? . , : 
 
 ' .'' 
 
 mm, 
 
 s i ij | . c i ' .' -j t 
 
 I < IS < .-'.-.I-::* V^( 
 
 !. ' ,'-'. ^}'^ 
 


HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
WEED 
 JAMI;- GORDON MI N 
 EPES BARG1 
 
 HOI; MI. I;I;I;KLEY 
 
 3E in l.i. 
 \MI\ RUSSELL 
 
 C HA I { l.I-iS A. DANA 
 
 BACH \i;i\ll POULSOM 
 
 I'lin.ii' n;i-:\EAU 
 
HISTORY OF 
 AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES MELVIN LEE 
 
 Director of the Department of Journalism 
 New York University 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 J&re$* Cambri&0e 
 1917 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY JAMES MELVIN LEE 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published December rgr? 
 
 
 

 TO 
 
 MY FIRST JOURNALISM CLASS 
 
 NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL 
 
 OF COMMERCE, ACCOUNTS 
 
 AND FINANCE 
 
 371634 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE first printed account dealing in any way with American 
 journalism was undoubtedly a letter addressed to the president 
 of the Massachusetts Historical Society and published for that 
 society in 1798 as a part of its Proceedings. This letter, entitled 
 "A Narrative of the Newspapers Printed in New England," 
 was, though signed "A. Z.," written by the Rev. John Elliott, 
 D.D., Pastor of the North Church of Boston. Full of errors, 
 it is interesting only in a sense that it marked the beginning of 
 printed literature on American journalism. A continuation of 
 the narrative by the same author was published in the Collec- 
 tions of the Massachusetts Historical Society for 1800. In- 
 cluded in this second narrative was a shorter letter, sketching 
 the newspapers of Connecticut from 1755 to 1800, from the 
 pen of Noah Webster, who had already achieved fame as a 
 distinguished lexicographer. 
 
 In 1810 Isaiah Thomas of Worcester, Massachusetts, pub- 
 lished his History of Printing in America, in two volumes. But 
 for these volumes little would be known about many of the early 
 American printers and their papers. The second edition, revised 
 and enlarged in 1878 by the American Antiquarian Society which 
 had been founded by Mr. Thomas, will always be the standard 
 work for the period which it covers. 
 
 Joseph Tinker Buckingham brought out in Boston in 1850 
 Specimens of Newspaper Literature, in two small volumes. With 
 one or two exceptions, its contents were limited to the news- 
 papers of New England. Though based upon the history by 
 Thomas, it enlarged much of the biography and reprinted many 
 extracts from the newspapers discussed. Two years later, Buck- 
 ingham published two volumes, of about the same size as those 
 already mentioned, entitled Personal Memoirs and Recollections 
 of Editorial Life. The latter work was practically a biography 
 of its author, who was closely associated with the journalism 
 of Boston. 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 Frederic Hudson, for many years- the managing director of 
 The New York Herald, issued in 1873 his Journalism in the 
 United States. This book, which aimed to cover the period from 
 1690 to 1872, contains many interesting sketches of editors and 
 their papers, but is so full of errors, and is so biased in its point 
 of view, that it cannot be accepted as an authority even for the 
 period with which Mr. Hudson was most familiar. 
 
 The United States Government in 1880 issued, in connection 
 with its publications of the census for that year, a History and 
 Present Conditions of the Newspaper and Periodical Press of the 
 United States. For the historical part, the book was based upon 
 the works already mentioned and perpetuated then 1 errors. Its 
 statistical matter, being compiled from data furnished to the 
 census, makes it a valuable contribution to journalism history. 
 
 In 1881 Charles Dudley Warner, a member of the editorial 
 staff of The Courant, of Hartford, Connecticut, published an 
 essay, The American Newspaper, which he had read before the 
 Social Science Association at Saratoga Springs, New York, on 
 September 6 of that year. Brief as was this booklet, it was a 
 most comprehensive summary of journalism as it then existed. 
 
 Nothing else of general scope, except scattering magazine 
 articles and biographies of individual editors, has appeared to 
 record the developments of American journalism. 
 
 The author of this book, while acknowledging his indebted- 
 ness to the works already enumerated, has sought in every 
 instance to verify facts as original sources: in his attempt to do 
 so he has been greatly assisted by secretaries of state historical 
 societies to whom acknowledgment for courtesies rendered must 
 first be made. 
 
 To acknowledge in print others who have helped in the prep- 
 aration of the manuscript is obviously impossible, except in a 
 few cases. For information and data about papers of the Co- 
 lonial Period the author is indebted to Albert Matthews, of 
 Boston, Massachusetts, who has always been ready to answer 
 questions about the early papers of New England, and to 
 Clarence R. Brigham, of Worcester, Massachusetts, who, as 
 secretary of the American Antiquarian Society, has furnished 
 many dates as to the beginnings of early papers in several 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 of the States. To these gentlemen, more than to any other two 
 individuals, he is indebted for help and cooperation. 
 
 A partial statement of some indebtedness may be given as 
 follows: Willis J. Abbot, journalism in Chicago; N. A. Baker, 
 first paper in Wyoming; W. W. Ball, journalism in South Caro- 
 lina; Edmund Booth, activities of The Grand Rapids Press, 
 Hilton U. Brown, story of The Indianapolis News; John S. 
 Butler, first newspaper in Idaho; William Conant Church, at- 
 tempt to make The New York Sun a religious newspaper; Clyde 
 Augustus Duniway, freedom of press in Massachusetts; Samuel 
 E. Forman, newspaper activities of Philip Freneau; Frederick 
 K. Freeman, history of The Frontier Index; Robert L. Fulton, 
 early Nevada papers; C. B. Galbreath, early Ohio papers; H. J. 
 Haskell, data about The Kansas City Star; Grace Raymond 
 Hebard, pioneer papers of the West; George H. Himes, early 
 Oregon newspapers; John W. Jordan, first papers in Philadel- 
 phia; Daniel S. B. Johnston, journalism in Minnesota Terri- 
 tory; Robert Lathan, early papers of Charleston, South Caro- 
 lina; Virgil A. Lewis, early West Virginia newspapers; Colonel 
 Clement A. Lounsberry, first paper in North Dakota; Charles R. 
 Miller, Tweed's exposure by The New York Times; C. P. J. 
 Mooney, peripatetic career of The Memphis Appeal; D. D. 
 Moore, journalism of New Orleans; Albert H. Nelson, early 
 papers of Oklahoma; William Nelson, early New Jersey papers; 
 John R. Rathom, story of The Providence Journal; Don C. 
 Seitz, Sunday journalism; Joanna H. Sprague, early papers of 
 Utah; Melville E. Stone, news-gathering associations; Reuben 
 
 old Thwaites, pioneer papers of the West; Rev. Richard H. 
 Tierney, S. J., bulls against news-letters; Lyman Horace Weeks, 
 early American news-letters; Richard H. Waldo, advertising 
 ethics; Louis Wiley, modern tendencies; Stephen B. Weeks, 
 early North Carolina papers; Horace G. Whitney, history of 
 The Deseret News; John P. Young, California newspapers. 
 
 For many courtesies in checking up dates of newspapers the 
 author is indebted to William A. Slade, Chief of the Periodical 
 Literature, Library of Congress; Horace G. Wadlin, Librarian 
 of Boston Public Library; Wilberforce Eames and John B. 
 Elliott, of the New York Public Library. For information from 
 
x PREFACE 
 
 unpublished manuscripts he is indebted to Victor Hugo Palsits, 
 of the Manuscript Department of the New York Public Library. 
 
 The 8Jns of omission are doubtless many owing to the diffi- 
 culty, in spite of the cooperation received, to get information 
 desired. Suggestions and additional information will be wel- 
 comed from any source. 
 
 The last chapter, dealing as it does with many points about 
 which there is a difference of opinion, might very properly be 
 considered a sort of appendix for the expression of personal 
 views. In all other chapters a sincere attempt has been made 
 to keep strictly to facts and to documents quoted. No history, 
 however, would be complete without some discussion of the 
 charges brought by critics against the newspapers of to-day. 
 The evidence has been presented and readers may draw their 
 own conclusions about the so-called weakness of the present 
 
 JAMES MELVIN LEE. 
 NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, 
 October, 1917. 
 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. INTRODUCTORY 1 
 
 II. PRECURSORS OF AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS .... 8 
 
 III. THE FIRST AMERICAN NEWSPAPER THE BOSTON NEWS- 
 
 LETTER 17 
 
 IV. BEGINNINGS IN COLONIES 28 
 
 V. BEGINNINGS IN COLONIES (continued) 44 
 
 VI. COLONIAL PERIOD, 1704-1765 62 
 
 VII. REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD, 1765-1783 82^ 
 
 VIII. PERIOD OF EARLY REPUBLIC, 1783-1812 .... 100 
 V/iX. FIRST DAILIES AND EARLY PARTY ORGANS . . .118-" 
 
 " <x?t PARTY PRESS PERIOD, 1812-1832 140 
 
 XI. BEGINNINGS IN STATES, 1783-1832 164 
 
 XII. BEGINNINGS OF THE PENNY PRESS 185 
 
 XIII. TRANSITION PERIOD, 1832-1841 206 
 
 XIV. BEGINNINGS IN STATES AND TERRITORIES, 1833-1873 . 230 
 XV. MEXICAN WAR TO CIVIL WAR PERIOD, 1846-1860 . . 258 
 
 XVI. CIVIL WAR PERIOD, 1860-1865 .285 
 
 XVII. RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD, 1865-1880 317 
 
 XVIII. PERIOD OF FINANCIAL READJUSTMENT, 1880-1900 . . 352 
 
 XIX. PERIOD OF SOCIAL READJUSTMENT, 1900- . . . .388 
 
 XX. JOURNALISM OF TO-DAY 429 
 
 INDEX 451 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 NINE AMERICAN EDITORS: THURLOW WEED, HORACE GREELET, 
 CHARLES A. DANA, JAMES GORDON BENNETT, JESSE BUEL, 
 ZACHARIAH POULSON, EPES SARGENT, BENJAMIN RUSSELL, 
 PHILIP FRENEAU Frontispiece 
 
 HOGARTH'S HEADING OF JACOBITE'S JOURNAL 6 
 
 THE FIRST ISSUE OF THE BOSTON NEWS-LETTER .... 18 
 
 MORTUARY ISSUE OF BRADFORD'S PENNSYLVANIA JOURNAL ON 
 OCCASION OF THE STAMP ACT 82 
 
 A BROADSIDE OF EDES: A REVOLUTIONARY "EXTRA" OF THE 
 BOSTON GAZETTE 86 
 
 CARTOON BY WILLIAM CHARLES: "THE TORY EDITOR AND His 
 APES GIVING THEIR PITIFUL ADVICE TO THE AMERICAN 
 SAILORS" . 140 
 
 THE FIRST ISSUE OF THE NEW YORK SUN 188 
 
 ADVERTISEMENTS IN THE PHILADELPHIA A URORA, SHOWING FREE 
 USE OF CUTS BEFORE THE INVENTION OF CYLINDER PRESSES . 224 
 
 THE EXTRA IN CHARLESTON WHICH ANNOUNCED THE ORDINANCE 
 OF SECESSION 282 
 
 GREELEY'S EDITORIAL ATTACK: "ON TO RICHMOND" AS SEEN 
 BY A CONTEMPORARY 302 
 
 JOINT ISSUE OF SAN FRANCISCO MORNING PAPERS THE DAY AFTER 
 THE EARTHQUAKE . 416 
 

UNIV. 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 HISTOEY OF 
 AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 THE desire to hear or to know the new thing is as old as man. 
 It was an instinct even of the most primitive people. Before the 
 men of the Stone Age traded in the products of the soil or of the 
 hand, they exchanged news. But the historian of journalism is 
 interested primarily not in the news which is spoken, but in that 
 which is written. He finds little to attract his attention until 
 he reaches the invention of the written language. Triangular 
 figures chiseled in stone and strange characters pricked on goat- 
 skin may give history, but not news. When the first written 
 newspaper for letters giving the news were sold and circulated 
 long before the invention of the printing-press appeared is 
 not known. Some say it was in Rome; others assert it was in 
 Venice. Recent investigators of the question have given the 
 honor to China. 
 
 On one matter there has been no difference of opinion: in 
 every country the printed has grown out of the written news- 
 paper. Even after the invention of printing it was a compara- 
 tively long time before the printing-press was called upon to aid 
 in the dissemination of news. A little thought on the subject will 
 give the reason. Not until printed sheets could be produced 
 cheaper or quicker in actual practice both than the written 
 ones did the gatherer and seller of news forsake the latter for the 
 former. Even then, the complete change was not made suddenly. 
 Libraries and museums have in their archives combination 
 sheets, half printed and half written. It was the custom at one 
 time to leave one page free from printing in order that the latest 
 news or freshest advices might be written in by hand. 
 
AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 always been the two most important 
 topics in Newspaper dom. There was no systematic collection 
 or distribution of news until men had a political interest in the 
 state, or were involved in financial transactions covering a fairly 
 wide area of trade and transportation. In most countries both 
 conditions were present before regular trade in news arose. The 
 walled city required no newspaper : the tower watchman and the 
 king's herald did the reporting. When, however, officials left the 
 city to govern undefended towns, there must be devised some 
 new method of publishing the official proclamations and of giv- 
 ing the gossip of the capital. When commercial houses began to 
 import and export goods, maritime news had a cash value and 
 might be sold. 
 
 EOMAN NEWS-LETTERS 
 
 By way of illustration, the Republic of Rome may be men- 
 tioned. As early as 449 B.C. official protocols of the transaction 
 of the Senate were kept and deposited in the Temple of Ceres, in 
 charge of the police commissioners (cediles). It was permissible 
 to take notes or to have them taken and then to communicate 
 these memoranda to others. When sent to the provincial gov- 
 ernors, or tax-farmers, these notes, with their additions of local 
 gossip, became news-letters. Their writers, in the early days of 
 the Republic, were intelligent slaves: later, bonded freemen took 
 up the work and sold their letters to any one who would pay the 
 price. Signs of "courtesy to the press" began to appear about 
 this time, for these news-writers could, upon the presentation 
 of proper credentials, obtain admission to the meetings of the 
 Senate. Wealthy Romans in the provinces continued to supple- 
 ment these regular news-letters by special reports from their own 
 correspondents, just as the modern newspaper may, in addition 
 to the service of the Associated Press, have its own correspond- 
 ents at strategic points to send in special items or "stories" 
 as they are called in the language of the newspaper office. 
 
 Antony, for example, was one of these men who kept in touch 
 with the political situation and the financial condition in Rome 
 by means of such news-epistles. In a way, he owned his own 
 newspaper of a single edition, for the man who wrote these news- 
 
INTRODUCTORY 3 
 
 letters was not allowed to write to other officials. There were in 
 the city, however, men who sent out two or more news-letters 
 to patrons. 
 
 In the year 51 B.C., when Cicero left for Cilicia, his friend 
 Cselius promised "to write a full and careful account" of all that 
 went on in Rome. The latter, being " the laziest man in the world 
 at writing letters," shifted the burden of his correspondence to 
 the shoulders of one of these professional writers of news. Later, 
 Caelius did find time to send this line: " If the news-letters do not 
 give you what you want, let me know, for I do not want to spend 
 my money only to bore you." Cicero's reply was, in modern 
 phraseology, " Stop my paper ! " He did not care for the sporting 
 news of gladiatorial matches; he did not want the court news, 
 chronicling the adjournment of trials; he did not read with 
 interest, so he asserted, the news that was n't fit to write 
 "such things as nobody ventured to tell" him when he was in 
 Rome. What he desired was the political news of the city, and 
 reports of occurrences where there was something especially 
 affecting himself. In the last suggestion he gave to the pro- 
 fessional journalist at Rome a tip which the modern school of 
 journalism follows when it instructs its students to put names 
 into the newspaper. 
 
 C^SARS AS JOURNALISTS 
 
 First place in Roman journalism, however, belongs to Julius 
 Csesar, another friend of high-school days. One of his first acts 
 after he became Consul in 60 B.C. was to issue a decree that the 
 reports of the doings of the Senate should be daily written and 
 published. Knowing the value of publicity, he hoped in this way 
 to change the crooked politics of the time ; at least, he was deter- 
 mined that no secret acts of the Senate should interfere with his 
 plans. The result of Caesar's decree was the establishment of 
 that precursor of the modern daily newspaper, Acta Diurna, or 
 The Daily Acts. At first, this daily compilation was published 
 on a whitened wooden board, called album (white). In other 
 words, the Romans got their news in the Forum, much as we 
 often get an epitome of the latest events by standing and watch- 
 ing the bulletin-boards of the modern newspaper. 
 
4 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 The Daily Acts had a special department in which were 
 recorded all the births and deaths of the city. It did not neglect 
 financial news, for it recorded the receipt by the treasury of 
 taxes from the provinces. Like the modern newspaper, it paid 
 special attention to both civil and criminal courts and made a 
 special feature of election news. Everything done by the Imperial 
 family was chronicled faithfully. One other fact must be noticed 
 in passing both Julius and Augustus Caesar knew how to work 
 the press. The former secured good display in The Daily Acts 
 when he declined the title of king; and the latter promoted his 
 attack on race suicide by inserting items about Romans who had 
 large families. In addition to the bulletin-board edition of The 
 Daily Acts there was a written one for circulation in the home. 
 One Latin author mentioned a Roman lady reading her morning 
 paper, and another said that he would wait at Thessalonica for 
 The Daily Acts. Seneca once boasted that his liberality was not 
 " written up" in The Daily Acts. Based upon this edition was 
 a still larger written newspaper sent to subscribers outside of 
 Rome. The professional journalist took the items of The Daily 
 Acts, gathered others of his own, and then, mounting a little 
 platform in his shop, dictated the news to a dozen slaves who 
 produced a written newspaper of twelve copies. The size of such 
 an edition was limited only by the number of slaves employed. 
 
 ORIGIN OF SENSATIONAL JOURNALISM 
 
 The Daily Acts probably continued even after the capital had 
 been moved from Rome to Constantinople. For fifteen centuries 
 little advance was made in the written newspaper unless the 
 ability to manufacture news might in some way be considered a 
 development. The ability to invent news and to mix truth and 
 falsehood became almost a profession (ars) in Rome, and was 
 carried to such an extent that the church was forced to take 
 drastic action. Papal bulls were issued against the writing of 
 such news-letters, under penalties recorded in both temporal 
 and ecclesiastical laws. In 1572 the saintly Pope Pius V threat- 
 ened "death and confiscation of property," according to "the 
 degree of the offense and the rank of the offender." His successor, 
 Gregory XIII, a great educationist, issued another bull which, 
 
INTRODUCTORY 5 
 
 while leaving all former laws about the news-letters in full 
 force, declared that writers of lettere d' avvisi should be sent 
 "to the galleys, either for life or for a term, without hope of 
 pardon." 
 
 THE WRITTEN NEWSPAPER 
 
 The written newspaper spread, chiefly by way of Venice, to 
 other countries. Many fanciful tales are told about the contri- 
 bution of Venice to journalism. The assertion has been made 
 that that city also had its Daily Acts, for the privilege of seeing 
 which a subscription price of a gazetta was asked, and that from 
 this custom came the name so often applied to newspapers, The 
 Gazette. But these rumors are doubtless highly colored, for this 
 term did not come into general use until a much later date. 
 Venice did have, however, the first press bureau, an organization 
 which gathered and retailed news in a wholesale way. Its news- 
 letters were far more timely in contents than those which had 
 previously gone out from Rome. 
 
 By 1600, what might be called epistolary newspapers were 
 appearing in Italy, in France, in Germany, and in England. It 
 was in Germany that such sheets reached their highest develop- 
 ment. France, however, led in the spoken newspaper. In Paris 
 there were men who stood at street corners and told the gossip 
 of the city. When they had finished, they passed around the hat. 
 At night they met at a tavern where they swapped news-items 
 gathered during the day. 
 
 THE SPOKEN NEWSPAPER 
 
 In the Swiss village of Champery the spoken newspaper still 
 survives. Curiously enough, it is a Sunday edition. On that day, 
 immediately after church, the villagers hear The Town Crier. 
 Its editor, literally the publishing bailiff, appears on a balcony 
 overhanging the street and announces the news to those on the 
 village green. First of all, he gives the information about the 
 decisions of the courts and announces the decrees both federal 
 and cantonal. He speaks of the fines and penalties incurred 
 by the citizens of the community and brings to public attention 
 all the official decisions of the civil authorities. All citizens 
 
6 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 are expected to listen to this spoken newspaper, and no one can 
 fall back, if he transgresses one of the published decrees, on 
 the assertion that he was not present when The Town Crier 
 announced the official decree. 
 
 The Town Crier of Champery has its spoken advertising depart- 
 ment. Its publisher gives notice, by spoken word, of the public 
 auctions of household goods, cattle, etc., as announced by the 
 Office of Law and Bankruptcy. The Town Crier gives the news 
 of mercantile houses, with the prices of the goods they are offer- 
 ing. It gives notice of lost and found articles and quotes the 
 price paid by local establishments for farm products. In other 
 words, it takes the place of a local printed newspaper, which, up 
 to the present time, has never existed in Champery. 
 
 BIRTH OF ENGLISH JOURNALISM 
 
 In some respects the evolution of journalism in London was 
 the same as that found in Rome. Men of wealth lived only four 
 or five months in London and spent the rest of the year in the 
 country. While away from the city, they wanted to know the 
 doings of the court and the gossip of the coffee-houses. To keep 
 themselves informed, they hired professional letter-writers who 
 gathered the items and then forwarded the most important by 
 special post. One of the best and hence busiest writers of such 
 letters was one Thomas Archer. So excellent was his service that 
 demand for his letters became larger than he could supply by 
 his pen. To meet this demand he called the printing-press to his 
 aid, and instead of posting items on irregular days of the week, 
 he put them all in one letter, printed it, and mailed it by a cer- 
 tain post. Nathaniel Butter was the first regular publisher of 
 this printed news-letter, The Weekly Newes, and posterity has 
 called him rather than Archer the founder of the English news- 
 paper press. There had been an occasional printed news-sheet 
 or news-book before the appearance of The Weekly Newes, but 
 to Nathaniel Butter belongs the honor of "printing all the news 
 of the day upon a single sheet and publishing it regularly week 
 by week upon fixed days and of giving it a distinctive title at a 
 time when there was nothing that could with strictness be called 
 a newspaper." Papers with dates prior to 1622, when The Weekly 
 
 
1' , 
 
 i 
 
INTRODUCTORY 7 
 
 Newes first appeared, have come to light from time to time, but 
 they have all proved to be forgeries. 
 
 CONDITIONS IN CHINA 
 
 In the case of China, however, the change from the written 
 to the printed sheet was abrupt. Chinese publishers wasted no 
 time by printing from movable type, but jumped at once from 
 the hand-written production to the impression from a wooden 
 block. The news was written on a transparent sheet, pasted 
 face downward on a wooden block, and then, save where the 
 Chinese characters showed, the wood was chiseled away. The 
 block was then inked, pressed upon a sheet of white paper, and 
 lo, a printed newspaper! 
 
 By way of conclusion, it may be noted that the English term 
 "newspaper" was first used, according to the best information 
 obtainable, in the year 1670, when it appeared in a letter ad- 
 dressed to Charles Perrot, the second editor of The Oxford Ga- 
 zette. The expression was found in the request, "I wanted your 
 newes paper Monday last post." 
 
 
CHAPTER II 
 PRECURSORS OF AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS 
 
 AMONG the broadsides published in New England during the 
 early colonial days, to correct false reports, may be found cer- 
 tain printed sheets so closely resembling a newspaper that such 
 a term has been applied to them. While they did give some 
 domestic news of the colonies and while they were printed to 
 sell as news sheets, they had no regularity in publication, being 
 issued only once. Consequently, they are to be regarded as the 
 precursors of the newspaper press and not as real newspapers. 
 
 GREEN'S BROADSIDE 
 
 One of the earliest of these broadsides in some ways the 
 most important was The Present State of the New-English 
 Affairs (1689). It was a single sheet, 8 x 14 J inches, printed 
 on only one side. Its printer and publisher was Samuel Green. 
 The first part consisted of an extract from a letter of the Rev- 
 erend Increase Mather, dated at Deal in Kent, to Simon Bald- 
 win, Governor of the Massachusetts colony in New England. 
 The most important item in the sheet was a " passage extracted 
 from the publick News-Letter" (of London) for July 6, 1689. 
 Because the extract has historical value and at the same time 
 shows, to a certain extent, the kind of news found in The London 
 News-Letter, it is worth quotation : 
 
 The people of New England having made a thorow Revolution, and 
 secured the publick Criminals. On Thursday last, the Reverend and 
 Learned Mr. Mather, President of the Colledge, and Minister of Bos- 
 ton, waited on the King; and in a most Excellent Speech laid before 
 His Majesty, the State of that People; saying, That they were sober, 
 and Industrious, and fit for Martial Service; and all with their Lives 
 and Interests were at His Majesties Command, to tender the same unto 
 His Majesty: That they desired nothing but His Majesties Acceptance 
 of what they had done, and His Protection; and that if His Majesty 
 pleased to encourage and Commission them, He might easily be Em- 
 
PRECURSORS OF AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS 9 
 
 perour of America. His Majesty assured him, that He was pleased with 
 what was done for Him, and for themselves in the Revolution, and that 
 their Priviledges and Religion should be secured unto them. 
 
 The Present State of the New-English Affairs was published 
 "to prevent false reports." Other news-handbills must have 
 circulated rather extensively about this time, for, toward the 
 close of 1689, the Massachusetts authorities passed a resolution 
 that " whereas many papers have been lately printed and dis- 
 persed, tending to the disturbance of the peace," any person 
 guilty of printing or even concealing "such like papers" should 
 be "accounted enemies" of the Government and "be proceeded 
 against as such with the uttermost severity." Nothing did more 
 to hinder the development of American journalism than the 
 requirement, "Published by Authority." Freedom of the press 
 came only after a hard-fought struggle. 
 
 A NEAR-NEWSPAPER 
 
 An attempt, however, was made, in 1690 to establish what 
 would have been a newspaper had there been more than one 
 issue. On September 25 of that year, Benjamin Harris brought 
 out, in Boston, Publick Occurrences. It was to have been pub- 
 lished once a month or oftener "if any glut of occurrences hap- 
 pen." As it was not published by authority, the Governor and 
 Council promptly found that the pamphlet, as it was called, 
 contained "reflections of a very high nature" and ordered its 
 suppression. They also, in the same resolution, forbade "any 
 person or persons for the future to set forth anything in print 
 without license first obtained from those that are, or shall be 
 appointed by the Government to grant the same." Because of 
 this drastic action, it was almost fifteen years before another 
 attempt was made to give Boston a newspaper. 
 
 Publick Occurrences, Both Forreign and Domestick, was a small, 
 four-page sheet, 1\ x ll| inches, and had two columns to the 
 page, except on the fourth, which was free from any printing. 
 The only known copy of this sheet is preserved in the London 
 Public Record Office, where it was found in 1845 by the Rev- 
 erend Joseph B. Felt, of Salem. Frederic Hudson, in his "Jour- 
 nalism in the United States," published an expurgated copy of 
 
10 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 its contents which has since been reprinted in many American 
 publications, and in 1901 Samuel Abbott Green, of the Massa- 
 chusetts Historical Society, reproduced the original in facsimile. 
 An unexpurgated version of Publick Occurrences is here given 
 for the sake of historical accuracy. The purpose for which the 
 sheet was printed, as well as the way in which the items were 
 told, will surely attract the attention of the reader of to-day. 
 Harris had a keener sense of news value than most of the other 
 men who started Colonial newspapers. 
 
 PUBLICK OCCURRENCES 
 
 Both Forreign and Domestick. 
 Boston, Thursday, Sept. 25th. 1690. 
 
 It is designed, that the Countrey shall be furnished once a 
 (or if any Glut of Occurrences happen, oftener,) with an account of 
 such considerable things as have arrived unto our Notice. 
 
 In order hereunto, the Publisher will take what pains he can to ob- 
 tain a Faithful Relation of all such things; and will particularly make 
 himself beholden to such Persons in Boston whom he knows to have 
 been for their own use the diligent Observers of such matters. 
 
 The which is herein proposed, is, First, That Memorable Occurrents 
 of Divine Providence may not be neglected or forgotten, as they too 
 often are. Secondly, That people every where may better understand 
 the Circumstances of Publique Affairs, both abroad and at home; 
 which may not only direct their Thoughts at all times, but at some 
 times also to assist their Businesses and Negotiations. 
 
 Thirdly, That something may be done toward the Curing, or at least 
 the Charming of that Spirit of Lying, which prevails amongst us, where- 
 fore nothing shall be entered, but what we have reason to believe is 
 true, repairing to the best fountains for our Information. And when 
 there appears any material mistake in any thing that is collected, it 
 shall be corrected in the next. 
 
 Moreover, the Publisher of these Occurrences is willing to engage, 
 that whereas, there are many False Reports, maliciously made, and 
 spread among us, if any well-minded person will be at the pains to trace 
 any such false Report, so far as to find out and Convict the First Raiser 
 of it, he will in this Paper (unless just Advice be given to to the con- 
 trary) expose the Name of such person, as A malicious Raiser of a false 
 Report. It is suppos'd that none will dislike this Proposal, but such as 
 intend to be guilty of so villanous a Crime. 
 
 That Christianized Indians in some parts of Plimouth, have newly 
 
PRECURSORS OF AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS 11 
 
 appointed a day of Thanksgiving to God for his Mercy in supplying 
 their extream and pinching Necessities under their late want of Corn, 
 & for His giving them now a prospect of a very Comfortable Harvest. 
 Their Example may be worth Mentioning. 
 
 Tis observed by the Husbandmen that altho' the With-draw of so 
 great a strength of them, as what is in the Forces lately gone for Canada, 
 made them think it almost impossible for them to get well through the 
 Affairs of their Husbandry at this time of the year, yet the Season has 
 been so unusually favourable that they scarce find any want of the 
 many hundreds of hands, that are gone from them; which is looked upon 
 as a Merciful Providence. 
 
 While the barbarous Indians were lurking about Chelmsford, there 
 were missing about the beginning of this month a couple of Children 
 belonging to a man of that Town, one of them aged about eleven, the 
 other aged about nine years, both of them supposed to be fallen into 
 the hands of the Indians. 
 
 A very Tragical Accident happened at Water-Town, the beginning 
 of this Month, an Old man, that was of somewhat a Silent and Morose 
 Temper, but one that had long Enjoyed the reputation of a Sober and 
 Pious Man, having newly buried his Wife, The Devil took advantage 
 of the Melancholy which he thereupon fell into, his Wives discretion 
 and industry had long been the support of his Family, and he seemed 
 hurried with an impertinent fear that he should now come to want be- 
 fore he dyed, though he had very careful friends to look after him who 
 kept a strict eye upon him, least he should do himself any harm. But 
 one evening escaping from them into the Cowhouse, they there quickly 
 followed him found him hanging by a Rope, which they had used to tye 
 their Calves withal, he was dead with his feet near touching the Ground. 
 
 Epidemical Fevers and Agues grow very common, in some parts of 
 the Country, whereof, tho' many dye not, yet they are sorely unfitted 
 for their imployments; but in some parts a more malignant Fever seems 
 to prevail in such sort that it usually gores thro' a Family where it comes, 
 and proves Mortal unto many. 
 
 The Small-pox which has been raging in Boston, after a manner very 
 Extraordinary, is now very much abated. It is thought that far more 
 have been sick of it then were visited with it, when it raged so much 
 twelve years ago, nevertheless it has not been so Mortal. The number 
 of them that have dyed in Boston by this last Visitation is about three 
 hundred and twenty, which is not perhaps half so many as fell by the 
 former. The Time of its being most General, was in the Months June, 
 July, and August, then 'twas that sometimes in some one Congregation 
 on a Lords-day there would be Bills desiring prayers for above an hun- 
 dred Sick. It seized upon all sorts of people that came in the way of it, 
 it infected even Children in the bellies of Mothers that had themselves 
 undergone the Disease many years ago for some such were now born 
 full of the Distemper. 'Tis not easy to relate the Trouble and Sorrow 
 
12 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 that poor Boston has felt by this Epidemical Contagion. But we hope 
 it will be pretty nigh Extinguished, by that time twelve month when 
 it first began to Spread. It now unhappily spreads in several other 
 places, among which our Garrisons in the East are to be reckoned some 
 of the greatest Sufferers. 
 
 Altho' Boston did a few weeks ago, meet with a Disaster by Fire, 
 which consumed about twenty Houses near the Mill-Creek, yet about 
 midnight, between the sixteenth and seventeenth of this Instant, an- 
 other Fire broke forth near the South-Meeting-House, which consumed 
 about five or six houses, and had almost carried the Meeting house it 
 self, one of the fairest Edifices in the Country, if God had not remark- 
 ably assisted the Endeavours of the People to put out the Fire. There 
 were two more considerable Circumstances in the Calamities of this 
 Fire, one was that a young man belonging to the House where the Fire 
 began, unhappily perished in the Flames; it seems that tho' he might 
 sooner awake than some others who did escape, yet he some way lost 
 those Wits that should have taught him to help himself. Another was 
 that the best furnished PRINTING-PRESS, of those few that we 
 know of in America was lost; a loss not presently to be repaired. 
 
 There lately arrived at Piscataqua, one Papoon from Penobscot, in 
 a small Shallop, wherein he had used to attend upon the pleasure of 
 Casteen, but took his opportunity to run away, and reports: That a 
 Vessel of small Bulk bound from Bristol to Virginia, having been so long 
 at Sea, till they were prest with want, put in at Penobscot instead of 
 Piscataqua, where the Indians and French seized her, and Butchered 
 the Master, and several of the men: but that himself who belonged unto 
 the Ships Crew, being a Jersey-man, was more favourably used, & found 
 at length an advantage to make his Escape. 
 
 The chief discourse of this month has been about the affairs of the 
 Western Expedition against Canada. The Albanians, New-Yorkers and 
 the five Nations of Indians, in the West, had long been pressing of the 
 Massachusetts to make an Expedition by Sea, into Canada, and still 
 made us believe that they stayed for us, and that while we assaulted 
 Quebeck, they would pass the Lake, and by Land make a Descent upon 
 Mount Real. Accordingly this Colony with some assistance from our 
 kind Neighbours of Plimouth; fitted an Army of near five and twenty 
 hundred men, and a Navy of two and thirty sail; which went from 
 hence the beginning of the last August, under the Command of the 
 Honourable Sir William Phips. 
 
 In the mean time the English Colonies & Provinces in the West 
 raised Forces, the Numbers whereof have been reported five or six hun- 
 dred. The Honourable General Winthrop was in the Head of these, 
 and advanced within a few miles of the Lake; He there had some good 
 number of Maqua's to joyn his Forces, but contrary to his Expectation, 
 it was found that the Canoo's to have been ready for the Transporta- 
 tion of the Army over the Lake, were not prepared, and the other Na- 
 
PRECURSORS OF AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS 13 
 
 tions of Indians, that should have come to this Campaign, sent their 
 Excuses, pretending that the Small-pox was among them, and some 
 other Trifles. The General Meeting with such vexing disappointments, 
 called a Councel of War, wherein 'twas agreed, That it was impossible 
 for them to Prosecute their Intended Expedition. However he dis- 
 patched away the Maqua's to the French Territories, who returned 
 with some Success, having slain several of the French, and brought 
 home several Prisoners, whom they used in a manner too barbarous for 
 any English to approve. The General coming back to Albany, there 
 happened a misunderstanding, between him and the Lieutenant Gov- 
 ernour of New-york which occasioned much discourse, but produced 
 not those effects which were feared of it. Where lay the bottom of these 
 miscarriages is variously conjectured, if any people further West than 
 Albany, have been Tampering with the Indians, to desert the business 
 of Canada, we hope time will discover it. And if Almighty God will 
 have Canada to be subdu'd without the assistance of those miserable 
 Salvages, in whom we have too much confided, we shall be glad, that 
 there will be no Sacrifice offered up to the Devil, upon this occasion; 
 God alone will have all the Glory. 
 
 'Tis possible, we have not so exactly related the Circumstances of 
 this business, but this Account, is as near exactness, as any that could 
 be had, in the midst of many various reports about it. 
 
 Another late matter of discourse, has been an unaccountable de- 
 struction befalling a body of Indians, that were our Enemies. This body 
 of French Indians had a Fort somewhere far up the River, and a party 
 of Maqua's returning from the East Country, where they have at a 
 great rate pursued and terrified those Indians which have been invad- 
 ing of our North-East Plantations, and Killed their General Hope 
 Hood among the rest; resolved to visit this Fort; but they found the 
 Fort ruined, the Canno's cut to pieces, and the people all either Butch- 
 ered or Captived. This gave them no little surprise, and they gave the 
 English this account of it. That a body of Maqua's lately returning 
 from the Spoil of Canada brought several French Prisoners with them; 
 That calling at this Fort in their way, the Indians there seeing them- 
 selves unable to resist them did pass divers Complements with them 
 and partake of their Booties, That a French Captive after this, escap- 
 ing from the Maqua's informed the French that these Indians had re- 
 volted unto the Maqua's, and hereupon the French or their Indians 
 made a sudden Sally forth upon them, and utterly destroyed them, 
 tho' they were in reality of their own party still. 
 
 Two English Captives escaped from the hands of Indians and French 
 at Pascadamoquady, came into Portsmouth on the sixteenth Instant & 
 say, That when Capt. Mason was at Fort Real, he cut the faces, and ript 
 the bellies of two Indians, and threw a third Over board in the sight of 
 the French, who informing the other Indians of it, they have in revenge 
 barbarously Butcher'd forty Captives of our that were in their hands. 
 
14 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 These two Captives escaped in a Shallop, which our Enemies in- 
 tended to have set out with all the Circumstances of a Fishing Shallop 
 but to have indeed fill'd it with Indians that should have Clap t d on 
 board any English Vessel that came in their way; They say that about 
 three or four weeks ago, some Indians were coming this way to War, but 
 crossing a path which they supposed to be of the Maqua's, they fol- 
 lowed it until they discovered a place where some Canoo's were making, 
 whereupon twenty Kennebeck Indian-Warriors went to look further 
 after the business, who never yet returned. Which gives hope that they 
 may come short home, but upon this the Squaws are sent to Penobscot, 
 and the men stand on their Defence. 
 
 Portsmouth Sept. 20th. Two days since arrived here a small Vessel 
 from Barbaboes, in which is a Letter to Captain H. K. of 19th August 
 that speaks thus, 
 
 Christophers is wholly taken from the French as also a small Island 
 called Stacia; we are very strong in Shipping, and our Ships of War are 
 now gone for Tobago, a very good place to shelter from any Storms, 
 after the suspicious months are over, they will attack the rest of the 
 French places. We have News here that K. William is safe arrived in 
 Ireland, and is marched with one hundred and forty thousand Foot 
 and Horse. Himself leads the Body, Duke Scomburgh the right Wing, 
 and the Earl of Oxford the left Wing, Duke Hamilton of Scotland leads 
 the forlorn Hope with ten thousand men under him. Great victory 
 they dayly have, and much people dayly come in to him, with submis- 
 sion: He has 200 Shipping with him of one sort or other, above one hun- 
 dred Sail dayly run between Ireland and England, with meat for Man 
 and Beast; His Majesty being unwilling to trust false Ireland for it. 
 France is in much trouble (and fear) not only with us but also with 
 his Son, who has revolted against him lately, and has great reason if 
 reports be true, that the Father used to lie with the Sons Wife. He has 
 got all the Hugonots, and all the dissatisfied Papists, with the great 
 force of the D. of Lorraign, and are now against him, resolving to depose 
 him of his life and Kingdom. 
 
 It's Reported the City of Cork in Ireland, has proclaimed K. Wil- 
 liam, and turned their French Landlords out of Doors; of this there 
 wants further confirmation. 
 
 From Plimouth Sept. 22. We have an Account that on Friday the 
 12th Instant, in the night, our Forces Landing privately, forthwith 
 surrounded Pegypscot Fort; but finding no Indians there, they March'd 
 to Amonoscoggin. There on the Lords-day, they kill'd and took 15 or 
 16 of the Enemy, and recovered five English Captives mostly belonging 
 to Oyster-River; who advised, that the men had been gone about ten 
 days down to a River, to meet with the French, and the French In- 
 dians; where they expected to make up a Body of 300 men, and design 
 first against Wells or Piscataqua. 
 
 On Tuesday, the Army came to our Vessels at Macquot, but one of 
 
PRECURSORS OF AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS 15 
 
 the Vessels touching a Ground stopt a Tide; by which means, young 
 Bracket, who was a considerable distance up the River, above Amonos- 
 coggin Fort, being advised by an Indian that ran away from Amonos- 
 coggin, that an English Army was there attempted his Escape, and 
 came down to the Sloop, just as they came on their Sail. 
 
 On Thursday, they landed at Saco; a Scout of 60 men of ours dis- 
 cover a party of the Enemy, and had the Advantage of killing three of 
 them, and taking nine Canoos, and an English captive named, Thomas 
 Baker, who informed, that the Enemy had left a considerable Plunder 
 at Pegypscut-Plains, which he supposed the Enemy was gone to secure. 
 Whereupon the Army immediately embark'd, and arriving there that 
 night, the next morning found the Bever-Plunder accordingly. 
 
 While our Vessels where at Anchor in Cascoe-Bay, our Auxiliary 
 Indians lodging on shore, and being too careless in their Watch, the 
 Enemy made an Attaque upon them. The English forth with repair'd 
 to their Relief; but were sorely galled, by an Embuscado of Indians, 
 The Enemy soon quitted the Field, escaping with their Canoo's, whereof 
 ours took several. In the Surprise, we lost 9 men, and had about 20 
 wounded; the blow chiefly fell on our dead Friends, the Plimouth 
 Forces; 15 being kuTd and wounded of Captain South worth's 
 Company. 
 
 In spite of the fact that Publick Occurrences was ordered sus- 
 pended, Benjamin Harris later met with public favor. In De- 
 cember, 1692, the official records show that he was ordered "to 
 print the acts and laws made by the Great and General Court, 
 or Assembly of their Majesties of Massachusetts-Bay in New 
 England." Along about 1695 he returned to England where he 
 became the publisher of The London Post. 
 
 WEITTEN AND SPOKEN NEWSPAPERS 
 
 Substitutes for the newspaper were found in two rather strik- 
 ing places the public tavern and the local church. In the 
 former, items of community interest were freely passed along 
 over pipes and ale. The walls of the tavern were frequently 
 decorated with notices of what to-day appear in the newspaper; 
 some in the advertising columns, others in the text. Foreign 
 news was found in the different gazettes for which the tavern 
 subscribed. In order that such papers might be available for the 
 perusal of news, a notice was frequently posted to the effect that 
 persons learning to read would please use old copies of the ga- 
 
 \ 
 
16 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 zettes. In some sections the news feature in the tavern was 
 attraction. At Bridgeton, New Jersey, a written newspaper 
 called The Plain-Dealer was publicly posted at " Matthew Pot- 
 ter's Bar." A notice informed the public that those interested 
 might read the paper by calling at the tavern every Tuesday 
 morning. Frequently, however, the contents of The Plain- 
 Dealer were more like essays than news-items. Issues, how- 
 ever, were not without human interest. One number, for ex- 
 ample, discussed " bundling with the girls"; another made a 
 special plea for more patriotism on the part of the Jersey colo- 
 nies. Whenever a colonial farmer visited a tavern, he always 
 carried the news away -- possibly along with other things 
 which he ought not to have had. 
 
 America has not been without its spoken newspaper. The 
 clergy of New England frequently related or referred to items 
 of news. The bellman, as he made his rounds, sometimes told 
 other things besides giving the hour and informing the public 
 that all was well. The spoken newspaper probably reached its 
 highest development in the United States in Detroit, Michigan. 
 The Reverend Father Gabriel Richard, a priest of the Order of 
 Sulpice, who first came to that place as resident pastor of the 
 Roman Catholic Church of St. Anne, was its conductor. To 
 arouse the public and awaken an interest in the affairs of the 
 Government, he appointed a town crier who every Sunday at 
 the doors of his church told the public in general and the con- 
 gregation in particular all the news that was fit to speak. In 
 addition, this public crier mentioned the auction sales and 
 related other advertising announcements. Later, to supplement 
 the spoken newspaper, a written edition was posted at a con- 
 venient place near the church. Father Richard was assisted in 
 his news enterprise by Theopolis Meetz, the sacristan of St. 
 Anne's Church, but later, a printer and publisher. 
 
 The evolution of journalism in America has been much the 
 same as that in other countries. There have been spoken news- 
 papers, written newspapers, and later printed newspapers. In 
 other words, journalism history has again repeated itself. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE FIRST AMERICAN NEWSPAPER THE BOSTON 
 NEWS-LETTER 
 
 THE action of the Governor of Massachusetts in suppressing 
 Publick Occurrences and the continued opposition of the Boston 
 clergy in guarding its influence prevented any attempt to found 
 another paper until 1704. The chief way that news was circu- 
 lated, except for an occasional broadside, was through pulpit 
 announcements and semi-public letters. 
 
 CAMPBELL'S WRITTEN NEWS-LETTERS 
 
 Foremost among these writers of news-letters was one, John 
 Campbell, the postmaster at Boston. He made a practice of 
 sending rather regularly letters to the various governors of the 
 New England colonies. These letters, after being read, were 
 passed along to others so that they had a comparatively wide 
 circulation. Sometimes they were publicly posted so that their 
 contents might be read after the manner news was communi- 
 cated in ancient Rome. An examination of the Campbell letters 
 show that they were what might be termed written newspapers. 
 By way of illustration, the following one is reproduced from 
 "The Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society": 
 
 BOSTON June 14th 1703 
 
 On the 8 th Instant the Assembly was adjourned unto the Last Wed- 
 nesday of this month. 
 
 On the O 1 . 11 His Excell. being Accompanyed with Severall Gentlemen, 
 went to his Goverm* of New hampshire. 
 
 On the 10 th a Sloop from the Bay of Campeachy brings no News. 
 
 On the 11 EsqT Bromfield mett w* h a Sore Mischance, coming out 
 of his Warehouse door a Sloop Lying before his Warehouse door the 
 m* of the Sloop noising up his boom, the Sail being Loose to Dry it, 
 gave Such a Swing that it struct him upon his Shouldier, Brock his 
 Collar bone, put his Shouldier out of joynt, was for sometime speechless 
 with the Stroak but its hoped He '1 Recover and do well 
 
 On the 12 th Arrived a Sloop from the Bay of Vandovas, one Lamson 
 
18 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 Dead 
 
 m r ., who sayes that Cap* Wheeler that went hence for Jamaica is 
 his men all prest on board men of warr and his Ship Hal'd up. 
 
 Cap* Blew from R4 Island is arrived here this Day. 
 
 The Gosport and Gaily is this Day sailed for Piscataqua. 
 
 Philad. May 28: Arrived a Sloop in 22 Dayes from Antegua in whom 
 Came Cap* Roach an Inhabitant of that Island w 1 . 11 his family to Setle 
 here, brings the bad news of our forces Leaving Guardilup untaken 
 w* h the Loss of about 1000 by Enemy and Sickness. The Day (?he) 
 Sailed the Gener 1 . 1 Arrived who has lost his Eye Sight w* h Some Dis- 
 temper, the rest of the fleett and forces were Exspected from Guardi- 
 loop, the Gene 1 . 1 Layes the Miscarridge so to heart that it's thought 
 he'l hardly Recover upon it. 
 
 It's said that the men of warr that were at Guardiloop were all or- 
 dered home, and were to Sail the 29 t . h may. 
 
 Some prisoners that made then* Escape from Martinico to Antegua 
 Says that the f rench were fitting out abundance of privateers from that 
 place many of them Stout Vessels. 
 
 It's reported in the West Indies that mons^ Ponti was daylie Ex- 
 spected there w th a Squadron of men of warr of 22 Sail besydes other 
 Vessells. 
 
 The 31 Arrived here a Sloop from Jamaica 28 Dayes passage, Ad- 
 mir 1 . 1 Whetstone w th his Squadron was at Jamaica, he's done nothing 
 only burnt a Ship the french took from us and two privateer Sloops at 
 Pettiquavis. 
 
 A fleet of merchantmen between 40 & 50 Sail und? Convoy a 2 or 3 
 men of warr was to sail in May from Jamaica to England. 
 
 N Yorke June 7: Last Week Arrived here a Sloop from Coraso, 21 
 Dayes passage sayes the Dutch have an open Trade w th New Spain and 
 that the Governour of Coraso has stopt Cap*. Wrightington & his 
 Comp* who Sailed from R Island on what pretence knows not. 
 
 Cap*. Bond & Cap*. Sinclair Sails in a fourth Night or 3 Week's for 
 London. 
 
 Boston Cap*. Travise sails to Day or Too morrow for London 
 (Superscribed) 
 
 To The Hon b ! e 
 
 John Winthrop EsqT 
 
 GovT of Connecti 
 
 ffranke N London 
 
 
 CAMPBELL'S PRINTED NEWS-LETTERS 
 
 So numerous were the requests to John Campbell for extra 
 news advices that neither he nor his brother, Duncan Campbell, 
 was able to make the supply equal to the demand simply by the 
 pen. He was forced to employ the printing-press. His first 
 
The Boil on News-Letter. 
 
 bp 2luti)o;it?. 
 
 I roiu 
 
 fro:.) 
 
 April 17. to fl$<M&a? April 24. 1704. 
 
 ^J to 4 ./.. 1703. 
 
 Hirers from -V /:.;./ bring ui the Copy of 
 a bhcet l-iiels I'ruiud there, IntituUd, ^ 
 
 , r tll*iie .i.'. . !<< St.0ll.tui 1: .1 If.'lir 
 
 Ctn::en.ei 
 
 er tj 
 
 tie C 
 
 t.'t f^ir.g.hm f.>.J it i< ' I'ictfiitl.t Hriiten. 
 
 I'his Letf.-r tAi-i N^ia, That Papift* fwarm in 
 tiir.t Nation, that ihey tratt'.^k more avowedly than 
 formerly, Cs: rlut of latr m.my bcores of PncUs and 
 jcfuttesarv comeilmL;i It >:\\ F;.:w, and gone to 
 th Noah, to the Hi^lu.u,^ c\ oti.^r pL.ei tl the 
 Country. That th- .Miuidtri of the Highliindi and 
 North j;.\vc in laigo Lifts of them to the Commit- 
 tv*c of i he Genci-1 Aflcmbly, ro br hid before the 
 
 it likcwilc obferves, that a vjiv.it Number of o- 
 ther ;!' affeded perfoits .tre come over from Frame, 
 Uv.dcr pretence of accepting hei Majefty's Gracious 
 
 From all this he infers. That they have hoprs of 
 Albtttnce iraa t'^mt, OthrrWife they would never 
 be TJ impuacnl , and he givrs Rc^fons for his Ap- 
 ['rch<_nli(-nb that tlic French King miy Knd 
 thirhtrrhis U'mter, i. Becaule the E>%li/b & 
 will not then be at Sea to cppofe them. i. He can 
 then bell (pare them, the Swfon of A6kio-i beyond 
 Set being over. ?. The Expedition given h m of a 
 rrmfidtrable number to jojn them, may inc.juragr 
 him to the undertaking with fewer Men if lie can 
 but ftnd over a iumciTnt number of Officers with 
 Arms and Ammunition. 
 
 He endeavours in the reft of his Lerters to an- 
 fwer the foulifli Pretences of the Pretender's being a 
 Proteftant, ^nd trur he will govern us according to 
 Law. He fays, that being bred up in the Reli- 
 Kion and Politicks of Fnnce, he is by Education A 
 Iht cd Enemy to our Libcirv and Religion. Tnat 
 the Obligations which ho and his Family owe to 
 nereiLrilv make him to be 
 
 the F 
 
 vine, niul 
 
 wholly at his Dcvoiicn, and to follow his-Example ; 
 
 that jf he fit upon the TboHC, the three Nations, 
 ,i JICT evident from matt be obli^'d to pay the Debt which he owes the 
 in.- Intcreil of the ! Fitm.lt King for the Education of himfeJf, and for 
 heir lecret Cabals, , Entertaining his Jjppofed Father and Its Fatnily. 
 
 And fince the King rauft reftorr him by Ais Troops, 
 
 if ever he be reftorec", he v/ill lee to fecurq 
 
 Inter . hy ; Ivr, in reality, to incrcafc Divifions in 
 the Nation, and to cntrriain u Corrcfpondcnc'e with 
 /r.".cr. T'MI their \'.\ Iment.cm Jic: evident froa 
 their talking big, li-.^ir owning 
 
 pra'cndcd King Junn VIII. their Iccrct Cabals, , Kntertaining his Jjppofed ... _ _^__, 
 
 a-nd their buying v;p of Arrui and Armr.unuio::, | And fince the King^nuft > reftorr him by Ais Troops, 
 \vftcrever they can fir 
 
 To tins'-- - JJ 
 of feme d: 
 
 tnW ^ad rather embrace Popfry than ronform tc ! rurricieiury avcng'd, but by the utter 
 
 .1 3 t - ,-. ^i 'i ...il.j^ >.ni. i>- ^../l- .. c..L:..Ts... i v " T i 
 
 r they can fine them. I if ever he be reflored, he v/ill lee to fecurq 
 
 is h? adds the Uie Writings and A_nfcj I his own Debt before chofc Troops leave BtitMiri, 
 i:(aftedted perli, .i, ii.a.ny of \vlv>r/. :UT tor j Thr Prc wilder being a good Proficient iuihe French 
 cT t Afr, rh^r frv 1 of ( hem hw tlecUr'H , nd P^^.fh Schoolis, !.v ,,'Jl uc*u il/inlc. Km.telf 
 
 prclcnt Government , diat-ihey reluie to pray 
 for the Queen, hut uu- the ambiguous word Sove 
 hiign, and" fouic of them pray in expirfs \Vo-xis for 
 'he King ar.o Royal F-mily and chc dunubie 
 and ccnerous Prince who liis (he'v'd chem fo rau^r 
 He iikewifc takes notice of Letrei-s not 
 
 long ago found in Cypher, and directed tc .1 
 Pcrion lately come thither roin x. ^trmunt. 
 He fiys that the greateft Jacobites, who wltt not 
 
 Protf:fta)ir Subjects, botl- isllcrctlcks ' if,id T>\rors. 
 The ULC Quctn, his pretended Mother, who In 
 (old Blooci when (he was << of B.-iisii^ ^fvnw 
 tntttrnihr V'eftof i.r/x,^ into a nunc!nir"^i e )d 
 wii'bethtm for doing To by the jrcateit part 
 Nation . and, no doubt, iS at P4JiM to ' 
 
 tended Sop educated to Her owi- 
 
 er 
 
 htfa\s, it wne agrca. iVUcuxefs Jo 'the Nation to 
 
 ... . , .. lakcaP-.V.ce bred up ir/ the hornd School a;"b>prjt 
 
 flualilv; tiheaifciyes by taking rhcC.'aths loHerMa- i titudc. PtrOcution and Cruelty: 'and filled vvitH 
 jellv^ do r.ov ^vith thr Fapift' ,m^ cneu Compaui- 1 ^'"^c and Etvy Tti^. jf*c*/ f h Jarv bclh n 
 
 ons frombr. G')MJO> i"--! up roi vht Liberty o: the I Scot^ana and at Sr 
 
 Subici, comrary 10 th-;ir own Principles, but rncer- their i>re r eut iryaitj, and , .._^ 
 
 l- to keep up a iDivifion iu the Nanon He artdsj ftanccs crnnot br nuch worifc lhaa t v ej 
 
 iriat ihey 3rjgra\ me ihofe t Dings which the People preienc, arfthe more inclinable t^lheliinr 
 
 complain o.. as to EnfltuSt iefuGug to allow them He adds, Fh^r tde F.er,cb Kniff knov.i ^tt ca) 
 
 * f.ceaomof T-adc.. &'. ind Ho all rhry can to fo- ! be a more effectual way fov bmirif toUrjiWii 
 
 pen' Pivifions b< rwixt the .vaoons^aad to obftrurt I Univer'.ai Monarchy, and to.-tanc flijt protf! 
 
 ; vf ihofc things conplain'd" ot inicrefi. char by krtsnj up thfcy.'elcnd^upor? the 
 
 . The Jacobites, he fays, dc uli they can to pci-- Th'ofit o> Gr<Mi P..V/II/J V fie will !n a^l' '.pfobarjility 
 Cwadt the Nation that theii pretended King is a I attempc u , i nd I'nn he fhnuld be pcrfv/edrd thai 
 jProcelrant in his Heait tho' lu- ciarrs nor declare it j -"he Oc!ign w-oulc. ^ntc.^y in the clofc' yct.bf ^sui- 
 >hilc uodcr the Power of Frr.n-t , that he is ac . net tvt .-. x^ iome A4va;i{xgP by tmbr^iiir.g v .e 
 with the Miftakc'; ot h ; s Father's Go- . cbret '\>u'>i\s. 
 
 vernrnept, will govern us rr.or^ ac'.ording -:o Law.! Ft>m a" .",$ h Aurhftr\C?}fic!ucics r k lobe iht 
 0n4 endear bimlelf to his Subje^s. Jrtcjrft oi k hf Kl ;uioa, ro pr.^dei for 541J defenae; 
 
 .Tjiey magnifie the Stren^ch of theii own Pa^vJ and iy, "hat a* many rav6 -^Hvf taken. rfv 
 aJitl the Weaknefs and, Divifions of the other, m Alarm, and are fumiiljng ijvet 
 
 facilitate and haften their Undertaking , 
 ihcy argue themfelvcs our of their Fears, and into 
 the higheft aJTurance of accomplishing their purpose. 
 
 and Ammunition, he 
 notom? allow it, bu^ t 
 on ought all to appear 
 
 FIRST ISSUE OF 
 
 THE BOSTON 
 
 (Reduced) 
 
 U, (IRCC thr Nj.il- 
 :'} tfitf.ffcfenc* 
 o. 
 NEWS-LETTER 
 
THE FIRST AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 printed news-letter appeared Monday April 24, 1704, and was, 
 called The Boston News-Letter. It was printed on both sides of 
 a half -sheet folio, 7 x Hi inches. Because it was dated "From 
 Monday April 17 to Monday April 24, 1704," several writers 
 on colonial journalism have erroneously set down the first date 
 as that on which number one of volume one of the first Ameri- 
 can newspaper was published. There were two editions of this 
 first issue, for a typographical difference is found in the three 
 copies that have been preserved. The copy of the New York 
 Historical Society and that of the American Antiquarian So- 
 ciety are alike, while the third, that of the Massachusetts His- 
 torical Society, is clearly a second edition. (Harvard Univer- 
 sity has a piece torn from the first issue.) 
 
 The publisher's announcement was in the nature of an ad- 
 vertisement. It read as follows : 
 
 This News-Letter is to be continued Weekly; and all Persons who 
 have any Houses, Lands, Tenements, Farmes, Ships, Vessels, Goods, 
 Wares or Merchandizes, EC. to be Sold, or Lett; or Servants Runaway; 
 or Goods Stoll or Lost, may have the same Inserted at a Reasonable 
 Rate; from Twelve Pence to Five Shillings, and not to exceed: Who 
 may agree with Nicholas Boone for the same at his Shop, next door to 
 Major Davis's, Apothecary in Boston, near the Old Meeting-House. 
 
 All Persons in Town and Country may have said News-Letter Weekly 
 upon reasonable terms, agreeing with John Campbell Post-Master for 
 the same. 
 
 The early issues of this printed newspaper differed little from 
 its written predecessors save that they had extracts from English 
 papers. That of Number 1, for example, had an extract from 
 The London Flying Post (December 2 to 4, 1703) about "a pre- 
 tender, called King James VIII of Scotland, sending Popish 
 missioners from France to Scotland," and another from The 
 London Gazette (December 16 to 20, 1703) about "a most gra- 
 cious speech made by Her Majesty to both Houses." 
 
 CONTENTS OF FIRST ISSUE 
 
 For the sake of comparison with Publick Occurrences all the 
 American items of the first issue are reproduced: - 
 
 Boston, April, 18 Arrived Capt. Sill from Jamacia about 4 Weeks 
 Passage, says they continue there very Sickly. Mr. Nathaniel Oliver 
 
20 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 a principal Merchant of this place died April 15 & was decently inter'd 
 April, 18. ^Etatis 53. 
 
 The Honourable Col. Nathanael Byfield Esq. is Commissioned Judge 
 of the Admiralty for the Provinces of Massachusetts-Bay, New-Hamp- 
 shire and Rhod-Island. And Thomas Newton Esq. Judge-Deputy for 
 the Colony of Massachusetts-Bay. 
 
 The 20. the Rd. Mr. Pemberton Preach'd an Excellent Sermon on 1 
 Thes. 4. 11. And do your own business: Exhorting all Ranks & Degrees 
 of Persons to do their own work, in order to a REFORMATION : which 
 His Excellency has ordered to be Printed. 
 
 The 21. His Excellency Dissolved the Gen. Assembly. 
 
 Rhode-Island 22. The Rd. Mr. Lockyer dyed on Thurs. last 
 
 Capt. Toungrello has taken Five Prizes off of Curraso, one of which 
 is come in to Rhode-Island mostly Loaden with Cocco, Tobacco, Li- 
 quors &c. She is a Curraso Trader, as all the rest were. One of the 
 Five was one Larew a French-man, a Sloop of 8 Guns & 8 Patteraro's 
 76 Men, Fought him Board and Board three Glasses; Capt. Larew was 
 kill'd, and 20 of his Men kill'd & wounded: Capt. Toungrello wounded 
 thro' the Body; and five of his men, but none kill'd, he had but 40 
 Fighting Men, when he took Larew. 
 
 The 18 Currant, came in a Sloop to this Port from Virginia, the Mas- 
 ter informed Governour Cranston Esq. he was Chased by a Top-sail 
 Shallop off of Block-Island, which he judged to be a French Privateer, 
 and that there was two other Vessels in her Company, which he judged 
 to be her Prizes. Whereupon his Honour being concerning for the Pub- 
 lick Weal and Safety of Her Majesties good Subjects, immediately 
 caused the Drum to beat for Voluntiers, under the Command of Capt. 
 Wanton, and in 3 or four hours time, Fitted and Man'd a Brigantine, 
 with 70 brisk young men well Arm'd, who Sail'd the following Night, 
 returning last Evening, and gave his Honour an Account, that they 
 found the aforesaid Shallop, with one other, and a Ketch at Tarpolian 
 Cove, who were all Fishing Vessels belonging to Marblehead or Salem, who 
 were Fishing off of Block-Island, one of them was a French built Shallop 
 with a Topsail, which gave the great suspician that they were Enemies. 
 
 New- York, April, 17. By a Barque from Jamacia, (last from Bar- 
 muda, 7 Weeks Passage,) says, there was an Imbargo in that Island sev- 
 eral Months, occasioned by News they had of a design the French & 
 Spaniards had, to make a descent upon them: She came out with the 
 Homeward bound London Fleet, who are gone home without Convoy. 
 
 Capt. Davison in the Eagle Gaily, Sailes for London, in a Month, if 
 the Virginia Fleet stays so long; he intends to keep them Company 
 Home, if not, to run for it, being Built for that Service. 
 
 Philadelphia, April, 14. An Account that the Dreadnaught Man of 
 War was Arrived in Marryland. 
 
 N. London, April, 20. The Adventure, A Vessell 60 Tuns, will Sail 
 from thence to London, in three Weeks or a Months time. 
 
THE FIRST AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 21 
 
 The issue on March 7, 1728, published the following item 
 about Campbell's death : 
 
 On Monday Evening last the 4th Currant at 8 a-Clock, died, John 
 Campbell, Esq; Aged 75 years, former Post Master in the Place, Pub- 
 lisher of the Boston News-Letter, for many years, and One of His 
 Majesties Justices of the Peace for the County of Suffolk. 
 
 Such a notice does scant justice to the man who founded the 
 first regular newspaper in the British colonies of North Amer- 
 ica. Because so little has been written about the service he ren- 
 dered American journalism something more should be said than 
 that he was simply editor " for many years " of The Boston News- 
 Letter. 
 
 CAMPBELL AND HIS PAPER 
 
 John Campbell was of Scotch ancestry, coming to Boston 
 about the year 1692. He was a son of Duncan Campbell. His 
 brother, also Duncan, was a bookseller and was at one time 
 postmaster of Boston. In fact, John Campbell succeeded his 
 brother in that office. 
 
 It is seen from the material between the lines of his News- 
 Letter that John Campbell was practical and purposeful. No 
 useless words appeared in his announcement of the first issue 
 no promises of what the publisher intended to do. No adver- 
 tisement costing over five shillings was to be inserted. That he 
 did not enlarge on matter is proved in the copy of March 18 
 to 25, 1706, "On Thursday night last, Sampson Waters, a 
 Young man went well to Bed, and was found dead next morn- 
 ing." Nothing more! 
 
 Campbell was a man who could wax indignant over dishon- 
 esty. This fact is shown in his editorial in The News-Letter of 
 July 24 to 31, 1704, in regard to the arrest of a band of counter- 
 feiters and the seizure of their plate and press. He also made 
 many telling comments on immorality and profaneness (Octo- 
 ber 30 to November 6, 1704). In the issue of August 6 to 13, 
 1705, he concludes an obituary notice of a suicide with, "She 
 was esteemed to be a Person of a Pious and Sober Conversa- 
 tion: And we hope the Inserting of such an awful Providence 
 
22 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 here may not be offensive, but rather a Warning to all others to 
 watch against the wiles of our Grand Adversary." 
 
 His subtle sense of humor is proven in The News-Letter of 
 November 5 to 12, 1705, in regard to one Henry Burch, a 
 Quaker: "Only, that he may have his NAME a little stick to 
 him (and because he told us, you know, that he had been at 
 AMSTERDAM) we will Humbly move, that if the Authority 
 see meet, it may be LAID ON after the DUTCH-fashion; that 
 is with good BURCHEN RODS, Tho' such dealing may be too 
 easy for such a SKEELUM to meet withal." 
 
 Sarcasm came easily from his pen. To quote from his account 
 of some French and Indian, and English encounters, "And that 
 notwithstanding the negligence of our People, they do acknowl- 
 edge to have lost Two of their principal French Officers, and 50 
 French & Indians in the action." Or to quote Campbell's words 
 after his removal from the postmastership of Boston in regard 
 to the establishment of The Boston Gazette, by William Brooker, 
 the new postmaster, "I pity the readers of the new paper; its 
 sheets smell stronger of beer than of midnight oil. It is not read- 
 ing fit for people!" 
 
 On the other hand, he was public-spirited and appreciative 
 of good work. In The News-Letter of June 3 to 10, 1706, Camp- 
 bell wrote: "There are two things therefore which I shall chiefly 
 recommend to your care, one is the providing a Fund for the 
 Fortifying this City; the other is, the providing a Fund for the 
 Repairing this Her Majesties Fort, which is extreamly out of 
 Order, and for mounting the Guns, most of the Carriages being 
 rotten and unserviceable. And you may be sure, that whatso- 
 ever you shall think fit to give, shall be applied to the Uses for 
 which you give it, and to no other." In another place he said: 
 "I cannot conclude without putting you in mind of the neces- 
 sity of making provision for Out-scouts this next Winter, to be 
 sent from ALBANY." He spoke with appreciation of the in- 
 habitants of the Town of Milton freely offering their services, at 
 a time of the year when laborers were very difficult to be got even 
 for wages, "to their Reverend Minister, Mr. Peter Thacher, to 
 cut down his Grass, to make his Hay, and to carry it into his 
 Barn, and to their praise and commendation be it spoken: On 
 
THE FIRST AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 23 
 
 Monday last there was no less in his Field than 26 men Mowers 
 in a Breast, and on Wednesday there was 14 others that were 
 Rakers; and on Thursday 16 more, and no doubt there was a 
 competent number on Friday and Satturday (though not come 
 to our knowledge) to carry it into the Barn." 
 
 John Campbell had a very decided belief in the continuity of 
 foreign news. At one time he announced, with as much regret 
 as simplicity, that he was "thirteen months behind in giving the 
 news from Europe." The number for November 25 to Decem- 
 ber 2, 1706, opens with an editorial note, introducing the for- 
 eign news: "According to our usual manner (on the Arrival of 
 Ships from England, Portugal, or by the West-India Pacquets) 
 we gave you in our Last, a Summary of the most Remarkable 
 Occurrences of Europe for six weeks time, viz from the 1st of 
 August, to the 15th of September last; And now we must pro- 
 ceed to the more particular Account of the Foreign Occurrences 
 where we left off; So that any one having this Print for the year, 
 will be furnished not only with the Occurrences of Europe, the 
 West-Indies, but also those of this and the Neighbouring Prov- 
 inces." 
 
 If Campbell did not show enterprise in his treatment of for- 
 eign news, his domestic news service in later issues may be con- 
 sidered a little more up-to-date. For the most part it consisted 
 of "ship news, the governor's proclamations, reports of the elec- 
 tions of representatives to the General Court, accounts of en- 
 gagements with the Indians or with the French privateers, news 
 from the West Indies, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Maine, 
 New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York 
 and occasionally from far-away Philadelphia, or farther away 
 South Carolina." Remarkable incidents in neighboring towns 
 were occasionally printed. Skippers sailing between Boston 
 and the West Indies or ports of the other colonies were his 
 reporters of adventure stories. 
 
 He obtained news by letter; the accounts of Indian operations 
 in the Connecticut Valley, and "to the Eastward," came in let- 
 ters from Colonel Church who was commander of the colonial 
 forces; by adventurers returning from the South, as in Septem- 
 ber 4 to 11, 1704, "By some gentlemen arrived here last Week 
 
24 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 from MARYLAND, we have the following Account "; or, in 
 November 20 to 27, 1704, "In the domestic news is a report by 
 an express from Albany to New York, as brought by an Indian 
 from Canada, of preparations in Canada for a French and Indian 
 winter attack upon some point in the colonies not named." 
 Later, packet-boats helped in gathering both foreign and domes- 
 tic news: " Her Majesty Hath Settled Packet-Boats for the West- 
 Indies, who are to go from Plimouth at the beginning of every 
 Month throughout the Year, no accident preventing the same; 
 who are to touch and stay at each of the English Island-Plan- 
 tations in the following manner And thence to Return to 
 England, and not to be stayed on any pretence whatsoever." 
 In the issue of February 3 to 10, 1706, there is a statement of 
 three definite post-routes; "All the Three Posts are now in, the 
 Eastern and Southern to go out on Monday night the 10th 
 Currant, in order to return on Satturday next; and the Western 
 Post to set out then also in order to return on Saturday the 22d 
 Instant and then to set out on the Monday following the 24th 
 Currant, to go and come once a week as the other Posts do." 
 
 FIRST EXTRA 
 
 Campbell showed great enterprise in his handling of an execu- 
 tion on the Charles River. Six pirates were executed on Friday, 
 June 30, 1704. The description of the scene, the "exhortations 
 to the malefactors," and the prayer made by one of the minis- 
 ters after the pirates were on the scaffold, "as near as it could be 
 taken in writing in the great crowd," filled nearly one-half of 
 the paper. 
 
 LATER PUBLISHERS 
 
 Incidentally, it may be remarked that The Boston News-Letter 
 was first printed by Bartholomew Green in a small wooden build- 
 ing on Newberry Street. Eighteen years later Green himself 
 became the owner and publisher of the paper. To quote from 
 the issue for December 31, 1722: - 
 
 These are to give Notice, That Mr. Campbell, Designing not to Pub- 
 lish any more News-Letters, after this Monday the 31st Currant, Bar- 
 
THE FIRST AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 25 
 
 tholomew Green the Printer thereof for these 18 Years past, having had 
 Experience of his Practice therein; intends (Life permitted) to carry on 
 the same, (using his Method on the Arrival of Vessels from Great Bri- 
 tain, &c., to give a Summary of the most Remarkable Occurrences of 
 Europe, and afterwards the Thread of the News,) provided he can have 
 due Encouragement by competent Numbers taking it by the Year, so 
 as to enable him to defray the necessary Charges. And all those who 
 have a Mind (either in Town or Country) to Promote and Encourage 
 the Continuation of the abovesaid Intelligence, are hereby desired to 
 Agree with the said Green, either by Word or Writing; who may have it 
 on reasonable Terms, left at any House in Town, Sealed or Unsealed. 
 
 In the meantime, another room had been added to the print- 
 ing-house for the use of the son, Bartholomew Green, Jr. Janu- 
 ary 30, 1734, the building burned, being occupied at the time 
 by the son and his brother-in-law, John Draper, each of whom 
 had his own plant. Draper put up a new structure which on his 
 death, December 6, 1762, passed to his son, Richard Draper. 
 It was used as a printing-house until the British evacuated Bos- 
 ton in 1776 and The News-Letter was discontinued. For almost 
 threescore and ten years, The Boston News-Letter was printed 
 at this same spot on Newberry Street. Four years during the 
 editorship or authorship of Campbell, 1707-1711, the paper was 
 printed elsewhere by John Allen. 
 
 When The News-Letter passed into the hands of Bartholomew 
 Green, he tried to give its readers what they wanted by making 
 the paper semi-religious in character. In an announcement from 
 the publisher he says on January 21, 1723: 
 
 It being my Desire to make this as profitable and entertaining to the 
 good people of this country as I can, I propose to give not only the most 
 material articles of intelligence, both foreign and domestic, which con- 
 cern the political state of the world ; but also because this is a country, 
 that has yet, through the mercy of God, many people in it, that have 
 the State of religion in the world very much at heart, and would be glad, 
 if they knew how to order their prayers and praises to the Great God 
 thereupon, I shall endeavour, now and then, to insert an article upon 
 the state of religion. I shall, therefore, from time to time, wait upon 
 such as I may know to cultivate a correspondence with the most emi- 
 nent persons in several nations, who may please to communicate with 
 me, and thereby to the public, such things as all good men cannot but 
 receive with satisfaction. 
 
26 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 
 Whenever Green printed any special news item he was pretty 
 sure to add some reflection of a religious character. By way of 
 illustration, Buckingham gave the following: 
 
 Yesterday, being the Lord's-Day, the Water flowed over our Wharffs 
 and into our streets to a very surprizing height. They say the Tide 
 rose 20 Inches higher than ever was known before. The Storm was 
 very strong at North-East. The many great Wharffs, which since the 
 last overflowing Tydes have been run out into the Harbour, and fill'd 
 so great a part of the Bason, have methinks contributed something not 
 inconsiderable to the rise of the Water upon us. But if it be found that 
 in other Places distant from us, and where no such reason as this here 
 given can have place, the waters have now risen in like proportion as 
 they did with us; then we must attribute very little to the reason above 
 suggested. The loss and damage sustained is very great, and the little 
 Image of an Inundation which we had, look'd very dreadful. It had 
 been a great favour to the town, if upon the first Rising of the Waters in 
 the Streets, which hapn'd in the time of the Fore-noon Service, some 
 discreet Persons had in a grave and prudent manner inform' d some or 
 other of the Congregations of it; that such whose Houses & Stores lay 
 most exposed might have repair'd timely to them. The reason in this 
 case seems the same as if there had been a Fire in the Town. Let us 
 fear the GOD of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land, who 
 commandeth & raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves; 
 who ruleth the raging of the sea, and when the waves thereof arise, He 
 stilleth them. 
 
 SIAMESE TWINS OF JOURNALISM 
 
 John Draper, to whom the management of the paper fell in 
 1733, tried to follow in the footsteps of his father-in-law by con- 
 tinuing this semi-religious editorial policy. On Draper's death 
 in 1762, his soji Richard became the publisher. One of his acts 
 was to change the name to that of The Boston Weekly News- 
 Letter and New-England Chronicle. Not satisfied with this, he 
 tried The Massachusetts Gazette and Boston News-Letter. When 
 he acquired The Boston Post-Boy in 1768 he ran what has been 
 called the Siamese Twins in journalism. The union was called 
 The Massachusetts Gazette, but each paper continued separate 
 publication : the twin papers came out on Monday and on Thurs- 
 day; the first half of the paper on each day was The Gazette and 
 was the official organ of the Government to publish the laws, 
 etc.; the second half was The Post-Boy on Monday and The 
 
THE FIRST AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 27 
 
 News-Letter on Thursday. This singular arrangement lasted 
 from May 23, 1768, till September 25, 1769. Draper, separating 
 the twin sheets, kept alive only The News-Letter. On his death, 
 June 6, 1774, his widow and his partner, John Boyle, conducted 
 the paper. A little later, John Howe purchased Boyle's interest 
 and together with Mrs. Draper ran the paper until some time 
 between September 7 and October 13, 1775, when Howe con- 
 ducted it alone until its suspension in 1776. The last known 
 issue was on February 22 of that year. 
 
 END OF NEWS-LETTER 
 
 In this way The Boston News-Letter had a continuous exist- 
 ence for practically seventy-two years. Loyal to the Home 
 Government, it had the distinction of being the only paper pub- 
 lished in Boston while Washington was besieging the city. That 
 it did not survive longer was doubtless due to its malicious at- 
 tacks upon Washington and other generals of the Revolution: 
 the Boston patriots, aroused by their desire for independence at 
 any cost, refused to tolerate a Tory paper which they had long 
 dubbed The Court Gazette. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 BEGINNINGS IN COLONIES 
 
 MASSACHUSETTS, PENNSYLVANIA, AND NEW YORK 
 
 BOTH for historical and for sentimental reasons, the beginnings 
 of anything have unusual interest. This fact will explain why 
 so much space is given to the first two or three newspapers in 
 each of the original thirteen colonies. Some of these papei;s were 
 most unpretentious and were born to bloom unseen save by a 
 comparatively few subscribers who were usually so delinquent 
 in the payment of their subscriptions that many of the papers 
 continually faced the possibility of suspension. The newspaper 
 must be properly nourished and must have a fairly good circu- 
 lation or it cannot withstand those diseases which thrive best 
 when the circulation is poor and the newspaper is struggling for 
 existence. Though the high death-rate among these papers tells 
 its own story, nowhere will be found a more practical demon- 
 stration of following the advice, "If at first you don't succeed, 
 try again." Whatever else may have been his qualifications, 
 the early American printer as a usual thing was persistent in 
 his efforts to enlighten his neighbors through the press, and in 
 his attempts to found papers may be found that distinguish- 
 ing characteristic of American journalism which knows no such 
 thing as defeat. The fact must not be lost sight of that during 
 the early history of this country newspaper censors were ever 
 present who, clothed by the law with authority, never hesitated 
 to annoy the poor printer whenever he put anything interest- 
 ing in his paper. A jail sentence rather than a libel suit was the 
 sword of Damocles which hung in every newspaper office should 
 something be printed which reflected in any way upon the 
 Government. Feeble as were some of these pioneer papers, 
 they were the foundations upon which rests the journalism of 
 to-day. 
 
BEGINNINGS IN COLONIES 29 
 
 POSTAL ORGAN OF MASSACHUSETTS 
 
 When John Campbell, the founder of American journalism 
 and the publisher of The News-Letter, was, in 1719, removed 
 from his office as postmaster at Boston, his successor was Wil- 
 liam Brooker. The latter for several reasons evidently felt the 
 need of a special organ, for on December 21, 1719, he startedS 
 The Boston Gazette. Campbell, said to have been so indignant I 
 over his removal from office that he would not let his paper be 
 distributed through the mails, intimated that his News-Letter 
 was "held up" in the post-office so that " people remote have 
 been prevented from having the News-Paper." Whatever his 
 reason he kept his paper out of the mails, a fact which is said to 
 have helped Brooker's decision to bring out The Gazette. The 
 latter paper became practically the organ of the Boston post- 
 master and was accordingly passed along one to. the other until 
 it became a part of The England Weekly Journal in 1741. From 
 1719 to 1754 every postmaster had his own paper, and five out 
 of the six who held the office during this time were connected 
 with The Boston Gazette. 
 
 So long as Brooker was postmaster, the printer of The Gazette 
 was James Franklin. When the paper changed hands, the print- 
 ing went to Samuel Kneeland. Peeved at the loss of this busi- 
 ness, Franklin retaliated by starting The New-England Courant 
 on August 7, 1721. 
 
 FIRST NEWSPAPER WAR 
 
 Of the newspaper war which arose after the starting of The 
 New-England Courant between or among the three Bos- 
 ton papers, only the briefest mention is necessary. Campbell 
 doubtless felt the competition, for his appeals for support of 
 The News-Letter became more urgent. If, in the end, he had to 
 yield, he at least "died with his boots on." 
 
