# History of American Journalism/Chapter 17

CHAPTER XVII
RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD
18651880
THE period after the War of the States was one of reconstruc- tion, not only in the world of politics, but also in that of journal- ism. Many changes had been wrought in the mechanical pro- duction of papers. Hoe, in order to get speed out of the press, had taken the type from a flat bed and put it on a revolving cylinder: Craske had stereotyped the page of type so that pages could be duplicated for as many presses as the plant possessed : Bullock had begun to feed paper to the press from a huge roll : Morse, to help gather the news, had stretched from Dan to Beersheba an electric wire which ran direct to the newspaper office. Other changes were soon to come. Mergenthaler told the compositor to stop distributing type into cases after the paper had been printed and to cast a line-of-type at a time, to be thrown back, when used, into the melting-pot; another inventor found a cheap method of manufacturing paper from wood pulp; still another, in order that the paper might have a late entry, put a "fudge" attachment upon the press so that even after the cylinders had started revolving, a bulletin of the latest item might be printed on the front page in a colored ink if desired. The Government agreed to carry papers by weight regardless of distance to all points of the United States for two cents a pound and free of charge to places in the county of publication, save where delivery was made to homes by mail-carriers, for which an extra fee was charged.
A city news association collected the local items in every field of industry. A press association, composed of newspapers scat- tered over the continent, sent in the happenings of national importance. An international bureau of the four great news- gathering organizations literally watched the four .corn ​ers of the
world. In addition, a special corps of reporters and correspond- ents at strategic points not only at home, but also abroad, sup- plemented, but did not supplant, the cooperative agencies. The one-man commentator on the news became an editorial staff of several members. Their daily conferences made the editorial "we" a truth and a reality. But they still left a column or two for the letters of "Pro Bono Publico" and " Veritas," and let the cartoon, in a wordless editorial, state the policy of the paper. Pegs were driven in the walls of the sanctum for the hats of the city editor, the sporting editor, the dramatic editor, the literary editor, the Sunday editor, the financial editor, etc.
But this is going too fast with the story. During the war the people demanded the latest news, and in their efforts to supply this demand the newspapers had put forth every energy, regard- less of the cost. After the war the press realized that the reading public which had been accustomed to startling events would be no longer willing to go back to the newspapers of slavery days, and it continued the custom of seeking the news which interested the people. The chief contribution of the War of the States to American journalism, save for the mechanical improvements in production already listed in the preceding paragraphs, was the willingness of newspapers to spend money for news-gathering.
REACTIONS OF THE WAR
The war reacted in another way on the American newspaper: it put the editorial in the background. During the stirring days of 1860-65, readers began to care less for editorial opinions and more for the news. They came to speak no longer of The Herald as Bennett's paper, of The Times as Raymond's paper, or of The Tribune as Greeley's paper. Amid the gigantic struggle for the preservation of the Union they lost much of their interest in personalities. The newspapers, however, especially in the North, continued to have their party affiliations and were seldom free from a biased point of view. In New York, for example, The World continued to print items to show that the South was still disloyal; The Tribune, on the other hand, took quite the opposite point of view from that of its neighbor; midway be- tween the two was The Times, which in its neutral position ​
devoted itself to a definite policy of reconstruction; to get all the news, readers were forced to take more than one paper. Toward the close of the period newspapers, in spite of party affiliations, had partially ceased bitter attacks which had for- merly been made because of the demands of party rivalry. They had even begun to print items which reflected upon their party; they had banished the former policy of coloring reports lest the truth hurt their candidates: most important of all, they had learned the folly of printing slander against rivals. The evolu- tion ofindependent journalism has ever been slow, but it made a most appreciable advance during the Period of the Reconstruc- tion.
STANDARD SET BY BOWLES
Prominent among the leaders of this new journalism was Samuel Bowles, of The Springfield Republican. It was his aim to create a newspaper "that should stand firmly in the possession of powers of its own; that should be concerned with the passing and not with the past; that should perfectly reflect its age, and yet should be itself no mere reflection; that should control what it seemed only to transcribe and narrate; that should teach with- out assuming the manners of an instructor, and should com- mand the coming times with a voice that had still no sound but its echo of the present." The Republican had been started by his father, who, having learned his trade in Hartford, Connecticut, put a small hand-press and a little type on board a flatboat and went with his wife to Springfield, Massachusetts, where he issued the first number on September 8, 1824. About twenty years later, March 27, 1844, it had commenced daily publication and even before the war it had become one of the most influential papers of the provincial press.
PICRIC JOURNALISM
The political upheavals of the early Reconstruction Period, however, brought a temporary relapse of the bitter personal journalism. Its picric qualities, on the other hand, may have hastened the purification process. New York was no worse than other cities in this respect, but it attracted more attent ​ion be-
cause of the prominence of its editors. One of the worst offend- ers was Horace Greeley, of The Tribune. For his special benefit Raymond, of The Times, on one occasion April 15, 1868 published a "Lesson on Good Manners in Journalism" of which the following was a part :
The Tribune headed a leading editorial article a day or two ago, "Governor Seymour as a Liar," and proceeded to vindicate the epi- thet by showing that, in a political speech in Connecticut, Governor Seymour had largely overstated the annual expenses of the govern- ment. The World came to the Governor's defense, and tried to show that the statements he had made were substantially correct; where- upon The Tribune replies statistically, and then adds that the editor of The World is a liar as well as the Governor. And in yesterday's issue The Tribune undertakes to vindicate not only the truth of its statement, but the gentlemanly character and perfect propriety of its language, "taking issue," as it says, with the code that assumes that it is "rude and ungentlemanly" to call a man a liar, and insisting that "it is only the liar who proves himself to be no gentleman."
We do not propose to discuss the morality of lying, or the manners of men guilty of it. But as the editor of The Tribune is to preside at the dinner to be given to Mr. Dickens on behalf of the Press of the United States, and thus becomes in a certain sense a representative of Ameri- can newspapers, we deem it worth while to dissent from his theory of journalistic manners. We do not think it either "gentlemanly" or proper for a newspaper to call Governor Seymour or any other man a "liar," because we do not think the use of such epithets proper any where. Mr. Greeley would not use them in conversation. He would not use them in personal intercourse, nor would he invite a man who did use them to social relations with himself or his family.
In a reply Greeley said in The Tribune:
The New York Times favored us with a column lecture on manners and professional courtesies apropos of The Tribune and Governor Seymour, wherein it compared the matter at issue between us to the diversity of taste between two gentlemen, one of whom should prefer to eat his beef with mustard, the other without. We received the rebuke with due meekness, and only ventured, at its close, to propound the ques- tion, "Is it true or is it false that our government is now spending $300,000,000 per annum, apart from payments on account of the national debt, and that $150,000,000 of this is the cost of holding the South in subjugation by means of a great standing army?" Hereupon The Times favors us with another column of moralities and courtesies, but never a word of answer to our questions. It appears to have no ​
choice between beef with mustard and beef without. . . . We would have The Times use such terms as most forcibly express its ideas. We es- pecially beg it not to be "mealy-mouthed" in speaking of The Tribune.
