The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1903-09-03
An Anniversary Perhaps OF Interest

An Anniversary Perhaps OF Interest.
THE SUN is threesccre and ten to-day
Seventy wears ago this morning. Yankee
lob printer from Springfield named BEN
JAMIN H. DAY pulled of, with his own
courageous right hand, several hundred
impressions of seventy -ten-inch news
paper, containing altogether about as
much reading matter as is held in two
columns and half Of the present issue
Of the same journal.
At that time the cornerstone OF the
Aston House had just been laid-ridicu-
lously far uptown, many people thought.
The Third avenue Improvement was
opening communication with Harlem.
One clerk in the New York Post ONCE
distributed "the great Southern mail,
and likewise the Northern mail and the
Eastern mail as fast as they came in. In
all of the United States there were $50
miles of railroad in operation. The Abo-
litionists of the city were then beginning
to be active. BEN DAYS paper was one
month old when the first riot occurred
in Chatham street, hard by the TaInmany
Hall of that time, the present Sun build
ing. We might accumulate facts to
show the difference between the New
York of Sept. 3, 1888, and that OF Sept 3,
1903, but the foregoing are sufficient to
mark the contrast.
Previously to his memorable physical
exertion at the primitive little handpress
he had established at 222 William street
Just north Of where the approach to the
Brooklyn Bridge overarches that thor
oughfare-BEN DAY had written. or scis-
sored, the entire literary contents of the
first number of The SUN. He had also
set all the type, with the assistance OF one
small boy. A little later in the morning,
the proprietor, editor, reporter, compost
tor and pressman Of THE Sun resolved
himself into a circulation department
and attended to the distribution of his
product to not very eager public.
The price was one penny. The morn
ing field was then occupied by seven
newspapers, which sold without excep-
ton for six cents copy. Their aggre-
gate editions amounted, perhaps, to
eighteen thousand papers day. The
only survivor of the seven is the journal
OF Commerce, our single senior among
the morning journals of New York.
DAYS main idea and purpose was to
advertise his job Office and recover some
of the prosperity he had lost in the hard
times of cholera year. He had no
ambition at the start to influence public
opinion The leading article on his first
editorial page deplored the melancholy
suicide OF young man from Boston.
Neither the name Of ANDREW JACKSON,
the President OF the United States, nor
that OF any other statesman Of contempt
rary prominence. appeared in his first
number. One of his most sensational
items of local news mentioned a burglary,
three days earlier, at SO and 80 Exchange
place, where some villain or villains
had succeeded in getting 500.
The advertisements were all bogus;
that is, DAY had copied them from other
newspapers, merely to impart business
like look to his own little sheet. They
ranged from a call for woman to do the
kitchen work at 443 Broadway to the
offer of Capt. CORNELIUS VANDERBILT
to take passengers through by day
light" to Hartford in thirteen hours on
his splendid low pressure steamboat the
Water Witch
Such was the beginning Of The Sun.
1t was not pretentious, and the name of
the Springfield printer holds no very IL
lustrious place in journalistic history. Yet
his modest enterprise marked very i'm
portant epoch in the development of the
American newspaper, and possibly there
are those living seventy years later who
may feel themselves under some little
obligation to him.
In recognition of the anniversary, and
without further comment or autobio-
graphic retrospect, we record these few
circum instances OF THE SUNS origin, leav-
ing it to our readers to do the rest in their
own friendly minds.