cooperstown, New York. During his absence, the villagers had used a piece of property belonging to the novelist as a sort of recreation spot. It was one of those numerous points which run out into Otsego Lake and was near enough to the village to be ideal for picnic purposes. Acting strictly within his legal rights Cooper forbade trespassing upon this piece of property. The resentment of the village was so bitter that it attracted the attention of the many newspapers of the State, including that of a Whig organ at Norwich, New York, which told how the Cooper books had been removed from the village library and burned. The local Whig organ at Cooperstown reprinted the item from its Norwich contemporary and was promptly sued for libel by Cooper, who "recovered the verdict and collected it by taking the money through a Sheriff's officer from the editor's trunk." Various Whig papers, not only in the vicinity of Cooperstown, but also New York City, promptly took up the fight. Not content with merely criticizing Cooper's action in his home town, it proceeded to criticize very severely Cooper's criticism of American ways and manners found in his two books, "Homeward Bound" and "Home as Found."
Among the New York newspapers which thus criticized Cooper were The Courier and Enquirer, edited by James Watson ​
Webb, and The Commercial Advertiser, edited by William L. Stone. Cooper promptly brought suit against them both. In his action against Colonel Webb, his suit was for criminal libel and the jury returned the verdict of not guilty. Cooper found that it was much harder to send a man to jail for libel than it was to collect monetary damage for a reputation. Cooper therefore had better success when he brought suit against Thurlow Weed, the editor of The Albany Evening Journal, who published several unfavorable notices about Cooper and his books. Weed at the time of the suit was unable to be present on account of sickness in his family and a verdict of four hundred dollars against him was given to Cooper. Weed sought in vain to have the case reopened. Finding himself unsuccessful, he proceeded to set forth his case in a letter to The New York Tribune published on November 17, 1841. For the publication of this letter Cooper brought suit against Greeley for libel. The jury, after several ballots, finally returned the verdict of two hundred dollars. Greeley having attended the trial in person proceeded to re- port the event for his own paper. The report came within three quarters of a column of filling the entire inside of The Tribune, which he headed "The Cooperage of The Tribune" Extracts were printed in more than two hundred papers and the novelist proceeded to bring suit for a new libel several of them, in fact. Greeley, now thoroughly aroused, prepared to take the suits more seriously and hired the Honorable William H. Seward as his attorney. The latter, by various hearings on demurrer and by numerous expensive interlocutory proceedings, pre- vented the case coming to trial.
PRESS RESTRICTIONS OF THE SENATE The Senate in 1841 attempted to exclude reporters from its Chamber on the ground that the regulations provided only for the admission of representatives from Washington newspapers. This attempt of exclusion was the last stand to favor the party organs of the Capital. For years these organs had been making enormous sums for printing the reports of Congress. Henry Clay asserted that $420,000 was thus paid to the three Washington organs, The Globe, run by Blair and Rieves, The National In​
telligencer, run by Gales and Seaton, and The Madisonian, run by Thomas Allen. James Gordon Bennett, of The New York Herald, promptly attacked this favoritism and announced that he was willing to give daily reports at the Senate without any remu- neration. Out of his efforts grew the "freedom of the press" for all newspaper correspondents at Washington.
SENSATIONAL NEWS OF THE PERIOD
In 1843 The United States Gazette published the statistics of the murders and other crimes recorded in its pages from January to July of that year. The account showed over nine hundred accidental deaths, of which fully one half came from drowning. There were two hundred and fifteen murders by guns, pistols, bowie-knives, etc.; there were fifty-six deaths by firearms which were imprudently handled; forty-five died from clothing taking fire; forty-six were struck by lightning; forty-three were killed by falling from horses or by the upsetting of carriages, etc.; eighty-three committed suicide. From this account, which was copied by many newspapers to show that they had not been beaten in recording such catastrophes, it is evident that the news- papers even at this time were not neglecting the so-called sen- sational news.
PARTY PATRONAGE VS. "THE POST"
As late as 1835 the National Government still exerted a tre- mendous influence through its patronage in moulding American newspapers. Party organs were kept strictly in line by the threat which continually hung over them of "Stop the Govern- ment advertising." Bribes for party support were fairly num- erous. Criticism of any department of the Government was dangerous. For example, because The New York Evening Post criticized the seditious doctrines of the Postmaster-General in the matter of the destruction of Northern papers circulated in the South, the official list of letters uncalled for in the New York Post- Office was transferred to The New York Times (not the paper which bears that name to-day). Because The New York Evening Post believed the tone of a letter of the Secretary of the Treas- ury to the President of the United States Bank was undignified, ​
the Treasury Department withheld its advertising in The Post. Because The New York Evening Post thought the Secretary of the Navy had acted with gross partiality in a naval court-martial, advertising from that department in The Post was promptly can- celled. Because The Evening Post exposed the duplicity of the Collector of the Port of New York, it lost the advertising supplied by the Custom House. In view of the "Government patronage" of the day, independence of the press was very expensive in 1835, but William Leggett hewed to an upright line in his Evening Post and let the Government patronage chips fall where they would.