On another occasion Greeley, through the columns of The Tribune, said to William Cullen Bryant, of The New York Even- ing Post, "You lie, you villain, you sinfully, wickedly, basely lie." This time Punchinello, the leading cartoon weekly of the period, rebuked on May 28, 1870, not only Greeley, but also other editors by a cartoon entitled, " Editorial Washing-Day in New York." It showed the editors at their editorial tubs with Greeley's celebrated "U-Lye-Soap," " guaranteed to remove all stains, impurities, etc.," on the wash-boards. In connection with its cartoon Punchinello also published this letter-press :
Observe Punchinello's Cartoon, in which you shall behold the edi- torial laundresses of New York City having a washy time of it all around. There is a shriek of objurgation in the air, and a flutter of soiled linen on the breeze. Granny Marble, of The World, to the extreme left of the picture, clenches her fists over the pungent suds, and looks fight at Granny Jones of The Times. The beaming phiz of Granny Greeley of The Tribune looms up between the two, like the sun in a fog. But the real Sun in a fog is to be seen to the extreme right. There you behold Granny Dana of The Sun, shaking her brawny bunch of fives in the face of Granny Young of The Standard, whose manner of wringing out the linen, you will observe, is up to the highest Standard of that branch of art. Further away, Granny Tilton of The Independent flutters her linen with spiteful flourish, nettled by the vituperation of Granny Hastings of The Commercial Advertiser who hangs up her Commercial clothes on the line. The tableau is an instructive one; and it is to be hoped that all the U-Lye soaps used by the washerwomen is used up by this time, and that they will replace it with some having a sweeter perfume.
In this remark Punchinello was speaking one word for the paper and two for the people, who had grown tired of the bitter personal quarrels of editors who were continually hurling the lie with or without adjectives at each other.
PICKIC JOURNALISM IN THE WEST
Picric journalism, however, died slowly. In the West it sur- vived after it had become a thing of the past in th ​e East. In
October, 1871, it was vigorously defended at the Annual Con- vention of the Kansas Editors' and Publishers' Association by Captain Henry King, who later achieved such distinction while editor of The St. Louis Globe-Democrat. Captain King believed in personalities and thought the journalist was never so power- ful as when he was personal. By way of proof he cited the case of Nathan, who first preached general principles, in the form of a parable, to David, but who was unable to move the guilty monarch until he pointed a finger of scorn and asserted, "Thou Art The Man." The most influential editors, according to Cap- tain King, had been exceedingly and often offensively personal in their criticism and to take it out of journalism would mean descent into bankruptcy. "Banish the words blackguard, liar, and villain from our newspapers and even the ' good and useful ' Greeley would quit the business in disgust," was the way he put it. Personal journalism to Captain King meant the application of such words only to scoundrels and rascals who could be effectively denounced in no other way. In its modified form personal journalism survived in the West until a much later period.
Evidently certain members of the first Kansas Legislature did not hold the views advocated by Captain King, for one member, a Mr. McMeekin, moved that if any reporter of a Kansas news- paper vilified any member of the Legislature, the member so vilified should be authorized and expected to thrash the repre- sentative of the press who made the attack. Captain King, however, thought that by such a scheme aggrieved parties could obtain satisfaction more surely and promptly than by libel suits and that offending editors could escape the expense and annoy- ance of court attendance. The resolution proposed by Mr. McMeekin, however, did not pass the Legislature, owing to the opposition of the Kansas press.
PRESS ON WHEELS
No history of American journalism would be complete without some mention of The Frontier Index which, true to its name, was published on the frontier and was literally a press on wheels. Though published at twenty-five different places along ​the line
of the Western advance, it was founded at Old Kearny City, Nebraska Territory, in May, 1866, by F. K. and L. R. Freeman, two brothers who had come West from Culpeper County, Vir- ginia. It was printed on an old-time hand-roller press which had been abandoned by General Joseph E. Johnston, who prior to 1861 had been in command of the United States troops in the Far Western territories.
The Frontier Index in the fall of 1866 was taken by three ox teams driven by Mexican greasers to a temporary terminus of the Union Pacific Construction Company at North Platte. As soon as the site was laid out for this mushroom terminal station, some four thousand adventurers flocked there to live in tents and portable houses, and The Index did a "land office" business in printing small circulars for which it charged twenty dollars for one hundred words. The next move was to Julesberg in January, 1867. In forty-eight hours North Platte was depop- ulated after the inhabitants moved to the new terminus which The Index was the first enterprise to reach. Another place of publication was Laramie City, one hundred and five miles west of Cheyenne. While published at this place The Index received a large subscription list and an extensive advertising contract from Brigham Young, of Salt Lake City. To continue the trail followed by The Frontier Index would be to publish a list of the temporary terminals of the Pacific railroad. On one or two oc- casions when The Frontier Index was being moved its wagon train was held up by Indians, who took no pains to conceal their disgust when they found that the ox carts contained nothing except the printing outfit. The trail ended for The Frontier Index at North Yakima, Washington.
MISFORTUNES OF GREELEY
The acceptance by Horace Greeley of the presidential nomin- ation in 1872 to run against Grant, the regular candidate of the Republican Party, was most unfortunate. He resigned the editor- ship of The Tribune and was never again in supreme control. He was caricatured with all the picric qualities of the period. The opposition press was filled with burlesques of "The Liberal Candidate," in which his familiar white hat and linen duster ​
were prominently portrayed. The people refused to take his nomination seriously, for since the foundation of The Tribune he had opposed the party whose standard-bearer he became. Because of the caricatures spread over the country Greeley was forced to take the stump, "not to advocate political claims, but to show that he retained some semblance of the human form." The illness of his wife later demanded his constant presence at her bedside, day and night, until her death just seven days before his crushing defeat at the ballot box. On November 7, 1872, Greeley published a note under his own signature "that the undersigned resumed the editorship of The Tribune which he relinquished on embarking on another business six months ago." That Greeley assumed the editorship only in name was shown by the insertion of another editorial not from Greeley's pen entitled "Crumbs of Comfort." In the second editorial men- tion was made that "every red-nosed politician who had cheated the caucus and fought at the polls looked to the editor of The Tribune to secure an appointment as a gauger, or as an army chaplain, or as Minister to France"; and that in frequent in- stances the editor of The Tribune was telegraphed in frantic haste to come to the Capitol to "save this bill, to crush that one, to promote one project and to stop another." A crumb of comfort was that office-seekers would now keep aloof from the defeated candidate who had not influence enough to get any one ap- pointed as "a deputy sub-assistant temporary clerk in the paste- pot section of the folding-room at Washington."
Greeley's amazement at reading the second editorial must have been greater than that of any of the subscribers. In vain did he try to secure the insertion of the following note of correc- tion :
By some unaccountable fatality, an article entitled "Crumbs of Comfort" crept into our last, unseen by the editor, which does him the grossest wrong. It is true that office seekers used to pester him for recommendations when his friends controlled the custom house, though the "red nosed" variety was seldom found among them; it is not true that he ever obeyed a summons to Washington in order that he might there promote or oppose this or that private scheme. In short, the article is a monstrous fable, based on some other experience than that of any editor of this ​journal.
In justice to those in control of The Tribune at the time, it must be confessed that the newspaper was in an extremely em- barrassing position because of its relations to the two political parties: founded to support one, it had for some months past been ardently supporting the other. But for its great vitality and this public announcement of its position, it doubtless would have succumbed with its founder, who, after his mind had given way, died on November 29, 1872.