 The conflict, however, that Franklin had, not only with the 
 authorities, but also with the clergy, deserves more than pass- 
 ing mention. The controversy with the latter started over vac- 
 cination for smallpox. Franklin was bitterly opposed to such a 
 practice, and the way he lampooned the Reverend Increase 
 
30 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 Mather for upholding such a doctrine has never been equaled 
 even by the yellow press. The distinguished clergyman was 
 something of a fighter, as may be seen from his "Advice to the 
 Publick" published in The Gazette: 
 
 Whereas a wicked Libel called the New-England Courant, has repre- 
 sented me as one among the Supporters of it; I do hereby declare, that 
 altho' I paid for two or three of them, I then, (before the last Courant 
 was published) sent him word I was extreamly offended with it ! In 
 special, because in one of his Vile Courants he insinuates, that if the 
 Ministers of God approve of a thing, it is a Sign it is of the Devil; which 
 is a horrid thing to be related ! And altho' in one of the Courants it is 
 declared, that The London Mercury Sept. 16, 1721, affirs that Great 
 Numbers of Persons in the City and suburbs are under the Inoculation 
 of the Small Pox; in his next Courant he asserts, that it was some Busy 
 Inoculator, that imposed on the Publick in saying so; Whereas I my- 
 self saw and read those words in The London Mercury : And he doth 
 frequently abuse the Ministers of Religion, and many other worthy 
 Persons in a manner, which is intolerable. For these and such like Rea- 
 sons I signified to the Printer, that I would have no more of their 
 Wicked Courants. I that have known what New-England was from 
 the Beginning, cannot but be troubled to see the Degeneracy of this 
 Place. I can well remember when the Civil Government would have 
 taken an effectual Course to suppress such a Cursed Libel! which if 
 it be not done I am afraid that some Awful Judgment will come upon 
 this Land, and the Wrath of God will arise, and there will be no Remedy. 
 I cannot but pity poor Franklin, who tho' but a Young Man it may be 
 Speedily he must appear before the Judgment Seat of God, and what 
 answer will he give for printing things so vile and abominable? And I 
 cannot but Advise the Supporters of this Courant to consider the Con- 
 sequences of being Partakers in other Mens Sins, and no more Coun- 
 tenance such a Wicked Paper. 
 
 The Reverend Mr. Mather was reported to have said that 
 The New-England Courant was " carried on by a Hell-Fire Club, 
 with a Non- Juror at the head of them." Not content with pick- 
 ing a quarrel with the clergy Franklin began to criticize the acts 
 of civil magistrates. But let Benjamin Franklin tell the tale how 
 he broke into journalism as the result of his brother's troubles 
 with the Assembly, even though he is in error about dates and 
 numerical rank of The New-England Courant which was the 
 third paper in Boston and the fourth in the colonies: - 
 
 My brother had, in 1720, begun to print a newspaper. It was the 
 second that appeared in America, and was called the New England Cou- 
 
BEGINNINGS IN COLONIES 31 
 
 rant. The only one before it was the Boston News-Letter. I remember 
 his being dissuaded by some of his friends from the undertaking, as not 
 likely to succeed, one newspaper being in their judgment enough for 
 America. At this time, 1771, there are not less than five-and-twcnty. 
 lie went on, however, with the undertaking. I was employed to carry 
 the papers to the customers, after having worked in composing the 
 types and printing off the sheets. . . . 
 
 My brother's discharge was accompanied with an order, and a very 
 odd one, that "James Franklin no longer print the newspaper called 
 The' New England Courant." On consultation held in our printing- 
 office amongst his friends, what he should do in this conjuncture, it 
 was proposed to elude the order by changing the name of the paper. 
 But my brother, seeing inconvenience in this, came to a conclusion, as 
 a better way, to let the paper in future be printed in the name of Ben- 
 jamin Franklin; and in order to avoid the censure of the Assembly, 
 that might fall on him, as still printing it by his apprentice, he con- 
 trived and consented that my old indenture should be returned to me 
 with a discharge on the back of it, to show in case of necessity; and, in 
 order to secure to him the benefit of my service, I should sign new in- 
 dentures for the remainder of my time, which were to be kept private. 
 A very flimsy scheme it was; however, it was immediately executed, 
 and the paper was printed accordingly, under my name, for several 
 months. 
 
 The fact not to be lost sight of is that every such conflict with 
 the civil authorities brought the freedom of the press a little 
 nearer its realization. Another fact, almost equally as impor- 
 tant, was that liberty of the press not only in England, but also 
 in America has been intimately associated with liberty of reli- 
 gious worship and that freedom in both was simultaneous in 
 New England. The Courant was probably discontinued in 1727. 
 
 FIRST PENNSYLVANIA PAPER 
 
 On December 22, 1719, the Tuesday following the Monday 
 on which The Boston Gazette was established, The American 
 Weekly Mercury, the first newspaper in the middle colonies and 
 the third paper in America, appeared in Philadelphia from the 
 press of Andrew Bradford, the local postmaster and a son of 
 William Bradford, who was to be the publisher of the first news- 
 paper in New York. At first, the paper was sold by "Andrew 
 Bradford at The Bible in the Second Street and John Copson 
 in the High Street/' but on May 25, 1721, Copson's name was 
 
32 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 withdrawn from the imprint and that of " William Bradford in 
 New York" was substituted. When the elder Bradford started 
 The New York Gazette November 8, 1725, his name, as the seller 
 of The American Weekly Mercury in New York, was removed. 
 On December 13, 1739, The Mercury was " printed by Andrew 
 and William Bradford," a partnership, however, which lasted 
 only about eleven months, when The Mercury was again printed 
 by Andrew Bradford. After his death on November 23, 1742, 
 the next issue, December 2, was put in mourning with the in- 
 verted column rules. His widow, Cornelia Bradford, suspended 
 the paper for one week on account of the death of her husband 
 and then continued the black borders for the next six weeks. 
 Later, with Isaiah Warner as a partner, she published The Mer- 
 cury until October 18, 1744, when she again became the sole 
 proprietor. The paper bore her name in the imprint so far as 
 can be learned until its suspension early in 1747. 
 
 Andrew Bradford, like other colonial editors, had his troubles 
 with the civic authorities, for on January 2, 1721, he printed an 
 item which read, "our General Assembly are now sitting and 
 we have great expectation from them at this juncture that they 
 will find some effectual remedy to revive the dying credit of this 
 Province and restore us to our former happy circumstances." 
 The Provincial Council saw a criticism of its actions in this 
 paragraph and summoned its publisher on February 21 to ex- 
 plain why such an item was inserted in his paper. In its defense 
 Bradford said the notice was written and inserted by a German 
 printer without authority and that he regretted exceedingly its 
 publication. With the usual reprimand and with a warning 
 never to publish anything in the future about the affairs of any 
 of the colonies, he was discharged. 
 
 This punishment was mild compared with the one that he re- 
 ceived for printing some communications from Benjamin Frank- 
 lin signed "Busy Body." These communications by Franklin, 
 while simply insisting that those in authority should be inspired 
 with a public spirit and with a love of their country, so offended 
 the Governor and his Council that they arrested Bradford, sent 
 him to jail, and later bound him over to the court. In colonial 
 days editors did not seem to mind being locked up in jail: edit- 
 
BEGINNINGS IN COLONIES 33 
 
 ing a paper from prison was always sure to increase the circula- 
 tion. Certainly, Bradford's Mercury never occupied a very im- 
 portant place in Philadelphia until after he had been in prison. 
 During much of the time that Bradford conducted The Ameri- 
 can Weekly Mercury he was postmaster of Philadelphia. This 
 office was of great help to him, if the words of Franklin can be 
 accepted at their face value. To quote from his " Autobiog- 
 raphy":- 
 
 As he (Bradford) held the post office, it was imagined that he had 
 better opportunities for obtaining the news, and his paper was thought 
 a better distributor of advertisements than mine, and therefore had 
 many more; which was a profitable thing for him and a disadvantage 
 to me, for tho' I did receive and send papers by the post, yet the pub- 
 lic opinion was otherwise; for what I did send was by bribing the rid- 
 ers, who took them privately, Bradford being unkind enough to forbid 
 it, which occasioned some resentment on my part; and I thought so 
 meanly of the practice that when I afterwards came into the position, 
 I took care never to imitate it. 
 
 SECOND PAPER IN PHILADELPHIA 
 
 With the issue of Number 80 of The New-England Courant on 
 February 11, 1723 (Old Style), Benjamin Franklin had become 
 a Boston newspaper publisher in name, if not in fact. After a 
 quarrel with his brother, James, he had gone to New York: 
 not finding employment with William Bradford, the only printer 
 there at that time, he had gone on to Philadelphia where he 
 worked at his trade in the office of Samuel Keimer, one of the 
 two printers of the place. Of his trip to England and of his part- 
 nership, upon his return to Philadelphia, with Hugh Meredith, 
 nothing needs to be said here until that time when they had de- 
 cided to publish a newspaper. Unfortunately for them, their 
 decision reached Keimer through a former fellow-workman, 
 George Webb, before they were prepared to bring out the paper. 
 
 Keimer, on the other hand, lost no time in publishing a pro- 
 spectus of one he would speedily print. His announcement re- 
 minds one of modern magazine braggadocio : 
 
 Whereas many have encouraged me to publish a Paper of Intelli- 
 gence: and whereas the late Mercury has been so wretchedly performed 
 as to be a Scandal to the Name of Printing, and to be truly styled Non- 
 
34 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 sense in Folio, This is therefore to notify that I shall begin in Novem- 
 ber next a most useful Paper, to be entitled, The Pennsylvania Gazette 
 or Universal Instructor. The Proposer having dwelt at the Fountain of 
 Intelligence in Europe, will be able to give a Paper to please all and to 
 offend none, at the reasonable Expense of Ten Shillings per annum, 
 Proclamation Money. 
 
 The paper, with the longer title of The Universal Instructor in 
 all Arts and Sciences; and Pennsylvania Gazette, appeared on 
 December 24, 1728. The next week Keimer, adopting the style 
 of the Quakers, dated his paper, "The 2d of the llth mo. 1728." 
 In spite of the fact that the first two pages were given up to 
 extracts from Chambers' " Dictionary of the Arts and Sciences," 
 a book just imported from London, Keimer boasted that with 
 the thirteenth issue the paper had a circulation of two hundred 
 and fifty copies. Then the subscribers began to drop off: not 
 even selected tales of English life or extracts from Defoe's "Re- 
 ligious Courtship" prevented the diminution. One reason for 
 the decline may have been the ridicule hurled at the paper by 
 Franklin, under the nom-de-plume of "Busy Body," in the col- 
 umns of The Mercury. After nine months the paper had less 
 than one hundred subscribers, and Keimer was glad to sell at 
 any price to Franklin and Meredith, who assumed control with 
 Number 40 on October 2, 1729. 
 
 FRANKLIN A REAL NEWSPAPER PUBLISHER 
 
 The new firm shortened the title to The Pennsylvania Gazette, 
 cut short the "Religious Courtship," and referred its readers to 
 Chambers' "Dictionary" for further information which it would 
 take them fifty years to give if they followed Keimer's example 
 of printing. In the place of these features, Franklin put good 
 news-items mixed with a little comment of his own. With 
 the fourth issue he announced a "Half Sheet twice a Week" 
 and gave America its first semi-weekly. But he was too pro- 
 gressive a journalist for the time, and after a few numbers he 
 returned to weekly publication. 
 
 On July 14, 1730, the partnership of Franklin and Meredith 
 was dissolved: the former continued the sole publisher of 
 the paper until 1748 when he admitted David Hall who had 
 
BEGINNINGS IN COLONIES 35 
 
 started to work on the paper five years before. Hall, to quote 
 Franklin's words, "took off my hands all care of the printing- 
 office, paying me punctually my share of the profits." This 
 second partnership lasted eighteen years, during which time the 
 paper became possibly the most influential and certainly the 
 most successful financially of any of the colonial newspapers. 
 By way of illustration of the latter, the profits from 1748 to 1766, 
 when Hall became the sole proprietor, amounted to over twelve 
 thousand pounds for subscriptions and over four thousand for 
 advertising. 
 
 When the Stamp Act went into effect on November 1, 1765, 
 The Pennsylvania Gazette appeared not only without a title, but 
 also without an imprint so that the publisher might not be 
 known to the authorities. When the paper resumed its old 
 title, Franklin's name was omitted in the imprint. He doubt- 
 less sold out to Hall at that time, but he did not dissolve the 
 partnership formally until February 1, 1766. In May of that 
 year Hall took in William Sellers as partner and together they 
 continued The Pennsylvania Gazette. 
 
 After Franklin ceased to be connected actively with The 
 Pennsylvania Gazette, he achieved fame in so many lines that he 
 has often been spoken of as the many-sided Franklin. To the 
 last, however, the diplomat and scientist thought of himself 
 first as a printer. This epitaph, composed by and for himself, 
 before his death on April 19, 1790, showed this fact: 
 
 The Body of 
 
 Benjamin Franklin, Printer, 
 (Like the cover of an old Book, 
 
 Its contents worn out, 
 And stript of its lettering and gilding) 1 
 
 Lies here, food for worms! 
 
 Yet the work itself shall not be lost, 
 
 For it will, as he believed, appear once more 
 
 In a new 
 
 And more beautiful edition, 
 Corrected and amended 
 By its Author. 
 
 The demise of The Pennsylvania Gazette occurred on October 
 11, 1815. An advertisement on that date reprinted a notice 
 
36 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 dated September 20, 1815, in which an announcement was 
 made that owing to the death of both proprietors, Hall and 
 Pierie, The Pennsylvania Gazette would discontinue on October 
 11, 1815. The notice asserted that if enough subscribers could 
 be obtained by a certain date the paper would be revived. New 
 papers which had appeared in Philadelphia seemed to have the 
 popular favor, for the required number of subscribers was not 
 secured and The Pennsylvania Gazette, which had held a fore- 
 most place in two different eras of American journalism, was no 
 more. The plant of the paper was sold and the equipment be- 
 came scattered among the various printing-offices of the city. 
 
 FIRST PAPER IN NEW YORK 
 
 Because William Bradford was the founder of the first paper 
 in New York, and because he trained in his shop many of the 
 printer-editors of colonial New York, he should receive special 
 attention. After learning his trade in the office of his father-in- 
 law, Andrew Sowle, he accompanied William Penn to America 
 in 1682. Upon his return to England in 1685 he procured a press 
 and type and again set sail for Philadelphia where he opened a 
 bookshop and did a general printing business a work which 
 needs only passing mention, as he did not at that time think of 
 starting a newspaper. 
 
 Invited to come to New York by Governor Benjamin Fletcher, 
 Bradford was appointed " Royal Printer" in 1693. In 1696 
 Bradford evidently reprinted an English newspaper, prob- 
 ably The London Gazette, for a letter dated May 30, 1696, 
 from Governor Fletcher to the Lords of Trade says: "A Ship 
 belonging to this Place from Madera happily mett at Sea that 
 Vessell which had your Lord's Packet for Virginia & brought 
 me a Gazett which gave me an Account of that horrid Conspir- 
 acy against His Majesty's Sacred Person. I caused it to be re- 
 printed here." Possibly Bradford was mindful of the fate of the 
 venture attempted by Benjamin Harris in Boston and did not 
 care to start a paper when the censorship was so severe. 
 
 Thomas, in his " History of Printing," reproduced a heading 
 of a second number of The New-York Gazette in which it showed 
 the date of from Monday, October 16, to October 23, 1725: 
 
BEGINNINGS IN COLONIES 37 
 
 this would make the first issue on October 16, 1725 a date 
 which has been commonly accepted as that on which New York's 
 first newspaper appeared. While Thomas undoubtedly knew at 
 first hand about the early journalism of New England, he was 
 evidently mistaken about the date of the first issue of The New- 
 York Gazette. Unfortunately, no copy of the first issue of the 
 paper has survived, but there are, however, copies of the paper 
 published the first half of 1726. Taking any one of these as a 
 starting-point and working backwards, one finds that Volume 
 I, Number 1, should be dated November 1 to November 8, 
 1725: in other words, The New-York Gazette was first published 
 on November 8, 1725, if there was regularity of publication. 
 
 To support the correctness of this date , the following facts 
 may be cited: Bradford's day of publication was on Monday, 
 and any almanac for 1725 shows that October 16 fell not on 
 Monday, but on Saturday. 
 
 The New-York Gazette, Number 26, May 2, 1726, contained 
 this item : 
 
 N.B. This Numb. 26 of our Gazette, concludes the first half year and 
 is the Time the first Payment should be made by the Gentlemen who 
 encourage the same. And altho' the Number subscribed for does not 
 defray the Charge, yet we intend to Continue it the next half year, in 
 the hopes of further Encouragement. 
 
 The most positive proof of November 8 as the date on which 
 Bradford first brought out his Gazette will be found in an item 
 published after the paper had been in existence two and one-half 
 years : 
 
 By the Advice and encouragement of some Gentlemen, for the In- 
 formation of the Publick, We began to Publish this Gazette the first of 
 November, 1725 (not doubting but we should have Subscribers to take 
 off such a Number as might defray the Charge), and the first of May 
 last it was Two Years & a half that we have continued its Publication; 
 but having calculated the Charge of Printing and Paper for the same, 
 as also how much will arise to defray that Charge (when all those that 
 take this Gazette have paid in what is due to the first of May last) do 
 find that we shall lose Thirty-Five Pounds in the two years and a half 
 by Publishing this Paper, besides the trouble and Charge of Corre- 
 spondents, collecting the News, making up Pacquets and conveying the 
 same to those in the Country who take them, And therefore if some 
 
38 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 further Encouragement be not given by a larger Number of Subscri 
 ers for said Gazette we must let it fall, and cease publishing the same. 
 Many Persons that take this Gazette being above a year behind in their 
 Payments, and some not having paid since the first publishing of the 
 same, They are now desired to pay in what is due, in order to enable the 
 further Publication, if it be continued. 
 
 This advertisement, or appeal, in Bradford's own paper set- 
 tles, beyond the permissibility of a doubt, the month in which 
 his Gazette first appeared. It should be noticed that Bradford 
 did not say the first day of November, but "the first of Novem- 
 ber 1725," and consequently, because of the other proofs just 
 given, his assertion may be taken as a common way about speak- 
 ing of the first week of the month. In view of these facts, the 
 date of New York's first newspaper may be set down as No- 
 vember 8, 1725. 
 
 From 1725 to 1730 The New-York Gazette consisted of a single 
 sheet of four pages. From 1730 on, the number of pages was 
 irregular, sometimes, two, other times, three, and occasionally, 
 six. The paper was invariably poorly printed doubtless due 
 to the fact that Bradford had used the type for a long time be- 
 fore he began to print this newspaper. Advertisements were 
 few in number and the subscribers were not numerous enough 
 to afford much encouragement to the printer a fact brought 
 out by the two quotations already printed from Bradford's 
 Gazette. 
 
 During all the years that Bradford conducted his paper, he 
 was most loyal to those in authority. Yet Bradford, at heart, 
 undoubtedly was in favor of the freedom of the press and sup- 
 ported in his columns many things simply because he needed 
 the salary which he received as "Printer to the Province of New 
 York," and which he would doubtless have lost had he adopted 
 the motto of The New-York Chronicle, the tenth paper in New 
 York, which read: "Open to all Parties and Influenced by None." 
 Had The New-York Gazette been open to the Popular Party, it is 
 a matter of doubt whether John Peter Zenger would have started 
 The New-York Weekly Journal in 1733. 
 
 The newspaper war which arose between The New-York 
 Gazette and The New-York Weekly Journal, the next paper of 
 
 :rib- 
 
BEGINNINGS IN COLONIES 39 
 
 the colony, made Bradford's newspaper unpopular with the 
 common people and assisted in a most material way to put Zen- 
 ger's paper on a firm basis. 
 
 Bradford retired from the newspaper world on November 19, 
 1744, with the last issue of The New-York Gazette. For some 
 time the paper had been published under the joint imprint of 
 William Bradford and Henry De Foreest. After Bradford's re- 
 tirement, De Foreest changed the name of the paper to The 
 New-York Evening Post, with the next issue on November 26, 
 1744. Bradford died May 25, 1752. 
 
 ZENGER AND HIS PAPER 
 
 The second newspaper in the city was The New-York Weekly 
 Journal first issued Monday, November 5, 1733, incorrectly 
 dated October 5, by John Peter Zenger, a German who had 
 come to New York in 1710 with a group of Palatines sent over 
 by Queen Anne. Robert Hunter, at that time " Governor-in- 
 Chief of New York, New Jersey, and Territories Depending 
 Thereon in America," apprenticed Zenger on October 26, 1710, 
 for eight years to William Bradford the printer whose news- 
 paper has just been mentioned. Zenger, after he had become 
 fairly proficient at his trade, ran away from his employer and 
 drifted first into Pennsylvania and later into Maryland. Upon 
 his return to New York he formed a partnership with Brad- 
 ford. His association with his former partner was brief, for in 
 1726 he set up his own print-shop first on Smith and then later 
 on Broad Street. 
 
 At this time New York had no newspaper to speak for the 
 Popular Party, as Bradford's Gazette was practically a Govern- 
 ment organ and its editor had to follow the directions of the 
 Government " under the penalty of losing 50 pounds per annum 
 salary and the title of the King's Printer for the Province of New 
 York." As Zenger was poor and barely able to make both ends 
 meet, there can be no doubt that when he brought out The New- 
 York Weekly Journal on November 5, 1733, he was assisted 
 financially by those opposed to the ruling powers. Among 
 these was one James Alexander, who, in modern newspaper lan- 
 guage, would be called the chief editorial writer. Most of the 
 
40 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 contents of The Journal was contributed matter, as may be 
 learned by any one who cares to turn to the files of the early 
 numbers. Zenger's contributions are easily discovered by their 
 poor spelling and by their grammatical errors. Nevertheless, 
 The Journal, which was folio in size, was much better printed 
 than Bradford's Gazette, and so popular were some of the articles 
 in the early issues that more than one edition had to be run off. 
 Zenger told of the success of his venture in the twelfth issue 
 which appeared on January 21, 1734 (3), in which he said: - 
 
 To my Subscribers and Wellwishers; 
 
 Now when Forreign News is not to be had and all other News Writ- 
 ers in these countries are at a Loss how to continue their Papers, and 
 what to fill them up with; I must acknowledge my Obligation to you to 
 be such, that you do so plentifully supply me, that tho' for some Weeks 
 past I have used my smallest Letter, and to put as much into a Paper 
 as was in my Power, yet I have now Supplies sufficient to fill above 
 seven weekly Papers more. This I mention that my Correspondents 
 whose Works have not presently a Place in my Journal may know the 
 cause of it and excuse it for a Time, assuring them that Justice shall 
 be done to their Labours as soon as I possibly can, at least so much of 
 them as I am advised I dare safely print and in order to do Justice to 
 every one, I have thought of publishing a Thursdays Journal weekly 
 for the Next Quarter, if my Subscribers for this Mondays Journal, will 
 on their first Quarters Payment signify their desire of it either by Let- 
 ter or Subscription for that purpose on the like Terms as this Paper, 
 which I beg they '11 consider of and signify their Inclinations, and if a 
 sufficient Number to bear the charge approve of it, it shall (God willing) 
 be done. 
 
 I am 
 Your obliged humble Servant 
 
 J. Peter Zenger. 
 
 An interesting comparison of The Gazette and The Journal was 
 made by a correspondent who, writing under the nom-de-plume 
 "Upon," gave the following reasons for his selection: "Zenger 
 rides too fast and sticks in the spur when he ought to make use 
 of the reins." 
 
 ZENGER'S TRIAL 
 
 An editor with such characteristics was bound to get into 
 trouble with the authorities in colonial days. In his second num- 
 
BEGINNINGS IN COLONIES 41 
 
 ber, Zenger published an article on "The Liberty of the Press." 
 This was followed by other articles radical in tone. In Novem- 
 ber, 1734, an issue of The Weekly Journal was omitted. The rea- 
 son Zenger gave in his next issue, Number 55, for Monday, No- 
 vember 25 : 
 
 To All My Subscribers and Benefactors Who take My Weekly Journall. 
 Gentlemen, Ladies, and Others; 
 
 As you last week were Disappointed of My Journall I think it Incum- 
 bent upon me, to publish My Apoligy which is this. On the Lords Day, 
 the Seventeenth of this Instant, I was Arrested, taken and Imprisoned 
 in the common Goal of this Citty, by Virtue of a Warrant from the 
 Governour, and the Honorable Francis Harrison, Esq; and others in 
 Council of which (God Willing) yo'l have a coppy whereupon I was 
 put under such Restraint that I had not the Liberty of Pen, Ink, or 
 Paper, or to see, or speak with People till upon my Complaint to the 
 Honourable the Chief Justice, at my appearing before him upon My 
 Habias Corpus on Wednesday following. Who discountenanced that 
 Proceeding and therefore I have since that Tune the Liberty of Speak- 
 ing through the Hole of the Door to My Wife and Servants by which 
 I doubt not yo'l think me sufficiently Excused for not sending my last 
 weeks Journall, and I hope for the future by the Liberty of Speaking 
 to my Servants thro' the Hole of the Door of the Prison to entertain 
 you with My Weakly Journall as formerly. 
 
 And am your obliged 
 
 Humble Servant 
 
 J. Peter Zenger. 
 
 Writing from his prison on December 20, 1734, Zenger not 
 only defended himself in replying to an attack made in Brad- 
 ford's Gazette, but also criticized its writer for recalling the fact 
 that he was brought over at the expense of the Crown. To quote 
 Zenger's words : 
 
 There is a great Noise made in that ridiculous Letter in Mr. Brad- 
 ford's last Gazette about setting the Province in Flames, raising of Sedi- 
 tion and Tumults, etc. I know of none, either past or intended; if my 
 Adversaries know of any, they '1 do well to discover them, and prevent 
 the Consequences . . . That I was brought over at the charitable 
 expense of the Crown is the only Truth that groaping Fumbler found 
 when he studied that clumsy Performence I acknowledge it; Thanks 
 to QUEEN ANNE whose Name I Mention with Reverence, her Bounty 
 to me and my distress'd Country Folks to be gratefully remem- 
 bered. If that Author has contributed any Thing towards it, I begg to 
 be inf orm'd, I assure him that my Acknowledgement shall not be want- 
 
42 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 ing, not with standing his 111 Treatment: If he has not, I begg leave to 
 tell him, that it is mean for him to twit me with Benefits that I am 
 no ways beholden to him for. 
 
 Because of his attack on the arbitrary and corrupt adminis- 
 tration of the British Colonial Governor Crosby, Zenger had 
 been arrested on the charge of seditious libel. In the trial which 
 followed, Zenger was fortunate in having to defend him Andrew 
 Hamilton, probably the ablest lawyer of Philadelphia. During 
 the most interesting trial several departures were made from 
 the legal procedure of the past in libel suits. These have been 
 outlined by Melville E. Stone, General Manager of the Asso- 
 ciated Press, as follows : 
 
 First, the jury took the bit in their teeth and asserted their right to 
 be the sole judges of both the law and the facts. Second, they decided 
 that the oldtime rule that "the greater the truth the greater the libel" 
 was an unwise one. Zenger was acquitted. And so it came about that 
 there was a famous revolution in the colonial law. The judge ceased to 
 be the sole arbiter of an editor's fate, and the truth when published 
 from good motives and justifiable ends became an adequate defence 
 for the journalist brought to bar. This meant that for the first time in 
 the world's history the freedom of the press, so far as such freedom was 
 consistent with public rights, was established. The seed which John 
 Milton had sown a century before, when he wrote his famous plea for 
 "unlicensed printing/' had come to fruition. Gouverneur Morris said 
 this verdict was "the dawn of that liberty which afterward revolu- 
 tionized America." 
 
 END OF ZENGER'S CAREER 
 
 Zenger was made Public Printer for the Province of New 
 York in 1737, and a year later was given the same office for the 
 Province of New Jersey. He continued, however, to bring out 
 his Weekly Journal and lived to see the suspension of his rival, 
 The New-York Weekly Gazette. The New-York Evening Post, the 
 first paper of that name in the city, told of the end of Zenger's 
 career when it published the following obituary notice on Au- 
 gust 4, 1746:- 
 
 On Monday Evening last, departed this Life Mr. John Peter Zenger, 
 Printer, in the 49 year of his Age; He Has left a Wife and six children 
 behind, he was a loving Husband, and a tender Father, and his Death 
 is much lamented by his Family and Relations. 
 
BEGINNINGS IN COLONIES 43 
 
 The New-York Weekly Journal, however, continued to be pub- 
 lished by Zenger 's wife and son, John Zenger, Jr., until March 
 18, 1751, or possibly a few weeks longer, though no copies 
 are known of a later date than the one just given. 
 
 Mother and son, however, experienced the greatest difficul- 
 ties in making the paper pay expenses, and at various times 
 printed in The New-York Weekly Journal notices requesting 
 subscribers who did not have the ready money to send in hams, 
 butter, cheese, poultry, flour, etc., in payment for their sub- 
 scriptions in order that the "poor printer" might bring out his 
 newspaper. The family was reduced to such straits financially 
 that New York printers had to come to its aid: James Parker, 
 for example, in his Post-Boy, advertised in the issue for No- 
 vember 11, 1751, that "a small Number of the Charters of the 
 City of New York, printed by the late Mr. Zenger, for the Bene- 
 fit of his Widow, are to be Sold by the Printer hereof, Price 3 
 Shillings." 
 
CHAPTER V 
 BEGINNINGS IN COLONIES (continued} 
 
 IN the printing-plants of the newspapers mentioned in the pre- 
 ceding chapter were trained many of the pioneers who founded 
 newspapers in the other colonies. Especially was this true of 
 the plant owned by Benjamin Franklin who, on several occa- 
 sions, helped his apprentices to establish their newspapers. 
 Just what financial relations existed between Franklin and these 
 printers must be a matter of conjecture. The partnership agree- 
 ment of The Pennsylvania Chronicle showed that a third interest 
 had been set aside for Franklin should he desire to avail him- 
 self of the offer. This policy of Franklin really made him the 
 first owner of a " string of newspapers." The reason why New 
 Jersey did not have a printed newspaper until after the Colo- 
 nial Period closed is easily given: there was no demand, for the 
 New York and Pennsylvania papers met all the needs. The 
 Revolution, however, changed matters, and New Jersey came 
 forward with financial assistance for the establishment of its 
 own newspaper. Mention has been made in an earlier chapter 
 of the written newspaper publicly posted in a tavern which 
 supplemented in New Jersey the printed sheets from other 
 colonies. The expressed hope of an early Governor of Virginia 
 that his colony would not have a newspaper " these hundred 
 years" was not fulfilled: the success of the newspapers in other 
 colonies led to the establishment of The Virginia Gazette. 
 
 GENERALLY A GAZETTE 
 
 The mention of the term Gazette recalls the popularity of this 
 word as a title for a newspaper. In nine of the thirteen colonies 
 the first paper was a Gazette: these colonies were Connecticut, 
 Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, New Hampshire, New Jer- 
 sey, New York, Rhode Island, Virginia. In the four remaining 
 colonies where the first newspaper had another name, the sec- 
 ond paper to be established had the word Gazette in its title. 
 
BEGINNINGS IN COLONIES 45 
 
 The second favorite as a title for a newspaper during the colo- 
 nial days was The Journal. 
 
 PARKS'S PAPER IN MARYLAND 
 
 William Parks, who had learned his trade in England, was 
 the founder of journalism in two of the colonies. To him be- 
 longs the honor of bringing out the first paper not only in Mary- 
 land, but also in Virginia. In setting up his press in the former 
 colony in 1726 he had been made " Public Printer to Maryland." 
 One year later he began, on September 19, The Maryland Gazette 
 at Annapolis. As the colony was but sparsely settled at the time 
 he had great difficulty not only in getting subscribers, but also 
 in securing advertisements: at times his paper contained no 
 advertising save the notices inserted by himself about the things 
 for sale in his print-shop. He was, however, more energetic in 
 the matter of attempting to gather the news than many of the 
 pioneer printers, and while visiting England in 1730, he made 
 arrangements "by which upon all Occasions, I shall be furnished 
 with the freshest Intelligence both from thence and other parts 
 of Europe." Finding it financially impossible to continue his 
 paper, Parks discontinued The Gazette in 1731, but on Decem- 
 ber 8, 1732, he brought out the paper again under the title The 
 Maryland Gazette Revived. Associated with him in the revival 
 of the paper was Edmund Hall, but evidently the partnership 
 lasted only one year, for the imprint of December 28, 1733, 
 showed that William Parks was again the sole proprietor. Some 
 time between March and April of that year, the word Revived 
 was dropped from the title and the paper came out simply as 
 The Maryland Gazette. In December the paper was irregular in 
 appearance and finally was totally discontinued. 
 
 GREEN'S GAZETTE 
 
 Another newspaper with the same title, The Maryland Ga- 
 zette, was started at Annapolis, January 17, 1745, by Jonas 
 Green, one of the greatest editors of the Colonial Period. Con- 
 sequently, his account of what he hoped to make The Maryland 
 Gazette may be quoted in full to show what the best publishers 
 of that time wanted their papers to be: 
 
46 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 OUR Intend therefore, is to give the Public a Weekly Account of 
 the most remarkable Occurrences, foreign and domestic, which shall 
 from time to time come to our Knowledge; having always a principal 
 Regard to such Articles as nearest concern the American Plantations 
 in general, and the Province of Maryland in particular; ever observing 
 the strictest Justice and Truth in Relation of Facts, and the utmost 
 Disinterestedness and Impartiality in Points of Controversy . 
 
 AND in a Dearth of News, which, in this remote Part of the World, 
 may sometimes reasonably be expected, we shall study to supply that 
 Deficit, by presenting our Readers with the best Materials we can pos- 
 sibly collect; having always in this Respect, a due Regard to what- 
 ever may conduce to the Promotion of Virtue and Learning, the 
 Suppression of Vice and Immorality, and the Instruction as well as 
 Entertainment of our Readers. 
 
 WE take this Opportunity of making Application to our Learned 
 Correspondents, whose ingenious Productions, if with such we shall 
 at any Time be favoured, will ever find a Place in this Paper, and lay 
 the Printer under greatest Obligations; provided whatsoever is trans- 
 mitted of this Kind, be consistent with Sobriety and good Manners. 
 
 TO render Our GAZETTE useful, as well as entertaining, we shall 
 present our Readers with the best Directions in the Culture of Flax and 
 Hemp, especially the former, in the plainest Manner; which we hope 
 will be of public Advantage to the Community in the present Situa- 
 tion of Affairs, when we can't always be certain of Supplies, and they 
 are not to be had at all but at such Prices as the Generality of the Peo- 
 ple are not able to give for them. 
 
 AS the prosecuting and carrying on an Undertaking of this Kind has 
 been much wished for, and long desired, and must necessarily be at- 
 tended with considerable Trouble and Expence; we doubt not of meet- 
 ing with a due Encouragement from the good People of this Province, 
 in a sufficient Number of Subscriptions whereby the Printer may be 
 enabled to carry on and continue it's Publication. 
 
 'THOSE Gentlemen who are pleased to commence Subscribers, may 
 depend on the most safe and speedy Conveyance of then' respective 
 Papers, by having them forwarded to the Court-Houses, and other 
 the most public Places, of the several Counties in which they reside; 
 especially where Want of Opportunity renders it impracticable to send 
 them to the Houses of such Subscribers. 
 
 THE Price of this, Paper to Subscribers, will be Twelve Shillings, 
 Maryland Currency, per annum, unsealed; or Fourteen Shillings if 
 sealed and directed. It will be Printed on good Paper, and a beautiful 
 new Letter, the same with this Specimen. 
 
 ADVERTISEMENTS, of a moderate Length, will be taken in at 
 the Printing-Office in Annapolis, and carefully inserted in this Paper, 
 at Five Shillings each, the first Week; and One Shilling for every suc- 
 ceeding Week, so long as continued therein. 
 
BEGINNINGS IN COLONIES 47 
 
 Green at the time he started The Gazette was Public Printer 
 to Maryland, having been appointed to that office in 1740. He 
 came from that New England family which was often distin- 
 guished as printers in colonial journalism, and in addition to 
 his home training in the trade, he had worked on both Brad- 
 ford's and Franklin's papers in Philadelphia before coming to 
 Maryland. It is not strange, therefore, that he made his Ga- 
 zette,, in typographical appearance at least, the rival of any 
 newspaper of his day. 
 
 Upon Green's death, April 11, 1767, The Maryland Gazette 
 was published by his widow, Anne Catharine Green, until the 
 first of 1768 when she took her son William into partnership. 
 The latter died in August, 1770, and his mother again became 
 the publisher until her death, March 23, 1775. Two sons, Fred- 
 erick and Samuel, then continued The Gazette, which, during 
 the War of the Revolution, did much to keep up the courage 
 of the Maryland patriots. The paper was last published in 1839. 
 
 JOURNAL FIRST IN SOUTH CAROLINA 
 
 Eleazer Phillips, a New England printer, went to South Caro- 
 lina in 1730 where he established a book and stationery shop in 
 " Charles Town." Associated with him was his son, Eleazer 
 Phillips, Jr. The latter established, on or near March 4, 1730, 
 The South Carolina Weekly Journal. The paper, however, failed 
 to get enough subscribers to warrant a continuous publication 
 and suspended in about six months. 
 
 WHITMARSH AND TIMOTHY 
 
 The most important colonial paper in South Carolina was The 
 South Carolina Gazette founded January 8, 1732, by Thomas 
 Whitmarsh. Whitmarsh died of yellow fever in the summer of 
 1733, and The Gazette suspended publication on September 8 
 of that year. It was revived, however, a year later by Lewis 
 Timothy (printed in the first few issues, " Lewis Timothee"), 
 a printer from Philadelphia who had learned his trade in the 
 plant of Benjamin Franklin. Timothy brought out the first 
 number of the revival on February 2, 1734. Timothy was killed 
 in an accident in December, 1738. For about six years his 
 
48 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 paper was run by his widow, Mrs. Elizabeth Timothy. She then 
 sold her interest to her son, Peter Timothy, who published The 
 South Carolina Gazette uninterruptedly until May 7, 1772, when, 
 on his appointment as Deputy Postmaster-General for the 
 Southern Provinces of North America he leased the plant to 
 Powell, Hughes & Company. With the issue for November 8, 
 1773, Timothy resumed control of The Gazette and was its pul 
 lisher until 1775, when the paper temporarily suspended on 
 account of the Revolutionary War. Timothy again revived The 
 Gazette on April 9, 1777, with the following change in title, T) 
 Gazette of the State of South Carolina. When Charleston fell into 
 the hands of the British in 1780, The Gazette was forced to sus- 
 pend another time and its editor went into exile in St. Ai 
 tine, Florida. Shortly after his release from St. Augustine 
 was drowned, but his wife revived the paper on March 28, 1785, 
 with another change in title, The State Gazette of South Carolina. 
 Mrs. Timothy, following the example set by her mother-in-law, 
 sold the paper in 1790 to her son, Benjamin Franklin Timothy, 
 who changed the name to The South Carolina State Gazette and 
 Timothy and Mason's Daily Advertiser. Timothy was associated 
 with the paper until its final suspension in 1802. 
 
 Not to be confused with the paper just mentioned was The 
 South Carolina Weekly Gazette at " Charles Town," started by 
 Robert Wells, on November 1, 1758. Wells was on good terms 
 with the British, for when the city fell into their hands he was 
 allowed to continue publication of his paper under the title, 
 The Royal Gazette. Volume I, Number 1, of The Royal Edition 
 appeared on March 3, 1781. A year later, when Charleston 
 was evacuated by the British, the paper ceased publication. 
 
 J. FRANKLIN IN RHODE ISLAND 
 
 After James Franklin, the founder of The New-England Weekly 
 Courant, left Boston, he went to Newport, Rhode Island, where 
 on September 27, 1732, he established The Rhode Island Ga- 
 zette. It was the first newspaper in that State, and while it 
 made a heroic struggle for existence, it only lasted eight months. 
 After Franklin's death his wife, Anne Franklin, made several 
 unsuccessful attempts to revive the paper. 
 
BEGINNINGS IN COLONIES 49 
 
 The Franklin imprint, however, appeared on the second news- 
 paper in Rhode Island, The Newport Mercury, founded in New- 
 port on June 19, 1758, by James Franklin, Jr. When the son 
 died in 1762, his mother, Anne Franklin, continued The Mer- 
 cury for a brief time until she went into partnership with Samuel 
 Hale. Upon her death in 1763 Hale ran the paper most success- 
 fully, as he was one of the first editors and publishers to realize 
 that advertising depends upon circulation for its value. 
 
 GODDARD'S FIRST PAPER 
 
 William Goddard, a name frequently found in colonial jour- 
 nalism, started the third paper in Rhode Island on October 
 20, 1762. He called his paper The Providence Gazette and Coun- 
 try Journal. Goddard had difficulty as usual in collecting pay- 
 ments for subscriptions, and on May 11, 1765, was forced to sus- 
 pend temporarily, but intended to revive the paper six months 
 later, providing the stamp duties did not make such a resump- 
 tion impossible. The permanent revival, however, did not be- 
 gin until August 9, 1766, and an editorial note informed the 
 reading public that the paper was now in the hands of Sarah 
 Goddard & Company. Leaving his paper thus in the hands of 
 his mother, William Goddard went to New York to seek em- 
 ployment, but sent Samuel Inslee, who later became a pub- 
 lisher of a New York colonial paper, to Providence to help Mrs. 
 Goddard. On November 12, 1768, the paper passed into the 
 hands of John Carter, who had worked in the office of Benjamin 
 Franklin in Philadelphia, and later became a partner of Mrs. 
 Goddard in the business. Carter made numerous improvements 
 in the paper and ordered new type from England. Before it 
 could reach Providence, however, the Revolutionary War was 
 well on its way, so that when the type finally reached New 
 York it was confiscated by the custom-house authorities of 
 that city. The Gazette was one of the first papers to realize the 
 importance of the battle of Lexington. In an account, which 
 occupied nine inches of space in The Gazette, its editor made 
 this significant statement: " Thus is commenced the American 
 Civil War." 
 
50 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 VIRGINIA MOTHER OF GAZETTES 
 
 One reason why Virginia did not have a newspaper earlier 
 than 1736 will be found in an assertion of Sir William Berkeley 
 who was Governor of the Colony for thirty-eight years. In his 
 report to the Lords of the Committee for the Colonies in 1671 
 he said: " I thank God we have not free schools nor printing; and 
 I hope we shall not have these hundred years. For learning has 
 brought disobedience and heresy, and sects into the world; and 
 printing has divulged them and libels against the government. 
 God keep us from both." On August 6, 1736, however, William 
 Parks brought out at Williamsburg The Virginia Gazette. This 
 first paper in Virginia has been described as " a small dingy sheet, 
 containing a few items of foreign news, the ads of Williams- 
 burg shopkeepers, notices of the arrival and departure of ships; 
 a few chance particulars relating to persons or affairs in the 
 colony; and poetical effusions celebrating the charms of Myr- 
 tilla, Florella or other belles of the period. " 
 
 Parks was made "Printer to the Colony," at a salary of two 
 hundred pounds payable in tobacco, the currency of the 
 time. If he was unsuccessful in establishing his paper on a per- 
 manent basis, it was through no fault of his, but due to the 
 opposition to a free press in the colony. In his announcement 
 Parks stated a subscription price of fifteen shillings per annum, 
 and after commenting on the newspapers published in the other 
 colonies, he said: "From these examples and the encouragement 
 of several gentlemen on the prospect I have of success in this 
 ancient and best settled colony of Virginia, I am induced to 
 send forth weekly newspapers here, not doubting to meet 
 with as good encouragement as others, or at least as may en- 
 able me to carry them on." 
 
 The Gazette published by William Parks is not to be confused 
 with The Virginia Gazette started on January 3, 1751, by Wil- 
 liam Hunter though the latter may be in a certain sense 
 considered as a revival of the first paper in Virginia. With 
 ^sue Number 52, on December 27, 1751, Hunter said: 
 
 This paper concludes the first year of The Gazette publication and as 
 ' I have been at a great expense, as well in printing as sending them to clif- 
 
BEGINNINGS IN COLONIES 51 
 
 ferent parts of the country, by special messengers, I hope ray customers 
 will favor me with their subscription money as soon as possible that I 
 may be enabled to continue them I am sensible there are many who 
 complain of not getting their papers so regular as they desire, but hope 
 they will be kind enough to excuse it, when they consider the many in- 
 conveniences the colony labours under both in this and other respects, 
 for want of regular post through the country. However, as we daily 
 expect the arrival of a postmaster-General, we have no reason to doubt, 
 but that the Post-Office will be regulated in such a manner as will give 
 content. In the mean time, as I shall do all in my power to dispatch 
 the Gazettes, as well by different posts, as favourable opportunities, 
 hope my customers will continue their favours, and oblige their very..- 
 humble servant, The Printer. 
 
 The second Virginia Gazette was a great improvement on the 
 first. Hunter was postmaster and had better opportunities to 
 gather news. In addition, his Gazette was better edited. In its 
 columns appeared some of the best-written essays of the Colo- 
 nial Period. For instance, in 1757 a man, under the signature 
 of "The Virginia Sentinel," published a contribution which 
 showed that Virginia in spite of its early opposition to the press 
 was not without literary talent. 
 
 A third Virginia Gazette was brought out in Williamsburg 
 in May, 1766, by William Rind with a motto "Open to all 
 Parties, Influenced by None." Rind began his Gazette with the 
 cooperation of Thomas Jefferson, who considered the old Ga- 
 zettes too much under the influence of the Government. 
 
 A fourth Gazette was started in Williamsburg on February 3, 
 1775, by Alexander Purdy and was conducted by him until 
 1779. Its motto was, "Always for Liberty and the Public Good."\ 
 This particular Virginia Gazette has the honor of being the first 
 American newspaper to print the full text of the Declaration of / 
 Independence which it did on July 26, 1776. 
 
 EARLY CONNECTICUT PAPERS 
 
 The Connecticut Gazette, the first paper in Connecticut, made 
 its appearance on April 12, 1755, at New Haven. The first num- 
 ber bore the imprint, "Printed by James Parker at the Post- 
 Office near the Sign of the White Horse." Benjamin Franklin 
 had been induced by President Clap to purchase a printing- 
 
52 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 plant with a view to establishing the former's nephew, Benja- 
 min Mecom, in business at New Haven. The material arrived 
 in the fall of 1754, but Mecom changed his plans and Parker was 
 secured to take up the work. Associated with Parker in The 
 Connecticut Gazette was John Holt, who had the title of editor 
 and was a junior partner of the firm of James Parker & Com- 
 pany. In 1764 The Gazette was suspended for a short time, but 
 was afterwards revived by Benjamin Mecom on July 5, 1765. In 
 an editorial announcement Mecom added the following statement 
 about subscriptions: "All kinds of Provisions, Fire Wood and 
 other suitable country Produce will be taken as pay of those who 
 cannot spare money, if delivered at the Printer's Dwelling 
 House, or at any other place which may accidentally suit him." 
 
 On August 8, 1758, Timothy Green the second brought out 
 The New London Summary, or the Weekly Advertiser, at New Lon- 
 don. Green died on the 3d of August, 1763, and the paper was 
 suspended for three weeks. Afterward it was revived by Tim- 
 othy Green, the third printer of that name in New London, 
 under the title, The New London Gazette. 
 
 More important than either of these two Connecticut papers 
 was The Connecticut Courant, first printed by Thomas Green at 
 the Heart and Crown, near the North Meeting-House in Hart- 
 ford, on Monday, October 29, 1764. This first issue was prospec- 
 tus, having the number of 00. The first regular issue, however, 
 was on December 3, 1764. During the War of the Revolution 
 The Connecticut Courant occupied a rather important place in 
 the journalism of the time. The British troops who took pos- 
 session of New York had driven from that city all the patriotic 
 printers, with the result that the circulation of The Courant was 
 greatly increased, so much so that in all probability it was 
 greater than that of any other colonial newspaper then printed. 
 The paper has continued down to the present time and now 
 bears the title of The Hartford Courant. 
 
 On October 23, 1767, Thomas and Samuel Green brought 
 out in New Haven the first number of The Connecticut Journal 
 and New Haven Post-Boy. After passing into the hands of many 
 publishers the paper was discontinued on April 7, 1835. On 
 July 3, 1776, The Connecticut Journal published the following 
 
 . 
 
BEGINNINGS IN COLONIES 53 
 
 note: "We are very sorry that we cannot procure a sufficiency 
 of paper to publish a whole sheet; but as there is now a paper- 
 mill erecting in this town, we expect after a few weeks, to be 
 supplied with such a quantity as to publish the Journal regu- 
 larly on a uniform sized paper, and to be able to make ample 
 amends for past deficiencies." In spite of its fairly long life the 
 paper passed through the usual newspaper difficulties of the 
 period. Some of the earliest issues were even smaller than that 
 of the common letter paper. 
 
 Pretentious, at least in name, was The Norwich Packet and 
 the Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island 
 Weekly Advertiser, first brought out on September 30, 1773, by 
 Alexander Robertson, James Robertson, and John Trumbull. 
 Three years later Trumbull became the sole proprietor and the 
 Robertsons began publishing papers elsewhere. 
 
 ATTEMPTS OF DAVIS IN NORTH CAROLINA 
 
 In 1755 Benjamin Franklin, then Postmaster-General for 
 the Colonies, appointed James Davis, who had emigratecLfrom 
 Virginia, to North Carolina, postmaster at Newbern. follow- 
 ing the example set by the colonial postmasters of Boston, the 
 latter established the same year The North Carolina Gazette. It 
 bore the following imprint: "NewbenK^Printed by James 
 Davis, at the Printing-office in Front Street; where all persons 
 may be supplied with this paper at Sixteen Shillings per annum : 
 And when Advertisements of a moderate length are inserted for 
 Three Shillings the first Week and Two Shillings for every week 
 after. And where also Book-Binding is done reasonably." Pub- 
 lished on Thursdays, it usually appeared on a sheet pot size 
 folio. Number 200 of this paper was dated October 18, 1759, 
 and did not colonial editors frequently skip a week and often mix 
 up their numbering it would be an easy matter to figure out by 
 the help of old almanacs the Thursday in 1755 when this, the 
 first paper in North Carolina, made its bow to Newbern. It 
 was published about six years. 
 
 Davis made_his second attempt to found a paper in 1764. He 
 called the new venture The North Carolina Magazine, or Univer- 
 sal Intelligencer. (Its name was somewhat misleading, as the 
 
54 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 sheet appeared weekly on Fridays.) The first number was dated 
 Friday, June 1, to Friday, June 8, 1764. The price per copy was 
 four pence: at the end of 1764 there was a reduction in size of 
 one half, but no reduction in price. 
 
 Evidently the second venture was not so successful as the 
 first, for on May 27, 1768, Davis revived The North Carolina 
 Gazette. This second Gazette, with intermittent publication, 
 lasted a little over ten years. The word " intermittent" is used, 
 since the issue for March 27, 1778, asserted that the third day 
 of April next completed a year of publication since the paper 
 was last resumed. The last known issue has the date of No- 
 vember 30, 1778. 
 
 Davis made still another attempt to found a North Carolina 
 Gazette. The last was on August 28, 1783, two years before his 
 death. His reason sheds considerable light on North Carolina 
 journalism for the Colonial Period: " There has not been a news- 
 paper published in North Carolina for several years." This third 
 Gazette by Davis was an interesting example of newspaper- 
 making, for it had neither headlines nor column rules. Possibly 
 the reason why Davis was so unsuccessful in establishing a per- 
 manent paper may be found in the fact that he printed so little 
 local news. Associated with Davis hi this last enterprise was 
 Robert Keith, who came from Pennsylvania. The full name of 
 the paper was The North Carolina Gazette, or Impartial Intelli- 
 gencer and Weekly General Advertiser. 
 
 STEWAKT "PKINTEK TO THE KING" 
 
 5 An- 
 
 The second newspaper publisher in North Carolina was 
 drew Stewart. Born in Belfast, Ireland, he, like many of the 
 early printers, had come to America to seek his fortune, and in 
 1758 or 1759 had set up a press in Laetitia Court, Philadelphia, 
 where he ran a bookstore along with his print-shop. Reaching 
 Wilmington, North Carolina, June 24, 1764, with a part of his 
 Philadelphia equipment, he announced himself as " Printer to 
 the King." There is good reason to believe that his bluff worked 
 and that he got part of the public printing. In September, 
 1764, he brought out the first number of The North Carolina 
 Gazette and Weekly Post-Boy. Wilmington was a better news 
 
BEGINNINGS IN COLONIES 55 
 
 center than Newbern, and Stewart printed, for the time, many 
 local items, but the paper did not take with the public and was 
 discontinued for lack of support in 1767. 
 
 The second newspaper in Wilmington was The Cape Fear 
 Mercury and was published by Adam Boyd. Number 7 had the 
 date of November 24, 1769, and if there were no omissions in 
 weekly publication, the first appearance must have been on 
 October 13, 1769. An examination of the early issues shows that 
 Boyd was not a practical printer, as his typography was very 
 poor: yet the paper survived till the War of the Revolution 
 broke out, being printed on the press and with the type that 
 formerly belonged to Stewart. 
 
 ORIGIN OF JOURNALISM IN NEW HAMPSHIRE 
 
 New Hampshire got its first newspaper in a rather unique 
 way. Daniel Fowle, after he left The Independent Advertiser of 
 Boston, opened a small shop on Anne Street, where he sold 
 books and pamphlets in addition to doing odd jobs on his press. 
 Arrested in 1754 on the suspicion of having printed "The Mon- 
 ster of Monsters," said to be a reflection on the House of Rep- 
 resentatives, and later sent to jail for having sold a few copies, 
 he became disgusted with the Government of Massachusetts. 
 At the psychological moment, to use a modern expression, a call 
 came from New Hampshire to come over and start a paper in 
 that colony. The call was answered by his removal to Ports- 
 mouth where he brought out Volume I, Number 1, of The New 
 Hampshire Gazette on October 7, 1756. 
 
 On November 1, 1765, The Gazette came out with the usual 
 black border, like so many other papers of the same time, and 
 announced that it would cease publication because its printers 
 were unwilling to pay the obnoxious stamp tax. During the War 
 of the Revolution the paper was published rather irregularly 
 and only slightly leaned toward the American cause. In 1776 it 
 printed a communication urging the Provincial Congress not 
 to establish an independent government because such a pro- 
 ceeding might be taken as a desire to throw off British rule. 
 The editor was at once summoned before the Provincial Con- 
 gress, severely censured, and admonished never in the future 
 
56 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 to publish articles reflecting upon the Continental Congress or 
 the cause of American independence. 
 
 PAPER OF PATRIOTS 
 
 The Portsmouth Mercury and Weekly Advertiser, the second 
 newspaper, came from the press of Thomas Ferber at his "New 
 Printing Office Near the Parade," in Portsmouth, on January 
 21, 1765. The paper was started because of dissatisfaction of 
 some of the ardent patriots who thought the first paper was 
 not sufficiently strong for American rights. In spite of the fact 
 that the new paper said it stood "Ever ready in exposing 
 arbitrary powers, public injuries and all attempts to prevent 
 the liberties of the people dearer to them than their rights," 
 it did not carry out its policy and consequently failed to obtain 
 sufficient circulation to make the venture profitable. It was 
 accordingly discontinued in about three years. 
 
 FIRST VENTURES IN DELAWARE 
 
 James Adams, a native of Ireland, was the publisher of The 
 Wilmington Chronicle, the first newspaper in Delaware. After 
 working for about seven years in the office of Franklin & Hall 
 in Philadelphia, he set up a press in that city, but a year later 
 (1761) he moved to Wilmington, where he first printed books 
 and almanacs. In 1762 he started The Chronicle, but failed to 
 get enough subscribers to make the venture profitable and after 
 six months discontinued the sheet. 
 
 The second newspaper was also started in Wilmington in 
 June, 1785, by Jacob A. Killen. He called his paper The Dela- 
 ware Gazette; or The Faithful Centinel. The few copies of the 
 early issues which have been preserved show that the paper had 
 numerous variations in its title. From 1787 to 1791 the pub- 
 lishers were Frederick Craig & Company. On March 5 of the 
 latter year, the partnership was dissolved and the paper con- 
 tinued by Peter Brynberg and Samuel Andrews "late part- 
 ners with Frederick Craig." The editorial policy of The Gazette 
 was outlined in its issue for April 2, 1791, as follows: "Particu- 
 lar attention will be paid to agriculture and all communications 
 (post paid) will be gratefully received and punctually attended 
 
BEGINNINGS IN COLONIES 57 
 
 to. Political pieces, with spirit and candor, in which measures 
 rather than men, are attacked will always have a place in this 
 paper. For the poet a corner is ever open : and the mathe- 
 matician will not be neglected." In September, 1795, the paper 
 became a semi-weekly. With the issue of March 8, 1796, the 
 imprint became "Printed for Robert Coram by Bonsai & Starr," 
 and the same year it was again changed to "Printed by W. C. 
 Smyth, rear of the New Fire-Engine, Shipley Street, opposite 
 Capt. O'Flinn's Tavern." The Gazette was discontinued with 
 the issue of September 7, 1799. The last issue, however, an- 
 nounced a successor in The Mirror of the Times, to be published 
 a little later by James Wilson. After the failure of The Chron- 
 icle, James Adams took his son Samuel into partnership and 
 started the third paper, The Delaware Courant and Wilmington 
 Advertiser, in September, 1786. It appeared weekly and sur- 
 vived about three years. 
 
 The fourth paper, The Delaware and Eastern Shore Advertiser, 
 was established in Wilmington on May 14, 1794, by S. and J. 
 Adams and W. C. Smyth. With the issue of March 18, 1795, 
 Smyth withdrew from the partnership in order to associate him- 
 self with The Delaware Gazette, as has already been mentioned. 
 On Thursday, August 1, 1799, the paper appeared without the 
 name of the publisher and in all probability that issue was the 
 last. 
 
 PAPER POORLY SUPPORTED 
 
 The Mirror of The Times and General Advertiser, mention of 
 which was made in the last issue of The Delaware Gazette, was 
 the fifth paper in Delaware, and was started in Wilmington, 
 Delaware, on November 20, 1799, by James Wilson as a Federal 
 paper. It incidentally attracted a great deal of attention be- 
 cause it was the first newspaper in America to be printed on 
 pure white paper especially prepared by a bleaching process dis- 
 covered by Thomas D. Gilpin, of Wilmington. Its motto told 
 the following tale : 
 
 Here sovereign truth for man's just rights contends, 
 Alike unawed by foes, unswayed by friends. 
 
58 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 / Wilson, like other colonial printers, had the same " hard-luck 
 tale" to record in his paper. In 1802, shortly after the New Cas- 
 tle County election, he announced to his friends and patrons 
 that he would spend the day at Captain Caleb Bennett's Tav- 
 ern, in New Castle, where he " would wait with his account- 
 books open," hoping that all subscribers will call on him and 
 inquire after the condition of his purse which was affected by a 
 lingering consumptive complaint. The lingering complaint evi- 
 dently proved fatal, for publication was suspended on August 
 22, 1806. 
 
 GAZETTES IN GEORGIA 
 
 For thirty years, after Georgia was founded, the colony de- 
 pended for its news upon the papers of South Carolina, and its 
 merchants were forced to advertise their goods in Charleston 
 papers. On April 7, 1763, however, the first number of The 
 Georgia Gazette was issued at Savannah by James Johnson at 
 his printing-office on Broughton Street. On November 21, 1765, 
 it suspended publication on account of the Stamp Act, but was 
 revived again on May 21, 1766, and lasted as late as February 
 7, 1776, possibly a little longer. 
 
 The second paper is not to be confused with the first, although 
 it bore a somewhat similar title. It was called The Royal Georgia 
 Gazette and was started in Savannah on January 21, 1781, by 
 John D. Hammerer and survived until well along in 1782. From 
 1781 the paper was published by James Johnson a fact which 
 has caused some confusion because he was the founder of the 
 first paper. 
 
 On January 31, 1783, Johnson started The Gazette of the State 
 of Georgia the third Gazette with which he was connected. 
 He later shortened the name to The Georgia Gazette, the name of 
 his first-born paper. Under this title the paper long continued 
 to be published save for a temporary suspension on account of 
 the great Savannah fire in 1796. 
 
 Such, in brief, was the history of the journalism enterprises 
 in Georgia until the colonies secured their independence. 
 
BEGINNINGS IN COLONIES 59 
 
 TARDY PAPERS IN NEW JERSEY 
 
 The first printed newspapers did not appear in New Jersey 
 until the War of the Revolution had started. But it is not hard 
 to explain this tardy appearance: Philadelphia and New York 
 newspapers circulated then, as they do to-day, through New 
 Jersey. The suspension of some of these papers, the removal of 
 others to distant points, the increase in subscription price, the 
 poor delivery by post-riders, many of whom were in active mili- 
 tary service all these things, coupled with the exciting events 
 of the War, created an independent demand for news on the 
 part of the patriots of New Jersey. Its Governor, William Liv- 
 ingston, knowing, in addition to the facts just mentioned, how 
 useful a newspaper could be to arouse local public sentiment, 
 made the following plea in a message to the Colonial Legisla- 
 ture October 11, 1777: 
 
 Gentlemen: It would be an unnecessary Consumption of Time to 
 enumerate all the Advantages that would redound to the State from 
 having a Weekly News-Paper printed and circulated in it. To facili- 
 tate such an Undertaking, it is proposed that the first Paper be circu- 
 lated as soon as seven hundred subscribers, whose Punctuality in pay- 
 ing may be relied upon, shall be procured: Or if Government will insure 
 seven hundred subscribers who shall pay, the Work will be immedi- 
 ately begun; and if at the End of six Months there shall be seven hun- 
 dred or more subscribers who will pay punctually, the Claim upon the 
 Government to cease. But if the subscribers fall short of that Number, 
 Government to become a subscriber so as to make up that Number. 
 The Price in these fluctuating Times can hardly be ascertained, but it 
 is supposed it cannot at present be less than Twenty-six shillings per 
 Year, which will be but six Pence a Paper. 
 
 STATE-SUBSIDIZED NEWSPAPER 
 
 A committee, to whom the matter was referred, brought in the 
 following recommendations which were adopted: (1) A paper 
 to be printed weekly, in four folio pages, and entitled The New- 
 Jersey Gazette; (2) price to be twenty-six shillings per year; (3) 
 the Legislature to guarantee seven hundred subscribers within 
 six months ; (4) a cross-post to be established from the printing- 
 office, to the nearest Continental post-office at the expense of 
 
60 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 the State; (5) the printer and four workmen to be exempted 
 from service in the militia. The printer selected for this State- 
 subsidized newspaper one of the very few in the history of 
 American journalism was Isaac Collins, who already had a 
 plant at Burlington. He was a native of New Castle County, 
 Delaware, where he was born "2d mo. 16, 1746" (Old Style). 
 Learning his trade in the shop of James Adams, Wilmington, 
 Delaware (see " Delaware Papers"), he had gone to Williams- 
 burg, Virginia, to work for William Rind (see "Virginia Papers "). 
 His most practical experience, however, he had obtained in 
 Philadelphia while in the employ of William Goddard, the pub- 
 lisher of The Pennsylvania Chronicle. 
 
 Collins, immediately after his selection for the position, began 
 to make preparation to bring out the paper, but owing to the 
 unsettled condition of the country he was not able to "pull" 
 the first number off his press until December 5, 1777. With the 
 issue of March 4, 1778, he took The New- Jersey Gazette to Tren- 
 ton. Contrary to his expectations, the paper was not better 
 supported at that place and at last suspended publication in 
 July, 1783. Collins, however, was a plucky editor and made an 
 attempt to revive The Gazette on December 9, 1783. He strug- 
 gled along until November 27, 1786, when he brought out the 
 last issue. He still continued his shop at Trenton, for the politi- 
 cal plum of public printing had fallen into the lap of his apron. 
 
 Before he discontinued The New-Jersey Gazette, he was selling 
 at his printing-office medicinal preparations, dry goods, grocer- 
 ies, etc. : a complete list would read like an advertisement in a 
 country four-corners store. He also received a commission on 
 the negro boys and wenches whose sales he effected through the 
 columns of his paper. He died at Burlington, New Jersey, March 
 21, 1817. 
 
 "JERSEY JOURNAL" 
 
 Two circumstances account for the appearance of the second 
 newspaper in New Jersey. One was that when New York fell 
 into the hands of the British the newspapers which continued 
 publication there were loyal to the Crown: the second was that 
 the army of General Washington at Morristown wanted a paper 
 
BEGINNINGS IN COLONIES 61 
 
 to tell the news of what the colonies outside of New Jersey were 
 doing. Undoubtedly the latter was the more important, for 
 Shepard Kollock, a printer at Chatham, who, like Collins, had 
 learned the trade with James Adams at Wilmington, started, 
 at the suggestion of General Knox, The New-Jersey Journal on 
 February 16, 1779. The soldiers only five miles away subscribed 
 liberally, considering how pitifully small were the wages re- 
 ceived, and the officers often furnished, in exchange for army 
 printing, the paper upon which The Journal was printed. 
 
 At the end of the Revolution, Kollock, finding himself in a 
 place too small to support a newspaper, went to New Bruns- 
 wick, where, on October 14, 1783, he started, with Shelly Arnett, 
 The Political Intelligencer and New- Jersey Advertiser "at the 
 Barracks," a building used to shelter British troops in colonial 
 days. The partnership was dissolved in July, 1784, and he be- 
 came the sole owner. On April 20, 1785, Kollock brought out 
 his newspaper in "Elizabeth Town." With Number 134, or on 
 May 10, 1786, he changed its title to The New- Jersey Journal 
 and Political Intelligencer. It still survives as The Elizabeth Daily 
 Journal The change in name from The New-Jersey Journal was 
 made when the paper became a daily on July 17, 1871. 
 
CHAPTER VI \ 
 COLONIAL PERIOD 
 17041765 
 
 
 THE colonial editor, to whom journalism was a trade rather 
 than a profession, found many difficulties in publishing his 
 paper. In the first place, it was hard for him to get stock, for 
 most of the paper on which he printed the news was imported 
 from Europe, or was secured with difficulty from the few paper- 
 mills established in this country. The year 1690, which saw the 
 appearance in Boston of Publick Occurrences, also saw the es- 
 tablishment at Germantown, Pennsylvania, of the first paper- 
 mill in the colonies. Other mills were erected so that the town 
 became the early home of the paper industry in America. In 
 one of them, William Bradford by 1697 had a fourth interest. 
 When he came to New York and started his Gazette, he met the 
 same difficulty in getting paper for his press that he had pre- 
 viously experienced in Philadelphia, but found relief by start- 
 ing in 1728 a paper-mill at " Elizabeth Town," New Jersey. 
 In 1730 a paper-mill was erected at Milton, Massachusetts, 
 and soon had a monopoly of the trade around Boston. Some- 
 times the newspaper had to establish its own mill. Such was 
 true of The Connecticut Courant, at Hartford. While this news- 
 paper secured its own paper from Norwich, the droughts in 
 summer or ice in the river in winter frequently curtailed the 
 size of the sheet. Other newspapers, by inserting advertise- 
 ments of "Rags Wanted/' supplied the mills with material from 
 which the paper was made. 
 
 TYPOGRAPHY OF PAPERS ^ 
 
 The size of the newspaper has been so frequently given in con- 
 nection with the mention of individual papers that little more 
 needs to be said. From 1704 to 1765 newspapers were gener- 
 ally printed on half-sheets. Shapes and sizes varied greatly, 
 
COLONIAL PERIOD 63 
 
 not only because of the scarcity of news of the various towns, 
 but more frequently because of the scarcity of paper. In spite 
 of his meager equipment the colonial printer seldom found 
 it necessary, even when he gave his reader two whole sheets, 
 to use more than one variety of type. Newspapers, however, 
 varied much in their style of typography. One distinctive 
 mechanical characteristic of the colonial newspaper was the 
 frequent use of a large initial letter for the leading news item or 
 essay. From the beginning of the printed newspaper in this 
 country down to the time when Franklin gave up writing for 
 his newspaper, all nouns were capitalized, and it seemed gen- 
 erally permissible to capitalize any other word, at the printer's 
 discretion. Extracts from colonial newspapers have been given 
 frequently enough in the preceding pages to give the reader a 
 fairly accurate idea of the orthography of the period. Some edi- 
 tors, usually of other birth than English, evidently compiled a 
 dictionary of their own for office use. John Peter Zengler, for 
 example, invariably spelled "Monday" in his date line, "Mun- 
 day," but frequently allowed contributors to spell the word 
 " Monday." 
 
 PRESSES AND INKS * 
 
 In the tools of his trade the colonial printer was under a 
 severe handicap. Both press and type had to be imported from 
 England, and in many instances the printer because of his pov- 
 erty had to purchase second-hand outfits. Such presses as 
 were used were built practically of wood, and were often so con- 
 structed that only one page of even the small-sized colonial news- 
 paper could be printed at one time. This handicap made four 
 pulls necessary on the part of the printer before he could pro- 
 duce a printed newspaper of a whole sheet. Even in the case of 
 the larger presses, two impressions were necessary for every 
 copy of the paper. In other words, the output of a press was 
 equal to one half the number of pulls a printer could give in an 
 hour. It took so much muscular strength to pull the lever of the 
 old-fashioned press that the services of a man were required. 
 The only help a boy could be in the colonial print-shop was to 
 ink the type : this he did, in many instances, with the help of a 
 
64 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 deerskin ball filled with wool and nailed to a stick of hickory. 
 Not until 1750 were printing-presses manufactured in America: 
 in that year, Christopher Sower, Jr., began to turn out hand- 
 presses at Germantown, Pennsylvania. Handicapped by the 
 lack of skilled labor, he was even then only able to manufacture 
 presses inferior to those imported from Europe. 
 
 Reliable printing-ink also came from abroad. Substitutes 
 were frequently attempted by the early printers and were 
 manufactured from wild berries. The fading of the impression 
 in some of the early colonial papers may be traced directly to 
 the use of such substitutes. Not until the close of the first half 
 of the eighteenth century was there a manufacture of a printers' 
 ink that was worth the name. 
 
 MAKERS OF TYPE 
 
 lie to 
 
 Much of the poor printing in the Colonial Period was due 
 the fact that the type had become badly worn from frequent 
 use. Often, the type had been used for years in printing colonial 
 documents and pamphlets before it was employed to print the 
 news. To get new type it was frequently necessary for the 
 printer to make a special trip to England. The first attempt to 
 cast type was made in Boston about 1768 by a Scotchman by 
 the name of Michelson. With the scant materials available, he 
 did the best that could be expected, but his type lacked the 
 wearing qualities of the imported variety. Christopher Sower, 
 Jr., of whom mention has already been made in connection with 
 the manufacture of printing-presses, began to cast type in 1772 
 at his foundry in Germantown, but was compelled to secure his 
 raw material in Germany. One of Sower's workmen, Jacob Bey, 
 started the second type foundry in Germantown, and made 
 several improvements in the composition of the metal employed 
 in the manufacture of type. The most important type foun- 
 dry was that established by Benjamin Franklin in 1775. For 
 years Franklin had been whittling type out of wood and had 
 been making cuts of metal, but not until the outbreak of the 
 Revolution did he make a business of casting type. In charge 
 of his foundry he put his son-in-law, B. F. Bache, who later 
 figured in Philadelphia journalism. 
 
COLONIAL PERIOD 65 
 
 WINTER WEATHER AND NEWS * 
 
 Winter always brought its difficulties to the colonial printer. 
 His shop often being poorly heated in severely cold weather the 
 paper froze while it was being prepared for the press and caused 
 endless delays. The colonial printer was forced to wet his paper, 
 before he could put it on the press. Winter also interfered seri- 
 ously in the delivery of newspapers: post-riders who acted as 
 mail-carriers frequently had to abandon their routes because the 
 roads were closed by snowdrifts. Such irregularity in delivery 
 frequently caused subscribers to discontinue their papers until 
 the roads were open for travel again in the spring. This custom 
 occasionally caused the colonial publisher so much annoyance 
 that he threatened to move his paper to another town unless 
 readers would subscribe for the paper for the entire year. 
 
 Possibly some of these discontinuances during the winter sea- 
 son were the fault of the colonial editor. Rural subscribers cared 
 more for local news than they did for reprints from English 
 papers. During the winter months when ships neither arrived 
 nor departed from the ports, early American editors had a hard 
 time to fill their columns. Few of them, however, were as frank 
 as William Bradford, of The New York Gazette, who, on one 
 occasion, explained the presence of an abstruse discussion in his 
 columns as follows: " There being a scarcity of Foreign News, 
 we hope the following Essay may not be unacceptable to our 
 READERS." Severely cold weather was often accepted by the 
 colonial printer as the excuse for omitting an issue entirely. 
 Benjamin Franklin was always equal to any emergency. He 
 frankly admitted that when news was dull during the winter 
 season, he amused the customers of The Pennsylvania Gazette 
 by filling the vacant columns with anecdotes, fables, and fancies 
 of his own. To these " fillers" he gave such an air of truth that 
 he not infrequently deceived his own readers. Many of his anec- 
 dotes, written only to amuse and entertain, were quoted as 
 Gospel truth by European writers on American affairs. 
 
66 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 FARLEY, PROGRESSIVE PUBLISHER 
 
 One attempt during this period to get the news while it was 
 still news should not be overlooked. Samuel Farley, the son of 
 a Quaker printer of Bristol, England, brought out the seventh 
 paper in New York City on March 20, 1762. He called his paper 
 The American Chronicle, and being energetic he tried to make it 
 live up to its name. In his efforts to gather news more quickly 
 he tried to secure from The Pennsylvania Journal and from The 
 Pennsylvania Gazette advance sheets of these newspapers, but in 
 each instance he was unsuccessful, as the two Philadelphia pub- 
 lishers positively refused to let him have copies of their papers 
 before the usual time for city delivery. The refusal showed the 
 spirit that then prevailed among American newspapers. Not 
 until the early part of the nineteenth century did newspapers 
 cooperate in sharing the burden of news-gathering. 
 
 Farley did, however, introduce into The American Chronicle 
 a department called "The Lion's Mouth," which attracted 
 much attention for its day. Some idea of this innovation may 
 be obtained from the announcement of the feature in the fourth 
 issue, April 12, 1762: 
 
 In order to convey such Papers to the Publisher of The Chronicle as 
 may be of general entertainment and Instruction, in the most secret 
 Manner; and to prevent all such authors as chuse to remain incog, from 
 being known even to the Printer, he has procured a young Lion, thro' 
 whose Mouth (which stands immoveably expanded) the said Composi- 
 tions may be conveyed with the utmost Secrecy; and such of them as 
 shall be deem'd acceptable to the Public, and are free from all Defama- 
 tion and personal Reflection, and come properly recommended, shall 
 be inserted in The Chronicle. The Lion will be seated in the Day Time 
 near the Window fronting the Dock, and to prevent his annoying any 
 of his Majesty's Liege Subjects (tho' he is extremely tame and good 
 natured) he will be chained securely to the Post of the Window. . . In 
 the Night Time, to prevent his taking cold by the noxious Dew of this 
 Northern climate, he will be placed on a Pedestal in the Entry just 
 behind or so near the Door, that any Materials may be conveyed 
 into his Mouth (which is always open) thro' a Hole in the Upper Door 
 which leads direct to his Jaw. 
 N.B. He will Roar at no honest man whatsoever. 
 
COLONIAL PERIOD 67 
 
 NEWS OF MODERN FLAVOR A 
 
 Some of the news items published as early as 1747 had a mod- 
 ern flavor. But for the color of the paper and the spelling of the 
 words a second glance for the date-line is almost necessary. 
 When the American colonies were raising men to defend north- 
 ern frontiers against invasions by the French and Indians and 
 were voting appropriations with modern prodigality, there were 
 newspapers which brought charges of graft against the men fur- 
 nishing supplies to the troops. Parker's New-York Gazette and 
 Weekly Post-Boy boldly printed an item which alleged that 
 many of the guns purchased were out-of-date and practically 
 useless, and that the beef for soldiers was more effective than*^ 
 powder because its odor would drive away the enemy. An edi- f 
 torial contributor, who had a keen sense of humor, offered the 
 explanation that the guns were supplied by Quakers, who had 
 scruples against the taking of human life, and that the loss on 
 the meat could more easily be borne by the colonies than by the 
 original owners. Veiled attacks were made that favoritism was 
 shown in the selection of men to lead the troops and that incom- 
 petency was common, especially among the British officers sent 
 over to defend the colonies. 
 
 NEWS "BOILED DOWN" * 
 
 The colonial editor was often a master of his trade in " boiling 
 down" the news: he did not use three columns when three lines 
 would tell the story. The Pennsylvania Gazette on January 7, 
 1752, saw no " sensational copy" in its item, "We hear that 
 within these few Days, near 400 Five-penny Loaves have been 
 seized among the Bakers of this City, by the Clerk of the Mar- 
 ket, for wanting greatly in their due Weight"; nor did it place 
 any "scare" headline over this one on February 25 of the 
 same year: "Last Week William Kerr (lately mentioned in this 
 Paper) was indicted and convicted at the Mayor's Court, of 
 uttering counterfeit Mill'd Pieces of Eight, knowing them to be 
 such, for which he receiv'd Sentence as follows: To stand in the 
 Pillory one Hour To-morrow, to have his Ear naiPd to the same, 
 and the Part nail'd cut off; and on Saturday next to stand an- 
 
68 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 Jother Hour in the Pillory, and to be whipt Thirty-nine Lashes, 
 |at the Cart's Tail, round two Squares, and then to pay a Fine 
 |of Fifty Pounds." 
 
 COLONISTS SLOW PAY 
 
 Franklin, in his "Autobiography," has left a permanent 
 record that the colonists were not especially interested either 
 in newspapers or in books. To quote from the pen of this dis- 
 tinguished editor of the Colonial Period: "At the time I estab- 
 lished myself in Philadelphia 1723 there was not a good 
 bookseller's shop in any of the colonies to the southward of 
 Boston. In New York and Philadelphia the printers were in- 
 deed stationers, but they sold only paper, almanacs, ballads, 
 and a few common school-books. Those who loved reading were 
 obliged to send for their books to England." 
 
 JBven those most interested in reading preferred to buy their 
 ^books and newspapers from England. This fact may explain 
 why so many of the colonial editors reprinted pieces from Eng- 
 lish papers : in other words, they attempted to give readers what 
 the latter wanted. Then, too, the colonists often followed the 
 English custom of reading their newspapers at the public tav- 
 erns. Other conditions prevented a paper from having a large 
 circulation in rural sections. Subscribers living at a distance 
 from the place of publication had to pay not only the subscrip- 
 tion price of the paper, but also the cost for distribution by the 
 mail-carrier. The pine knot, the tallow candle, or the bit of 
 bear oil burning in a saucer afforded poor light for the perusal 
 of a newspaper by a farmer, already tired by the day's toil of 
 clearing forest land. 
 
 The fervent appeals of colonial editors to delinquent sub- 
 scribers show how hard it was for the poor printer to raise the 
 necessary funds in cash to meet the cost of his materials sent 
 from abroad. To judge by the notices, the colonial editor ex- 
 perienced much the same difficulty in getting his subscribers to 
 part with provisions in exchange for newspapers. Yet the co- 
 lonial printer was willing to take almost anything in exchange 
 for subscriptions. Firewood, homespun cloth, butter, eggs, 
 poultry almost anything was acceptable to "ye printer." 
 
COLONIAL PERIOD 69 
 
 Some of the dunning appeals to subscribers were most unique. 
 One printed by Thomas Fleet in The Boston Evening Post 
 brought results even if some delinquents did not renew: "The 
 Subscribers for this Paper, (especially those at a Distance) who 
 are shamefully in Arrear for it, would do well (methinks) to 
 remember those Apostolical Injunctions, Rom. xiii. 7, 8. Ren- 
 der therefore to all their dues ; and Owe no man any thing. It 
 is wonderful to observe, that while we hear so much about a 
 great Revival of Religion in the Land; there is yet so little Regard 
 had to Justice and Common Honesty ! Surely they are Abomi- 
 nable Good Works!" 
 
 PRINTER CAPITALIZES MOTHER-IN-LAW 
 
 Thomas Fleet, who has been mentioned in the preceding para- 
 graph, found many ways to supplement the income from The 
 Boston Evening Post. One of these was from the sale of "Mother 
 Goose Rhymes." Fleet, who had married Elizabeth Goose, was 
 very much amused at the nursery jingles with which his mother- 
 in-law amused his children"at night. After he had put them into 
 type he found it necessary to print several editions to meet the 
 demand. So far as can be learned Fleet was the first man to 
 capitalize his mother-in-law. 
 
 COST OF PRODUCTION 
 
 Fleet also left a memorandum which illustrated trade condi- 
 tions of his day. In it he said: "In the days of Mr. Campbell 
 (the founder of The Boston News-Letter), who published a news- 
 paper here, which is forty years ago, Paper was bought for eight 
 or nine shillings a Ream, and now tis Five Pounds; his Paper 
 was never more than half a sheet, and that he had Two Dollars 
 a year for, and had also the art of getting his Pay for it; and 
 that size has continued until within a little more than one year, 
 since which we are expected to publish a whole sheet, so that 
 the Paper now stands us in near as much as all the other charges." 
 For the sake of comparison of the cost of production of The Bos- 
 ton Evening Post with that of a similar paper published later in 
 the century, the figures may be given for 1798. In that year the 
 editor of The Northern Budget^ a weekly paper published at 
 
70 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 Troy, New York, asserted that he could, with the utmost econ- 
 omy, conduct his paper at thirty dollars a week. His estimate 
 was somewhat lower than that of other editors of his time be- 
 cause he was able to get paper cheaper on account of the fact 
 that a paper-mill had been built in Troy about five years pre- 
 vious. 
 