ADVEETISING OF THE PERIOD
Before the advent of the penny press the advertiser usually took a "square" in the newspaper for which he paid thirty dol- lars a year: this amount also included a subscription to the news- paper. After the first year the advertiser sometimes paid and not infrequently he neglected to do so. As the number of adver- tisers increased, the size of the sheets was enlarged until they became too bulky to hold conveniently in the hands. For this reason they were called by the penny papers "our bed-quilt contemporaries. ' '
The first penny papers asked the same rate of thirty dollars per year for advertising, but the squares were smaller, and the sum did not include a subscription to the paper. Later, the penny papers adjusted their prices for advertising according to a more modern rate card and insisted that advertisers change their copy more frequently. They developed a new field with the small ad- vertiser: what is now called "classified advertising" began to make its appearance.
In their first issues penny papers reprinted somewhat more desirable advertising, such as railroads, steamboats, stage- coaches, etc., and inserted a notice similar to the following taken from The New York Daily Bee :
The advertisements inserted in this number we insert gratuitously, hoping to obtain the patronage of the advertising public, as this will be our greatest support. We would respectfully request those persons whose advertisements are inserted, if they wish to have them continued to call
ADVERTISEMENTS IN THE PHILADELPHIA AURORA
Showing free use of Cuts before the Invention of Cylinder Presses (Enlarged)
PHILADELPHIA
STOVE
MANUFACTORY,
No. 189 N Second street, t\vo doors below the sign of the Barley Sheuf, between ll'Ce and Vine streets. HENRY J. FOUGERAY re- spectfully informs the citi- zens of 'the U. States that he continues to manufacture .an extensive assortment of his Patent Stoves, for burn- ing Lehigh and Schuylkill Coal, for Churches, Halls, Parlours, Kitchens, Offices, &c. together with Nine Ptote, Open and Cabin Stoves, Cambouses, Backs, Jams, &.c. AH of which he will dispose of at low prices.
N B.~ Cash given for Old Stoves and Scrap Iron, or taken In exchange. aug 18-6m
Approved Cook Stoves Perpetual Oven, dec.
No. Ill North Second street, Phi ladelphia.
GKO J.FOUGE- B'AY informs the citizens of the United States that he continues to. manufacture his approved Cook Stoves, to burn coal and wood, with stoves for churches, Jialls, offices, stores, &c.
Also, Perpetual Ovens.
N.H. All kinds of old Stoves and
Irpn taken in
(Enlarged)
Legal notices found in six-penny contemporaries were reprinted by the cheaper papers and bills mailed to county officials. Al- though unauthorized, these bills were paid because politicians did not dare to offend the penny sheets who were in a position to expose the petty grafts of the period. Before the type-revolving cylinder press made its appearance, many of the newspapers were so profusely illustrated that they resembled catalogues rather than newspapers. Some of the more fastidious sheets seriously objected to the use of these cuts which gave such a black appear- ance to the newspaper, and charged extra for their insertion even though no extra mechanical labor was involved.
EPIDEMIC OF MEDICINAL ADVERTISING During the Colonial Period the newspaper publisher was often a seller of medicines. There were several reasons for this; one was that the colonial printer was forced by necessity to supple- ment the income from his press by that from other sources; medicinal preparations, then, as now, allowed large profits. In the second place, the early settler was forced by isolation to be his own doctor. What was more natural, therefore, than that the post-rider who brought The Gazette should also bring house- hold remedies for cases of emergency. It made matters easier when both these items could be purchased at the same shop. The American, forced by necessity to be his own doctor, soon came to be his own doctor from choice. All that was needed to increase the sale of pills and powders was an epidemic of bodily ills. This " curse" came at about the time that the masses were getting the penny press. An epidemic of dancing swept across the country. Previously, balls had been confined to the more aris- tocratic gatherings, but dances became popular with the me- chanics, the gatherers of ashes, the clerks in shops, etc. Econo- mists who have studied this period of American history say that the amount spent on balls by all manner of society was simply enormous. Dancing was prolonged into the morning hours. Ventilation of ballrooms was then so poor that the result was a flood of almost all ills to which the human body is heir. Manufacturers of proprietary medicines found they could reap a fortune by advertising their nostrums in the public ​
press. They did so and on the profits of the sales of such medi- cines were founded some of the large fortunes of later years. Some of the concoctions of this period were simply colored water and were absolutely harmless; but others contained absolute poisons. The injurious effect of such widespread doping was checked by threatened legislation by various States. In this way the worst of the positively injurious "remedies" were eliminated from the advertising columns, but the press, not only in the rural sections, but also in the cities, continued its partnership in dosing the American people. Many newspaper men actually wrote the advertisements; for instance, Henry Jarvis Raymond, who later became the distinguished founder of The New York Times, increased his income by writing daily advertisements of medicinal pills for a quack doctor for which he received a re- muneration of fifty cents for each piece of copy.