Of all. the newspaper critics of Grant's Administration, the most bitter was unquestionably The New York Sun, which was under the editorship of Charles Anderson Dana. Forced from the position as managing editor of The Tribune by Greeley, Dana had gone to Washington in November, 1862, as Second Assistant Secretary of War. Resigning this position on July 1, 1865, he returned to journalism as editor of The Daily Republican, which had just been started in Chicago, and which undoubtedly would have been successful had it not been so severely handicapped for lack of funds and by political dissention among its owners. After a vain struggle of about a year, Dana became so discouraged that he resolved to leave and go to New York, expecting either to buy or to start a newspaper. His previous connection with The New York Tribune had brought him in contact with several men of wealth, so that he had little difficulty in raising the necessary capital to commence a new paper when he was offered The Sun for $175,000. He accepted the offer and on January 25, 1868, announced his policies as follows :
The Sun will continue to be an independent newspaper, wearing the livery of no party and discussing public questions and the acts of public men on their merits alone. It will be guided, as it has been hitherto, by uncompromising loyalty to the Union, and will resist every attempt to weaken the bonds that unite the American people into one nation.
Of the acts of public men those of Grant received the most attention. Henry Watterson summed up the situation in the following editorial, headed, "One Who Hates The Sunlight": ​
There is only one man that objects to The Sun violently, and that is Grant. He sees nothing but spots on it. The very sound of the word is so hateful to him that he loathes the whole solar system.
In the platform of The Sun for 1872 Dana advocated numerous reforms. Among them were that both Grantism and Tweedism be abolished by laws for the summary punishment of present- taking and bribe-taking as well as of public robbery; that polit- ical rights be restored to all persons concerned in the late rebel- lion; that the civil service be so reformed that appointments to office no longer depend on party patronage; and that the Presi- dent cannot appoint his own relatives or those of his wife to office. When, however, The Sun linked together the names of Grant and John Barleycorn the reading public of New York resented this Sunstroke. It cancelled its subscription, but The Sun shone on. The Sun was but a typical representative of a portion of the press which was most bitter in attacking this weakness of Grant. David Dudley Field said in a magazine article in 1876 that the following item was a fair sample in the press opposed to the Administration:
"Periodical Neuralgia" is what they call it in Washington now. Grant has it, and has not been able to see visitors for several days. Parson Newman prayed for him on yesterday, and the parson's inti- mate relations with Divine Providence, backed by continued liberal doses of hydrate of chloral, justify the hope that the patient will get his nerves steadied in a day or two.
"THE BITER BIT"
Other newspapers were just as bitter toward Grant, and The Sun has been selected for illustration simply because of its greater prominence. The assertion has been frequently made that the hostility of The Sun to the Grant Administration was due to the fact that its editor had not been appointed to the Collectorship of the Port of New York. Those who knew Dana best denied most emphatically the truth of such an assertion, and pointed out that the editor of The Sun never criticized the military tactics of Grant, but only those acts of his Administra- tion which demanded condemnation. The enemies of Dana, how- ever, inspired the publication of a pamphlet entitled " The Biter ​
Bit," which was supposed to be "a narrative of some of the blackmailing operations of Charles A. Dana's Sun." "The Biter Bit," however, did not shake the confidence of the friends or acquaintances of Dana in his integrity as a journalist, nor did it affect Dana's own confidence in Amos Cummings or Isaac Ingland or any of the other subordinates who came over to The Sun from The Tribune and were incidentally assailed in this scurrilous pamphlet.
TOMBSTONE CARTOON PUBLISHED
The most biting rays which The Sun shed on Grant appeared on November 30, 1876, when The Sun published in its columns a picture of a tombstone with the following inscription:
Sacred
To the Memory of American Liberty
Born July 4, 1776
Died
At Columbia, S.C.< By Order of Ulysses I
November 28, 1876 Age 100 yrs., 4 mo., 24 days
DANA'S ATTACK ON HAYES
After the great political conflict of 1876, which declared that Hayes had been elected, The Sun turned its rays from Grant to the new President. On Saturday, March 3, 1877, when Hayes was about to take office, The Sun came out with inverted column rules, thus giving the paper the appearance of mourning. Upon his -first visit after the election to New York, The Sun found a spot on May 14, 1877, for his picture with the word "Fraud" printed across his forehead. Under the picture it published this quotation from Charles Francis Adams: "A person who must forever carry upon his brow the stamp of fraud first triumphant in American history. No subsequent action can wash away the letters of that record." It again reprinted the picture on May 15, when Hayes was still hi the ​city.
Nothing under the sun could make Dana move his paper from the orbit he had once outlined and he was most fertile in thinking up something new for his paper. It was, however, his mode of treatment rather than his news that made The Sun so distinctly a newspaper-man's paper. After assuming the .editorship of The Sun, Dana outlined in his first issue how the news would be treated in the future: "It will study condensation, clearness, point, and will endeavor to present its daily photograph of the world's doings in the most luminous and lively manner." This determination to tell the news "in the most luminous and lively manner" gave such a peculiar style to items in The Sun that it became possible to distinguish a story handled in Dana's way, whether it appeared in his own newspaper or in The Tombstone Epitaph. Dana applied the same mode of treatment to his edi- torials. In 1880 he referred to General Hancock, then a presi- dential candidate, as "a good man, weighing two hundred and forty pounds." It was Dana, and the men whom he trained, who gave the editorial essays of The Sun that distinctly literary charm which did much to soothe the anger aroused by the vituperative political squibs in neighboring columns. For the struggling poet of merit Dana always found a place in The Sun. No finer tribute was ever paid Dana in this connection than the one which came from the pen of Eugene Field.
FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR
During the Franco-Prussian War, The New York Tribune spent unusually large sums in reporting that conflict. Practically no attention was paid to the cable tolls. Short as was this war, The Tribune paid for its telegraphic news $83,303.51; its addi- tional bill for this correspondence also paid in gold was $42,263.46. Such lavish expenditure was then unknown in jour- nalism, in spite of the expense to which papers had been put for correspondence during the War of the States. The Tribune rapidly achieved such a reputation for being first in war news that it disputed this field with The Herald. For the sake of comparison Whitelaw Reid furnished the following figures ​
for The Times and The Tribune during the year 1863 of the Civil War:
Expense
Tribune
Times
Editors and correspondence not war
$49,228 25,706 49,547 12,623 9,000
$45,660 14,040 45,741 7,817 4,730
\Var Correspondence
Compositors
Special telegraphing
Supplements, Tribune, 21, Times, 11
At just about the time that The Tribune would have reaped the benefits of its Franco-Prussian enterprise, it was over- shadowed by the activities of The New York Times in exposing the famous Tweed Ring.