 ADVERTISEMENTS OF PERIOD 
 
 When John Campbell brought out The Boston News-Letter 
 on April 24, 1704, he announced that " Persons who have any 
 Houses, Lands, Tenements, Farms, Ships, Vessels, Goods, 
 Wares or Merchandizes, &c. to be Sold, or Let; or Servants 
 Runaway, or Goods Stole or Lost; may have the same inserted 
 at a Reasonable Rate, from Twelve Pence to Five Shillings, and 
 not to exceed: Who may agree with John Campbel Post-master 
 of Boston." This list is fairly typical of the advertisements in- 
 serted in colonial newspapers. In many instances the Boston 
 post-office was made the clearing-house: the first advertise- 
 ment in the second 'number of The News-Letter offered a reward 
 for the return of two iron anvils, weighing between one hundred 
 and twenty and one hundred and forty pounds each, which had 
 been lost "Off Mr. Shippen's Wharff," provided they were re- 
 turned to John Campbell, Postmaster. Many of the advertise- 
 ments contained the stereotyped expression, "For further in- 
 formation, inquire of John Campbell, Postmaster." 
 
 The third number of The News-Letter contained the following 
 advertisement : 
 
 At Oysterbay on Loruj-l sland in the Province of N. York, There is a 
 very good Fulling-Mill, to be Let or Sold, as also a Plantation, having 
 on it a large new Brick house, and another good house by it for a Kit- 
 chin, & work house, with a Barn, Stable, &c. a young Orchard and 20 
 Acres clear Land. The Mill is to be Let with or without the Planta- 
 tion: Enquire of Mr. William Bradford Printer in N. York and know 
 further. 
 
 This insertion in the third number showed quick action on 
 the part of Bradford when it is considered how long it took to 
 get a letter from New York to Boston at that time: it also 
 showed that Bradford was familiar with, and was doubtless 
 
 
COLONIAL PERIOD 71 
 
 watching with much interest, the attempt to found a newspaper 
 in Boston. 
 
 Advertisements similar to the following were found in colonial 
 papers : 
 
 /"Captain Peter Lawrence is going a Privateering from Rhode-Island in 
 a good Sloop, about 60 Tuns, six Guns, and 90 Men for Canada, and 
 any Gentlemen or Sailors that are disposed to go shall be kindly enter- 
 tained- 
 
 The first advertisements of any size were those announcing 
 the sale of books and pamphlets especially those dealing with 
 religious topics, or giving the sermons of noted divines. After 
 the colonial publishers had reprinted extracts from The London 
 Gazette, The London Flying Post, The London Post-Boy, etc., 
 they advertised these English newspapers for sale at greatly 
 reduced prices. 
 
 Franklin especially knew the value of The Pennsylvania 
 Gazette as an advertising medium, and used it frequently, not 
 only for himself, but also the members of his family. His wife, 
 for example, sold in the print-shop a so-called very fine grade of 
 toilet soap, said to have been imported from abroad, but doubt- 
 less manufactured by Franklin's father in Boston. He occa- 
 sionally put into his " house" advertisements some of the humor 
 found in "Poor Richard's Almanac." The following advertise- 
 ment of this character was taken from The Pennsylvania Ga- 
 zette: 
 
 rpAKEN out of Pew in the Church some months since, a Common 
 Prayer Book, bound in red, gilt, and lettered D.F. (Deborah Frank- 
 lin) on each cover. The Person who took it is desired to open it and 
 read the eighth Commandment, and afterwards return it into the same 
 Pew again, upon which no further Notice will be taken. 
 
 Another advertisement, inserted by Franklin in 1742, must 
 have given his subscribers the impression that he was in the im- 
 porting as well as in the printing business : 
 
 TUst import'd from Lond and to be sold by B. Franklin, at the Post- 
 Office, near the Market in Philadelphia. 
 
 All sorts of fine Paper, Parchment, Ink-powder, Sealing Wax, Wafers, 
 fountain Pens, Ink and Sand Glasses with Brass Heads, Pounce, and 
 
72 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 Pounce Boxes, Curious, large Ivory Books and Common ditto, large 
 and small slates, Gunters Scales, Dividers, Protactors, Pocket Com- 
 passes, both large and small, fine Pewter Stands proper for Offices and 
 Counting Houses, fine Mezzotinto and grav'd Pictures of Mr. White- 
 field. 
 
 Where may be had great Variety of Bibles, Testaments, Psalters, 
 Spelling Books, Primers, Hornbooks, and other sorts of stationery ware. 
 
 Even James Franklin, Benjamin's brother, was a good adver- 
 tiser of the products of his press. Before he started The New- 
 England Courant, and while he was still printing The Boston 
 Gazette for Postmaster Brooker, he inserted this advertisement 
 in the latter paper on April 25, 1720: 
 
 rphe Printer hereof prints Linens, Calicoes, Silks, &c., in good Figures, 
 very livily and durable colours, and without the offensive Smell 
 which commonly attends the Linens printed here. 
 
 PILLS AND POWDERS SOLD AT PRINT-SHOPS 
 
 Even the most successful of the colonial printer-editors had 
 to supplement the income from their presses by work in other 
 fields. Attention has already been called to how frequently 
 they were postmasters, or employed in the postal department. 
 Almost invariably they were booksellers and stationers, espe- 
 cially of their own presses. To read the list of things which 
 might be obtained at the print-shop gives one the impression 
 that the colonial editor practically ran a store. Often he sold 
 over the counter the goods accepted in payment for subscrip- 
 tions. He seemed to make a specialty of selling quack medi- 
 cines : he early discovered the value of his own newspaper as an 
 advertising medium for such nostrums. The colonial editors 
 of New York practically acted as wholesale distributors for such 
 nostrums and encouraged their brother editors in other colonies 
 to put pills and powders alongside of the Bibles and printed 
 sermons on the shelves of the print-shop. Some of these nos- 
 trums "cured diseases not to be mentioned in the newspaper"; 
 for full details sufferers might call at the office of the colonial 
 papers and editors would answer any questions asked. In the 
 North, most of these so-called remedies were imported from 
 Europe and frequently bore the endorsement of royal persons; 
 
COLONIAL PERIOD 73 
 
 in the South, most of the proprietary medicines offered for sale 
 by local printers were manufactured from herbs after prescrip- 
 tions furnished by Indian doctors. Typical of the latter The 
 South Carolina Gazette advertised in January, 1744: 
 
 Seneka-Rattle-Snakc-Root, so famous for its effectually curing 
 of Pleurisy; and an excellent Eye- Water, to be sold by the Printer 
 hereof. 
 
 TALES TOLD BY ADVERTISEMENTS 
 
 Save for their headlines, advertisements were frequently set 
 up like regular reading matter. They were usually small in size, 
 and not infrequently limited in size by the"printer. Occasionally, 
 one finds a colonial printer using the margins for an advertise- 
 ment which came in late. Strange as it may seem, however, 
 these advertisements when read to-day are almost as interest- 
 ing as the text. They tell a story which needs but little by way 
 of interpretation. They tell us of the fads and fancies in the 
 matter of dress of the colonial period. If there were no mention 
 of the prevalence of smallpox in the colonies, one would know 
 that it was common because the word " pock-fretten " was used 
 in describing a slave who had run away and for whom a reward 
 was offered in the local press. The advertisements of servants 
 and apprentices, who, like the slaves, had run away from their 
 masters, recall a time when people were sold in bondage for a 
 limited time until the money owed for their passage across the 
 ocean, or for debts incurred after their arrival, was paid in full. 
 The amount of the reward offered was often small six cents. 
 Such small rewards, however, are explained by the fact that 
 masters were required by law to advertise runaway servants 
 and slaves. 
 
 The advertisements of the colonial department stores if 
 that term may be used correctly need to-day a glossary in 
 order that articles described may be intelligible, even to women. 
 How many readers of this book, for example, are familiar with 
 the items listed by Isaac Jones, when in 1752 he advertised in 
 The Pennsylvania Gazette to be sold cheap the following things? 
 
 Boiled and common camblets, single and double alopeens, broad and 
 narrow shaloons, tammies, durants, plain and corded poplins, duroys, 
 
74 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 1 
 
 calimancoes, common and silk sagathies, florettas, bearskins, common 
 and hair grazets, tabbies, ducapes, stay galloon and twist, men's and 
 women's thread, dowlas, ozenbrigs, etc. 
 
 ' LIVE NEWS IN ADVERTISEMENTS 
 
 Charles Dudley Warner, who was connected for many years 
 with The Courant of Hartford, Connecticut, once asserted that 
 the colonial newspaper was a " broadside of stale news with a 
 moral essay attached." Whatever may be true of the news, the 
 advertisements in these old papers were rather interesting read- 
 ing. There was nothing stale in this item inserted at regular 
 rates in the columns of The New-York Gazette for 1734: 
 
 Whereas James Moor of Woodbridge has advertised in this Gazette, 
 as well as by Papers sent out and posted up, that his Wife, Deliverance, 
 has eloped from his Bed and Board. These are to certifie, that the Same 
 is altogether false, for She has lived with Him above Eight Years under 
 His tyranny and increditble Abuses, for He has several times attempted 
 to murder Her and also turned Her out of Doors, shamefully abusing 
 Her, which is well known to the Neighbors and Neighbourhood in 
 Woodbridge. 
 
 An advertisement in The New York Weekly Post-Boy in 1756 
 showed that Barnum was not the first to discover that the Ameri- 
 can people liked to be fooled once in a while: - 
 
 To be seen at the sign of the Golden Apple, at Peck's Slip, price six- 
 pence, children four coppers, a large snake-skin, 21 feet long and four 
 feet one inch wide. It was killed by some of Gen. Braddock's men by 
 firing six balls into him, close by the Allegheny Mountains, supposed 
 to be coming down to feed on dead men. When it was killed, there was 
 found in its belly a child, supposed to be four years old, together with 
 a live dog! It had a horn on its tail seven inches long, and it ran as fast 
 as a horse. All gentlemen and ladies desirous to see it may apply to the 
 subscriber at Peck's Slip. 
 
 ADVERTISING AGENCY IN POST-OFFICES 
 
 In many localities, advertisements for colonial papers might 
 be left at the local post-office. In some instances the local post- 
 office would accept advertising copy for publication in papers 
 in other places: it did so with the permission of the postal 
 authorities. Sometimes the post-office made public in print 
 
COLONIAL PERIOD 73 
 
 standing announcements similar to the following which ap- 
 peared during the middle of the eighteenth century in The 
 Pennsylvania Gazette at Philadelphia: "Advertisements for the 
 German and English Gazettes printed at Lancaster by Miller 
 and Holland are taken at the post-office." In fact, the colonial 
 post-office always stood ready to help the newspaper when the 
 postmaster was not financially interested in the printing-plant. 
 William Bradford, the publisher of the first colonial weekly in 
 New York, made an arrangement with Richard Nichols, post- 
 master in 1727, whereby the latter accepted advertisements for 
 The New-York Gazette at regular rates and sold single copies of 
 the paper at what to-day would be the stamp window. 
 
 FREE POSTAGE AT FIRST 
 
 When John Campbell first sent out his written news-letters 
 to colonial Governors, they were mailed without cost. Later, 
 when he printed his letters under the title, The Boston News- 
 Letter ', he undoubtedly was able to mail many of them free and 
 only had to pay a nominal charge in other cases. One of the 
 reasons why the colonial printer-editor desired to be postmaster 
 was undoubtedly the opportunity that was afforded by such 
 an office to make advantageous arrangements with local post- 
 riders to deliver newspapers. Certainly, the postmaster-editor 
 possessed better facilities for the distribution of his paper than 
 rival editors; Benjamin Franklin and William Weyman have 
 already borne testimony to this fact. 
 
 Franklin was a master at the art of securing free distribution 
 of his Pennsylvania Gazette. In his issue for January 28, 1735, 
 he published the following item: "By the indulgence of the 
 Honorable Colonel Spotswood, Post-Master-General, the printer 
 hereof is allowed to send the Gazettes by the post, postage free, 
 to all parts of the postroad, from Virginia to New England." 
 
 REGULATIONS OF FRANKLIN 
 
 But as newspapers increased, a change from the plan just out- 
 lined was made. In 1758 Franklin and Hunter were in charge of 
 the general post-office for the colonies, and on March 10 of that 
 year they issued the following statement : 
 
76 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 Whereas the News-papers of the several Colonies on this Continent, 
 heretofore permitted to be sent by the Post free of Charge, are of late 
 years so much increased as to become extremely burthensome to the 
 Riders, who demand additional Salaries or Allowances from the Post 
 Office on that Account, and it is not reasonable that the Office which 
 receives no Benefit from the Carriage of News-papers, should be at any 
 Expence for such Carriage; and Whereas the Printers of News-papers 
 complain that they frequently receive orders for News-papers from 
 distant Post-Offices, which they comply with by sending the Papers 
 tho they know not the Persons to whom the Papers are to be directed, 
 and have no convenient Means of collecting the Money, so that much 
 of it is lost; and that for Want of due Notice when distant Subscribers 
 die, become Bankrupt, or remove out of the County, they continue 
 to send Papers some years directed to such Persons, whereby the Posts 
 are loaded with Many Papers to No Purpose, and the Loss so great to 
 the Printers, as that they cannot afford to make any Allowance to the 
 Riders for carrying the Papers; And whereas some of the Riders do, 
 and others may demand exorbitant Rates of Persons living on the Roads, 
 for carrying and delivering the Papers that do not go into Any Office, 
 but are delivered by the Riders themselves. 
 
 To remedy these Inconveniences, and yet not to discourage the 
 Spreading of News-papers, which are on many Occasions useful to 
 Government, and advantageous to Commerce, and to the Publick; You 
 are, after the first Day of June Next, to deliver No News-paper at your 
 Office (except the single Papers exchang'd between Printer and Printer) 
 but to such Persons only as do agree to pay you, for the Use of the 
 Rider which brings such papers a small addition Consideration per 
 Annum, for each Paper, over and above the Price of the Papers: that 
 is to say, For any Distance not exceeding 50 miles, each Paper is carried, 
 the Sum of 9d. Ster. per Annum, or an equivalent in Currency: For 
 any Distance exceeding 50 miles, and not exceeding One Hundred Miles 
 the Sum of One Shilling and Six Pence Ster. per Annum; and in the same 
 proportion for every other Fifty Miles which such Paper shall be car- 
 ried; which Money for the Rider or Riders, together with the Price 
 of the Papers for the Printers, you are to receive and pay respectively 
 once a Year at least, deducting for your Care and Trouble therein a 
 Commission of Twenty per cent. And you are to send no Order to any 
 Printer for Papers, except the Persons, to whom the Papers are to be 
 sent, are in your Opinion responsible, and such as you will be account- 
 able for. And you are to suffer no Rider employed or paid by you to 
 receive more than the rates above for carrying any Papers by them de- 
 livered on their respective Roads : Nor to carry and deliver any Papers 
 but such as they will be accountable for to the Printers, in considera- 
 tion of an Allowance of the same Commission as aforesaid for Collect- 
 ing and paying the Money. 
 
 And as some of the Papers pass thro' the Hands of several Riders 
 
COLONIAL PERIOD 77 
 
 between the Places where they are printed and the Place of Delivery; 
 You are to pay the Carriage-money you collect for the Riders to the 
 several Riders who have carried such Papers in Proportion, as near as 
 conveniently may be made, to the Distance, they have been carried 
 by each Rider respectively. 
 
 (Signed) FRANKLIN AND HUNTER. 
 
 This order remained in force until the relations between the 
 colonies and England and the postal service became interrupted 
 on account of the approaching conflict of the Revolution. Then 
 many of the newspaper publishers arranged for a private dis- 
 tribution of their papers to country subscribers. 
 
 The reforms of Franklin and Hunter in the reorganization of 
 the colonial post-office and in the increase of post-roads had two 
 effects on the journalism of the period. First, there was an in- 
 crease in letters among correspondents in the several colonies, 
 and as these letters often contained news items of considerable 
 importance, they not infrequently found their way into the 
 newspapers under some such caption as "From a Gentleman 
 Residing in Virginia"; second, the newspapers were placed on a 
 better subscription basis, and the exchange papers, being more 
 regular in their receipt, not only improved the news service, but 
 also aroused a news interest in what was going on in all the colo- 
 nies. Without this awakened interest, it might have been im- 
 possible to have persuaded the colonies to unite for common 
 defense in the Revolutionary Period. 
 
 LOST ELEVEN DAYS 
 
 Readers who turn the files of colonial newspapers for 1752 are 
 often surprised at the irregularity in the matter of dating found 
 in the papers for the first week of September of that year. The 
 fifth issue of The Mercury, published by Hugh Gaine at New 
 York, was dated August 31, 1752: seven days later, the sixth 
 was dated September 18. Yet no mistake had been made; 
 eleven days had simply been wiped out of existence by the 
 change to the Gregorian style in figuring time, adopted the first 
 week of September, 1752. Several writers have thought that 
 Benjamin Franklin skipped a week in publishing his Pennsyl- 
 vania Gazette at Philadelphia in the September of 1752. The 
 
78 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 irregularity here, as elsewhere, was due to the change to the 
 Gregorian system of time. 
 
 i 
 
 B. FRANKLIN, CARTOONIST 
 
 Benjamin Franklin, who introduced many innovations into 
 the American press, was the first to print the cartoon in his 
 Pennsylvania Gazette. The occasion was a memorable one in 
 American history. The government of the New York colony, 
 on the recommendation of the Lords of Trade, issued on Decem- 
 ber 24, 1753, a call for a meeting in Albany of the British colo- 
 nies in America and announced the date for that meeting for 
 June 14, 1754. Rumors of a possible war with the French was 
 the immediate cause of the action. The rumors were not with- 
 out some foundation, for on May 9, 1754, Franklin, who was 
 one of the three commissioners to attend the Albany convention 
 on behalf of Pennsylvania, published in The Pennsylvania Ga- 
 zette an " ad vice" for Major Washington that the fort in the 
 Forks of the Monongahela had been surrendered to the French. 
 To increase the force of his appeal for "our common defense and 
 security," he inserted a cartoon which represented a snake cut 
 into eight parts: the head represented New England, and the 
 seven other parts stood for New York, New Jersey, Pennsyl- 
 vania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Caro- 
 lina. By way of a caption Franklin inserted under the cartoon 
 the words " Join or Die." 
 
 INFLUENCE OF FIRST CARTOON 
 
 The power of the cartoon was at once recognized by the other 
 editors of colonial papers. Before the end of the month, the 
 snake cartoon had been copied in The New-York Gazette, The 
 New-York Mercury, The Boston Gazette, and The Boston News- 
 Letter. The Boston Gazette improved the original by putting the 
 following words into the mouth of the snake, " Unite and Con- 
 quer." The influence of the cartoon was not entirely confined 
 to the papers already mentioned. The South Carolina Gazette, 
 for example, doing the best it could with the mechanical facili- 
 ties at its disposal, printed a "near-snake" with straight lines 
 to represent its parts. Even The Virginia Gazette spoke of a 
 
COLONIAL PERIOD 79 
 
 "late ingenious emblem " which was arousing the colonies. The 
 snake of this cartoon was not allowed to die, but in its charmed 
 life it appeared twice more in the newspapers at critical periods 
 in American history. After a sleep of eleven years the snake 
 appeared when the British Stamp Act was scheduled to go into 
 effect, and after another rest it appeared at the outbreak of the 
 Revolution. 
 
 TAXES ON NEWSPAPERS 
 
 During the Colonial Period two attempts were made to tax 
 newspapers. The first was in Massachusetts, the second in New 
 York. In both instances the tax was designed simply to raise 
 revenue for the colony and not to restrict in any way the pub- 
 lishing of a newspaper. In each colony the tax was paid by 
 the ultimate consumer and not by the producer of the news- 
 paper. 
 
 FIRST IN MASSACHUSETTS 
 
 The Provincial Legislature of Massachusetts published on 
 January 13, 1755, an act, passed on January 8 of that year, 
 which imposed a tax of a halfpenny on every newspaper printed 
 on and after April 30, 1755. The act was to cover a period of 
 two years, from April 30, 1755, to April 30, 1757. There were 
 three papers published in Boston: all of these appeared with 
 "the little red stamp," save those preserved for office files. The 
 stamp, usually put on the lower part of the right-hand margin 
 of the paper, was a bird with outstretched wings. Of it The 
 Boston Evening Post spoke as follows in its issue for May 5, 
 1755: 
 
 The little pretty Picture here, 
 O' the Side looks well enough; 
 
 Though nothing to the purpose 't is, 
 It will serve to set it off. 
 
 As has already been intimated, the subscribers rather than 
 the printers paid for the adornment of "the little red bird" 
 which stood for the tax. The Boston News-Letter in its issue for 
 April 24, 1755, published the following announcement: 
 
80 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 As the Stamp-Duty takes Place on Wednesday next, the 30th Cur- 
 rent, the Publisher of this Paper desires such of his good Customers in 
 Town or Country, who intend to take in on the Terms lately adver- 
 tised, and have not yet given notice thereof, to do it on or before the 
 said Day, that he may know what Number to print off. 
 
 The Boston Evening Post, shortly before the bird flew away 
 when the tax ceased to be levied, May 1, 1757, printed this note 
 for the benefit of its customers who were to benefit by the re- 
 duction in price : 
 
 As the Stamp-Act will expire the second Day of May next, (after 
 which there will be some Abatement of the present Price, notwith- 
 standing the very high Price of Paper, &c. since the War) the Publisher 
 thinks it proper to inform you that he will send out no Papers to any 
 one who does not clear off all Accounts to that Time. 
 
 SECOND IN NEW YORK 
 
 The colony of New York passed on December 1, 1756, an 
 which went into effect on January 1, 1757, and which placed a 
 halfpenny weekly tax on newspapers. ' The act originally was 
 for one year, but it was renewed in December, 1757, and again 
 in December, 1758, for one year. The purpose of this tax was 
 practically the same as that of the one just mentioned in Massa- 
 chusetts : it was to raise funds to help defray the cost of running 
 the local government. 
 
 The subscribers in New York, as in Massachusetts, had to pay 
 this tax. The situation was thus explained by The New-York 
 Weekly Mercury for December 20, 1756: 
 
 Consider that the Sum to be raised by the Stamp Office is to be laid 
 out in the Defence of their Country; and that the Advanced Price of 
 the Paper is not extorted from them by the Printer, but is owing to the 
 Act, legally passed by the three different Branches of the Legislature 
 of this Province. 
 
 When the New York provincial tax on newspapers ceased 
 to be collected at the end of the year 1759 the papers, including 
 The Mercury, went back to subscription rates asked before 
 they were adorned with the red halfpenny stamps. 
 
COLONIAL PERIOD 81 
 
 LITERARY INFLUENCES 
 
 Moses Coit Tyler, in his " History of American Literature," 
 has thus summed up the literary influence of the newspapers 
 of the first era : 
 
 Our colonial journalism soon became, in itself, a really important 
 literary force. It could not remain forever a mere disseminator of pub- 
 lic gossip or a placard for the display advertisements. The instinct of 
 critical and brave debate was strong even among those puny editors, 
 and it kept struggling for expression. Moreover, each editor was sur- 
 rounded by a coterie of friends, with active brains and a propensity to 
 utterance; and these constituted a sort of unpaid staff of editorial con- 
 tributors, who, in various forms letters, essays, anecdotes, epigrams, 
 poems, lampoons helped to give vivacity and even literary value 
 to the paper. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 
 
 17651783 
 
 THE Revolutionary Period really began on March 22, 1765, 
 when on that date the British Parliament passed its obnoxious 
 Stamp Act to take effect on November 1 of that year. By this 
 act, newspapers published in the colonies were scheduled to pay 
 a halfpenny tax for one half-sheet or less and a one-penny tax 
 for anything over one half-sheet, but not exceeding one whole 
 sheet "for every printed copy thereof." Any advertisement in- 
 serted in their columns must, according to the terms of the act, 
 pay a duty of two shillings. The newspaper taxes imposed by 
 the Provincial Legislatures had been paid without a great deal 
 of protest, but colonial printers fought this act, not only because 
 they were opposed to taxation without representation, but also 
 because they feared that subscribers and advertisers would not 
 be willing to pay the increased cost of production. In self-de- 
 fense the newspapers, even those still loyal to the Crown, united 
 in a spirit of cooperation against the act: legislators were ad- 
 vised to "take good care of the freedom of the press," and the 
 columns of the newspapers reproduced lively discussions on 
 "the rights of the people" in the matter of taxation. Distin- 
 guished patriots, acting as occasional contributors to the press, 
 changed editorial policies from static to dynamic influences. 
 
 NEWSPAPER VS. STAMP ACT OF 1765 
 
 While a few of the newspapers in America did actually sus- 
 pend publication on account of the Stamp Act, most of them 
 simply threatened to do so and then went ahead and brought 
 out their issues with or without their regular official titles. For 
 two or three weeks after the act went into effect several news- 
 papers appeared with such heads as "No Stamped Paper To Be 
 Had," "Recent Occurrences," etc. In Philadelphia The Penn- 
 
Thurfday. OOttir )i, 1765. THE NUMB. n;;. 
 
 [PENNSYLVANIA JOURNAL; 
 
 AND 
 
 WEEKLY ADVERTISER. 
 
 EXPIRING: In Hopes of a Rcfurrcftion to LIFE again. 
 
 [AM forry to be obliged 
 to acquaint my Resd 
 en. that a> TheStAMp 
 ACT, ijfear'd to bcob 
 
 I.gatory upo 
 
 of tc 
 
 fuing. 
 
 <*) he t'ubliiher of thii Paper unable t< 
 Srar the Burthen, his thought it expetlien 
 > STOP a while, inorder todeliberate, whe 
 I th r any Methods can be found to elude the 
 Lh.in, forced tor ut. and efcapc jhe mfup 
 | pomt'lc Slavery , which it it lioperf, frorr 
 thejulV Repreienutions now frude igainf 
 (hat Aft, may be effected. Mean while 
 I mult earnnlly Requell every Individua 
 [of mf Sublcribrri, manjr of whom hav 
 Seen long behind Hand, that they would 
 j'mrr.cdu'cly Difchtrge their rtfpe&ive Ar 
 ean, th.u I mav be able, not only 
 J lupport myfelf during the IntervaJ, boi 
 I be better prepared to proceed igtin wtfc 
 Ith'uPaper, whenever an opening for thai 
 (Pnrpol'e ippeari, which I hope wiH tx 
 1 WILLIAM BRADFORD. 
 
 4 ii 
 
 iofi Cato 
 
 rll Hlcfunft 
 e.iio, 
 
 they ire umlej, that their mulu.l aim 
 ,. raicht be (incere a 
 ,'kpLtedby ,1 ' 
 . .|,,.h iithe ! 
 
 -kl>L.Mr. 
 
 xiiyottol L,l 
 I *h>ch i tiruc 
 
 t Liberty ol |l.e Pcuple. Wlilc 
 
 IMI iimj.nia,ne4. the rft Seep, to Opn,ef!,on are Je 
 :oftej, ar.lthe AIICI.I, " o< t',,e Peo; e i.aion.lil) a.ak 
 
 .Bed Wnen tl lup^cliej. II c . 
 
 nd Iheu- Ku,n M admit J la I..JJ--. . l.an!,. 
 
 ! Tlbtimt'.'iunjil^ the litter unavoidable, sj 
 ni la uWi toli.lruPo.er. tl at il.e lai._l.i(i a... 
 to .{ art rrtolii/ely opj>c.ie( 
 
 ...J w.i to lir o Dlnjn ! nT, . i- 
 |t)t>n Bm< Wlba .n Rel ( .u w f..i,niki r>i...r.f 
 . ,w'*J "- Wl 
 
 I - .- ...j .cUoll, to ru'e 
 
 I kind l-byf.ci.n ,..i .verf toe^.^eluc t >,.!-. or ft 
 
 I in all political Dilorjen the mare contented e a 
 ertben. fo m.ich the o,le aie tie., and lo n,u 
 worfe are ne fur them. It n a *nv !, .ppy t t'.un 
 
 . a.e.y li%pr.y UN 
 
 t.nci KOin, 
 
 .... Caluin,,) But .lil.oujh fuMn Vinue (annol 
 iftecie.1 by Ihe Indulgence of the malt uT'imireO Fi 
 
 e. Ref"tf. Furlhiti* i 
 
 ammonly nipt in il 
 ,,heV,e.,of.l.f,|t. 
 
 .( Men to Oiut up Ihe moft IvKce'.ful ax) u 
 Chain.elof Inl ,n,.i. n f..,r,i:e I'r.'l Ir. .r.enl 
 
 dci t be Opoofcd Befide. tlie Deprivttion of Ov 
 -hole liberty may be ,u.ned o e lame Pnncip 
 
 mfSuathAnMB h'eJl" 1 ,. 1 '"' """ " 
 
 II ul SerMtuJel Til ttierefore fir 
 
 ,t The old rVriv-f. (/.< Sni 
 
 "n'd JirJa'rfTntabV'ileft'iithoo. 
 Day, an Hour of .iriuoui Libert, , 
 li otMili a .hole ttermty in Bonda ( e. 
 ,i r e all at loyal Su^ejt,. tod Ire? born Briton 
 - ;ht. and Libert.e. c 
 I a.ld Honour lo ou 
 
 , ._-uie Ponent) may reap tlie Bene 
 
 ind blefl tk< H.vnd. .r...l. .ere ll.c Inllmmeutl of p 
 :unnc it -T? 
 
 That Cfcey then, thel.riihte(t Crown ofPnife, 
 
 *.nd ever> Patro 
 
 The I 
 
 ] U t ZE3SXZS. 
 
 u, il.elaidcounryofV 
 
 'TheVin^ha.'heenpieal.dto ippoint Ihe rithl hn 
 Mliam E!.! of D^rtmoutli, So.rn^ Jemr... EdVard t. 
 
 lowncr"' o: nade. and for lnlpetlui|; 
 
 XtutjgM 
 
 , been ,le.,V 
 
 ufam ii u . 
 
 j etko'hn 
 
 t ftmt, lh'>tide,.'-''r ^..c,.'uy tie Pu'nc'h m.n".' 
 >, lor imrr.e.t,atc!y leti.flg \bout the demolition ol 
 e Jetteei, bKU are the luppuft uf the kvbow cl 
 
 'i. The tilbt.Hil of Ctnt Poland. 
 -J .': K:,.a.:,.. h;l P ..uJ perniJnon lo ! Luthe- 
 ...a.U,l.'. u ,7 lo o,* ll,e.e church. ,A U. bn 
 .1 re>r t.ei.ty yn.-. to p.o.,le i mjnifter, and ! 
 t,.and,.i,,ele/.ue,n 
 
 . The Oetachle.t of one hundre.1 
 e.iU,,rie<! fw Lou.tina. .re TO ike iturch for ,.,!, 
 i.e t r/areroemuak un b*itil tlie Unicon, t.i ( , 
 t'l a (o.ernoe, two canttch,n trout, l toxmifl^i.. ( , 
 
 ufhtby ihelarlpUtfrwnl 
 | 
 
 A^mf ,, On Thu.M.y at the In,, , . I 
 
 ContuH, in, I,,,,,. ,,,..,., ! J 
 
 comrnittee^Nlnb A-. j 
 
 'n 'rn'y'la" l".',^",'",",""^ ."("" d'.d'i'f.lt r c . 
 Ju>e MaJure. The aim. ha. f,,nc c n s i>tr,d Ihe Ane 
 r country tor the Nauob, of |.*I. rtKue . ytr 
 
 Munro f ..ned -t Scr| 
 i|i Dowla, one ol l>e molt fonr.i.lable p^wer. o 
 i TTit luuiequence oftl,.. batt e e.vei the co, 
 he cornmiml ot trade 10 the greater) part of thi 
 
 nl.i , omi ,,,v at p.' .em ma, be blOur'i! in' eon 
 
 n with Alrxan.irr the Great, .bole on.nuod 
 
 leiiver InJu.tu Iht n.er Uan ( e., . fj 
 
 elpeOed u tbxit i." 
 
 It is raid the ne m y, takire into eonndi 
 
 r r ,,lt.,t deplorable ntu.tK,,, of Ihe Cln^an, 
 UrmtneJ to take up all tbe Canada btHiai oa: 
 rereftte the pie'.m time, .nd aCtr-ard. od,' 
 
 , the ..oil lo,,e te,m,. ,.,,.f M ,. ,,d /..,,. 
 
 '.'"-'-"-^f^" "' *" "" C1 "" C 1^ *- < 
 . lord.' 
 
 oird on Monday 
 
 menta, obtained njr fotrner { rant, guder ll,e c,e. n 
 ordered to be nude out. ai allo . efl.m.te t/tri I 
 nnual produce of their land o, In order to n.trod,,,, 
 
 V^^hVr.d"""'-"'^" "'"" "'"" 
 he, ite from ClhralteT. trat En.lifl, S C ,^ In 
 men ire {>,,!,, both there andai ^,nurca b r (om 
 nt., to le.ve O.I bo*rd hi. S.rd.man aa^e*,'! 'tup, 
 
 X.fV The right Uononnbl. the Earl O, 
 
 rSI ^^Kh^fwst I 
 
 .ilterland. .l,e?e he mitnd, pub:, u !i n, hl^^d M" I 
 iuich,il t rvein.. with CK|'!ani(., y r(H *. ., 
 kt.lfel,,fo.n.ed. ll.at I,. U .,, ,,,;'M u t'll^'l 
 a, 0,e &m, He. . liiftory f E n ,,.W ,,^ T, 
 
 enrjfo. 
 Af . , , \v, ,, 
 
 X'lf.oanl Speocer h D.OI ll> to be 
 
 ft ,.rfro.le,r, rim . perf, 
 ely oReretl t f.et enipl 
 M. reful.J It, fi,ln t ; 
 
 sftssJrs 
 
 l$&& 
 
 : <5^Ni^ 
 
 MORTUARY ISSUE OF BRADFORD'S /'A'.V.V.s'lV.r.l.V/A JOURXAL 
 OX OCCASION OF THE STAMP ACT 
 
 (Reduced) 
 
REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 83 
 
 sylvania Journal and The Pennsylvania Gazette were typical ex- 
 amples of papers which adopted such a scheme. The former, 
 in its issue for October 31, 1765, was the edition par excellence 
 of the Stamp Act days. Reproduced on another page, it did 
 much to arouse the colonists to drastic action, but it was the 
 appearance of the paper typographically rather than what it 
 said editorially that made this issue so influential. The Mary- 
 land Gazette, another paper which issued a "Doom's-Day Num- 
 ber," appeared in deep mourning, with the skull and crossbones, 
 representing the stamp, on the lower right-hand corner of the 
 front page, and printed in deep black type the words, "The 
 Times are Dreadful, Dismal, Doleful, Dolorous, and Dollar- 
 less." Though this newspaper had announced in its issue of 
 October 10, 1765, that it would suspend publication, it was kept 
 before the people of Maryland by "apparitions" which closely 
 resembled the real thing. For example, on January 30, 1766, 
 there appeared The Maryland Gazette Reviving: on February 
 20, 1766, The Maryland Gazette Revived, and by March 6, 1766, 
 The Maryland Gazette. These "apparitions" proved that The 
 Gazette was "not dead but only sleepeth." After the date last 
 mentioned, the paper resumed regular publication. Even The 
 South Carolina Gazette had in place of its title the usual imprint, 
 "No Stamped Paper To Be Had." 
 
 Other newspapers took just as decided a stand against the 
 act. Hugh Gaine printed in his New-York Weekly Mercury on 
 October 28, 1765, a notice that his paper "must now cease for a 
 Time and the Period of its Resurrection is uncertain," but that 
 "when it is revived the Printer hopes for a Continuation of the 
 Favour of his Friends." He made as did many other printers 
 who issued a similar announcement an appeal to patrons to 
 pay what was due on subscriptions. A little later a New York 
 mob compelled the surrender of all stamped paper in that city, 
 and thus Gaine, when he printed a news-sheet on November 4, 
 with "No Stamped Paper To Be Had" as its title, literally told 
 the truth. All papers which adopted some subterfuge in the 
 matter of headings resumed their old titles after the first few 
 weeks of the Stamp Act. 
 
 A most diligent and careful search has not revealed among the 
 
84 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 thirteen original colonies a single newspaper which appeared on 
 stamped paper. The stamp, however, was used by two or three 
 papers elsewhere. A copy of The Halifax Gazette for February 
 13, 1766, for example, has on the upper left-hand corner of the 
 fourth page the red halfpenny stamp with the word "America" 
 also in red above it. The Boston News-Letter, in its issue for 
 December 26, 1765, printed an item from Philadelphia in which 
 a mention was made of the arrival in that city from Barbados 
 of a "Stamped News-Paper of 2d. of November," and an an- 
 nouncement was given that the newspaper was "exposed to 
 Public View at the Coffee-House." The paper was later sus- 
 pended from an iron chain and burned. 
 
 REPEAL OF STAMP ACT 
 
 When the news reached Boston on Friday, May 16, 1766, 
 that the British Parliament had repealed the Stamp Act on 
 March 18, the papers of that city united and published an 
 "extra" of the fact with the head, "Glorious News." To quote 
 its conclusion: "Printed for the Benefit of the PUBLIC by 
 Drapers, Edes & Gill, Green & Russell, and Fleets. The Cus- 
 tomers to the Boston Papers may have the above gratis at the 
 respective Offices." In the same spirit at least, the newspapers 
 in other colonies published the "Glorious News." 
 
 SNAKE CARTOON AGAIN 
 
 At the time the British Stamp Act was attracting so much 
 attention in the press, there appeared on September 21, 1765, 
 The Constitutional Courant. The name of its editor was not 
 given and the place of its publication was not mentioned. While 
 there was only one issue, there were at least three different edi- 
 tions, which seems to indicate that there was simultaneous or 
 nearly so publication in different cities. The paper was de- 
 voted principally to an attack on the Stamp Act, and two of the 
 editions reprinted the snake cartoon which Franklin had inserted 
 in The Pennsylvania Gazette in 1754. The sale of The Consti- 
 tutional Courant was unusually large. It was hawked on the 
 streets of New York by newsboys and was distributed along all 
 the postroads by colonial riders. The Boston Evening Post, in 
 
REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 85 
 
 publishing an account about The Courant, had the snake car- 
 toon, already mentioned, reproduced in its columns on Octo- 
 ber 7, 1765. 
 
 The snake cartoon was reproduced a second time during this 
 period. In 1774 John Holt, fighting editor, dragged it out of its 
 newspaper hole and put it into the title of his paper, The New- 
 York Journal or General Advertiser. The snake now had nine 
 parts Georgia had entered the combination. A slight change 
 was made in the caption so that it read, " Unite or Die." Toward 
 the close of the year, Holt's snake shed its skin and appeared 
 coiled and united. On it were printed the following words: - 
 
 UNITED NOW FREE AND ALIVE FIRM ON THIS BASIS 
 LIBERTY SHALL STAND AND THUS SUPPORTED EVER 
 BLESS OUR LAND TILL TIME BECOMES ETERNITY. 
 
 Holt kept the united snake in the title of his paper until he 
 was compelled to flee from New York on August 29, 1776, on 
 account of the occupation of the city by the British. 
 
 The cartoon snake in its largest form stretched itself out on 
 July 7, 1774, in The Massachusetts Spy, a paper published in 
 Boston by Isaiah Thomas. It appeared directly under the title 
 and occupied practically the entire width of the newspaper. 
 However, a little space at the extreme right was saved in which 
 appeared a dragon, representing Great Britain. Thomas as- 
 serted in his " History of Printing" that the snake cartoon ap- 
 peared in each succeeding issue so long as The Spy was printed 
 in Boston. The snake finally reached Philadelphia again, but 
 for some unaccountable reason, instead of creeping back into its 
 old hole, The Pennsylvania Gazette, it sunned itself in the title 
 of The Pennsylvania Journal, a rival paper published by William 
 Bradford. Its first appearance in The Journal was on July 27, 
 1774; its last was on October 18, 1775. 
 
 PET OF PATRIOTS 
 
 The Boston Gazette, the third paper of that name in Boston, 
 and established April 7, 1755, by Edes and Gill, was the especial 
 "pet of the patriots." In its pages were fought the New Eng- 
 land editorial battles for American freedom: its contributors 
 
86 I^STORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 numbered such patriots as Samuel Adams, Joseph Warren, 
 John Adams, Thomas Gushing, Samuel Cooper, etc. The paper 
 was a good reporter of such important events as the Stamp Act, 
 the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, etc. 
 
 The account of the Tea Party, from The Boston Gazette, is 
 reproduced to show the improvement in the handling of news 
 since the days of the Colonial Period: 
 
 On Tuesday last the body of the people of this and all the adjacent 
 towns, and others from the distance of twenty miles, assembled at the 
 Old South Meeting-house, to inquire the reason of the delay in send- 
 ing the ship Dartmouth, with the East-India Tea, back to London; 
 and having found that the owner had not taken the necessary steps for 
 that purpose, they enjoined him at his peril to demand of the collec- 
 tor of the customs a clearance of the ship, and appointed a committee 
 of ten to see it performed: after which they adjourned to the Thursday 
 following, ten o'clock. They then met, and being informed by Mr. 
 Rotch, that a clearance was refused him, they enjoined him imme- 
 diately to enter a protest and apply to the Governor for a passport by 
 the castle, and adjourned again till three o'clock for the same day. At 
 which time they again met, and after waiting till near sunset, Mr. Rotch 
 came in and informed them that he had accordingly entered his pro- 
 test and waited on the Governor for a pass, but his excellency told him 
 he could not consistent with his duty grant it until his vessel was quali- 
 fied. The people finding all their efforts to preserve the property of the 
 East-India Company and return it safely to London frustrated by 
 the tea consignees, the collector of the customs, and the Governor of 
 the Province, DISSOLVED their meeting. But, BEHOLD what fol- 
 lowed! A number of brave and resolute men, determined to do all in 
 their power to save their country from the ruin which their enemies had 
 plotted, in less than four hours, emptied every chest of tea overboard, 
 the three ships commanded by Captains Hull, Bruce, and Coffin, 
 amounting to 342 chests, into the Sea!! without the least damage done 
 to the ships or any other property. The masters and owners are well 
 pleased that their ships are thus cleared; and the people are almost 
 universally congratulating each other on this happy event. 
 
 REVERE, ENGRAVER OF CUTS 
 
 When the four victims of the Boston Massacre of 1770 were 
 buried, The Boston Gazette, in its issue for March 12, 1770, illus- 
 trated its account of the event with cuts of four coffins. Evi- 
 dently there must have been some one else who was expected 
 to die, for Paul Revere, the leading Boston engraver, but better 
 
Cornwall;* TAKEN! 
 
 BOSTON, (Friday; Oftober 26, 1781. 
 
 This Morning an Exprcfs arrived from Providence 
 to HIS EXCELLENCY the GOVERNOR, 
 with tlic following IMPORTANT INTELLI- 
 GENCE, viz. 
 
 PROVIDENCE, 0<h 25, 1781. Three o;CIock, P. M; 
 
 This Moment ah Exprefs arrived at his Honor the Deputy^ 
 Governor's; from Col. Chriftopher Qlney, Commandant on 
 J*hode-Ifl?.. n d, announcing the important Intelligence of the 
 Surrender of Lord CORNWALUS and his Army ; an Ac- 
 count of which was Piinted this Morning at Newport, and 
 is as follows, viz. 
 
 NEWPORT, October 25, 1781. 
 
 X^ESTERD AY Afternoon arrived in this Harbour Cap't. 
 J Lovett, of the Schooner Adventure, from York River, in 
 Chefapeak Bay, (which he left the 2Oth infbnt,) and brought 
 us the glorious News of the Surrender of Lord Cornwailis and 
 his Army P.ifoners of War to the allied Army, under the 
 Command of our illuftrious General ; and the French Fleet, 
 under the Command of His Excellency the. Courit de GraiTc. 
 
 A Ccfotidn of Arms took Place on Thurfday the i8ih Inftant 
 in Confcquence of Pr.opofals from Lord CORNWALLIS for & 
 Capitulation. His Lordfhip propofed a Ceftition of Twcrity- 
 four Hours, but Two only wers granted by His Excellency 
 General V/ASHINGTCN. The Articles were complcatcd 
 the fame Day, and the next Day the allied Army took. Pcflcf- 
 fion of York Town. 
 
 By this glorious Cpnqueft, NINE* THOUSAND of the 
 Eneniy, including Seamen, fell into our Hands, wi:h an im- 
 mcnfe Quantity of Warlike Stores, a Fotfy-Gtui.$&tp, a Frigate^ 
 an armed V r eiTel, and about One Huudted Sail of 
 
 Printed by B, Edes and Soas. ia Scacc Strecc. 
 
 A BROADSIDE OF EDES 
 
 A Revolutionary "Extra" of The Boston Gazette 
 (Reduced) 
 
REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 87 
 
 known for his midnight ride, rendered a bill to The Boston 
 Gazette for engraving "5 coffings for a massacre." The coffins, 
 with their skulls and crossbones, did much to arouse the Sons of 
 Liberty to action. 
 
 GAINE AND HIS PAPERS v 
 
 In all probability Hugh Gaine was the first newspaper pub- 
 lisher to employ newsboys to deliver papers. The Mercury for 
 September 14, 1761, contained an advertisement for a nice boy 
 to deliver papers to city patrons; "he will not be employed for 
 more than two Hours every Monday Morning." The Mercury 
 again asked on August 24, 1772, for "a clever honest Fellow to 
 carry The New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury to Part of the 
 Customers in the City, four Hours every Monday will do 
 business." 
 
 After New York had been abandoned by the Continental 
 army, there were two editions for a short time of Hugh Game's 
 New-York Gazette. One edition was brought out in New York 
 City, another was brought out in Newark, in East New Jersey. 
 The New York edition favored the Tory cause, and the Newark 
 edition, that of the Whigs. In the past the assertion has been 
 made that Gaine brought out both of these editions and was 
 simply watching to see which side would probably be success- 
 ful before he cast his lot. Such, however, was not the case. 
 After the battle of Brooklyn, Gaine removed part of his presses 
 and type to Newark. Here, on September 21, 1776, he brought 
 out Number 1301 of his Gazette. This and the following issues 
 spoke of "the Honourable Continental Congress," and the issue 
 of Number 1306 showed that he enjoyed the confidence of Gov- 
 ernor Livingston of New Jersey. What happened in New York 
 was this: General Howe, upon his arrival found that there was 
 no newspaper in the city and appointed Ambrose Serle, a Royal- 
 ist, to bring out a paper. Serle promptly appropriated the type 
 and presses which had been left at "The Bible and Crown" and 
 brought out on September 30, Number 1301 of The New York 
 Gazette with Gaine's imprint upon it. With the next issue, how- 
 ever, Number 1302, Searle changed the imprint. Gaine, how- 
 ever, did have a change of faith and returned to New York and 
 
88 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 resumed charge of his old New-York Gazette with the issue of 
 November 11, Number 1307. How Gaine made his peace with 
 the British authorities was never told. He did, however, re- 
 main loyal to the Crown until the end of the war. For this 
 change to the Royalist cause, Philip Freneau the poet of the 
 Revolution, hurled a scorching poem at Gaine. But Gaine was 
 never trusted by the Royalists, for they appointed James Riv- 
 ington " Printer to the King's Most Excellent Majesty," and 
 made Rivington's New-York Loyal Gazette, started after the office 
 of The Gazetteer had been wrecked, the official paper. They even 
 'prevented Gaine from printing in his sheet the more important 
 items of news. After the evacuation of New York, by the 
 British, Gaine suspended his Gazette on November 10, 1783, 
 crossed out the word "Crown" hi his imprint, " Bible and 
 Crown," and confined himself principally to the printing and 
 . selling of books. 
 
 EXTRAMURAL PUBLICATIONS 
 
 During the War of the Revolution, whenever the British suc- 
 ceeded in occupying a strategic city there was nothing left for 
 the patriotic printer to do but to suspend publication or take his 
 newspaper elsewhere. John Holt, the publisher of The New York 
 Journal, for example, was forced to remove his paper to King- 
 ston when New York fell into the hands of the British. His first 
 issue of The Journal, with the Kingston date-line was July 7, 
 1777. In making its bow to Kingston, The Journal said: 
 
 After remaining, for ten months past, overwhelmed and sunk, in a 
 sea of tyrannic violence and rapine, The New York Journal, just emerg- 
 ing from the waves, faintly rears its languid head, to hail its former friends 
 and supporters, to assure them that unchanged in its spirit and prin- 
 ciples, the utmost exertions of its influence, as heretofore, will ever be 
 applied, with a sacred regard to the defence and support of American 
 rights and freedom, the advancement of true religion and virtue and 
 the happiness of mankind. 
 
 Holt found it necessary to make another change. After he had 
 brought out an issue on October 13, 1777, Kingston was burned 
 by the British three days later, and he removed to Poughkeep- 
 sie where he revived his Journal with the date-line on May 11, 
 
REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 89 
 
 1778. He discontinued publication in Poughkeepsie on Janu- 
 ary 6, 1782, and returned the latter part of 1783 to New York, 
 where he again brought out his paper on November 22 of that 
 year. Other publishers of the period were forced to make simi- 
 lar arrangements. Edes took his Gazette from Boston to Water- 
 town; Thomas, his Massachusetts Spy from Boston to Worces- 
 ter; Loudon, his New-York Packet to Fishkill; South wick, his 
 Newport Mercury to Attlebury; Dunlap, his Pennsylvania Packet 
 from Philadelphia to Lancaster, etc. 
 
 NEWSPAPER OFFICE MOBBED 
 
 The Royalist papers, published under the protection and the 
 encouragement of the British authorities, continued to issue 
 their numbers, but they experienced difficulties and hardships 
 almost equal to those of the patriotic papers, for local citizens, 
 sympathizing as they did with the cause of national independ- 
 ence, positively refused to support journals with Tory editorial 
 policies. But of these Tory sheets, possibly the most hated as 
 well as the most feared was Rivingtoris New-York Gazetteer; or 
 the Connecticut, New Jersey, Hudson's River and Quebec Weekly 
 Advertiser, which James Rivington, once a member of a famous 
 English publishing house of his name, established in New York 
 April 22, 1773. So bitter became the feeling against this news- 
 paper that its shop was twice mobbed during 1777. The second 
 time a thorough job was done; a group of armed men on No- 
 vember 27 rode into New York, broke into the building, de- 
 stroyed the press, and carried away the type, which was later 
 melted into bullets for the use of the "Rebels," as Rivington 
 called the Whigs. But Rivington, securing from England new 
 press and type, brought out The New-York Loyal Gazette, which 
 became, as has already been asserted, the official organ of the 
 British in New York. 
 
 AID FROM ARMY 
 
 Because the New York newspapers were supervised by the 
 British authorities, New Jersey as a "war measure" promoted 
 the establishment of The New- Jersey Journal at Chatham. The 
 Revolutionary forces under Washington at Morristown, five 
 
90 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 miles away, helped its publisher, Shepard Kollock, with "Nine 
 Hundred Wt of old Tent Unfitt for service," and later with 
 " Eight Hundred Three Quarters & Twelve pound old Tent 
 Cloath," and still later, "Two Bundles Old Tent Rags w* Two 
 Hundred One Quarter," also "One Other Bagg w* Two Hun- 
 dred One Quarter old tent Rags"; these rags and old tents were 
 for the manufacture of paper which Kollock so sadly needed. 
 In addition, the army out of its scanty stores actually furnished 
 a very large amount of white paper in order that the soldiers 
 might have a newspaper which told of the progress of struggles 
 in other colonies. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA PAPERS 
 
 During the last few years of the American Revolution, the ^ 
 most important newspaper in Philadelphia was The Freeman 1 s ~ 
 Journal; or The North- American Intelligencer. It first appeared 
 on April 25, 1781, and was edited and printed by Francis Bailey. 
 Its policy was thus announced editorially: " To encourage genius, 
 to deter vice, and disrobe tyranny and misrule of every plu- 
 mage." Its most distinct service, however, was in reporting 
 the progress of the war. In its issue for October 24, 1781, it 
 announced the surrender of General Charles Earl Cornwallis in 
 lines which reached clear across the page. In addition to its / 
 patriotic news was its satire. Philip Freneau, who later achieved w 
 prominence through his editorship of The National Gazette, con- 
 tributed to The Freeman's Journal numerous bits of satirical 
 verse. Another paper in Philadelphia started during the War 
 was The Pennsylvania Evening Post, established January 24, 
 1775, by Benjamin Towne. During the early part of the War 
 the paper was very friendly to the American cause, but later 
 changed its editorial policy when the British occupied Phila- 
 delphia. After the evacuation of that city The Evening Post t 
 again announced its devotion to the Whig principles, but was 
 forced to suspend for want of popular support, due to its policy 
 while the British were in the city. The Pennsylvania Journal, 
 established December 2, 1742, as The Weekly Advertiser, or 
 The Pennsylvania Journal, by William Bradford, was in many* 
 respects, and these the most essential, more independent in 
 
REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 91 
 
 tone than The Pennsylvania Gazette and was much the better 
 newspaper during the Revolutionary Period. 
 
 When the British occupied Philadelphia a local printer took 
 his printing-press and went to Egg-Harbour where he published 
 The Minute Intelligencer. Evidently the Tory press was not the 
 only one which published sensational news, as the following 
 item quoted from The Minnie Intelligencer will show: 
 
 It is said the English Ministry, having no hopes of subduing America 
 by force of arms, whilst the inhabitants retain their native virtue, have 
 instructed the officers in their army to try a more certain method of 
 success; by debauching the morals of the men, and seducing the virtue 
 of the women. For this purpose play-houses are opened, gaming-tables 
 established, and balls promoted, in a city languishing under a scarcity 
 of the necessities of life. 
 
 In striking contrast to The Minute Intelligencer was The 
 Pennsylvania Ledger, or The Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania 
 and New- Jersey Weekly Advertiser, Heaven save the name, 
 started in Philadelphia on January 28, 1775, by James Hum- 
 phreys. He was extremely loyal to the Crown, and because of 
 his somewhat rabid tendencies he was forced to suspend publi- 
 cation in November, 1776. When the British, however, took 
 possession of the city, Humphreys seized the opportunity to 
 resume publication of his sheet which he as promptly discon- 
 tinued when they left. 
 
 SOUTHERN SHEETS 
 
 While the British were in control of Charleston, several print- 
 ers in the army conducted a newspaper called The Royal South 
 Carolina Gazette, printed by Roberts, MacDonald, and Cameron. 
 Revolutionary forces in South Carolina also had an army print- 
 ing-press and issued many " near-newspapers" telling of the 
 activities of Green's army. The Royal Gazette always referred 
 to them as The Rebel Gazette. But when the British evacuated 
 Charleston, December 14, 1782, there was no newspaper left to 
 tell the news of the place. This condition did not obtain long, for 
 on February 15, 1783, Nathan Childs brought out The South 
 Carolina Weekly Gazette; on January 18, 1786, the paper ap- 
 peared as a daily under the name, The Charleston Morning Post 
 
92 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 and Daily Advertiser later changed to The City Gazette, or 
 Daily Advertiser. Associated in the publication of this paper 
 was Peter Freneau, a brother of Philip Freneau who was the 
 poet of the Revolution and later the editor of The National 
 Gazette. 
 
 A SCOOP 
 
 On September 3, 1783, The Gazette of Providence, Rhode 
 Island, printed one of the great scoops of the period when it 
 announced: "By the brig Don Golvez, Capt. Silas Jones, ar- 
 rived in the river from London, we have received a copy of the 
 long looked-f or Definitive Treaty, which we embrace the earliest 
 occasion of handing to the public." 
 
 EDITOKIAL CHANGES 
 
 If editorial expression before the Revolutionary Period was 
 feeble and timid, as has been so often asserted, it was not 
 because the colonial editors were weaklings or cowards, but 
 because they knew that the publication of any criticism of the 
 Government meant the suppression of their papers on account 
 of the censorship. After the Stamp Act the newspapers became 
 more critical and debates became more numerous. When the 
 printer found, as he did in the case of the Stamp Act, that he 
 could now violate the censorship with impunity, he became 
 braver and more critical in his editorial expression, and en- 
 joyed for the first time a freedom which rapidly changed the 
 character of the American press. 
 
 HANDLING OF NEWS 
 
 In spite of the fact that daily newspapers did not make their 
 appearance until after the Republic had been established, the 
 newspapers showed unusual enterprise in printing the news of 
 the more important battles. Instead of waiting to insert such 
 accounts in regular issues, theyjrinted handbills which were 
 hawked on the streets and carried by the post-riders much the 
 same as extra editions are to-day. These handbills, of which 
 possibly The Boston Gazette issued the largest number, did not 
 hesitate to employ large type whenever the Americans were vie- 
 
REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 93 
 
 torious. When Lord Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, pro- 
 vision must have been made for the prompt dispatch of the 
 news because many of the handbills contained the expression, 
 "by special express." Benjamin Towne, even after he had sus- 
 pended publication of The Pennsylvania Evening Post, occa- 
 sionally printed handbills under the head, "All the News for 
 Two Coppers." These he sold on the streets of Philadelphia. In 
 spite of the stereotyped words, "Important Intelligence," many 
 of these handbills gave the gist of the news in large headlines 
 across the page. 
 
 ADVERTISING OF PERIOD 
 
 During the early part of the Revolutionary Period, editors 
 not only increased the stock of patent medicines carried on their 
 shelves, but did a more extensive business in the selling of slaves. 
 The following advertisement from Hugh Gaine's Weekly Mer- 
 cury for January 25, 1768, is typical: - 
 
 To be sold an excellent negro Wench about twenty years old, with 
 a male Child about three months old; the Wench has had the Small- 
 pox, can cook, wash and iron, can be well recommended, and is sold for 
 no other fault than being too fruitful. Enquire of H. Gaine. 
 
 This advertisement was followed by another also offering a 
 slave for sale, but in this case one should " enquire of the printer" 
 Hugh Gaine. Strange as it may seem, the editorial trade in 
 ^slaves-was possibly the largest in Boston. Many of the adver- 
 tisements of runaway slaves differed slightly from those of the 
 Colonial Period in that personal descriptions included such 
 items as "an iron collar around his neck," "manacles on his 
 wrists," "three scars on his back where he was burned for run- 
 ning away two years ago," etc. The interpretation of such items 
 belongs to another history than that of journalism. 
 
 Many of the papers fairly bristled with advertisements like 
 the following: " I intend to leave this Colony immediately. Pay- 
 ment of all debts to me should be made at once. (Signed 
 
 )" A collection of these advertisements would make a 
 
 fairly good index of the leading Tories who fled to foreign coun- 
 tries to avoid the disorders of the Revolution. 
 
94 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 Toward the close of the period, advertisements of lotteries 
 occupied much space in the newspapers. In most cases these 
 lotteries were conducted not for personal gain, but for village 
 and city improvement. Especially interesting to-day are those 
 advertisements which announced lotteries for the benefit of 
 churches and colleges. If these advertisements were truthful, 
 and there is no reason to suppose they were otherwise, lot- 
 teries equipped the libraries of our higher institutions of learn- 
 ing, remodeled houses of worship, put bells in the steeples of 
 churches, repaired roads, erected bridges over rivers, and did many 
 other things for which communities to-day are commonly taxed. 
 
 An advertisement in The Virginia Gazette showed that a local 
 church had gone into the wholesale tobacco business and was 
 evidently trying to market through the columns of the press the 
 nicotia leaves turned in by parishioners in payment for subscrip- 
 tions to the rector's salary. 
 
 Benjamin Franklin has already been mentioned as an able 
 writer of advertisements. An excellent example of his work will 
 be found in an advertisement which he wrote for George Wash- 
 ington, inserted in the first number of The Maryland Journal and 
 The Baltimore Advertiser, which William Goddard brought out 
 on Friday, August 20, 1773. Most vividly did Franklin tell how 
 Washington, " having obtained patents for upwards of twenty 
 thousand acres of land on the Ohio and Great Kanhawa Rivers," 
 was going to lease sections upon moderate terms a number 
 of years rent free provided settlers cleared, fenced, tilled, laid 
 down good grass for meadow, and set out at least fifty good fruit 
 trees. Franklin did not hesitate to add for Washington this con- 
 cluding bit of comment : 
 
 And it may not be amiss further to observe, that if the scheme for 
 establishing a new government on the Ohio, in the manner talked of, 
 should ever be affected, these must be among the most valuable lands 
 in it, not only on account of the goodness of soil, and the other advan- 
 tages above enumerated, but from their contiguity to the seat of gov- 
 ernment, which more than probable will be fixed at the mouth of the 
 Great Kanhawa. 
 
 This advertisement, it may be remarked incidentally, was ex- 
 ceedingly profitable to Washington. 
 
REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 95 
 
 PRINTING-PRESSES OF PERIOD 
 
 Newspapers continued to be printed on the ordinary flat-bed 
 hand-press. The size of the editions of some papers had become 
 so large that the man who pulled the levers complained of back- 
 aches. To overcome this difficulty, inventors had already 
 started to find some way out of the difficulty. Before the close 
 of the period, Benjamin Dearborn, publisher of The New Hamp- 
 shire Gazette, had invented a wheel press which would print the 
 whole side of a sheet at one pull of the lever. No great mechani- 
 cal improvement in the printing-press was made, however, until 
 the beginning of the next century when a revolving cylinder was 
 substituted for the lever. 
 
 SMALL CIRCULATION 
 
 The circulation of individual papers during the Revolutionary 
 Period still remained small. James Rivington, with Number 78 
 of The New-York Gazetteer; or the Connecticut, New Jersey, Hud- 
 son's River and Quebec Weekly Advertiser, boasted in October, 
 1774, that he sent his paper to every colony of North America, 
 and announced with pride that it had a circulation of thirty-six 
 hundred. As Rivington's paper later came to be known as The 
 Lying Gazette, it is barely possible that he was also a "circula- 
 tion liar." His paper did have, however, one of the widest dis- 
 tributions of any of the period. 
 
 POST VS. PRESS 
 
 John Holt, in his New York Journal for October 30, 1766, com- 
 plained most bitterly that his rival, James Parker, prevented 
 the post-riders of New Jersey from distributing his paper to 
 customers and had substituted in its place the newspaper pub- 
 lished by Parker, "as his Paper is printed in the same Form, and 
 under the same Title that mine used to be, it is probable many 
 of my Customers may not have attended to the Difference of 
 the Printer's Name. The Meanness and Dishonesty of this 
 Proceeding, I shall leave to the Resentment of my Custom- 
 ers, who will determine, whether to encourage such a Man, by 
 accepting his Papers, or whether to adhere to the Printer, 
 
96 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 they voluntarily thought fit to employ." Holt then com- 
 plained that Parker, his rival printer who had control of the 
 post-office, ought not have such authority, "an arbitrary power, 
 greater than that ever exercised in England." 
 
 At the time William Goddard started his Maryland Journal, 
 August 20, 1773, newspapers were under an espionage: if they 
 contained any reflection on the Royal Government they were 
 promptly destroyed. Postmasters loyal to the British Gov- 
 ernment carefully examined all copies offered for transmission 
 through the mails. In order to get around this annoyance, 
 Goddard ran his own post to Philadelphia. Leaving his sister, 
 Mary K. Goddard, in charge of his newspaper, Goddard in Oc- 
 tober, 1773, made a tour through the Northern colonies. While 
 on this trip he arranged for "an American post office system on 
 constitutional principles" to put into effect his plan for the dis- 
 tribution of newspapers from Massachusetts to Georgia. 
 
 FIRST STRIKE OF PRINTERS 
 
 During the time that the British were in control of New York 
 times were unusually hard, especially for printers. The price 
 of provisions had been repeatedly advanced. On account of the 
 blockade the supply of firewood, the only fuel of the time, was 
 greatly reduced, and what there was, sold for a price beyond 
 the purse of the printer. Rents had been raised, and local taxes 
 had been increased. Consequently, there was some justification 
 for a meeting of printers for the expressed purpose of insisting 
 upon an advance in their wages. Meeting at the home of one of 
 their number, they fixed upon what they considered a fair re- 
 muneration for their work and presented their demands to the 
 newspapers by which they were employed. The newspapers 
 consented to the increase, except the one owned by James Riv- 
 ington. Upon his refusal to grant the increase the printers for 
 his paper refused to work any longer at the old wage. Finding 
 himself unable to print his newspaper, Rivington at last yielded, 
 and the printers came back. In all probability this was the first 
 strike of printers in America. Justification for this strike will 
 be found in the fact that the printers were receiving a wage of 
 less than one dollar per day. 
 
REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 97 
 
 PAPER FOR PRESSES 
 
 The war automatically ended the importation of white paper 
 from abroad. Paper-mills had increased until there were over 
 forty in the country. Several of these were laid waste by Brit- 
 ish soldiers, and others lay idle because employees had enlisted 
 in the army. The remaining mills were unequal to supply the 
 demand, so that during the latter part of the Revolutionary 
 Period and for some time later the newspapers experienced great 
 difficulty in securing the paper on which to print the news. 
 
 Several sheets were forced to refuse subscriptions until con- 
 ditions should improve. The New Jersey Gazette on April 23, 
 1778, announced, "No more Subscriptions can be received at 
 the present by this GAZETTE for Want of Paper." The Su- 
 preme Executive Council of Pennsylvania was very anxious to 
 subscribe for The New York Packet, which had been established 
 in New York, January 4, 1776, but was then published at Fish- 
 kill, New York. In answering the request Samuel Loudon re- 
 ported that on account of the scarcity of paper he had printed 
 but few sheets for the past three months, but that a parcel was 
 now on its way to him and that in two weeks he would begin to 
 forward the papers to the Council. 
 
 ADVERTISEMENTS FOR RAGS 
 
 Advertisements for rags for the paper-mills continued to ap- 
 pear frequently in papers of all sections of the country where 
 presses had been established. Especially urgent were these ap- 
 peals in such papers as The Boston Gazette, The Providence 
 Gazette, The Albany Gazette, The Maryland Gazette, The Hudson 
 Gazette, The New-Jersey Gazette, The North Carolina Gazette, The 
 Fayetteville Gazette to use simply the Gazettes. The Fayette- 
 ville Gazette asserted "that the economical Housewife who sup- 
 plies the paper mill with rags, serves her country in her sphere 
 as well as the soldier who fights for it does in his." The Chelsea 
 Courier, at Norwich, Connecticut, suggested that every hus- 
 band should say to his wife, "Molly, make a rag bag and put 
 it under the shelf where the family Bible lies." The Massachu- 
 setts Spy Sit Worcester expressed much the same thought when 
 
98 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 it requested "the fair Daughters of Liberty not to neglect to 
 serve their country by saving for the Paper Mill all Linen 
 and Cotton Rags/' and remarked, "If the Ladies should not 
 make a fortune by this piece of Economy, they will at least have 
 the Satisfaction of knowing they are doing an essential Service 
 to the Community, which, with the ten Shillings per pound, the 
 price now given for clean white rags, they must be sensible will 
 be a sufficient reward." The North Carolina Gazette urged young 
 ladies to send to the paper-mill "Any old handkerchief no longer 
 fit to cover their snowy breasts." The Boston Gazette printed a 
 "Rag Lesson" for children and servants, especially girls, and 
 respectfully submitted to the consideration of all "Parents, 
 Masters, and Mistresses, but particularly to the Women of 
 every House: you all know that Paper is made of Rags. You 
 will therefore do much good, if you will promote the Manufac- 
 ture of that useful article by saving all Rags, fine or coarse, of 
 whatever colour, made of Linen or Cotton Don't sweep them 
 into the Fire, or out of the House: but be prudent, and attend 
 to the Direction and Advice of the wisest and best Person that 
 ever lived * Gather up the fragments, that nothing be lost.' 
 Although the Quantity you may save should be but small and 
 you should think it of little Consequence in itself, consider that 
 when it is put together with other Savings, it will increase the 
 heap; and that, as the Scotch Proverb says, 'Many Mickles 
 Make a Muckle.' ' The New- Jersey Gazette expected "Store- 
 keepers who wish well to their Country to lend their Assistance 
 in taking Rags in and to whom a Compensation will be made." 
 An advertisement in The Providence Gazette announced: "Four 
 Coppers per Pound will be given for fine linen and cotton Rags, 
 and two Coppers for coarse, by John O. Waterman, at the 
 Paper Mills in Providence, and by the Printer of The Gazette: A 
 cart from the Paper Mills will go through the Town of Providence 
 once a Month for the Purpose of Collecting Rags." Hugh Gaine 
 early in the Revolutionary Period experienced such difficulty 
 in getting paper for his press that he offered prizes to persons 
 who delivered the most rags to the office of his paper in New 
 York, The prizes were ten dollars, eight dollars, and five dol- 
 lars, and were in addition to the regular price paid for rags. On 
 
REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD 99 
 
 account of the scarcity of paper, numerous newspapers were 
 forced to raise their subscription price. 
 
 The paper from American mills was of inferior quality, be- 
 cause in the rush to supply the demand it had to be taken wet 
 from the machines and was often unfinished by the workmen. 
 The poor printing of the latter part of the period was due, in 
 many cases, to the poor quality of the paper put on the press. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 PERIOD OF EARLY REPUBLIC 
 
 1783 1812 fi 
 
 WHEN the American colonies secured their independence and 
 faced the problem of self-government, the conditions were ex- 
 tremely favorable for a revival of papers which had suspended 
 publication during the war and also for the establishment of 
 many new journals to mirror the radical changes of the times. 
 The few Tory sheets which had survived through the coopera- 
 tion of British arms now changed their policies and became loyal 
 supporters of the new Republic. The people, ever mindful of the 
 past, refused to subscribe or to support such papers. After brief 
 struggles for existence they discontinued publication and their 
 publishers made a living as booksellers, stationers, job printers, etc. 
 
 Controversies which soon arose between States became so 
 bitter as almost to lead to civil war. They changed even the 
 colorless and purposeless newspaper into a lighting organ. Edi- 
 torial policies were largely determined by geographical location. 
 To this stimulus may be attributed the influence secured by the 
 local press an influence even greater than that of the Revo- 
 lutionary Period. 
 
 The debates over the adoption of the Constitution broke 
 down the geographical lines and divided the press as well as the 
 people into two groups, one which favored and the other which 
 opposed. Some of the newspapers which had been most urgent 
 in demanding nothing but absolute independence from England 
 were among those which sought to delay or even to defeat the 
 adoption of the Federal Constitution. The subsequent death 
 of some of these journals was due to the fact that however sin- 
 cere they might have been they took what later proved to be 
 the unpopular side of this great issue. Others, often new pub- 
 lications, met with immediate favor because of the fervor with 
 which they advocated the needs of such a document. 
 
PERIOD OF EARLY REPUBLIC 101 
 
 NEWSPAPERS CHIEFLY POLITICAL TRACTS 
 
 After the Constitution was adopted political leaders found 
 that they needed mouthpieces for a wider expression of their 
 views. They divided themselves into parties of which the com- 
 mon people knew little or nothing. To get the people to take 
 sides on political questions they founded newspapers which, 
 while giving a little news, did more to advance and spread the 
 doctrines of party leaders, for politics tended to make the jour- 
 nals of the period not newspapers in the modern sense of the 
 term, but chiefly political tracts : the moral essay of the Colonial 
 Period was omitted and in its place was substituted a coarse and 
 frequently vulgar attack upon a rival. Papers conceived amid 
 intense political feeling and born simply to be bulletin boards for 
 party leaders, continued to increase in number in spite of a high 
 death-rate. At a political meeting it was considered quite 
 proper to pass a resolution calling upon "our party newspapers 
 to attack at once the reputations of all the leading Federalists 
 in the State," or vice versa, for most papers were either Federal 
 or Republican. 
 
 PERSONAL ATTACKS OF PRESS X 
 
 In view of such conditions the newspapers of the last decade 
 of the eighteenth century with here and there an exception 
 only to prove the rule abounded in little else than libelous 
 and scand&knis jjersonaljittacks. The new freedom of the press 
 promoted not truth but calumnies and falsehoods. Chief Jus- 
 tice McKean, in a libel case (1798) against William Cobbett, of 
 Peter Porcupine Gazette in the City of Brotherly Love, remarked : 
 
 Every one who has in him the sentiments either of a Christian or a 
 gentleman cannot but be highly offended at the envenomed scurrility 
 that has raged in pamphlets and newspapers printed in Philadelphia for 
 several years past, insomuch that libelling has become a national crime, 
 and distinguishes us not only from all the states around us, but from the 
 whole civilized world. Our satire has been nothing but ribaldry and 
 billingsgate; the contest has been who could call names in the greatest 
 variety of phrases; who could mangle the greatest number of characters, 
 or who could excel in the magnitude of their lies; hence the honor of 
 families has been stained, the highest posts rendered cheap and vile in 
 the sight of the people, and the greatest services and virtue blasted. 
 
1C2 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 This opinion had already been held by Benjamin Franklin 
 who said in a comment on the political change in the press : 
 
 Now many of our printers make no scruple of gratifying the malice 
 
 Sof individuals by false accusations of the fairest characters among 
 themselves, augmenting animosity even to the producing of duels, and 
 are, moreover, so indiscreet as to print scurrilous reflections on the gov- 
 ernment of neighboring states, and even on the conduct of our best 
 national allies, which may be attended with the most pernicious con- 
 sequences. 
 
 PASSAGE OF SEDITION LAWS 
 
 That the American press from 1790 to 1800 was probably as 
 powerful in its influence as at any time in its history, is not to be 
 denied. But the violence and vituperation of the party press led 
 to the first attempt on the part of the American Government to 
 regulate the newspaper press. The year of 1798 saw the passage 
 v> of the Alien andSedition ]pa.ws. A section of the latter enacted : 
 
 That if any person shall write, print, utter, or publish, or shall cause 
 or procure to be written, printed, uttered or published, or shall know- 
 ingly and willingly assist or aid in writing, printing, uttering, or pub- 
 lishing any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against 
 the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress 
 of the United States, or the President of the United States, with intent 
 to defame the said government, or either house of the said Congress, 
 or the said President, or to bring them, or either of them, into contempt 
 or disrepute; or to excite against them, or either or any of them, the 
 hatred of the good people of the United States, or to stir up sedition 
 within the United States, or to excite any unlawful combinations 
 therein, for opposing or resisting any law of the United States, or any 
 act of the President of the United States done in pursuance of any such 
 law or of the powers in him vested by the Constitution of the United 
 States, or to resist, oppose, or defeat any such law or act, or to aid, 
 encourage, or abet any hostile designs of any foreign nation against the 
 United States, their people or government, then such person, being 
 thereof convicted before any court of the United States having juris- 
 diction thereof, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding $2,000, and 
 by imprisonment not exceeding two years. 
 
 EDITORS JAILED 
 
 There were several prosecutions under this act. Abij ah Adams, 
 publisher of The Boston Chronicle, officially called bookkeeper 
 
PERIOD OF EARLY REPUBLIC 103 
 
 at that time, was indicted for libeling the Massachusetts Legis- 
 lature, found guilty, sentenced to jail for thirty days, and forced 
 to give bond for one year of good conduct. The editor of The 
 Chronicle was Thomas Adams, who was confined to his bed at 
 the time, but he wrote for his paper the following note: "The 
 patrons of The Chronicle may still depend on the regular supply 
 of their papers. The Editor is on the bed of languishment and 
 the bookkeeper is in prison, yet the Cause of Liberty will be 
 supported amid these distressing circumstances." 
 
 Charles Holt, publisher of The Bee at New London, Connecti- 
 cut, spent three months in jail and paid a fine of two hundred 
 dollars because he censured the President and urged men not 
 to enlist in the army. The Bee was a party opponent of John 
 Adams, and after Holt had served his time and paid his fine, 
 he took his paper to Hudson, New York. Fifty years later Con- 
 gress refunded the fine with interest. James Thompson Cal- 
 lender, editor of The Richmond Examiner, paid the same fine as 
 Holt, but was sentenced for three times as long in jail for de- 
 faming the press. When Jefferson became President, he par- 
 doned Callender and had the fine remitted. 
 
 David Frothingham, editor of The Argus, of New York, was 
 indicted for libel and found guilty by a jury which recom- 
 mended, however, the mercy of the court. He was fined only one 
 hundred dollars, but received a sentence of four months. Henry 
 Croswell, editor of The Wasp, was indicted for printing a "scan- 
 dalous, malicious and seditious libel concerning Thomas Jef- 
 ferson." Alexander Hamilton was one of the lawyers who 
 appeared for Croswell. In spite of these and other convictions, 
 the attempt of the Government to reform the press only made 
 bad matters worse. 
 
 , editor of The Vermont Gazette, at Benning- 
 
 ton, Vermont, paid, a year after his indictment, a fine of two 
 hundred dollars and spent sixty days in jail. Benjamin Frank- 
 lin Bache, of The General Advertiser, probably escaped a still 
 more severe sentence because his death ended a suit. Inciden- 
 tally it may be remarked that because of the abuse his news- 
 paper had heaped upon Washington, he had been thrashed by 
 Clement Humphrey. 
 
104 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 WASHINGTON ATTACKED 
 
 Even Washington once was led to remark that "the publica- 
 tions in Freneau's [The National Gazette] and Bache's [The General 
 Advertiser] papers were outrages on common decency.' 7 They 
 were, especially the latter. When Washington retired from the 
 presidency The General Advertiser, in its issue for Monday, 
 March 6, 1797, incorrectly dated March 5, thus expressed itself 
 in an editorial comment disguised as correspondence: - 
 
 " Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes 
 have seen thy salvation," was the pious ejaculation of a man who be- 
 held a flood of happiness rushing in upon mankind If ever there 
 was a time that would license the reiteration of the exclamation that 
 time is now arrived; for the man who is the source of all the misfor- 
 tunes of our country, is this day reduced to a level with his fellow-citi- 
 zens, and is no longer possessed of power to multiply evils upon the 
 United States If ever there was a period for rejoicing this is the 
 moment every heart in unison with the freedom and happiness of 
 the people ought to beat high with exultation, that the name of Wash- 
 ington from this day ceases to give a currency to political iniquity, and 
 to legalize corruption a new era is now opening up upon us, an era 
 which promises much to the people; for public measures must now 
 stand upon their own merits, and nefarious projects can no longer be 
 supported by a name: when a retrospect is taken of the Washingtonian 
 administration for eight years, it is a subject of the greatest astonish- 
 ment that a single individual should have cankered the principles of 
 republicanism in an enlightened people, just emerged from the gulf 
 of despotism, and should have carried his designs against the public 
 liberty so far as to have put in jeopardy its very existence Such, 
 however, are the facts, and with these staring us in the face, this day 
 ought to be a Jubilee in the United States. 
 
 Yet this comment was mild compared with the coarser utter- 
 ances of previous issues which ought not to be reprinted because 
 of their vulgarity. Federalists were accustomed to speak of The 
 General Advertiser as being " misconducted " first by "Bennie 
 Bache" and later by "Willie Duane." 
 
 PRESS DIVIDED OVER BRITISH TREATY 
 
 Much of this newspaper hostility toward Washington, it may 
 be remarked incidentally, grew out of the British Treaty of 
 
PERIOD OF EARLY REPUBLIC 105 
 
 1794 which divided the American press very distinctly in the 
 matter of editorial opinion. /Practically every Federal news- 
 paper gave a column or two in support of the treaty. On the 
 other hand, the Republican-Democratic press fairly teemed 
 with criticism which was both coarse and spiteful in its attacks 
 on the Administration. These editorial reproaches, expressed - 
 to quote Washington's own words "in such exaggerated and 
 indecent terms as could scarcely be applied to a Nero, to a no- 
 torious defaulter, or even to a common pickpocket," did much 
 to strengthen his determination to retire to Mount Vernon, 
 for Washington had become extremely sensitive to newspaper 
 rebuke. Perceiving this, Jefferson, toward the last, did what he 
 could to stem the torrent of newspaper abuse, but the flood was 
 at high tide and could not be dammed. Federal newspapers, 
 however, were more successful in their attempts to dam the 
 Republican press. 
 
 PKESIDENTS VS. PRESS ^C 
 
 When John Adams became President in 1797 he was even 
 more severely attacked in the press than Washington had been. 
 But his Administration fought the attacks. Armed by the Sedi- 
 tion Law, which was passed the following year and which has 
 already been outlined, it sought to annihilate the Republican 
 papers which it could not force to surrender. In the fight, which 
 lasted four years, the Federal Party lost, for the people rallied 
 to the support of the papers and defeated Adams in the election 
 of 1800 by putting Thomas Jefferson in the presidential chair. 
 Jefferson remitted many of the fines imposed upon Republican 
 editors, but was later forced to commence suits for libels upon I 
 himself by Federal editors. 
 
 Federal papers bitterly attacked Jefferson for the Louisiana 
 Purchase on the ground that he had trampled on the Consti- 
 tution which granted him no such power to acquire additional 
 territory: some of the most radical sheets suggested that the 
 States where the Federals were in the majority should secede 
 from the Union. Jefferson's Embargo Policy alienated some of 
 his own party organs especially in Virginia where the to- 
 bacco-growers had been hard hit by the Embargo. Jefferson 
 
106 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 suffered the same personal abuse from newspaper editors as did 
 Washington. Federal editors spoke of him as "a cold thinking 
 villain whose black blood always runs temperately bad." 
 