As late as 1881 Charles Dudley Warner complained that the newspaper columns "outshine the shelves of the druggist in the display of proprietary medicines." Many excellent newspapers, for thirty years after this remark, continued to be, so far as the advertising columns were concerned, directories of patent medi- cines until Samuel Hopkins Adams, in a series of articles in Collier 1 s Weekly, entitled "The Great American Fraud," exposed the chicanery of patent medicine manufacturers and the worth- lessness of many of their concoctions.
FEDERAL SUPERVISION ADVOCATED
By a ruling of the Postmaster-General, Amos Kendall, in 1835, the coaches having mail contracts were not permitted to carry passengers on their Western trips until provision was made for all the mail matter addressed to the West. Similar restrictions were placed upon the mail routes along the Atlantic seaboard. When the newspapers in the North began to advocate the aboli- tion of slavery it raised a howl of protest in the South. Charles- ton, in South Carolina, particularly objected to the circulation of such newspapers. The postmaster in that city held such news- papers in his office pending instructions from the Postmaster- General. The latter side-stepped the question by saying that he had no legal authority to issue instructions on this technical ​
point. Before the Department handed out a ruling, a public meeting was held and a resolution unanimously adopted that all incendiary newspapers held at Charleston should be burned and that the mails in the State should be searched and every attempt be made to suppress inflammatory newspapers, and suggested the propriety of passing a law that would prohibit under severe penalties the circulation in Southern States of news- papers which tended to instigate the slaves to insurrection.
President Jackson, in his Inaugural Message, advocated the right of Federal supervision of newspapers. This recommenda- tion by President Jackson was referred by the Senate to a com- mittee of which the chairman was John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina. Speaking for the committee, Calhoun reported on Feb- ruary 14, 1826, that it was not up to Congress to decide when newspapers were incendiary, for they might also decide they were not, and thus laden the mails of the South with papers advocating abolition. He insisted that it belonged to the Southern States and not to Congress to determine what news- papers should circulate in that section. He also proposed that it should not be lawful for any postmaster in any State or Territory of the United States knowingly to deliver to any person any newspaper touching the subject of slavery. Cal- houn 's recommendations were put in a bill which was ordered to a third reading in the Senate by a vote of 18 to 16, but it failed to pass.
STATISTICAL
The Postal Department requested The Globe to publish the fol- lowing information doubtless to be paid for at regular rates
about the newspapers and periodicals published in the United States, July 1, 1839:
Maine .............................................. 41
New Hampshire ..... ................................. 26
Vermont ............................................ 31
Massachusetts (at Boston, 65) ......................... 124
Rhode Island ........................................ 14
Connecticut .......................................... 31
New York (at New York City, 71) ..................... 274
New Jersey ................................ ​.......... 39
Maryland (at Baltimore, 20) 48
Pennyslvania (at Philadelphia, 71) 253
Delaware 3
District of Columbia (at Washington, 11) 16
Virginia (at Richmond, 10) 52
North Carolina 30
South Carolina 20
Georgia 33
Florida Territory 9
Alabama 34
Mississippi 36
Louisiana (at New Orleans, 10) 26
Arkansas 4
Tennessee 50
Kentucky 31
Ohio (at Cincinnati, 27) 164
Michigan 31
Wisconsin Territory 5
Iowa Territory 3
Indiana 69
Illinois 33
Missouri 25
1555
The account then went on to say that of the above publica- tions, 116 were daily newspapers, 14 tri-weeklies, 30 semi- weeklies, and 991 weeklies. The rest were semi-monthlies, monthlies, and quarterlies principally magazines and reviews. Mention was also made of the fact that many of the daily papers were also publishers of the tri-weeklies, semi-weeklies, and weeklies. Of the newspapers, 38 were in the German language, 4 in French, and 1 in Spanish. Attention was also called to the fact that several of the New Orleans papers were printed in French and English.
The statistics of the newspaper press made an interesting feature in the returns of the Seventh Census. From that it appeared that the whole number of newspapers and periodicals in the United States, on the first day of June, 1850, amounted to 2800. From calculations made on the statistics returned, it appeared that the aggregate circulation of these 2800 papers and periodicals was about 5,000,000.
The following table, taken from an abstract of the Census Report, shows the numbers of daily, weekly, monthly, and other issues with the aggregate circulation of each class in ​1850:
Number
Circulation
No. of copies printed annually
350
750,000
235,000 000
Tri-weeklies
150
75,000
11 700 000
Semi- weeklies
125
80,000
8 320 000
Weeklies
2,000
2,875,000
149,500 000
Semi-monthlies
50
300,000
7 200000
Monthlies
100
900,000
10800000
Quarterlies
25
20,000
80000
2,800
5,000,000
422,600,000