EXPOSURE OF TWEED RING
After the death of Raymond, Lewis J. Jennings became the editor of The New York Times. How Boss Tweed and his Ring had secured control of New York at a loss to the city of mil- lions of dollars is a story, too long to be told in this book. Attacks on their graft appeared in The Times long before that paper had absolute proof of the facts, though of the frauds of the Ring there could be no question. On July 28, 1871, The Times came out with a special supplement in which it exposed the gigantic frauds of the Ring, and published the astounding bills of furniture dealers, carpenters, plasterers, and plumbers in other words, $9,789,482.16 had been signed away without ques- tion for repairs and furniture for the new Court-House, etc. This issue of The Times sold by hundreds of thousands. Even the Mayor of New York was forced to admit that the bills were perhaps exorbitant. But Tweed only asked the cynical question "What are you going to do about it?" The accounts of the swindle in The Times, aided by the cartoons of Nast in Harper's Weekly, so aroused the people that they overthrew the Tweed Ring and sent many of its members to jail. All of this is, of course, an old story, but it permitted The Times to say with Othello, to quote a quotation of the present editor of that paper, "I have done the State ​some service."
During the days when Tweed controlled New York, it is as- serted that eighty-nine newspapers were on his pay-roll and that after the exposure of the Ring by The New York Times, twenty-seven of these papers, which had depended upon city plunder for existence, were compelled to suspend. The records showed that messages of the Mayor which the reading public accepted as news were really paid advertisements charged to the city at the rate of one dollar a line. During the Tweed regime some of the smaller evening papers received an annual subsidy of one thousand dollars a month. Unsettled newspaper claims from various papers totaled over two millions. A remarkable thing connected with the Tweed control was the fact that two hundred dollars a year was voted by the Aldermen to reporters for omitting to report the activities of the Aldermen.
The attitude of Tweed toward the New York press Punchi- nello portrayed in a cartoon of contentment: it showed Tweed smoking his Tammany peace pipe while on the bowl sat a re- porter to represent the newspapers of the city. To the latter Tweed said, according to the cartoon: "Say, young man, ain't you afraid you'll burn your breeches?" This remark was but a repetition of a better-known Tweed twitter, "Well, what are you going to do about it? " What the people did about it was to tan thoroughly the hide of the Tammany Tiger.
SIMILAR EXPOSURE OF WHISKEY RING
Somewhat similar to the exposure of the Tweed Ring by The New York Times was the exposure of the Whiskey Ring by The St. Louis Democrat. This Ring was organized in St. Louis to defraud the Government of the revenue tax from the distillers. A large fund was raised to bribe the Government officials and "to put the soft pedal" on St. Louis papers.
The exposure of this Ring was due to the activity of George Fishback, editor of The St. Louis Democrat, who secured the appointment of Myron Colony, the financial editor of The Democrat, as a special agent to expose the frauds. Colony was supposedly gathering commercial statistics for The Democrat, ​
and obtained bills of lading of all shipments out of St. Louis. He paid no attention to any save those of distilled liquors. The dis- crepancies between these bills of lading and the records furnished the internal revenue office gave him the material for his great exposure. After The St. Louis Democrat had once started the work, it was materially aided by many newspapers in other cities. Yet so powerful was the Ring that a congressional amendment in the matter of libel, called by the newspapers the "Press Gag Law," was passed. Just as the Sedition Law, men- tioned in an earlier chapter, aided in the defeat of the Federal Party, so the Press Gag Law undoubtedly had much to do with the Democratic victories which followed in 1874 in many of the States. Several men whom Grant had appointed to public office were involved in these whiskey scandals.
REVIVAL OF RELIGIOUS JOURNALISM
At the time of the relapse into bitter personal journalism, there was in the East a revival of religious journalism. Among the few daily newspapers with religious leanings started during this time was The Boston Daily News which began publication "every forenoon and afternoon" on July 19, 1869. Its editor, E. P. Marvin, asked his subscribers, on October 11, 1869, to wait a day for the marriage of The Boston Daily News with The Boston Daily Tribune, as the object of the union was to "increase the strength and permanency of the advocacy of the great moral questions of the day of which temperance is prominent."
With the issue of December 24, 1869, the Reverend E. D. Winslow, who had had practical experience with church week- lies, became associated with The Daily News. In 1870 The Boston Daily News boasted of being "a moral, religious daily." It called attention to the fact that it gave "all the news for a penny a day." In May, 1875, the Reverend Winslow bought The Boston Post, but in completing the transaction he made the "trifling" mistake of committing forgery, which was not dis- covered, however, until several months later. When the facts of the case were made public, Winslow fled to Holland and The News continued publication for a short time, but on February 11, 1876, it announced its last edition with that issue because the ​
affairs of the newspaper were so involved with those of Mr. Wins- low that legal obstacles made the suspension necessary. The stigma which was attached to The Boston Daily News did much to dampen the religious ardor of those who had planned to establish daily religious newspapers in other cities, for The Boston Daily News had not practiced what it preached.
A decade after the attempt in New York City to found The World as a daily religious newspaper, The New York Daily Wit- ness, "a Christian, one-cent, afternoon newspaper," appeared. It started on July 1, 1871, and aimed not only to be religious in character, but also "to give the news of the day and much excel- lent family reading besides." It inserted no advertisements of "liquors, theaters, lotteries, or anything inconsistent with its character." It failed to receive the financial support it ex- pected and was fittingly interred in the newspaper graveyard alongside of its more secular companions. No attempt to found a daily religious newspaper was successful until Mary Baker Eddy started The Christian Science Monitor in Boston on Wednesday, November 25, 1908.
RECONSTRUCTION OF SOUTHERN PRESS During the Reconstruction Period, The Charleston Mercury was revived in 1867 under Colonel R. Barnwell Rhett, Jr. At about this time South Carolina was holding its Reconstruction Convention which was spoken of in Charleston as "the ring- streaked and striped convention." A secret editorial conference of The Mercury was held, and in spite of some objection it was decided "to make any attempt to establish a mongrel govern- ment in South Carolina a stench in the nostrils of the public and to make the odium of it too great for white men to bear." The Mercury then proceeded to publish the careers of all the "carpet- baggers and scallywags" then running for office. The articles were illustrated with numerous cartoons showing the carpet- baggers and the negro delegates to the Reconstruction Conven- tion in the most ridiculous juxtapositions. So well did The Mercury carry out its purpose that to this day the stigma of "Republicanism and Mongrelism" remain odious in South ​Carolina.
But The Charleston Mercury, which before the war had been the chief organ of the secession press of South Carolina, sus- pended publication in November, 1868. Its suspension was the more remarkable because The Mercury as late as August, 1868, had the largest circulation of any newspaper in the State. The reason given by its editor, R. B. Rhett, Jr., was that he desired to "take his place among the ruined children of the South bet- ter so than to be the proudest and most honored of her success- ful enemies and to wait, hoping, praying, expecting the bright coming of a final deliverance, the independence and prosperity of the South."
CAEPET-BAGGERS AND THEIR ORGANS
To offset the political influence of the older Democratic sheets, numerous papers were started in the South as Republican organs to promote political schemes of Northern carpet-baggers. Again, South Carolina may be taken by way of illustration. Most of its new papers were published in the interest of what the old Southern press called "Thad Stevens's Ring-streaked Rule and Negro Misrule." The South Carolina Ledger, edited by Allen Coffin at Charleston, had as its motto, "Free Labor and General Reforms." The local press revised this motto to read, "Free Lunch and General Graft." Lieutenant-Governor A. J. Ransier, of South Carolina, had his special organ to which he gave the rather sanctimonious name of The Missionary Record, but which the regular established press of Charleston looked upon as an incendiary newspaper, as it appealed to the passions of the negro. The South Carolina Republican was an- other carpet-bag newspaper printed in the interest of Northern political control. The Columbia Union was also a radical paper edited by a carpet-bagger afterwards convicted of forgery.