 EDITORIAL CHANGES 
 
 One important change occurred during the Period of the 
 Early Republic, in the matter of editing newspapers. In the 
 Colonial Period the editor was almost invariably a practical 
 printer who depended upon his trade for a living, and where 
 this was not possible, he supplemented the income from his 
 press by ways which have already been outlined in a preceding 
 chapter. He spoke of himself in his columns not as an " editor," 
 but as a printer, undertaker, author, and other terms. Such 
 editorial matter as appeared in his columns was from the pen 
 of other contributors. During the Period of the Early Repub- 
 lic, when papers were founded chiefly for political purposes, 
 the editor came into his own. j He was either a printer seeking 
 an office or he was a politician who hired a printer to run his 
 paper. In the Colonial Period the pamphlet was the medium 
 for editorial expression, but with the change just mentioned, 
 to use the newspaper for political purposes, the pamphlet dis- 
 appeared and its contents were printed in the newspaper. To- 
 ward the close of the period men of real ability were hired to 
 edit newspapers in which they had no financial interest. Com- 
 munications from other pens were welcomed, but they were no 
 longer given first place in the paper. 
 
 PESTILENCE AND PRESS 
 
 The prevalence of yellow fever in Philadelphia during sev- 
 eral seasons toward the close of the eighteenth century, and an 
 epidemic of a malignant fever in New York City in the early 
 part of the nineteenth century, caused several papers in both 
 cities to suspend publication. The fever devastation in Phila- 
 delphia may have been one of the reasons why Freneau failed 
 to resume publication of The National Gazette. For fear that 
 it might return, Joseph Gales, at the suggestion of his wife, who 
 had been a sufferer from the fever in a previous year, sold his 
 Independent Gazetteer, in 1799, to Samuel Harrison Smith, who, 
 
PERIOD OF EARLY REPUBLIC 107 
 
 in 1800, moved the journal to Washington, as has been men- 
 tioned elsewhere in this book, and gave it the name of The 
 National Intelligencer. Gales then went to Raleigh, North Caro- 
 lina, where he started another paper, The Raleigh Register, a 
 name which suggested itself from his first-born newspaper ven- 
 ture, The Sheffield Register, of England. After the malignant 
 fever had attacked New York City in 1803, The Evening Post 
 of that city pledged itself "to pursue the discussion of the origin 
 of the late pestilence to a regular and satisfactory close." Wil- 
 liam Coleman, the editor of that paper, had evidently jseen a 
 vision that a newspaper might do something more than merely 
 print the news of political squabbles. 
 
 NEWSPAPERS DISINFECTED 
 
 At times when epidemics similar to those just named in the 
 preceding paragraph were appearing in the larger cities, the 
 publishers of newspapers disinfected their sheets before deliv- 
 ering them to newsboys and post-riders. Frequently, in order 
 that the sheets might not be carriers of disease, they were put 
 into stoves and thoroughly smoked before being wrapped for 
 delivery. In the South, where yellow fever often spread very 
 rapidly, special stoves, built of sheet iron, were designed for 
 this purpose and used tobacco as fuel, but the process was slow, 
 as only one sheet "smoked" at a time. The plan of "smoking" 
 by wholesale from resinous woods was probably more commonly 
 employed in the North than in other sections of the country be- 
 cause of the great infection feared from smallpox. The academic 
 and pedantic newspaper critics, who, like the poor, have been 
 ever present, used to assert at such times that a publisher would 
 perform a much more useful service for the public if he would 
 pay more attention to disinfecting the contents of his papers 
 and less to disinfecting the sheets themselves. The latter, so the 
 critics asserted, could be done when necessary by the reader in 
 his own home. 
 
 FREEDOM OF PRESS X 
 
 For some unaccountable reason the American colonies, after 
 they established their independence and had drawn up their 
 
108 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 Constitution, did not make provision for the freedom of the 
 press. Each colony, however, as it drew its State Constitution, 
 passed some resolution to the effect that the press being essen- 
 tial to State freedom ought to be inviolably preserved. As new 
 States and Territories drew their own constitutions, they incor- 
 porated some similar resolution to protect the press from the 
 censorship to which it had been subjected during the colonial 
 period. Even the first Congress saw the mistake of its omission 
 and passed an Amendment that Congress shall make no law 
 abolishing the freedom of speech or of the press. In spite of this 
 constitutional guarantee, the Alien-Sedition Laws were passed. 
 
 HILDRETH ON PRESS OF PERIOD 
 
 Hildreth, in speaking of the influence of the press upon 
 American politics in 1812, thus explains the rise of this period 
 of black journalism: "The demand for printers and editors, 
 especially in the middle states could not be supplied from do- 
 mestic sources and as many of these political exiles had been 
 connected with the press at home, many of them having been 
 driven into exile in consequence of publications prosecuted by 
 the Government as libelous and seditious, they had adopted the 
 same calling in America." 
 
 LOCATION OF LEADING PAPERS 
 
 According to the census of 1800 there were in the United 
 States only eleven cities or towns which had a population of over 
 five thousand. Of these, only two, Philadelphia (70,287) and 
 New York (60,489), had more than fifty thousand: three, Balti- 
 more, Boston, and Charleston, had between twenty and thirty 
 thousand: three, Providence, Savannah, and Norfolk, had be- 
 tween five and ten thousand: just over the five thousand limit 
 were Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Albany, New York, and 
 Richmond, Virginia. As the total population, as given in the 
 census, was about five million, three hundred thousand, the city 
 population, therefore, constituted only about five per cent. 
 Newspapers had greatly increased in number since 1783, but 
 they were still largely agricultural, except in the eleven cities 
 just mentioned. The temporary location of the seat of the Gov- 
 
PERIOD OF EARLY REPUBLIC 109 
 
 ernment at Philadelphia had given that city a most influential 
 place in journalism. Its papers were not only the largest in cir- 
 culation, but they had the widest distribution and were the most 
 frequently quoted. When the Government removed to Wash- 
 ington this newspaper preeminence went from Philadelphia to 
 New York. Already the latter had made itself felt in a political 
 way, and its newspapers, especially its dailies, took first place not 
 only in local, but also in national, influence. The political battle 
 between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr assisted materially 
 in giving an impetus to New York journalism. 
 
 MASSACHUSETTS STAMP ACT OF 1785 
 
 During the Period of the Early Republic an attempt to put a 
 stamp tax on newspapers was made in Massachusetts. That 
 State, on March 18, 1785, passed an act imposing duties on 
 licensed vellum, parchment and paper including "for every 
 newspaper two-thirds of a penny." Nothing could have aroused 
 greater opposition on the part of the press, to which the very 
 name of " stamp act" was most offensive. Whereas, there was 
 no evidence that the State Legislature desired in any way to 
 abridge the liberties of the press, the newspapers promptly took 
 that point of view and filled their columns with tirades against 
 this obnoxious act. 
 
 The Massachusetts Centinel was especially bitter in its de- 
 nunciation. To quote from the issue of May 4, 1785: 
 
 The Stamp Act, passed the last session of the General Court, meets 
 opposition throughout every part of the Commonwealth; that part 
 laying a duty on newspapers particularly so. The cloven foot in it 
 appears too visible to escape notice. To clog the currents of informa- 
 tion, and to shackle the means of political knowledge and necessary 
 learning, are discordant notes to the general ear. But its danger 
 is not the whole of its evil consequences. It is deemed impolitic and 
 unequal, impolitic, as it will encourage our sister States to send 
 their papers into this commonwealth cheaper than they can possibly 
 be afforded here, to the ruin of a set of artizans, whose exertions in the 
 late revolution deserve a more liberal fate: unequal, as the revenue 
 arising from newspapers must (while but a mite in the general treasury) 
 operate, in a great degree, to the destruction of the present printers of 
 these publications. 
 
110 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 The Boston Gazette in its issue for April 18, 1785, printed the 
 following item : 
 
 The General Court in their last Session was pleased to pass an Act, 
 generally called the STAMP ACT, a Name heretofore held in an ap- 
 probious light, and highly disgustful to us. 
 
 A clause in said Act says, "For every NEWS-PAPER, two thirds of 
 a Penny." 
 
 Should the Stamp on NEWS-PAPERS take place, the price will be 
 enhanced and the poor, by being unable to take the same, will be de- 
 prived of the pleasure of affording themselves and their children the 
 advantages attendant on the perusal of this vehicle of entertainment 
 and political knowledge; and who will say, it will not be a disad- 
 vantage to the State in general, for the majority of the inhabitants 
 thereof to be politically ignorant? 
 
 And will not this Stamp on NEWS-PAPERS, if held in force, tend 
 thereto? 
 
 It is therefore hoped and expected by many, that the Honorable 
 Members of the General Court, in their next Session will take the above 
 mentioned Clause in the said Act into mature consideration repeal the 
 same, and free the public from that bar to political wisdom. 
 
 On August 12, 1785, under a Philadelphia date-line, was pub- 
 lished an article entitled "A Libel Some Will Say." From it, the 
 following paragraph was taken: 
 
 Every man in the thirteen states from New Hampshire to Georgia, 
 should pour out incessant execrations on the devoted heads of those 
 miscreants in Massachusetts who machinated, advised, aided, abetted, 
 or assisted in laying sacriligious hands upon that most invaluable of all 
 blessings THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS that palladium 
 of all the rights, privileges, and immunities, dear or sacred to any body 
 of men worthy to rank above the brute creation! that dispeller of 
 the till then unpenetrable clouds which overspread the world for 
 ages anterior to the auspicious aera of its discovery! That scourge of 
 tyrants whether monarch, aristocrats, or demagogues. 
 
 TAX ON ADVERTISING 
 
 Because of the unpopularity of this act, the Massachusetts 
 Legislature repealed it on July 2, 1785. But another was passed, 
 putting a duty on advertisements of six pence on each insertion 4 
 Some of the Massachusetts newspapers, notably The Massa- 
 chusetts Centinel, were willing to accept this substitute on the 
 ground that it was no infringement of the liberty of the press 
 
PERIOD OF EARLY REPUBLIC 111 
 
 and that it " contributed thousands to the exigencies of the 
 State." But most of the papers continued their opposition to the 
 measure. The Massachusetts Spy said that it had to suspend 
 publication on account of the act. Of this circumstance, The 
 American Herald of Boston in its issue for April 3, 1786, said: 
 
 The Massachusetts Spy (which it is acknowledged has been very 
 essential to this Commonwealth in particular, before, at, and since 
 the late Revolution) is now languishing with a dangerous Wound, given 
 it by the Legislature of Massachusetts on the second day of July last. 
 Humble and united application has been made for a particular kind of 
 Court Plaister, which could speedily have wrought a Cure; but as that 
 Power, only, which gave the Wound, could apply the Remedy, with 
 effect, it could not be obtained! The wound grows worse daily 
 mortification has taken place, and in all probability will soon prove 
 fatal to the existence of that Old Public Servant "Alas Poor SPY." 
 
 MODERN METHOD TO EVADE LAW 
 
 While the Massachusetts papers of this period could scarcely 
 have afforded the services of modern corporation lawyers, some 
 of them knew how to get around the law that was so offensive to 
 them. The way in which it was done is outlined in this announce- 
 ment from The Boston Gazette: 
 
 The sixteenth article of our Bill of Rights says "The Liberty of the 
 Press is essential to the security of Freedom in a State: It ought not 
 therefore to be restrained in this commonwealth." 
 
 While the papers of the other states are crowded with advertisements, 
 (free of duty) those of this state are almost destitute thereof; which 
 justly occasions the oppressed printers of those shackled presses to 
 make their separate complaints, as many do, owing to their being pro- 
 hibited advertising in their own papers their own Books and Station- 
 ery without incurring a penalty therefor. We, for the same reason that 
 our brother Typographers use, forbear publishing that Bibles, Testa- 
 ments, Psalters, Spelling-Books, Primers, Almanacks, &c. besides Sta- 
 tionery and all kinds of Blanks, may be had at No. 42, Cornhill. 
 
 The duty on advertisements also prevents our publishing that we 
 have lately reprinted an excellent moral Discourse, entitled, "The 
 Shortness and Afflictions of Human Life illustrated," for the price of 
 said book being but eight pence, it will take away the profits of too 
 many; and perhaps encourage government to continue this burthen. 
 
112 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 ADVERTISING TAX WITHDRAWN 
 
 Such methods to make the law ineffectual doubtless had much 
 to do with its repeal in 1788. The House Committee in reporting 
 on the act, announced that the imposition on the newspapers was 
 not worth the small return from the tax (250) so long as the 
 papers from New York, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and 
 Connecticut might circulate freely in Massachusetts. Several of 
 the papers which had suspended publication on account of the 
 act reappeared. The Massachusetts Spy in resuming publica- 
 tion on April 3, 1788, offered this salutation of thankfulness: 
 
 The Printer has the happiness of once more presenting to the Pub- 
 lick, the MASSACHUSETTS SPY, or the WORCESTER GAZETTE, 
 which at length is restored to its Constitutional Liberty, (thanks to our 
 present Legislature), after a suspension of two years. Heaven grant 
 that the FREEDOM of the PRESS, on which depends the FREEDOM 
 of the PEOPLE, may, in the United States, ever be guarded with a 
 watchful eye, and defended from Shackles of every form and shape, 
 until the trump of the celestial messenger shall announce the final dis- 
 solution of all things. 
 
 After Massachusetts had repealed the act which taxed news- 
 paper advertising, no State, because of the odium attached to a 
 Stamp Act, attempted to impose a duty upon newspapers until 
 the fifth decade of the next century. On September 30, 1842, an 
 act of the Virginia Legislature imposed a tax on newspapers 
 which amounted to the subscription price for each paper. 
 
 POSTAL REGULATIONS OF PERIOD 
 
 Newspapers multiplied so rapidly that they became a burden 
 to post-riders. In order to make sure that copies reached sub- 
 scribers, newspapers were forced to pay the carriers on the post- 
 roads an extra allowance. This charge meant an increase in the 
 subscription price. Madison " vie wed with alarm this news- 
 paper tax" as he called it. On June 12, 1792, he wrote Jeffer- 
 son: "I am afraid the subscriptions will soon be withdrawn from 
 the Philadelphia papers unless some step be speedily taken to 
 prevent it. The best that occurs seems to be to advertise that the 
 papers will not be put into the mails, but sent, as heretofore, to 
 
PERIOD OF EARLY REPUBLIC 113 
 
 all who shall not direct them to be put into the mail. Will you 
 hint this to Freneau?" Federal postal acts of 1793 permitted 
 every printer of a newspaper to send one copy without charge 
 to every printer of a newspaper in the United States. Other 
 provisions permitted newspapers to be carried in separate bags 
 from letters at a fixed rate of one cent for a distance not over one 
 hundred miles. Papers going farther were charged a cent and 
 one half, but a restriction was made that postage on a single 
 newspaper in a state where it was published should not exceed 
 one cent. An additional act, the same year, insisted that news- 
 papers should be dried by the publisher before being turned over 
 to the postmaster for transmission: the Postal Department ob- 
 jected to carrying too much water in its mail-bags. No distinction 
 was made in the matter of weight of the different newspapers; 
 whether they were large or small they paid the same price per 
 copy. 
 
 READERS BUT NOT BUYERS OF PAPERS 
 
 During this period, newspapers when sent regularly through 
 the mail seemed to be more or less common property like um- 
 brellas left in the hallways. The complaints about non-delivery 
 of papers were frequent. Even George Washington had to com- 
 plain on this matter, and in a letter to a Philadelphia printer who 
 was about to establish a paper he made the folio whig request: 
 "It has so happened, that my Gazettes from Philadelphia, 
 whether from inattention at the Printing or Post offices, or other 
 causes, come very irregularly to my hands. Let me pray you 
 therefore to address those you send me, in the appearance of a 
 letter The common paper, usually applied, will do equally 
 well for the cover. It has sometimes occurred to me, that 
 there are persons who, wishing to read News Papers without 
 being at the expense of paying for them, make free with those 
 which are sent to others; under the garb of a letter it is not 
 presumeable this liberty would be taken." 
 
 AN ADDITIONAL DUTY OF POST-RIDER 
 
 The post-rider was not only a carrier of the Gazettes in the 
 early days of the Republic, but he was also a collector of sub- 
 
114 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 scriptions. The following advertisement of the post-rider from 
 Providence to Connecticut is taken from The Gazette of the 
 former place for April 2, 1803: 
 
 PAY THE POST, THAT HE MAY PAY THE PRINTER 
 
 I who have been TWO YEARS at most 
 
 (Strange as 't may seem) a RIDING POST 
 
 And worn my poor old DOBBIN 'S shoes out 
 
 With riding hard, to bring the news out, 
 
 And made wry faces at the storm, 
 
 While yet the news was moist and warm, 
 
 That you might read, before the fire, 
 
 Of battles fought, and sieges dire, 
 
 What politician now is vest, 
 
 Who 's dead, and who is married next, 
 
 And such like entertaining story, 
 
 Which I have always laid before ye, 
 
 Solicit, my friends, the amount 
 
 Of what is due ON OLD ACCOUNT. 
 
 ALBE STONE. 
 
 COMBINATION OF PUBLISHERS TO RAISE PRICES 
 
 In 1803 several papers in New York City made an attempt to 
 get together to fix prices. The New York Evening Post, in its 
 issue for December 1 of that year, told of this attempt as fol- 
 lows : 
 
 At a meeting of the Publishers of the following Daily Newspapers 
 printed in the City of New-York, viz. Daily Advertiser, Mercantile 
 Advertiser, Daily Gazette, American Citizen, Commercial Advertiser, and 
 Evening Post held at Lovett's Hotel on Saturday 5th November, 1803 
 it was unanimously Resolved: 
 
 That the sum of eight dollars per annum, at present paid as the 
 price on Subscription for a Daily Paper, is inadequate to the expences 
 of Paper, Printing, and Publication: and that the same be increased 
 to Ten Dollars from and after the first day of January next. 
 
 That the price of those papers which are issued twice a week for the 
 country, shall, from and after the first day of January, be Four Dollars 
 per annum. 
 
 In a note to the public The Evening Post gave some of the 
 reasons, which were found in the "rise which labor and every 
 article employed in the printing shop had experienced since the 
 terms of the subscriptions were last fixed." Printers' wages had 
 
PERIOD OF EARLY REPUBLIC 115 
 
 increased from six dollars to eight and nine; salaries of clerks 
 and collectors had risen from three hundred and three hundred 
 and fifty to four hundred and five hundred dollars a year. The 
 item of paper, in quality and size, amounted in its blank state 
 to more than one half of the proceeds of all subscriptions. Type 
 had risen twenty-five per cent and all other materials in about 
 the same proportion. Attention was called that these items 
 including that of labor required prompt payment, while news- 
 papers gave more extensive credit than was allowed in any other 
 business "an evil sorely felt by the proprietors." While The 
 Evening Post admitted that subscriptions in amount had quad- 
 rupled, it asserted that they were not sufficient to support a 
 newspaper establishment, and frequently confessed that it was 
 the advertisers who provided the paper for the subscribers, and 
 went so far as to say that without a very extensive advertising 
 support, a publisher of a newspaper received less reward for his 
 labor than the humblest mechanic. While the subscription rates 
 were scheduled for a raise, those of advertising remained the 
 same as before. 
 
 r The scheme did not work out as planned. The Evening Post, 
 in a column and a half editorial in its issue for December 9, 
 expressed surprise that both The Mercantile Advertiser and The 
 New-York Gazette had receded from the project which they had 
 stood pledged to support and that The Morning Chronicle had 
 declined to come into the measure, not because the price of sub- 
 scriptions was high enough, but because, being the youngest 
 establishment in the city, it was not prepared to encounter 
 shock of the loss of subscribers. The same editorial in The Post 
 denied that there had been any improper combination among 
 the printers. The previous price of The Evening Post had been 
 eight dollars per year to city subscribers and nine dollars to 
 country subscribers. 
 
 PARTY SUPPORT OF PRESS 
 
 During the era of the party organ, not only the politicians 
 but also the voters were expected to subscribe to the paper 
 which supported partisan principles, regardless of the represen- 
 tative merit of such publications. Occasionally, a paper of the 
 
116 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 rival party became so energetic in the matter of gathering 
 news or in its ability to express more forcibly its editorial opin- 
 ions that it secured circulation among all parties. Such a paper 
 was The Phoenix, started in Providence, Rhode Island, on May 
 11, 1802, to help the organization of the Republican Party, then 
 under the leadership of Thomas Jefferson, and to assist the polit- 
 ical activities of the Honorable Theodore Foster, then United 
 States Senator from Rhode Island. This paper became so popu- 
 lar with the voters of Providence that The Gazette published a 
 complaint in its columns that The Phoenix had not only the 
 largest circulation, but also the largest advertising patronage in 
 spite of the fact that it was a Republican paper in a Federal 
 town. 
 
 NEWSPAPEK DIVISION ALONG PARTY LINES 
 
 In 1810 Isaiah Thomas published, in his " History of Print- 
 ing," a list of the American newspapers. His list of three hun- 
 dred and sixty-six papers while not complete showed 
 fairly well the relative distribution of papers along party lines. 
 Of the twelve in New Hampshire, eight were Federal and two, 
 Republican; of the thirty-two in Massachusetts, twenty were 
 Federal and eleven, Republican; of the seven in Rhode Island, 
 four were Federal and three, Republican; of the twelve in Con- 
 necticut, ten were Federal and one, Republican; of the fifteen in 
 Vermont, nine were Federal and six, Republican; of the sixty- 
 seven in New York, twenty-nine were Federal and twenty- 
 seven, Republican; of the eight in New Jersey, three were 
 Federal and five, Republican; of the seventy-three in Pennsylva- 
 nia, thirty-four were Federal and twenty-nine, Republican; of the 
 three in Delaware, two were Republican; of the twenty-one in 
 Maryland, nine were Federal and eleven, Republican ; of the six 
 papers in the District of Columbia, two were Federal and three, 
 Republican; of the twenty-three in Virginia, seven were Fed- 
 eral and fifteen, Republican; of the ten in North Carolina, five 
 were Federal and three, Republican; of the ten in South Caro- 
 lina, four were Federal and four, Republican; of the thirteen 
 in Georgia, three were Federal and seven, Republican; of the 
 seventeen in Kentucky, two were Federal and fourteen, Re- 
 
PERIOD OF EARLY REPUBLIC 117 
 
 publican; of the six in Tennessee, one was Federal and five 
 were Republican ; of the fourteen in Ohio, three were Federal and 
 eight, Republican; of the four in Mississippi, one was Federal 
 and one, Republican; of the ten in Territory of Orleans, five 
 were Federal and one was Republican. Of the single papers in 
 Michigan, Indiana, and Louisiana, Thomas did not give the 
 party affiliation. Of the scattering neutral papers, most of them 
 were agricultural in character. The figures already given show 
 how closely the newspapers were divided on party lines, for 
 politics and press were in close partnership. Often the party 
 in control sought support through the advertising at its dis- 
 posal; at other times it held before the editor the promise of 
 political office. This partnership reached its closest affiliation 
 in the next period. 
 
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 Tues- 
 day, 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 Clay- 
 poole, under the title of Claypoole 1 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 paperxin this 
 country. 
 
 CONTENTS OF FIRST 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- 
 
FIRST DAILIES AND EARLY PARTY ORGANS 119 
 
 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 AMEKICA 
 
 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 tn~e close ol 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 States of 
 
120 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 D wight, 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 Irishmen." 
 
FIRST DAILIES AND EARLY PARTY ORGANS 121 
 
 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 
 
122 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 usVially 
 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 Stales 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 
 
FIRST DAILIES AND EARLY PARTY ORGANS 123 
 
 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 our vitals: 
 
124 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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. Qucere: 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 
 
FIRST DAILIES AND EARLY PARTY ORGANS 125 
 
 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 yeajj finds his interest in at- 
 tempting to poison the mind of the people oy 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 
 
126 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 tune 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 
 
FIRST DAILIES AND EARLY PARTY ORGANS 127 
 
 "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 FRENEAU FOR EDITORIAL FREEDOM J 
 
 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 liberty. 
 
128 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 
 American in 1847. 
 
FIRST DAILIES AND EARLY PARTY ORGANS 129 
 
 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 Centind 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"7ud*icTo'uslin3"lhe 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 
 hislftrbsmbefs. He was extremely fertile in devices and never 
 hesitated to use pictures or mechanical arrangement in types 
 
130 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 CenMnel 
 Russell took special delight in printing allegories in 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. 
 
 RUSSELL'S OFFER TO 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. 
 

 FIRST DAILIES AND EARLY PARTY ORGANS 131 
 
 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. 
 
 WORDLESS 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: "fi&* 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 
 
132 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 words 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 
 
FIRST DAILIES AND EARLY PARTY ORGANS 133 
 
 "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 ' * j^ajger^ 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 and printed in 
 
134 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 defended 
 
FIRST DAILIES AND EARLY PARTY ORGANS 135 
 
 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 far 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. 
 
 COLEMAN STARTS "EVENING POST" 
 
 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 
 
136 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 re- 
 ligion" 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 tem- 
 perate 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 correspon- 
 dent, 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 
 
FIRST DAILIES AND EARLY PARTY ORGANS 137 
 
 be not entirely without its advantages. If there is danger of its 
 making the gentlemen too prompt to advance, let it not be un- 
 observed 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 Decem- 
 ber 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 Phila- 
 delphia 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, 
 
138 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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. 
 
 LITERARY 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 
 
FIRST DAILIES AND EARLY PARTY ORGANS 139 
 
 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 179(tsaw an innovation in the shape of two editions, 
 morning aiicTevening, 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. 
 

PARTY PRESS PERIOD 141 
 
 THE TORY 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 
 prison ships!-- Don't submit to the War! You will beg in 
 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- 
 
142 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 Oates 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 
 
PARTY PRESS PERIOD 143 
 
 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. 
 
 ERA OF " BLACK JOURNALISM " ^ 
 
 The darkest period in the history of American journalism was 
 that which began :it the close of the second war with England, 
 a time 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, i 
 
 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; 
 
144 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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. 
 
 A 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 
 
 the home and of fights in the 
 
 streetsTNew 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 
 
PARTY PRESS PERIOD 145 
 
 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 
 
146 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 
 
PARTY PRESS PERIOD 147 
 
 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' and Farmers' 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, were 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 
 
148 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 die-, 
 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 urgedj^sejDara- 
 tion from the Union and a few even recommen3ecT an alliance 
 
PARTY PRESS PERIOD 149 
 
 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. 
 
 PART 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 
 
150 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 
 
PARTY PRESS PERIOD 151 
 
 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 tin* 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- 
 
152 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 
 
PARTY PRESS PERIOD 153 
 
 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. 
 
 WANDEKING JEW JOURNALIST 
 
 One of the most interesting characters in the history of 
 American journalism was Mordecai Noah, a journalist of fertile 
 
154 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 in 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. 
 
 FIRST STAR REPORTER 
 
 *^ Henry Ingraham Blake, the Father of American Reporting, 
 
 belonged io tLIs 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 
 
PARTY PRESS PERIOD 155 
 
 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 in 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 Poulson'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 
 
156 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 
 Paulson'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 
 
PARTY PRESS PERIOD 157 
 
 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 President Jackson ; s 
 
158 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 resume 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 same time being 
 
PARTY PRESS PERIOD 159 
 
 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 resume* 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 
 
160 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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, Isaao 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. 
 
PARTY PRESS PERIOD 161 
 
 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 tjy 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. 
 
PARTY PRESS PERIOD 163 
 
 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- 
 tion ever obtained. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 'BEGINNINGS IN STATES 
 
 17831832 
 
 r> BEFORE taking up the origin of the penny press, some notice 
 must be paid to the pioneer printers who had established news- 
 papers in the States and Territories not included in the thirteen 
 original colonies. Sons and apprentices of Massachusetts print- 
 ers, especially from Boston, had left their cases and, taking 
 old hand-presses and fonts of type, had founded papers in Ver- 
 mont 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 out- 
 fits on flatboats and into dug-outs, they had floated to Missis- 
 sippi 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. Occasion- 
 ally the frontier journalists were politicians who sought to re- 
 peat 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 edi- 
 torial 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 diffi- 
 culties of the pioneers on the Atlantic Coast. Individual hard- 
 ships are given in the accounts of some papers, not because they 
 were unusual, but because they were typical. Without these pio- 
 neer 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, there- 
 fore, 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 pos- 
 sibly 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 get- 
 ting 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, con- 
 taining 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, 
 
166 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 Mont- 
 pelier 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 colo- 
 nies of North America and that it did the best work in a me- 
 chanical way, when set up in the house of Henry Dunster, the 
 first president of Harvard College. But at any rate, it printed 
 
BEGINNINGS IN STATES 167 
 
 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 x 12J, 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 Jack- 
 son 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 Palmouth 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 
 
168 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 in- 
 sreased cost. On March 5, 1798, Baker admitted Daniel George 
 as a partner, but left the paper himself with the issue of No- 
 vember 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 Hallo well 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 Febru- 
 ary 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 encour- 
 
BEGINNINGS IN STATES 169 
 
 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, pos- 
 sibly 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 separa- 
 tion of Maine from Massachusetts, Burton employed to advertise 
 lottery tickets. The Bangor Register lasted until August 2, 1881. 
 
 Possibly The Tocsin, established at Hallowell 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 regu- 
 larly 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 Vir- 
 ginia, 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, 
 
170 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 Bradford put up a log print-shop and on April 11, k !787, 
 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 Pitts- 
 burgh, 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 x 19J), three columns to the page. Fielding Brad- 
 ford retired with the issue of June 7, 1788, and from that time 
 its publisher until 1802 was John Bradford. The peculiar spell- 
 ing of " Kentucke " was changed to the modern form, "Ken- 
 tucky," 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 suc- 
 cessful 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, enlist- 
 ing 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 
 
 
BEGINNINGS IN STATES 171 
 
 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 Ken- 
 tucky 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 Brad- 
 ford & 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 
 
172 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 Rich- 
 mond, Virginia. Nathaniel Willis, father of Nathaniel Willis, 
 who published The Boston Recorder, and grandfather of Na- 
 thaniel 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 Mar- 
 tinsburg 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 Kana- 
 wha 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 
 
 Before the seat of government was permanently located in 
 the District of Columbia, a number of newspapers had been 
 published in Georgetown. The first of these was The Times 
 and Potowmack Packet, established by Charles Fierer in February, 
 1789. Others were The Weekly Ledger, started by Alexander 
 Doyle in March, 1790; The Columbian Chronicle, by Samuel 
 Hanson in December, 1793 ; and The Centinel of Liberty, by Green, 
 English & Company in May, 1796. The first paper actually 
 printed in Washington City was The Impartial Observer and 
 Washington Advertiser, the initial number of which Thomas 
 Wilson issued on May 22, 1795. The paper was suspended about 
 a year later on account of its owner's death. Its immediate 
 successor was The Washington Gazette a semi-weekly estab- 
 lished on June 15, 1796. The relation between The Impartial 
 Observer and The Washington Gazette is made clear by the follow- 
 ing notice in the early issues of the latter : _ 
 
BEGINNINGS IN STATES 
 
 173 
 
 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. 
 
 The most important early paper was the tri- weekly, The 
 National Intelligencer and Washington Advertiser, started on 
 October 31, 1800, by Samuel Harrison Smith, who moved with 
 the Government from Philadelphia to Washington and who 
 has already been mentioned several times in these pages. He 
 took into partnership in 1810 Joseph Gales, Jr., who dropped 
 The Washington Advertiser from the title. After Smith became 
 president of the Washington branch of the United States 
 Bank, he retired from journalism and William W. Seaton 
 became associated with Gales in the publishing of the paper 
 now issued daily. , Under the editorship of these two men the 
 paper became the recognized Government organ called by 
 John Randolph "The Court Paper." It was the official reporter 
 of Congress, and had it not been for the excellent work of 
 Gales, who had been taught stenography by his father, it is 
 extremely doubtful whether the great speeches of Webster, 
 Clay, and Calhoun would have been preserved. j These states- 
 men, incidentally, often wrote for the paper. The Intelligencer 
 was the spokesman for the Presidents until the inauguration of 
 Jackson, when The United States Telegraph, edited by General 
 Duff Green, became the Administration organ. Because of 
 Green's endorsement of the policies of John C. Calhoun, Jackson 
 established The Globe. When William Henry Harrison was in- 
 augurated in March, 1841, The Intelligencer came back into its 
 own official position until the Whig Party was split by the death 
 of the President, but it again became "The Court Paper" when 
 Fillmore took the presidential chair on the death of Taylor. 
 It continued to be published in Washington until January 10, 
 1870, when it was moved to New York, where it lasted only a 
 short time. The reason for the removal was the fact that with 
 the secession of the South the paper lost over two thirds of its 
 entire circulation. 
 
174 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 
 
BEGINNINGS IN STATES 175 
 
 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. 
 
176 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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. 
 
BEGINNINGS IN STATES 177 
 
 Ohio had in 1810 fourteen newspapers and by 1819, thirty- 
 three. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 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- 
 
178 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 
 
BEGINNINGS IN STATES 179 
 
 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 
 became a printer and newspaper publisher. 
 
180 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 
 
BEGINNINGS IN STATES 181 
 
 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 M o- 
 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- 
 
182 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 
 
BEGINNINGS IN STATES 183 
 
 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. 
 The Texas Gazette survived until 1832 when it was purchased by 
 
184 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 D. W. Anthony and united with The Texas Gazette and Bra- 
 zoria Commercial Advertiser, a paper started in 1830 by Mr. 
 Anthony at Brazoria. The union was called The Constitutional 
 Advocate and The Texas Public Advertiser and its first issue ap- 
 peared on August 30, 1832. One year later Anthony died of the 
 cholera in Brazoria. In July, 1834, F. C. Gray and A. J. Harris 
 began in Brazoria the publication of The Texas -Republican, a 
 paper which continued until the invasion of Santa Anna in 1836. 
 Of The Advocate of the Peoples 1 Rights, another paper started in 
 Brazoria in 1834 by Oliver H. Allen, little is known, and not 
 much more about The Texian Advocate and Immigrants' Guide, 
 which appeared spasmodically during 1835-36 in Nacogdoches. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 BEGINNINGS OF THE PENNY PRESS 
 
 THE precursor of the penny press was undoubtedly The Daily 
 Evening Transcript, which was established in Boston (Jli Salur- 
 "cmyi Juiy24, 1830, by Lynde M. Walter^ a graduate of Harvard. 
 It was published l"he fhst Iwuniaysof 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 cre- 
 ated by the surcease of The Bulletin," and asserted that ic would 
 not "mingle in the everyday warfare of politics nor attempt to 
 control public bias, in abstract questions of Religion or Moral- 
 ity. " 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 im- 
 provement; that the Bank of the United States' is expedient to the 
 preservation of a wholesome currency, and is warranted by the Con- 
 stitution; 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 in- 
 debtedness 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 regime, the most im- 
 portant matter of moment was the anti-slavery movement 
 
186 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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. HaskelPs 
 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 
 TheJZent, 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 per- 
 suaded Horace Greeley to join him in bringing out such a paper. 
 Greeley, however, insisted that the price was too sudden a re- 
 duction 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 Morrjmg_Eost started 
 on January 1, 183& as a two-cent paper with Dr-^ghegard, 
 Horace Greeley, and Francis W. Story as its printers and pub- 
 
BEGINNINGS OF THE PENNY PRESS 187 
 
 Ushers. 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 re- 
 duced to one cent. The change was made too late, however, for 
 financial resources had been exhausted and no printer was will- 
 ing 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 prac- 
 tical printer, who had learned his trade on The Springfield Re- 
 publican 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 
 teftisey. 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 af- 
 forded 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 experi- 
 ment, and I issifect 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 com- 
 plaints 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 per- 
 mitted the locking of the type upon the cylinder. 
 
188 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 IffiZ 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 jjajia and his associates, who assumed control on 
 January 25, 1868^ After Day retired from The Sun he became the 
 publisher of r f fie 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. 
 
 EARLY 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 
 was The Transcnvt started on March 14, 1834. by three composi- 
 
THE 
 
 SUN. 
 
 Kcnn i.] 
 
 KKW YORK, TTKSIUY, ^KITKMKKR 3, 1833 
 
 [PRICE ONI Pmxf. 
 
 PUBLISHED DAILY, 
 
 tT=I WILLIAM ST .,., u ..T, MIMIE. 
 
 Toe oSjr( 'f iblf taper ii to l.y Ufon U>. public, tl t 
 
 rqv DAT, and t~"lh SUB* time, afford ID adr.ntaceoul 
 d<um for >drrti<lD[ Tb. ihe.t *m b. >Blar ( td a. 
 xm ai lit IncrvAa. of .dr.rtiw&u'Dti rt.;uir II tb* prtc. 
 RmalnlBC rt,..ame, 
 
 Yrlj *lTfrti*r, (wltboot tb* p.p*r,l Th.rty PolUn 
 
 A* HUSH CAPTAJ*. 
 
 M 
 
 b*M tna<i.eet apat'of late4i aiaiylB tb.thTM 
 
 for. BO. . .1 tb. .: ihl.it touch of tbey ,o, a. nret u *"* 
 
 Prjtlded yo b.l a ( ood caoM repllej th. - 
 IL .!". 
 
 I abotld Ml bo i 
 
 KOfl *I.BA 
 
 1 of b ,h..T_i. m tbil part of Ib. 
 
 "Not I " replUd tb. <. ' md if I had I aboold not 
 IrOBbti myaelf lo aarry the pl.toU OB ItuAi aeeoaat- lll|b 
 
 No, my d*ar .Ir. blfb.aymra know that Ml- 
 Bot mucb moB.y and nbat Ibiy b... 
 
 be mucb lo Ih4 adtaBtafi 
 U dwindling Into a country of ( 
 and nvrcb.nu And you muit kaow, too, tt,at I ax prruj 
 D> already .toad tUrura .kou. and I e 
 
 blrtMB ' whit, bit * y 11 foojht thirtt^B dli t ' 
 o. BO!" rrpl.M It. ri^tilB. " U. lift ibot IrcJ U 
 OM ct>np',tf i only rnr >"*> 
 
 , 
 
 _"''," " ta rfWl .^ i 
 
 " ~ 
 
 Tbf plrnJi.l I^TT.prMsur* tr.n,bn4t 
 IVATKIl Wli. II C. P I \.n.i-ii...t. 
 
 lltrtr rJ at 7 o'clock tbe r.mt rTtnin^ f'aua^4 uu- 
 
 Tb'.".W?e* b^rir.r H.rlfoeJ ou MonJijl W- In.i 
 d, aJfriJ.t. t !t..amehouri. rl It 
 
 I aa.l OB it., lib .OKI. For freight or ;.ai.. B e. 
 bo.rd:P,^.L.b.,f.or,o PP"ft.U.f^-, 
 
 ,. apply 
 JOHN GRISWPI.D.. 
 
 i h.'b., hilled' ,'b.i.. .y. lock, ul In .:to r iter -:lbcJ bat oo. 
 idoubu bc.n, J0 w remd. h. | t' * l^" 
 
 JOB. .nd wi bare bee. T.ry food frieodi .cr iinr " ! l(ont cu . J D . O tr-B f orm O f , l-Mkef ; in It were fourVr* 
 -Pray .bat !ti you oceulon rjr tbe ateoof" aald p.ir of dicedi.tlnct. the pot ud Bumbcn of Vcb wtn 
 x youoj itud.nt ] cirtly to U diwernel .itb a food ey.. 
 
 r.red .be c^puin ; all I k.mw if.lbit a lar; coupin; 
 Ul djiu-d tosctbcr. .e lit long and drank deep, and 
 
 a.akeJ in tb. morning from a profounj Me. p. by a jcn- , 4rtiil QiwaUlul Sorhlo t rul 
 11, mm hobe 3 .B a looj .lory, bow I hJ .;.! omhin, drti dulle , wllich w , rp , 1; pt 
 tbiit required eiplan.tlon ; ind alio. th.t I hid acc.J.ntal. , part r ,, , o ,,,; 101 .lender t 
 
 for 
 
 xcellent .cc.>mipr,dtlo 
 art pjuin^er,. f nr fr. ft, i nr pa-iie. .rply to 
 : \VtX>u THIMBI.e.. 107 Maiden lane. 
 
 rupllng him. 
 
 VRE-Tb. rackrt ibip Fo 
 
 FOR I. IVr.Rr-001. -Packet of th. > Sept - 
 
 10 very .mall a, to be almo.t tnTUibl. to tb* naked 
 Ki.B, Sir, (laid I.) I am uaable lo declare, ..tb c.r'.ain. AJ.bo U| h b.l bollne-. thu. lau.fled bl. own eye. M 
 
 ty,.b.lberlbil anylnten.ioo of afroulioj you or not. ' , bf fKt- oe j, j ,,. are a.-ured, re au ir. rf tho,, .bout 
 bMaua. my bead I. mil a lUUe eocfuwd, iol I h.o no ^^ ( JIU b, cr ,be. to it an tb,- credit of bi, InMlibillty ; f>e 
 
 bend your dr.ft at prc.ent. but I conjecture tbt y)O wi.b inf fx blol .,. ;r . ,! lrrljo , the perfon. thu- k <l,ly failed, 
 to h... aatUfartlon . If 10. I mult brg you .111 h. k.nd ; pir . lCU ;. r Ir f.renci ll made to i.a.pir Scblopi. u, J u ba. 
 
 FnJ*BC UwMtftat CwtawMI b. n.med tbe pla<-. .ad the. ' " 
 .... ', ., ... .re,,,, a, ,b. ,m, ^^JS^^^^XXSSK^ 
 
 
 - J hlp, j 
 
 r-t^,.'o;V.'''' ! ;'"b.,' n ;'ht;',","' "r!.ntn,"nT. j ,b. .ii"..d.l b.'b... earned 
 
 t ft \,la f K <OLLIN.-..MrV>utb.t | B . re b,o, frm Ib. tl-ld of b.lll OB 
 
 N B. AII;hUfl) inreadjneM lo r.e..t. c.r,;j at Fine 
 
 Verramt. >een.unrj l W)i 
 |,n, alo... wa, i-) prco. ) h..l!.rj Ih.t a. K ..a* 
 , wa. by himelf h uo'0rMJlly cou.tli^rod. Vf^am 
 
 'fVnror < pa^'n."',nT'baaJ' 
 W, HOLMrS t CO 8, Soutb 
 
 Pr.,.m.,la,k,froueT.a.,o. 
 
 t.,, ' r.pl.ed tb. c.pt.ia .Ith a .l(b - I c.iw 
 
 ..r bad tb.'. ,ool fonun. Ibou.-b I .Juld ,.'. I 
 
 eomplctrly fe:er,V. I .= th,. .u^-ialioa. b. .bl.U J 
 
 .ppent.. ant alou-t t .:.: rf"'.'at,oa of atren^tb. eoBilA 
 oed hu m^tii.r it wou J .nd In death if .01 .r-e.l.ly or. 
 eoni-^ wb.cb w.i aec .mpll-b.4 ty plaeln< ha. .a ta. 
 .ody of .nutb.r boy wbo b. I .la.tl 19 "J UU a <Hjt ' 
 u i^.a w u, '.,-.. M wi.il. 
 
 THE FIRST ISSUE OF THE NEW YORK SUN 
 
 (Reduced) 
 
BEGINNINGS OF THE PENNY PRESS 189 
 
 tors Havward. Lvnde. 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, Th& 
 J^m, had been born in New York on February 18,.1834-r-Jt 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 
 DailyJ$e came from the hive (located in Masonic Hall) of 
 JoImLrKingslgy 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 183. 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 
 
190 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 made on April 29, 1836, when The Ladies' Morning Star, price 
 one cent, appeared above thePnewspaper 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 T^ie 1? 
 o'clock News in Boston on March 13, 1834, Strictly speaking, 
 the first newspaper to be sold in Bostonjor one cent was The 
 DailyPenny Post which was first set up at 28 Franklin Street 
 on Monclay, 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- 
 
BEGINNINGS OF THE PENNY PRESS 191 
 
 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 ,J&&, a morning 
 newspaper of their own called ^fr^j^friffflffi ^^ lp 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 
 1842, it appeared with a new dress as The Morning Herald and 
 fhe Evenin^JLerald. 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 
 
192 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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, 
 TheJSoston Mwrning Herald, but which had been started earlier 
 
 and was edited by William B. English. 
 
 i" * 
 
 PENNY PRESS IN PHILADELPHIA 
 
 When Day started The Sun in New York in 1833, he had in his 
 employ three printers, A. S. 4hp.11 T 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 
 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- 
 
BEGINNINGS OF THE PENNY PRESS 193 
 
 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 Transcrivt. TheVeJo, a 
 distinctly campaign publication, had been started on April 17, 
 1834, at one cent a copy: it had for its motto, "Old Hickory, 
 Some 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. 
 
 BENNETT AND HIS " HERALD" 
 
 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 Ywk HfrM } it was 
 published by James Gordon Bennett & Company in the cellar 
 of Number 20 Wall Street. On May"fi, isaa. 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 
 
194 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 one cent a copy and consequently its circulation brought in 
 only a very limited revenue. The Sun and The Transcript ob- 
 jected 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 con- 
 tinued 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 in- 
 creased to two cents. 
 
 At the end of the year 1836 the following re*sume* was pub- 
 lished: 
 
 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 thou- 
 sand 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 man- 
 kind, 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 publica- 
 tion 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 
 
BEGINNINGS OF THE PENNY PRESS 195 
 
 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 re- 
 sumed 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 prin- 
 ciple 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 can- 
 didate 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, work- 
 ing people the private family as well as the public hotel the jour- 
 neyman and his employer the clerk and his principal. There are in 
 this city at least 150,000 persons who glance over one or more news- 
 papers 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. 
 
196 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 Ameri- 
 can, 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 Tran- 
 script. 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 at- 
 tacked 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 pul- 
 pit 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 
 
BEGINNINGS OF THE PENNY PRESS 197 
 
 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.j 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. 
 
 VITUPERATION 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 
 
198 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 "THE HERALD" 
 
 What really made The New York Herald, however, yet remains 
 to be outlined. In the second number a Wall Street feature was 
 
BEGINNINGS OF THE PENNY PRESS 199 
 
 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 mil 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 power, Bennett 
 
200 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 had 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 
 
BEGINNINGS OF THE PENNY PRESS 201 
 
 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. 
 
 t For the first time journalism was brought directly to the 
 I people. By making the daily papers easy to buy, the penny press 
 
 / brought something of a revolution into American journalism. 
 
 *v Its system of marketing its products undoubtedly had much to 
 \lo with its success. 
 
202 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 DIFFERENCES BETWEEN PENNY AND SIX-PENNY SHEETS 
 
 The penny pager on account of its size was forced to give its 
 n^w^Jn^mairspace. 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 sixpenny jsheets 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 
 franklyHadmitted 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. \fhe penny papers went on the principle v 
 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 
 
BEGINNINGS OF THE PENNY PRESS 203 
 
 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 formed; whose 
 
204 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 undefmable 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. Ut 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 
 
BEGINNINGS OF THE PENNY PRESS 205 
 
 in the house ;put when newspapers sold for a penny a copy, they 
 cpept 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. I 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 
 p/ess had done in twenty. In the birth of the penny newspaper 
 inay 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 
 controlled by party class or personal clique. 
 

 CHAPTER XIII 
 TRANSITION PERIOD 
 ^ 1832 1841 
 
 THE penny press brought seyeral chart p^g jp f.frp mn.-nnfQM-.nro 
 
 and niarketirg ft* npwgfp^g 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 sub- 
 
 cribers. The greater demand for larger editions, the competi- 
 
 ion to be first in news, the better facilities for gathering items, 
 
 he deeper interest taken in civic improvement, the changes in 
 
 he body politic, the expansion of the country, the increase of 
 
 iteracy among all classes with the introduction of compulsory 
 
 iducation 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. Manyrejorms 
 
 +-k pfir p v Press. In iNew fork, for 
 
 example, The Sun advocated the installation of a paid fire de- 
 partment. 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 su- 
 premacy as before. In securing the introduction of horse-drawn 
 engines and the adoption of a paid department, The Sun ren- 
 dered a most distinct service to the city. The Herald performed 
 just as distinct a service when it fought for the adoption of uni- 
 forms for the city police. Previously, members of the police de- 
 partment 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 
 
TRANSITION PERIOD 207 
 
 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 ana Territories into a JNation. 
 
 _ __ -^..^^^^-^ ..^^^^"B^* 
 
 GREELEY, SEWARD, AND WEED 
 
 During the time when the penny press was being established 
 in the larger cities, Horacs.Iilfieley was interested in various 
 newspaper enterprises. His entrance, jnjjfl New-Yhrfr 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 in the Pufrlififlit ir>T *- nf what 
 became the first one-cent newspaper in New York, TVieJlformtt*/ 
 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 withjJonas Winchester he started 
 on March 2^ 1834 1 The New Yorker, in which he published the 
 larger part of his editorial work:, both original and selected writ- 
 ings, though he continued *** wrjtp fnr T*ir n iri7y TTftn 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, J.838. a campaign paper in Albany 
 called The Jeffersoniau. 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 
 
208 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 
 
TRANSITION PERIOD 209 
 
 Dry Cider Barrett. Of the Whig sheets, next to Greeley's Log 
 Cabin, came The Corn-Stalk Fiddle and The Whig Rifle^E&uu* 
 again djfHJif; fiijrnpniffn witf.Ulim. or dailies for that matter, play 
 SO important a part, in prffijffent.ml pjfifif.irmg as in the "Tip and 
 
 Ty" ^rv.pQipri^f 1&J/^ \L 
 
 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 Therjfcwe 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 : 
 
210 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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, l&ljj^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 
 
 J J aily the partisan gospel, according to St. Horace, it was also a 
 latform for the early appearance of such distinguished jour- 
 alists and publicists as Charles Anderson Dana, Henry Jarvis 
 Avaymond, 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, etcl 
 
TRANSITION PERIOD 211 
 
 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. Employers 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." 
 
212 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 STEAM EXPRESSES OF " THE SUN" 
 
 In running steam expresses to obtain early news possibly The 
 New York S u un 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. 
 
 EDITORIAL 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 anA "Rn.qmi.rer. 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 
 
TRANSITION PERIOD 213 
 
 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 time 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 
 
214 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 honors l^ong 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. 
 
 / 
 
 FIRST 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 
 
TRANSITION PERIOD 215 
 
 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 firsjrpaper to be thus published by a stock company was 
 The NewYork Tribune. On January 1, 184SL a meeting was 
 called foFthe purpose of distributing the stock .among its em- 
 ployees.^ Every one was placed on a salary from editor-in-chief 
 "Hown to printer's devil. This system of flssnfifl.t.inn ownership 
 was especially pleasing to Greeley because of itsjsocialistic 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 
 
216 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 politi^' qr> i^n^H that 
 he must speak to a larger audience than that around the stump, 
 he reporter was regarded as an impertinent intruj 
 
 \* 
 
 l h 
 
 JOURNALISM IN THE REPUBLIC OF TEXAS 
 
 When Texas, being dissatisfied with Mexican rule, revolted 
 
 in 1835, its most important newspaper became 
 and Texasjtegister 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 Harrisbujgb, 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 Th^Morjy&p 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, 1S26, 
 at Columbia on the Brazos, "then the temporary seat of the 
 Government. On April 11, JJ&7, The Telegraph was moved to 
 Houston, at that time the seatTof the Government, where Dr. 
 Francis Moore became its editor. On June 20, 1837, Gail Borden 
 
TRANSITION PERIOD 217 
 
 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 ISQfttoT Th* T^ m fifm/****, but continued The Tele- 
 graph &t 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 resume* 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-ROOM" 
 
 Possibly Samuel Topliff made the first attempt to gather 
 news to be retailed ajnong several newspapers. Establishing 
 his headquarters in a "news-room 77 in the Coffee Exchange in 
 Rnpt.nn he made a specialty of the reports of the markeTand 
 the commercial news of Boston Harbor. He kept a logbool$: in 
 which cajjtajpfii 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. Abel], of Th^ 
 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 time over four hundred were kept in a house on Ham- 
 stead Hill near the Maryland Hospital for the Insane. The 
 
218 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 ex- 
 pected 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. Wliile at sea he would write 
 on thin manifold paper a summary of the most important Eu- 
 ropean 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 in- 
 tense 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. 
 
TRANSITION PERIOD 219 
 
 HALE AND HALLECK 
 
 In New York the first^ pretentious step to gather news while 
 it was news was made by ^rtjmr Tappan^wno nad founded 
 Tfie^Tournal of Conwnw rA -** 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 Tfole 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 uouner" 
 andEnquirer. notTo"be outdone, promptly put into commission 
 Another news-boat, "The Thomas H. Smith.^The Journal of 
 Commerce, true to the principles 01 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^^exjiEfiss- 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 Sun 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 
 
220 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 Way liye'fl to bring the messages of the Presi- 
 dents to Ballinlore; 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 thatjthe pony express 
 reached its highest. deye,lpr.mpTiT -"" 
 
 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 frmnfted for p.o)Hi| ill nniiiT'i 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, Ift41. 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 
 
TRANSITION PERIOD 221 
 
 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 
 
222 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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. 
 
 \l 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- 
 
TRANSITION PERIOD 223 
 
 telligencer, run by Gales and Sea top, and The Madisonian, run by 
 Thomas Align. James (lordon Rftpnett, of The New York Herald, 
 promptly attacked this~Favbritism and announced that he was 
 willing to give daily reports at the Senate without any remu- 
 neration. Out of his efforts ^rew thq "fwwlnm rfi fjjp pr^gg" 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 recordea in its pages from January 
 to July of that year. The account sbowe.fi over nine hundred 
 accidental dearths, of which fully one half came irom drowning. 
 
 TlWg wprp t.wn VmnHrpfj anH fiff.PAn TY^j|v|prg by glUlS, 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 asj25 the National Government still exerted_ 
 mendous infltfeTOe through ilu paliuMge 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, 
 
224 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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. 
 
 ADVERTISING 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^jto 
 make its appearance. 
 
 ^ln Infill 1 hrsi 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 
 and make it known. 
 
 
PHILADELPHIA 
 
 STOVE 
 
 MANUFACTORY, 
 
 No. 189 N Second street, 
 two dtiors below the sitfn of 
 the Barley Sheuf, between 
 H-.ce and" Vine streets. 
 HENRYJ.FOUGE.RAY 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'ami Schuylkill 
 Coal, for Churches, Halls, Parlours, Kitchens, Offices, 
 Sec, together with Nine Plate, Open and Cahin 
 Stoves, Cambouses, Backs, Jams, &.c. All of which 
 lie will dispose of at low prices. 
 
 N B.~ Cash given for Old Stoves and Scrap Iron, 
 or taken In exchange. au !8-6m 
 
 Approved Cook Stoves Perpetual Orcn, &c. 
 
 No. Ill North 
 Second street, Phi 
 ladelphia. 
 
 GEO J.FOUGE- 
 I?AV 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, halls, 
 offices, stores, &c. 
 
 Also, Perpetual 
 Ovens. 
 
 N. H. All kinds 
 
 of old Stoves and 
 
 tjJPi 
 
 Irpn taken in 
 
 ADVERTISEMENTS IN THE PHILADELPHIA AURORA 
 Showing free use of Cuts before the Invention of Cylinder Presses 
 
 (Enlarged) 
 
TRANSITION PERIOD 225 
 
 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 
 
226 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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. ^lany newspaper men actually 
 wrote the advertisements; for instance, Hen^Jarvis.fiajaaaond, 
 who later became the distinguished fnn*fTffr"nf Tlip. N^n Ynrk 
 Tirnes, 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 W. Warner complained that the news- 
 paper columns "outshine the shelves of the druggist in the dis- 
 play 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'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 
 
 
TRANSITION PERIOD 227 
 
 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 RESUME 
 
 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 
 
228 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 A 
 
 1555 "/ wy 
 
 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, J85D. 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: 
 
TRANSITION PERIOD 
 
 229 
 
 
 Number 
 
 Circulation 
 
 No. of copies 
 printed 
 annually 
 
 Dailies 
 
 350 
 
 750,000 
 
 235,000,000 
 
 Tri- weeklies 
 
 150 
 
 75,000 
 
 11,700,000 
 
 Semi-weeklies 
 
 125 
 
 80,000 
 
 8,320,000 
 
 Weeklies 
 
 2000 
 
 2875000 
 
 149500000 
 
 Semi-monthlies 
 
 50 
 
 300000 
 
 7 200 000 
 
 Monthlies 
 
 100 
 
 900000 
 
 10800000 
 
 Quarterlies 
 
 25 
 
 20000 
 
 80000 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 2,800 
 
 5,000,000 
 
 422,600,000 
 
' 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 BEGINNINGS IN STATES AND TERRITORIES 
 18331873 
 
 ALL the editors who had joined the Westward advance in jour- 
 nalism had one characteristic in common: they had the most 
 sublime faith that the section where they settled was to become 
 an influential part of the country at large. In the code of these 
 pioneer editors, optimism was ever present. Such a quality was 
 necessary, for often preparations were made to bring out a 
 newspaper before a sufficient number of subscribers to support 
 the enterprise had arrived on the scene. The homes of these 
 pioneer newspapers were at the start to be found in the rude tent 
 of the camper, the dug-out of the prairie, and the log cabin of the 
 mountain. 
 
 Often the story of these beginnings is more interesting than 
 the contents of the newspapers. But few copies of the earliest 
 papers in the territory covered in this chapter have been pre- 
 served. The greatest loss, however, was not that of the printed 
 sheets, but that of the written precursors which were sold on 
 the mountain trails and paid for with gold taken in tin pans 
 from the bed of a neighboring stream. In the South printing 
 materials came by way of Mexico: in the Far West they went 
 with the immigrant train over the desert : on the Pacific Coast 
 they came by ship around Cape Horn. 
 
 Before making any criticism of the contents of these early 
 papers, one must remember that the men who blazed the trail 
 through Western wilds were not discriminating readers. They 
 cared more for interesting subject-matter than for literary mode 
 of treatment. Their respect was commanded only by the editor 
 who could fight with his gun as well as with his pen. Illustra- 
 tions hi proof of the assertion just made will be found in the pages 
 which follow. 
 
BEGINNINGS IN STATES AND TERRITORIES 231 
 
 EARLY WISCONSIN WEEKLIES 
 
 The frontier printer occasionally started his paper before the 
 arrival of other settlers. With intuitive foresight he seemed to 
 kno.w probable locations of settlements along rivers and at the 
 junction of smaller streams. Typical of papers thus established 
 was The. ft/Yrrgr of Newport, one of the pioneer papers oJKi** 
 consin^ but by no means the first. Its editor, Alanson Holly, 
 very graphically mirrored the Westward movement of journal- 
 ism in his salutatory greeting: 
 
 We are doing what, perhaps, has never been done in the United 
 States before We are printing The Wisconsin Mirror in the woods. 
 Not a dwelling, except our own, within half a mile of us, and only one 
 within a mile. The forest oaks hang over our office and dwelling, the 
 deer and rabbits shy around us, and the partridges and quails seek our 
 acquaintance, by venturing nearer and nearer our doors. The noble Wis- 
 consin is bearing onward its immense burdens of ice, majestically and 
 silently, within sight of our windows; and the snow-capped hills, covered 
 with scattering oaks and pines, peer up in the distance. There is ro- 
 mance and reality in all this, and we feel almost willing to publish a 
 paper in such a location, just for the excitement of the thing. But most 
 of the romance is soon to be spoiled. Already, several dwellings are in 
 progress near us and before many weeks they are to be occupied by 
 enterprising neighbors, and when spring and summer shall come, we 
 expect such a chatter of axes and spades, and trowels, and saws, and 
 hammers, that we shall hardly be able to write our editorials without 
 introducing more or less confusion. The fact is, we expect a large 
 village, yea, a city, to grow up rapidly around us; and that is why we 
 are here printing in the woods. 
 
 Mr. Holly was in error when he thought his paper was the 
 first to be printed "in the woods." Other papers had been 
 started under conditions even more primitive with the type set 
 under the oaks themselves. 
 
 t Not infrequently the paper was published to advertise the 
 attractions of the settlement and to promote immigration. For 
 these reasons D. H. Richards founded in July, 1K36. The Mil- 
 ipaukee Advertiser, the first paper in the city and the third in the 
 State! Incidentally, The Advertiser was also issued to advance 
 the interest of the Milwaukee and Rock River Canal. In March, 
 
232 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 1841, Richards sold the paper to Josiah A. Noolan, who changed 
 its name to The Courier. The latter was succeeded by The Wis- 
 consin. 
 
 Pioneer papers were invariably begun as weeklies, but even 
 Ithen they were often irregular in appearance. Such was the case 
 lof The Green Bay Intelligencer, the first paper in Wisconsin 
 Territory, begun on December 11, 1833, by John V. Suydam and 
 Albert Ellis. The following year the latter, becoming the sole 
 proprietor, continued as publisher until June 1, 1835, when he 
 accepted C. P. Arndt as a partner. In August, 1836, The In- 
 telligencer united with The Wisconsin Free Press, which had 
 been in existence just a year and was the second paper in Wis- 
 consin, to form The Democrat. In the spring of 1840 the paper 
 last mentioned went to Kenosha, where it was published as 
 The Telegraph. 
 
 GENESIS OF KANSAS JOURNALISM 
 
 Kansas ever has been, and is, a great newspaper State. Its 
 journalism, in the strict sense of that term, dates from March 
 1, 1835, when there appeared at the Baptist Mission h& 
 Shawanoe Sun. Published exclusively in the Indian language, it 
 was a small quarter-sheet edited by the Reverend Johnston Ly- 
 kins and printed on the Mission press by Jotham Meeker. In 
 the spring of 1837, when Meeker went to the Ottawa Mission in 
 Franklin County, the paper was printed by J. G. Pratt until 
 1839, when it was discontinued on account of the illness of its 
 publisher. The old-fashioned press of the Mission was later 
 taken to Prairie City and used to print The Freeman's Champion 
 first issued on June 25, 1857, in a home-made tent, the gift of 
 the women of that place. 
 
 The earliest English newspaper in Kansas was The Kansas 
 dy Herald, first brought out in Lea\enworth on September 
 15,,jg54, by Qgborn Adams. It was started before there was 
 a single" permanent building" in Leaven worth: only four tem- 
 porary tents had been raised before a type-setter was at work, 
 under an old elm tree, on the first number. An editorial remark 
 in the first issue said: "Our editorials have been written and our 
 proof corrected while sitting on the ground with a big shingle 
 
BEGINNINGS IN STATES AND TERRITORIES 233 
 
 for a table." In 1859 it became a daily, but suspended in 1861 
 on the death of its owner. 
 
 The same year that The Kansas Weekly Herald was started, 
 a second paper, The Pioneer, was begun at Kickapoo. The next 
 year saw three established at Lawrence. The first of these, 
 started on January 5, 1855, by John Spear, was The Kansas 
 Tribune. In November it suspended for a few weeks and later 
 removed to Topeka. On January 6, 1855, just one day after 
 The Tribune was founded, The Herald of Freedom appeared at 
 Lawrence under the direction of George W. Brown. One num- 
 ber of the paper, dated October 21, 1854, had been printed at 
 Wakarusa, Pennsylvania. After publishing this issue, Brown 
 moved to Lawrence, where, with the help of a few settlers, he 
 set up a log printing-office. The third paper to be established at 
 Lawrence in 1855 was The Kansas Free State. Both The Free 
 State and The Herald of Freedom figured conspicuously in the 
 exciting times of '55 and '56. 
 
 In striking contrast to these papers published at Lawrence 
 was The Squatter Sovereign, started on February 3, 1855, at 
 Atchison by John H. Stringfellow and Robert S. Kelly. In a 
 way the paper was the successor of The Democratic Platform, 
 which Kelly had published at Liberty, Missouri, in the interest 
 of slavery. The Squatter Sovereign was practically the organ of 
 the Border Ruffians and fought most bitterly the Free State 
 papers then in existence in "bleeding Kansas." After the ex- 
 citing years of '55 and '56, The Squatter Sovereign passed into 
 the hands of other owners who gave it another name and re- 
 versed its editorial policies. One of the earliest, if not the first, 
 daily paper published west of the Missouri River was The 
 Daily Kansas Freeman begun at Shawnee on October 24, 1855. 
 The times were evidently too exciting and the threats of the 
 Border Ruffians to destroy the paper were too frequent to war- 
 rant a continuance of the sheet, for it suspended on November 7. 
 
 DAWN OF NEW MEXICO JOURNALISM 
 
 In strict accuracy the first newspaper printed in New Mex- 
 ico was Kl Crp.pufipuln (FThp. Dawn) and was first published by 
 Antonio "Jose* Martinez in Taos, November 29, 13&. But four 
 
234 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 numbers of El Crepusculo were issued and these were on paper 
 the size of foolscap. The paper failed to pay expenses and was 
 suspended after the four issues. 
 
 The first newspaper, however, to be printed in English, either 
 in whole or in part, was The Santa Fe Republican. This paper 
 was a four-page weekly irr4we^parts two in Spanish and 
 two in English and made its appearance in Santa F6 on 
 September 4, 1847. Its publishers were Hovey and Davies and 
 its editor, G. fe*tfibson. 
 
 The New Mexican was started at Santa F6 on December 1, 
 1849, by Davies and Hones. This paper, however, is not to be 
 confused with the present New Mexican, started by Charles 
 Leiv on January 22, 1863. 
 
 INITIAL PAPERS OF IOWA 
 
 The first paper in Iowa was The Dubuque Visitor, brought out 
 at the Dubuque Lead Mines, ~at-thSt tune uTWisconsin Terri- 
 tory, by John King on May 11, J.836. He had founded the 
 Dubuque Lead Mine in 1834 and was satisfied that the little 
 village would grow and become a prosperous city. Having pur- 
 chased in Cincinnati a hand-press, some type, and material 
 sufficient to issue a small weekly paper, he returned to Du- 
 buque. William Carey Jones, a young printer from Chillicothe, 
 accompanied King to take charge of the mechanical side of the 
 paper. On June 3, 1837, a new owner changed the title to The 
 Iowa News, and the name of the paper was again changed on 
 August 1, 1841, to The Miner's Express. When on April 19, 
 1851, a new publication, The Dubuque Herald, appeared, The 
 Miner's Express made preparation to bring out a daily paper. On 
 August 19 of that year it published the first daily paper north 
 of St. Louis or west of the Mississippi. The Herald met this move 
 by also changing to a daily paper and the competition became 
 so keen between the two that a merger became necessary and 
 on October 26, 1854, the two papers united under the title, 
 The Daily Express and Herald later changed to The Daily 
 Herald. On August 27, 1901, the paper absorbed The Dubuque 
 Daily Telegraph. The paper is now continued as The Telegraph 
 and Herald. 
 
BEGINNINGS_ IN STATES AND TERRITORIES 235 
 
 The second paper in Iowa was started at Mount Rose in 1836 
 by Dr. Isaac Glalland. He called his paper The Western Ad- 
 venturer. After a struggle of two years he took it to Fort Madi- 
 son, where it was purchased by James G. Edwards, who, on 
 March 24, 1838, converted it to a Whig sheet called The Fort 
 Madison Patriot. The paper was finally moved to Burlington 
 where it is now known as The Hawk-Eye. On August 4, 1838, 
 The Iowa Sun and Davenport and Rock Island News appeared 
 simultaneously at Davenport, Iowa, and at Stephenson (now 
 Rock Island, Illinois), and was published by Andrew Logan. The 
 fourth paper was The Iowa Standard, first brought out at Bloom- 
 ington October 23, 1840, and a year later removed to Iowa City. 
 
 The Iowa Standard was only four days ahead of The Bloom- 
 ington Herald, issued on October 27, 1840, with Thomas Hughes 
 and John B. Russell as editors. This paper, after some changes, 
 became The Muscatine Journal, under which name it is still 
 published. The Courier was established at Fort Madison by 
 R. Wilson Albright on July 24, 1841. 
 
 INDIAN PAPERS OF OKLAHOMA 
 
 To the Cherokees unquestionably belongs the honor of 
 printing the first and many of the early papers in what was 
 the Indian Territory but is now the State of Oklahoma. The 
 first of these was The Cherokee Messenger, started in August, 
 1844, at Cherokee Baptist Mission. Edited by the Reverend 
 Evan Jones, it was more of a religious and temperance pamphlet 
 than a newspaper: printed at irregular intervals it might more 
 justly be considered the precursor of journalism in the Indian 
 Territory. 
 
 The first real newspaper was the national organ of the Chero- 
 kee Nation. Its National Council on October 25, 1843, had 
 passed an act to establish a printing-press and to print a news- 
 paper, and on September 26, 1844, there appeared at Tahlequah 
 the first number of The Cherokee Advocate. Under the editorship 
 of William P. Ross it was printed in both the English and Cher- 
 okee languages. The Cherokee Nation fixed the subscription 
 price at three dollars per year "except to those persons who 
 read only the Cherokee language and they shall pay two dollars." 
 
236 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 The paper was discontinued in 1853, but was revived again in 
 1870. 
 
 Another Indian Journal, The Vindicator, was started by J. H. 
 Moore at New Boggy in June, 1872, in the interest of the Choc- 
 taws and Chickasaws. It afterwards united with The Okla- 
 homa Star. Still another Indian paper was The Indian Journal, 
 first begun in May, 1876, at Muskogee by M. P. Roberts. It 
 was the official organ of the Creek Nation. 
 
 The Territorial Advocate, started at Beaver by E. E. Eldridge 
 in May7l?&7, was the first real English newspaper in Oklahoma 
 and had the distinction of being probably the only newspaper 
 ever published in the United States outside the pale of estab- 
 lished law of any character. The pan-handle portion of the 
 State of Oklahoma, in which Beaver is located, was prior to 
 1889 known as "No Man's Land." The Advocate is now pub- 
 lished under the name of The Beaver Herald. 
 
 The first paper after the Territory was opened was one issue 
 of The Guthrie Get-Up, on April 29, 1889. It was a small sheet 
 folded in the center and printed only on one side. Having only 
 one issue it is not, strictly speaking, to be classed as a news- 
 paper. Its immediate successor was The Oklahoma State Capitol, 
 started in Guthrie a little later. The latter paper survived until 
 1911 when it was taken over by The Guthrie Daily Leader. 
 
 ORIGIN OF JOURNALISM IN OREGON 
 
 Oregon City, in 1844, thought it ought to have a newspaper. 
 Accordingly, a company was formed known as the Oregon 
 Printing Association. According to the articles of compact, 
 the following regulation was set down for the guidance of the 
 editor: "The press owned by, or in connection with, this Associ- 
 ation shall never be used by any party for the purpose of propa- 
 gating sectarian principles or doctrines; nor for the discussion of 
 exclusive party politics." 
 
 As soon as a press could be secured from New York, the or- 
 ganization brought out the first newspaper in Oregon on Thurs- 
 day, February 5, 1846. It was called The Oregon Spectator and 
 had for its motto, "Westward the Star of Empire takes its 
 Way." Its first editor was Colonel William G. T'Vault, who was 
 
 
BEGINNINGS IN STATES AND TERRITORIES 237 
 
 then Postmaster-General of the Provisional Government, and its 
 first printer was John Fleming, who had immigrated to Oregon 
 in 1844. T' Vault did not sit long in the editorial chair, for on 
 April 16, 1846, the name of Henry A. G. Lee appeared as the 
 editor. He had been the original choice of the Oregon Printing 
 Association, but had wanted a salary of six hundred dollars, 
 which was considered too exorbitant. Mr. Lee, a descendant 
 of Richard Lee, of Virginia, did not preside over the editorial 
 columns much longer than his predecessor, for he severed his 
 relations with the issue of August 6, 1846. For two months fol- 
 lowing, John Fleming, the printer, was the editor of the paper. 
 
 Early in October, George L. Curry, who had come to the 
 Territory of Oregon by way of the Cow Prick Canyon, took up 
 the editorial reins and tried to direct the editorial policies with a 
 "firm and consistent American tone." In his attempts to put 
 his theories into practice he was severely handicapped by the 
 seigniorship exercised by the Oregon Printing Association. So 
 strained became the relations between the editor and pub- 
 lishers of the paper that Mr. Curry resigned in 1848. After 
 leaving The Spectator, Mr. Curry decided to start a rival news- 
 paper and accordingly bought about eighty pounds of type 
 from the Catholic Missionaries. Having no press, and being 
 unwilling to wait until one could be secured from the East, he 
 constructed one of a rude sort chiefly out of wood and scrap 
 iron. The type which he had purchased from the Catholic Mis- 
 sionaries, and which had been used to print religious tracts in 
 French, had but few letter "w's." This obstacle was overcome 
 by whittling a number out of hard wood. The typographical 
 appearance of the paper printed with an occasional handmade 
 "w" may well be imagined. 
 
 Curry's paper was called The Free Press and lasted until Oc- 
 tober, 1848, when it ceased publication, largely on account of the 
 wild rush of subscribers to the mines in the Territory. Inci- 
 dentally, it may be said that Curry was appointed Governor of 
 the Territory of Oregon in 1854 and held that office until 1859. 
 On January 1, 1861, he joined forces with S. J. McCormick, of 
 The Portland Daily Advertiser, started on May 31, 1859. The first 
 daily, however, was The Daily News, begun by S. A. English 
 
238 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 and W. B. Taylor, April 18, 1859, in Portland. After Curry left 
 The Spectator, Aaron E. Wait, a native of Massachusetts, be- 
 came the editor and on February 10, 1848, he enlarged the paper 
 to twenty-four columns. 
 
 On September 7 it was necessary to suspend publication be- 
 cause its printer, John Fleming, had left for the mines. The 
 paper appeared again, however, on October 12, with S. Bentley 
 as printer and with the following note of apology: - 
 
 The Spectator, after a temporary sickness, greets its patrons and 
 hopes to serve them faithfully and, as heretofore, regularly. "That gold 
 fever" which has swept about three thousand of the officers, lawyers, 
 physicians, farmers, and mechanics of Oregon from the Plains of Ore- 
 gon into the mines of California, took away our printer hence the 
 temporary non-appearance of The Spectator. 
 
 Mr. Wait left The Spectator with the issue of February 22, 
 1849. Soon after the paper suspended publication for a time, 
 but on October 4, 1849, the Reverend Wilson Blain, a Pres- 
 byterian clergyman, revived the paper. On April 18, 1850, 
 Robert Moore became the owner of The Spectator, but he retained 
 Blain as its editor. 
 
 On September 12, D. J. Schnebly became the editor and 
 about a year later, on September 9, 1851, he became the owner. 
 The Spectator frequently had trouble in getting a supply of white 
 paper on which to print the news and had to change its size. In 
 1852 it became a distinctly political newspaper to plead the cause 
 of the Whig Party. It failed to receive sufficient support and 
 was compelled to suspend on March 16, 1852. Even after it was 
 revived in August, 1853, the paper was not well supported and 
 finally had to be sold to C. L. Goodrich in the latter part of 1854. 
 With the permanent suspension of The Spectator in March, 
 1855, the history of the first paper in Oregon ends. 
 
 A month later, however, W. L. Adams, one of the pioneers 
 of 1847, used the plant, starting The Oregon City Argus on April 
 21, 1855. According to the best information obtainable, this 
 was the first real Republican paper, not only in Oregon, but 
 also on the Pacific Coast. Mr. Adams, needing a printer, em- 
 ployed David W. Craig, who had been working on The Oregon 
 Statesman. Starting in as a foreman, Mr. Craig became the 
 
BEGINNINGS IN STATES AND TERRITORIES 239 
 
 owner of The Argus on April 16, 1859, but he retained his former 
 employer as editor until October 24, 1863. On that date The 
 Statesman and The Argus consolidated and continued publica- 
 tion under the name of The Statesman. 
 
 The Western Star was the fourth paper published in Oregon. 
 This paper was first published at Milwaukie, on November 21, 
 1850, but in May, 1851, was moved to Portland. Here the 
 name The Western Star was dropped and a new one, The Oregon 
 Weekly Times, was selected for the issue of June 5, 1851. 
 
 The Weekly Oregonian, the fifth paper in Oregon, was started 
 December 4, 1850, at Portland. Its press was purchased in 
 1852 by T. F. McElroy and J. W. Wiley, who took it to Olympia 
 and on it printed The Columbian, the first paper north of the 
 Columbia River. The first issue was dated Saturday, September 
 11, 1852. Six months later the editor told of his struggles as 
 follows: "We commenced publication without a subscriber and 
 without a dollar. Since that time we have kept 'batch/ done 
 our own cooking and our own washing, our own mending, cut our 
 own wood, made our own fires, washed our own dishes, swept out 
 our own office, made up our own bed, and composed our own 
 editorials out of the cases writing paper being luxuries which 
 we have been deprived of and done our own press work. Now 
 we have three hundred and fifty subscribers." Under such 
 difficulties were some of the earlier papers on the Pacific Coast 
 produced. 
 
 CATHOLIC AND MORMON PRESSES OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 At Monterey^ Robert Sempje, former editor of The Phila- 
 delphia North American, and the Reverend Walter Colton, 
 Chaplain of the United States Frigate Congress, brought out 
 the first^paper in California on August^ 15, 1846. It was most 
 appropriately called The Calif ornian. In a book which Colton 
 later published, he described nis partner at the time the paper 
 was brought out as follows: "He is in buck-skin dress and fox- 
 skin cap; he is true with his rifle, ready with his pen and quick 
 at the type-case." 
 
 Colton once asserted that the materials in his office had been 
 used by a Roman Catholic monk in printing a few sectarian 
 
240 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 tracts; that the press was old enough to preserve as a curiosity, 
 and that the types were all in pi and were so rusty that it was 
 only by hard scouring that the letters could be made to show 
 their faces. There were no rules or leads, and in their absence 
 two or three sheets of tin were cut with the help of a jack-knife 
 for substitutes. Fortunately, there was enough ink for the 
 press, but unfortunately no paper. A supply of paper sent to 
 California to be used to wrap cigars was purchased from a 
 coaster, and on these sheets, not much larger than the common- 
 sized foolscap, was printed the first issue of The Californian. 
 One half of the paper was in English, the other in Spanish, and 
 single copies sold for twelve and one half cents considered 
 cheap at that. The first issue contained a declaration of war 
 between the United States and Mexico with an account of a 
 debate in the Senate. 
 
 The Californian after six months boasted that it had been able 
 to meet expenses, but in spite of this assertion it was forced to 
 move from Monterey to Yerba Buena, now San Francisco, 
 ~wheFe on May 22, 1847, it issued the first number of its second 
 volume with Robert Semple as its sole publisher. Before this 
 change of place of publication, another paper had already been 
 started at Yerba Buena called The California Star, first issued 
 on January 7, 1847. It was published by Samuel Brannfln and 
 edited by E. P. Jones. It was much better printed than The 
 Californian, and in spite of the fact that its press was brought 
 to California by the Mormons it announced that it would eschew 
 sectarian discussions and confine itself strictly to the news. 
 The Star was used extensively to boom California and extra 
 editions were printed for circulation in other States. 
 
 The Star and The Californian were merged on January 4, 
 1849, into The Alta Califc 
 
 PIONEERS OF MINNESOTA 
 
 The first newspaper in Minnesota was announced in its 
 prospectus as The Epistle of St. Paul When the paper appeared, 
 however, it bore the name of The Minnesota Pioneer, and was 
 published at St. Paul, April 28, 1849. It was a four-page, six- 
 column sheet for the first few months, but in October it was 
 
BEGINNINGS IN STATES AND TERRITORIES 241 
 
 enlarged to seven columns. Its editor and owner was James 
 M. Goodhue, a native of Hebron, New Hampshire. He has been 
 aptly described as "the James Gordon Bennett of Minnesota." 
 
 The early issues were printed under difficulties. The only 
 available printing-office was the basement of the only public 
 house in St. Paul. The editor in describing his early experiences 
 said that it was as open as a corn crib, and that the pigs in seek- 
 ing shelter under the floor frequently jostled the loose boards on 
 which rested the editorial chair of The Minnesota Pioneer. 
 
 Such editorial assertions as, "He stole into the Territory; He 
 stole in the Territory, and then stole out of the Territory," got 
 Goodhue into serious difficulties difficulties out of which he 
 escaped only with the help of his fist and a pistol. Like James 
 Gordon Bennett, he published full accounts in The Pioneer. 
 An editorial tribute published in The Pioneer on September 1, 
 1853, says of Goodhue, "Many of his editorials would have done 
 no discredit to The New York Herald in its most palmy days." 
 Goodhue died on August 27, 1852. His successor was Joseph R. 
 Brown. 
 
 Other early papers of Minnesota may be briefly mentioned. 
 The second was The Minnesota Chronicle, first published May 
 31, 1849, at St. Paul, with James Hughes, a former resident of 
 Ohio, as its editor and proprietor. It was a Whig paper of the 
 same size of The Minnesota Pioneer. The third paper, The 
 Minnesota Register, had its first issue in St. Paul on July 14, 
 1849, though an earlier number had been printed in Cincinnati, 
 Ohio, dated Saturday, April 27, 1849, and had been sent by 
 steamboat to St. Paul for distribution. A monthly missionary 
 sheet was the fourth paper: printed half in English and half in 
 the Dakota language, it was called The Dakota Friend. Goodhue 
 made an interesting comment in his paper on March 6, 1851, 
 when he said, "The little press at The Chronicle office has been 
 horribly twisted and distorted by printing the crooked Sioux 
 dialect of The Friend.'' 1 Colonel B. A. Robertson brought out 
 the fifth paper, The Minnesota Democrat. In order to give the 
 people of the other side a newspaper, Elmer Huyler, a tailor 
 of St. Anthony, now Minneapolis, issued on May 31, 1851 , 
 The St. Anthony Express, the sixth newspaper. Other papers, 
 
242 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 arranged in the order of their establishment, were The Minne- 
 sotian, first published on September 17, 1851; The North Western 
 Democrat, first published on July 13, 1853; The Minnesota 
 Times, first published on May 15, 1854; The Minnesota Repub- 
 lican, first published on October 5, 1854; The St. Paul Financier 
 and Real Estate Advertiser, first published on November 3, 1854. 
 The papers just mentioned make the first eleven newspapers 
 to be published in Minnesota. Of these, only The Minnesota 
 Pioneer now survives and even that paper has undergone so 
 many changes that it now bears the title of The Dispatch Pioneer 
 Press. 
 