The various methods resorted to by Congress to reconstruct the South brought about many unfortunate evils which were continually placed before the people by the press. Naturally, the Force Bill of 1870-71, by which the Federal judges tried those indicted for depriving a man of his privileges under the Constitution, were criticized by the press of the South, especially where Federal arms were used to enforce the law. ​
Such acts of the Northern carpet-baggers frequently drew forth the ire of Southern editors. Particularly was this true in New Orleans, where The Bulletin in 1874 attacked so bitterly the Reconstruction Government in a series of articles that a pitched battle finally resulted on Canal Street with a comparatively heavy loss of life. The Bulletin, in apologizing to its subscribers for its meager report of the battle, offered by way of explana- tion the excuse that the whole staff of the paper was in the fight and consequently could do no reporting. At Columbia, South Carolina, John T. Sloan was expelled by the House on January 15, 1869, for denouncing in his correspondence to The Charleston Courier the attempt to turn out the white professors and to substitute negroes at the State University.
In Memphis, Tennessee, The Appeal had two or three fights with the Reconstructionists before it accepted the results of the war and began its great work of rebuilding Tennessee in general and Memphis in particular.
The Southern press was practically unanimous in its support of the movement to disfranchise the negro. But almost without exception it insisted that nothing should be done that would in any way violate the Constitution of the United States. Some of the newspapers were very frank in acknowledging that the new constitutional conventions were designed to overthrow negro control, provided nothing be done to conflict with the laws of the United States. In this movement to avoid negro suffrage the South was seldom condemned by the press of the North. Even Republican organs, in confessing that such suffrage as had been tried was a failure, admitted that the movement to get rid of ignorance and superstition at the ballot-box was par- donable.
ORGANS OF KU-KLUX KLAN
One of the methods employed to keep colored voters from the polls of the South was the organization in Tennessee of a secret society called the Ku-Klux Klan. It was really a revival of the night patrol of slavery days when a negro was not allowed to be away from home without a pass from his owner. The chief purpose of this organization seemed to be to prey upon ​the super-
stitions of the negro. Some method of restraining the negro was undoubtedly necessary, but no excuse existed for the severities which the Ku-Klux Klan later adopted in other States. In fact, its extreme violence was deprecated even in the South. The or- ganization had its special organs which wielded at one time much influence. Of these, The Independent Monitor at Tuska- loosa, Alabama, was a typical illustration.
NEW PAPERS AND OTHERS
During the period of the Reconstruction, many of the papers of the South, which had suspended on account of the war, were revived. In addition, many other papers were born both in the North and South. Lack of space no editorial fib permits only the briefest mention of some of the more important. In Nashville The Republican Banner resumed publication on Sep- tember 27, 1865, and was followed by The Union and American on December 5, 1865. The following year the latter absorbed The Dispatch, a paper born during the war, and in the beginning used the type of the old Republican Banner. Subscribers to each of these revived papers received from carriers on September 1, 1875, a united sheet called The American a most appropriate title for the new era dawning in the South. Under this title it continued publication until September 26, 1910, when it absorbed The Nashville Tennessean. The Courier of Louisville, Kentucky, which had died at Nashville in the winter of 1861-62, was revived at its old home by its founder and owner, Walter N. Haldeman. In Charleston, South Carolina, several papers ap- peared to divide the field with The Courier. Among these were The Charleston Daily News, started on August 14, 1865; The Jour- nal of Commerce, edited by Colonel R. B. Rhett, Jr., formerly the editor of The Charleston Mercury and later editor of The New Orleans Picayune; The Sun; The World; The Budget; The Evening Post; The Charleston Review, etc. In New Orleans, The Times, which had started on September 20, 1863, united on December 4, 1881, with The Democrat which had started on December 18, 1875. The first of these two papers had been the leading force in the settlement of the political differences of the period and in reporting the revival of the progress in Louisiana. ​
It was The Times which bitterly denounced the Republican Re- turning Board which gave the election to Hayes. The Daily States, established January 3, 1880, used as its motive power to turn its press an "old and blind but willing and muscular darky." In Boston The Journal, founded February 5, 1833, grew so prosperous from the start given it during the Civil War by the correspondence of Charles Charleton Coffin that The Globe was established in that city on March 4, 1872, with an evening edition on March 7, 1878. At Chicago The Republican appeared on May 30, 1865; The Evening Post on September 4, 1865; The Evening Mail, on October 18, 1870; The Interocean on March 25, 1872; The Daily News, on December 26, 1875. In Philadel- phia The Record was launched on June 1, 1877, as a one-cent newspaper, the first after the Civil War; it was the outgrowth of The Public Record, a paper founded on May 10, 1870, which had no influence and was a losing venture until William M. Singerly bought its Associated Press franchise for his new paper, that was most successful from the beginning. The Evening Bulletin, which had been founded in 1847 by Alexander Cum- mings under the title Cummings's Evening Telegraphic Bulletin, was in 1865 sold at auction for eighty-nine thousand dollars and passed through various hands until it finally, after its circulation had dwindled to less than five thousand, became the property of William L. McLean. The Press, founded in August, 1857, by John W. Forney and one of the most influential newspapers during the Civil War Period, passed into the control of Calvin Wells in 1879. The Pennsylvania Inquirer changed its name to The Philadelphia Inquirer and became one of the most influen- tial Republican newspapers of the State. The first number of The News appeared in Indianapolis on December 7, 1869; a few subsequent issues were called The Evening News, but after a few months it became The Indianapolis News, under which title it is still published. In Washington, D. C., The Evening Star, which had been founded December 16, 1852, became after the war a newspaper whose growth has been contemporaneous with the development of Washington. After the war, John W. Forney devoted most of his time to The Press of Philadelphia and al- lowed his Washington organ, The Chronicle, to die. The latter's ​
place was, to a certain extent, taken by The Post, which Stilson Hutchins established in Washington, December 6, 1877.
In San Francisco The Examiner was started as a successor of The Democratic Press, whose office had been mobbed on the assassination of Lincoln by a crowd provoked to violence by its previous attacks on the martyred President. In October, 1880, The Examiner became a morning paper and shortly after passed into the control of George Hearst, who wanted to further his aspirations to the United States Senate. On taking a seat in that body on March 4, 1887, he turned the paper over to his son, William Randolph Hearst, who used it as a starter for the chain of Hearst newspapers. In 1869 The Daily Alia California, the successor of The Yerba Buena Star, and the first daily paper in the State, absorbed The Times and enjoyed a period of pros- perity until it was acquired by James G. Fair, who used the sheet to promote his personal interests and his political aspira- tions. In spite of the wealth of its owner, The Alia California gradually lost circulation and finally disappeared completely in 1891. The Bulletin, which had been started in San Francisco on October 8, 1855, six years after the famous gold rush, by James King, of William, who lost his life in May, 1855, for his attack upon James Casey, accused of stuffing ballot-boxes, had been a Democratic paper until 1861, but at the outbreak of the Civil War it changed to a Republican and did much to keep Califor- nia loyal to the Union cause. Unlike many other editors of the post-bellum period, its editor, Loring Pickering, never forced his personality upon his readers, but he gave his paper a state-wide reputation for incorruptible honesty. For a number of years he was also a part owner of The San Francisco Call, then a morning newspaper, and took an active interest in the editorial manage- ment. The San Francisco Post was started in 1871.
Two papers, started like theater programmes during this period, later became influential newspapers. The first of these was The Bee, a small two-page evening paper founded in Omaha on June 19, 1871, by Edward Rosewater. The second was The Dramatic Chronicle established in San Francisco on June 16, 1865, by Charles de Young. Its initial numbers had the appearance of play-bills and were distributed free in theaters and ​
other places. After each performance at San Francisco theaters copies of The Dramatic Chronicle were gathered from the floors and elsewhere, smoothed out by an old-fashioned kitchen iron, and then sent to points outside the city. In this way the paper became a very valuable advertising medium. Enterprising from the start, The Chronicle reached an important prestige during the Modoc War when it distanced all other San Francisco dailies in publishing the news. The distinctly dramatic character of the paper was abandoned on September 1, 1878, when it became a regular daily newspaper. Shortly after the paper was started, M. H. de Young joined his brother in the editorship and man- agement of The Dramatic Chronicle.
OTHER NEWSPAPER CHANGES
In Cleveland William W. Armstrong, a prominent newspaper- man, assumed charge of The Plaindealer which J. W. and A. N. Gray, two school-teachers, had founded in 1841 upon the re- mains of The Cleveland Advertiser, a Democratic daily started in 1832. In Columbus The Ohio State Journal, with which Wil- liam Dean Howells had been actively connected as a sub-editor, became one of the most important Republican organs of the State; the paper had been started in 1811 in the little village of Worthington as The Western Intelligencer by James Kil- bourne, but in 1814, in moving to Columbus, it added Gazette to its name and in 1825 it took into partnership State Printer Nashee, of Chillicothe, famous in Ohio journalism, who insisted that Ohio State Journal be put first in the title. In De- troit, The Evening News, started in August, 1873, by James E. Scripps and sold on the streets at two cents a copy, became a rival of The Free Press and The Detroit Tribune. In Milwaukee The Sentinel, established on June 27, 1837, and The Evening Wis- consin, established on June 8, 1847, became leaders of Wisconsin journalism. In St. Louis The Republic, which changed its name from The Republican because its editor, Charles H. Jones, found it impossible to convince his friends that he was running a Democratic and not a Republican newspaper, became, under the editorship of William Hyde, a paper with no straddling or wab- bling editorial policies. In Pittsburgh The Gazette acquired in ​
1877 the controlling interest in The Commercial, a paper estab- lished in 1864 by C. D. Bingham: this consolidation, called The Commercial Gazette, was edited by Russell Errett.
PULITZER IN ST. LOUIS
One newspaper change can be recorded in a sentence. Toward the close of the period, Joseph Pulitzer purchased The Post- Dispatch of St. Louis. "The penniless son of a Jewish father and a Catholic mother," Pulitzer left Hungary in 1864 to come to America. After various precarious attempts to earn his living, he became at twenty-one a reporter on The St. Louis Westliche- Post, then under the management of Carl Schurz. By strange coincidence he was the secretary of the Cincinnati Liberal Re- publican Convention which nominated Horace Greeley, of The New York Tribune, for President. After securing control of The Post-Dispatch, Pulitzer made the paper a power for good by at- tacking the corrupt interests which had again become intrenched following their exposure by The Democrat during Grant's Ad- ministration. It was in St. Louis that Pulitzer first tried out many of his theories about the editing and making of a news- paper which he later developed and perfected after he pur- chased The New York World from Jay Gould in May, 1883.
FIRST COOPERATIVE PAPERS
During the War Colonel A. H. Bellow was a soldier in the Con- federate Army, but after the surrender at Appomattox he went on horseback to Galveston, where he arrived in June, 1865. Be- coming associated with The News he made it one of the most suc- cessful papers in the State. In 1881, in reorganizing a company to publish The News, he drew its charter in such a way that it might publish papers not only in Galveston, but also in other cities in Texas and became the first successful publisher of co- operative newspapers. With the privilege granted by the new charter, he established in Dallas a second daily also called The News. He made no mistake in trying to make the latter paper a minor publication. For all practical purposes The News in Dallas was quite independent of its older relative in Galveston and had its own newspaper plant, its own staff of editors, and its ​
own corps of reporters. To Texas, therefore, belongs the honor of being the first in cooperative journalism in America.
PASSING OF PRENTICE
In Louisville, Kentucky, there came a most remarkable jour- nalism change brought about by the new conditions which had arisen in that city, where for more than thirty years George Denison Prentice had been not only the foremost journalist of Kentucky and the entire South, but also one of the greatest edi- tors of the middle nineteenth century. His journalistic career began in 1828 on The New England Review, as an associate of John Greenleaf Whittier, who, though a Quaker, was a most in- tense fighter for the freedom of the negro. Induced by Con- necticut Whigs at Hartford to prepare a campaign life of Henry Clay, Prentice went to Kentucky to gather data. At that time the Democrats were determined to defeat Clay in his own State and Prentice was persuaded to start a paper to attack the Jack- son Democracy. Accordingly The Louisville Journal appeared on November 24, 1830. From the start the paper had attracted national attention by its clever satirical epigrammatic para- graphs, which William Cullen Bryant of The New York Evening Post called "the stinging, hissing bolts of scorn. " Many of these satiric arrows from his editorial quiver were aimed at Andrew Jackson. When it was announced that General Jackson had be- come a member of the Presbyterian Church, subscribers of The Journal wondered what Prentice, who had been educated in a Presbyterian school, would say: following his bare announce- ment of Jackson's decision were two lines to which no Presby- terian could object, for they were taken from a hymn by Dr. Watts:
While the lamp holds out to burn The vilest sinner may return.
The mention of sinners recalls another flip from Prentice's pen, "A well-known writer says that a fine coat covers a multi- tude of sins, but it is still truer that such coats cover a multitude of sinners." Many of these squibs were later collected in a book entitled "Prenticeana, or Wit and Humour in Paragraphs."
Prentice was ever prepared to fight, not only with his ​pen, but
also with his pistol. So frequent were the attacks upon him that he was commonly caricatured by cartoonists with a pistol in one hand and a pen in the other. Possibly the nearest that he ever came to losing his life was when he was fired upon by George J. Trotter, editor of The Kentucky Gazette. At the beginning of the war, he espoused the cause of the Union and put into his column all the ardent enthusiasm of his nature in spite of the threats of his enemies and the enlistment of his two sons, whom he loved devotedly, hi the Southern Army. An old-time Whig, he could not become either an out-and-out Republican or an out-and-out Democrat. This indecision during the Re- construction Period proved a handicap to The Journal, which was not heeding the new voice of the South. Henry Watterson, however, in reviving an old suspended newspaper in Nashville, was attracting a great deal of attention with his editorials. It was to him that Prentice, in retiring, turned to find a successor for the editorial chair of The Journal. Later, Walter N. Halde- man, who had revived The Courier, made even a more attractive offer to Watterson. The offer was refused, and for a while the papers continued a separate publication, though always on friendly terms. On Sunday, November 8, 1868, however, sub- scribers were surprised to find on their doorsteps a united sheet, The Courier- Journal. At the start, Watterson had found him- self at a disadvantage following the steps of Prentice. Gradually he impressed upon his subscribers his own remarkable abilities as an editor. During the Hayes-Tilden fight, "Marse Henry," a sobriquet bestowed upon him by the press, announced that he was prepared to lead one hundred thousand Democrats to Wash- ington for no other purpose than to put Samuel J. Tilden in the White House. On the other hand, Watterson did much to dis- seminate broadcast a better feeling between the North and South.