 AN OASIS OF JOURNALISM IN UTAH 
 
 When the Mormons were expelled from Nauvoo in 1846, 
 they gathered on the banks of the Missouri River near a point 
 where Council Bluffs now stands. From here various bands 
 were dispatched to the Rocky Mountains; one of the earliest of 
 these to leave had a wagon loaded with an old Ramage press, a 
 supply of paper, and a few fonts of type. This outfit was hauled 
 across the plains from the Missouri River to the Salt Lake Valley, 
 a distance of over one thousand miles, by team. Upon its ar- 
 rival at Salt Lake City, preparations were made for printing The 
 Deseret News, to be the official organ of the Church of Jesus 
 Christ of Latter Day Saints familiarly known as the Mormon 
 Church. 
 
 Brigham Young appointed William Richards as editor, Horace 
 K. Whitney as typesetter, and his nephew, Brigham H. Young, 
 as pressman. The first number appeared on June 15, 1850. 
 Its motto was, " Truth and Liberty," and its price, fifteen cents 
 per copy. Travelers and immigrants were charged twenty-five 
 cents per copy, but this amount included the notice of their 
 names, place of residence, and time of arrival and leaving. The 
 setting-up of a newspaper plant in the wilds of the Rockies, nearly 
 a thousand miles from civilization, before Denver, Omaha, or 
 Kansas City was on the map, and when San Francisco was 
 only a cluster of Mexican shanties, may be taken as a splendid 
 illustration of that spirit which animated the early Mormon 
 pioneers. 
 
 
BEGINNINGS IN STATES AND TERRITORIES 243 
 
 Naturally, grave difficulties were encountered in publishing a 
 paper under the conditions just outlined. Currency was scarce, 
 but The News accepted "flour, wheat, corn meal, butter, tea, 
 tallow, and pork" in exchange for subscriptions. For years it 
 made its own supply of paper from rags gathered in the early 
 settlements of Utah. Most of its foreign news was obtained 
 from Eastern papers brought by chance visitors on their way to 
 the California gold fields. Not infrequently it apologized for 
 absence of such items with a note like the following: "From all 
 the immigrants we were not able to obtain one whole paper: 
 they were all wet, damaged or destroyed on the way." In local 
 news it was more fortunate, for at the same time that Brigham 
 Young established The News he founded a university, a theatri- 
 cal association, and an instrumental and vocal society which 
 flourished and spread and from which grew the University of 
 Utah, the famous Salt Lake Theater, and the noted Tabernacle 
 Choir of the present time. The doings of these enterprises filled 
 many a column of The News. 
 
 The News has been continually printed at Salt Lake City, 
 except during "The Utah War" of 1857-58 when the Governor 
 sent an expedition to that Territory to quell the so-called 
 "Mormon Insurrection." The Mormons moved a second time 
 before the advance of the army, but they always took their 
 newspaper plant with them. The press was installed in a special 
 wagon and wherever the company camped there appeared The 
 News. Its longest temporary stop was at Fillmore City, where 
 the first issue dated at that place appeared on May 5, 1858. The 
 News was printed as a weekly and later as a semi-weekly until 
 1867, when it came out daily. The News to-day presents a strik- 
 ing contrast to the little pamphlet sheet issued in 1850. 
 
 The Daily Telegraph was started in Salt Lake City on July 4, 
 1864. Five years later it was moved to Ogden, but was discon- 
 tinued the same year (1869). 
 
 When the Pony Express reached Salt Lake City, journalism 
 took a jump. The Mountaineer of that city on February 2, 1861, 
 said: "We are favored by the Pony Club of this city with a 
 copy of their telegraphic dispatches bringing dates from New 
 York and Washington up to the 22nd ult." 
 
244 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 A curiosity in Utah journalism was The Manti Herald, started 
 on January 31, 1867, at Manti, Utah, by F. C. Robinson. This 
 paper was printed entirely by hand and with pen and ink. 
 
 WHIG PAPEES OF WASHINGTON 
 
 The old-fashioned Ramage press, which had been used to print 
 the first number of The Oregonian in Oregon and several early 
 papers of the Pacific Coast, was the press on which was " pulled" 
 the first newspaper in Washington The Columbian. This 
 paper appeared on September 11, 1852, at Olympia, and was 
 edited and owned by J. W. Wiley and Thornton F. McElroy. 
 In March of 1853, Wiley retired, but he again appeared as its 
 editor on December 3. From the start Wiley advocated a separa- 
 tion from Oregon. Through the columns of his paper he arranged 
 a meeting of the more prominent settlers to arrange for the or- 
 ganization of Washington as a territory. (See Oregon papers.) 
 
 The Columbian later became The Washington Pioneer, and 
 with this change was made over into a radical Democratic 
 journal. Because of its new political affiliation it became in 
 February, 1854, The Pioneer and Democrat. It suspended in 
 1861. 
 
 The second paper, a Whig sheet, was started at Steilacoom 
 on May 19, 1855, by William B. Affleck and E. T. Gunn. Called 
 The Puget Sound Courier, it lasted about a year, but was revived 
 however, in January, 1871, at Olympia where it became a daily 
 in January, 1872. About two years later, December, 1874, the 
 paper suspended for lack of support, but was revived again 
 as The Daily Courier early in 1877. 
 
 These pioneer sheets of Washington frequently retailed at 
 fabulous prices especially when they contained information 
 about the discovery of gold in new fields. Occasionally copies 
 of The Washington Pioneer or The Puget Sound Courier sold in 
 San Francisco at five to ten dollars a copy. Sometimes the 
 demand for papers was so great that their printers reproduced 
 items about the discovery of gold on thin strips of paper: these 
 news-strips brought just as high prices as complete copies of 
 the paper. 
 
BEGINNINGS IN STATES AND TERRITORIES 245 
 
 EARLY NEWSPAPERS OF NEBRASKA 
 
 The first five papers in Nebraska were printed in Iowa. The 
 first of these, and incidentally, the first printed in Nebraska, 
 was The Nebraska Palladium. Number 1 was dated July 15, 
 1854, and was printed at St. Mary's, a hamlet just below Belle- 
 vue on the Iowa shore of the Missouri River. The first number 
 to be printed in Nebraska was that of November 15, 1854. For 
 the privilege of turning off the first number, E. N. Upjohn gave 
 one dollar. From that date on until April 11, 1855, it was a dis- 
 tinctly Nebraska-made publication. While Thomas Morton was 
 its publisher, Daniel Reed & Company were set down as edi- 
 tors and proprietors. 
 
 The second paper in Nebraska was The Omaha Arrow, dated 
 at Nebraska City, but printed at Council Bluffs, Iowa. It first 
 appeared July 28, 1854, and was discontinued December 29 of 
 that year. Its publishers were J. W. Pattison and J. E. John- 
 son. The former of these is credited with the honor of being the 
 editor, and doubtless was the author of the following intro- 
 ductory remark in the first issue of the paper: "Well, strangers, 
 friends, patrons, and the good people generally, wherever in the 
 wide world your lot may be cast, and in whatever clime this 
 Arrow may reach you, here we are, upon Nebraska soil. Seated 
 upon the stump of an ancient oak, which serves for the editorial 
 chair, and the top of our badly abused beaver for a table, we pur- 
 pose inditing a leader for The Omaha Arrow." 
 
 In spite of the fact that The Arrow was never printed in 
 Nebraska, it attracted much attention from a contemporary 
 press. In its eleventh issue it published five columns of notes 
 about itself clipped from other newspapers. 
 
 On May 5, 1858, The Nebraska Republican, dated at Omaha, 
 but printed at Council Bluffs, Iowa, appeared with E. F. Shneider 
 and H. J. Brown as editors and publishers. In 1859 its name was 
 changed to The Omaha Republican and E. D. Webster became its 
 editor. The Nebraska News was originally printed in Sydney, 
 Iowa, by Dr. Henry Bradford, but on November 14, 1854, it was 
 removed to Nebraska City and published in the second story 
 of the Block House of old Port Kearny. It was owned by the 
 
246 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 Nebraska City Town Site Company. Its editor was J. S. 
 Morton, who had formerly been connected with The Detroit 
 Free Press. 
 
 The Omaha Nebraskan first appeared on January 17, 1855, and 
 was the first newspaper printed at Omaha. It was established 
 by B. B. Chapman. The last issue was on June 15, 1865. The 
 first regular daily was The Telegraph, which appeared on Decem- 
 ber 5, 1860, published simultaneously at Omaha and Council 
 Bluffs. Its life was short, however; it did not last more than a 
 year. On June 19, 1871, Edward Rosewater started The Bee 
 at Omaha, Nebraska. The Herald had been begun in Omaha, 
 October 2, 1865: it was purchased in 1888 by Gilbert M. 
 Hitchcock. 
 
 DflBUT IN SOUTH DAKOTA 
 
 The first newspaper published within the present boundaries 
 of South Dakota was The Dakota Democrat, founded at Sioux 
 Falls City, now Sioux Falls, September 20, 1858. Its owner and 
 publisher was Samuel J. Albright. He published the paper, 
 which was a four-page sheet with five columns to the page, 
 rather irregularly until July 2, 1859. After that date he rarely 
 skipped an issue until the autumn of 1860, when he turned 
 the paper over to Mr. Stewart, who changed its name to The 
 Northwestern Democrat. The reason for this change was that 
 Albright took with him the original heading of the paper The 
 Democrat and the new owner was forced to use one which had 
 been previously employed in printing a paper at Sergeant Bluffs, 
 Iowa. When the Indian war broke out in 1862, the settlement 
 of Sioux Falls was abandoned. In sacking the town the Indians 
 destroyed the printing-plant, but carried away most of the type. 
 After peace was declared the type came back again to the whites 
 in the shape of ornaments used to decorate the pipes which the 
 Indians fashioned out of the red pipe stone and sold to the set- 
 tlers. The Dakota Democrat was "the official organ" of the Leg- 
 islature which first convened at Sioux Falls, 1858-59. 
 
 The second paper, The Weekly Dakotaian, the oldest contin- 
 uous newspaper in South Dakota, was established in Yank ton, 
 June 6, 1861, by Frank M. Ziebach. In March, 1862, it was sold 
 
BEGINNINGS IN STATES AND TERRITORIES 247 
 
 to J. C. Trask, the first Public Printer. The daily edition was 
 started April 26, 1875. William Kiter started The Pantegraph 
 at Sioux Falls in February, 1872. This newspaper was printed on 
 the cooperative plan and was published at irregular intervals 
 until October, when it went into "winter headquarters." It 
 was revived in April, 1873, and was again published with oc- 
 casional interruptions until the spring of 1877 when the plant 
 was closed by an order of the court. Later, the material of the 
 plant was used in starting The Roscoe Express. Of the other 
 early editors of The Pantegraph, mention may be made of F. D. 
 Cowles, F. E. Everett, and W. S. Guild. 
 
 Another paper in Sioux Falls was The Independent, which was 
 first issued on May 15, 1875, by Charles W. McDonald; on 
 January 6, 1881, it was merged with The Dakota Pantegraph. 
 Among those who edited the newspaper before this merger were 
 E. A. Sherman, F. E. Everett, W. A. Williams, and L. C. 
 Hitchcock. The Dakota Pantegraph was started in Sioux Falls 
 in the spring of 1877 by G. M. Smith and M. Grigsby. The press 
 and type used to bring out this paper had been formerly em- 
 ployed to*get out The Era at Swan Lake. Grigsby continued as 
 editor until April, 1878, when The Pantegraph was sold to Cald- 
 well & Stahl. 
 
 Other early papers in South Dakota were The Dakota Union, 
 established at Yankton, June 21, 1864, by George W. Kings- j 
 bury; The Press, at Yankton, August 10, 1870, by George H. 
 Hand; The Dell City Journal, established in 1871, was an inter- 
 esting innovation in the journalism of South Dakota in that 
 this newspaper was printed at Webster City, Iowa, but was is- 
 sued at Dell Rapids, South Dakota, by J. C. Ervin; The Advocate, 
 at Canton, April 26, 1876, by Skinner & Tallman; The Times, 
 at Sioux Falls, November 15, 1878, by E. O. Kimberly and 
 C. M. Morse; The Exponent, at Dell Rapids, February, 1879, by 
 
 E. C. Whalen; The Centinel, at Madison, April, 1879, by J. H. 
 Zane and F. L. Fifeld; The Leader, at Herman, June, 1879, by 
 
 F. C. Stowe; The Beadle County Sentinel, at Huron, March 17, 
 1880, by John Cain. 
 
248 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 WKITTEN NEWSPAPERS OF NEVADA 
 
 Among the prospectors who hastened to Nevada after the 
 discovery of gold and silver in that region was Joseph Webb. 
 He was nob successful prospecting and settled for a while at the 
 Carson River Crossing where Dayton now stands. Gold had 
 been found there in some quantities and then it became a sta- 
 tion for immigrants along the trail on their way to California. 
 Webb gathered up the gossip of the trail, supplemented by what 
 news was told him by passersby, and then with pen and ink 
 made a written newspaper which he sold to travelers, who paid 
 for it with gold dust taken from Carson River with milk-pans 
 and wash-basins. He called his written newspaper The Golden 
 Switch. Unfortunately, but few copies of this written newspaper 
 have survived. It was started some time in 1854 and lasted not 
 later than 1858. At about the same time that Webb was get- 
 ting out his sheet, Stephen A. Kensey was issuing a rival written 
 newspaper called The Scorpion in the little village of Genoa at 
 the eastern foot of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. $ 
 
 The first printed newspaper, however, in Nevada was The 
 Territorial Enterprise, issued November 18, 1858, at Genoa by 
 Alfred Jones and W. L. Jernegan. On November 5, 1859, it 
 was purchased by Jonathan Williams and J. B. Woolard, who 
 took the paper to Carson City, the Capital of the Territory, and 
 where later it was purchased by Joseph T. Goodman and Dennis 
 E. McCarthy and again moved to Virginia City, where it be- 
 came the mouthpiece for the mines of that place. Its fortune 
 fared in direct ratio to the prosperity of the mining camps in that 
 vicinity. The Enterprise lasted until May 30, 1916, when it was 
 merged with The Virginia City Chronicle. 
 
 The Enterprise is best remembered as the paper on which Mark 
 Twain worked. In response to a request to attend a reunion 
 at Virginia City, Mr. Clemens wrote: " Those were the days 
 those old ones. They will come no more. Youth will come no 
 more. They were full to the brim with the wine of life. There 
 have been no others like them. But I cannot come out. Would 
 you like me to come out and cry? It would not become my white 
 head. Good-bye. I drink to you all. Have a good time, take an 
 old man's blessing." 
 
BEGINNINGS IN STATES AND TERRITORIES 249 
 
 After The Territorial Enterprise was moved from Carson City 
 to Virginia City its place was almost immediately taken by The 
 Silver Age. The new venture was successful almost from the 
 start because it was favored by the Legislature in the matter of 
 public printing. 
 
 The third paper in Carson City was started by W. W. Ross 
 on July 27, 1863. It was called The Daily Independent and ex- 
 pired on October 11, 1864. 
 
 H. W. Johnson & Company had started The Daily Evening 
 Post of Carson City on August 27, 1864. Its appearance had 
 undoubtedly something to do with the death of The Daily In- 
 dependent, because when the latter paper suspended publication 
 The Evening Post became a morning paper. In January, 1865, 
 it, too, suspended publication. The following December John 
 C. Lewis, who had been editor of the morning edition of The 
 Post, took the plant to Wasshoe City, where he started The 
 Eastern Slope. Unsuccessful here, he moved the plant to Reno 
 in July, 1868, where he printed The Crescent until 1875. He then 
 sold the paper to J. C. Dow, who commenced The Daily Nevada 
 Democrat, which later became The Reno Daily Record. 
 
 ARRIVAL IN ARIZONA 
 
 The first paper in Arizona, The Weekly Arizonian, was started 
 at Tubac by Sylvester Moury in all probability on or near March 
 3, 1859. Number 20 of Volume I, the earliest known issue of this 
 paper, was dated July 14 of that year. The press on which the 
 paper was printed came around the Horn in 1858 and was brought 
 from Guaymas to Tubac by wagon. In 1860 the paper was re- 
 moved to Tucson where it was published by Jack Simms and 
 George Smithson. It suspended publication in 1861. In adver- 
 tising the sale of its plant, it included among the office equip- 
 ment two derringers. This mention, brief as it is, showed a 
 necessary adjunct, along with "shooting-irons," in the office of 
 many of the Western papers. As a matter of fact, one reason for 
 the suspension of the paper was the fact that its publishers were 
 charged with a stage robbery and in resisting arrest one of them 
 was killed. 
 
 In 1867 the paper was revived under its old name by W. S. 
 
250 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 Moury. Out of this paper grew the present Citizen of Tucson. 
 Incidentally, it may be remarked that in the fall of 1879 the old 
 press was taken to Tombstone, where it was used to print The 
 Nugget, the first paper in that camp. 
 
 The second paper in Arizona was called The Miner and was 
 started in Prescott on March 9, 1864, by John H. Marion. In- 
 terested in the enterprise was R. C. McCormick, the secretary 
 of the Territory for that year. Beginning in 1866, Marion pub- 
 lished The Daily Arizona Miner during the session of the Legis- 
 lature. 
 
 The third paper was The Sentinel, started in Yuma in 1870. 
 
 Among the most interesting of the early Arizona papers was 
 The Epitaph, started on May 1, 1880, at Tombstone. Its founders 
 were John P. Clum, the mayor and also the postmaster at 
 Tucson, Charles D. Reppy, and Thomas Sorin. The name of the 
 paper was suggested by John Hayes Hammond, who later be- 
 came distinguished as one of the foremost mining engineers. 
 He was dining, with the gentlemen who were about to start the 
 paper, at the Can Can Restaurant. When he asked what the 
 name was to be he was informed that no title had as yet been 
 selected. Hammond, recalling a rather exciting adventure which 
 had recently happened, suggested that in view of the character 
 of the news the paper would probably print, there could be no 
 more fitting title than The Epitaph. The title was thought 
 very appropriate and was promptly adopted. 
 
 When The Epitaph was founded there were but six counties 
 in the Territory of Arizona and but ten newspapers printed in 
 the English language. These included The Nugget at Tombstone, 
 The Record, The Citizen, and The Star at Tucson, The Silver 
 Belt at Globe, The Salt River Herald and Territorial Expositor at 
 Phcenix, The Enterprise and The Miner at Prescott, and The 
 Sentinel at Yuma. 
 
 ROCKY MOUNTAIN PAPERS OF COLORADO 
 
 In Denver The Rocky Mountain News has the distinction of 
 being the oldest paper in Colorado. Its first issue was April 23, 
 1859, in a struggling, home-seekers' settlement which had not 
 yet a definite name. The discovery of placer gold some months 
 
BEGINNINGS IN STATES AND TERRITORIES 251 
 
 earlier had made a settlement at the junction of the Platte River 
 and Cherry Creek. On each bank of the river there was a rival 
 town site, so that William N. Byers very wisely dated his paper 
 as published at Cherry Creek, Denver Territory. The first issue 
 of The Rocky Mountain News was printed on brown wrapping- 
 paper. At the start it was published weekly, but later it became 
 a daily. It has been published uninterrupted since its establish- 
 ment, with a single exception in the early sixties when a flood 
 in Cherry Creek wiped its plant out of existence. 
 
 The day The Rocky Mountain News started was one of the most 
 exciting in frontier journalism. When the news of the discovery 
 of gold in the " Pike's Peak Region" had reached as far east as 
 the Missouri, it promptly started two small newspaper plants 
 which had for their motto, figuratively speaking, " A newspaper 
 near Pike's Peak, or bust." One left Omaha and was owned by 
 William N. Byers, Thomas Gibson, and John L. Bailey; the other 
 set out from St. Joseph, Missouri, and consisted of the outfit 
 which John L. Merrick had purchased from The St. Joseph 
 Gazette. Both outfits had to cross the plains by ox teams. 
 
 Merrick was the first to arrive. Not knowing that competi- 
 tors were on the way, he leisurely commenced preparing for 
 the first issue of The Cherry Creek Pioneer. Ten days later the 
 Omaha plant arrived and the competition for the honor of the 
 first paper in Colorado began. The settlement offered a suitable 
 prize to the winner and appointed a committee of citizens to 
 referee the contest. Both The Rocky Mountain News and The 
 Cherry Creek Pioneer announced their date of first publication 
 April 23, 1859. At ten-thirty o'clock, on the evening of April 23, 
 the first copy of The News, a four-page sheet, was pulled from 
 the old Washington hand-press. Other copies soon circulated 
 among the pioneers surrounding the log cabin print-shop. A 
 little later The Pioneer also appeared on the streets. The decis- 
 ion of the committee, however, was that The News had won 
 by twenty minutes. 
 
 Worn out by his efforts and depressed by defeat, Merrick the 
 next morning offered to sell his plant to his rival upon terms 
 which were later accepted. Merrick then set off for the moun- 
 tains, not to hunt for news, but for gold. 
 
252 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 As the pioneer settlement grew into a larger town, The 
 News always led in a movement for law and regulation. In his 
 attempts to clear the town of its rougher element, Editor 
 Byers often wrote his editorials and news with a rifle across his 
 knee while armed men guarded his printers. For nineteen years 
 Byers conducted The News. 
 
 Under difficulties seldom equaled, and never surpassed, he 
 brought out his paper. When the Indian outbreak caused an 
 embargo on traffic over the Western plains in 1864-65, he fre- 
 quently ran out of white paper, and in such emergencies he 
 printed the news on wrapping-paper, gathered from Denver 
 stores. That he might have the news before the mails from the 
 East arrived in Denver, he established an overland pony express. 
 By means of a relay of horseback riders he had brought the news 
 from the nearest express lines with a speed which to-day almost 
 seems incredible. Of course, it was expensive to run such a private 
 pony express, but The News in those days cost forty-four dollars 
 a year and single copies sold for one dollar and twenty-five 
 cents apiece. In 1878 the paper was sold to the Rocky Mountain 
 News Printing Company, with W. A. H. Laughlin as editor and 
 principal owner. 
 
 Two papers were established in Denver in 1867: the first of 
 these was The Daily Argus, begun on October 25; the second, 
 The Rocky Mountain Star, begun on December 8. A third at- 
 tempt was made by N. A. Baker, who, after bringing out a few 
 issues of The Colorado Leader, left Denver, to go to Cheyenne, 
 where he founded the first paper in Wyoming. 
 
 INFANCY OF IDAHO JOURNALISM 
 
 While there was a paper called The Golden Age, published at 
 Lewiston, by Frank Kenyon in 1862, the first paper to be pub- 
 lished in Idaho after the Territory was created on March 3, 1863, 
 was The Boise News, started on September 30, 1863, at Bannock 
 City now called Idaho City. It was published by T. J. and 
 J. S. Butler. J. S. Butler had left Auburn, Oregon, in the fall of 
 1862 to look after a band of cattle in the Powder River Valley. 
 Later, he organized a pack-train to take goods to Walla Walla, 
 Washington, and still later he ran a pack-train to Bannock 
 
BEGINNINGS IN STATES AND TERRITORIES 253 
 
 (now Idaho City), Idaho. At Walla Walla he met Major Reese, 
 of The Walla Walla Watchman, who had just bought out a rival 
 newspaper. The sale gave Butler an idea: realizing that a great 
 many people were gathering in the Boise Basin, nearly three 
 hundred miles from any newspaper, and that a great political 
 campaign was approaching, he conceived the idea of starting a 
 newspaper there. Purchasing the extra outfit from Major Reese, 
 he sold his packing business and sent for his family and also his 
 brother, T. S. Butler, who became the editor of the new paper. 
 The outfit sold to Butler was far from being complete. He found 
 it necessary to make composing-sticks from the tin of an old 
 tobacco box: he improvised an imposing-stone by using a large 
 slab split from a pine log, which he dressed off on one side, 
 mounted on a frame, and covered with sheet iron: he chiseled 
 a chase out of old horseshoe iron. In spite of such handicaps, 
 however, The Boise News was a fairly creditable production. It 
 was continued by the Butler brothers for about thirteen months, 
 and often sold for two dollars and fifty cents a copy. 
 
 In addition to getting out The Boise News, the plant printed 
 a campaign paper for each of the political parties. On October 
 29, 1864, the paper was sold to Street & Bowman, who changed 
 the name of the paper to The Idaho World. Before The Boise 
 News was started, Portland papers were sold extensively in 
 Idaho by rival express companies. 
 
 The second paper in Idaho was The Union, edited by John 
 Charleton, first issued in Idaho City October 8, 1863. 
 
 The third paper was The Idaho Daily Statesman, established on 
 July 26, 1864, by James S. Reynolds and his brothers, T. S. 
 and S. W. Reynolds. It has been run continuously ever since 
 under that title. 
 
 BEGINNINGS IN MONTANA 
 
 Journalism in Montana began in the cellar of a log cabin at 
 Virginia City on August 27, 1864, when John Buchanan brought 
 out The Montana Post. He had brought a press and material 
 from St. Louis to Fort Benton, only to locate, however, at Virginia 
 City. After two issues of The Post he sold the paper to D. W. 
 Tilton and Benjamin R. Dittes. The latter having secured 
 
254 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 complete control of the paper, took it to Helena, where in May, 
 1868, he again resumed publication. The reason for the change 
 was that Virgina City was a placer camp, and after its mineral 
 beds were exhausted the miners left the city and there was no 
 longer need of a newspaper. On April 23, 1869, Helena was swept 
 by fire, and from that time until June 11 of the same year The 
 Post continued to appear, but was unable to make any collec- 
 tions either for subscriptions or advertisements on account of 
 the paralysis of business. On the date last mentioned The Post 
 was compelled to suspend publication. 
 
 The second paper was The Montana Democrat, established in 
 1865 at Virginia City by John P. Bruce. In 1857 Kirk Anderson, 
 reporter and correspondent for The Missouri Republican, had 
 established a "Gentile" newspaper in Salt Lake City. After 
 running the sheet for about a year and a half he returned to 
 St. Louis after he had sold his printing-plant to Bruce. With this 
 material Bruce started The Democrat, which became a daily in 
 1868. In 1865 T. J. Favorite, having removed the worn-out type 
 and hand-press of The Radiator from Lewiston, Idaho, started 
 in Helena The Montana Radiator on December 17, 1865, with 
 Bruce Smith as editor. The Radiator continued until Novem- 
 ber 15, 1866, when it was bought by The Helena Herald, the 
 third paper in Montana. That paper continued publication 
 until December 27, 1902, when it became The Montana Daily 
 Record. The Rocky Mountain Gazette was first issued on August 
 11, 1866. It was destroyed in the conflagration of 1874 and did 
 not resume publication. 
 
 The Independent, which had been published originally in Deer 
 Lodge, secured John H. Rogers as editor and then moved to 
 Helena, where it is still published. 
 
 COMMENCEMENT IN WYOMING 
 
 Wyoming Territory, organized in May, 1869, was composed of 
 land from three other territories, namely, Idaho, Utah, and 
 Dakota. The first newspaper published in the boundaries of 
 Wyoming was The Cheyenne Leader. It first appeared Septem- 
 ber 19, 1867, with N. A. Baker as editor and proprietor, from a 
 primitive printing-office on the east side of Eddy Street. In 
 
BEGINNINGS IN STATES AND TERRITORIES 255 
 
 truly primitive style Baker thus reported a wedding in the 
 winter of 1867-68. " On the east half of the northwest quarter of 
 section twenty-two (22), township twenty-one (21), north of 
 range eleven (11), in an open sleigh, and under an open and un- 
 clouded canopy, by the Rev. J. F. Mason, James B., only son 
 of John Cox of Colorado, and Ellen C., eldest daughter of Major 
 0. Harrington of Nebraska." Published tri-weekly, The Leader 
 sold for twelve dollars a year, or fifteen cents a copy. Before 
 coming to Cheyenne, Mr. Baker had made an unsuccessful 
 attempt to establish The Colorado Leader at Denver in July, 
 1867. 
 
 In the spring of 1868 A. E. Slack started another Wyoming 
 paper at South Pass under the name of The South Pass News, 
 and in the fall of 1869 S. A. Bristol started The Wyoming Weekly 
 Tribune at Cheyenne. The latter had a precarious life and only 
 survived about five years. 
 
 In Laramie A. E. Slack brought out Volume I, Number 1, 
 of The Independent on December 26, 1871. It continued publi- 
 cation in that city until March, 1876, when Mr. Slack moved 
 his plant to Cheyenne and consolidated with The Daily News 
 of that city under the name of The Cheyenne Sun. (The Cheyenne 
 News had been started in 1874.) Later, The Sun united with 
 The Leader and the union was known as The Sun-Leader. As 
 time went on, The Sun set and left only The Leader. The paper 
 is still published as The Leader at Cheyenne. 
 
 Two Wyoming papers of unusual importance must be no- 
 ticed. The first was The Boomerang at Laramie, started on 
 March 17, 1880, by Edgar Wilson Nye, and Bill Barrow's 
 Budget at Douglas in 1886, by W. C. Barrow. 
 
 END OF BEGINNINGS 
 
 Colonel Clement A. Lounsberry was the founder of journalism 
 in North Dakota, the last of the States and Territories to have 
 a newspaper. On July 6, 1873, he established The Bismarck 
 Tribune. His first issue was remarkable in that it contained 
 an advertisement of every business establishment in Bismarck. 
 In the fall of that year it was forced for a short time to print 
 on wall-paper on account of a snow blockade. For the same 
 
256 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 reason the following winter the size was reduced from a seven to 
 a four column sheet. The Bismarck Tribune had the usual ex- 
 periences of frontier journalism, in that numerous gun and re- 
 volver shots were frequently heard in the establishment: once its 
 local editor narrowly escaped a lynching. In 1878 Stanley Hunt- 
 ley and Marshall H. Jewell came from Chicago at the instance 
 of Major Alonson W. Edwards, of The Fargo Republican, to 
 establish an opposition paper to The Bismarck Tribune with 
 the help of local Democrats. Dennis Hannafin, a unique local 
 character, who was known as "the Squatter Governor," gave a 
 bonus of one hundred dollars. Lounsberry, being financially 
 embarrassed at the time, sold The Tribune to a syndicate headed 
 by the men just mentioned and as part payment took their 
 notes. These were not paid on maturity and he again assumed 
 control of The Tribune, but sold the job office to Mr. Jewell. In 
 1883 he took Mr. Jewell into partnership and established The 
 Daily Tribune. 
 
 The second newspaper was The Fargo Express, first issued on 
 January 1, 1874. It was published by The Fargo Publishing 
 Company, consisting of A. J. Harwood, Gordon J. Keeney, 
 Henry S. Back, Terence Martin, Jacob Lowell, and A. H. 
 Moore. Harwood and Keeney were the editors and managers. 
 W. G. Fargo, of New York, for whom Fargo was named, con- 
 tributed five hundred dollars toward the establishment of the 
 paper. About 1875 The Fargo Express was consolidated with 
 The Fargo Mirror, established by A. J. Clarke in 1874, and The 
 Glyndon Gazette (Minnesota), established by E. B. Chambers 
 in 1872. The consolidation under the management of Cham- 
 bers became The Fargo Times. Chambers sold the paper to E. 
 D. Barker, who consolidated it with The Fargo Republican, es- 
 tablished by Major A. W. Edwards and Dr. J. B. Hall in 1878. 
 Still later, the paper united with The Fargo Forum, established 
 November 17, 1894, by Major Edwards and Horatio C. Flum- 
 mery. 
 
 The third newspaper was The Grand Forks Plaindealer, estab- 
 lished in 1875 by George H. Walsh. Later, it was merged with 
 The Grand Forks Herald, established in 1879 by George B. Win- 
 ship. 
 
BEGINNINGS IN STATES AND TERRITORIES 257 
 
 The fourth paper was The Jamestown Alert, founded July 4, 
 
 1878, by Edward H. and Clarence E. Foster. On October 17, 
 
 1879, it was sold to Marshall McClure. Under his editorship it 
 became a daily February 14, 1881. 
 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 MEXICAN WAR TO CIVIL WAR PERIOD 
 18461860 
 
 MANY of the Northern newspapers opposed the admission of 
 Texas to the Union until all controversies with Mexico had 
 been settled in an amicable way. Later, these papers " pointed 
 with pride" to their editorial comment of previous years and 
 declared that if their advice had been followed there would have 
 been no war with Mexico and that possibly the great conflict 
 with the South might have been avoided. The Tribune, of 
 New York, was one of these papers hostile to the Mexican War, 
 and excited the animosity not only of office-holders, but also 
 of well-meaning patriots. Even President Polk made a very 
 palpable allusion to The Tribune in one of his messages. At 
 one of the war meetings held in City Hall Park there was some 
 talk of mobbing the office of The Tribune, but the threat was 
 not then carried out, but was reserved until during the War 
 of the States. VThe Mexican War showed the value of news to 
 get circulation, andTt was this recognition thai changecT the 
 cKaracter of the American press from a " feudal" to a purely 
 democratic re*gime\ Party papers during this transitional period 
 became still more independent of political parties and were 
 changed into journals of public opinion. The attitude of the 
 Northern press was well summed up by James Russell Lowell 
 in his contribution of "The Biglow Papers" to The Boston 
 Courier. These consisted of a collection of poems in Yankee 
 dialect, supposedly written by Hosea Biglow, and edited with 
 pseudo-learned notes by Homer Wilbur, A.M., pastor of the 
 First Church of Jalaam. 
 
 FAMOUS PONY EXPRESS 
 
 At the beginning of the war practically every paper received 
 its news of the conflict through the exchanges from New Orleans. 
 
MEXICAN WAR TO CIVIL WAR PERIOD 259 
 
 This meant that news had lost its flavor when it finally appeared 
 in print: the news of the battle of Vera Cruz and the battle of 
 Buena Vista, March 7 and 9, did not reach Boston until the 
 last day of the month, and being published on April 1, was re- 
 ceived by most of the readers of The Boston Journal as an April 
 Fool's joke. Of the Southern papers which reported rather fully 
 the various battles of the Mexican War, The Picayune, of New 
 Orleans, took the lead. The reason for this may be found in the 
 fact that George Wilkins Kendall, the founder of the paper, 
 reported the war himself in a series of letters which were so 
 important that they were forwarded to the Government at 
 Washington. 
 
 The lateness in publishing accountgtof *-hg j^onflicts 
 can battlefields led to the cooperation of a number of newspapers 
 to gather war newsr Already The tiun, ot"BaItunore, had estab- 
 lished exclusively Tor its own services, "without consultation 
 or previous arrangement or agreement with any other paper," 
 an overland express from New Organs. This pony express was 
 often spoken ot in the press as the "sixty horse-power," be- 
 cause sixty blooded horses were used in forwarding the news. 
 To reduce the tremendous expense incurred by The Sun, a 
 number of northern papers notably The New York Herald 
 and The Philadelphia Public Ledger cooperated in the scheme. 
 Later, The Crescent City, oi' !New~brleans, joined the combina- 
 tion, whose overland express, making the trip from New Orleans 
 to Baltimore in six days, so often beat the Southern mail from 
 New Orleans to Washington that the Post-Office authorities 
 started an investigation, but on finding that they were fairly 
 beaten in the game to be first with the news, they then tried to 
 throw all sorts of obstacles in the way of their rival news-carrier. 
 But the news from Mexico continued to reach Washington, not 
 through the mail-bags, but through the news-columns of the 
 various newspapers which shared in the expense of the overland 
 express. In fact, all through the war the pony express, rather // 
 than the Government mail, brought the story of the conflict. 'I 
 
 It was The Sun, of Baltimore, which told the President and 
 his Cabinet on April 10, 1847, of "the fall and surrender and 
 unconditioned capitulation of the City of Vera Cruz." That 
 
260 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 paper, in telling how it got its news from the Halls of the Monte- 
 zumas, paid this tribute to its faithful pony express in its issue 
 of October 4, 1847: "Our pony team as if in anticipation of the 
 great excitement prevailing in the City on Saturday evening 
 (October 2nd), came flying up to the stopping-post with the 
 most thrilling and important intelligence yet received from the 
 seat of the war, full twenty-four hours ahead of steamboats, 
 railroads, and even telegraphs. The news brought by them 
 twenty-four hours in advance of the mail being of such exciting 
 and thrilling interest, we put to press at a late hour on Saturday 
 night an 'Extra Sun/ with full details, which were sought after 
 by our citizens during yesterday morning." 
 
 These editions of The Sun came to be known, not only in Bal- 
 timore, but also elsewhere, as The Southern Daily Pony Express 
 and justly so. 
 
 MODEKN WAR CORRESPONDENTS ARRIVE 
 
 The Mexican War not only put the news in newspape/s, but 
 it developed war correspon98!rts*wiio put the heart-throb^ into 
 their stories. A typical illustration from The Louiswlte (Jourier 
 must suffice for lack of space : 
 
 While I was stationed with our left wing in one of the forts, on the 
 evening of the 21st, I saw a Mexican woman busily engaged in carrying 
 bread and water to the wounded men of both armies. I saw this minis- 
 tering angel raise the head of a wounded man, give him water and food, 
 and then carefully bind up his wound with a handkerchief which she 
 took from her own head. After having exhausted her supplies, she went 
 back to her own house to get more bread and water for others. As she 
 was returning on her mission of mercy, to comfort other wounded per- 
 sons, I heard the report of a gun, and saw the poor innocent creature fall 
 dead! I think it was an accidental shot that struck her. I would not 
 be willing to believe otherwise. It made me sick at heart, and, turning 
 from the scene, I involuntarily raised my eyes toward heaven, and 
 thought, great God! and is this war? Passing the spot next day, I saw 
 her body still lying there with the bread by her side, and the broken 
 gourd, with a few drops of water still in it emblems of her errand. We 
 buried her, and while we were digging her grave cannon balls flew 
 around us like hail. 
 
 From 1846, when this account appeared, newspapers became 
 more human, not only in their subject-matter, but also in their 
 
MEXICAN WAR TO CIVIL WAR PERIOD 261 
 
 mode of treatment. "The feature storv" hfg*" tn nrmkp its 
 
 appAflr.pnP^iAntil_it^jPfl.r>.hpH its Vghfst fWplnpmpnt in the 
 
 stories of the "sob sisters" of the present-day journalism. 
 
 Out of the war correspondence from Mexico grew the popu- 
 larity of Jefferson Davis, who later became President of the 
 Southern Confederacy. The correspondents of such New Or- 
 leans papers as The Picayune, The Herald, and The Delta feat- 
 ured in their reports the bravery of Colonel Davis, of the 
 Mississippi Rifle Regiment, in repulsing the charge of the Mexi- 
 cans in Buena Vista. 
 
 AMERICAN ARMY ORGANS 
 
 During the Mexican War an army newspaper was found in 
 practically every camp. The army under General Scott had its 
 own organ known as The American Flag, which reported the 
 doings of the troops under "Old Rough and Ready." The army 
 under General Taylor also had its special newspaper. Of these 
 special army organs mention might be made of The Sentinel, 
 published in Tampico, The American Star at Jalapo, The Eagle 
 at Vera Cruz, and The Picket Guard at Saltillo. 
 
 FOLK'S PAPER AT WASHINGTON 
 
 Polk, like the other Presidents, had to have a special organ. 
 TheJUjdon at Nashville had been a strong supporter of the Polk 
 wing of the Democracy and TheJZn&u^ at Richmond had 
 aided in the defeat of Van Bur^nT Polk therefore thought it a 
 good piece of politics to bring a representative from each of 
 these papers to Washington for a new organ, and TheUnionjiL 
 making its appearance on May 1, 1845, under the^eo!i?OTs!iip of 
 John P. Heiss and Thomas Ritchie, supplanted The Globe as 
 the official paper at Washington. 
 
 During the Mexican War The Union was brought prominently 
 before the people through publishing an attack on Congress for 
 not supporting the Administration in several military matters. 
 The criticism was not allowed to pass unnoticed, for four days 
 after its appearance in print a resolution was introduced into 
 the Senate calling for the expulsion of the editor of The Union 
 from the floor upon the ground of libel upon the Senate and for 
 
262 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 the expulsion of the reporters of The Union from the press 
 gallery on the ground of a colored report of the debate of the 
 previous Monday. The debate which followed was important 
 because it definitely established the rights of the press at Wash- 
 ington. The resolution was lost by a vote of 27 to 21. 
 
 ORGAN OF TAYLOR'S ADMINISTRATION 
 
 After the battle of Buena Vista several papers, led by The 
 Sentinel, of Boston, suggested the nomination of Zachary Tay- 
 lor. Other papers adopted the suggestion and strongly advo- 
 cated his election. When he came to the White House he found 
 that he was without an official newspaper at the Capital, as 
 The National Intelligencer was the organ of Daniel Webster. 
 TayJorJmmediately prepared to establish a newspaper which he 
 called TJieJte-public. For its editors he brought Alexander Bui- 
 lit t from The New Orleans Picayune and John 0. Sargent from 
 The New York Courier and Enquirer. 
 
 Dujjng^ Taylor*sAdministration TheNationalJZra, the recog- 
 nized oSanoftIie~anti-sla very party at Washington, published 
 " Uncle^Tum^ Cabin n HS a 'serial. No romance"ever printed in 
 an American newspaper attracted so much attention in the 
 press. Its influence was clearly recognized by Lincoln, for 
 when he met its author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, he remarked, 
 "So you are the little woman who caused this great war." The 
 great influence of this tale was due not only to its newspaper 
 publication, but also to the book and to the play. The National 
 Era should not be confused with The New Era later edited for 
 the colored people by Frederick Douglass. 
 
 JOURNALISM OF THE PACIFIC COAST 
 
 The discovery of gold in California, strange to say, did not 
 attract very much attention in the press of that State. Possibly 
 The Calif ornian published in its issue for March 5, 1848, the 
 best account under the small caption, "Gold Mine Found": 
 "In the newly made raceway of the Saw Mill recently erected by 
 Captain Sutter, on the American Fork, gold has been found in 
 considerable quantities. One person brought thirty dollars 
 worth to New Helvetia, gathered there in a short time. Call- 
 
MEXICAN WAR TO CIVIL WAR PERIOD 263 
 
 fornia, no doubt, is rich in mineral wealth; great chances here 
 for scientific capitalists. Gold has been found in almost eveiy 
 part of the country." The Calif ornian gave practically the same 
 amount of space to a local horse-race. [The real news of the dis- 
 covery of gold was made known through the columns of the 
 papers published on the Atlantic Coast.f 
 
 Among the newspapers which made a specialty of their 
 special California editions were The Tribune and The Herald, 
 of New York, The Journal and The Herald, of Boston, The Delta, 
 of New Orleans, etc. These special editions, printed just before 
 San Francisco boats sailed, were shipped to the Pacific Coast 
 depots for the distribution of Atlantic papers where men, fre- 
 quently in the employ of local express companies, relayed these 
 papers in large baskets to the outlying mining camps. Miners 
 were expected to throw a dollar into the basket in exchange for a 
 newspaper, but if a man did not have "the dirt/' he could still 
 take a copy and pay for it later when he struck a " paying streak." 
 
 After gold had been discovered in California, many of the 
 mining camps had what might be called a spoken newspaper. 
 The man sent back for grub usually returned with an Eastern 
 paper for which he had paid one to five dollars. Immediately 
 upon his arrival he would mount a stump and then read the 
 news to a group of miners and then the paper would be passed 
 along to an adjoining camp, where it would again be read aloud: 
 in this way did the California miner of the fifties get his news. 
 Frequently these special California editions of the Atlantic 
 papers were literally worn thumb-bare by frequent readings and 
 handlings, for the greatest luxury in a mining camp was a late 
 newspaper. 
 
 From the time that The Calif ornian was founded at Monterey, 
 on August 15, ,1846, down to the completion of the transcon- 
 tinental telegraph on October 24, ^86L three hundred anH 
 seventy-seven papers had been started in California. Many of 
 these were printed at Marysville, Placerville, Sacramento, 
 San Jose, Stockton, and Yerka, and the great majority, of 
 course, at San Francisco. Of the daily papers located in San 
 Francisco, mention may be made of The Daily Herald, started 
 on June 1, 1850;^e Evening Picayune, on August 3. 1850i 
 
264 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 The Morning Post, on May 24, 1851 ; The San Francisco Daily 
 Wttg, olfaepiember 27, 185%/Jflg Daily Sun on May 19, 1853; 
 
 The Evening News, on November 1, 1853; The Daily Globe, on 
 March 13, 1856; The True Calif ornian, on May 26, 1856; and 
 The Evening Telegram, on October 1, 1858. 
 
 JOURNALISM HISTORY REPEATED 
 
 Journalism history repeated itself on the Pacific Coast. In 
 the East presses which printed early newspapers had often done 
 previous service on religious tracts: especially was this true in 
 New England and in Pennsylvania, where for the most part 
 these tracts were put out in the interest of that earnest band 
 seeking religious freedom in America by settling in New Eng- 
 land, or by the Pennsylvania Quakers, who made William 
 Bradford their official printer. On the Pacific Coast the print- 
 ing-press was first brought either to promulgate the Catholic 
 faith among the Spanish-speaking population, or to support the 
 principles for which the Mormon Church stood. Later, these 
 same presses were used to print the newspapers. 
 
 Just as the colonial newspaper never forgot the arrival and de- 
 parture of ships, so the early press of the Pacific Coast featured 
 marine intelligence. In its glowing accounts of achievements of 
 clipper ships it furnished its best illustration of its news instinct. 
 Again, just as Henry Ingraham Blake, the first star reporter in 
 American journalism, knew the name of every vessel docking at 
 the port of Boston, so the nautical reporter on the early San 
 Francisco paper knew every clipper ship which passed through 
 the Golden Gate, a still harder task, for in 1852 seventy-two 
 clipper ships are said to have dropped anchor in that harbor. 
 The arrival of these fast boats in San Francisco had another 
 news value in that they brought news from home. These clippers 
 were met in the harbor by rowboats which took off the news, just 
 as it had been done at an earlier period in Boston and New York, 
 and then hastened to the port. Their budget of news was 
 promptly seized at the dock and rushed to the newspaper offices, 
 where the more important facts in an abbreviated form were 
 put into type at the earliest possible moment. The next day 
 a longer account appeared in the papers. 
 
MEXICAN WAR TO CIVIL WAR PERIOD 265 
 
 The early American newspapers were filled with long extracts 
 from English newspapers because the American colonists were 
 especially interested in what England and the Continent were 
 doing. In the same way the early papers on the Pacific Coast 
 contained column after column of reprint from the Eastern 
 papers for its settlers who wanted the news from home. A most 
 distinctive characteristic of the early Pacific press was its 
 catholicity of taste in printing cosmopolitan news. 
 
 Pacific Coast journalism passed through the same vicious 
 personal era as that found in the East. Quarrels between editors 
 became frequent, and newspapers were not considered inter- 
 esting unless they were lambasting some one. Often these edi- 
 torial battles led to others on the field of honor, where the 
 number of editors killed was undoubtedly larger because the 
 Westerners shot straighter. The author of the "Annuals of San 
 Francisco," in speaking of the editors of the era, remarked: 
 " They were particularly exposed not merely to the literary rak- 
 ing fire of antagonists, but to their literal fire as well." Demands 
 for satisfaction continued to come not only from other editors, 
 but also from subscribers, until "The Irrepressible Conflict" in 
 which Seward forecast the War of the States turned the edi- 
 torial page from a discussion of local personalities to a broader 
 treatment of an approaching national crisis. 
 
 MEDILL AND HIS PAPER 
 
 While the people of the village of Chicago read their first 
 newspaper on the morning of November 26. J.833. when John 
 Calhoun brought out the first number of The Chicago Democrat. 
 the journalism of that city really dates from the birth of The 
 Tribune on June 10, 184L when an edition of four hundred copies 
 was worked off on a hand-press by JosephJKeliev and John 
 Wheeler. The immediate source of The Tribune was an earlier 
 paper published under the bucolic title of The Gem of the Prairie, 
 and it later absorbed The Chicago Democrat. The Tribune, there- 
 fore, is entitled to be considered the oldest paper in Chicago 
 (though, strictly speaking, The Chicago Daily Journal has been 
 published from 1844), and no one will deny it a first place, not 
 only among the newspapers of that city, but also among the 
 
266 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 newspapers of the country. During its early years there were 
 various changes in ownership, and the paper was at times in 
 dubious financial circumstances, until Joseph MedJJI, i" 18*-V 
 purchased an interest and the paper became a member of the 
 Associated Press. Even then, and after it had purchased The 
 Democrat, The Tribune was occasionally in financial straits and 
 had to refuse the payment of its obligations, not only to the 
 Associated Press, but also to others until it was financially 
 forced into bankruptcy. The owners of the paper, however, 
 had faith in their enterprise, and, undiscouraged by financial 
 difficulties, they secured a three years' extension of their debts 
 all of which were discharged in twenty-one months and 
 began anew. The fullness with which the paper reported the 
 Lincoln-Douglas debates brought not only an increased circu- 
 lation, but also relief from financial embarrassment. Its great 
 influence, however, came from the editorials of Medill edi- 
 torials which were only surpassed by those of Horace Greeley. 
 It was on The Tribune that Horace White first made a place for 
 himself in American journalism. 
 
 RELIGIOUS DAILY NEWSPAPERS 
 
 In every period of American journalism there have been edi- 
 tors who laid special emphasis upon the moral character of their 
 newspapers. Some attempted to make their sheets distinctly 
 religious organs. Out of the latter grew the religious weeklies 
 of the various denominations. Occasionally an editor like Arthur 
 Tappan, of The New York Journal of Commerce, positively refused 
 to gather news on Sunday and excluded all advertisements of 
 theaters, amusements, etc. No attempt, however, was made 
 to found a distinctly religious daily newspaper until 1839. 
 
 FIRST IN PHILADELPHIA 
 
 In that year a number of wealthy Philadelphia gentlemen 
 possessed of high moral and religious principles set about to pub- 
 lish a daily commercial sheet that should be at least semi-reli- 
 gious in character. After advancing the necessary capital they 
 launched on March 29, 1839, the first number of The North Amer- 
 ican. Religion was kept out of the news, but the editorials were 
 
MEXICAN WAR TO CIVIL WAR PERIOD 267 
 
 largely moral essays. No notices of the theaters were admitted 
 in the news-columns. Rigidly excluded were all advertisements 
 of the theaters; also under the ban were the advertisements 
 of oyster-cellars, now commonly known as saloons. After sus- 
 taining a heavy loss the promoters of the religious North Ameri- 
 can sold the paper for practically the value of the type, press, 
 etc., to George R. Graham and Alexander Cummings. These 
 men, both able writers, succeeded in introducing new life into 
 the newspaper because of their enterprise in getting the news 
 first. After abandoning the original design of the paper they 
 secured as its editor Robert T. Conrad, who had already won 
 distinction as a jurist, a poet, a dramatist, and author. 
 
 TEMPORARY ECLIPSE OF "THE NEW YORK SUN" 
 
 From August, 1860, to December, 1861, The Sun, of New York, 
 was made over into a daily religious newspaper. As the story 
 of this experiment has never been told, it might be well to 
 record this interesting experiment in the present chapter. An 
 able, but fanatical, newspaper man, laboring under the delusion 
 that he acted under the direction and guidance of the Lord in 
 answer to prayer, conceived the idea that he should publish a 
 daily religious newspaper. Having no funds himself, he inserted 
 in one of the daily papers an advertisement in which he sought 
 the assistance of some one of means to assist in such a religious 
 enterprise. The advertisement attracted the attention of the 
 Reverend Archibald M. Morrisson, a clergyman living in Phila- 
 delphia. The latter was the son of a Reverend Dr. Stone, of 
 the Episcopal Church, Brookline, Massachusetts. His mother 
 before her marriage had been courted by a wealthy gentleman 
 who lived and died a bachelor, but who later willed all his property, 
 amounting to several hundred thousand dollars, to the son of 
 Dr. Stone on the condition that he adopt the name of the testator. 
 
 Morrisson was a man of fine quality, but thought that the 
 rather peculiar character in which he had received his good 
 fortune imposed upon him an obligation to use it in some reli- 
 gious way. The advertisement just mentioned suggested such a 
 religious use. He answered the advertisement and the two men 
 after a prayer meeting decided that the Lord needed a news- 
 
268 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 paper of his own in New York City. They accordingly P lir " 
 chased The New York Sun from Moses S. Beach for onejiun- 
 dred thousand dollars, with the option of taking the machinery 
 aVtm additional payment of twenty-five thousand. In pur- 
 chasing the paper, Morrisson paid fifty thousand dollars in 
 cash and gave notes for the otner fifty thousand secureoTby a 
 mortgage on The Sun. They secured as editor of their religious 
 paper William 'Conaht Church, the brother of the writer of 
 the famous Sun editorial, tr ls There a Santa Claus? " Church, 
 being a practical newspaper man, was never thoroughly in accord 
 with the idea of making The Sun a religious paper, but thought 
 that he could persuade its owners to be content with the pub- 
 lishing of a high-grade moral newspaper. He was unsuccessful 
 in bringing the real owners to his point of view, for they insisted 
 that they were directed by the Lord to conduct the paper ac- 
 cording to plans they had outlined. Finding that he could not 
 convince the " Vice-regents of the Lord " that their plan if carried 
 out would speedily ruin The Sun, he accepted a compromise 
 proposition. He was paid a salary in full for the term of his con- 
 tract and was'allowed to spend the remainder of the time in trav- 
 eling in Europe. While he was abroad, his prophecy about the 
 paper came true. Morrisson practically lost every cent he had 
 in trying to make The Sun "a daily lay preacher to the poorer 
 classes of New York." Fortunately, before embarking upon the 
 publishing of a religious daily, Morrisson had settled a con- 
 siderable portion of his estate upon his wife, and she had re- 
 ligiously and wisely refused to yield her money to be jeopardized 
 in the publishing of a religious sheet. In throwing out the liquor, 
 cigar, theatrical, and other irreligious advertisements, Morris- 
 son had greatly reduced the income from the paper; he had also 
 increased the expenses to such an extent that the time arrived 
 when he was unable to meet his notes. Beach still had his lien 
 on The Sun, and when the notes were not paid, he sold the prop- 
 erty at the Merchants' Exchange and "knocked it down " to 
 himself at his own price. The Sun then ceased to begin the day's 
 work with a prayer meeting in the editorial rooms. The experi- 
 ment, interesting as it was, almost caused the total eclipse of 
 The Sun. 
 
MEXICAN WAR TO CIVIL WAR PERIOD 269 
 
 RELIGIOUS BIRTH OF "THE NEW YORK WORLD" 
 
 Alexander Cummings was one of those who had purchased 
 The North American in Philadelphia after its failure as a reli- 
 gious newspaper. Evidently he had faith in such an enterprise, 
 for he made a second attempt to establish a newspaper of that 
 kind, but in another city. Getting together a number of men, 
 chiefly from Philadelphia, who held a similar view, he started 
 in New York on June 1, 1860, The World as a two-cent religious 
 daily newspaper not a one-cent sheet as has been so commonly 
 asserted. It was advertised extensively in the religious press and 
 in the back part of church hymnals. Backed by sufficient capital 
 and possessed of experience dearly bought in Philadelphia, Cum- 
 mings made a heroic struggle to give the people of New York an 
 ideal newspaper. Church notices appeared on the first page of 
 the first issue. Supplies for Sabbath school and sermon paper 
 at wholesale and at retail, etc., were advertised in its columns. 
 A special rate of four dollars a year was quoted to clergymen. 
 It refused to print the theatrical news and rigidly excluded all 
 theatrical advertising from its columns. Whatever might be 
 true of its editorial policy, it was not consistent in its advertising, 
 for early issues of The World saw any number of quack patent 
 medicines, such as soothing syrup, etc., extensively advertised. 
 After being published at a heavy loss and failing to secure suf- 
 ficient popular support in its religious intelligence, it merged 
 with The Courier and Enquirer on July 1, 1861, and its religious 
 aspect was dropped. Though The Courier and Enquirer was the 
 more important of the two journals, The World by some mere co- 
 incidence was placed first in the title. For this reason the paper 
 after the years went by came to be known as The World, and 
 after a while The Courier and Enquirer was dropped completely 
 from the heading. Two hundred thousand dollars were spent 
 in this second attempt to give New York a religious daily news- 
 paper. The paper then became a worldly World. 
 
 RAYMOND AND HIS PAP,ER 
 
 The founding of The New YorkJEimes really grew out of the 
 financial success of The New York Tribune. A remark by Henry 
 Jarvis Raymond that the latter paper was clearing over seventy- 
 
270 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 five thousand dollars a year, and that a new daily in New York 
 ought to do equally as well, aroused the interest of George 
 Jones, a banker of Albany, New York. It must be confessed, 
 however, that the starting of a new paper in New York had 
 often been the subject of conversation and the chief topic of a 
 long correspondence between the two gentlemen. In 1848 Thur- 
 low Weed, who had founded The Albany Evening Journal and 
 made it one of the most influential political sheets of the Empire 
 State, was seriously thinking of retiring from journalism. 
 Through George Jones the editorship of the paper was offered 
 to Raymond, whose work on The New York Courier and Enquirer 
 had attracted attention even in Albany. Negotiations failed to 
 materialize, but the establishment of a new "Whig vehicle of 
 intelligence in New York" was repeatedly mapped out. Nothing 
 definite was done until Raymond, leaving journalism temporarily 
 to go into politics, had been made Speaker of the Assembly at 
 Albany. The remark about the success of The Tribune was ut- 
 tered as Raymond and Jones were crossing the Hudson in the 
 winter of 1850-51. Action, which spoke louder than words, 
 brought about the firm of Rayjnond, Jongs & Company to start 
 The New York Daily Timeson September 18,1851^ 
 
 Raymond had been well trained for the tast hewas about to 
 assume. While still a student at the University of Vermont he 
 had written for Greeley's New Yorker. Later, he became a paid 
 contributor to its columns, and after The Tribune was estab- 
 lished he was made one of the assistant editors and the chief 
 reporter at the magnificent salary of ten dollars per week. In the 
 field of reporting he achieved distinct success. Even The Boston 
 Post, a Democratic daily started on November 9, 1831, and 
 The Boston Atlas, a Whig organ started on July 2, 1832, ad- 
 mitted that Raymond was about the only journalist who could 
 faithfully reproduce the speeches of Webster whose Latin 
 phrases were too much for the ordinary reporter. Leaving The 
 Tribune in 1843, Raymond joined the editorial staff of The 
 Courier and Enquirer, with which he was connected until 1850, 
 and in which he disputed the supremacy of James Watson Webb 
 as a writer on political topics. In addition to his regular duties 
 he also wrote New York letters for Western papers. 
 
MEXICAN WAR TO CIVIL WAR PERIOD 271 
 
 When The Tribune learned that Raymond was going to start 
 The Times to dispute the Whig field in New York, it promptly 
 gave notice to its carriers that if any of them should get up 
 routes for the new paper, they would forfeit all rights to carry 
 The Tribune. The large blanket sheets likewise opposed a new 
 rival, and did what they could to insinuate that the new paper 
 was going to be a rabid abolition sheet. When Raymond wrote 
 his prospectus he took care to outline somewhat at length 
 just what The Times hoped to become. It was going to print 
 the local news of the day, insert correspondence from European 
 countries, give full reports of Congressional and legislative 
 proceedings, review books, and contain criticism of music, 
 drama, painting, and any form of art which might merit atten- 
 tion. His statement about the editorial policy was of course the 
 most important. The Times would inculcate devotion to the 
 Union, the Constitution, obedience to law, and a generous love 
 of that personal and civil liberty which the Constitution and 
 laws are made to preserve: while it would exert and exercise 
 the right freely to discuss every subject of public interest, it 
 would not countenance, however, any improper interference 
 on the part of the people of one locality with the institutions, or 
 even the prejudices, of any other; it would seek to allay, rather 
 than to excite, agitation; it would substitute reason for preju- 
 dice and make cool and intelligent judgment take the place of 
 passion in all discussions of public affairs. 
 
 After the first issue of The Times appeared on September 18, 
 1851, subscriptions came in rapidly and advertising soon fol- 
 lowed. It was not so easy to start a paper, however, in 1851 as it 
 had been in the early thirties when Bennett started The Herald. 
 The Hoe press and the mechanical outfit necessary for a daily 
 paper cost, at a low estimate, at least fifty thousand dollars. 
 To compete with the papers already in existence Raymond was 
 forced to hire competent editorial assistants at a much larger 
 salary than he received when he started to work on The Tribune. 
 Over one hundred thousand dollars was sunk in the enterprise 
 before it made a profit, and it was a long time before the paper 
 made the amount which Raymond mentioned to Jones when 
 they crossed the frozen Hudson in 1850. In September, 1861, 
 
272 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 The Times showed its pocket-book as follows: "Our cash re- 
 ceipts have been $50,000 more this year than they were last up to 
 the same time. All through the dullest of the summer months 
 we have had a balance of from $15,000 to $20,000 in the bank. 
 We have no notes afloat which we are not prepared to cash on 
 presentation. " 
 
 One thing which helped The Times, however, was its selection 
 by the State Banking Department at Albany as the official 
 paper in which the metropolitan banks should publish their 
 weekly statements as required by law. These statements, 
 often containing the very best of financial news and often occu- 
 pying two or three columns, had to be paid for by the banks at 
 the regular advertising rate of The Times. As a matter of fact, 
 practically every New York paper was glad to publish these 
 statements, but The Times was the only one to receive compen- 
 sation for their notice. The Times had secured this concession 
 because one of its leading stockholders, D. B. St. John, was the 
 State Superintendent of Banks, and he naturally favored the 
 newspaper in which he had a financial interest. By withholding 
 these bank statements from other New York papers until they 
 had first appeared in The Times, Raymond was able to square 
 matters with Greeley, who had refused to allow Tribune carriers 
 to distribute copies of The Times. Greeley promptly took the 
 matter up with St. John, but was unable to secure any satisfac- 
 tion: in one of his letters of protest he said: "All this insolence 
 of this little villain is founded on your injustice," and the New 
 York press, whenever it saw fit to attack The Times, spoke of its 
 editor as "the little villain." 
 
 EXPOSURE OF LAND GRAB 
 
 On January 6, 1857, The Times published what it called a 
 magnificent land-stealing scheme. Among the men who left The 
 Courier and Enquirer in 1851 to become connected with_7%e 
 Times was James W. Simontpn, who later became connected with 
 the Associated Press. At the beginning of 1 857 he was the Wash- 
 ington correspondent for The Times. He it was who exposed the 
 8chejne_ofjand-robbery which, under the guise of granting cer- 
 talnpublicTands to the Territory of Minnesota to help build 
 
MEXICAN WAR TO CIVIL WAR PERIOD 273 
 
 railroads, practically gave away the larger part of that Terri- 
 tory. When the edition of The Times reached Washington, it 
 created almost as much of a stir as the edition which startled 
 New York by the exposure of the Tweed Ring. The House 
 promptly ordered an investigation, and on February 19 its com- 
 mittee reported that the charges of corruption as published in 
 The Times had been proved and recommended that four mem- 
 bers of the House be promptly expelled. This exposure was one 
 of the most distinct services for the public good performed by 
 the press so far in the history of American journalism. 
 
 RAYMOND VS. GREELEY 
 
 Like Greeley, Raymond was vitally interested in politics. 
 Unlike Greeley, Raymond conceived the idea that the first busi- 
 ness of a newspaper was to publish the news rather than to print 
 the political views of its editor. In politics Raymond was the 
 more successful as he held several offices under the Whigs. In a 
 certain sense he was the Father of the Republican Party: at 
 any rate, it was he who announced its birth in an address "To 
 the People of the United States," delivered before the Republican 
 Convention at Pittsburgh, February 22, 1856. The Times, how- 
 ever, reached its greatest influence under his editorship when he 
 retired from politics and devoted all his energy to the newspaper 
 which he had founded. Then it widened its influence through a 
 larger circulation, while its stock rose in value from one thousand 
 dollars to eleven thousand dollars a share, until an offer of one 
 million dollars for the paper was refused by its owners. Unfor- 
 tunately, Raymond could not make a decision " never again to 
 be a politician" until a short time before his death. Greeley 
 thought himself and was greater than The Tribune. Ray- 
 mond thought The Times was greater than himself greater 
 than all the men then associated with him on the paper: he was 
 the first great editor to place his newspaper before himself. 
 
 TELEGRAPH OF MORSE 
 
 The man who brought about the greatest transformation in 
 American journalism, not only in this period, but even in any 
 other before or after, was not a practical newspaper man, but, 
 
274 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 strange as it may seem, a college professor, Samuel Finley Breese 
 Morse, of New York University. During 1832-36 Morse, when 
 not busy with his academic duties, had been experimenting with 
 an electric device to send messages over wires he had stretched 
 in and out of the classrooms of the old University Building on 
 Washington Square. 
 
 To many, including several of his colleagues, the instrument 
 was only an interesting mechanical toy of no practical value. 
 But when Horace Greeley was given a private demonstration of 
 the magnetic telegraph, he was most enthusiastic about its 
 possibilities, and said to Morse, " You are going to turn the news- 
 paper office upside down with your invention." In spite of this 
 remark and the fact that he later wrote a magazine article about 
 the instrument, Greeley allowed his rival, Bennett, of The Herald, 
 to excel in using the telegraph to supplement the news that came 
 by mail. The telegraph did not completely supplant the mail 
 as a carrier of news till a much later period. 
 
 New York papers, however, were not the first to use the tele- 
 graph: this honor belongs to those of Baltimore. The cities of 
 Baltimore and Washington had no sooner been connected in 
 1844 by wire largely through Government aid than both 
 morning and afternoon papers of the former city began to print 
 items headed "By Morse's Magnetic Telegraph." Later, when 
 the telegraph line reached the Jersey coast opposite New York, 
 the proceedings of Congress and important news of Washington, 
 Baltimore, and Philadelphia were sent by wire and re^ed by 
 boat to New York newspapers, where they were published under 
 a head similar to that used by the Baltimore papers. 
 
 When the telegraph came to be used in newspaper offices out- 
 side the cities on the Atlantic Coast, it was employed, strange 
 to say, not so much to give the news as to indicate where it might 
 be found in the exchanges coming by mail. Murat Halstead has 
 told how, when working on a Cincinnati paper in the early fifties, 
 he would go down to the depot at one o'clock in the morning, 
 wait for the train, ride on the mail wagon to the post-office, 
 snatch the copies of the newspapers from New York, Philadel- 
 phia, and Baltimore, and then rush to his newspaper office where 
 he would slash out with the scissors the items to which his atten- 
 
 
MEXICAN WAR TO CIVIL WAR PERIOD 275 
 
 tion had been called by telegrams. As fast as he cut them out he 
 handed them to printers, who possibly had been standing around 
 idle for more than an hour. In those days printers were paid for 
 the amount of copy they set and not for the amount of time they 
 put in at the plant. Competition, however, soon forced the 
 publishers of newspapers to pay the telegraph charges for 
 brief bulletins of important but late news. 
 
 TAX ON VIRGINIA NEWSPAPERS 
 
 In Virginia during most of the decade from 1840 to 1850 it was 
 the practice of the General Assembly of that State to pass annu- 
 ally an act " imposing taxes for the support of the Government." 
 From 1843 to 1848, inclusive, this act contained the following 
 provision: "Upon every printing press of newspapers taxed the 
 amount charged per annum for a subscription to the highest 
 priced paper that may issue from such press : Provided, however, 
 That no press shall pay a higher tax than ten dollars." The 
 revenue thus derived by the State from its tax on newspapers 
 ranged from three hundred and eleven dollars for the year end- 
 ing September 30, 1843, to three hundred and fifty-five dollars 
 for the year ending September 30, 1848. The Act of 1849 did not 
 impose any newspaper tax. So far as can be learned, Virginia 
 was the only State to levy a tax on newspapers during the 
 nineteenth century. In fact, the only other direct tax, either 
 Federal or State, was that levied by the Government during the 
 War of the States, and this exempted many newspapers and 
 applied only to the gross receipts from advertising and was de- 
 signed to provide internal revenue to "support the Government 
 and pay interest on the public debt." 
 
 PRESS ASSOCIATIONS OF PERIOD 
 
 During the middle of the fourth decade of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, there were three cooperative associations to gather the 
 marine news of New York. The first and most important of 
 these was the one composed of the blanket sheets, The Courier 
 and Enquirer and The Journal of Commerce; the second was com- 
 posed of The Express, The Mercantile Advertiser, and The Ga- 
 zette; the third, of The Commercial Advertiser, The Evening Star, 
 and The American. 
 
276 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 Ten years later, in October, 1856, the General News Associa- 
 tion nf f.hft City nf ^w Vnrlr wag nrpramgpH wJ+.h f^rsrH HQ|, 
 
 loc^foTfhe Journal of Commerce, as its president, and Moses S. 
 Beech, of The New York Sun, as secretary. The other newspapers 
 which were charter members of the Association were The Ex- 
 press, The Herald, The Tribune, The Courier and Enquirer, and 
 The Times. The purpose of this Association was to reduce the 
 cost in collecting and receiving the news. Hallock remained presi- 
 dent of the Association until 1861, when he was succeeded by 
 D. H. Craig, who had already achieved distinction with his 
 press pigeons first at Baltimore and then at Boston. Designed 
 at first to gather news for its New York members, the Associa- 
 tion gradually extended its service to take in papers in other 
 cities. It came to be known as the Associated Press of New York, 
 though it never organized or incorporated under any such title. 
 
 EDITOKIAL GIANTS 
 
 During the decade of 18Q=0 the editorial policy reached 
 its highest development in the matter orintuienceT'' True, this 
 periocTwalTbne of the most pivotaTintfie history of the American 
 Republic. In it the Democratic Party began to organize. The 
 Whig Party was wiped out, and the Republican Party was 
 born. The newspaper, both in the North and the South, had an 
 opportunity to discuss a question which was destined later al- 
 most to split the Republic into two Governments. In the North 
 especially, the editorial influence was felt where there was almost 
 universal opposition to the spread of slavery. Such a great 
 moral issue naturally brought out editorials of unusual strength. 
 Of these, possibly special mention should be made of those of 
 Greeley in The New York Tribune; those of Webb in The New 
 York Courier and Enquirer; those of Forney in The Philadelphia 
 Press; those of Bowles in The Springfield Republican; those of 
 Medill in The Chicago Tribune; those of Raymond in The Neiu 
 York Times; those of Schouler in The Cincinnati Gazette; those of 
 Bryant in The Evening Post; and those of Weed in The Albany 
 Evening Journal. In this connection a remark of Horace White, 
 while editor of The New York Evening Post, should be quoted on 
 the value of the editorial page: he once asserted that "a news- 
 
MEXICAN WAR TO CIVIL WAR PERIOD 277 
 
 paper which merely inked over a certain amount of white paper 
 each day might be a good collector of news, it might be suc- 
 cessful as a business venture, but that it could leave no mark 
 upon its time and could have no history. " 
 
 LABOR CONDITIONS IN BACK OFFICE 
 
 From the time of the first strike in the office of Rivington's 
 Gazette during the Revolution, down to as late as 1850, labor 
 conditions in newspaper offices were far from satisfactory. Most 
 of the trouble between the newspaper and its employees came 
 from the fact that the men who put the items into type were 
 paid for the amount of work they did and not for the amount of 
 time they spent in the composing-room. The men who worked 
 on the morning newspapers especially complained, with con- 
 siderable justification, about the irregularity of their time. Local 
 news and items clipped from the exchanges were usually in type by 
 midnight. There was always the possibility, however, in the case 
 of seaboard cities that some ship bringing important intelligence 
 from abroad might dock at a wharf late in the evening and the 
 newspapers must be prepared to meet just such an emergency. 
 Printers could either hang around the office or they could go 
 home only to be aroused from their slumbers by the office devil, 
 who came with orders to hasten to the office in order that the 
 latest intelligence be put in the morning issue. There was no 
 uniformity in the price which individual papers paid their print- 
 ers, although the morning papers, because of night work, were 
 compelled to pay more on the average to their printers than the 
 evening journals. In order to remedy these conditions, unions 
 were organized, and by the middle of the nineteenth century 
 they did much to improve the conditions of the printers em- 
 ployed on city papers. Editors at the start were not debarred 
 from membership in these unions. /Horace Greeley, for ex- 
 ample, was the first president of the New York Printers' Union, 
 which was established in January, 1850. Greeley, in fact, used 
 his trenchant pen in numerous editorials to improve working 
 conditions among New York printers. > When The Journal of 
 Commerce and other New York papers criticized the attempt to 
 establish a uniform scale of wages throughout the city, it was 
 
278 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 Greeley who took up the cudgels for the printers and defended 
 their course to obtain a "fair day's pay for a fair day's work." 
 Newspapers which did not accept the established scale for the 
 employment of men were called "rat papers," a term that is still 
 applied to newspapers which have open shops. 
 
 PUTTING THE TYPE ON THE CYLINDER 
 
 The penny papers with their large editions demanded fast 
 presses. To meet this increased requirement Robert M. Hoe, 
 who followed his father as the head of the firm of R. Hoe & 
 Company tried numerous schemes, but finally found that the 
 way to print rapidly was to take the type from the flat bed and 
 put it on the cylinder. This was done by making beds in the 
 cylinder one for each page of type. The column rules, which 
 held the type in place, were shaped like the letter V, and thus 
 acted as a wedge when the thin edge was pushed toward the 
 axis of the cylinder. " Projecting tongues sliding in rebated 
 grooves cut in the cylinder" held the rules in place. The type did 
 not fall out when the page forms were locked or fastened with 
 usual care. Around the large type cylinder were grouped four 
 impression cylinders at which sheets were supplied to the press 
 usually by boys. The first press with type on its cylinder 
 was made for The Philadelphia Ledger in 1846. Its capacity per 
 hour was about eight thousand papers printed on one side only. 
 
 As newspapers increased their demands, Hoe simply added 
 more impression cylinders until as many as ten were grouped 
 about the type cylinder. The hourly output of the ten-cylinder 
 rotary type-revolving press was in the neighborhood of twenty 
 thousand copies half-printed. America had now taken the lead 
 in the manufacture of fast presses a lead which it has never 
 lost. To show how far England was behind, The London Times, 
 two years after a rotary press had been in successful operation 
 in Philadelphia, said, in an article in December, 1848, "no 
 art of packing could make the type adhere to a cylinder 
 revolving around a horizontal axis and thereby aggravating 
 centrifugal impulse by the intrinsic weight of the metal." 
 Nevertheless, Hoe had already accomplished this very thing. 
 Subsequently The London Times ordered from Hoe two of his 
 
 
MEXICAN WAR TO CIVIL WAR PERIOD 279 
 
 ten-cylinder rotary presses. The Lords of the Privy Council, 
 extending the patent of this press, spoke of it as one of "the 
 greatest steps ever made in the printing art.' 1 
 
 LOSS OF CUTS IN ADVERTISEMENTS 
 
 When Hoe took the type from a flat bed and put it on a re- 
 volving cylinder, he changed completely the appearance of the 
 advertising columns. Making the type secure in the column- 
 wide " turtles" which curved around the cylinder had presented 
 mechanical difficulties which were overcome. To make large 
 cuts adhere to the cylinder during revolution was so intricate 
 that publishers of newspapers charged prohibitive prices for 
 such advertising. Advertisements wider than one column 
 necessitated the breaking of the rule and when this was done 
 an extra charge was made. The use of large type was discour- 
 aged the same as that of cuts. Advertisers, however, were allowed 
 to use large letters made up of smaller letters of the regular type. 
 The letters were of course identical save for the size: the large 
 "A" consisted only of smaUer "A's"; the large "B" only of 
 smaller " B's," etc. So common did this practice become that 
 even after forms were stereotyped and solid letters of any size 
 could be used, manufacturers of type continued to cast the 
 "logotypes." With the practical abolition of cuts and heavy 
 block-face type the newspapers became much neater in typo- 
 graphical appearance. Occasionally advertisers using space wider 
 than a column would allow the rules to show rather than to pay 
 the extra charge much to the annoyance of readers. Adver- 
 tising copy received late was frequently set up in this way. 
 
 SLAVERY DISCUSSION STARTED 
 
 Editorial discussion of slavery first began to appear during the 
 Administration of Andrew Jackson, but most papers, even in 
 the North, were inclined to leave the matter alone until dis- 
 cussion of some compromise at Washington brought the matter 
 before the people. Attention has already been called to the fact 
 that newspapers like The New York Times were not disposed to 
 interfere with the peculiar institutions of other States. The few 
 abolition journals which appeared attracted little attention 
 
280 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 until their contents were reprinted in other papers in connection 
 with the discussion of legislative halls. A paper, however, which 
 carried a torch was The Telegraph published at Washington. 
 This journal in some way secured the reports of the Abolition 
 Society of New York, so small at the time that it had at- 
 tracted but little attention from the New York press, and 
 then by publishing the most offensive passages persuaded what 
 papers it could that the North was seeking to deprive the 
 planters of their slaves without remuneration. It seemed to take 
 special pride in setting fire to secession papers. 
 
 When Douglas introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 
 1854, which provided that the inhabitants of these States should 
 decide whether slavery should be permitted within their bound- 
 aries, he aroused again a press discussion which to a certain 
 extent had been quieted by the compromise of Clay and the 
 passage of the Fugitive Slave Law. The bill was denounced by 
 the press, not only in the South, but also in the North. The Eve- 
 ning Post, for example, asserted at the time that out of some 
 hundred newspapers which reached the editor's desk almost all 
 were in condemnation of the bill. After it had become a law its 
 sponsor, Stephen A. Douglas, became the target of editorial pens 
 all over the country: papers, regardless of party affiliations, de- 
 nounced him everywhere; even in his own State of Illinois, his 
 personal friends found it necessary to establish, at Chicago, in 
 1854, The Times as a political organ to defend the attacks brought 
 against him. 
 
 The Kansas-Nebraska Bill, repudiating as it did the Missouri 
 Compromise, had a national effect upon the press of the period. 
 Its most immediate effect, however, was felt in Kansas. The 
 Free-Soilers started bands of immigrants from New England to 
 Kansas. Border Ruffians, determined to make it a slave State, 
 camped temporarily in the Territory. Both sections had their 
 papers which did much to promote trouble and to cause Kansas 
 to lose some of its best blood. * 
 
 This chapter of Kansas history may almost be read in the titles 
 of the papers established there during the second hah" of the 
 decade 1850-60. (See " Beginnings in Kansas.") At Atchi- 
 son, The Squatter Sovereign was started on February 3, 1855; at 
 
MEXICAN WAR TO CIVIL WAR PERIOD 281 
 
 Topeka, The Kansas Freeman, on July 4, 1855; at Le Compton, 
 The New Era, on September 26, 1855; at Prairie City, The 
 Freeman's Champion, on June 25, 1857; at Sumner, The Sumner 
 Gazette, on September 12, 1857. At Lawrence, settled for the 
 most part by Free-Soilers from Massachusetts, four papers, 
 every one of which had its office destroyed by Border Ruffians, 
 were established during these fateful years. Of these papers the 
 most important was The Herald of Freedom, the first issue of 
 which, though dated at Wakarusa, Kansas, October 21, 1854, 
 was printed in Pennsylvania: the second was published at 
 Lawrence on January 6, 1855. Second was The Kansas-Free 
 State, begun in January, 1855. On May 21, 1856, when Border 
 Ruffians attacked Lawrence, they dumped the press, type, books, 
 papers, etc., of The Free State into the street and did practi- 
 cally the same thing for The Herald of Freedom, but in addition 
 set the building on fire. This act of the Border Ruffians stirred 
 up the press of the North so that a subscription for money with 
 which to purchase new types and press for the owners of The 
 Herald was started by the Chicago press, headed by The Chicago 
 Tribune, The Chicago Journal, and The Staats-Zeitung. Horace 
 Greeley, of The New York Tribune, also helped to raise money 
 for the enterprise. 
 
 In the next period Lawrence had a practical repetition of this 
 act of violence. The Kansas Tribune, which had been started at 
 Lawrence on January 5, 1855, in removing to Topeka in Novem- 
 ber of that year, escaped the violence of the Border Ruffians. The 
 Tribune, however, again returned to Lawrence on January 1, 
 1863. After the offices of The Herald of Freedom and The Kansas 
 Free State had been mobbed, and their printing-plants destroyed, 
 their place was taken by The Lawrence Republican, established on 
 May 28, 1857. Both The Tribune and The Republican suffered a 
 like fate on August 21, 1863, when their offices were destroyed, 
 and the papers suspended. The Tribune was revived in Novem- 
 ber, 1863, and The Republican in February, 1868, but these re- 
 vivals belong to another period. 
 
282 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 SOUTHERN PRESS ON SECESSION 
 
 The press of the South, save a few " bitter-enders," was unusu- 
 ally conservative, in spite of the commonly accepted opinion, 
 in the matter of secession. About three hundred journals were 
 received in exchange from below the Mason and Dixon Line by 
 The National Intelligencer, of Washington: of these, only fifty 
 were for the Nashville Convention. The New York Herald, in 
 commenting on this fact, remarked that some of these fifty were 
 " backing down." Both the Whig and the Democratic press of 
 the South were continually urging their readers to await the 
 results v> A compromising measures. The Whig journals of the 
 South, with The Richmond Whig as a leader, were strongly op- 
 posed to secession. The Texas Advertiser once recommended that 
 the introduction of the slavery question into Congress be pun- 
 ished with expulsion. The Louisiana Gazette frequently scouted 
 the idea of dissolution. The Raleigh Press begged that "if we 
 have to fight for liberty, let us fight with the Stars and Stripes." 
 The New Orleans Crescent opposed violence. The Memphis Eagle 
 even went so far as to characterize the peaceful secession of a 
 State as a most absurd vagary. The Memphis Inquirer urged 
 every one " to put his foot on disunion." Such newspapers as The 
 Mobile Advertiser, The New Orleans Bulletin, The Nashville 
 Banner, The Natchez Courier, etc., warned the South of its 
 dependence upon the North, and suggested that before any dras- 
 tic action be taken the South should be made independent of 
 "Yankee" factories for the manufacture of finished products. 
 
 On the other hand, a few papers of the South thought they saw 
 the approaching conflict. The Savannah Republican again and 
 again prophesied that civil war between the free and the slave 
 States was inevitable. The Abbevilk Banner asked the South to 
 rebuke the North by refusing to read the papers of the latter 
 even if they were cheaper. The Natchez Free Trader boldly re- 
 commended secession as a constitutional and safe remedy for 
 the wrongs of the South. The Charleston Mercury asserted that 
 "the tea has been thrown overboard" and that "the Revolution 
 of 1860 has been initiated." From The Hornet's Nest of Charlotte, 
 North Carolina, came many "stings" for the North. That paper 
 
IIIIRIISIOX 
 
 MERCURY 
 
 EXTRA: 
 
 Passed unanimously of 1.1A o'clock, /*. . /. December 
 2O/A, I860. 
 
 AJ on m > t > < i 
 
 To dissolve the Union between the State of South Carolina attd 
 other States united with her under the compact entitled " The 
 Constitution of the United States of America." 
 
 We, the People of the Slate of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and 
 it w hereby declared and ordained, 
 
 That the Ordinance adopted by us in Convention, on the twenty-third day of May, in the 
 year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, whereby the Constitution of {he 
 United States of America was. ratified, and also, all Acts and parts of Acts of the GenenJ 
 Assembly of this State, ratifying amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed; 
 and that the union now subsisting between South Carolina And other States, under the name of 
 ' The United States of America," is hereby dissolved. 
 
 THE 
 
 UNION 
 
 DISSOLVED! 
 
 THE EXTRA IX CHARLESTON WHICH ANNOUNCED 
 THE ORDINANCE OF SECESSION 
 
 (Reduced) 
 
MEXICAN WAR TO CIVIL WAR PERIOD 283 
 
 went so far as to publish a list of the business houses in the 
 North which did not rally to the support of the South and asked 
 editors to keep this list standing in their newspapers. The 
 suggestion was warmly seconded in Atlanta by The Southern 
 Confederacy, one of the most violent secessionist papers of the 
 South. The secession press was strongest in South Carolina and 
 next in Mississippi. 
 
 SEWARD AND GREELEY AGAIN 
 
 In the earlier part of another chapter mention was made of 
 the dissension which arose between Greeley and Seward, partners 
 in several newspaper enterprises. Greeley had another grievance 
 against Seward : when the Whig Party was out of control Greeley 
 was nominated as State Printer, but when at the next election the 
 Whigs were successful the office went to his rival, Henry J. Ray- 
 mond, of The Times. Greeley took this very much to heart, as it 
 enabled to quote his own words "St. John to show his 
 Times as the organ of the Whig State Administration." Later, 
 Raymond was nominated on the Whig ticket for Lieutenant- 
 Governor and the fight for his election was left by Seward to 
 Greeley. There were numerous other instances where Greeley 
 thought he was treated unjustly by Seward. The story has al- 
 ready been told how Seward pardoned Webb, the editor of 
 The Courier and Enquirer a paper which had continually 
 abused Greeley. 
 
 But Greeley waited his time as he said he would. His day 
 came when the Republican Party met at Chicago in 1860. How 
 Greeley defeated Seward and nominated Lincoln in that Con- 
 vention has been told so often that no repetition is necessary. 
 Vanity Fair, the cartoon weekly of the period, told it in wordless 
 journalism with a picture entitled "Et Tu, Greeley?" with 
 Seward portrayed as Caesar, Greeley, of The New York Tribune, 
 as Brutus, Raymond, of The New York Times, as Marc Antony, 
 and Blair, of The Washington Globe, as Casca. By way of repe- 
 tition, Vanity Fair told the same story in verse (Brutus Greeley 
 speaking) : 
 
 I have nipped him at Chicago, 
 
 I have made my Seward wail, 
 I Ve ordained that Uncle Abram 
 Shall be ridden on the rail. 
 
284 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 Did he think that I forgave him? 
 
 Did he think I was an ass? 
 Did he think I 'd love my enemies, 
 
 And let the occasion pass? 
 
 If he did he was mistaken, 
 
 And I guess he knows it now, 
 For I nipped him at Chicago, 
 
 And I made a precious row. 
 
 I was slow to wrath against him, 
 
 When I bore defeat and pain, 
 But I 've waited for him patiently, 
 
 And I did n't wait in vain. 
 
 Now they swear at me, the vipers, 
 
 But they swear a good way off, 
 For they know the gallant Greeley, 
 
 At the best of them will scoff. 
 
 And they know he 's used to swearing, 
 
 (Tho' it's very wrong to swear) 
 So they curse his seedy garments, 
 
 And they blast his yellow hair. 
 
 But little cares the Greeley 
 
 What his enemies may say, 
 When he knows the grayhound Seward, 
 
 Is a dog that's had his day. 
 
 With the nomination of Lincoln came the close of this period. 
 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 CIVIL WAR PERIOD 
 
 18601865 
 
 THE nomination of Abraham Lincoln, due in part to the activi- 
 ties of Horace Greeley, of The New York Tribune, was a great 
 surprise to the Democratic journals of the North. Amazed at the 
 defeat of Seward, who was the logical candidate, they did all 
 they could to belittle the ability of Lincoln, whom they repeat- 
 edly referred to in their campaign attacks as "Old Uncle Abe." 
 The Republican papers, on the other hand, promptly came to 
 Lincoln's support and spoke of him as "a man of the people" 
 and gave him the name of " Honest Abe." 
 
 After the election of Lincoln, the conservative papers, regard- 
 less of their political affiliations, rallied to his support. Both 
 The St. Louis Democrat and The Missouri Republican asked that 
 he be given a square deal, and The Washington Star asserted that 
 he had been constitutionally elected and that his elevation to 
 office could no longer be resisted save by naked and palpable 
 revolution. 
 
 THE COPPERHEAD PRESS 
 
 Yet in the North there were newspapers which were in favor 
 of acceding to the demands of the South. Even The New York 
 Tribune advocated letting "the erring sisters depart in peace," 
 and another New York newspaper, during the first year that 
 Lincoln was President, compiled a list of newspapers in the free 
 States which were oppose^ to what is called the "Present Un- 
 holy War." The New York World went so far as to say that Lin- 
 coln's election meant that the Union neither would be restored 
 nor would slavery be abolished. Other papers encouraged the 
 South to persevere and condemned the North for using arms 
 to force States to remain in the Union. Northern papers opposed 
 to the "Unholy War" came to be known as the "Copperhead 
 
286 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 press." They were so influential that they greatly hindered the 
 War Department in its activities and were a source of much 
 encouragement to the South, but they possibly did the greatest 
 amount of harm in continually opposing the issue of Treasury 
 notes. 
 
 EDITORIAL ATTACKS OF STOREY 
 
 Especially savage in attacks upon the paper currency of the 
 United States Government was The Chicago Times, one of the 
 foremost leaders of the CopperheaLcrpress : it repeatedly spoke of 
 such currency as the paper having the largest circulation of any 
 in the country, and every decrease in the value was hailed as a 
 fulfillment of its prophecy. Its editor was Wilbur D. Storey, who 
 adopted an editorial policy that was always opposed to the Union 
 Government and later became so seditious that General Burn- 
 side suppressed the paper for two days. When President Lincoln, 
 always slow to wrath and tender in mercy, learned what Burn- 
 side had done, he revoked the order, enforced at the point of 
 the bayonet, and allowed The Times to continue publication. 
 The suppression, instead of acting as a restraint upon Storey, 
 seemed to incense him all the more. His editorial comments, 
 more seditious than ever, caused his paper to be known as "Old 
 Storey's Copperhead Times" and brought frequent threats of 
 destruction to the building and personal violence to the editor. 
 His editorial rooms, now always prepared for a siege, were 
 equipped with loaded muskets and hand-grenades, and had a 
 hose so attached that the floor might instantly be flooded with 
 the scalding steam and boiling water from the boilers of the 
 plant. So bitter were some of Storey's editorial comments that 
 when reports of them reached various regiments in service in 
 Union lines, soldiers time and time again sent word that upon 
 their return from the war they were going to destroy The Cop- 
 perhead Times threats, however, which were never carried 
 out. 
 
 " TRIBUNE" DRAFT RIOTS 
 
 The plant of The New York Tribune also narrowly escaped de- 
 struction but for quite a different reason. For some time 
 
CIVIL WAR PERIOD 287 
 
 before the battle of Bull Run, Horace Greelcy kept the following 
 paragraph standing on the editorial page of his Tribune: - 
 
 The Nation's War Cry. Forward to Richmond! Forward to Rich- 
 mond! The Rebel Congress must not be allowed to meet there on 
 the twentieth of July! By that date the place must be held by the 
 National Army! 
 
 This call on the part of Greeley for an immediate advance on 
 Richmond undoubtedly had something to do with the defeat at 
 Bull Run. At the outbreak of the war The Herald, seeming a 
 little too lukewarm in its allegiance to the cause of the North, 
 had been most bitterly and incessantly criticized by The Tribune. 
 After the defeat at Bull Run The Herald promptly denounced 
 The Tribune and its editor as being one of the immediate causes 
 of the disaster, and indicated that the time would come when the 
 people would find it expedient to hang Greeley upon a lamp- 
 post, because he poisoned and killed the Republic with aboli- 
 tion sentiment. Undoubtedly the attack of The Herald had 
 something to do with the assault upon the building of The Trib- 
 une during the draft riots, when on Monday, July 13, 1863, a 
 mob advanced against The Tribune with the cry: "Down with 
 The Tribune! Down with the old white coat what thinks a 
 nayger as good as an Irishman. " In its attacks on The Tribune 
 the mob succeeded in destroying the furniture on the first floor 
 where all gas-burners were twisted off; it battered down the 
 doors and windows after it had started a fire in the center in the 
 hope of destroying the plant. The building, however, was saved 
 by the arrival of one hundred policemen with orders to "Hit 
 their temples, strike hard, take no prisoners." The instructions 
 were followed: twenty-two were killed; scores taken away se- 
 verely wounded. A heavy downpour of rain suddenly broke 
 over the mob and scattered it even faster than the charge of the 
 bluecoats. By the next day The Tribune building had been 
 transformed into an arsenal; guns protruded from the second- 
 story windows, a hose had been connected with the steam boiler 
 in the basement, and arrangements had been made to drop 
 shells on any attacking party. These preparations undoubtedly 
 prevented a second attack, for on Wednesday morning The 
 
288 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 Tribune announced editorially that it was prepared for any en- 
 counter and warned rioters of what would follow in an attack 
 upon its building. Greeley always insisted that the attack on 
 The Tribune building was the turning-point in the war and 
 boldly asserted that if the raid had not been successfully re- 
 sisted it would have swept all over the North and broken the 
 Union into fragments. 
 
 During this same terrible riot week of July, 1863, proprietors of 
 The Times in New York adopted strenuous measures that its 
 plant might be in a prepared state for defense. They put a 
 revolving cannon in the publication office and laid in a store of 
 rifles with which to ward off any invasion by the mob. Thus 
 defended, The Times did not hesitate to send out red-hot shots 
 in its editorial columns headed, " Crush the Mob." It turned 
 its editorial guns not only on the mob, but also on the other New 
 York newspapers which sought to characterize the riots as "re- 
 bukes of the laboring men." "These are libels," said The Times, 
 "that ought to have paralyzed the fingers that penned them." 
 The conclusion of the editorial was, "Give them grape, and 
 plenty of it." Because of its determined stand on the matter of 
 the riot, The Times also came to be somewhat severely criticized. 
 
 GENERALS VS. CORRESPONDENTS 
 
 General McClellan on August 5, 1861, invited the war cor- 
 respondents to meet him for consultation about handling war 
 news. At this meeting a resolution was passed, requesting the 
 Government "to afford the representatives of the press facilities 
 for obtaining and immediately transmitting all information suit- 
 able for publication, particularly as touching engagements with 
 the enemy." But correspondents in their desire to be first with 
 the news were so careless at first that the Union generals found it 
 necessary to place numerous restrictions upon publishing mili- 
 tary intelligence. General Rosecrans complained that the army 
 in occupation of Western Virginia was handicapped by having 
 the strength and movements of his troops made public in the 
 press so that all advantages of secrecy of concentration and 
 surprise failed at critical moments. In contrast, he said, the 
 newspapers of the South never betrayed the movements of the 
 
 
CIVIL WAR PERIOD 289 
 
 Confederate armies. Later, General McClellan, in a dispatch to 
 the War Department, called attention to the violation by news- 
 papers of the agreement not to publish, "either as editorial or 
 as correspondence, any description, from any point of view, any 
 matter that might furnish aid or comfort to the enemy," and 
 suggested that editors be held responsible for its infraction. 
 Major-General Benjamin F. Butler, in a communication ad- 
 dressed to the newspaper correspondent connected with the 
 Army of the James, asserted that, while he had never interfered 
 with the quality or the quantity of the communications of the 
 correspondents, he wanted them to speak only of acts done and 
 not of movements in preparation or in progress, because in 
 forty-eight hours at the farthest the enemy had such news in 
 printed form. Offering to put at the disposal of the correspond- 
 ents many public and official documents, he cautioned them es- 
 pecially against describing the movements of officers of high rank 
 mentioned therein. Major-General Foster, in command of the 
 Department of North Carolina, complained in September, 1862, 
 that The New York Evening Post had betrayed the numbers 
 and positions of his troops and asserted that "such information 
 from our friends was more injurious than that gained by the 
 Rebel spies. " 
 
 SUSPENSION OF SOUTHEKN SHEETS 
 
 Union generals did not hesitate to suppress any newspaper in 
 the South whenever they thought such papers were guilty of 
 treason. In New Orleans, for example,_T7ie Bee, The Delta, and 
 The Cresj&ti were suppressed at various times. Northern gen- 
 erals when they suspended a newspaper occasionally allowed a 
 continuation of the sheet under the editorial supervision of war 
 correspondents from the North. Such was the case when General 
 Wallace suspended The Daily Argus, of Memphis, for publishing 
 a "fake" item about the capture or umcmnati by Confederate 
 troops. He put the paper into the hands of A. G. Richardson, 
 a correspondent of The New York Tribune, and Thomas W. 
 Knox, a correspondent of The New York Herald. In other cases, 
 where newspapers published editorials in "an incendiary or 
 treasonable spirit," the resignation of the writer of the editorial 
 
290 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 was demanded under threat of total suspension. General Grant, 
 incensed at an editorial entitled " Mischief-Makers," in The 
 Avalanche, of Memphis, ordered that either the paper suspend 
 or the writer of the offensive editorial resign. Jeptha Folkes 
 accordingly withdrew from the editorial staff and The Avalanche 
 continued for a short time, only to suspend a little later for 
 other reasons until the war was over. 
 
 CONDITIONS OF REVIVAL 
 
 The following editorial notice from The Evening Whig, the only 
 paper to make its appearance in Richmond after Evacuation 
 Day, set forth the conditions under which publication of a news- 
 paper was generally permitted by Federal authorities : 
 
 The publication of The Whig is resumed this afternoon, with the con- 
 sent of the military authorities. The editor, and all who heretofore con- 
 trolled its columns, have taken their departure. The proprietor and one 
 attache of the recent editorial corps remain. The former has had a con- 
 ference with General Shepley, the Military Governor, who has assented 
 to the publication of the paper on conditions which will be cheerfully 
 and faithfully complied with. The Whig will therefore be issued here- 
 after as a Union paper. The sentiments of attachment to our "whole 
 country," which formerly characterized it as a journal will again find 
 expression in its columns, and whatever influence it may have for 
 the restoration of the national authority will be exerted. 
 
 As soon as practicable a full and efficient editorial force will be 
 organized. For the present we ask the indulgence of our readers. We 
 will do the best we can under existing circumstances, promising a 
 daily improvement in the variety and interest of the contents of the 
 paper, until we shall make The Whig commend itself to the favor and 
 support of all persons loyal to the Government of the United States. 
 
 The terms cannot, as yet, be definitely fixed. We shall commence 
 with such charge, in Federal currency, as we conceive to be fair and 
 reasonable. In a short time we will resume the issue of a double sheet. 
 
 CENSORSHIP OF THE PRESS 
 
 General Rosecrans has mentioned that the papers of the South 
 seldom betrayed the movements of Confederate troops in such 
 a way as to give valuable information to the North. This con- 
 dition was due to the fact that most of the papers in that section 
 of the country received their war news through an official press 
 
CIVIL WAR PERIOD 291 
 
 association. By means of this organization the Confederacy 
 was better able to control what appeared in the newspapers 
 than was the Government at Washington, in spite of its censor- 
 ship. 
 
 During the early part of the war, Washington officials made 
 several blunders in adopting too stringent measures to prevent 
 the publishing of news which might help the army of the South. 
 The papers if* the larger cities were repeatedly informed by tele- 
 graph that nothing whatever in regard to military movements 
 would be allowed to come over the wires. This threat was never 
 fully carried out, but a censor was put in the telegraph office at 
 Washington whose duty it was to inspect all news dispatches and 
 to suppress any communication which he deemed inexpedient 
 to publish. To deceive the generals of the Confederacy false 
 reports must have been circulated : Henry J. Raymond, of The 
 New York Times, complained bitterly in an editorial in his 
 paper that when on the night of the battle of Bull Run he had 
 placed in the telegraph office a "perfectly accurate statement of 
 the result," derived from personal observation, the Govern- 
 ment Agent refused to allow the account to be sent to The Times, 
 and instead reported that the Union army had achieved a vic- 
 tory. So much dissatisfaction resulted, on account of the cen- 
 sorship, that a change was made, with a result that greater 
 freedom for the expression of truth was given to the dispatches 
 and additional facilities were provided by the War Department 
 for the gathering of news by correspondents in the Union army. 
 
 NEWS FROM WASHINGTON 
 
 The assertion was frequently made that The Tribune, because 
 of the part it had played in nominating Lincoln, was granted 
 special privileges in the matter of publication of items, issued by 
 various departments at Washington. The truth of this charge 
 was never proved, except that correspondents for that paper were 
 possibly more energetic in calling on the various members of the 
 War Cabinet. The policy of giving items to the newspaper cor- 
 respondent who had called first created so much disturbance and 
 ill-feeling that arrangements were made whereby the news from 
 all departments was turned over to a special newspaper repre- 
 
292 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 sentative, who, in turn, supplied the items to all papers. The 
 most practical way of carrying out this scheme was to select 
 the official representative of the Associated Press at Washington 
 and he became the buffer between newspapers and Government 
 officials. This change in the matter of Government publicity 
 proved more satisfactory and seemed to please the press, save 
 the local representatives at Washington, who suffered some 
 delay and a little more expense by the new method. They 
 appealed to President 'Lincoln, who, in turn, passed their request 
 along to Secretary Stanton with this note: 
 
 Hon. Secretary of War: I am appealed to by the proprietors of papers 
 here because they have to get telegraphed back to them from New 
 York, matter which goes from the War Department. Might not this 
 be avoided without harm or inconvenience in any way? 
 
 This was done and the New York papers were no longer to 
 be the first publishers of Washington news. 
 
 TREATMENT OF NEWS 
 
 During the War of the States, the news, both in its siibj^nt" 
 
 f , was so modern that no special 
 srSce needs to be taken for the discussion ot this topic. In the 
 South, however, one peculiarity will be noticed. After South 
 Carolina seceded from the Union, the papers of that State pub- 
 lished all items from the North under the head of " Foreign In- 
 telligence." Secession papers in other States later followed the 
 example set by South Carolina. Throughout the war the most 
 important news, save the announcement of a victory or of a de- 
 feat, was the long list of dead or wounded soldiers which news- 
 papers printed in small type. In the composition of headlines, 
 however, there was extreme modesty: seldom were they wider 
 than one column and frequently they were the same, day after 
 day. Northern papers frequently used as a standing head "The 
 Rebellion," or, set in smaller letters, "The Great Rebellion." 
 Another headline, repeated with routine monotony, was "Im- 
 portant From Washington." After the battle of Bull Run a 
 favorite was the slight variation, " Important If True." The 
 assassination of Lincoln appreciably increased the length, but 
 not the width, of newspaper headlines. 
 
CIVIL WAR PERIOD 293 
 
 In the matter of publishing war news, possibly the most im- 
 portant papers were those of New York, which still had an ex- 
 tensive circulation out of the city. Honors were fairly evenly 
 divided among TheJHerald, The Times, and The Tribune. The 
 first had already learned the value of the interview in connection 
 with John Brown's raid at'Harei^Ferr^nd^ 
 
 proved of the utmost value in getting news from those in au- 
 thority. Before Sumter was fired upon, The Herald had sent to 
 the various strategic points in the South correspondents with 
 instructions to gather Southern newspapers, to collect all in- 
 formation possible about Confederate situations, and to forward 
 the same at once to New York. The data thus gathered enabled 
 The Herald as hostilities broke out to publish a muster roll of the 
 Confederate army with such accuracy that a leak was suspected 
 in the War Office at Richmond. Several times The Herald pub- 
 lished items based upon such accurate information that rivals 
 positively asserted that The Herald was in collusion with Con- 
 federate authorities. In the number of war correspondents pos- 
 sibly The Herald excelled. Every army of the North had its 
 Herald headquarters equipped with tents, a wagon bearing the 
 name of the paper, and several attendants. A full half-million 
 dollars was spent by this paper on its war correspondence. The 
 Times had for its representatives equally as daring men: one of 
 them, being caught in an unavoidable delay which prevented 
 his presence with the Union forces, deliberately surrendered 
 himself to the Confederate army in order that he might witness 
 the battle from the opposite side. His correspondence was un- 
 usually interesting, because, being written inside the Confeder- 
 ate lines, it gave a new point of view to military manceuvers. 
 Correspondents for other papers outside of New York, however, 
 achieved distinction because of the excellence of their reports. 
 C. H. Ray, of The Chicago Tribune, attracted much attention 
 when he exposed the fake correspondents of The London Times. 
 (Incidentally, it may be said that much of the correspondence 
 which appeared in English papers was written in London and 
 was based upon data taken from Union and Confederate news- 
 papers.) The London Times was also criticized in the American 
 press because of the insertion of an item, sent by its New York 
 
294 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 correspondent, which asserted that " Lincoln writes English that 
 passes muster in America, but that would not be tolerated in a 
 British school for young men." This was taken as a direct insult 
 to the President and numerous newspapers which had criticized 
 his military campaigns came at once to his defense as a writer 
 of English. 
 
 CLEVER TRICKS OF CORRESPONDENTS 
 
 Some of the tricks employed by war correspondents to get 
 news through the lines were unusually clever. A Union soldier 
 released from Libby Prison walked into the office of a New York 
 newspaper, cut a button from his military coat, and handed it 
 to the man in charge of the office. When the button was pried 
 apart it was found to contain a letter written on thin tissue paper 
 from a war correspondent still in prison. The notes of the letter, 
 when expanded, made a long article. Another correspondent 
 wrote an account on thin tissue paper which he wrapped in tin 
 foil and put inside a quid of tobacco. This he gave to a soldier 
 about to be exchanged. When the latter was being searched, his 
 mouth was examined, but in preparation for such an investiga- 
 tion he had taken the quid from his mouth and no one thought 
 enough of the matter to look at the tobacco. The correspon- 
 dence, save for a slight yellow stain or two, reached successfully 
 a Northern newspaper. Another common trick was to rip a 
 pocketbook apart, insert the news-letter, and then resew the 
 wallet. In a similar way, news items were literally carried on 
 foot by insertion in the leather sole of a shoe of the messenger. 
 In the attempts of various correspondents to give their papers 
 a beat on various encounters, resort was made to all sorts of 
 devices to hold the telegraph wire: on one occasion a corres- 
 pondent instructed the operator when to add the first chapter 
 of Genesis to the dispatch. This chapter was sufficiently long 
 to delay other reports until his newspaper secured a lead which 
 enabled it to be first on the street with the report of the battle. 
 
 LEADING EDITORIALS OF THE PERIOD 
 
 The most important editorial printed during the Civil War 
 Period was probably the one from the pen of Horace Greeley. 
 
CIVIL WAR PERIOD 295 
 
 It appeared in The New York Tribune on Wednesday, August 20, 
 1862 f and was entitled. "The Praver^of Twenty Millions." In 
 hfGreeley, " so rely disappointed and deeply pained" at the con- 
 duct of the President, severely criticized Lincoln for not enforc- 
 ing the laws of Congress and for not doing enough for the negro. 
 The editorial drew from Lincoln a characteristic reply which 
 was given to the press the following Saturday. The note stated 
 Lincoln's position on the slavery question so clearly and so 
 succinctly that in the North there was hardly a newspaper of 
 any importance which did not make some editorial comment. It 
 changed completely the attitude of many papers which had 
 been previously opposed to the policies of the Administration. 
 Because of its influence on the journalism of the period the 
 note, as given to the press, is reprinted in full: - 
 
 Dear Sir: I have just read yours of the 19th, addressed to myself 
 through The New York Tribune. If there be in it any statements or as- 
 sumptions of fact which I know to be erroneous, I do not now and here 
 controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe 
 to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here argue against them. If 
 there be perceptible in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive 
 it in deference to an old friend whose heart I have always supposed to 
 be right. 
 
 As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing," as you say, I have not meant 
 to leave any one in doubt. 
 
 I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under 
 the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored 
 the nearer the Union will be " the Union as it was." If there be those who 
 could not save the Union unless they could at the same time save 
 Slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would some 
 time destroy Slavery, I do not argue with them. My paramount object 
 in this struggle is to save the Union and is not either to save or destroy 
 Slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would 
 do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it, and 
 if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also 
 do that. What I do about Slavery and the colored race, I do because I 
 believe it helps to save the Union, and what I forbear, I forbear because 
 I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less when- 
 ever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more 
 whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to cor- 
 rect errors when shown to be errors ; and I shall adopt new views as fast as 
 they shall appear to be true views. I have here stated my purpose ac- 
 cording to my view of official duty, and I intend no modification of my 
 oft-expressed personal wish that all men, everywhere, could be free. 
 
296 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 The publication of Lincoln's reply was accompanied by other 
 comment in the more important papers in which rebuke to 
 Greeley was freely expressed. The National Intelligencer, of 
 Washington, for example, hoped that now Lincoln had stated 
 his position Greeley would be "less arrogant, dictatorial, and 
 acrimonious." It added : " Twenty millions of Greeley 's country- 
 men have a right to claim this at his hands in deference to the 
 high office whose incumbent he ventures to arraign before the 
 bar of public opinion in their name." 
 
 Lincoln was delighted with the response from the press to his 
 note. He found that the better understanding between himself 
 and the newspapers paved the way, to a certain extent, for the 
 Emancipation Proclamation issued on the 22d of the following 
 month. When that appeared, Greeley wrote another famous 
 ' editorial which concluded, in capital letters, "GOD BLESS 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN." 
 
 In the South the curtailed newspapers had, on the whole, but 
 little room for editorials. Most of their space was given to the 
 news of campaigns, with here and there an injection of comment 
 by the editor. Southern newspapers of the War Period have 
 not been so extensively preserved as in the North: consequently, 
 the problem is harder to pick the most influential editorial. Pos- 
 sibly none attracted greater attention, not only in the South, but 
 also in the North, than the one which early appeared in The 
 Courier, of Charleston, South Carolina, when it indited the fol- 
 lowing: 
 
 The sword must cut asunder the last tie that bound us to a people, 
 whom, in spite of wrongs and injustice wantonly inflicted through a 
 long series of years, we had not yet utterly hated and despised. The 
 last expiring spark of affection must be quenched in blood. Some of the 
 most splendid pages in our glorious history must be blurred. A blow 
 must be struck that would make the ears of every Republican fanatic 
 tingle, and whose dreadful effects will be felt by generations yet to come. 
 We must transmit a heritage of rankling and undying hate to our chil- 
 dren. 
 
 This editorial from The Courier must be judged by the stand- 
 ards of the period and not by those of to-day. It was no worse 
 than some of the treasonable doctrine advanced by the Copper- 
 head press of the North. 
 
CIVIL WAR PERIOD 297 
 
 BUTLER'S FAMOUS OR INFAMOUS ORDER 
 
 General Butler's Order Number 28 was a common topic for 
 editorial discussion and divided the press into two camps re- 
 gardless of section. This much-discussed order directed that any 
 female who should annoy or insult a Union soldier on the streets 
 of New Orleans should be arrested at once and treated like any 
 bold woman of the town plying her trade. Whatever may have 
 been the necessity for such an edict, it aroused press rebukes 
 from feminine pens. A Southern woman, writing to the editor 
 of The Savannah Republican, urged " every woman in our Con- 
 federacy" to contribute "her mite to the ripe sum" of ten 
 thousand dollars offered in a paper of the South for "the in- 
 famous Butler's head." 
 
 PUBLICATION OF FORGED PROCLAMATION 
 
 A forged proclamation, reported to have come from the pen 
 of President Lincoln, was published in May, 1864, by two New 
 York newspapers, The World and The Journal of Commerce. 
 The proclamation was designed by those interested in the forgery 
 to promote financial disturbance in the stock market which 
 could be taken advantage of by the promoters. It called for four 
 thousand citizens between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, 
 either by volunteer or by draft, to take up arms for the preser- 
 vation of the Union and in addition appointed a day of fasting 
 and prayer. The forged proclamation was received by The World 
 and by The Journal of Commerce on thin manifold sheets exactly 
 like those received regularly from the Associated Press, and the 
 time of its delivery was so arranged that the late arrival did not 
 permit extensive investigation before publishing. 
 
 Both The World and The Journal of Commerce were deceived. 
 After their discovery of the imposition, they did all in their 
 power to rectify the wrong. The sale of papers by newsboys and 
 over the counters was stopped at once. Where it was possible, 
 papers which had already been mailed to distant points were 
 recalled. Rewards were offered for the discovery of the forger. 
 The Associated Press was requested to notify every newspaper 
 in its service that the proclamation was a forgery. In spite of 
 
298 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 all that was done, however, a guard on May 18 was thrown around 
 the offices of The World and The Journal of Commerce and for 
 four days the publication of these papers was suspended and their 
 editors and owners arrested and imprisoned in Fort Lafayette, 
 but were soon released. As The World was the official spokes- 
 man of the Copperhead press of New York, and as it was a bitter 
 opponent of Lincoln's war policies, Secretary Stanton may have 
 been misled in issuing the order of suspension, but that he com- 
 mitted a tactical blunder cannot be questioned. Manton Marble, 
 the editor of The World, drew up a long statement about the forg- 
 ery, and after printing it in The World forwarded it with other 
 documents to President Lincoln. The suspension caused a great 
 sensation at the time and was looked upon as an attempt on the 
 part of Stanton to get even with the Copperhead press which 
 had so bitterly criticized his acts. 
 
 Other New York papers, including The Tribune and The Times, 
 narrowly escaped being fooled by the same bogus proclamation. 
 Copies were sent to all morning papers of the city, but the boy 
 to whom they were given delivered the copy for The Tribune at 
 the wrong door of the building and aroused so much suspicion 
 that The Tribune called up The Times to see whether the proc- 
 lamation was a genuine dispatch from the Associated Press. The 
 Times, which had accepted the message in good faith, was in 
 turn aroused, and, finding that the copy did not come from the 
 Associated Press, suppressed the document. The Sun, on ac- 
 count of its large circulation, already had gone to press when 
 its copy arrived. The Herald, before its suspicions were aroused, 
 had actually printed over twenty thousand copies of the paper 
 with the bogus proclamation, but when it found that neither 
 The Times nor The Tribune was printing the document, it im- 
 mediately substituted something else and recalled the copies 
 already printed, save a few which had already been mailed to 
 points outside the city. 
 
 The author of the forgery, Joseph Howard, was arrested and 
 upon his full confession was also sent to Fort Lafayette. The 
 bogus proclamation caused trouble for other papers which re- 
 printed it in good faith. The Picayune, in New Orleans, for ex- 
 ample, reprinted it, and General Banks, on discovering the hoax, 
 
CIVIL WAR PERIOD 299 
 
 ordered the plant of the newspaper to be seized and the news- 
 paper suppressed from May 23 to July 9, 1864. Other papers 
 of the South, when they learned of the suppression of The World 
 and The Journal of Commerce in New York, enlarged on the fact 
 and declared that it was Lincoln's policy to suspend other news- 
 papers "until freedom of speech was effectually suppressed and 
 crossed out in the North." 
 
 PERIPATETIC PAPERS 
 
 Of all the peripatetic papers published in the South, during the 
 War of the States, possibly The Memphis Appeal had the most 
 interesting history. This newspaper, the mouthpiece of the 
 Southern soldier, for it spoke for the Confederate army in general 
 and for the Army of Tennessee in particular, was forced time 
 and time again to move its type, presses, etc., from place to 
 place in order to keep in advance of the invading army. The 
 first of these migrations was on Friday, June 6, 1862, during the 
 "sea" fight in front of Memphis, when The Appeal retreated 
 in a box car to Grenada, Mississippi. The following Monday, 
 June 9, it appeared as an afternoon paper, and was published 
 under difficulties because the exchanges and mail from which it 
 got most of its news continued to be delivered at Memphis. 
 When the Federals crowded down toward Grenada, The Appeal 
 went farther back to Jackson, Mississippi : from November 29, 
 the date of the last issue at Grenada, there was no issue until De- 
 cember 13, when The Appeal made its bow at Jackson as follows: 
 "Though driven from home, we are not among strangers." 
 Here again the paper had its same troubles with the exchange 
 list and the scarcity of paper, and for over six weeks it appeared 
 with its news set in nonpareil type on paper of varying shape, 
 color, and size. Shelled out of Jackson on May 14, The Appeal , 
 taking its presses and its type, retreated by way of the Southern 
 Raijroad to Meridian, only to find a more permanent place at 
 Atlanta, where it was located between Whitehall Street and the 
 Atlanta and Westpoint Railroad, but it left a few cases of type 
 and an old proof-press, with which to get out small extras daily, 
 at Meridian. From Atlanta the press and type were shipped to 
 Montgomery, but part of the staff continued to issue extra 
 
300 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 news-slips from a proof-press. Again the paper, finding it neces- 
 sary to make a change, went to Macon, but made a stop at 
 Columbus on the way. At Macon the press, hid in a safe place, 
 was not discovered until after General Sherman had issued an 
 order that the destruction of both public and private property 
 must cease, but the proof -press, and the few cases of type which 
 had been left behind hi Columbus were, after being pied, de- 
 stroyed by the order of Major-General Wilson. Thus for three 
 years The Memphis Appeal was printed away from its home 
 city, but immediately after Appomattox the paper returned 
 to Memphis, where it brought out its first issue November 5, 
 1865. 
 
 Another peripatetic newspaper of the South was The Chatta- 
 nooga Rebel, often spoken of as the organ of the Army of Tennes- 
 see. -A link in Southern Journalism between the ante-bellum 
 papers and those of the period devoted to the reconstruction, 
 it made its first appearance in August, 1862, being published 
 by F. M. Paul, with the assistance of John C. Burch. An early 
 editor was Henry Watterson, who later achieved still greater 
 fame as the editor of The Louisville Courier- Journal. After the 
 First Manassas, Watterson, giving up his Washington corres- 
 pondence, came to Nashville, where he joined the staff of The 
 Republican Banner. Upon the suspension of that newspaper and 
 the fall of the city, Watterson joined the Confederate army as a 
 voluntary aide. It was while serving in this capacity that he met 
 the publisher of The Rebel, who persuaded him that he could serve 
 the South better with his pen than in any other way. Neither 
 Paul nor Watterson approved of the conduct of Bragg, who was 
 in control of the army. The publisher, however, thought that 
 Bragg's official position entitled him to editorial immunity from 
 The Rebel. Watterson, however, thought otherwise, and later, 
 during the absence of the publisher in North Carolina, wrote one 
 of his typical editorials in which he attacked the commander. 
 For this "mutiny" the punishment was prompt; the next day 
 General Bragg issued an official order forbidding the circulation 
 of The Rebel within the Confederate lines. Associated with Wat- 
 terson on The Rebel was Albert Roberts, who had worked with 
 the former on The Republican Banner. After the suspension both 
 
 
CIVIL WAR PERIOD 301 
 
 went to Atlanta where they became associated with The Con- 
 stitution of that city. The Rebel was permitted to appear once 
 again and did excellent service, always keeping just a little in 
 advance of the Federals, until it was finally forced to surrender 
 at Selma in April, 1865. 
 
 ARMY ORGANS 
 
 During the War of the States the Federal troops frequently 
 found newspapers in towns taken by Union arms. Often they 
 used the printing-press of such a paper to issue an army organ. 
 When the Third Iowa Regiment, for example, passed through 
 Macon, Missouri, some of the members of the regiment who 
 were printers seized a press and some type belonging to The 
 Register of that place and published an army paper called The 
 Union. When General Banks received the surrender of Port 
 Hudson, Louisiana, on January 8, 1863, some of the printers in 
 the army seized a local newspaper and got out one issue of The 
 Port Hudson Freeman on July 15, 1863, to tell the other soldiers, 
 with large display heads, about the Union victories. The editor 
 of The Port Hudson Freeman was Charles A. Ackert. One of the 
 best of these army organs was The Weekly Junior Register ', is- 
 sued after the capture of Franklin, Louisiana, by General Banks: 
 its issue for April 25, 1863, was printed on the blank side of wall- 
 paper. Especially interesting was The Kettle-Drum, the small 
 official organ of a Pennsylvania regiment. 
 
 Confederate forces were not without their own newspapers. 
 The Missouri Army Organ was a four-page sheet published in the 
 interest of the Confederate army of that State. It was edited by 
 Joseph W. Tucker, a Methodist preacher, who had been editor 
 of The Missouri State Journal at St. Louis. It was first published 
 on October 28, 1861, when the army was in camp at Neosh. An 
 editorial note asserted that "this little newspaper is paid for by 
 the State, expressly for the use of the army." The last number 
 was issued at Camp Churchill Clark, near Corinth, Arkansas. 
 The Rebel and Copperhead Ventilator at Edina, Missouri, was 
 also in a certain sense an army sheet. 
 
302 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 EDITORS AS GENERALS 
 
 If the newspapers of the North seemed too willing, without 
 sufficient military preparation, to tell the Government how the 
 war should be conducted, they were but doing what thousands 
 of others were doing, from the select coterie who dropped into 
 a metropolitan club for a little chat down to the farmers who 
 gathered around the stove beside the cracker barrel in the coun- 
 try grocery store. Much criticism has been made of these editors 
 who told McClellan how to take Richmond and advised Farra- 
 gut how to capture New Orleans, but the fact must not be lost 
 sight of that the close relation which existed between the press 
 and politics was not to be severed suddenly even by the outbreak 
 of a great war. Very often the suggestion of military criticism had 
 come from some official in Washington too petty to forget politi- 
 cal aspirations even at such a time as the Civil War. 
 
 Much of this criticism of newspaper generals was directed to- 
 ward New York editors in general and toward Horace Greeley, 
 of The Tribune, in particular. The latter, it must be remembered, 
 had been the semi-official adviser of party officials and had been 
 instrumental in nominating Lincoln at Chicago, and naturally 
 thought it was his duty to advise the President, whom he con- 
 sidered rather inexperienced for such great problems as now 
 presented themselves for solution. Secretary of State Seward 
 had been a partner of Greeley in party organs, and again it was 
 perfectly natural for the editor of The Tribune to think himself 
 equally, or even better, informed about international relations. 
 Some of the carping criticism which Greeley bestowed upon 
 Lincoln may have been due to the fact that the latter had ele- 
 vated to the highest office within his power a man whom Greeley 
 had " nipped at Chicago" for reasons already given in a preced- 
 ing chapter. 
 
 The New York newspaper generals were favorite topics for the 
 pens of the cartoonists of the period. One of the best products 
 of their pen was a cartoon which caricatured Greeley, of The 
 Tribune, Raymond, of The Times, and Bennett, of The Herald, 
 as "The Three Bedlams" who were continually stirring the 
 pot of "Governmental Botheration." Another cartoon was 
 
GREELEY'S EDITORIAL ATTACK 
 "On to Richmond" as seen by a contemporary 
 

CIVIL WAR PERIOD 303 
 
 a picture of the newspaper offices on Park Row: it showed The 
 Tribune building transformed into a military school which 
 advertised itself as having "no connection with the shop [New 
 York Times] over the way." Unusually popular at the time was 
 one which, entitled, "Assault by the Press Gang," featured 
 Bryant, of The Evening Post, and Greeley, of The Tribune, at- 
 tacking Secretary Stanton and General McClellan : in the cartoon 
 Greeley was holding under McClellan's nose a copy of his edito- 
 rial, "On to Richmond." This advice by Greeley, "On to 
 Richmond," kept standing so long at the top of his editorial 
 columns, appealed to the pen of cartoonists especially after 
 the failure of the attack, doubtless hastened by Greeley's com- 
 mand. O\. careful survey of the cartoons published during the 
 Civil War Period disclosed the interesting fact that Greeley was 
 caricatured more often than any other man, not excluding 
 Abraham Lincoln.") 
 
 ABSENCE OF CARTOONS 
 
 For some reason the daily papers of the Civil War Period pub- 
 lished no cartoons. They did circulate, however, through such 
 media as envelopes, broadsides, colored lithographs, etc. And 
 the artists connected with Vanity Fair, a comic weekly published 
 in New York in the early sixties, drew most of their inspiration 
 from the stirring events of the period. The chief cartoonist of 
 Vanity Fair was H. L. Stephens : it was he who pictured New York 
 editors as he saw them in their paper military campaign. In the 
 absence of cartoons, however, the press lacked a great weapon 
 to supplement the power of its editorials. Possibly the absence 
 of cartoons in daily papers may be explained by the fact that 
 when Hoe put the type on the cylinder, he made illustrations 
 extremely difficult and costly. But, it must be confessed, the 
 leading metropolitan dailies had, even in the early days of the 
 war, begun to stereotype their pages and to use war maps 
 extensively. The explanation, therefore, may be the one most 
 often given: there was no one connected with the newspapers 
 of sufficient artistic ability to do the work. Until The World 
 revived cartoons in the eighties the illustrated weeklies had the 
 field of wordless journalism to themselves. 
 
304 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 CIKCULATION CONTEST CAEICATURED 
 
 Something resembling a cartoon, however, did appear on the 
 first page of The New York Times on the morning of December 
 11, 1861. Bennett, having won a wager that his Herald had a 
 larger circulation than that of Greeley's Tribune, began blowing a 
 bag of braggadocio that The Tribune and The Times together 
 did not " have one half as many subscribers as The Herald, which 
 sells from one hundred and five thousand to one hundred and 
 thirty-five thousand of its daily issue." Raymond accepted the 
 challenge and The Times offered the following wagers : 
 
 $2500 that The Herald daily issue is Not 135,000 
 
 $2500 that it is not 105,000 
 
 $2500 that it is not 100,000 
 
 $2500 that it is not 75,000 
 
 $2500 that The Times average daily issue is over ... 25,000 
 
 $2500 that it is over 30,000 
 
 $2500 that it is over 40,000 
 
 $2500 that it is over 50,000 
 
 $2500 that it is over 75,000 
 
 On the morning mentioned, The Times published two carica- 
 tures of Bennett. The first pictured him, in Scotch costume, 
 inflating the wind-bag of The Herald. Under it The Times re- 
 printed numerous extracts from The Herald about the latter's 
 boasted circulation and again repeated the wagers offered. The 
 second and lower caricatures showed Bennett in a recumbent 
 position with pins puncturing the bag, from which all the wind 
 had escaped. Under it The Times reprinted from The Herald 
 the following extracts which had appeared after the wagers were 
 first offered: 
 
 BROTHER BENNETT RESORTS TO THE CONSOLATIONS 
 OF RELIGION 
 
 From The Herald, Dec. 5. 
 
 Betting, even when fair, is AGAINST OUR RELIGION, and we 
 cannot consent to let him have the information he seeks in that way. 
 
 From The Herald, Dec. 7. 
 
 Mr. Mephistopheles GREELEY and that little villain RAYMOND 
 are greatly moved upon the subject of the relative circulation of The 
 
CIVIL WAR PERIOD 305 
 
 Herald and their own petty papers, and are affected to tears about the 
 matter. We are sorry for them, but their attempts to inveigle us into 
 a silly bet are absolutely in vain. THE PRACTICE OF BETTING IS 
 IMMORAL. We cannot approve of it. It may suit GREELEY and 
 RAYMOND, who have exhibited very little morality in the conduct of 
 their journals, but it will not do for us. 
 
 According to the terms one half of the wager was to be de- 
 posited immediately in the bank and the whole was to be devoted 
 by the winner to the relief of families of Civil War volunteers. 
 If reproduced, this page would show, not only both caricatures, 
 but also a typical war map so frequently inserted during the Civil 
 War Period, not merely in The Times, but also in many other 
 papers. 
 
 For the bet Bennett suggested as substitute that The Times 
 and The Tribune try to get the post-office printing of adver- 
 tised letters awarded to the local paper with the largest circu- 
 lation. Raymond's rejoinder was that the post-office offered 
 rates too far below the established charges of The Times to make 
 the job profitable. Bennett never explained why it was morally 
 right to bet with The Tribune and morally wrong to bet with 
 The Times. On the other hand, Raymond, who had started with 
 determination to keep personalities out of his paper, regretted 
 that he had inserted the caricatures which had only advertised 
 The Herald in the columns of The Times. 
 
 SOUTHERN SCARCITY OF PAPER 
 
 Southern newspapers were warned by The New Orleans Bul- 
 letin that they ought to say less about secession until they ceased 
 to use Northern type, Northern presses, Northern ink, and 
 Northern paper in bringing out their sheets. The assertion has 
 been made that the tone of many papers in the South was tem- 
 pered by a realization of their dependence upon the North for 
 printing supplies, but the election returns of 1860 showed that 
 the voters of the South, while opposed to putting Lincoln in the 
 White House, were not in favor of secession, for the total vote 
 of the various tickets opposed to secession was larger than 
 that of the candidate favoring a separation. Hence this charge 
 of an ulterior motive influencing editorial expression has no 
 
306 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 more foundation than a similar charge brought against the voters 
 of the South. 
 
 The threat implied in the assertion of The New Orleans Bul- 
 letin proved only too true during the war. The supply of paper 
 soon became so inadequate to the demand that practically every 
 paper at strategic points in the South was forced to reduce its 
 size. The Charleston Courier, for example, was compelled several 
 times to make such reductions: the first was on September 1, 
 1861, when it reduced its pages to 18 x 26; the second on January 
 1, 1862, when the pages were reduced to 15 x 24; the third on 
 April 1, 1862, when the pages were made 13 x 20, with only five 
 columns to the page; later it appeared on a single printed sheet, 
 until by February 13, 1865, it was a small sheet, 10 x 15, with 
 only four columns to the page. In numerous instances papers of 
 the South did away with headlines, and simply issued small news- 
 sheets about the size of handbills in which the news was printed 
 on the smallest type with which the office was equipped. On ac- 
 count of the scarcity of paper some of the leading newspapers 
 began a systematic gathering of " cotton or linen rags, white or 
 colored," for which the highest market price was paid either in 
 money or in subscriptions to the newspapers themselves. Many 
 of the papers were forced to suspend publication entirely : others, 
 not knowing how long they might continue publication, published 
 notices limiting the period for which they would receive sub- 
 scriptions. The Memphis Daily Appeal did not take subscrip- 
 tions for a period longer than two months and The Macon Daily 
 Confederate refused all orders for more than three months. 
 
 EDITIONS ON WALL-PAPER 
 
 Before entirely ceasing publication many newspapers availed 
 themselves of such materials as common wrapping-paper, writ- 
 ing paper, and paper bags : a few actually printed the news on the 
 blank side of wall-paper. Among the latter with wall-paper edi- 
 tions were the following: The Pictorial Democrat, of Alexandria, 
 Louisiana; The Daily Citizen, of Vicksburg, Mississippi; The 
 Courier, of Opelousas, Louisiana; The Southern Sentinel, of 
 Alexandria, Louisiana; The Courier, of St. Martinsville, Louis- 
 iana; The Stars and Stripes, of Thibodaux, Louisiana; etc. 
 
CIVIL WAR PERIOD 307 
 
 SUBSCRIPTION RATES RAISED 
 
 The scarcity of paper greatly increased subscription rates. 
 The prices asked by a few sheets may be mentioned by way of 
 illtistration. During 1864 the subscription price of The Macon 
 Daily Telegraph, published by Joseph Clisby, was forty-eight 
 dollars a year; in October, 1864, it raised its subscription price 
 to sixty dollars a year; in December, 1864, it went to seventy- 
 two dollars a year; in January, 1865, it again advanced the 
 price to ninety-six dollars a year; in March, 1865, it boosted the 
 price to one hundred and twenty dollars a year. In view of 
 the fact that The Macon Daily Telegraph was often a small one- 
 page sheet, such a subscription price seems unusually high. The 
 Memphis Appeal, though it continued to be sold at half-price 
 to Confederate soldiers, advanced its regular subscription price 
 in June, 1863, to two dollars and a half per month; again in July 
 to three dollars a month; still again in January of the next year 
 to four dollars a month; and once again in March to five dollars 
 a month these prices were for coin currency and not for paper 
 money. The daily edition of The Georgia Journal and Messen- 
 ger, published at Macon by Knowles & Rose, charged seventy- 
 two dollars a year at the beginning of the war, and later 
 advanced its rate as paper became more scarce. 
 
 Evidently the high prices charged for single copies of news- 
 papers must have aroused numerous protests. In one of its wall- 
 paper editions, June 18, 1863, The Citizen, of Vicksburg, printed 
 an item on "The Price of Our Paper and the News Boys," in 
 which the following explanation was given: "The price of our 
 paper at the office is twenty-five cents. Newboys who charge 
 fifty cents on the streets are not authorized by us to sell at that 
 price; and those who object to the extortion should call at the 
 office and get their papers at first cost. We cannot control the 
 trade nor the prices of newsboys and can only sell our papers to 
 them at the same prices that we get from those who call at the 
 office." 
 
 Some of the papers in the South avoided total suspension by 
 leading a peripatetic career. Box cars were transformed into 
 printing-offices and taken from place to place with each advance 
 
308 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 of the Federal forces. Occasionally papers temporarily suspended 
 for the same reason as that given by The Daily Confederate, of 
 Macon, Georgia: " There was no paper issued from The Con- 
 federate office on Sunday morning. Every man in the establish- 
 ment was in the field on Saturday. We hope our subscribers 
 will consider this a sufficient excuse. Two of our employees, we 
 believe, were 'shot in the neck.'" 
 
 INKS AND NEAR-INKS 
 
 The scarcity of ink caused the publishers of newspapers in the 
 South almost as much annoyance as the scarcity of paper. The 
 poor typographical appearance of some papers was not the fault 
 of the printer, but of the materials with which he had to work. 
 Home-made inks, though often so poorly mixed that they did 
 not spread evenly over the rollers, nevertheless gave a far better 
 impression than did some of the substitutes or "near inks." 
 The extremity to which certain publishers were put when print- 
 ing-ink could no longer be bought from the North was illus- 
 trated rather forcibly when they were compelled to print their 
 sheets with ordinary shoe-blacking. The Memphis Appeal was 
 one of these papers which had to employ such a substitute for 
 ink. 
 
 NEWSPAPER TICKETS 
 
 When federal troops occupied Southern cities and permitted 
 the publication of its newspapers, under certain restrictions, 
 some difficulty was experienced in arranging payment for sub- 
 scriptions. Usually this difficulty was met by selling tickets in 
 amounts ranging from two to five dollars in Federal currency. 
 Each ticket thus sold was good for one copy of the paper daily 
 during the time for which the subscription had been paid. Oc- 
 casionally notes for amounts mentioned, payable in thirty days, 
 were taken from responsible parties. In other instances all copies 
 were sold over the newspaper counter and only coin was ac- 
 cepted in payment. Resentment was felt by the local citizens 
 because Confederate bills were refused as of no value what- 
 ever. 
 
CIVIL WAR PERIOD 309 
 
 CONDITIONS IN THE NORTH 
 
 In the North the daily paper suffered no such difficulties as 
 found in the South in the matter of securing the raw product on 
 which to print the news. The larger dailies, however, were forced 
 to carry the additionally heavy burdens of war correspondents. 
 In the general advance in prices on all merchandise the news- 
 paper was no exception. Printers shared in the increase in wages 
 and this added a considerable amount to the cost of production. 
 Printing-paper doubled in cost the first year and again the 
 second until it brought thirty cents a pound. After the first year 
 of the war most of the leading dailies advanced their prices about 
 one cent every twelve months until they were selling at four and 
 five cents a copy. There were, however, a number of noticeable 
 exceptions to this advance in price. The Sun, of New York, 
 which had been founded as a penny paper and had taken great 
 pride in its price, held off for a long time before increasing its 
 rate: even then it found a subterfuge by advertising, "Price one 
 cent in gold, two cents otherwise." Part of this increase in price 
 was due to the fact that newspapers increased their size, not by 
 enlarging the sheet as in the case of the old six-penny blanket 
 papers, but by increasing the number of pages, now possible 
 through the invention of Hoe. Other papers partially met the 
 increased cost by increasing the charges for advertising and by 
 still keeping their old size. 
 
 The war, especially in the North, made many additional 
 newspaper readers. Papers were eagerly purchased in order to 
 learn whether relatives or friends were among those wounded or 
 lost in battle. The desire to know the news gave a 
 petus to t* 10 -forH Q y "fiwap ]^, wKTrh , iintilhthe Civil Wnr, had 
 attracted but little attention. FoY~thlTSmiday edition, though 
 no larger than regular issues, an increase of one cent was gener- 
 ally asked. This additional charge was justified on the ground 
 that the distribution of papers cost more on Sundays. Gradu- 
 ally the papers began to add, by way of good measure, a few 
 additional features, chiefly semi-news in value, to the Sunday 
 editions. In this way began the differentiation between the daily 
 paper and the 
 
310 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 CONDITIONS IN THE WEST 
 
 'city 
 
 In the West different conditions obtained. Here the scarcity 
 of paper was especially felt. The Rocky Mountain News, of 
 Denver, frequently found itself in the same position as that of 
 many of the Southern papers and made its regular appearances 
 only with the help of wrapping-paper, tissue paper, and even 
 writing-paper. The towns of the West and those hi some of the 
 Border States were compelled, when martial law was declared, 
 to reduce their size and print little else than military orders and 
 official notices. On the Pacific Coast there was no increase in 
 subscription rates. The price of "one bit" (12J cents) was still 
 sufficient to meet the increased cost of white paper, as the news- 
 papers did not increase their size, but met the situation by a more 
 careful pruning of the news items. The California papers became 
 masters of the art of boiling down the news in small space. 
 
 STATE EXEMPTIONS FOR WORKERS 
 
 Many of the States in the Confederacy provided for the 
 exemption of newspaper men from military duty in order that 
 the public might not be deprived of newspapers. Some restric- 
 tions were, of course, imposed. In South Carolina, for example, 
 provision was made that the number thus excused should not 
 exceed seven for a daily in Charleston, five for a daily in Colum- 
 bia, and two for a country paper. In Virginia the law exempted 
 "one editor of each newspaper not being published in the state, 
 and such employe's as the editor or proprietor may certify on 
 honor to be indispensible for conducting the publication of the 
 newspaper, so long as the same is regularly published at least 
 once a week." 
 
 The Northern States during the war were not so generous in 
 excusing editors and printers from military service. The result 
 was that numerous country weeklies found themselves severely 
 handicapped in getting out their issues. The difficulty was met 
 by sending to a newspaper in a near-by city and having the lat- 
 ter paper print one half of the sheet with the latest available 
 war news. The other half was printed in the country town and 
 filled with local news and local advertising. From this scheme of 
 
CIVIL WAR PERIOD 311 
 
 cooperation grew the present plan of getting out newspapers with 
 the help of patent "insides," or "outsides," as the case may be. 
 In this way the cost of production for country weeklies was 
 greatly reduced. Often the half-printed sheets were sold for the 
 cost of white paper. The profit of the producing company was 
 made from general advertising. 
 
 IMPROVEMENTS IN STEREOTYPING 
 
 Though The London Times in 1856 had adopted a modern 
 papier-mache process of stereotyping, it used the process, not for 
 pages, but only for columns, which were fastened on the type- 
 revolving cylinder of Hoe's press by means of V-shaped rules. 
 In the same year a proposition was made to The New York 
 Tribune by English stereotypers to establish a plant in New York 
 and to stereotype The New York Tribune at so much per column. 
 Nothing, however, came from these negotiations. Newspapers 
 in New York and in other large cities continued to buy new 
 outfits of type practically every three months. 
 
 When the War of the States broke out, circulation had in- 
 creased so rapidly that it was impossible for either The New York 
 Tribune or The New York Herald to meet the demand for papers 
 and Richard Hoe was negotiating with Greeley and Bennett for 
 the construction of twenty-cylinder type-revolving presses to 
 meet the situation. Meanwhile, Charles Craske, a stereotyper 
 by the clay process, had been experimenting with the papier- 
 mache process in an attempt to apply it to newspaper pages. His 
 experiments were carried on in rooms provided by The New York 
 Tribune, which had reached the point where it must have the 
 faster presses already mentioned or set its pages in duplicate, as 
 had been the practice of The London Times before it adopted the 
 papier-mache process. His idea was to cast the whole page after 
 the manner now employed, but in his experiments, covering over 
 two years, he failed to make satisfactory progress because he 
 attempted to cast the plates type-high. It was only when he 
 reached the conclusion to cast a thin plate and then to compel 
 press-builders to change the cylinder that he succeeded in over- 
 coming his difficulty. In August, 1861, The Tribune commenced 
 to print from curved ste?66"fyped plates of whole pages. 
 
312 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 An unfortunate though humorous incident delayed the success 
 of Craske for several months. His room in the building of The 
 Tribune was directly over the editorial sanctum of Horace 
 Greeley. In the course of one of his experiments some hot and 
 exceedingly dirty water from the steam heaters was spilled upon 
 the floor : it leaked through the boards and dropped directly upon 
 Greeley's bald head. Some of the hot water which carried chem- 
 icals in solution actually stained the halo of whiskers under 
 Greeley's chin. The accident so incensed the editor of The 
 Tribune that he went upstairs and threw the stereotyping outfit 
 from the building. 
 
 There has been little change in stereotyping newspaper pages 
 since August, 1861, when The Tribune adopted the papier-mache 
 process. The New York Times soon adopted the new process, as 
 did The New York Herald. Because of this process it was no 
 longer necessary to add additional cylinders to the press. Pages 
 could be duplicated to the number desired and several presses 
 could be employed at the same time to print the same edition of 
 the newspaper. Craske not only revolutionized newspaper 
 stereotyping in America, but he also changed completely the 
 construction of American printing-presses. By 1880 forty-five 
 daily newspapers in the United States were printing with plates 
 made by this papier-mache process : they were distributed among 
 the following States Pennsylvania, 10; New York, 9; Ohio, 6; 
 Illinois, 6; Massachusetts, 2; Maryland, 2; California, 2; Mis- 
 souri, 2; Wisconsin, 1 ; Minnesota, 1 ; New Jersey, 1 ; Kentucky, 1 ; 
 Indiana, 1; Michigan, 1. 
 
 ADVERTISING OF THE PERIOD 
 
 Newspaper advertising, not only in the South, but also in the 
 North, reflected the spirit of the great conflict of the period. Both 
 Governments used the advertising columns extensively to make 
 known their various needs for army supplies. Other advertise- 
 ments for some unaccountable reason escaped the watchful eye 
 of the censor, even in the South, where the censorship was more 
 strict than in the North. The following advertisement, printed 
 in The Charleston Mercury early in 1861, " boiled down" an 
 important news item: 
 
CIVIL WAR PERIOD 313 
 
 Wanted A first class strongly built clipper. She must be fast, 
 light draft, and capable of being fitted out as a privateer. Address 
 Sunder through the post-office. 
 
 In the North newspaper pages fairly bristled with advertise- 
 ments like the following: 
 
 An officer of the First Division proposes to raise a Regiment to 
 Volunteer its services to the State in support of the Federal Union. 
 Persons desirous of uniting in such a movement are requested to ad- 
 dress, post-paid, Union Volunteers, N.Y., Post Office Station D. 
 
 Attention! Persons desirous of joining a Military Organization 
 for the purpose of Defending the Union, and to uphold the laws at all 
 hazards, will please address Volunteer, Tribune Office. 
 
 The advertisements in the newspapers of the Secession States 
 continually indicated the tremendous fluctuation in the value of 
 the paper currency of the Confederacy. In the North a similar 
 condition obtained even though the fluctuation was not so 
 marked. A clothing store, for example, published an announce- 
 ment that, owing to the victory of the Union army and the fall 
 in gold, it was offering its stock of gentlemen's furnishings at 
 greatly reduced prices. Other advertisements were linked with 
 war news in similar ways : a Chicago bookstore advertised season- 
 able books, in treasonable times, at reasonable prices. Whatever 
 was the product offered for sale, its advertisement often had a 
 distinctly war-time flavor. The conditions were identical so far 
 as mode of treatment of advertisements was concerned with 
 those which obtained when the United States united with the 
 Allies in 1917, save that heavy advertisers did not give up their 
 space for the insertion of notices urging citizens to buy Govern- 
 ment bonds. 
 
 In the most exciting places of publication, newspapers did not 
 neglect their attention to advertising even where the supply of 
 paper was only sufficient to print single sheets. The Evening 
 Whig, for example, in its first issue after Richmond had been 
 evacuated, told its readers: 
 
 Several days will elapse, we suppose, before business is actively re- 
 sumed. Still, there are stocks if goods in the city, and others will be 
 rapidly introduced by loyal perspns who may be authorized to carry on 
 
314 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 trade in Richmond. We suggest that parties having anything for sale 
 in Richmond, especially the necessaries of life, will make the fact 
 known through the advertising columns of The Whig. 
 
 POSTAL REGULATIONS 
 
 ht 
 
 Changes in the postal laws affecting newspapers were so slig 
 after 1825 that they have not been noticed under the various 
 periods. Always, however, there was some discussion by Post- 
 master-Generals, in their reports to Congress, about the advis- 
 ability of charging for newspapers by weight rather than by 
 piece. Attention was repeatedly called to the fact that small, 
 struggling sheets paid the same postage as the mammoth blanket 
 sheets of New York and elsewhere, which were, on the average, 
 six feet square. On March 3, 1845, a new act, while changing 
 letter postage, allowed the old newspaper rates to stand, except 
 that all papers were granted free postage for not exceeding thirty 
 miles from place of publication, provided that they were "of no 
 greater size or superficies than 1900 square inches." In 1847 
 newspaper postage to California and Oregon was fixed at four 
 and one half cents. In 1851 the free limit of thirty miles was 
 abolished, but free circulation within the county of publication 
 was granted. Under the same Act of 1851 quarterly rates were 
 established. Weeklies, for example, paid five cents a quarter for 
 all distances, under fifty miles and out of the county; ten cents 
 for over fifty and under three hundred miles; fifteen cents for 
 over three hundred and under one thousand miles; twenty cents 
 for over one thousand and under two thousand miles; thirty 
 cents for over two thousand and under four thousand. For semi- 
 weeklies it was double, for tri-weeklies treble, and for dailies five 
 times these rates. A distinction was made for newspapers under 
 three hundred square inches : they were charged only one quarter 
 of the rates just given. 
 
 These changes affected in no way the Act of 1825 which 
 granted to every printer of a newspaper permission to send one 
 paper free of charge to each and every other printer of a news- 
 paper in the United States. This special privilege, undoubtedly 
 abused by the printers, imposed heavy burdens upon the Postal 
 Department, for Postmaster-Generals were continually discus- 
 
CIVIL WAR PERIOD 315 
 
 sing the so-called "unjustifiable discrimination in favor of edi- 
 tors." During the first year of the period, Postmaster-General 
 Holt published a report for 1859. His comment was typical of 
 the attitude of the Postal Department : 
 
 The newspapers received by the journalist is, in American parlance, 
 his stock in trade. From their columns he gathers materials for his own, 
 and thus makes the same business use of them as does the merchant 
 of his goods or the manufacturer of the raw material which he proposes 
 to manufacture into fabric. But as the government transports nothing 
 free of charge to the farmer, merchant, or mechanic to enable them to 
 prosecute successfully and economically their different pursuits, why 
 should it do so for the journalist? If the latter can rightfully claim that 
 his newspaper shall thus be delivered to him at the public expense, why 
 may he not also claim that his stationery and type, and indeed every- 
 thing which enters into the preparation of the sheet he issues as his 
 means of living, be delivered to him on the same terms? It has been 
 alleged, I am aware, that postage on newspaper exchanges would be a 
 tax on the dissemination of knowledge. But so is the postage which the 
 farmer, mechanic and merchant pay on the newspaper for which they 
 subscribe; yet it is paid by them uncomplainingly. If it should be in- 
 sisted that the publishers of newspapers, as a class, are in such a con- 
 dition as to entitle them to demand the aid of the public funds, it may 
 be safely answered that such an assumption is wholly unwarranted. 
 Journalism in the United States rests upon the deepest and broadest 
 foundation, and has here won a career far more brilliant and prosper- 
 ous than in any other nation in the world. The exceedingly reduced 
 rates at which its issues pass through the mails secure to it advan- 
 tages enjoyed under no other government. 
 
 The newspapers fought bitterly any attempt to abolish this 
 special privilege by which they secured the news. Already, 
 however, the larger dailies had united to form press associations 
 to share the financial burdens of gathering the news. The 
 smaller papers then began to condense from their daily contem- 
 poraries so that there was no longer any necessity for this whole- 
 sale exchange. By the time all newspapers were charged by 
 weight the exchange privilege had adjusted itself to such reason- 
 able limits that it no longer warranted any special attention 
 from the Postal Department. 
 
 Before the War of the States the local postmaster was very 
 lax in collecting postage on newspapers. To a certain extent 
 they had been corrupted by publishers who were unusually gen- 
 
316 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 erous in supplying free copies to postmasters, postal clerks on 
 trains, stage-drivers, etc. This petty graft often gave the pro- 
 vincial newspaper free circulation even outside the county of 
 publication. Or, at best, it reduced appreciably the revenue due 
 the Government. The large increase in newspaper production 
 during the war brought about a radical change due to the activ- 
 ities of the Postal Department. New stamps in denominations of 
 five, ten, and twenty-five cents were prepared for the defraying 
 of postage of newspaper packages and more careful postal 
 inspection prevented any loss in revenue to which the Govern- 
 ment was entitled. 
 
 The Post-Office Department did not hesitate to deny North- 
 ern newspapers the use of the mails when they published matter 
 adjudged to be treasonable. One illustration must suffice. On 
 August 16, 1861, the Grand Jury of New York City " presented " 
 The Journal of Commerce, The Daily News, The Day Book, The 
 Freeman's Journal, and The Brooklyn Eagle to the Circuit Court 
 of the United States on the charge that these papers contained 
 treasonable utterances "calculated to aid and comfort the 
 enemy," and added to its presentment the following conclusion: 
 "The conduct of these disloyal presses is of course condemned 
 and abhorred by all loyal men, but the grand jury will be glad 
 to learn from the Court that it is also subject to indictment and 
 condign punishment." Thereupon the Post-Office Department 
 at Washington sent the following notice to the Postmaster of 
 New York: 
 
 Sir: The Postmaster-General directs that from an'd after your re- 
 ceipt of this letter none of the newspapers published in New York City 
 which were lately presented by the grand jury as dangerous, from their 
 disloyalty, shall be forwarded in the mails. 
 
 At other times the Post-Office Department denied the mails to 
 Northern papers which expressed dissatisfaction with the use of 
 force to overcome the States then in secession. 
 
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 corners of the 
 
318 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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. 
 
 EEACTIONS OF THE WAR 
 
 The war reacted hi 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 
 
RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD 319 
 
 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 of independent 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 TheSprinpfald Republican. It was his aim to 
 create a newspaper rthat should stand firmly in the possession 
 of powers of its own; that should be concerned with the passing 
 anor^oT^with the past; that should perfectly reflect its age, aifd 
 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 attention be- 
 
320 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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, hi 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 
 
 

 RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD 321 
 
 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 Grecley, 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. 
 
 PICRIC 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 the East. In 
 
322 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 l 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 Tfo 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 
 

 RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD 323 
 
 of the Western advance, it was founded at Old Kearny City, 
 Nebraska Territory, in May, ISGGj 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 
 
 C^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 
 
324 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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. 
 
RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD 325 
 
 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. 
 
 DANA'S ATTACKS ON GRANT 
 
 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": 
 
326 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 
 
RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD 327 
 
 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 
 pieture of a tombstone with the following inscription: - 
 
 Sacred 
 
 To the Memory of 
 American Liberty 
 
 Born 
 July 4, 1776 
 
 Died 
 
 At Columbia, S.GJ 
 
 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 in the city. 
 
328 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 DANA AND HIS PAPER 
 
 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 "hi 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 Neio 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 
 
RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD 
 
 329 
 
 for The Times and The Tribune during the year 1863 of the 
 Civil War: 
 
 Expense 
 
 Tribune 
 
 Times 
 
 Editors and correspondence, not war 
 
 $49,228 
 
 $45,660 
 
 War Correspondence 
 
 25,706 
 
 14,040 
 
 Compositors 
 
 49,547 
 
 45,741 
 
 Special telegraphing 
 
 12,623 
 
 7,817 
 
 Supplements, Tribune, 21, Times, 11 
 
 9,000 
 
 4,730 
 
 
 
 
 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 secureT 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 appesfred 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." 
 
330 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 ATTITUDE OF TWEED TOWARD NEW YORK PRESS 
 
 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, 
 
RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD 331 
 
 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. 
 Win slow, 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 
 
332 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 R~hett, ~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. 
 
RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD 333 
 
 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." 
 
 CARPET-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. 
 
334 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 fighb 
 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- 
 
RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD 335 
 
 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 
 1 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. 
 
336 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 Inter ocean 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. J , 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 
 
RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD 337 
 
 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, ISST^he turned the paper over to his 
 son, William Randolph Hearst, who used it as a starter for the 
 chain of Hearst newspapers. In ISjffl The Daily Alta 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^AUa California 
 gradually lost circulation and finally disappeared completely in 
 1891. The Bulletin, which had been started in San Francisco on 
 October ^J.8^, six years after the famous gold /ush^ by James 
 King, of William, who lost his life in May, 185#, 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 Rose water. 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 
 
338 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 jDe- 
 troit, The Evening News, started in August, 1873, by James 1 ;. 
 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 
 
 
RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD 339 
 
 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 
 
340 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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, 1&3Q. 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 
 
 
RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD 341 
 
 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, in 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 al 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 no writer 
 
342 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 
 ind special features designed primarily to appeal to the women. 
 
 CHICAGO FIRE AND LOCAL PRESS 
 
 The great fire which occurred in Chicago in October, 1870, 
 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- 
 
RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD 343 
 
 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 'Tirnes, had exposed theJMand 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 
 
344 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 re'sume' 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. 
 
RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD 345 
 
 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. 
 
346 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 TAX ON ADVERTISING REMOVED 
 
 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 
 
 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: 
 
RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD 347 
 
 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, 1874JI 
 by which postage on newspapers was paid by weight and withfl 
 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 
 
348 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 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 fche 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 RESUME 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- 
 
-H O0fiti-i OOCO >-i<N 1-1 CO 
 
 " I I O I I I I I I -^.-ICOCO I -i I CSi-l^H I rHCO>HIOaO I I I I i-l 
 
 (N I I Tj | rH | CO I <-l OS <H * -H | i-l I -^00 I CNCO I I CO I I I (N | I 
 
 (N I i-l- I I I I THlNtOiHOCO I CO * -* -i -"-i -i CO kO CO 10 r- -i | | | 
 
 o> .coco^co ,^co , jo ,30 ,g 
 
 t" I CO 00 I CO I i* i-H t^ I COCO I 
 
 ~1 . 1-11-< 
 
 Hi |COI>H|^*C'Hr-l|CM>OIOI>HCOI I t< CO I H I |^H| |i-H 
 
 (O I I N I I I I iHNWJ I CO I I CN I CO I TfCNCO'H | C< CO I I I I I 
 
 * i i^i^I 1 i^l^i nn i <?> * oo oo eo t-j oo rj< o jo | | | | o 
 oo ,o>eo , o , t^aoot^ , ^g , jo 
 
 I I I I I I I CO I I I I I I I I 
 
 I I I I * I I lOiHCO I -*(N | CM I t CO >O Tt< rt< C^ | <** I I I I | | 
 
 COI l^|t| I 10 I 10 I GOO I I I Q> -H * CO IN CO I I IO I I I | CO I 
 
 i '. '. '. '. ' '. 2 i ; i i ; ' ! i i '. '. ; ! i * i * 
 
iMT*C5TH'-iej*<-<ooc^^<r'5:oeoao 
 
 5 r-i 00 1C t- CO C CO t^CNCSOSOO 
 
 i * i eo i i- i i i i ^e 
 
 -l I rHO I 00 I I CO I 
 
 lOCOQO I CO I -*(N>fl I I t^-H 
 
 t^ O <N t* O5 C I-H OS <N 00 CO * O 
 
 ooi-iC5'-HCOoi^ CMO leoi 
 
 toi-100 I <-H I t^CC I I 1C I I 00 
 
 O TH M i-i IN 
 -J<g5 Or^ 
 
 OC 
 C0"3 
 
 -T.U19S 
 
 COiCO I CS I IQCMIQ I I C4 I |-4< 
 
 
RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD 351 
 
 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. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 PERIOD OF FINANCIAL READJUSTMENT 
 1880 1900 
 
 MANTON MARBLE, one of the ablest of the early editors of The 
 New York World, claimed in a published lecture on journalism 
 two things for the maker of newspapers : 
 
 A. That he is a merchant of news. He buys it everywhere he sells 
 it in any market not stocked with his commodity. Enterprise and in- 
 dustry get him, and other merchants, success and honor, and of like 
 kind. Probity has the same reward in public confidence. Shrewd and 
 far-sighted combinations bring to the merchant of news or of flour, or 
 of pork profit and credit. 
 
 B. That he has it in trust and stewardship to be the organ and mould 
 of public opinion, to express and guide it, and to seek, through all con- 
 flicting private interests, solely the public general good. Herein his 
 work is allied to the statesman's, the politician's, and takes rank as it 
 takes tribute of letters, science and the law. 
 
 COMMERCIAL JOURNALISM 
 
 The financial readjustment under which the larger daily news- 
 paper went during the last two decades of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury brought many changes in journalism. There was a time 
 when the subscriber paid his money primarily to see what 
 Horace Greeley had to say in The New York Tribune or to read 
 what Joseph Medill wrote for The Chicago Tribune: even after 
 Greeley's death the upstate farmer renewed his subscription for 
 The New York Tribune because he thought Horace still prepared 
 its contents. But the impersonal and commercial journalism 
 changed completely conditions and customs. Formerly, the 
 editor was practically supreme in control: he was the employer 
 of the publisher, of the advertising manager, of the circulation 
 agent, etc. After he ceased to have the controlling interest, it 
 passed into other hands represented at official councils by the 
 business manager: only occasionally, the exception which proved 
 
PERIOD OF FINANCIAL READJUSTMENT 353 
 
 the rule, did the editor have sufficient wealth or its equivalent in 
 credit at the bank to buy or to start a daily in any one of the 
 larger cities. The dividing line between the A and the B of 
 Manton Marble's claims grew very distinct : the former became 
 the downstairs office devoted to the business; the latter, the up- 
 stairs office devoted to the profession. Here and there, more fre- 
 quently in the West than in the East, arose a man who was both 
 a good business executive and an able editor. 
 
 The metropolitan daily represented too heavy a financial in- 
 vestment to be organized on any save a sound business basis. 
 The telegraph and the cable made news a most perishable com- 
 modity because of the rapidity with which it could be placed be- 
 fore the public. Shop- worn goods the merchant can sell at a 
 special sale to bring at least the cost of production, but stale news 
 the publisher cannot market at any price. The franchise in a 
 press association became harder to get and at the same time 
 carried with it a constantly increasing charge for better service. 
 Presses jumped from hundreds to tens of thousands in cost of 
 manufacture. Extra ones were purchased for emergency cases 
 so that if one press broke down the plates of the paper could be 
 shifted to another without danger of missing the mails. Typo- 
 graphical unions kept pushing the wages of printers and press- 
 men higher and higher up the scale. Competition reduced the 
 selling price, but increased the cost of distribution. The return 
 privilege by which newsdealers did not pay for unsold papers 
 kept the "profit and loss" entry on the ledger first in red and 
 then in black ink according to sales. Additions to the editorial 
 staff increased the number of employees while "bids" from rivals 
 raised the salaries of other members. More and more the revenue 
 came from advertising and less and less from circulation. Such 
 conditions demanded a business pilot at the wheel to steer the 
 newspaper craft sailing over seas uncharted by editors of previ- 
 ous periods. 
 
 VIEWS OF CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 
 
 Charles Dudley Warner, long associated with The Couranl, of 
 Hartford, Connecticut, thus explained clearly and succinctly 
 journalism conditions obtaining at the beginning of the Period 
 
354 HISTORY, OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 of Financial Readjustment in a lecture on "The American News- 
 paper" before the Social Science Association on September 6, 
 1881: 
 
 The recognition of the fact that the newspaper is a private and purely 
 business enterprise will help to define the mutual relations of the editor 
 and the public. His claim upon the public is exactly that of any man- 
 ufacturer or dealer. It is that of the man who makes cloth, or the grocer 
 who opens a shop: neither has a right to complain if the public does not 
 buy of him. If the buyer does not like a cloth half shoddy, or coffee half 
 chicory, he will go elsewhere. If the subscriber does not like one news- 
 paper, he takes another, or none. The appeal for newspaper support on 
 the ground that such a journal ought to be sustained by an enlightened 
 community, or on any ground than that it is a good article that people 
 want, or would want if they knew its value, is purely childish in 
 this age of the world. If any person wants to start a periodical devoted 
 to decorated teapots, with the noble view of inducing the people to live 
 up to his idea of a teapot, very good; but he has no right to complain if 
 he fails. 
 
 On the other hand, the public has no rights in the newspaper except 
 what it pays for; even the "old subscriber" has none, except to drop the 
 paper if it ceases to please him. The notion that the subscriber has a 
 right to interfere in the conduct of the paper, or the reader to direct its 
 opinions, is based on a misconception of what the newspaper is. The 
 claim of the public to have its communications printed in the paper is 
 equally baseless. Whether they shall be printed or not rests in the dis- 
 cretion of the editor, having reference to his own private interest, and to 
 liis apprehension of the public good. Nor is he bound to give any rea- 
 son for his refusal. It is purely in his discretion whether he will admit a 
 reply to any thing that has appeared in his columns. No one has a right 
 to demand it. Courtesy and policy may grant it; but the right to it does 
 not exist. If any one is injured, he may seek his remedy at law; and I 
 should like to see the law of libel such and so administered that any per- 
 son injured by a libel in the newspaper, as well as by slander out of it, 
 could be sure of prompt redress. While the subscriber acquires no right 
 to dictate to the newspaper, we can imagine an extreme case when he 
 should have his money back which had been paid in advance, if the 
 newspaper totally changed its character. If he had contracted with a 
 dealer to supply him with hard coal during the winter, he might have a 
 remedy if the dealer delivered only charcoal in the coldest weather; and 
 so if he paid for a Roman-Catholic journal which suddenly became an 
 organ of the spiritists. 
 
 The advertiser acquires no more rights in the newspaper than the 
 subscriber. He is entitled to use the space for which he pays by the in- 
 sertion of such material as is approved by the editor. He gains no in- 
 
PERIOD OF FINANCIAL READJUSTMENT 355 
 
 terest in any other part of the paper, and has no more claim to any 
 space in the editorial columns, than any other one of the public. To 
 give him such space would be unbusinesslike, and the extension of a 
 preference which would be unjust to the rest of the public. Nothing 
 more quickly destroys the character of a journal, begets distrust of it, 
 and so reduces its value, than the well-founded suspicion that its edi- 
 torial columns are the property of advertisers. Even a religious journal 
 will, after a while, be injured by this. 
 