EVENING PAPERS OF NEW YORK
Augustus Maverick, writing in 1870 about the New York press in general and The New York Times in particular, expressed sur- prise at the alarming growth of New York evening papers during recent years and asserted that it was a mystery which n ​o writer
on the subject of journalism could explain. Speaking specifically of some of these papers, he said :
The youngest of these sheets, The Republic, died suddenly at the end of 1869; yet nine survive. The prices at which these nine are sold range from one cent to five cents each. The oldest is The Commercial Ad- vertiser, which has been in existence since 1794. The next in age is The Evening Post, established in 1801. The third in order is The Express, first issued as a morning paper, but changed into an evening sheet several years ago. Then were born The Evening Mail, The News, The Commonwealth, The Telegram, The Democrat, and The Press and Globe. Some of these have gained a daily circulation of ten thousand copies; others, seven to eight thousand; others, a few hundreds only. No one of them can ever reach the circulation which is regarded as essential to the existence of a morning paper; for the latter is never accounted a success until it is delivered daily to at least twenty thousand readers; but the advertising patronage of the business houses in the city is fairly apportioned among all, in great part through the skilful manipu- lation of Advertising Agencies; and thus a respectable support is se- cured.
The evening paper had not yet come into its own as a daily bulletin board of the news, to which might be added illustrated and special features designed primarily to appeal to the women.
CHICAGO FIRE AND LOCAL PEESS
The great fire which occurred in Chicago in October, 1871, showed the ingenuity of the newspaper publishers of that city. Within forty-eight hours after the fire had been stopped, The Journal, The Republican, The Mail, The Times, The Tribune, and The Post were again reappearing. To be sure, they were printed on smaller sheets, but they gave the news of the city. Within two months, the Chicago papers were back again to their original size. To their help came the other newspapers of the country with offers of type, presses, etc. For example, The Tribune of New York offered to ship its entire auxiliary plant to its name- sake in Chicago. This offer was brought about by John Hay, who was reporting the conflagration for The New York Tribune no easy task, for pitted against him were three representatives of The New York Herald. The offer, however, was seed sown on good ground, for later, when Hay was acting as editor of The New York Tribune in the absence of Whitelaw Reid, ​a para.-
grapher of the editorial staff of The Chicago Tribune began a somewhat savage, though disguised as humorous, attack on New York papers, whereupon Hay reminded Medill, editor of The Chicago Tribune, of the services offered at the time of the fire and asked that the picric squibs be stopped. It was done.
ATTACK ON ASSOCIATED PRESS
How James W. Simonton, when Washington correspondent of The New York Times, had exposed the "land graft" has been recorded in another chapter. During Grant's Administration, Simonton was the general manager of the Associated Press and undoubtedly had much to do with the publicity given to the chicanery of many of the appointees of the Administration. Their exposure led to an attempt to depose Simonton as the "sole tele- graphic historian of the country." They drew up an indictment of the Associated Press in which they tried to cast reflections upon its manager. Their attack upon the organization, forming a basis of others which followed later, may be quoted as the atti- tude of its opponents not only in this period, but in the others which followed :
The Associated Press is engaged ostensibly in the collection, sale, and distribution of news dispatches for such of the newspaper press of the country as find favor in its sight. It has numerous agents in the towns and cities of the United States, employed to send dispatches to its headquarters at New York. It makes special and exclusive contracts with combinations of favorite newspapers, and within their charmed circles no other papers are admitted. Being favored by the Western Union Telegraph Company with terms and conditions as to cost and precedence of business much more favorable than any rival concern can secure, the Associated Press has become a power in the land, amounting to a censorship of the press; for as it virtually monopolizes the only tele- graphic system which extends generally throughout the United States, of course no papers can compete with the Associated Press "ring" newspapers in the completeness of news by telegraph. The manager of this overshadowing power has the appointment and removal of all its agents, and his good will being the tenure of their employment, it is in his power to give color and tone to all press dispatches.
Were the manager a man devoted to giving legitimate information concerning passing events, and above all temptation to spread false information, either for gain or to gratify personal feeling, still it would seem hard that he should have the power to dictate which of the papers ​
of the land should be forced upon people who must have the news even though they have to patronize papers not in accord with their sentiments. But if the manager should be an unscrupulous man, devoid of all regard for truth and justice, filled with prejudice and hatred grow- ing out of punishment inflicted upon him, and bent upon building up or tearing down the reputation of individuals by reckless misstatements scattered broadcast throughout the land, he would be able to play the tyrant and assassin, and would possess a power which ought to be un- known among a free people.
This resume* was followed by an attempt to show that Simon- ton, "at whose bidding the so-called news dispatches of the day are concocted, is a man of the class last described." Simonton, however, had simply published the facts as he found them in Washington. While Grant may be justly blamed for the selec- tion of the men he put in office, he was not, according to the records, directly implicated in the questionable deals put through at Washington.
The Associated Press during the Period of Reconstruction was not an incorporated body, being simply a combination of smaller associations loosely held together through a written agreement for the exchange of news. The New York City Association, as during the Civil War Period, was the clearing-house for the smaller branches. These branch associations were determined by a community of interest due, for the most part, to geographi- cal situation. The parent association at New York attended to the exchange with European agencies and stationed agents in the sparsely settled sections of the great plains West of the Mis- sissippi. The telegraph company during the period permitted its operators to act as agents and to forward news by wire: in fact, they were expected to add to the revenue of the company by such service. Distributing stations were also established at Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit, Memphis, Milwaukee, and St. Louis; from these cities abbreviated accounts technically known as "pony reports" were distributed along circuits to the dailies in the smaller cities. The exclusive features of the Associated Press led to the organization of a rival company, the American Press Association, which sold its news to any news- paper on payment of stated weekly charges. A distinct reorgani- zation of the Associated Press occurred in the next era. ​
GRANT'S POSTMASTERS
There was much complaint on the part of the Democratic press that Grant's postmasters showed partiality in distributing newspapers to the advantage of the Republican editors. The charge brought by The Syracuse Courier was typical of what was said to be a general condition in many sections. The postmaster at Baldwinsville, according to The Courier, "kept back Demo- cratic papers and to some of the subscribers he delivered the copies a week after arrival and to others he did not deliver the papers at all but when a package of loyal newspapers reached him, the alacrity with which he flew around and put them in boxes was beautiful to behold." Such a condition has obtained, however, during the administrations of presidents other than Grant especially in the rural sections.