 To be just to Mr. Warner, and to inform the reader that in this 
 " commercialization of the press" the second claim of Manton 
 Marble, of The New York World, was not completely overlooked, 
 a comment from "The American Newspaper" should be given 
 in this connection : 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to say, except to prevent a possible misap- 
 prehension, that the editor who has no high ideals, no intention of bene- 
 fiting his fellow-men by his newspaper, and uses it unscrupulously as 
 a means of money-making only, sinks to the level of the physician and 
 the lawyer who have no higher conception of their callings than that 
 they offer opportunities for getting money by appeals to credulity, and 
 by assisting in evasions of the law. 
 
 Before taking up the changes and historical developments of 
 the period, it should be said that The Hartford Courant practiced 
 what Mr. Warner preached in "The American Newspaper" 
 at Saratoga Springs in September, 1881. 
 
 INCREASE OF ADVERTISING 
 
 The Period of Financial Readjustment was marked by a 
 tremendous increase in the amount of advertising printed in the 
 newspapers. During this period came the development of the 
 great department stores in the large cities. Their increase in size 
 may be traced almost invariably by the increase in the amount 
 of space they used to advertise their wares in the newspapers. 
 Stores which inserted advertisements of a half a column at the 
 beginning of the period were using a full page at the close of the 
 century, when individual stores were paying as high as fifty 
 thousand dollars a year to one newspaper in order to market 
 their merchandise to readers. Railroads, instead of inserting a 
 time-table occupying two squares of the old blanket sheet, be- 
 came heavy purchasers of space to advertise the scenic beauty 
 
356 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 of the various roads and to attract settlers to the new territory 
 opened up along their lines. Manufacturers of patent medicines 
 seemingly entered upon competition to see which one could use 
 the most printer's ink in American newspapers. New adver- 
 tisers appeared with announcements of breakfast foods, laundry 
 soaps, baking powders, in fact everything used in modern 
 American homes. Local gas companies urged women to "cook 
 with gas"; electric light and power companies pointed out how 
 easy it was to attach the sewing machine to the current from the 
 incandescent light; telephone companies started campaigns to 
 get housewives to "shop by wire"; book publishers, usually the 
 most conservative advertisers, caught the advertising fever and 
 by the close of the period were, in exceptional cases, using a 
 whole page in certain newspapers to advertise a popular novel; 
 etc. Classified advertising grew from a column or two of "Help 
 Wanted" and "Houses to Let" to several pages. The worst 
 feature of this tremendous increase in the amount of advertising 
 was the fact that it was possible to insert at a higher cost almost 
 any advertisement disguised as a bit of news. Sometimes these 
 paid reading notices of advertisers were distinguished by star or 
 dagger, but more frequently there was no sign to indicate to the 
 reader that the account had been bought and paid for and was 
 not a regular news item. 
 
 JOURNALISM THAT MAKES NEWS 
 
 Though the journalism that makes news really started when 
 The New York Herald sent Henry Morton Stanley to find David 
 Livingstone, the English missionary who was lost "somewhere in 
 Africa," the newspapers were somewhat slow in sowing seed in a 
 field so long fallow. The Herald on July 2. 1872. startled the 
 world with its exclusive announcement that Stanlej-had found 
 Livingstonfi_atUjiji and that the latter had discovered the source 
 oFTHeNile. At the time this remarkable piece of news was 
 looked upon as a piece of good fortune on the part of an American 
 war correspondent who had been sent to witness the opening of 
 the Suez Canal, to report the results of Baker's Expedition up 
 the Nile, to learn the truth about the Russian Expedition bound 
 for Khiva, and to write interesting letters from Bagdad, Persep- 
 
PERIOD OF FINANCIAL READJUSTMENT 357 
 
 oils, etc. ^Stanley's achievement possibly caused a greater sensa- 
 tion in England than in America. The London papers promptly 
 acknowledged the achievement of The New York Herald. The 
 London Post went so far as to say that the expedition surpassed 
 everything which had hitherto been achieved by journalistic 
 enterprises. 
 
 EXTRAMURAL ACTIVITIES 
 
 The example set by The Herald later led other American news- 
 papers to undertake humanitarian enterprises which had not 
 been formerly assoYiuied With the editing and making of a news- 
 paper. Such enterprises became more distinctly local, but the 
 sum total of good accomplished was greater than the more sen- 
 sational finding of a man lost in the wilds of Africa. Among these 
 humanitarian enterprises was the establishment of a Free-Iae 
 Fund by The New York Herald. On May 29, 192, the paper 
 thaThad sent $ta"nley to rmd Livingstone laid before its readers 
 a proposal to furnish free ice for the relief of mothers and babies' 
 in the tenement-house districts of New York. The fund, started 
 with a donation of five hundred dollars by The Herald, met with 
 the enthusiastic encouragement of charity organizations, wel- 
 fare workers, physicians, and others, who longed to do something 
 to relieve the distress which the extreme heat produced in tene- 
 ment districts. On July 2 of that year The Herald distributed six- 
 teen thousand pounds of ice from seven different stations with 
 the result that over one hundred families were benefited. When 
 the season closed on September 15, over forty thousand pounds 
 of ice were being distributed daily from fifteen stations in the 
 poorer sections of the city for the benefit of about twelve thou- 
 sand, five hundred men, women, and children. During the ex- 
 treme hot summer of 1914 a daily average of seven hundred 
 thousand pounds were distributed among twenty-two thousand 
 families. The ice was distributed upon presentation of tickets 
 secured on the recommendation of social workers, physicians, 
 ministers, and others who were familiar with the needs of the 
 people living in the district of the station. 
 
 Somewhat similar to the Free-Ice Fund was the JFresh-Air 
 Fund originally associated with The New York Evening^Post, but 
 
358 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 taken over by The New York Tribune in 1881. This movement 
 was a practical application of the text from which the Reverend 
 Willard Parsons, a young clergyman, preached at Sherman, 
 Pennsylvania, on June 3, 1877: " Inasmuch as you have done it 
 unto the least of these, my brethren, you have done it unto me." 
 In the course of his sermon he outlined the distress which pre- 
 vailed in that section of New York where he once had a mission 
 church and urged that his parishioners alleviate such suffering by 
 taking into their homes for brief periods during the summer some 
 of the children from the tenements. From the time that The 
 Tribune became interested, it worked along two lines: first, it 
 provided outings for children in private families in the country; 
 second, it provided outings for children in so-called fresh-air 
 homes and camps maintained by the Fund annually raised by the 
 paper. Except in rare instances no organization except The 
 Tribune has attempted to provide outings in the first of these two 
 ways. Later, many organizations started sending children to 
 institutional homes and camps for brief rests during the summer. 
 The Tribune, in connection with this Fund, now maintains some 
 ten homes and camps. It utilizes these primarily for special 
 classes of children for whom it is either unwise or impossible to 
 secure the hospitality of private families such as negro children, 
 under-nourished children, tubercular children, etc. In 1881 The 
 Tribune sent thirty-two hundred to the country for two weeks, 
 and in 1900, the year in which the period closed, it sent seven 
 thousand, four hundred and thirty-one. The maximum number 
 was in 1892, when fifteen thousand, two hundred and sixty-seven 
 were sent. The price of board in the country, the amount of 
 annual subscriptions, etc., are factors which determine the num- 
 ber which can be helped. The Tribune has aided in establishing 
 a similar movement in other countries: in England it is known as 
 "The Country Fortnight" and in France, as "Les (Euvres du 
 Grand Air." 
 
 Special attention has been given the enterprises just mentioned 
 because they were pioneer humanitarian enterprises of the press. 
 Other papers, however, have attended to other things than put- 
 ting ink on paper. The Press, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, started 
 a subscription which raised forty thousand dollars to build a 
 
PERIOD OF FINANCIAL READJUSTMENT 359 
 
 home for the newsboys of that city. It raised a fund to erect a 
 monument to the memory of Steven C. Foster, a native of Pitts- 
 burgh, who wrote "The Old Folks at Home"; it started a young 
 folks league, a baseball club, a brass band and drum corps, two 
 clubs for girls, an athletic league, etc. The Times, of Troy, New 
 York, following the example set by The New York Tribune, 
 started its Fresh- Air Fund by which hundreds of children could 
 get the benefits of a two weeks' vacation at the fresh-air home 
 erected by The Times in the mountains of Rensselaer County. 
 \The Tribune, of Chicago, Illinois, initiated two reforms which 
 developed into a national movement, that of a "Sane Fourth of 
 July" and the "Good Fellow Club," the object of which was to 
 make the children of the poor acquainted with Santa Claus. The 
 News of Indianapolis, Indiana, built a fresh-air village for sick 
 women and children, in addition to building several public mon- 
 uments. But in doing this The News did not forget that such 
 humanitarian enterprises could begin closer at home. It es- 
 tablished a sub-station system of delivering papers to boys in the 
 neighborhood where they lived and appointed a district man 
 to look over them, to keep in touch with their parents, and to 
 guard them as jealously as a school teacher, and above all to 
 teach them business thrift. In this way The News eliminated the 
 old-style newsboy with dirty face and worn shoes. The Press, of 
 Grand Rapids, Michigan, was one of the pioneer papers to 
 carry on all-round welfare work for its newsboys. Knowing that 
 boys like a noise, it started two bands, a senior and a junior, the 
 latter to teach the rudiments of music to beginners. It went into 
 the business of education to start a day school for the lads han- 
 dling the noon editions and the extras : to be sure, the school was 
 ungraded, but the teacher, always a high-grade woman with a 
 good salary, has taught the boys from the poorer families so well 
 that the movement has the endorsement of public school offi- 
 cials. To its Hoe press it added the strange equipment of baths 
 and a swimming-pool for the use of its boys. It put in a lunch 
 counter where the carriers could get sandwiches, milk, buns, etc., 
 for less than cost. The crowning feature of the welfare work of 
 The Press has been the "Happy Hour" held in its own halls 
 every Sunday afternoon. Here the programme begins with a flag 
 
360 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 service full of thrillers and closes with motion pictures. The 
 Journal, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, early started a similar welfare 
 movement for its carriers. The Nashville Tennessean, at Nash- 
 ville, Tennessee, soon devoted its attentions to the school children 
 of the city and at its own expense it provided public lectures to 
 amuse, entertain, and instruct the children. Its manager recently 
 said: " It is far from the province of the daily press to print only 
 the news a newspaper should be a community and section 
 builder." The Chronicle, of San Francisco, California, was in- 
 strumental in establishing the zoological gardens in 1880; it 
 started the movement for the Golden Gate Park Museum in 
 1885. The Examiner, of the same city, erected the Little Jim 
 Hospital for Incurables and the Free Eye and Ear Infirmary 
 for the treatment of unfortunate children of the poorer 
 classes. If space permitted, many other humanitarian news- 
 paper enterprises could be mentioned, but the beginnings of 
 the movement distinctly belong to the Period of Financial 
 Readjustment. 
 
 PRESS AS DETECTIVE 
 
 With the financial readjustment many newspapers not only 
 undertook humanitarian enterprises, but also assumed other 
 extramural activities. Not content with mere publicity for 
 crime, the press in numerous cities undertook active detective 
 work in locating criminals. Mention might be made of how The 
 Daily News, of Chicago, Illinois, followed D. E. Spencer, presi- 
 dent of the State Savings Institution, who had absconded with 
 something like half a million dollars from the vaults of the Bank 
 of Chicago, step by step across Canada, over the Atlantic and 
 thence through Europe until it finally located him at Stuttgart; 
 or how The Argus, of Albany, New York, after the police of that 
 city were completely baffled in an attempt to locate a kidnapper, 
 not only found the child, but also captured the criminal. 
 
 The most remarkable instance, however, was possibly the 
 identification by The World, of New York, of the man who made 
 an attempt upon the life of Russell Sage. Isaac D. White, then a 
 reporter on The World and now head of its Bureau of Accuracy 
 and Fair Play, secured a button from the trousers and a piece of 
 
PERIOD OF FINANCIAL READJUSTMENT 361 
 
 cloth from the clothing of the would-be murderer. The button 
 was stamped " Brooks, Boston." Going to that city White 
 found that there was only one tailor by the name of Brooks and 
 that he still had his roll of cloth like the sample cut from the 
 trousers. Investigation of the order books proved that material 
 for only one pair of trousers had been cut from it. It was com- 
 paratively easy to find, by means of the tag number of the roll, 
 the name and address of the man for whom the trousers had been 
 made: the address was the business office of Norcross at Boston. 
 White, on going to this office, learned that Norcross had been 
 away for several days. He then went to the home of Norcross in 
 Somerville, where he found that the man had been missing for 
 several days and that his disappearance had greatly worried the 
 family. The parents of Norcross recognized the sample of cloth- 
 ing and came to New York with White, where they identified the 
 head of their son. 
 
 Many other illustrations might be given of the excellent work 
 that the press has done in the field of detection of criminals. 
 Every police commissioner in the city of New York who has 
 proved himself competent to hold that office has frankly ad- 
 mitted the great assistance of the press. In every great city there 
 is only one thing members of the police department fear, that is, 
 the exposure of their incompetence by the daily press. Pub- 
 licity for the defenders of the law has accomplished almost as 
 much good as publicity for the offenders of the law. 
 
 PRESS VS. PRESIDENTS 
 
 The question of a presidential third term again came up for 
 discussion in the press in 1880. Grant had returned from a most 
 spectacular trip around the world and his friends again started 
 a movement in the newspapers for a third-term nomination. 
 There is every reason to believe that Grant in this instance did 
 not desire such an honor, but was used simply as a tool by Roscoe 
 Conkling, the senior Senator from New York, to prevent the 
 nomination of James G. Blaine, who had become such an im- 
 portant Republican leader that he was disputing the field with 
 Conkling. The struggle was even more bitter than in a former 
 contest. Editorial pages in the opposition press fairly bristled 
 
362 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 with almost a standing caption over the leading article, "Any- 
 thing to Beat Grant." The result, as every student knows, was 
 that both Grant and Elaine were defeated and the nomination 
 went to James A. Garfield. 
 
 CARTOON REVIVED 
 
 To The NM$ York World belongs the honor of reviving the 
 cartoon, the wordless editorial of American journalism. From 
 the time that Franklin had cut a snake into eight parts, each part 
 representing a section of the country, and published the same in 
 his Gazette under the caption "Join or Die," cartoons had ap- 
 peared spasmodically in the American press usually at times 
 of great political or national excitement. The New York World, 
 however, was the first newspaper to make the cartoon a regular 
 feature. Its first cartoon, printed on August 10, 1884, was en- 
 titled " The Difference Between Two Knights," and was a con- 
 trast of Blaine and Cleveland. This cartoon was not signed. In 
 August, 1884, The World began in its Sunday issue a series of 
 political cartoons which attracted a great deal of attention and 
 so increased its circulation that new presses had to be ordered. 
 So popular, indeed, were these cartoons that they were introduced 
 into the daily edition. Of these early cartoons none was more 
 popular than that entitled " Belshazzar's Feast," which ap- 
 peared on August 30 and dealt with the coming presidential elec- 
 tion of the Cleveland-Elaine Campaign. It occupied half of the 
 first page and showed the Republican chiefs in the robes of 
 Babylonian revelers at the Belshazzar banquet of Special Priv- 
 ilege. Though the cartoon was crudely drawn, it had a certain 
 strength which caused it to be remembered long after Cleveland 
 was elected to the Presidency. 
 
 FIGHT OF TYPOGRAPHICAL UNION 
 
 In 1884 The New York Tribune possibly aided the election of 
 Grover Cleveland though not through the support of its edi- 
 torial page. This assistance, such as it was, grew out of a strike 
 which started in December of 1883 when the Typographical 
 Union decided upon a boycott of the paper because of some dis- 
 agreement about wages of printers. A circular was sent to labor 
 
PERIOD OF FINANCIAL READJUSTMENT 363 
 
 organizations throughout the United States to announce the boy- 
 cott and to ask the withdrawal of all support from The Trib- 
 une. Pressure was brought to bear to get advertisers to with- 
 draw from the columns of The Tribune and a weekly paper, The 
 BQTJ cotter, was started to induce other trade unions to take up the 
 fight. As the strike at the start proved unsuccessful, the Union 
 decided to enter politics, for The Tribune was considered at that 
 time the leading exponent of the principles of the Republican 
 Party. A committee was sent to the Republican National Con- 
 vention, when it met in Chicago on June 3 of the following year, 
 to inform the delegates that the policy of The Tribune was hos- 
 tile to organized labor and to request the convention to repudiate 
 that paper as a Republican organ. When no satisfaction was 
 received, the Union in August passed a resolution that " until the 
 Republican National Committee give us written assurance that 
 they will repudiate The Tribune the future policy of The Boy- 
 cotter shall be to boycott The Tribune and James G. Elaine." In 
 spite of the activity of political leaders to adjust the dispute, 
 The Tribune was not repudiated and many of the Union printers 
 decided to vote against Elaine. As Cleveland carried New York 
 State by a plurality of only 1144 votes, and as the Union num- 
 bered over 3500 printers, the assertion has been made that, New 
 York being the pivotal State in the election, Elaine was defeated 
 because The Tribune refused to come to terms. A year later the 
 Republican State Committee took the matter up with The Trib- 
 une in order to bring about a settlement of the controversy, and 
 a satisfactory agreement was finally reached so that by 1892 the 
 Union announced its willingness to send a committee to the Na- 
 tional Republican Convention at Minneapolis to declare that all 
 hostilities against The Tribune and against the Republican Party 
 had ceased. 
 
 BRYAN AND PARTY PRESS 
 
 When William Jennings Bryan was nominated for the Presi- 
 dency at the Democratic Convention held in Chicago in 1896, 
 many of the Democratic papers refused to support the party 
 ticket because of the stand taken by the nominee on the question 
 of free silver. Colonel A. K. McClure, editor of The Philadelphia 
 
364 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 Times, thus summed up the remarkable editorial change in 
 policy of these papers: - 
 
 A number of the leading newspapers of the country which had sup- 
 ported Cleveland in his three contests repudiated the Chicago platform 
 and its candidate, and they stood in the forefront of American jour- 
 nalism. Not one of them ever had conference or communication with 
 the McKinley leaders, or received or proposed any terms for their sup- 
 port, or ever sought, accepted, or desired favors from the McKinley 
 administration. Some of them suffered pecuniary sacrifice, but they per- 
 formed a heroic duty, and it was the inspiration they gave to the con- 
 servative Democratic sentiment of the country that made McKinley 
 President by an overwhelming majority. 
 
 This opposition of the press undoubtedly explains the criticism 
 which Mr. Bryan later showered upon newspapers in general and 
 those of New York State in particular. The New York World in 
 explaining its own course said, " Never before in a Presidential 
 campaign had the leading newspaper of either party declined to 
 support the ticket and platform presented by the politicians, not 
 only without loss of power and prestige, but actually with a gain 
 in both." 
 
 Yet it was to this New York newspaper that Grover Cleveland 
 once said he owed his election to the Presidency. 
 
 JOURNALISM DURING WAR WITH SPAIN 
 
 In the war with Spain, the American war correspondent reached 
 
 Arthur Brisbane has told what it 
 
 meant to report that conflict in the American press. It meant, to 
 quote his own words: - 
 
 To cover the field of possible action in advance from Manila to Porto 
 Rico; to place the right man in the right place, select the man through 
 intuition; to secure boats and arrange telegraphic facilities; to get the 
 news into the office first, into the newspaper first, on the street and all 
 over the country first; to sift the kernel of fact from the mass of rumors; 
 to exercise discretion and reasonable conservatism without falling be- 
 hind in the great fight for news priority and supremacy; to meet the 
 problems of circulation grown suddenly to be vastly in excess of the 
 mechanical facilities; and with the weaker papers to meet with 
 limited capital the problem of expense unlimited, to make mental re- 
 source replace the hard money sinews of the newspaper war reporter. 
 
PERIOD OF FINANCIAL READJUSTMENT 365 
 
 The explosion which sank the Maine occurred on Friday eve- . 
 ning, February 15, 1898, at 9.40 o'clock. The first reports from 
 Havana, however, did not reach the New York papers until 
 about half-past two the following morning. Yet before noon of 
 that day a tug chartered by The New York World left Key West 
 with three divers on board. The correspondent of The World at 
 Havana received the following instructions by cable : 
 
 Have sent divers from Key West to get actual truth, whether favor- 
 able or unfavorable. First investigation by divers with authentic re- 
 sults worth one thousand dollars, extra expense, to-morrow alone. 
 
 When the boat chartered by The World reached the Maine its 
 divers were not allowed to make any investigation and the only 
 direct result to The World from this expedition was an expense 
 amounting to one thousand dollars. Yet this incident was fairly 
 typical of the enormous expense to which American newspapers 
 were put in reporting the war. One New York newspaper re- 
 ported that it spent on the average of three thousand dollars a 
 day during the entire war. > 
 
 Immediately after the sinking of the Maine, correspondents 
 from all the leading papers hastened to Havana. From the start 
 they met continued opposition from the Spanish censor, who 
 sometimes let what they wrote go through, but who just about 
 as often threw their communications into the waste-basket. To 
 overcome this difficulty several of the more influential American 
 newspapers chartered special boats to ply between Havana and 
 Key West. Their cargo consisted, as one war correspondent put 
 it, "of a little package of copy which a man might carry in the 
 vest pocket of his coat." After the blockade was established the 
 newspapers had to increase the number of boats, which patroled 
 the waters of the West Indies. All this, of course, meant a tre- 
 mendous expense for getting the news from Cuba. 
 
 After the correspondents were compelled to leave Havana and 
 the blockade was firmly established, it became still more dif- 
 ficult to get news through the lines. Some of the newspapers, 
 which up to that time had been gathering news separately, now 
 pooled their interests in self-preservation. 
 
 As the war progressed, newspapers had additional difficulties 
 
366 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 to meet. There were only two cables between Key West and the 
 mainland of Florida. Because the official Government dispatches 
 took precedence over everything else, correspondents found that 
 the cables were soon overloaded and they had to wait the pleas- 
 ure of the Government. Some of the newspapers then made ar- 
 rangements to run their dispatch boats to Miami on the main 
 coast of Florida. This trip took longer, but it got the messages 
 through. 
 
 After the American correspondents left Havana, several of 
 them joined the insurgents and thus kept in touch with what was 
 going on. Every so often they returned to some point on the 
 coast where they were met by dispatch boats which forwarded 
 their copy to their newspapers. 
 
 When Sampson sailed for Porto Rico, correspondents sta- 
 tioned at Key West found that the censor had placed an embargo 
 on any word relating to the departure for San Juan. One cor- 
 respondent, in spite of this censorship, managed to get the in- 
 formation, as he thought, to his managing editor in New York. 
 The latter, with a stupidity unusual in newspaper work, failed 
 to interpret the news in the personal message, "Tell father to 
 send my valise to San Juan," and cabled the reply, "Can't find 
 father, send better address." By this time the Key West censor, 
 who was Lieutenant-Colonel Allen, of the Signal Corps, had read 
 between the lines and refused to allow the correspondent to send 
 any more personal messages. The correspondents, however, 
 were poorly prepared to report the sea fight outside of Santiago. 
 Of all the dispatch boats on the south side of the island only two 
 were present at the time Cervera's fleet was destroyed. The ex- 
 planation was that none of the newspaper correspondents thought 
 that Cervera would come out and were devoting all their atten- 
 tion to the exciting events on the island. 
 
 Correspondents located in Madrid had their problems almost 
 as difficult as those of their brethren in Havana. The cable com- 
 panies took their messages, but neglected to forward the same to 
 New York. In vain did the correspondents protest that either 
 the messages should be sent or the money returned. The Ameri- 
 can newspapers spent thousands of dollars for which they never 
 received a single word of news. Later, the American correspond- 
 
PERIOD OF FINANCIAL READJUSTMENT 367 
 
 ents in Madrid sent their news by special couriers to France, 
 thence the messages were sent without censorship, and without 
 other molestation from authorities. Such messages had to be 
 paid for in gold and in advance and the expense for this service 
 for one New York newspaper totaled over two thousand dollars 
 a week. After the Manila cable was cut, a certain newspaper in 
 order to be first with the news chartered a special dispatch boat to 
 run to Hong Kong and thereafter sent its war news by cable from 
 that place at $1.80 a word. 
 
 At home the American newspapers were put to great expense 
 in being forced to get out extra editions. The New York Evening 
 Journal, for example, printed as many as forty editions in a single 
 day, and The Evening World nearly, if not quite, as many. The 
 size of editions reached startling figures : one New York news- 
 paper, for example, frequently printed over one million copies a 
 day and failed even with such an output, to meet the demand. 
 
 APPEARANCE OF BIG HEADLINES 
 
 m 
 
 The immediate effect of the war with Spain upon American 
 journalism wa^ thp lafe-&tceamer headline. During the war the 
 headline of the most important item, or news story, stretched 
 itself across the page. It not only increased in width, but also in 
 length, until some of the more sensational newspapers used one 
 which occupied fully one half of the first page, except a little 
 corner where the name of the newspaper appeared in small type. 
 In the absence of exciting news, certain newspapers adopted 
 rather questionable methods in the composition of headlines. 
 A half-page would be given to the two words "BIG BATTLE," 
 in large black letters. Underneath these two words and directly 
 under the fold of the page would be some qualifying expression, 
 in small type, such as "Expected To-morrow." When the paper 
 was on the stand or when it was held aloft by the newsboy, all 
 the passer-by could see was "BIG BATTLE." Such questionable 
 tactics brought certain papers into bad repute with their read- 
 ers. While the newspapers of the better class never practiced 
 such deceptions, they did increase the size of their headlines. 
 Even the World War did not produce any such flaring headlines 
 in American newspapers as appeared during the time the United 
 
368 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 States was fighting Spain. The flaring streamer headline is not 
 in itself open to such hostile criticism as it has received: the 
 American people, with their hustle and bustle, seem to take 
 kindly to a paper which gives them the latest news of the hour 
 in a headline which can be read by those who run to catch trains, 
 and they do not consider it a piece of extravagance to pay one 
 cent or more for a newspaper which is prodigal in its use of 
 space. But when these sensational headlines are absolutely mis- 
 leading, or feature something that is silly or that has no per- 
 manent news interest, they are open to just criticism. 
 
 NEWSPAPER STRIKE IN NEW YORK 
 
 One of the most important newspaper strikes, at least in New 
 York City, was the one that commenced on August 5, 1899, in 
 the plant of The Sun. Until July of that year The Sun had put 
 its news into type by hand composition, chiefly because Dana 
 thought such composition gave a neater typographical appear- 
 ance to the page, but it then determined to adopt machines 
 to do the work. As the old hand compositors, not being familiar 
 with the mechanism of the machines, were unable to set matter 
 by this process, The Sun was forced to employ a number of ex- 
 pert machinists. According to a statement issued by The Sun, 
 the old compositors simply " stood by, looked on, and drew their 
 salaries." The Typographical Union, on the other hand, in- 
 . sisted that the strike grew out of an attempt to make The Sun 
 an open shop, and pointed by way of proof to an advertisement 
 inserted in a Philadelphia newspaper asking for compositors to 
 work on a newspaper a short distance from Philadelphia. After 
 the strike had been declared, some of the men hired in Phila- 
 delphia came to New York and worked on The Sun. With the 
 s assistance of The Evening Post, The Sun was able to get out its 
 regular issues, but in reduced size. The strike was bitterly fought 
 on both sides. The Sun, under Dana, had passed from a news- 
 paper of the masses to one of the upper classes. J^'oTttnTreason 
 ifwas better prepared to stand a strike~than other morning 
 papers of the city with larger circulation among the laboring 
 people. ^Pressure was brought to bear upon advertisers to with- 
 draw from the columns and the reading public was asked in vari- 
 
PERIOD OF FINANCIAL READJUSTMENT 369 
 
 ous ways to boycott the paper. Relief was sought in the courts, 
 and injunctions, forbidding the boycott, were issued. Posters 
 and circulars were then printed after the style of the Brisbane 
 headline only reversed: 
 
 It is illegal to 
 
 BOYCOTT THE SUN 
 BOYCOTT THE SUN 
 
 Hostilities did not cease until March 12, 1902, when a mutual 
 agreement was reached, the strike declared off, and the Union 
 refrained from "further action repugnant or injurious to the 
 paper." 
 
 CHANGES OF OWNERSHIP 
 
 During the Period of Financial Readjustment there were many 
 changes of ownership in newspapers. Of these only a few may be 
 noticed without expanding beyond the legitimate limits of this 
 volume. On July 1, l8^The_Evening Post in New York City 
 passed into the control of Henry V iliard who had achieved dis- 
 tinction as a great railroad builder in the West. He was a man of 
 the highest patriotic motives, and he early declared his inten- 
 tion to make The Evening Post " independent of himself, inde- 
 pendent of its counting-room, and independent of party." This 
 intention he carried out by putting all his shares in trust and 
 turning them over to trustees with full power to act. Upon his 
 death the control of The Evening Post passed to his wife, but 
 his son Oswald Garrison Villard became the president of the 
 company which published the paper. He, too, has kept The 
 Post as independent as it was in the days when it was conducted 
 by William Leggett. 
 
 Two activities of The Post during this period deserve more 
 than passing mention. In 1885-86 The Evening Post rendered a 
 distinct service to the country in general and to the South in 
 particular when it opposed the Blair Educational Bill which pro- 
 posed to appropriate one hundred million dollars from the Na- 
 tional Treasury to promote negro education below the Mason 
 and Dixon Line. The opposition of The Post to this measure 
 was based upon the fact that its passage fostered a distinct loss 
 
370 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 to the South, not only in self-reliance, but also in self-respect. 
 During 1890 The Post fell upon Tammany Hall, which it nearly 
 destroyed by means of a series of biographical sketches of the 
 leaders and numerous editorials about the work of the organiza- 
 tion. While numerous warrants were issued for the arrest of its 
 editor on the complaint of the various politicians whose biog- 
 raphies appeared in The Post, none of these cases actually came 
 to trial. 
 
 i 
 
 ARRIVAL OF PULITZER IN NEW YORK 
 
 The newspapers of New York printed an advertisement on 
 October 31, 1876, that the "Hon. Joseph' Pulitzer of Missouri 
 at eight o'clock at Cooper Union speaks for Tilden, Hendricks, 
 and Reform." The next morning The World had at the top of 
 its fifth column on its last page the name of Joseph Pulitzer in 
 black letters and under it the words, "His Stirring Speech at 
 Cooper Union Last Night. " This was probably the first time 
 that Mr. Pulitzer's name ever appeared at the top of a column 
 in The New York World. The next evening he was one of the 
 Democratic speakers at Tammany Hall. Among the others was 
 Manton Marble, who, as editor and publisher of The World, had 
 been successful in the first role, but a failure in the second. After 
 the speeches were over the two gentlemen had a long conversa- 
 tion about the possibilities of making The World successful 
 financially in New York City. Nothing definite came out of the 
 conference at the time and The World passed into the control of 
 Thomas A. Scott, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, who 
 made William Henry Hurlburt its editor. Money to meet the 
 weekly deficit came regularly from an unknown source by ex- 
 press. 
 
 Of The World under Hurlburt's regime, St. Clair McKelway, 
 long editor of The Brooklyn Eagle, has left the following account: 
 
 It upheld Horatio Seymour when he insisted on the gold standard 
 for New York State in a time of irredeemable paper currency. It warred 
 on William M. Tweed's criminal alteration of the city charter from 
 behind which he practiced highway robbery to the tune of millions in 
 the name of the law. It made now and then a stand for better muni- 
 cipal results by informal fusion of parties. But it never sought the art of 
 
 ! 
 
PERIOD OF FINANCIAL READJUSTMENT 371 
 
 commanding a living by the approbation and confidence of the masses, 
 for the tendency of its management inclined to the satisfaction of the 
 capitalists with its steadiness, and to the applause of the carping, the 
 cynical, the sciolistic, and the pessimistic by its selection and treat- 
 ment of topics. Its mistaken sense of humor comprised the discussion 
 of serious matters from a comedy side and the discussion of trivial 
 matters from a serious side. 
 
 Upon the death of Scott, The World passed into the control 
 of other capitalists. During all this time the paper steadily lost 
 in circulation until it had less than ten thousand in New York 
 City, due doubtless to the reasons already outlined by Mr. 
 McKelway. 
 
 Ever since his talk with Manton Marble, after both had spoken 
 at Tammany Hall, Pulitzer had watched the movements of The 
 World on the chance that he might sometime become its owner. 
 Finding that its proprietors were willing to be relieved of an un- 
 profitable burden, he purchased the newspaper in May, 1883. 
 On the eleventh of that month he published over his own signa- 
 ture the following editorial : 
 
 The entire World newspaper property has been purchased by the 
 undersigned, and will, from this day on, be under different manage- 
 ment different in men, measures and methods different in purpose, 
 policy and principle different in objects and interests different in 
 sympathies and convictions different in head and heart. 
 
 Performance is better than promise. Exuberant assurances are cheap. 
 I make none. I simply refer the public to the new World itself, which 
 henceforth shall be the daily evidence of its own growing improvement, 
 with forty-eight daily witnesses in its forty-eight columns. 
 
 There is room in this great and growing city for a journal that is not 
 only cheap, but bright, not only bright but large, not only large but 
 truly democratic dedicated to the cause of the people rather than 
 that of purse-potentates devoted more to the news of the New than 
 the Old World that will expose all fraud and sham, fight all public 
 evils and abuses that will serve and battle for the people with earnest 
 sincerity. 
 
 In that cause and for that end solely the new World is hereby enlisted 
 and committed to the attention of the intelligent public. 
 
 Sidney Brooks, a distinguished London journalist, in discuss- 
 ing "The American Yellow Press" in one of the great English 
 reviews, asserted that Joseph Pulitzer would probably be best 
 
372 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 remembered as the founder of the yellow press in America. Yet 
 Mr. Brooks admitted in the same article that Mr. Pulitzer con- 
 ducted one of the most independent and most fearless news- 
 papers hi the United States. Now that the hysteria about yellow 
 journalism has passed, Mr. Pulitzer will probably be remembered 
 as the editor of the paper which tried to, and in many respects did, 
 live up to the doctrines he set forth in making his bow as a news- 
 paper publisher in New York. Once forced by competition to 
 adopt questionable methods to secure a circulation, he later 
 saw whither such a course led and ordered a "right about face." 
 
 It was to the editorial page that Mr. Pulitzer paid most of his 
 attention. He cared little to be a great merchant of news, and 
 in the words of one of his associates "the details of business 
 management never engaged his attention longer than was neces- 
 sary." He agreed with his editorial predecessor on The World, 
 Manton Marble, that "the journalist has it in trust and steward- 
 ship to be the organ and mould of public opinion, to express and 
 guide it, and to seek, through all conflicting private interests, 
 solely the public general good." 
 
 Pulitzer died on board his private yacht in the harbor of 
 Charleston, South Carolina, after having guided the editorial 
 policies of The World for not quite thirty years. Toward the close 
 of his career he was totally blind, but he never let this affliction 
 interfere with his interest in The World, which he continued to 
 direct through the liberal use of the telegraph and the cable 
 while traveling in the pursuit of health, lost through too constant 
 devotion to his paper. 
 
 " QUIET JJ ENTRANCE OF HEARST 
 
 William Randolph Hearst, whose newspaper activities in 
 California have already been noticed, came to New York in 
 1896, where he purchased The New York Journal, founded by 
 Albert Pulitzer, a brother of Joseph Pulitzer, of The World. 
 Before coming East Hearst is said to have added together the 
 circulation of all the New York dailies and, after comparing the 
 total with the population of the city, declared that there was 
 room for a daily which met the needs of those who were not sub- 
 scribing for any newspaper. According to the gossip of Park 
 
PERIOD OF FINANCIAL READJUSTMENT 373 
 
 Row, Hearst "broke into New York with all the discreet secrecy 
 of a wooden-legged burglar having a fit on a tin roof" : according 
 to a member of the staff of The New York American, Hearst, when 
 he first came to New York, was compelled to "blow his horn un^ 
 usually loud to attract the crowd, but once he secured his audi- 
 ence he became more dignified." He brought with him all the 
 circulation schemes which he had successfully used in San Fran- 
 cisco to increase the sale of his Examiner, and in addition tried 
 many others such as sending New Yorkers each a card to which 
 a penny had been attached with the instructions to buy a copy 
 of The Morning Journal. He secured many of the men whom 
 Pulitzer had trained and at once began to toot his newspaper 
 horn so loudly that even those who ran were forced to hear 
 that The Journal had made a new entry. Separating the paper 
 into two editions, he later called the morning one The New York 
 American while the evening still retained the old name of The 
 Journal. In charge of the latter he placed Arthur Brisbane, son 
 of Albert Brisbane, who had worked with Greeley on The Trib- 
 une. Brisbane by still more sensational methods advanced the 
 circulation by leaps and bounds until The New York Evening 
 Journal led all other American newspapers in number of copies 
 printed. Not until the next period did Hearst enter the news- 
 paper field in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, etc. 
 
 FIRST APPEARANCE OF MUNSEY 
 
 In 1891 Frank A. Munsey purchased The Star, a daily which 
 had been established on September 22, 1885. On February 1, 
 1891, he changed its name to The Daily Continent. A distinguish- 
 ing feature of The Continent was its small size, for it pre- 
 sented the news in tabloid form. Mr. Munsey had the idea that 
 a smaller sheet with the news presented concisely would be more 
 convenient than the conventional blanket-size newspaper. His 
 venture, though it attracted considerable favorable attention 
 at the start and carried a good deal of advertising, was not suc- 
 cessful and was discontinued on June 30, 1891. No other at- 
 tempt has been made in New York to give the people of that 
 city a daily tabloid newspaper. 
 
374 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 DEATH OF DANA 
 
 Charles Anderson Dana, so long editor of The New York Sun, 
 died on October 17, 1897. The paper which he had guided for 
 nearly thirty years told of the occurrence in these two lines: 
 
 Charles Anderson Dana, editor of The Sun, 
 died yesterday afternoon. 
 
 There were no inverted column rules, there was no long article 
 in praise of the deceased editor. The announcement in fact was 
 typical of the editor whose death it recorded. For a short time 
 after his death, The Sun was edited by his son, Paul Dana. 
 Later, E. P. initials which in The Sun office stand for Editorial 
 Page Mitchell became its editor. 
 
 Mention has already been made how, in the handling of news, 
 Dana wielded a tremendous influence, for he made The Sun a 
 sort of school of journalism in which he trained bright young 
 college men who had the itch, or, to use a more academic word, 
 the urge to write. Dana saw no reason why the news column 
 should not be as well written as any piece of literature, for to 
 him reporting was an art. He also insisted that the headlines of 
 the newspaper should have some sort of literary form, so that 
 The Sun in time shone not only with a literary finish in its news 
 columns, but also in its still larger rays in the headlines. Dana 
 liked to quote Dickens as being a great police-court reporter; and 
 pointed to the Bible as a place where stories were boiled down, 
 the story of the Crucifixion, for example, being told in six hun- 
 dred words. The making of a newspaper in all its phases re- 
 quired, so he asserted, the skill of an artist in every department, 
 and when he came to put into a book his ideals about the editing 
 and publishing of a paper, he called it "The Art of Newspaper 
 Making." 
 
 CHANGES IN CHICAGO 
 
 The Herald has been unusually popular as a name for a news- 
 paper. On March 11, 1881, The Herald appeared in Chicago. It 
 had obtained the Associated Press franchise of The Telegraph, 
 an old organ of the Greenback-Labor Party, and had no con- 
 nection with two other papers of the same name which had been 
 
PERIOD OF FINANCIAL READJUSTMENT 375 
 
 established in Chicago. Under James W. Scott, one of the chief 
 owners of the United Press, the paper was Democratic, but when 
 The Herald passed into the control of H. H. Kohlsaat one year 
 before the historic campaign of 1896, it became a Republican 
 paper. The Record later united with The Herald which was started 
 almost at the same time. It first appeared on March 31, 1881, 
 as the morning edition of The Chicago Daily News and was known 
 as The Morning News until January 11, 1892, when it became 
 The Record. In March, 1901, Frank B. Noyes, who had been 
 associated with his father on The Washington Star, became the 
 publisher on the 28th of that month of the united papers known 
 as The Record-Herald, the name under which it was published 
 until May, 1914, when James Keeley, in consolidating The Rec- 
 ord-Herald and The Interocean, called the new enterprise simply 
 The Herald. The Interocean, started in 1872 as the political organ 
 of the " Stalwart" Ring of the Republican Party of the West, 
 was built upon the ruins of The Chicago Republican once edited 
 by Charles Anderson Dana. The Chicago Daily News, a one- 
 cent evening paper which first appeared on December 20, 1875, 
 was started by Melville E. Stone with a capital stock of some- 
 thing like five hundred dollars and with its entire plant pur- 
 chased on time. Within eighteen months it purchased The Chi- 
 cago Post and Mail and in this way secured an Associated Press 
 franchise. From the beginning The Daily News aimed to make 
 the first page worth the price of the paper. It was one of the 
 first papers to believe that women readers were more valuable 
 than men. It published mystery stories and offered cash prizes 
 to women readers for the best solution of the mystery. 
 
 The City Press Association of Chicago was founded about 
 1885. At that time the Chicago newspapers paid a great deal of 
 attention to suburban news, printing a page or two of personals 
 or small society happenings in the Chicago suburbs. Minor 
 weddings and club functions in Chicago were also given much 
 space. J. T. Sutor conceived the idea of covering these events 
 in a syndicate way for the Chicago papers. Sutor started with 
 two men to help him. The work was acceptable to the papers 
 and the organization, as time passed, gradually took over more 
 and more territory for the newspapers. Various reorganizations 
 
376 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 and changes in management have occurred since then and the 
 news-gathering organization, now known as the City News 
 Bureau of Chicago, employs over fifty men, serves all the Eng- 
 lish papers, and covers all avenues of news in Cook County with 
 the exception of finance, labor, and politics. 
 
 NELSON OF KANSAS CITY 
 
 One of the most picturesque figures among makers of Amer- 
 ican newspapers was William Rockhill Nelson, editor and pub- 
 lisher of The Star, of Kansas City, Missouri, from the date of 
 its establishment, September 18, 1880, until his death, April 
 13, 1915. When The Star, called by the local press "The Twi- 
 light Twinkler," first began to shine, it was a small four-page 
 paper and "twinkled " for two cents a day or ten cents per week : 
 when its owner died it equaled in size any of the metropolitan 
 dailies and shone morning and evening and Sunday for the same 
 rate of ten cents per week. At the start pennies were scarce 
 in Kansas City, where papers sold for five cents per copy, and 
 Mr. Nelson was forced to import them by the keg from the United 
 States Mint in order that newsboys might have the change for 
 customers. By the end of the first month The Star published a 
 little note that it had more readers than any other newspaper 
 published there. The purchase of The Mail in 1882 gave the pa- 
 per an Associated Press franchise, which in turn furnished the 
 telegraph news so much needed at the time. When The Times 
 was bought in 1901 it was made the morning edition of The Star 
 with the issue of November 18. The Sunday edition of The Star 
 was begun on April 29, 1894. The delivery of thirteen papers by 
 carriers morning, evening, and Sunday for ten cents per week 
 has never been duplicated by any other newspaper publisher 
 in America and practically stifled competition in Kansas City. 
 
 Two incidents in the history of The Star will illustrate the 
 personality of its founder. An early issue called attention to the 
 fact that the town opera house, owned by Colonel Kersey Coates, 
 was poorly constructed and sadly in need of proper exits. Coates 
 denied the danger from fire and denounced the editor as a black- 
 mailer, but later went to Nelson and, after remarking that he 
 was going to reconstruct the opera house, he added, "The town 
 
PERIOD OF FINANCIAL READJUSTMENT 377 
 
 needs such a newspaper as yours, and if you ever need help, 
 come to me." It was the same Coates who helped Nelson raise the 
 funds to purchase the first web perfecting press used by The 
 Star. Years later a manager of a local theater complained about 
 the treatment given him by The Star and threatened to with- 
 draw his advertising unless a change was made. Nelson gave 
 the change when he replied, "Out you go and out you stay!" 
 a decision he never reversed. 
 
 These two incidents, selected from many much more spec- 
 tacular, explain what Collier's Weekly meant when it said in an 
 obituary notice, "The founder and editor of The Kansas City 
 Star took his place in journalism's Hall of Fame by kicking in 
 the door with hobnailed boots." Nelson, himself, expressed the 
 same idea, but more moderately, when he asserted, "I've tried 
 to be gentle and diplomatic, but I've never done well in my 
 stocking feet." He was one of those men to whom reference 
 has already been made in this chapter as being great editors and 
 good business executives. By means of The Star he pulled Kan- 
 sas City out of the mud, for there were "no pavements and 
 only a few plank sidewalks" when he arrived, and made it 
 a city of parks and boulevards. 
 
 The Star, it may be remarked in passing, secured the inter- 
 view with General Nelson A. Miles which led to the condemna- 
 tion of the army supplies used in Cuba in the war with Spain. 
 The Star, through the liberality of its readers, did much to re- 
 lieve the starving people of Matanzas, Cuba. 
 
 OTIS OF LOS ANGELES 
 
 raxtisb 
 
 geles Times, Los Angeles, California, on August 1, 1882. The 
 paper had been started on December 4, 1881, and grew out of a 
 weekly which bore quite a different name The Mirror. The 
 latter paper had been started in 1873 as -a little "thumb-nail 
 journal" by the owners of a second-hand job plant in the hopes 
 that the sheet might bring business to the office. 
 
 On August 5, 1890, there began in the office of The Times, be- 
 tween its owner and the local typographical union, a struggle 
 which stretched over a period of nearly two decades. The strike 
 
378 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 started in the offices of the four Los Angeles newspapers, but 
 finally concentrated on The Times. On October 1, 1910, occurred 
 the widely known disaster which resulted in the destruction of 
 the building of The Times and the loss of the lives of twenty 
 members of its force when the plant was dynamited by lawless 
 labor unions. While the attitude of the owner of The Times 
 toward organized labor would not be within the scope of this 
 book, the following official re'sume' of the publisher of the paper 
 may be quoted : 
 
 The Times has never objected to lawful and legitimate organizations 
 formed and maintained by laborers in any branch of industry. The 
 paper does not do foolish things, but what it objects to is the tyranni- 
 cal management of labor unions by the generally irresponsible, always 
 ignorant, and frequently vicious leaders of these organizations. There 
 has never been a word printed in The Times objecting to lawful or- 
 ganizations of working people per se. All the fault ever found in the 
 columns of the paper with these organizations has been leveled at 
 some gross and mischievous abuse in the management of the organi- 
 zations by the leaders of them. It has been a fight made for legitimate 
 labor more than for any other interest in the country. 
 
 Mr. Otis, before his death, denounced the destruction of his 
 building as "the crime of the century." His side of the contro- 
 versy has been described in a small brochure entitled "The 
 Story of a Sixteen Years' Battle." 
 
 OTHER LEADERS OF THE WEST 
 
 While the newspapers especially in the East were be- 
 coming more distinctly limpersonal in character, there were 
 in the West numerous editors who, during the decade of 1880- 
 1890, impressed their personalities upon their newspapers. 
 Among these leaders of Western journalism were Murat Hal- 
 stead, of The Commerial Gazette, John R. McLean, of The In- 
 quirer, and Charles P. Taft, of The Times-Star, in Cincinnati, 
 Ohio; Edwin Cowles, of The Leader, William W. Armstrong and 
 L. E. Holden, of The Plaindealer, in Cleveland, Ohio; General 
 J. M. Comley, of The Commercial Telegram, in Toledo, Ohio; 
 W. D. Bickham, of The Journal, in Dayton, Ohio; J. S. 
 Clarkson, of The Register, and John Watts, of The Leader, in 
 Des Moines, Iowa; John Arkins, of The Rocky Mountain News, 
 
PERIOD OF FINANCIAL READJUSTMENT 379 
 
 in Denver, Colorado; John Atkinson, of The Tribune, W. E. 
 Quinby, of The Free Press, and James E. Scripps, of The Eve- 
 ning News, in Detroit, Michigan; A. H. Belo, of The News, in 
 Galveston, Texas; John H. Holliday, of The News, John C. 
 New, of The Journal, and W. J. Craig, of The Sentinel, in In- 
 dianapolis, Indiana; Henry Watterson, of The Courier- Journal, 
 in Louisville, Kentucky; J. M. Keating, of The Appeal, in 
 Memphis, Tennessee; Horace Rublee, of The Sentinel, and Wil- 
 liam E. Cramer, of The Evening Wisconsin, in Milwaukee, 
 Wisconsin; W. E. Haskell, of The Tribune, and J. S. McLain, of 
 The Journal, in Minneapolis, Minnesota; A. S. Colyar, of The 
 American, in Nashville, Tennessee; H. L. Pittock, of The Ore- 
 gonian, in Portland, Oregon; 0. H. Rothaker, of The Republican, 
 in Omaha, Nebraska; George K. Fitch, of The Bulletin, M. H. 
 de Young, of The Chronicle, and John P. Irish, of The Daily Alta 
 California, in San Francisco, California; William Hyde, of The 
 Republican, and Joseph B. McCullagh, of The Globe-Democrat, 
 in St. Louis, Missouri; J. A. Wheelock, of The Pioneer Press, and 
 Lewis Baker, of The Globe, in St. Paul, Minnesota. 
 
 SUNDAY PAPERS 
 
 After the War of the States was over some of the newspapers 
 which had been printing an edition on Sunday suspended pub- 
 lication on that day. Others, especially in the South, continued 
 their edition on Sunday, but omitted the issue on Monday. But 
 the reading public demanded the news daily. How The New 
 York Tribune, which had discontinued its Sunday edition, dis- 
 covered this fact has been described by Whitelaw Reid in an 
 address delivered on the Bromley Foundation at Yale Univer- 
 sity: 
 
 For a long time I resisted the general tendency to extend the daily 
 publication over into Sunday. Nearly every man I knew approved of 
 this refusal to print a Sunday paper. Old friends went out of their way 
 to congratulate me on thus setting my face against the pernicious habit 
 of Sunday publication. They hoped I would never yield it; it was a 
 noble stand and gave them yet greater confidence in my paper. Fi- 
 nally, as they kept introducing the subject, I took to explaining to these 
 excellent and well-meaning men that my noble stand seemed to result 
 merely in sending all my regular readers, when Sunday came, over to 
 
380 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 one or another of my competitors; and next, turning suddenly on each, 
 I would ask, "By the way, what paper do you read on Sunday?" Then 
 came stammering and hesitation, to be sure; but not once, during the 
 years this went on, did I fail to find that, with the single exception of 
 some of the clergy, the men who were exhorting me to continue setting 
 a noble example for Sabbath observance by not publishing on Sunday, 
 were themselves quietly gratifying their own craving to know what was 
 going on by reading some Sunday paper! 
 
 Other papers by costly experience learned the same facts and 
 then resumed their Sunday issues. The Sunday paper, as it is 
 understood to-day, did not appear until the early eighties. Its 
 development and enlargement were due to several causes. The 
 department stores, finding the Sunday edition an especially 
 valuable advertising medium, increased their space to set forth 
 the bargain attractions of the coming week. The auxiliary 
 presses purchased by papers for use in cases of emergency were 
 utilized for the Sunday edition to print additional supplements 
 in which were portrayed numerous interesting phases of city 
 life. At about this time, S. S. McClure, founder of the magazine 
 which bears his name and later editor of The Evening Mail, of 
 New York City, began to retail to the newspapers, for simul- 
 taneous publication on Sunday, novels and short stories by 
 writers who had previously sold their manuscripts only to the 
 better-class magazines. In addition to fiction, special articles 
 about men and matters of moment were similarly syndicated 
 for use in the Sunday papers. While McClure was developing 
 his syndicate service, Morrill Goddard, whom Pulitzer had placed 
 in charge of the Sunday edition of The New York World, was 
 applying psychology to newspaper-making. Goddard, knowing 
 the value of the optical center, began at once to develop the il- 
 lustrated features and to enlarge the size of the pictures until 
 they spread all over the pages. From his knowledge of psychol- 
 ogy, he knew what features would give readers a thrill, and he 
 emphasized such articles so much that people came to buy the 
 paper on Sunday not so much for its news as for its special 
 articles. Thus was the pace set for the feature editors who fol- 
 lowed in Goddard's footsteps. 
 
 Sunday journalism was strangely influenced by a Puritan 
 
 
PERIOD OF FINANCIAL READJUSTMENT 381 
 
 strain in the matter of presentation of the special features. By 
 chance two early products of American printing came to the 
 notice of a Sunday editor. The first, published in Boston in 
 1656, was entitled, " Spiritual Milk for Boston Babes in either 
 England. Drawn out of the Breasts of both Testaments for their 
 souls nourishment But may be of like use to any Children. By 
 John Cotton, B.D., late Teacher to the Church of Boston in 
 New England"; the second, published in Cambridge in 1657, 
 was entitled, "The Watering of the Olive Plant in Christs Gar- 
 den. Or a Short Catechism For the first Entrance of our Chelmes- 
 ford Children: Enlarged by A three-fold Appendix. By John 
 Fisk, Pastour of the Church of Christ at Chelmesford in New- 
 England." 
 
 "That's the way to write captions for our special features" 
 was his exclamation. From that time dramatization of fact be- 
 came the popular mode of treatment. Did a special article tell 
 how Constantinople was freed from its plague of dogs? It bore 
 the caption, "Constantinople No Longer a Dog Kennel." Not 
 only were the headlines treated this way, but the practice crept 
 into the text columns. The old essay was dramatized and made 
 to live. "Don't preach, write a parable," was the advice given 
 to copy-writers. Contents of the Sunday supplements became 
 not a story that was told, but a drama that was enacted before 
 readers. So popular was the new mode of treatment that even 
 magazines adopted it. 
 
 Though The New York World had installed in 1893 a press 
 capable of printing in colors and later added a larger press of the 
 same type, both were allowed to lie idle except to put a tint now 
 and then on a supplement page. When D.on.Ci Seitz came to 
 The World he urged that the color presses be used to print a comic 
 section and Pulitzer cabled instructions'* of one word, "Experi- 
 ment." Seitz "experimented." The yellow comic came when 
 the pressman complained that "wishy-washy" tints gave no 
 results and asked for more solid colors. R. F. Outcault had just 
 submitted to the Sunday editor, Arthur Brisbane, who followed 
 Goddard in that capacity, a series of " black-and- whites " which 
 portrayed life in "Hogan's Alley." By way of experiment the 
 "kid" in the pictures was given a robe of solid yellow. With the 
 
382 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 arrival of the " yellow kid," the success of the comic supplement 
 was assured as a circulation-getter. The circulation of The 
 World on Sunday jumped from a quarter to a half million. 
 Other papers, following the example set by The World, issued a 
 colored comic section on Sunday. 
 
 The addition of a section printed on coated, or glossy, paper 
 permitted the insertion of advertisements which had previ- 
 ously appeared only in the magazines. Other features and other 
 sections were added until by the close of the period the Sunday 
 paper became a " journalism department store" wherein every 
 reader could find something for his amusement and entertain- 
 ment. No other country has anything like the American Sun- 
 day newspaper. 
 
 EVENING PAPERS 
 
 Many evening papers borrowed some of the Sunday " stuff" 
 and became feature papers. Daily beauty hints, the bedtime 
 story for the "kiddies," the comic "colyum," the woman's page, 
 etc., crowded the space devoted to the news. Extensive use of 
 the telephone by evening papers made the news more scrappy 
 and bulletin-like in form. Even the editorial page was "popular- 
 ized" in form. The growth of interest in baseball, "the great 
 American game," was mirrored in the "sporting extra" in the 
 publication of which The Evening Sun, of New York, and The 
 Press, of Pittsburgh, were leaders. Enlarged size came when de- 
 partment stores and other advertisers learned that the evening 
 paper went to the home and was extensively read by women. 
 The change in the character of afternoon papers was most no- 
 ticeable in the Period of Financial Readjustment. 
 
 WILD-WEST WEEKLIES 
 
 Journalism, in what was popularly called "the wild and 
 woolly West," if told in detail would make a most interesting 
 chapter. When a Colt revolver and a pen lay side by side on 
 an editor's desk it was but natural that the contents of his news- 
 paper should have a tang oHhe desert, a flavor of the sagebrush. 
 The editor of a great metropolitan daily never had "anything 
 on " these editors in the matter of excitement. Chief among these 
 
PERIOD OF FINANCIAL READJUSTMENT 383 
 
 fighting editors was Alvin S. Peck, who once boasted that he 
 "had run newspapers in nine different states and territories, had 
 shot eleven men who took exception to his editorial opinions, 
 but had never been compelled to swallow a single opinion which 
 he had uttered in his newspaper thanks to his ever-loaded 
 pistol." He finally died "with his boots on" at the age of fifty- 
 one. Another such editor was Albert Tyson, of The Rising Star 
 X-Ray, of Texas, who announced himself in print "Lying and 
 Fighting Editor." At the top of his editorial column he printed 
 his motto, " Do Unto Others as You Would Have Them Do Unto 
 You, and Do It Fust." 
 
 These weeklies were what might primarily be called one-man 
 sheets. One of them, The Yampa Leader, of Oregon, enlarged 
 upon this fact in the following editorial notice : 
 
 The great city papers think they are smart in having a large staff, 
 and, although we have not published ours before, we shall do so to take 
 some of the conceit out of the city brethren. The editorial staff of 
 The Leader is composed of: Managing editor, V. S. Wilson; city editor, 
 Vic Wilson; news editor, V. Wilson; editorial writer, Hon. Mr. Wilson; 
 exchange editor, Wilson; pressman, the same Wilson; foreman, more 
 of the same Wilson; devil, a picture of the same Wilson; fighting 
 editor, Mrs. Wilson. 
 
 In the struggle for existence these pioneer editors duplicated 
 the experiences of the colonial printer. The editor of The Gem, 
 of Flagstaff, Arizona, printed an editorial notice very similar in 
 subject-matter to what Peter Zengler once published in The 
 New York Journal. Though slightly different ia its phraseology 
 it read : 
 
 Have you paid your subscription yet? Remember even an editor 
 must live. If the hard times have struck your shebang, don't forget 
 turnips, potatoes, and corn in the shock are most as welcome as hard 
 cash at the Gem office. Also hard wood. Our latch-string is always out, 
 or same (i.e., the turnips, etc.) can be delivered to our wife, who will 
 give receipt in our absence. 
 
 The society news was found in such Western journals and 
 was just as interesting as the "tammy-rot" of metropolitan 
 dailies. The following is taken from an account of a wedding 
 printed in The F airplay Flume, of Colorado: 
 
384 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 The groom wore a long pair of overalls and a cutaway coat. The 
 bride wore a calico dress and apron. They both looked the picture of 
 health, and were ably assisted the groom by the bride's sister and 
 the bride by Mr. Sam Meadows, a particular friend of the groom's. 
 
 The titles of these Western papers make interesting reading. 
 For example, there was The Hannibal Hornet, of Hannibal, 
 Missouri; The Bliss Breeze, of Dallas, Texas; The Arizona Arrow, 
 of Arizona; The Mustang Mail, of Oklahoma; The Mother Lode 
 Magnet, of California; The Rifle Reville, of Colorado; The 
 Javelin, of Texas; The Oasis, of Arizona; The Creede Candle, of 
 Colorado. 
 
 These weekly papers of the West were nothing if not original. 
 One, for example, published notices of births, marriages, and 
 deaths under the following respective headlines: "Hatched," 
 "Matched," and "Dispatched." Inducements to subscribers 
 were often unique: it was not at all uncommon for such a paper 
 to publish a notice like the following: "All subscribers paying in 
 advance will be entitled to a first-class obituary notice in case 
 of death." By way of illustration the following obituary notice 
 may be quoted as typical: 
 
 JAKE MOFFATT GONE SKYWARD! 
 
 As we feared on hearing that two doctors had been called in, the 
 life of our esteemed fellow-citizen Jake Moffatt ebbed out on Wednes- 
 day last, just after we had gone to press. Jake was every inch a 
 scholar and a gentleman, upright in all his dealings, unimpeachable in 
 character, and ran the Front Street Saloon in the very toniest style 
 consistent with order. Jake never fully recovered from the year he 
 spent in the county jail at the tune of the Ryan-Sternberg fracas. His 
 health was shattered, and he leaves a sorrowing widow and nary an 
 enemy. 
 
 Many of these papers were published in mining camps and led 
 peripatetic lives. The few of them which have survived to the 
 present time, while having the same name, have lost their indi- 
 viduality with the advance of the telegraph and the railroad. 
 
 PRESS ASSOCIATIONS 
 
 How the Associated Press in 1880 was composed of smaller 
 organizations scattered over the country has been outlined in 
 
PERIOD OF FINANCIAL READJUSTMENT 385 
 
 the preceding chapter. At various times discrepancies arose 
 between a local branch and the general association. On one occa- 
 sion the Western Associated Press withdrew from the general 
 association and tried to maintain an independent and rival news- 
 gathering organization. After a short period of competition, 
 however, the differences were compromised and the Western 
 Associated Press came back into the fold. With a develop- 
 ment of new telegraph companies, and with the foundation of 
 new newspapers unable to secure the news service of the Asso- 
 ciated Press, came a more formidable competitor known as 
 the United Press. Competition between these two organizations 
 became extremely keen until an agreement was reached by 
 which they worked in harmony and refrained from competing 
 with one another in gathering and distributing the news. In 
 1892 the Western Associated Press again withdrew from the 
 organization with headquarters at New York and the New York 
 Associated Press was absorbed by the United Press. In the 
 period of rivalry which followed, both associations had the co- 
 operation of the Reuter News Agency of Europe. In their serv- 
 ices they divided the United States along geographical lines. 
 The United Press furnished news to practically all of the lead- 
 ing daily papers east of the Alleghany Mountains, the newspapers 
 of the South, and a few newspapers in the West. But in the sec- 
 tion last mentioned the Western Associated Press supplied most 
 of the newspapers. Later, the Western Associated Press suc- 
 ceeded in obtaining the exclusive use of the news gathered by 
 the Reuter Association and the United Press was put under a 
 severe handicap in the gathering of European news : so much so 
 that several of the New York, Philadelphia, and certain New 
 England newspapers left the United Press to join the Western 
 Associated Press. The depletion was so great that on April 8, 
 1897, the United Press was forced to discontinue its services and 
 between two hundred and three hundred of its members joined 
 the Western Associated Press. Other members formed a bureau, 
 headed by The New York Sun, which practically supplanted the 
 old United Press. The Western Associated Press was incorpo- 
 rated under the laws of Illinois and had its headquarters at 
 Chicago. Its general manager was Melville E. Stone. In 1900 
 
386 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 the present Associated Press was organized out of the old West- 
 ern Associated Press. 
 
 AMERICAN NEWSPAPER PUBLISHERS* ASSOCIATION 
 
 That the period was one in which the emphasis, on the whole, 
 was placed upon the marketing of news, was shown by the forma- 
 tion of the American Newspaper Publishers' Association, which, 
 after preliminary steps had been taken at Detroit, Michigan, 
 on November 17, 1886, was organized at Rochester, New York, 
 February 16, 1887, to provide a clearing-house for the business 
 departments of its members and to protect them in case of labor 
 difficulties. From the start, it devoted most of its attention to 
 a study of paper conditions, a supervision of advertising agencies 
 in an attempt to weed out the undesirable, a campaign against 
 the imposition of press agents who tried to secure the insertion 
 of advertising as pure reading matter, etc. The association came 
 to be a great force in American journalism, as its membership 
 included the most influential newspapers in the country. The 
 need of such an organization early became patent when legis- 
 lators at Washington began to take steps looking toward the 
 regulation of the press. 
 
 PRINTING-PRESSES OF PERIOD 
 
 The two decades from 1880 to 1900 saw the printing-press of 
 the newspaper develop into the greatest mechanical achieve- 
 ment of the human mind. Hoe had produced a press which would 
 print on both sides of a continuous roll of paper, but there were 
 several minor difficulties to overcome. Among these were the 
 unequal distribution of ink and a frequent tearing of the paper 
 web. Hoe took these matters up with the leading manufacturers 
 and insisted that the ink-makers produce a product which would 
 spread evenly from the ink fountain of his press; he next turned 
 his attention to the paper manufacturers and demanded that 
 they produce a paper of even thickness and uniform quality, 
 while he in turn experimented with presses where the paper 
 pressure would be uniform. Other inventors perfected the me- 
 chanical arrangement of the press by means of adjustments too 
 complicated to describe in a book of this character. Tucker and 
 
PERIOD OF FINANCIAL READJUSTMENT 387 
 
 Campbell produced the rotary folder which made possible the 
 great speed in creasing the web sheets transversely. The latter 
 also gave the stationary longitudinal folder and perfected the 
 rotary delivery of the printed sheets. Another inventor added 
 the sheet-turning bar by which two parts of different webs 
 were brought together. Later, Hoe produced the mechanical 
 marvel which gathered together several streams of paper and 
 united them into one printed product. Mergenthaler so improved 
 his linotype that newspaper publishers were forced by the saving 
 in cost of composition to adopt his machine. Then came a new 
 process of stereotyping, known as the "autoplate," which trans- 
 formed the old and laborious hand process into automatic opera- 
 tions. The introduction of the autoplate closed the period. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 PERIOD OF SOCIAL READJUSTMENT 
 1900 
 
 WITH what is said to be characteristic candor, Henry Watter- 
 son, the veteran editor of The Louisville Courier- Journal, thus 
 summed up the conditions obtaining at the opening of the 
 Period of Social Readjustment: 
 
 Journalism is without any code of ethics or system of self-restraint 
 and self-respect. It has no sure standards of either work or duty. Its 
 intellectual landscapes are anonymous, its moral destination confused. 
 The country doctor, the village lawyer, knows his place and keeps it, 
 having the consciousness of superiority. The journalist has few, if any, 
 mental perspectives to fix his horizon; neither chart of precedent nor 
 map of discovery upon which his sailing lines and travel lines have been 
 marked. 
 
 NEWSPAPER ETHICS CODIFIED 
 
 Practically every newspaper before 1900 had been, as Mr. 
 Watterson asserted, a law unto itself, without standards of 
 either work or duty: its code of ethics, not yet codified like those 
 of medicine and of law, had been, like its stylebook, individualis- 
 tic in character. The most important change to leave its mark 
 upon the journalism of the period was not in the gathering of 
 news, not in the speed with which it could be placed before the 
 public, not in the ownership and control of the journal from the 
 individual to the incorporated company, but in the ethical ad- 
 vance made in all departments of the newspaper. New standards 
 of ethics were established, not only for the editorial, but also for 
 the advertising and circulation departments. Yet the press but 
 reflected again the trend of the times, for it was an era of moral 
 awakening. Collier's Weekly in " taking stock" asserted: 
 
 Fifty years from now, when some writer brings Woodrow Wilson's 
 ."History of the American People" up to date, we think he will say that 
 
 
PERIOD OF SOCIAL READJUSTMENT 389 
 
 the ten years ending about January 1, 1914, was the period of the great- 
 est ethical advance made by this nation in any decade. 
 
 FEMINIZING THE NEWSPAPER 
 
 Another change was what might be called feminizing the news- 
 paper. To a certain extent it was doubtless the reaction of the 
 suffrage movement, or, to be more exact, the movement whereby 
 women widened their activities, social, commercial, and politi- 
 cal. The time came when every page, possibly with the exception 
 of that devoted to sports, had to be written so that the intelli- 
 gent woman could understand it. Even the advertising columns 
 were prepared to appeal to women as merchants learned that the 
 housewife made the purchases for the home. Dorothy Dix in a 
 journalism lecture at New York University emphasized this 
 point when she said : 
 
 Women spend the money of the world. Except for his vices and his 
 outside clothes, the average man does not handle a penny of the money 
 he earns. His wife spends it. She buys the groceries, the furniture, the 
 piano, the jewelry, everything that is advertised in the newspapers, 
 and the advertisers, of course, support the paper. Therefore, surprising 
 as it may seem to the uninitiated, it is the women readers and not the 
 men who are considered first in the make-up of a paper. 
 
 GOVERNMENT REGULATIONS 
 
 The period also saw numerous regulations of the press by both 
 state and national legislation. While most of the bills presented, 
 and a great majority of those passed by legislators, related to 
 advertising, some were aimed at the reportorial and editorial 
 columns, especially in handling the news about crime and in the 
 attacks on personal character. More drastic libel laws were 
 passed by numerous States. In several instances, the qourts held 
 that newspapers, in printing privileged matter such as the re- 
 ports of divorce and criminal cases, must not overemphasize 
 such accounts either by sensational headlines or by emphasis upon 
 sordid details in order to increase street sales, and construed such 
 action as constructive malice. Most of the regulations, however, 
 affecting the newspapers came from the Postal Department. 
 
 These three changes were so closely interwoven, both objec- 
 tively and subjectively, that it is almost impossible to separate 
 
390 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 them. Every one, however, was so important that each deserves 
 discussion somewhat more in detail. 
 
 ADVERTISING ETHICS ADVANCED 
 
 The first advertising advance was made when the immoral 
 personal advertisement was thrown into the hellbox the 
 technical name in the newspaper office for the receptacle in which 
 rubbish and other waste matter is deposited. Previously such 
 advertisements formed practically a directory of the houses of 
 ill-fame to be found in the red-lighted~streets of the city tender- 
 loin. In 1907 the United States District Attorney forced one 
 newspaper to pay a fine of about $30,000 for publishing such 
 obscene matter in its advertising columns devoted to "per- 
 sonals." The Daily News and The Tribune, of Chicago, were 
 among the leaders to exclude such advertising, which in that city 
 had been so cunningly designed that it deceived many readers as 
 to its true character. The stylebook of several newspapers now 
 contains paragraphs about classified advertisements which are 
 based upon regulations adopted by The Chicago Daily News and 
 which specify kinds of advertising which under no condition may 
 be accepted for publication and about others which must be 
 rejected unless O.K. 'd by a responsible member of the adver- 
 tising staff who has made a personal investigation of the ad- 
 vertiser. Another ethical advance was the exclusion from the 
 newspapers of what The Journal, of Minneapolis, called "the 
 filthy, dangerous, fraudulent medicinal, and near-medicinal 
 advertising." A few newspapers have gone so far as to exclude 
 all medicinal advertising. Others, like The North American, of 
 Philadelphia, accept no medicinal advertising which would 
 promote a drug-forming habit, or which guarantees to cure an 
 incurable disease, such as cancer, etc. Many conflicting opinions 
 exist about the advertising of patent medicines. The code of 
 ethics of the better newspapers on this point suggests that the 
 newspaper may insert the advertising of any patent medicine 
 which the publisher of the paper is willing to use in his own 
 home. The suggestion of medical societies, that the press should 
 exclude all patent medicine advertising, is not well accepted. 
 A newspaper is inclined to believe that physicians are not en- 
 
PERIOD OF SOCIAL READJUSTMENT 391 
 
 tirely unselfish in such a desire and suggests that the doctor pay 
 more attention to the ethics of his own profession and less to that 
 of the press. The manufacturers of medicines of merit maintain 
 that it is just as honorable to advertise a product which will re- 
 lieve a stomach of an ache as it is to advertise a mincemeat that 
 puts an ache in the stomach : that it is as ethical to describe the 
 merits of a corn plaster to take corns away as it is to sell shoes 
 which make corns. Whatever opinion may be held about these 
 matters there can be no question that the American newspaper 
 is no longer a directory of patent medicine manufacturers of 
 products of no merit. 
 
 APPLICATION OF GRESHAM'S LAW 
 
 While it took newspaper publishers some time to learn that 
 Gresham's law, of the good driving out the bad, applied as well 
 to advertising as to money, they had no difficulty to read the 
 handwriting when it appeared on the walls of the counting- 
 room. Especially was this true of financial advertising. The 
 advertisement of the swindler was weighed in the balance and 
 found wanting and the press refused to be a partner in selling a 
 hole in the ground for a gold mine or a swamp-lake for real estate. 
 The modern code of ethics demands that any financial advertis- 
 ing which promises an unusually high rate of interest should be 
 carefully investigated before appearing in print. It also de- 
 mands the exclusion of the announcement of that advertiser who, 
 dealing previously in gilt-edged securities, " changes his line" 
 and seeks to insert the announcement of "gold brick mining 
 schemes. " The Tribune, of Chicago, once set a very good prec- 
 edent: it received by telegraph an order for the insertion of a 
 page advertisement which in flamboyant words predicted im- 
 mediate wealth through the purchase of stocks advertised, but 
 instead of publishing the advertisement, The Tribune gave a 
 whole page with something like the following printed in the 
 center, " Mr. Blank telegraphed last night that he wished a page 
 in The Tribune in which to print an advertisement of the So- 
 and-So mines. The Tribune is through with Mr. Blank. It will 
 print no more of his advertising and takes this method of an- 
 nouncing its position to its readers." 
 
392 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 The ethical advance extended to other advertising columns. 
 The copy for fire and bankruptcy sales were among those to be 
 revised. Even department stores were urged to do away with 
 the evils of comparative prices. At about the time the editorial 
 columns were conducting a national campaign of "Swat the 
 Fly! " advertising clubs all over the country were demanding that 
 the newspapers "Swat the Lie!" whenever it occurred in any 
 form of advertisement. A few newspapers positively guaranteed 
 the reliability of assertions in the advertising columns. The 
 Tribune, of New York, went so far as to offer to refund to its 
 readers in case of dissatisfaction whatever had been paid for 
 purchase of products advertised in its columns. It did so whether 
 the purchase was of a pair of stockings or of an automobile. The 
 amount that it had to refund, however, was very small when 
 compared with the total amount of purchases made. 
 
 DEPARTMENTS FOE THE HOUSEHOLD 
 
 Whether the efforts on the part of newspapers to reach women 
 readers were due to commercial reasons or to a sincere desire to 
 be of social service, may be a debatable question about which to 
 make a specific generalization. The Tribune, of Chicago, ac- 
 cepted the view that the modern newspaper "must not only help 
 in the fight for a clean city, but must aid the clergy and others 
 to fight for a clean home, and in entering the everyday life of its 
 readers, it must, like the parish priest, be guide, counselor, and 
 friend." It was while speaking on this point that the general 
 manager of The Tribune said: " I have often thought that a news- 
 paper can most closely realize its real mission the nearer it comes 
 to attaining the ideals of the parish priest and the clergyman in 
 his ministrations to his flock. And the newspaper's flock is often 
 numbered in the hundreds of thousands." 
 
 Academic and pedantic critics have made no end of fun of 
 newspaper departments conducted under such headlines as 
 "Advice to the Lovelorn" or "First Aid to Wounded Hearts." 
 Positive proof exists, however, that such departments conducted 
 by Dorothy Dix, Laura Jean Libbey, etc., in spite of protests 
 over the modern desecration and decadence of the American 
 newspaper, have played no mean part in the social service of the* 
 
PERIOD OF SOCIAL READJUSTMENT 393 
 
 press. James Keeley, when general manager of The Tribune, of 
 Chicago, left this testimonial to the value of such depart- 
 ments: 
 
 In a little over two years Miss Libbey has received fifty thousand 
 letters asking advice, and if you could have read the letters, as I did, 
 not all, but hundreds, you would have felt as I did, that she was, to use 
 that trite saying, "filling a long-felt want." They were from lonely hu- 
 man beings with human problems. Over two hundred girls and young 
 women have written and acknowledged that her words of warning saved 
 them from taking the irretrievable false step which often confronts the 
 friendless girl in a large city. Almost as many have testified that she 
 has prevented the wrecking of homes in a divorce court. Several hun- 
 dreds of her readers have written her that she saved them from the folly 
 of an elopement which would have been accursed. Other hundreds have 
 written that she straightened out the kinks in their affairs, and sent 
 wedding invitations or announcements with thanks to her that they are 
 established happily. Probably the most interesting thing revealed in 
 Miss Libbey 's journalistic career is that it has brought to light so many 
 persons hopping heedlessly in the direction of a bad finish, when a sharp 
 word from a woman professionally engaged in giving advice would 
 bring them to then- senses. 
 
 Of the department, " Marion Harland's Helping Hand," Mr. 
 Keeley said: 
 
 It is a department through which a great exchange is conducted 
 reaching from coast to coast. Actually hundreds of old trusses, abdom- 
 inal belts, invalid chairs, and crutches, as well as other articles dis- 
 carded by those who no longer need them, have been sent to those who 
 do, and not only have a dozen encyclopa3dias been given to those who 
 need them, but half a dozen typewriters and one piano have found 
 places where they would be of real value. Over a dozen orphans have 
 found homes through her efforts. Mrs. Harland has three secretaries, 
 and together they sort the applications from those who want and the 
 offers from those who have and use their best efforts that the helping 
 hand shall be extended to those deserving. Queer work, the old-tune 
 editor would think. But it is real work. 
 
 SOCIAL SERVICE WORK 
 
 The social service work of The Tribune, of Chicago, has been 
 selected for illustration chiefly because that newspaper was a 
 pioneer in the field and blazed a trail along which many other 
 papers followed. An examination of the dailies in the larger 
 
394 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 cities, especially of the evening papers, will show that almost 
 every edition has numerous departments which aim to make 
 bad homes good and good homes better. There can be no ques- 
 tion that the introduction of such features has made the news- 
 papers better advertising mediums and doubtless numerous 
 newspapers adopted them for that reason. The late Mayor 
 Gaynor, of New York, knew whereof he spoke when he said to a 
 gathering of Gotham newspaper men, "A paper going into the 
 home is worth a hundred littering the streets or clogging the 
 sewers of the city." Advertisers also know this fact. In addi- 
 tion, a newspaper which goes into the home must have the ethics 
 of a gentleman or the good American housewife puts the sheet 
 into the kitchen range. 
 
 POSTAL REGULATIONS 
 
 When the Postal Department first began to enforce the sec- 
 tions of the Revised Statutes which forbid the delivery of mail 
 and the payment of money orders to concerns which advertise 
 fraudulent schemes to obtain money under false pretenses and 
 promises, there was a distinct lack of cooperation in work on the 
 part of many newspapers. The reason was undoubtedly the 
 enormous amount such concerns paid for newspaper advertising 
 which was often their greatest item of expense. In comment- 
 ing on this fact an official report of the Solicitor of the Postal 
 Department asserted: 
 
 In one case the evidence showed that several hundred thousand dol- 
 lars had been paid for advertising during a period of eighteen months, 
 as high as fifty thousand dollars having been paid in a single month; 
 and it was developed in a number of cases that fabulous amounts have 
 been spent for this purpose. It will be readily seen, therefore, that the 
 financial interests of some publications will be seriously affected by the 
 loss of this class of advertising if the loss is not made up in another way, 
 and it is not expected that hearty cooperation can be enlisted at once 
 from all publishers. 
 
 This lack of cooperation was shown in the suppressioii of news 
 relating to the issuance of fraud orders by the Postal Depart- 
 ment. On this point the report to which reference has just been 
 made said : 
 
PERIOD OF SOCIAL READJUSTMENT 395 
 
 The reasons assigned for this course by some of such newspapers is 
 that they fear libel suits; but it is difficult to understand wherein the 
 liability for the publication of such news differs from the liability, if any, 
 for the publication of the action of public officers in other classes of 
 cases or of court proceedings, which are generally published and fre- 
 quently command front-page space. As a matter of fact, a number of 
 newspapers do give the greatest publicity to these fraud orders, and I 
 have yet to hear of any civil or criminal action being attempted against 
 them for the publication of such news. 
 
 Yet such conditions did not obtain long, for the ethics of news- 
 paper-making demanded a new standard. With the higher 
 standard and the broader vision the old common-law doctrine of 
 "let the buyer beware" (caveat emptor) was discarded by many 
 of the better newspapers. A report of the Solicitor to the Postal 
 Department recorded the movement to free newspapers from 
 fraudulent advertising as follows: 
 
 Another and very striking effect of the policy of this administration 
 with respect to fraudulent operations through the mails is that the lead- 
 ing organizations of advertising men and newspaper proprietors through- 
 out the country have inaugurated and are now actively carrying out 
 plans to "clean up" all false and fraudulent advertising. It is strongly 
 urged by those behind this movement that the public will have more 
 faith in advertising matter generally and that it will patronize the ad- 
 vertising columns to a greater extent when advertisements are uniformly 
 honest, and that the standing of the newspapers themselves will soon be 
 rated by the character of the advertisements they carry. Many news- 
 papers now make it a rule to accept none but absolutely clean and true 
 advertisements, and some papers even go so far as to guarantee the 
 truth of the representations contained in their advertisements and to 
 offer to reimburse any one defrauded by having placed reliance upon 
 them. 
 
 COOPERATION OF NEWSPAPERS 
 
 Then came the cooperation recorded a year later (1916) : 
 
 The movement for truthful advertising among publishers of news- 
 papers and advertising clubs and associations, to which reference was 
 made in my last annual report, has continued with undiminished vigor. 
 This office has lent every proper assistance to the movement by keep- 
 ing in touch with its leaders, supplying them with information with ref- 
 erence to fraud orders and acting upon complaints filed by them. The 
 movement has been encouraged from its inception by this office in the 
 
396 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 realization that practically every fraudulent scheme depends upon false 
 advertisements and that the withdrawal of such means of reaching the 
 public would greatly handicap their operation. This campaign for truth- 
 ful advertising is resulting in a great change in the nature of advertise- 
 ments carried by many newspapers and in the conservative tone which 
 is becoming more and more a characteristic of the advertising of legiti- 
 mate business. Its effect is also to be seen in the fraudulent advertising 
 laws which have recently been passed by many State legislatures and 
 by Congress in legislating for the District of Columbia. It may be stated 
 in this connection that widespread public interest has been aroused in 
 this fraud-order work which has formed a subject for numerous syndi- 
 cated articles of a highly commendatory character published through- 
 out the country, as well as many favorable editorials, some by the lead- 
 ing daily metropolitan papers of all shades of political opinion. There 
 have been no adverse newspaper comments so far as I have observed. 
 