NO THIRD TERM FOR GRANT
In 1874 the editorial pages of American newspapers bristled with items about the possibility of a third term for Grant. The commotion, which is said to have been started by The New York Herald, announced that Grant was willing to set aside the prece- dent established by Washington and to accept a third term. If The New York Herald really started the matter, it threw a fire- brand among the Democratic sheets, which with surprising alacrity proceeded to denounce Grantism and " Third Termism." The Republican press was not so prompt to consider the ques- tion, but was later forced to take sides. Urged by friendly news- papers, Grant finally made known his position in which he said, "I do not want it any more than I did the first," but he added that the Constitution did not expressly restrict a president to two terms and that conditions might be such as to make it an im- perative duty to accept. The reply so divided the Republican press that many warm supporters of Grant in previous cam- paigns came out boldly and asserted that any departure from the custom set by Washington would be unwise and fraught with great peril to the American Republic. This revolt, aided by the Democratic journals, undoubtedly defeated the third nomination for Grant. ​
During the Reconstruction Period all acts which had imposed a tax upon newspaper advertisements during the war were repealed. On July 1, 1862, an act was passed which provided that after August 1, 1862, all newspapers and other periodicals should pay a tax of three per cent on the gross receipts for all advertise- ments and for all other items for which pay was received. On June 30, 1864, another act provided that in cases where the rate on the price of advertising was fixed by law of the United States, of the State or Territory, it was lawful for the newspapers pub- lishing such advertisements to add the tax to the price of the advertisements, "any law to the contrary notwithstanding," be- cause of the burden that the tax imposed upon the smaller news- papers. The act of 1864 provided for the exemption of taxes on newspaper advertisements to the amount of six hundred dol- lars annually : it also provided that all newspapers whose average circulation did not exceed two thousand copies should be ex- empted from all taxes for advertisements. Because of continued opposition on the part of newspapers, these various acts relating to a tax on advertisements were repealed on March 2, 1867.
PAPER MADE FROM WOOD PULP
While paper made from the fiber of soft wood began to be fed to the printing-press as early as 1867, it did not come into exten- sive use until later, for at the start it cost too much money to manufacture in proportion to the cost of raw material. For the years covered in the period of Reconstruction the contract price of news print paper delivered in New York were as follows:
Year Cents Year Cents
1865 12.6 1873 11.2
1866 17.2 1874 8.6
1867 15. 1875 8.5
1868 14.6 1876 8.2
1869 12.5 1877 8.2
1870 12.3 1878 6.46
1871 12.1 1879 6.
1872 12. 1880 6.9
Whitelaw Reid, of The New York Tribune, in addressing the New York Editorial Association on June 17, 1879, said: ​
I look forward to the day when printing paper will sell far below its present price; and I rest this faith on the simple supposition that a manufactured article, the process of manufacture of which is easy and comparatively cheap, cannot long be continuing to be sold at six cents a pound, when the bulk of the raw material entering into it grows in the forests on every hillside and can be bought at two dollars a cord. The disproportion between the cost of the raw material and the cost of the manufactured article is too great to be permanently maintained. It is true enough that paper-makers have only the narrowest margin of profit now; but better processes for making wood pulp and unproved machinery for converting into paper must surely come.
It did come. During the decade between 1880 and 1890 the price of wood-pulp paper dropped from six cents to four cents. During the next decade it touched the remarkable low price of one and six tenths cents per pound for the larger cities, where it was purchased in rolls. From that time it gradually advanced fraction by fraction until the problem of white paper became most acute, during the great European War.
POSTAL REGULATIONS OF PERIOD
After years of unsuccessful agitation, the Postal Department finally secured from Congress an act, approved June 23, 1874, by which postage on newspapers was paid by weight and with- out reference to distance carried. The rate provided by this act was two cents per pound for papers issued weekly or of tener and three cents per pound for those published less frequently than once a week. Newspapers for subscribers living outside of the county of publication were made up in bulk, carted to the post- office, where they were weighed. The postage for the proper amount was given to the postmaster in stamps instead of being adjusted to the papers or packages sent through the mail. The newspaper stamps, now a rarity, ranged in denomination from two cents to sixty dollars. The new system of collecting postage at the office of publication, rather than at the offices of destina- tions, returned the Postal Department additional revenue, for postmasters had been most lax in collecting postage due. The act of June 23, 1874, provided this exception : " That newspapers, one copy to each actual subscriber residing within the county where the same are printed, in whole or in part, and published, shall go ​
free through the mails; but the same shall not be delivered at letter-carrier offices or distributed by carriers unless postage is paid thereon as by law provided." An act of March 3, 1879, fixed the uniform rate of two cents a pound for postage on second- class matter to which newspapers belonged. All publications now paid the same rate. The two-cent rate prevailed until March 3, 1885, when it was reduced to one cent a pound.
STATISTICAL R^SUMlS OF PAPERS
Statistics as to the number of newspapers in the United States until after the Census of 1880 were most unreliable, es- pecially as to the number of papers in the newly settled States and Territories. The reports of the census for 1850, 1860, 1870, and 1880 being, however, the most authoritative statements as to the increase in number of newspapers, should be quoted in a comparative table. According to this table, there were in the United States 254 dailies in 1850, 387 in 1860, 574 in 1870, 971 in 1880; 115 tri-weeklies in 1850, 86 in 1860, 107 in 1870, 73 in 1880; 31 semi-weeklies in 1850, 79 in 1860, 115 in 1870, 133 in 1880; 1902 weeklies in 1850, 3173 in 1860, 4295 in 1870, 8633 in 1880. Of all these classes, there were in 1850, 2526; in 1860, 4051; in 1870, 5871; in 1880, 11,314. The accompaning table, on pages 349, 350, shows the distribution of these classes for the various census years:
LOCATION OF DAILY PAPERS
S. N. B. North made for the Government in 1880 a special investigation of the newspaper and periodical press in America. In his report he published an interesting observation about the location of the daily papers. Nine hundred and seventy-one daily newspapers of the census year were published in three hundred and eighty-nine towns or cities an average of two and one-half to each place. The strange anomaly was discovered of towns, with less than four thousand in population, having two and sometimes three daily papers. The smallest town in 1880 which had a daily was Elko, Nevada, with a population of seven hun- dred and fifty-two. The smallest town in which two daily papers were published was Tombstone, Arizona, with a popula-
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tion of nine hundred and seventy-three. In California the town of Eureka, with a population of twenty-six hundred and thirty- nine, had three daily papers, and the town of Red Bluff, popula- tion of twenty-one hundred and six, two daily papers. Galena, Kansas, had one daily for a population of fourteen hundred and sixty-three; Greenville, Michigan, two dailies for a population of thirty-one hundred and forty-four; Olean, New York, one daily for a population of three thousand and thirty-six; Winne- mucca, Nevada, one daily for a population of seven hundred and sixty-three; and Milton, Pennsylvania, one daily for a popula- tion of twenty-one hundred and two.
END OF PERIOD
The period practically began with an impeachment of a Presi- dent of the United States and closed with a contest of one whose very election to the White House was most seriously questioned and had to be determined by an unconstitutional Electoral Com- mission distinctly partisan in bias. Under such conditions it was but natural that a somewhat inflammable press should mirror the times often at white-heat with political passion. From ma- terial of unrefined ore the editors fashioned their papers under a forced draft that left no time for the cooling process. Yet the centrifugal force threw out much of the slag and left the news- paper nearer the pattern given by Samuel Bowles, of The Spring- field Republican.