 For the passage of the honest advertising laws mentioned in 
 the paragraph just quoted especial credit should be given to 
 Printer's Ink, a weekly journal published in the interest of ad- 
 vertising, and to the Associated Advertising Clubs of the World. 
 
 STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP AND CIRCULATION 
 
 By an act of August 24, 1912, it was provided: 
 
 It shall be the duty of the editor, publisher, business manager, or 
 owner of every newspaper, magazine, periodical, or other publication to 
 file with the Postmaster-General and the postmaster at the office at 
 which said publication is entered, not later than the first day of April 
 and the first day of October of each year, on blanks furnished by the 
 Post-Office Department, a sworn statement setting forth the names and 
 post-office addresses of the editor and managing editor, publisher, busi- 
 ness managers, and owners, and, in addition, the stockholders, if the 
 publication be owned by a corporation; and also the names of known 
 bondholders, mortgagees, or other security-holders; and also, in the 
 case of daily newspapers, there shall be included in such statement the 
 average of the number of copies of each issue of such publication sold or 
 distributed to paid subscribers during the preceding six months. Any 
 such publication shall be denied the privileges of the mail if it shall fail 
 to comply with the provisions of this paragraph within ten days after 
 notice by registered letter of such failure. 
 
 This regulation was somewhat bitterly attacked on the part 
 of both rural and metropolitan journalism. There appeared 
 shortly after it went into effect numerous editorials similar 
 
PERIOD OF SOCIAL READJUSTMENT 397 
 
 in vein to the following quoted from The Record, of Bushnell, 
 Illinois : 
 
 Uncle Samuel is keeping a fatherly and watchful eye on the news- 
 paper boys. Just why the old gentleman has any more right to poke his 
 venerable nose into the private affairs of a man who runs a newspaper 
 than he has to interfere with a grocer, a butcher, a dry-goods man, or a 
 manufacturer has not yet been explained. As will be noted by the 
 statement published this week, a paternal government has been given 
 some weighty and important information about The Record and it is 
 hoped the country has thereby been saved. 
 
 While Uncle Sam is prying into private affairs that are none of his 
 business, perhaps it might be in order to inform him that The Record 
 man is a brunette and a Republican; he has a pretty bad corn on his left 
 foot and his hair shows signs of falling out; he has only one good eye 
 and walks a little splay-footed; he has a wife, a daughter, a couple of 
 grandchildren, an alleged automobile, a horse, a Jersey calf, and a peg- 
 legged cat. He thought he was running for the Legislature last fall, but 
 he found out he was n't even walking. He hopes to be able to keep on 
 making an honest living without having to stop every little while and 
 answer impertinent questions, as he is neither a criminal nor a dependent. 
 
 Metropolitan papers questioned the legality of the act and 
 took the matter to the Supreme Court of the United States. The 
 latter declared that no act had been enacted to abridge the free- 
 dom of the press, as newspapers might still continue to print 
 editions if so desired, and were simply deprived of the use of the 
 mails for distribution of copies if they did not obey the regula- 
 tion. Later publishers came to accept the regulation as guaran- 
 teeing " full-weight" circulation just as the Government had in- 
 sisted upon " full-weight" packages. 
 
 LABEL FOR ADVERTISEMENTS 
 
 Another act of August 24, 1912, was still more revolutionary, 
 for it provided : 
 
 All editorial or other reading matter published in any such news- 
 paper, magazine, or periodical for the publication of which money or 
 other valuable consideration is paid, accepted, or promised shall be 
 plainly marked "advertisement." Any editor or publisher printing 
 editorial or other reading matter for which compensation is paid, ac- 
 cepted, or promised, without so marking the same, shall, upon convic- 
 tion in any court having jurisdiction, be fined not less than fifty dollars 
 ($50) nor more than five hundred dollars ($500). 
 
398 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 This second regulation was also assailed on the ground that 
 if the letter of the law was enforced book reviews and dramatic 
 criticisms would have to bear an advertising label. The Evening 
 Post, of New York, was somewhat facetious in its comment: 
 
 When book reviews and dramatic criticisms are duly labeled "Ad- 
 vertisement," as the Post-Office authorities would have it, H. Sillings- 
 bee Jones, author of the original novel, " Heartache," may find notices 
 of the following nature in his weekly envelope from the clipping bu- 
 reau: 
 
 " Heartache" is a fairly appropriate title for this latest story from 
 the pen of Mr. H. Sillingsbee Jones, but " Headache" would have 
 been better. There may have been a reason why this book should 
 have been inflicted on a long-suffering public, but the reason, like 
 the author's grammar, is not obvious. If the possession of nothing 
 to say, and an utter inability to say it, constitute a call to author- 
 ship, then Mr. Jones is divinely inspired. There may be worse 
 books than this in print, but we do not know where they are to be 
 found. In all seriousness, why should labor and money be wasted on 
 stuff like this? Advertisement. 
 
 Such a postal regulation, however, did much to help codify the 
 code of ethics for newspapers, a code which, at the beginning 
 of the period, was without form, and imposed by law a self- 
 restraint and self-respect upon newspapers outside the straight 
 and narrow way. No attempt has been made to make it apply 
 either to literary or to dramatic criticism. 
 
 "DRY" JOURNALISM 
 
 The Prohibition movement found a prompt reaction in the 
 press. As time went on, one newspaper after another began to 
 exclude advertisements of spirituous liquors. As one section 
 after another became dry, numerous complaints were made that 
 distillers and brewers were using the columns of the newspapers 
 to market liquors in sections where their sale was prohibited by 
 law. Protests were so numerous that Congress passed a law 
 approved March 3, 1917, and effective July 1, 1917 which, 
 according to Liquor Bulletin No. 1, issued by the Postal Depart- 
 ment and mailed to publishers and news agents, provided : 
 
 No letter, postal card, circular, newspaper, pamphlet, or publication 
 of any kind containing any advertisement of spirituous, vinous, malted, 
 
PERIOD OF SOCIAL READJUSTMENT 399 
 
 fermented, or other intoxicating liquors of any kind, or containing a 
 solicitation of an order or orders for said liquors, or any of them, shall 
 be deposited in or carried by the mails of the United States, or be de- 
 livered by any postmaster or letter-carrier, when addressed or directed 
 to any person, firm, corporation, or association, or other addressee, at 
 any place or point in any State or Territory of the United States at 
 which it is, by the law in force in the State or Territory at that time, 
 unlawful to advertise or solicit orders for such liquors, or any of them, 
 respectively. 
 
 If the publisher of any newspaper or other publication or the agent of 
 such publisher, or if any dealer in such liquors or his agent, shall know- 
 ingly deposit or cause to be deposited, or shall knowingly send or cause 
 to be sent, anything to be conveyed or delivered by mail in violation of 
 the provisions of this section, or shall knowingly deliver or cause to be 
 delivered by mail anything herein forbidden to be carried by mail, shall 
 be fined not more than one thousand dollars or imprisoned not more than 
 six months, or both; and for any subsequent offense shall be imprisoned 
 not more than one year. Any person violating any provision of this 
 section may be tried and punished, either in the district in which the 
 unlawful matter or publication was mailed or to which it was carried 
 by mail for delivery, according to direction thereon, or in which it 
 was caused to be delivered by mail to the person to whom it was 
 addressed. 
 
 Before the passage of the national legislation, regulation in 
 some of the States had been very strict about the insertion of 
 advertisements of liquors. In Texas, for example, there appeared 
 under every advertisement of whiskey, beer, wine, etc., a notice 
 to the effect: "No orders solicited in, rilled in, or shipped into 
 prohibited territory in violation of the Texas laws." In "wet" 
 territory, the exclusion of liquor advertising by newspapers was 
 usually due to agitation started by women who somehow knew 
 how to establish a boycott without breaking the state law. Other 
 papers voluntarily excluded liquor advertising because they 
 thought that newer standards demanded that the paper going 
 into the home should be without the odor, or, to be more exact, 
 the suggestion, of the alcoholic beverage. Unquestionably the 
 decision of magazine publishers, who were the first to exclude 
 liquor advertising, had much to do with the policies adopted by 
 the newspapers. The change in editorial attitude of magazines 
 and newspapers on the temperance question was one of the most 
 remarkable total reversions of policy in journalism history. 
 
400 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 INFLUENCE OF CIVIC SOCIETIES 
 
 That the period was one devoted to social readjustment may 
 be seen by the attention which civic leagues paid to local news- 
 papers. From these leagues came a constant demand for im- 
 provement in the advertising and news columns. In Denver, for 
 example, was organized the Citizens' Protective League with 
 purposes thus outlined by one of the Colorado papers published 
 outside that city: 
 
 One hundred leading citizens of Denver have organized the Citizens' 
 Protective League, which has for its only purpose the squelching of the 
 knocking and blackmailing newspaper. The most remarkable feature 
 of this action is the length of time it required to awaken Denver's sub- 
 stantial citizenry to a realization that the newspaper condition was the 
 heaviest millstone that beautiful but benighted city has been carrying 
 for a dozen years. 
 
 It is common knowledge that certain newspapers there have had the 
 business men of Denver and there is no more abject coward on earth 
 than the average business man at their mercy through fear of at- 
 tack, and even blackmail. This situation is incomprehensible when one 
 stops to think that a combined stand against any newspaper by its 
 patrons could put it out of business in six months. 
 
 Citizens of Denver, you have it in your power to make good Indians 
 of the Denver newspapers, and if it is necessary to adopt the measures 
 used to make good Indians of the aborigines, you are justified in the 
 light of past experience. There is no newspaper published in Denver 
 that is so absolutely necessary to your existence that you must stand for 
 everything. And an occasional penance is not enough. Make them be- 
 have, as decent citizens are expected to do, all the time. 
 
 The press and the people of the interior are with you. 
 
 The official platform of the Citizens' Protective League was 
 thus stated in advertisements published in Denver news- 
 papers : 
 
 1. That no news story, editorial, or advertisement be published 
 which is unfit for a fifteen-year-old boy or girl to read. 
 
 2. That fake stories, misrepresentations, and exaggerations of all 
 kinds be eliminated. 
 
 3. That stories of divorce, murder, suicide, and other forms of crime 
 and immorality be kept in the background. 
 
 4. That the petty quarrels and constant warfare between the news- 
 papers be permanently discontinued. 
 
PERIOD OF SOCIAL READJUSTMENT 401 
 
 5. That stories which, though having some basis of fact, might be 
 hurtful to Colorado or to any city in Colorado, should not be exploited 
 in a sensational manner. 
 
 6. That malicious or unwarranted statements injurious to Colorado, 
 or to any city or citizen of Colorado, or to any legitimate industry of 
 Colorado be barred from publication. 
 
 Similar organizations in other cities did much to help codify 
 that code of ethics the absence of which Henry Watterson so 
 much regretted. 
 
 FOR ACCURACY AND FAIR PLAY 
 
 In 1908 William Bayard Hale sold to The Century Magazine, 
 of New York, an article which contained an interview with the 
 German Kaiser. After the article had been put into type and was 
 actually on the press, the German Foreign Office requested its 
 suppression a request which the publishers of The Century 
 granted, even though the act necessitated a stopping of the 
 presses and the substitution of another article and a delay in the 
 publication of the number. When the news of its suppression 
 leaked out, the public became very much interested in the sup- 
 pression and was unusually anxious to know what the Kaiser 
 had said. The World, of New York, gave a wild guess which it 
 published on November 21, 1908. Immediately upon the appear- 
 ance of what purported to be a synopsis of The Century article, 
 Mr. Hale gave to the press the following statement : 
 
 I repudiate absolutely the story which The New York World this morn- 
 ing published purporting to tell what passed at my audience with the 
 German Emperor. It is pure falsification from beginning to end and I 
 so declared to The World reporter who showed it to me before publica- 
 tion. 
 
 The World was then forced to admit that it had imposed upon 
 its readers in the publication of the article. The reaction which 
 followed undoubtedly had something to do with the establish- 
 ment by The World of its Bureau of Accuracy and Fair Play, the 
 object of which was thus stated by Ralph Pulitzer, who suc- 
 ceeded his father on The World : 
 
 To promote accuracy and fair play, to correct carelessness, and to 
 stamp out fakes and fakers. 
 
402 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 Isaac Deforest White, head of the Legal Department of The 
 World, was placed in charge of the Bureau. He then sent to the 
 various correspondents of The World the following declaration 
 of policy : 
 
 The World aims to be accurate. It aims to be fair and just to every 
 person who reads it and to every person whose name it prints. 
 
 Accuracy and fair play are inseparable in journalism. Inaccuracy 
 often means injury to innocent persons. A newspaper's influence is 
 measured by the number of people who read it AND BELIEVE IN IT. 
 
 The words "accuracy and fair play" sum up the law of libel. If what 
 is published is true and fair, the writer need not worry about the libel 
 law, civil or criminal. t 
 
 All complaints about inaccuracy of news items or about un- 
 just treatment of persons mentioned in the columns are promptly 
 turned over to this Bureau, which makes a careful investigation 
 to determine whether there is any foundation for the complaint, 
 and if so, where the responsibility lies. During the first year of 
 its establishment, two hundred and sixty-two complaints were 
 sustained and one hundred and sixty-four corrections were pub- 
 lished in the newspaper. 
 
 A more liberal policy in the matter of making corrections or 
 offering apologies, adopted by newspapers all over the country, 
 marked the passing of the so-called infallibility of the press. 
 Even such a conscientious editor as Samuel Bowles, of The 
 Republican, of Springfield, Massachusetts, always hesitated to 
 make corrections in his paper. The story is told that a man 
 whose death had been recorded in The Republican appeared be- 
 fore the editor and demanded a correction. Upon being told the 
 policy of the paper, he exclaimed, "But I am not dead, as you 
 can see." To this the editor replied, " We cannot print a correc- 
 tion, but as your case demands some attention, we will bring you 
 back to life by putting your name in the birth column." Whether 
 this story be fact or fiction, it recorded an attitude taken by 
 many newspaper publishers before the Period of Social Readjust- 
 ment. 
 
 Not only did many papers establish complaint departments, 
 but a number adopted the policy of submitting, before publica- 
 tion, any item reflecting on a man's character to the man him- 
 
PERIOD OF SOCIAL READJUSTMENT 403 
 
 self, that false or incorrect statements might be corrected. It is 
 but justice to The Evening Post, of New York, to say that that 
 paper was among the first thus to safeguard the accuracy of its 
 news of this character. With the movement "Safety First!" 
 in railroading came that of "Accuracy First!" in newspaper- 
 making. 
 
 DANGERS OF UNLICENSED JOURNALISM 
 
 With the "purified publicity" there came occasionally a dis- 
 cussion of the advisability of licensing newspaper men. Atten- 
 tion was called to the fact that before a man could practice at 
 the bar, enter the pulpit, teach in the schools, run an automobile, 
 etc., he must take out a license to demonstrate his ability and 
 proficiency, but that any one might start a newspaper if pos- 
 sessed of the necessary capital. Lieutenant-Governor Barratt 
 O'Hara introduced into the Illinois Legislature a bill which pro- 
 vided for the licensing of journalists. Though it failed to pass and 
 become a law, its introduction drew forth much comment in the 
 press. The ablest presentation, however, of the dangers of a free 
 press and unlicensed printing came, not from the pen of an Amer- 
 ican, but from that of the Russian publicist, Pobiedenostseff: 
 
 Any vagabond babbler or unacknowledged genius, any enterprising 
 tradesman, with his own money, or with the money of others, may 
 found a newspaper, even a great newspaper. He may attract a host of 
 writers and feuilletonists, ready to deliver judgment on any subject 
 at a moment's notice; he may hire illiterate reporters to keep him sup- 
 plied with rumors and scandals. His staff is then complete. From that 
 day he sits in judgment on all the world, on ministers and administra- 
 tors, on literature and art, on finance and industry. It is true that the 
 new journal becomes a power only when it is sold on the market that 
 is, when it circulates among the public. For this talent is needed and 
 the matter published must be attractive and congenial for the readers. 
 Here, we might think, was some guarantee of the moral value of the 
 undertaking men of talent will not serve a feeble or contemptible 
 editor or publisher; the public will not support a newspaper which is 
 not a faithful echo of public opinion. 
 
 This guarantee is fictitious. Experience proves that money will at- 
 tract talent under any conditions, and that talent is ready to write as 
 its paymaster requires. Experience proves that the most contemptible 
 persons retired money-lenders, Jewish factors, news-venders, and 
 bankrupt gamblers may found newspapers, secure the services of 
 
404 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 talented writers and place their editions on the market as organs of pub- 
 lic opinion. The healthy taste of the public is not to be relied upon. 
 The great mass of readers, idlers for the most part, is ruled less by a 
 few healthy instincts than by a base and despicable hankering for idle 
 amusement, and the support of the people may be secured by any editor 
 who provides for the satisfaction of these hankerings, for the love of 
 scandal, and for intellectual pruriency of the basest kind. Of this we 
 meet with evidence daily; even in our capital no search is necessary 
 to find it; it is enough to note the supply and demand of the news- 
 venders' shops and at the railway stations. 
 
 Such a paper may flourish, attain consideration as an organ of public 
 opinion, and be immensely remunerative to its owners, while no paper 
 conducted upon firm moral principles or founded to meet the healthier 
 instincts of the people could compete with it for a moment. 
 
 The full text of this criticism of journalism by Pobiedenostseff 
 will be found in the appendix of Albert J. Beveridge's book 
 entitled " Russian Advance." 
 
 RURAL JOURNALISM 
 
 \Preceding chapters have recorded the relationship which 
 Horace Greeley, of The New York Tribune, bore to his daily con- 
 temporaries. Yet Greeley exerted such a tremendous influence 
 over the country weekly that it still bears his imprint. The latch- 
 string of his editorial sanctum in New York was ever out for the 
 country editor who cared to call, no matter whether he wanted 
 to talk about the present coming presidential election or to dis- 
 cuss the squash or pumpkin crop in his own county; for Greeley 
 was always prepared to give advice on either topic. Of all the 
 New York editors of his time, Greeley was the most willing to 
 send his paper to, or to exchange with, country publishers, and 
 no matter how busy he might be he always found time to give 
 advice about country weeklies. One such letter, which was ex- 
 tensively published, so influenced the making of the country 
 weekly that it ought, in spite of its length, to be reproduced in 
 this chapter. On April 3, 1860, Greeley penned the following 
 letter: 
 
 FRIEND FLETCHER: I have a line from you, informing me that you 
 are about to start a paper at Sparta, and hinting that a line from me 
 for its first issue would be acceptable. Allow me, then, as one who spent 
 
PERIOD OF SOCIAL READJUSTMENT 405 
 
 his most hopeful and observant years in a country printing-office, and 
 who sincerely believes that the art of conducting country (or city) 
 newspapers has not yet obtained its ultimate perfection, to set before 
 you a few hints on making up an interesting and popular gazette for a 
 rural district like yours. 
 
 I. Begin with a clear conception that the subject of deepest interest 
 to an average human being is himself; next to that, he is most concerned 
 about his neighbors. Asia and the Tongo Islands stand a long way after 
 these in his regard. It does seem to me that most country journals are 
 oblivious as to these vital truths. If you will, so soon as may be, secure 
 a wide-awake, judicious correspondent in each village and township of 
 your county, some young lawyer, doctor, clerk in a store, or assist- 
 ant in a post-office, who will promptly send you whatever of moment 
 occurs in his vicinity, and will make up at least half your journal of 
 local matter thus collected, nobody in the county can long do without it. 
 Do not let a new church be organized, or new members be added to one 
 already existing, a farm be sold, a new house be raised, a mill be set in 
 motion, a store be opened, nor anything of interest to a dozen families 
 occur, without having the fact duly though briefly chronicled in your 
 columns. If a farmer cuts a big tree, or grows a mammoth beet, or 
 harvests a bounteous yield of wheat or corn, set forth the fact as con- 
 cisely and unexceptionably as possible. In due time, obtain and print a 
 brief historical and statistical account of each township, who first 
 settled in it, who have been its prominent citizens, who attained ad- 
 vanced years therein, &c. Record every birth as well as every marriage 
 and death. In short, make your paper a perfect mirror of everything 
 done in your county that its citizens ought to know; and whenever a 
 farm is sold, try to ascertain what it brought at previous sales, and 
 how it has been managed meantime. One year of this, faithfully fol- 
 lowed up, will fix the value of each farm in the county, and render it 
 as easily determined as that of a bushel of corn. 
 
 II. Take an earnest and active, if not a leading, part in the advance- 
 ment of home industry. Do your utmost to promote not only an an- 
 nual county Fair, but town Fairs as well. Persuade each farmer and 
 mechanic to send something to such Fairs, though it be a pair of well- 
 made shoes from the one or a good ear of corn from the other. If any 
 one undertakes a new branch of industry in the county, especially it it 
 be a manufacture, do not wait to be solicited, but hasten to give him 
 a helping hand. Ask the people to buy his flour, or starch, or woollens, 
 or boots, or whatever may be his product, if it be good, in preference 
 to any that may be brought into the county to compete with him. En- 
 courage and aid him to the best of your ability. By persevering in this 
 course a few years, you will largely increase the population of your 
 county and the value of every acre of its soil. 
 
 III. Don't let the politicians and aspirants of the county own you. 
 They may be clever fellows, as they often are; but, if you keep your 
 
406 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 eyes open, you will see something that they seem blind to, and must 
 peak out accordingly. Do your best to keep the number of public 
 trusts, the amount of official emoluments, and the consequent rate of 
 taxation other than for common schools as low as may be. Remem- 
 ber that in addition to the radical righteousness of the thing the 
 tax-payers take many more papers than the tax-consumers. 
 
 I would like to say more, but am busied excessively. That you may 
 deserve and achieve success is the earnest prayer of 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 HORACE GREELEY. 
 
 In view of Greeley 's prominence in the journalism world, 
 this letter was taken as a guidebook by the country publisher, 
 who ever since has tried to follow all the advice given save that 
 mentioned in the last paragraph. For some reason, the country 
 weekly could not break away from partisan bias something 
 that Greeley himself was unable to do. The party "pap " which 
 politicians handed out to local papers undoubtedly had some- 
 thing to do with this allegiance of party and country press. 
 The printing of the session laws of the State, the insertion of 
 announcements about sales by the sheriff, the publishing of the 
 calendar of the county court, etc., were too profitable to the 
 country publisher to make him independent of party allegiance. 
 In addition, the printing of the campaign literature always went 
 to a party publisher in spite of the fact that the independent 
 printer would do the job cheaper. Only in recent years has the 
 country publisher learned that "the taxpayers take more 
 papers than the tax consumers/' and the lesson has not been very 
 well learned yet, as any newspaper directory will show. 
 
 Country weeklies of which there are now more than twenty 
 thousand, have on the whole been closer to readers than the 
 daily papers. The suggestion given by Greeley and followed by 
 rural editors partly explains the fact, for the weekly became 
 the printed diary of the home town. No finer tribute has been 
 paid to rural journalism than that which came from the pen of 
 William Allen White, editor of The Gazette, of Emporia, Kan- 
 sas: 
 
 Our papers, our little country papers, seem drab and miserably pro- 
 vincial to strangers; yet we who read them read in their lines the sweet, 
 intimate story of life. And all these touches of nature make us won- 
 
PERIOD OF SOCIAL READJUSTMENT 407 
 
 drous kind. It is the country newspaper, bringing together daily the 
 threads of the town's lif e, weaving them into something rich and strange, 
 and setting the pattern as it weaves, directing the loom, and giving the 
 cloth its color by mixing the lives of all the people in its color-pot it 
 is this country newspaper that reveals us to ourselves, that keeps our 
 country hearts quick and our country minds open and our country 
 ifaith strong. 
 
 The country press has not been without its influence. The 
 Independent of New York City once offered a prize for the most 
 meritorious essay describing "The Best Thing in Our Town." It 
 was awarded to a preacher in a Missouri town who told about 
 the local weekly of his parish. The country weekly often is just 
 that the best thing in our town. 
 
 FAMOUS LIBEL SUIT 
 
 A libel suit brought by the United States Government against 
 The World of New York and against The News of Indianapolis 
 attracted much attention. On December 15, 1908, President 
 Roosevelt sent to Congress a special message upon the purchase 
 of the Panama Canal Right for forty million dollars in which 
 he asserted that the Government authorities should bring suit 
 for libel for the intimation that the money was not paid to the 
 French Government, but to an American syndicate, which had 
 purchased the effects of the Panama Canal Company. Presi- 
 dent Taft, who went into office on March 4, 1909, kept aloof 
 from the matter, but the Government continued its prosecu- 
 tion of the two papers on the grounds that it was their purpose 
 to "stir up disorder among the people." The charge against 
 The World was that it circulated twenty-nine copies contain- 
 ing the item "within the fort and military reservation of West 
 Point." The World fought the suit on technical grounds, for 
 reasons best known to itself, and resisted the pretense of the 
 Federal authorities that they had a coordinate jurisdiction 
 with the State authorities in prosecuting libel. No action was 
 taken by the Government to bring the suit to the District of 
 Columbia. The matter came up for trial in the United States 
 Circuit Court of New York City on July 25, 1910, and the Court 
 ordered that a judgment be entered quashing the indictment 
 
408 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 because it was not authorized by the statute upon which it 
 rested. The World then urged that the matter be taken to the 
 Supreme Court, which the Department of Justice did on Janu- 
 ary 3, 1911. Judge Hough handed down an opinion in which 
 he quashed the indictment on the ground that the Federal Gov- 
 ernment had no jurisdiction. On January 4, 1911, The World 
 thus summed up the results: 
 
 The unanimous decision handed down by the United States Su- 
 preme Court yesterday in the Roosevelt-Panama libel case against 
 The World is the most sweeping victory won for freedom of speech and 
 of the press in this country since the American people destroyed the 
 Federalist Party more than a century ago for enacting the infamous 
 Sedition Law. 
 
 EXPERIMENTS IN JOURNALISM 
 
 The Period of Social Readjustment saw many experiments in 
 journalism. When the United States undertook to dig a canal 
 across the Isthmus of Panama, it later found itself also engaged 
 in quite a different thing that of publishing a newspaper. 
 Employees who worked on "the big olitch" had to have news 
 printed in English. There was nothing else for the Government 
 .to do but to establish The Canal Record. This paper, practically 
 a country weekly for the Isthmus, was a letter from home and 
 a diary of local events. It was distributed without charge to all 
 the Government employees engaged in any sort of work on the 
 Canal. Other new ventures in the field of journalism are out- 
 lined somewhat more in detail in the paragraphs which follow. 
 
 THE ADLESS DAILY PAPER 
 
 The endowed newspaper and the "adless" newspaper have fre- 
 quently been the subject of academic discussion. No attempt 
 has been made to establish the former and but one of the latter. 
 On September 28, 1911, The Day Book, an adless daily newspaper, 
 appeared in Chicago. Several issues were published before it was 
 placed on sale and the circulation was kept to two hundred di- 
 vided between two routes of one hundred each. With the car- 
 rier on Saturday went a personal representative of the paper to 
 talk with the subscribers. Its object was to secure all its rev- 
 
PERIOD OF SOCIAL READJUSTMENT 409 
 
 enue from its readers in order that the paper might be under 
 no obligation to anybody save to them. In December, 1912, 
 The Day Book was gradually put on the newsstands with a cor- 
 responding increase in circulation which was as follows: 1912, 
 3446; 1913, 7886; 1914, 15,762; 1915, 19,562; for the six months 
 ending September 30, 1916, 20,742. The daily average for Oc- 
 tober of that year was 22,938, but when on November 20 the 
 retail price was raised from one to two cents there was a falling- 
 off in circulation. At the higher rate The Day Book might pos- 
 sibly have been successful had there not been the very rapid in- 
 crease in the cost of white paper due to the Great European War. 
 With the increased cost of production, the paper, however, was 
 forced either to raise its rates again or to suspend publication. 
 The latter course was adopted. The Day Book did not prove very 
 popular with the women, chiefly because it did not advertise the 
 bargains of the department stores. How necessary store news is 
 to the modern newspaper, Samuel Hopkins Adams has outlined 
 in his novel, "The Clarion." The only substitute for such store 
 advertising seems to be to hire a special reporter to report the 
 news of shopping centers. The adless newspaper may possi- 
 bly be a part of the journalism of to-morrow, if fifty thousand 
 people will be willing to pay ten cents per copy for their daily 
 paper and will agree not to cancel their subscription orders even 
 though displeased with the presentation of the news or offended 
 at the editorial policy adopted by the editors. 
 
 THE ENDOWED NEWSPAPER 
 
 The endowed newspaper has often been advocated. Hamilton 
 Holt, editor of The Independent, of New York City, once out- 
 lined, before a National Newspaper Conference held under the 
 auspices of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Wisconsin, 
 somewhat in detail just how an endowed newspaper should be 
 conducted. 
 
 However ideal the endowed newspaper may be in theory, 
 practical newspaper men like Don C. Seitz, business manager of 
 The New York World, and James Keeley, editor and publisher of 
 The Chicago Herald, do not think the scheme practical. Mr. 
 Keeley once expressed himself as follows : 
 
410 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 An ideal paper, broadly speaking, is impractical. The people can en- 
 dow a newspaper. No one else can. There are too many men of many 
 minds in this as in every other land to make an ideal paper possible. 
 Oatmeal may be the ideal breakfast food from a dietetic point of view, 
 but it never has been universally adopted and never will be until all 
 palates are set in the same gustatory key. So what might be the ideal 
 mental oatmeal to some would prove caviar to the general multitude. 
 Even class and technical papers, which one would think should speak 
 with unanimity and authority, do not long remain as oracles in sole 
 possession of their fields. Opposition develops and competitors appear 
 expressing divergent views. One man's physical food is another man's 
 poison, and until all think alike the ideal paper cannot come into being. 
 And may it never come, for when all men think alike the spice of life 
 will be gone, initiative will be smothered, and the world will be reduced 
 to a dull level of mediocrity. 
 
 The nearest that the endowed newspaper has come to a reali- 
 zation in America was the partial promise of Andrew Carnegie to 
 be one of ten men to finance such a venture. It would take just 
 about ten men of Mr. Carnegie's wealth to establish successfully 
 an endowed daily newspaper. 
 
 THE MUNICIPAL NEWSPAPER 
 
 The most pretentious attempt to publish a municipal news- 
 paper was tried in Los Angeles, California, in 1912, when The 
 Municipal News was started to publish the facts concerning the 
 city's business and to give fully and accurately the arguments of 
 contending sides. It was published weekly and circulated sixty 
 thousand copies which were distributed by newsboys every 
 Wednesday afternoon absolutely free throughout the residence 
 sections of the city. One copy was left at every house regardless 
 of whether the resident desired the paper or not. The paper was 
 under the control of the Municipal Newspaper Commission, 
 composed of three citizens who served without pay, and who were 
 appointed by the mayor subject to confirmation by the city coun- 
 cil. Each commissioner held office for four years, subject to 
 recall by the voters at any time and to removal at any time by the 
 mayor, subject to the referendum. Special columns were set aside 
 solely for the use of political parties which furnished the items 
 for insertion. Financial support came from two sources; first, 
 
 
PERIOD OF SOCIAL READJUSTMENT dll 
 
 there was the appropriation of $36,000 set aside by the city of 
 Los Angeles ; second, there was the revenue derived from adver- 
 tising, for which the rates were one dollar an inch for one in- 
 sertion. In addition to the municipal news, there was a page 
 intended primarily to interest pupils attending city schools. 
 The weekly expenses for publishing The News amounted to 
 a little over a thousand dollars a week. The remarkable fact 
 about The Municipal News was that in spite of the fact that it 
 went into the home with its free distribution, it carried no de- 
 partment store advertising, except for four weeks when one pro- 
 prietor, against the wish of his advertising manager, announced 
 the special bargains offered at his store. A referendum vote, a 
 vote by which the paper was established, later ordered the dis- 
 continuance of the sheet, chiefly on account of the financial 
 cost. 
 
 The Municipal News did not compete with the daily papers of 
 Los Angeles, California, because it printed no telegraphic in- 
 telligence. It was restricted by the ordinance which created the 
 paper from printing any editorial opinion or argument about a 
 religious question or any political question which pertained to 
 National or State politics. A political party polling three per 
 cent of the vote of Los Angeles had the right without charge to 
 one column each issue in which it might set forth its views on 
 public questions. The local committee of each party selected its 
 own editor to edit its own column, which was free from censor- 
 ship by the editor of the paper on the condition that matter sub- 
 mitted must be lawful for publication. The mayor or any mem- 
 ber of the city council could have half a column in any issue of 
 the paper. 
 
 In discussing the possibilities of a daily newspaper publicly 
 owrcd, George H. Dunlop, manager of The Municipal News f 
 once expressed his views as follows : 
 
 The publicly owned daily newspaper, covering the entire field of 
 journalism, must be a very high grade paper if it is to be of value. Its 
 news must be accurate, its arguments fair, and its style interesting. It 
 must not present the weaknesses of mankind as worthy, nor the vices 
 of mankind as amusing, nor the virtues of mankind as stupid. It must 
 not rely on scandal and vice, the improprieties of the stage and pictures 
 of perfect women, as the means for interesting its readers. It will not 
 
412 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 seek to ingratiate itself with the childhood of the community with comic 
 pictures whose humor is in inverse proportion to their general "smart- 
 aleckness" and downright depravity. Above all, it must not preach 
 the gospel of hate and try to make each half of the community believe 
 the other half is the bitter foe of all progress and of their fellow-men. No 
 one can say when we shall see a publicly owned daily newspaper of 
 this kind, but I venture to say that the necessity for such a publicly 
 owned newspaper lies in the very nature of things, and that in the in- 
 evitable course of events, it is on its way. The day is coming when it 
 will arrive. 
 
 " TRADING STAMPS GIVEN" 
 
 In December, 1904, an interesting journalism experiment was 
 started in Detroit, Michigan. S. P. Hutchinson, who had already 
 attracted notice through trading stamps which bore his name, 
 along with that of his partner, conceived the idea that a news- 
 paper which gave premiums for coupons cut out of the sheet would 
 be very successful. Accordingly he had special presses constructed 
 which could print in the upper right-hand corner of each news- 
 paper a little tri-cornered red coupon and started The United 
 States Daily. These little coupons could be exchanged for pre- 
 miums which ranged all the way from oak rockers and marble 
 clocks to bicycles and automobiles. In charge of The United 
 States Daily was the well-known journalist, Willis J. Abbot, who 
 had been chairman of the National Democratic Press Bureau. 
 He secured many of the features which had proved successful 
 in New York in attracting circulation. In addition, he sur- 
 rounded himself with an exceptionally able editorial and art 
 staff and produced a paper which would seemingly compare very 
 favorably with the popular newspapers of the Atlantic Coast. 
 But the venture did not prove successful ; even the coupons failed 
 to bring a circulation, and after a spectacular career of sixty- 
 eight days The United States Daily was interred in the journal- 
 ism graveyard at Detroit on February 22, 1905. Brief as was it 
 career, it aroused the bitter opposition of the other newspapers in 
 Detroit, especially that of The Journal, The Free Press, and The 
 News, and it failed to secure the cooperation of local department 
 stores which had previously taken kindly to the trading stamp 
 idea. 
 
 E 
 
PERIOD OF SOCIAL READJUSTMENT 413 
 
 NEW TESTAMENT JOURNALISM 
 
 Shortly before the period opened, the Reverend Charles Sheldon 
 had published a book which had a nation-wide sale under the title 
 of "In His Steps, or What Would Jesus Do?" The suggestion 
 was made to The Daily Capital, of Topeka, Kansas, that it would 
 be a good idea to turn the paper over to the Reverend Dr. Shel- 
 don for a week to be conducted as he thought Jesus Christ would 
 have edited it. The offer when made to Dr. Sheldon was ac- 
 cepted and the experiment began on March 13, 1900, and con- 
 tinued for a week. Dr. Sheldon had long held the view that the 
 daily newspaper was as much bound to give readers the things 
 they needed instead of what they wanted as was the pulpit to 
 give what was needed instead of what was wanted. He once as- 
 serted, "I have as much right to go into my pulpit next Sunday 
 and preach to my people the things they want in theology or 
 moral living as editors have to print in their papers anything 
 below the high standards that govern human beings, for the 
 rules of moral conduct are the same for an editor as for a minis- 
 ter." The edition during the week of Mr. Sheldon's editorship of 
 The Capital, of Topeka, was sold on the newsstands all over the 
 country. The immediate result was that several editors offered ,/ 
 to preach the Gospel as Christ would have preached it, if pulpits 
 were provided. The latter offers, however, were not accepted 
 by the clergy. Fourteen years later a number of distinguished 
 Kansan editors occupied pulpits and preached lay sermons on 
 journalism the Sunday preceding the meeting of a National 
 Newspaper Conference held under the auspices of the University 
 of Kansas, at Lawrence, Kansas. For that conference Mel- 
 ville E. Stone, general manager of the Associated Press, pre- 
 pared a lay sermon, using for his text, "For unto whomsoever 
 much is given, of him shall be much required; and to whom men 
 have committed much, of him they will ask the more." (St. Luke, 
 xii, 48.) The conclusion of the sermon thus summed up the text, 
 as applied to the Associated Press : 
 
 Obviously then, the very magnitude of the Associated Press work 
 tends to make truthfulness and impartiality in the service imperative. 
 It cannot be used for private aims, to serve any special interest, or to 
 help any political party or faction or propaganda. I am not laying 
 
414 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 claim to any great virtue. I am saying that, under its system of opera- 
 tion and in view of the millions of critics passing upon its work, the 
 Associated Press is automatically truthful and fair. If you hear a man 
 whining that the Associated Press is run in the interest of this party or 
 that you may put it down that what he wants is not fair play, but a lean- 
 ing his way. As one evidence of the truthfulness of our reports, I direct 
 your attention to the fact that during the life of the present organiza- 
 tion we have never paid a dollar of damages in an action for libel, nor 
 have we compromised any case. Thus do we aim to keep in mind our 
 obligation, "Unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much re- 
 quired." 
 
 CHEISTIAN SCIENCE DAILY PAPER 
 
 In spite of unsuccessful attempts in Boston, New York, 
 Philadelphia, etc., to establish daily religious newspapers, Mary 
 Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, made up her mind 
 that she would start a daily paper modeled along lines which had 
 been suggesting themselves to her for a long time in connection 
 with her work. Taking as her motto a Scriptural phrase about 
 lifting up a standard which should be a light unto the people, 
 she resolved that her newspaper, instead of being a mirror for 
 reflecting destructive agencies, should be a journal to record 
 achievements in every useful field of human endeavor. She ac- 
 cordingly started The Christian Science Monitor in Boston, No- 
 vember 25, 1908. From the start the paper was more inter- 
 national in scope than most rivals in the secular field. Special 
 attention was paid to commercial conditions in foreign lands in 
 general, and in South America in particular. Art and education 
 were given prominent positions in the paper; its religious propa- 
 ganda was limited to a daily article on one of the back pages. 
 From the first issue the paper was successful, due largely to the 
 wonderful cooperation of the church of which Mrs. Eddy was the 
 visible head. It is but justice to The Monitor to say that no paper 
 has a higher standard of ethics. Its circulation has not been con- 
 fined by any means to members of the Christian Science Church. 
 Even a distinguished Chicago journalist once remarked, "I 
 have n't any more use for Christian Science than Hetty Green 
 had for a poorhouse, but I consider The Christian Science Mora- 
 tor one of the greatest dailies in America and I read it religiously, 
 not for its propaganda, but for its secular news." 
 
PERIOD OF SOCIAL READJUSTMENT 415 
 
 ASSOCIATED PRESS 
 
 On May 23, 1900, the State of New York issued a charter to a 
 corporation known as the Associated Press. The new organiza- 
 tion was virtually a continuance of the Western Associated Press 
 which had had its headquarters at Chicago. This change was 
 doubtless made because the Supreme Court of Illinois, after a 
 suit had been brought against the Associated Press by The 
 Chicago Inter ocean to secure the news service of the Association, 
 had handed down the following decision : / 
 
 The Associated Press from the time of its organization and estab- 
 lishment in business sold the news reports to various newspapers who 
 became members, and the publication of that news became of vast 
 importance to the public so that public interest is attached to the dis- 
 semination of that news. The manner in which that corporation has 
 used its franchise has charged its business with a public interest. It has 
 devoted its property to a public use, and has, in effect, granted to the 
 public such an interest in its use that it must submit to be controlled 
 by the public, for the common good, to the extent of the interest it has 
 thus created in the public in its private property. The sole purpose for 
 which news was gathered was that the same should be sold, and all news- 
 paper publishers desiring to purchase such news for publication are en- 
 titled to purchase the same without discrimination against them. . . . 
 The appellee corporation being engaged in a business upon which a 
 public interest is engrafted, upon principles of justice it can make no 
 distinction with respect to persons who wish to purchase information 
 
 and news, for purposes of publication, which it was created to furnish 
 
 The legal character of the corporation and its duties cannot be disre- 
 garded because of any stipulation incorporated in a contract that it 
 should not be liable to discharge a public duty. Its obligation to serve 
 the public is not one resting on contract, but grows out of the fact that 
 it is in the discharge of a public duty, or a private duty which has been 
 so conducted that a public interest has attached thereto. 
 
 The position taken by the Associated Press is that it has no 
 monopoly of the news. Its general manager, Melville E. Stone, 
 has explained the situation as follows : { 
 
 The output of the Associated Press is not the news; it is its own story 
 of the news. There can be no monopoly in news. At the point of ori- 
 gin, Havana, the destruction of the Maine was known by every man, 
 woman, and child. Any one could have written a story of it. The 
 Associated Press men did. It was their own story. Who shall say 
 
416 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 that they, or those who employed them, were not entitled to its exclu- 
 sive use? And is this not equally true, whether the employer be one 
 man, or ten men, or nine hundred men acting in cooperation? 
 
 Charges of unfair play have on several occasions been brought 
 against the Associated Press. Oswald Garrison Villard, president 
 of The New York Evening Post, has drawn the following con- 
 clusion about these charges: 
 
 I personally have examined one mare's nest after another, only to find 
 that each was due to ignorance of the technique of the profession or of 
 the facts. Most of them would never have been heard of had the sus- 
 picious ones gone to headquarters to inspect the records. It is only hi 
 the tenth or one hundredth case that I have found that there was a 
 genuine error. And it goes without saying that I have yet to learn of a 
 constructive suggestion as to something better to take the place of the 
 Associated Press. 
 
 The Associated Press secured in 1917 a court decision which 
 established the legality of its claims to ownership of its own story 
 of the news. The comparison was made that the product of the 
 organization was like ore which had been mined and refined. To 
 make claims still stronger newspapers which were members of 
 the Associated Press posted a notice on editorial pages to the 
 effect: 
 
 The Associated Press is exclusively entitled to the use for republica- 
 tion of all news dispatches credited to it or not otherwise credited in 
 this paper and also the local news of spontaneous origin published 
 herein. All rights of republication of all other matter herein are also 
 reserved. 
 
 UNITED PEESS 
 
 While the present United Press was organized in June, 1907, 
 it really dates back to the breaking up of the old United Press in 
 1897, though between the two organizations there is no direct 
 connection. At the time, however, that the discontinuance of 
 the service of the old United Press was announced, several of its 
 members were unable to join the Associated Press and others 
 refused to do so. Among the latter was E. W. Scripps, one of 
 the owners of the Scripps-McRae string of newspapers, pub- 
 
The CaU=Chromcle-Examiner 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO. THURSDAY. APRIL IP. 1904. 
 
 EARTHQUAKE AND FIRE: 
 SAN FRANCISCO IN RUINS 
 
 . TVUATKMID re DIVTTOT iuoi UCTIOMI AI n roiT HAD VAUC DVJO TWI IOLIU roinox or TMI DAT r.-AOWo TXEii 
 
 movi TO TNI tniDtwct rcrriom AJ VIONT mx rnrr HAD HACK TVBU WAV ovu imo THI Notrx KCACM itcT-3 AMD 
 
 ACMIO OUT ALOW THI IH:prma IETTIOII OCW TV! iAT UOU O TU MO. LI AHD ATlOI..TO.n TH1O A> D TOWMWD 
 U* AVD AurAC-TU:0 COCI*l nil. IN TMUI PATN. THII COlOimo TMI OUTtuCT10>. Or THt IVT; DIIT1CT XOW 
 FAI TOT AJU (lACxma TO TMI IOJTK At.oM TM C KAJtllU. CAjnOT U TOLD AITHnPAC OF TKI C1TT U IMXr OFT nCW 
 
 oi AMD Ayreyoiaci *in HAUUTJC TMI TMINOI AWAY -II n.r irAiiiLY irrnto MCIOMI VITOOT o> IA nuMcuco 11 *WA>LU re UAVI TH> CITY roi TK 
 
 It If II n. TKATIAN riA-iruco WILL II TOIALLt DUTVOVCD 
 
 DOWNTOWN t.IIT.'Mlkj U IL': HOT A lullxtM HOUII ITANI TMtATtri All C1UL0 INTO MIAft ttCKU** AK3 COHVIKIO' MO'.I' 1 'I IKOVLOUUVO OM 
 T*tr fOIMU AITLA AIL TM NfWirAni I\TtKAVl IIIN ItKDUlO LULCU. TMt XAOJ." AMD TMt -UAMDIir iLlLD^NOt. UUL'. 3IMO THI "CAU1 K)ITr.!At 
 
 PJOMI of iTTvuifcCii mtrr BDHC DmaiaT Dcrrtovio 
 
 OH I W V: I TH j; <VAJ DIATi. Am. JLfTH-HO TBTIICAV IIJSDII191 wm 1NJUIC.- UT1O ILIW 
 TJcr DUO U HOT 1MOII IL-7 IT II OTIMAiro THAT AT LtAlI Ml Mrr Trftll rtAl II IN TXI MOtOl 
 
 TM 7UULJ 01IA 
 
 no HOPE LEFT M MIX WHOLE CITY CHUfiCHQFSHIIlI ^ n* COMFLRS 
 
 FOR SAFETY OF 
 
 mm is 
 
 OESTBOKD 
 
 WITH MILITARY 
 AHD CITIZENS 
 
 JOINT ISSUE OF SAN FRANCISCO MORNING PAPERS THE DAY 
 AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE 
 
 (Reduced) 
 
PERIOD OF SOCIAL READJUSTMENT 417 
 
 lished in the Middle West, which had been organized around a 
 nucleus of The Cincinnati Post, The Cleveland Press, and The 
 St. Louis Chronicle. Probably the reason that Scripps did not 
 care to join the Associated Press was the fact that he thought that 
 any papers which his company was planning to establish in 
 other cities would be unable to secure franchises. So he started 
 his own news-gathering organization at about the same time that 
 the newspapers in the East, who were not members of the As- 
 sociated Press, organized the Publishers' Press, with headquar- 
 ters in New York. The latter organization was prepared to fur- 
 nish its service to both morning and evening papers while the 
 former limited its field to the evening dailies. A little later an- 
 other organization came into existence which furnished a brief 
 or "pony" report of the news to a string of small dailies stretch- 
 ing from Chicago to San Francisco. The three organizations 
 after about ten years saw that strength was in union and organ- 
 ized the present United Press with John Vandercock as president 
 and general news manager. Upon his death, shortly after the 
 union, Roy Howard succeeded him as manager. Whenever the 
 Associated Press is attacked on the ground of having a monopoly 
 of the news, it points to the claims of the United Press to show 
 that it has a formidable rival in the field. 
 
 The United Press differs from the Associated Press in that its 
 services are available to any newspaper which can pay the neces- 
 sary charges for a leased wire, etc. There is no "power of pro- 
 test" such as belongs to the Associated Press. 
 
 PAPERS OF SCRIPPS 
 
 E. W. Scripps is the Benjamin Franklin of modern journalism. 
 Just as Franklin used to furnish an apprentice with a printing 
 outfit and send him to a newly settled section to start a paper, 
 so Scripps puts out a bright young journalist and furnishes him 
 the funds with which to establish under a partnership agreement 
 a new paper in another field. There are some thirty-odd news- 
 papers, large and small, in his string of papers, the distinguishing 
 characteristic of which is said to be that they address them- 
 selves primarily to the interests of the working class. 
 
418 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 STATISTICAL 
 
 During the first decade of the twentieth century, the number 
 of daily newspapers increased 16.8 per cent: in every geographic 
 division of the United States there was an increase, except in 
 New England, but the greatest increase both relative and abso- 
 lute was in the Pacific and the West South Central divisions. 
 In every State of New England there was a loss in the number of 
 dailies during the first decade except in Rhode Island where 
 conditions remained stationary. 
 
 According to the same statistics gathered for the Thirteenth 
 Census of the United States, New York led among the individual 
 States with a total daily circulation of over one fifth of that for 
 the entire country. Pennsylvania came second with a little more 
 than one eighth and Illinois third with about one tenth. The 
 only other States which had over three per cent of the total 
 daily circulation were California, Massachusetts, Missouri, and 
 Ohio. New York reported the largest absolute increase in cir- 
 culation and Louisiana the least; the highest per cent of gain 
 was in Oklahoma, and the lowest in Louisiana. 
 
 By 1909 the circulation of the evening dailies exceeded that 
 of the morning in eight of the nine main geographic divisions of 
 the United States. The Mountain division was the only]one where 
 the morning circulation was greater than the evening. 
 
 The total circulation of the daily newspapers in the ten leading 
 cities of the United States showed a decrease from 50.5 per cent 
 in 1904 to forty-seven per cent in 1909, in comparison with that 
 for the entire country. This fact proved that the circulation of 
 dailies published outside the metropolitan centers increased the 
 more rapidly. In 1909 the circulation of the daily papers of 
 New York City was 16.9 per cent of that of all the dailies in the 
 country; in 1904 it was 18.3 per cent. The census of 1910 showed 
 that the preponderance of the evening circulation increased in 
 Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, and Philadelphia, and 
 that the morning circulation increased, but in decreasing propor- 
 tion, in Baltimore and San Francisco. In St. Louis the evening 
 papers had a larger circulation than the morning in 1909 a 
 condition quite the reverse of that in 1904; the same condition 
 obtained in Pittsburgh. 
 
PERIOD OF SOCIAL READJUSTMENT 419 
 
 In the matter of Sunday newspapers there was an increase of 
 twenty-nine for the five-year period 1904-09; though there was 
 a decrease in number in the West North Central and the South 
 Atlantic divisions there was an increase in the total circulation 
 of the Sunday newspapers published therein. With the excep- 
 tion of the Middle Atlantic and the East North Central divisions 
 there were increases both in number and in total circulation. 
 The aggregate number of copies reported for 1909 was sufficient 
 to furnish one copy for every fifth person who was ten years of 
 age or over, and was able to read. The growth in circulation of 
 the Sunday newspaper in the metropolitan cities was checked 
 by the establishment of Sunday editions in smaller places. In 
 only two of the ten leading cities, however, was there a distinct 
 loss in circulation on Sunday Baltimore and San Francisco. 
 
 EFFECTS OF EUROPEAN WAR 
 
 Press dispatches told the American reading public of the ef- 
 fect of the war on European newspapers. The great struggle had 
 scarcely begun when the French papers began either to suspend 
 publication or to reduce their size, and those which continued 
 publication for the most part confined themselves to a single 
 edition a day and abolished all headline display. Americans who 
 subscribe for London dailies noticed an immediate reduction in 
 size as soon as war had been declared. A cablegram from Am- 
 sterdam announced that over eight hundred and fifty German 
 newspapers, according to statistics gathered by the Postal De- 
 partment, had suspended the first year of the war. Belgian jour- 
 nalism soon became a thing of the past, save that conducted 
 under German supervision. 
 
 The effect of the war on American journalism has been even 
 more pronounced, though along different lines. Size and circula- 
 tion of papers in this country were not at first curtailed, but the 
 amount spent by the American press to gather the news, even 
 when all was quiet near Ypres, would, it is said on good author- 
 ity, have bankrupted the journalism of Continental Europe. 
 The increased sales of both regular and extra editions put addi- 
 tional financial burdens on the leading dailies. Those who think 
 that the advertisers footed the bills could not be more mistaken 
 
420 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 in their deduction. While advertising rates were computed on 
 the basis of circulation, no newspaper could advance its charge 
 for advertisements on short notice, as contracts, often covering 
 a term of months and in some cases years, prevented a sudden 
 increase in rates. Advertisers, not the newspapers, profited by 
 the increased circulation. 
 
 The most immediate effect of the war was noticed in the rapid 
 advance in cable tolls, which, not only the news-gathering or- 
 ganization, but also the newspapers themselves, were forced to 
 pay for the special war dispatches. So high were these tolls that 
 newspapers pooled their interests. In New York City, for ex- 
 ample, The World, The Times, and The Tribune used a joint 
 cable service which reduced the tolls to one third for each news- 
 paper. As the London newspapers sold their news service to any- 
 body, the three papers just mentioned had been getting practi- 
 cally the same special war dispatches at three times the cost they 
 later had to pay. In the beginning the British censors, however, 
 were a source of much annoyance to American newspapers, for 
 every one seemed a law unto himself. The proof-sheets of The 
 London Daily Mail, for example, filed for transmission to Amer- 
 ican newspapers, would be blue-penciled one way by one censor 
 and another by a second. Such irregularities in censorship did 
 much to promote the newspaper combination just mentioned. 
 
 In spite of such combinations to improve the service and to 
 reduce the cost in cabling, the newspapers found it impossible 
 to print both the war news and the other routine news without 
 increasing the size of the regular issues to such an extent that 
 financial returns would not pay for the cost of production. Both 
 local and national news was therefore reduced in quantity. Such 
 reductions in the amount of local news printed released news- 
 paper workers from many offices. The condition at Chicago, 
 typical of that in metropolitan cities, was thus set forth in The 
 Scoop, the official publication of the Chicago Press Club: 
 
 The European War has created a condition in Chicago which has 
 seriously affected the working newspapermen of the city. The great 
 expense to which the newspapers are being subjected in heavy cable 
 tolls, and the largely increased circulation without an adequate en- 
 larged advertising revenue, have forced the newspapers to curtail costs, 
 
PERIOD OF SOCIAL READJUSTMENT 421 
 
 and a number of good men find themselves without employment, with 
 winter staring them in the face. Some of the hustlers are willing to go 
 out and create work for themselves in various ways. They will require 
 printing, and may require credit from printing firms. The Scoop sug- 
 gests to our printer members that in all such cases they apply the 
 golden rule rather than the strict rule of commerce. Look up the record 
 and personal standing of an applicant for credit, and if he be found 
 worthy, extend a helping hand. 
 
 After the outbreak of the war the evening papers assumed a 
 position never before held in the history of American journalism. 
 Many of the papers of this class consisted in the past of a few 
 pages which closely resembled in contents a bulletin board, a 
 number of pages of special features which had no more news 
 value than last year's almanac, and an editorial page of the hu- 
 man interest type. The war made a decided change by putting 
 more news into the pages of the evening editions. The difference 
 in time between America and Europe often gave the evening 
 paper almost a monopoly of the war news : the late editions had 
 not yet gone to press when the European armies bivouacked for 
 the night. Consequently there was time if the censor did not 
 keep union hours to get a report of the day's activities. 
 
 The war also produced a change in the routine handling of 
 news. Previously newspapers had put first in the item either the 
 most important or the most startling fact and had then hidden 
 the source of the information in the middle of the first paragraph. 
 After the war began the press was frequently criticized for print- 
 ing misleading information. Such charges, however, were usu- 
 ally unfounded, as a careful perusal of the item would show 
 some such assertion as "according to a bulletin issued yester- 
 day." The bulletin may have contained assertions which were 
 not true, but the press told the truth when it asserted that the bul- 
 letin contained such and such statements. Because responsibil- 
 ity was placed upon the newspaper rather than upon those who 
 issued the bulletins and statements, the press usually protected 
 itself by emphasizing in the opening sentence its source of infor- 
 mation. Military necessity may have demanded the publication 
 of misleading items, but military necessity must be willing to 
 accept the responsibility for such publicity. 
 
422 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 I : 
 
 KEVIVAL OF EDITORIAL PAGE 
 
 The war from the start did much to revive the interest in the 
 editorial page the influence of which had declined very much 
 in the Period of Financial Readjustment. Unfamiliar with Eu- 
 ropean geography, unacquainted with the economic and politi- 
 cal situations in the warring countries, readers found they must 
 have the news interpreted through the editorial. The war 
 made readers more thoughtful and the thoughtful reader has al- 
 ways been a reader of the editorial page. Once again American 
 journalism found itself divided into two groups, one of which was 
 pro-Ally, the other, pro-German, in its editorial sympathies. 
 The editorial battles between the two developed military critics 
 in the editorial sanctum. The entrance of America into the Great 
 European War brought these two factors together into practi- 
 cally a harmonious press, with only here and there an exception 
 to prove the general rule. 
 
 The attempt of certain newspapers, early in the war, to be 
 strictly neutral in the publishing of the news, was rather amus- 
 ing. The eighth edition of a metropolitan daily on a certain day 
 stretched this streamer headline across the page : 
 
 Germans Fall Like Leaves at the Battle of Ypres. 
 
 The ninth edition of the same paper on the same day bore this 
 headline : 
 
 Allies Fall Like Leaves at the Battle of Ypres. 
 
 Could any newspaper be more neutral? 
 
 PAPER SITUATION 
 
 The increase in the cost of white paper later made space more 
 valuable. The result was that there was a noticeable condensa- 
 tion of news in all departments. Special features, instead of being 
 set in rather large type, were made to occupy a rather smaller 
 space through a change of font, or by the omission of leads be- 
 tween the lines. Headlines were reduced in size; though they 
 often stretched across the page, they were in much smaller type 
 than during the days of the American war with Spain when, as 
 
PERIOD OF SOCIAL READJUSTMENT 423 
 
 has already been mentioned, they sometimes, in extreme cases, 
 practically filled half of the front page. 
 
 The increased cost of production raised the subscription rates 
 of many daily newspapers all over the country especially was 
 this true of those selling at one cent. Even in the few cities where 
 rates were not raised for local subscribers, rates were raised for 
 those living outside the first zone: the farther zones were from the 
 place of publication, the larger the price. Early in 1917, when 
 the shortage of wood pulp paper was most acute, the papers not 
 only limited the size of their editions, but frequently in so doing 
 reduced the number. Notices similar to the following appeared : 
 
 Owing to the shortage of paper, the circulation of the morning edi- 
 tion of The World will be reduced to 350,000 copies 'daily. Beginning 
 February 1st, until further notice, the paper will be absolutely non- 
 returnable. 
 
 When wood chips, which had been previously useful only as 
 fuel or had been totally discarded, came also to be used to manu- 
 facture wood pulp paper, as the result of study made in the For- 
 ests Products Laboratory at Washington, and after numerous 
 economies had been made in newspaper plants to utilize paper 
 which had been previously thrown away, newspapers were able 
 to print announcements similar to the following: 
 
 The World having purchased the High Falls Pulp and Paper Com- 
 pany, and improved the conditions of its newsprint supply, is now able 
 to more nearly approach meeting the demands of its readers by in- 
 creasing the daily circulation on the morning edition to 375,000, but 
 cannot exceed that figure, except on a day when news of extraordi- 
 nary importance may justify a departure from this rule. 
 
 PRESS CENSORSHIP 
 
 Shortly after the entrance of America into the war, President 
 Wilson appointed a Committee on Public Information, the pur- 
 poses of which were twofold : first, to be a clearing-house for the 
 news of the various departments at Washington; second, to act 
 as censors for war intelligence received from other sources. The 
 committee consisted of the Secretary of State, the Secretary of 
 War, the Secretary of the Navy, and one civilian, George Creel. 
 Owing to practically the united opposition of the press, Congress 
 
424 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 deprived the committee of its second function and limited it to 
 the dissemination of information. The committee, however, did 
 issue a pamphlet, based largely upon a similar publication put 
 out by the Press Censor of Canada, which offered suggestions for 
 voluntary censorship. The attitude of the press, The Tribune, 
 of New York, expressed in the following editorial : 
 
 Must every censor or would-be censor put on the clown's livery? 
 Must he lose all sense of restraint and judgment, all touch with actuali- 
 ties? Certainly there seems to be something in this perilous office which 
 goes to a man's brains and makes him the easy victim of his own 
 fatuity. 
 
 Mr. George Creel's latest promulgation is a case in point. He has 
 just issued a new series of "voluntary" censorship regulations and de- 
 clared them in effect from yesterday. They are "voluntary" regulations 
 only in the sense that they have no warrant of law behind them. The 
 newspapers have not volunteered to respect them. Nor could they 
 consent to respect all of them without at the same time submitting to 
 a dictatorship more fantastic and oppressive than exists in any other 
 nation now at war. Even in Turkey, we fancy, newspapers may still 
 do what Mr. Creel wants to prohibit American newspapers from doing. 
 
 The American press was doubtless influenced by the results 
 of censorship in England, where papers like The London Times 
 and The London Daily Mail had asserted that press censorship 
 was pernicious and had been used solely to protect office-holders 
 and blunderers from the penalties of their own stupidity and in- 
 efficiency. "Secrecy helps these men," said Lord Northcliffe, 
 owner of the two papers just mentioned, "to protect their false 
 positions and to do damage to the nation. Publicity pricks the 
 bubble; that is why so many of them hate publicity when it 
 begins to be critical." 
 
 The Committee on Public Information, though deprived of all 
 censorship save where newspapers voluntarily chose to submit 
 news items for inspection, did excellent work in the matter of 
 publicity for different branches of the Government. Had not the 
 two functions, censorship and publicity, been joined at the start, 
 the cooperation of the press would have been more complete. 
 
 When Congress passed in September, 1917, the Trading with 
 the Enemy Act, it gave the Postmaster-General power not only 
 to refuse the second-class entry privilege to newspapers publish- 
 
PERIOD OF SOCIAL READJUSTMENT 425 
 
 ing treasonable or seditious matter, but also to penalize papers 
 reprinting articles from publications declared unmailable. The 
 Postmaster-General thus outlined how he planned to administer 
 the act which gave him so much power over the press : 
 
 This legislation is not to prevent criticism of the Government or the 
 Administration or the Post-Office Department. It is not aimed against 
 Socialist publications or any other kind of publications as a class. The 
 newspapers can denounce the Postmaster-General or the Administra- 
 tion all they like, and they can have such criticism circulated through 
 the mails. But if we find newspapers preaching disloyalty, newspapers 
 that are really German at heart and in secret sympathy with the Ger- 
 man Government which we are fighting, newspapers which are trying 
 to make the masses in this country believe that this is a capitalists' 
 war and that the Government therefore ought not to be supported 
 those publications we intend to suppress with a firm hand, because we 
 are at war with the Imperial German Government. The country has 
 declared war. Any one who deliberately sets afoot a propaganda to 
 discourage support to the Government as against its enemies is doing a 
 treasonable thing. We must win the war, and we cannot brook disloy- 
 alty at home. 
 
 EXPOSURE OF GERMAN INTRIGtJE 
 
 In exposing German intrigue The Journal of Providence led 
 all other American newspapers and lived up to its reputation for 
 enterprise established way back in the Revolutionary Period. 
 During the first year, the exposures of The Journal were accepted 
 by the press with natural reluctance, but so many] of them 
 became verified that newspapers, not merely in the United 
 States,but also in England, France, and Italy, regularly reprinted 
 the sensational disclosures of The Journal. A fitting tribute to 
 that newspaper was thus given in The Evening Transcript of 
 Boston: 
 
 The Providence Journal is entitled to the thanks of the country for 
 the remarkable success of the inquiries into the German spy system 
 and the German propaganda in this country which it has conducted. 
 The Journal's discoveries have been the basis for about three-quar- 
 ters possibly a larger proportion than that of the Government's 
 proceedings against the German plotters; the scalps of Boy-Ed and 
 Von Papen hang at its tepee door; and it was upon The Journal 's in- 
 formation that most of the judicial proceedings now pending were 
 
426 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 taken. It has been a patriotic service to ferret out this plotting and 
 treason and the work is by no means completed. There is not the 
 slightest doubt that The Journal has a good many more sharp arrows 
 ' in its quiver. It has taught the metropolitan press, and that of Boston, 
 a lesson in enterprise; it has advertised itself quite legitimately through- 
 out the world, for The Journal is now known in Downing Street and 
 Wilhelmstrasse, as well as on Westminster Street; and it has performed 
 a work that will be remembered in the history of the war. 
 
 FIRST ARMY EDITION 
 
 The first American newspaper which had an army edition 
 was The Tribune, of Chicago. On July 4, 1917, in spite of the 
 paper scarcity, it started publishing a daily paper in Paris for 
 the American soldiers " somewhere in France." As no young 
 printers were available, most of the work was done by French 
 women who did not understand English. In spite of this handi- 
 cap, editions were fairly free from typographical errors. As there 
 are few "?/V' an d "w's" in the French language, the supply was 
 soon exhausted and editorial writers and reporters were forced 
 to use English words which did not have these letters in their 
 spelling. While the paper had many features of its namesake in 
 Chicago, it gave most of its space to news of America. It sold for 
 ten centimes or two cents per copy and its yearly rate was fixed 
 at thirty francs or six dollars. Though designed primarily for cir- 
 culation among the American soldiers quartered in France, the 
 army edition of The Tribune built up a substantial circulation 
 among the English and American residents in Paris. Joseph B. 
 Pierson was its first editor. 
 
 ARMY AND CAMP ORGANS 
 
 In September, 1917, arrangements were made for the publica- 
 tion of a soldiers' weekly newspaper in most National Army and 
 National Guard camps. The paper to a certain extent was co- 
 operative in that four of its pages were compiled and supplied 
 by the central New York office. These four pages were then sent 
 to the cooperating publisher in the local field. He added the 
 news of the local camp and finished printing the sheet. Distribu- 
 tion was secured through Y.M.C.A. headquarters. 
 
 Cooperation was secured from local newspapers because the 
 
PERIOD OF SOCIAL READJUSTMENT 427 
 
 soldiers' weekly did not carry advertising and was not sold and 
 there could be no competition with other newspapers. To the 
 credit of the South it should be said that its newspapers were 
 among the first to cooperate in the plan. Early cooperation was 
 secured from The News-Leader, of Richmond, Virginia; The 
 News, of Birmingham, Alabama; The Advertiser, of Montgomery, 
 Alabama; The Constitution, of Atlanta, Georgia; The Telegraph, 
 of Macon, Georgia; The Courier -Journal, of Louisville, Ken- 
 tucky. 
 
 REPRESENTED " SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE " 
 
 Represented directly with the First Expeditionary Force to 
 France were the following newspapers and associations: 
 
 The Associated Press. 
 
 The United Press. 
 
 The International News Service. 
 
 The Associated Papers. 
 
 The Newspaper Enterprise Association. ' 
 
 The Philadelphia Ledger Syndicate. 
 
 The Munsey group of newspapers. 
 
 The New York Times and group of newspapers. 
 
 The New York Herald Syndicate. 
 
 The Chicago Tribune and group of newspapers. 
 
 The New York World and group of newspapers. 
 
 The New York Tribune. 
 
 The Philadelphia North American and group of newspapers. 
 
 The Denver Post. 
 
 Collier's Weekly. 
 
 In addition to these accredited correspondents in the field, 
 a number were permitted to go to Paris with letters to the 
 Maison de la Presse, commending them to the French Govern- 
 ment and opening numerous news channels of considerable 
 breadth for them. Included in this second category were numer- 
 ous magazine writers, as well as newspaper correspondents. 
 
 * * 
 
428 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 This chapter must conclude with the imprinted line which ap- 
 pears in the last column of the last page of the daily newspaper : 
 
 To be continued to-morrow. 
 
 Though stopping at a time when the American newspaper is 
 undergoing many changes, it must of necessity be an unfinished 
 chapter to be edited and revised later. Of nothing can it 
 more truthfully be said, that "no man knoweth what the day or 
 hour may bring forth/' than of the newspaper. But one need 
 not be a prophet, nor the son of a prophet, to realize what has so 
 often been stated in the pages of this book, that the newspaper is 
 a motion picture of life's drama, with a plot furnished by the 
 politics and the society of the times. 
 
CHAPTER XX . 
 JOURNALISM OF TO-DAY 
 VIEWS AND INTERVIEWS 
 
 ATTENTION has been repeatedly called to the fact that jour- 
 nalism is a mirror of the times. It is a mirror of the people in 
 general, and the individual paper is a mirror of its subscribers. 
 Arthur Brisbane in discussing newspaper work once remarked : 
 
 The newspaper is not, as Schopenhauer says, "a shadow on the wall," 
 although many a newspaper is a mere shadow of what a newspaper should 
 be. A newspaper is a mirror reflecting the public, a mirror more or less 
 defective, but still a mirror. And the paper that the individual holds 
 in his hand reflects that individual more or less accurately. 
 
 On this point the late Whitelaw Reid, when editor of The New 
 York Tribune, said : 
 
 The thing always forgotten by the closest critic of the newspapers is 
 that they must be immeasurably what their audiences make them; 
 what their constituencies call for and sustain. The newspaper cannot 
 uniformly resist the popular sentiment any more than the stream can 
 flow above its fountain. To say that the newspapers are getting worse 
 is to say that the people are getting worse. They may work more evil 
 now than they have ever wrought before, because the influence is more 
 widespread; but they also work more good, and the habitual attitude 
 of the newspaper is one of effort toward the best its audiences will 
 tolerate. 
 
 Arthur Twining Hadley, president of Yale University, prac- 
 tically concurred in the opinions just noted when he wrote: 
 
 If we are to have responsible newspapers, the reform must begin with 
 the readers themselves. Most of the men who edit newspapers will give 
 the people the kind of newspapers they want. There will, of course, be 
 exceptionally good editors who will make their papers better than 
 their readers demand, and try to educate the people up to a higher level; 
 just as there will be exceptionally bad editors, who will make papers 
 worse than the readers want, and be the instruments, whether they try 
 to or not, of educating the public down to a lower level. But the average 
 
430 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 editor will work for the average reader. He cannot be any more in- 
 dependent of the man who buys his goods than the manufacturer or 
 merchant can be. A manufacturer who refuses to produce things that 
 the people want, because he thinks they ought to want something better, 
 will be driven out of business, and so will a newspaper editor. People 
 sometimes talk of "yellow journalism" as if the editors of the yellow 
 journals were solely responsible for their existence. They are responsible 
 to some degree; but to a still larger degree the responsibility lies with 
 the public that will buy and read their news. 
 
 Other college presidents share this same view. While presi- 
 dent of the University of Minnesota, George Edward Vincent 
 declared : 
 
 The press is more than a business. It is a social service fundamental 
 to the national life, exerting profound influence upon it. The men of the 
 press must recognize the social nature of their task. If the press be a 
 corporation, it is a public service corporation with all of the social 
 responsibility that this implies. The American press reflects the life of 
 all of us, and it affects the life of all of us. We must all share the com- 
 mon task of raising slowly, steadily, courageously this life to a higher 
 level of truth, of justice, of good will. We, the people, make the press 
 what it is. The press can help us to make it and all our national in- 
 stitutions more nearly what they should be. 
 
 Those who maintain that the newspaper has outgrown the 
 looking-glass stage, and should be developed along lines of 
 community interest, overlook the fact that the paper which 
 devotes its energies to community welfare is but reflecting the 
 trend of the times. The old-fashioned church, open only on Sun- 
 day, has in many communities become the institutional church 
 which not only preaches, but also practices the ideals of its 
 Founder. The American university is taking the torch of learn- 
 ing from its academic seal and using it to light its halls at night 
 for the instruction of those unable either on account of the time 
 or money to take the regular course. 
 
 SUPPRESSION OF NEWS 
 
 The charge most often brought against the newspaper to-day 
 is that it suppresses news because it fears certain powerful ad- 
 vertisers. This charge is quite different from that of giving free 
 publicity to advertisers in the news columns. Oswald Garrison 
 
JOURNALISM OF TO-DAY 431 
 
 Villard, of The New York Evening Post, has testified that the 
 newspaper upon which he worked in Philadelphia used to send 
 him to its large advertisers with the statement that "they could 
 have as much space in news columns at anytime as they wanted." 
 Undoubtedly, such a condition too often existed during the Pe- 
 riod of Financial Readjustment. No such condition, however, 
 obtains to-day. On the other hand, the first charge deserves care- 
 ful consideration. There has been in a few cities a suppression of 
 news because of fear of advertisers, but it has always been fraught 
 with great danger to the local press. Mr. Villard has admitted 
 that the press of Philadelphia "has never recovered from the 
 blow to its prestige when it actually refused to tell the story of a 
 crime of the member of one of the large drygoods houses." Yet 
 this omission proved the impossibility of suppressing news, for 
 the story appeared in New York papers which sold rapidly in 
 the streets of Philadelphia. The story was taken up and told all 
 over the country through the pages of the monthly magazines and 
 the literary weeklies. The suppression of the news did more 
 harm to innocent members of the firm than had the Philadel- 
 phia papers given a whole edition to the story of the crime. 
 The publicity given this incident would indicate that such sup- 
 pressions are rare. 
 
 A controversy arose later between this same mercantile estab- 
 lishment and the city of Philadelphia over the question of fire 
 prevention appliances, etc., required by city ordinances: it came 
 from a movement started by the Alumnse Committee of Bryn 
 Mawr College which was studying fire prevention in factories, 
 shops, and stores where women and girls were employed. The 
 Bryn Mawr Committee once complained that it had wrestled in 
 vain with the Philadelphia papers to take the matter up and that 
 the local press had refused to mention the store save in the way 
 of kindness. The press of Philadelphia again received rebuke at 
 the hands of publications of national circulation. In comment- 
 ing on the incident, The Outlook, of New York City, called at- 
 tention to the serious social danger from the muzzling of the 
 newspaper by powerful advertisers. 
 
 r A letter from the manager of the Philadelphia store to the 
 present writer said: 
 
432 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 Do you mind if we say we feel the condition to which you allude has 
 been represented, we think, in an unfair way? 
 
 Unquestionably, the firm was treated unfairly by local papers 
 which suppressed news to which the public was legitimately en- 
 titled. In justice to the firm it must be admitted that there were 
 extenuating circumstances which if the Philadelphia papers had 
 recorded would have put the firm before its patrons in quite a 
 different light for the Bryn Mawr Alumnae knew how to bring 
 pressure upon charge customers. 
 
 Another paragraph of the letter from the manager of the 
 store ought to be quoted: 
 
 The matter has been settled amiably and completely by the city 
 authorities of Philadelphia and ourselves, as you, doubtless, observed 
 from the reports of the papers. 
 
 The present writer did observe those reports, not merely in 
 papers published outside of Philadelphia, but also in those of that 
 city. 
 
 Yet Philadelphia, strange as it may seem, furnishes the honest 
 and conscientious editor with positive proof that readers will not 
 stand any interference on the part of the advertiser in an at- 
 tempt to control editorial policies. During the heat of the Presi- 
 dential Campaign of 1912, the page advertisement of a depart- 
 ment store, a rival of the one to which reference has just been 
 made, was withdrawn one Friday night from a Philadelphia 
 newspaper. No intimation had previously reached its editor that 
 such a step was contemplated and the action was unaccompanied 
 either by word or letter to throw light upon the subject. Adver- 
 tising solicitors were instructed to make no inquiry as to the 
 cause of the discontinuance of the advertisement. The editor 
 instructed the staff to make no explanations or comments about 
 the matter. He then left for his old home to visit his mother. 
 He was absent about a week. Upon his return he was notified 
 that the page advertisement would be resumed the following 
 Monday. 
 
 The absence of the page for a whole week not only attracted 
 much attention, but caused much comment. Readers of the 
 paper thought that they saw in the absence of the advertise- 
 
JOURNALISM OF TO-DAY 433 
 
 ment an act of reprisal against the paper on account of its edi- 
 torial attitude on national politics. Subscribers put their own 
 interpretation on the disappearance of the advertising and in- 
 ferred that the paper had been threatened with a loss of adver- 
 tising unless its editorial policy on politics was modified. Let- 
 ters and telegrams of protest in large numbers poured in upon 
 the owner of the department store. Their writers threatened to 
 refuse to trade at the store unless the advertising was returned to 
 the newspaper. The advertising was sent back without any con- 
 dition suggested or implied. The editorial policy of the paper 
 was not changed one iota, although it may have seemed to the 
 public that it was a little more vigorous than ever before. 
 
 In passing from Philadelphia to New York, the two stores just 
 mentioned, for branches of them are in both cities, may again be 
 used for purposes of illustration. When the first store opened in 
 New York it wanted to give its name to the thoroughfare upon 
 which its building was located. In spite of the thousands of dol- 
 lars which it was spending for advertising the press of New York 
 fought the change, although the store was only attempting what 
 it might perfectly legitimately try to do. Later, the store at- 
 tempted to free the sidewalks in front of its store from "cadets," 
 "mashers," and all other groups of young men who follow the 
 swish of a silken petticoat, as patrons of the store had been an- 
 noyed by the insults of these good-for-nothing chaps. It was a 
 fine thing to do. But some one blundered in making a request 
 that any account of this activity of the store be suppressed in the 
 local press. The request simply sent the account of the affair to 
 the first page and put the firm's name in the headline. Other- 
 wise, there probably would have been just passing mention. The 
 store was again badly treated by the newspapers for it obtained 
 undesirable publicity about a condition which undoubtedly ex- 
 isted around other stores whose owners lacked the courage to 
 take up the matter. 
 
 When the Bryn Mawr Fire Prevention study was seemingly 
 lacking the cooperation of the Philadelphia papers, a New York 
 evening paper The Evening Post, to render unto Caesar the 
 things that are Caesar's sent a man to Philadelphia to make a 
 quiet investigation and to discuss the situation with the Phila- 
 
434 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 delphia store. A conference with the store was sufficient with- 
 out publication to bring about nearly all the changes originally 
 desired. To the unbiased critic it may seem as though the news- 
 paper went out of its own local news field in going to Philadel- 
 phia to make the investigation, but The Evening Post has ever 
 had a high standard regarding its duty to the public. 
 
 George Creel, who was appointed by President Wilson chair- 
 man of the Committee on Public Information, in a magazine 
 article published in January, 1917, brought against the press of 
 New York the serious and specific charge that the department 
 stores "can exercise an absolute censorship whenevei they 
 choose to do so." His general conclusion "The same condi- 
 tion exists in every city large enough to have department 
 stores" may be dismissed without further discussion because 
 made without any proof to substantiate the generalization. His 
 charge against the newspapers of New York, however, deserves 
 careful consideration because it seemed to be supported by evi- 
 dence based on the fact that New York papers refused to insert 
 a political advertisement attacking the owner of the second store 
 used for illustration. The article clearly implied that the rejec- 
 tion of the advertisement was due to a fear that the owner of the 
 store might withdraw his advertising. Mr. Creel, however, failed 
 to explain why The New York Times rejected the advertisement 
 in view of the fact that the store did not advertise in The Times 
 and was therefore without a club to swing at the paper. The in- 
 sertion of the rejected advertisement a copy of which lies 
 before the present writer would make any newspaper subject 
 to a suit for libel. Any man running for public office must assume 
 that his Me is going to be open to attack from all points, in order 
 that voters may be properly informed to pass upon his quali- 
 fications for office. Quite a different condition obtains in at- 
 tacks made upon a man not before people for election to office. 
 The New York papers in general and The New York Times in 
 particular have refused thousands of dollars worth of advertising 
 where the copy consisted of scurrilous attacks upon character. 
 
 For years critics asserted that the most positive proof that the 
 department stores controlled the policies of New York papers 
 was found in the fact that the greatest news story lying around 
 
JOURNALISM OF TO-DAY 435 
 
 loose was the fire hazard in these stores and that no newspaper 
 had the courage to describe the conditions. Yet when conditions 
 attending employment in the large department stores in New 
 York were publicly taken up at a hearing of the Federal Com- 
 mission on Industrial Relations, the New York papers printed 
 without suppression the facts brought out at the inquiry, not 
 only about the two stores to which reference has been made, but 
 also about all the larger stores of the city. [For some reason, 
 doubtless best known to city editors, the following assertion by 
 former Chief Guerin of the Bureau of Fire Prevention was 
 omitted: "I must say that the department store managers are 
 fair and ready to do anything within reason to correct existing 
 imperfect conditions." City editors have seen no reason why 
 they should attack fire hazards in department stores when worse 
 conditions existed in many manufacturing plants. They were 
 unable, in spite of several attempts, to arouse the people to the 
 necessity of better working conditions and regretted that it 
 would take a great holocaust like the fire in the Triangle Shirt- 
 waist Factory to arouse the public conscience. 
 
 Not long ago the owner of a large department store failed in 
 business. There was a pretty well founded rumor that condi- 
 tions had not been just right at his store for some time. Because 
 the New York papers did not give any publicity to the matter 
 till the failure was a legal fact, they were accused of suppressing 
 the news because of the advertising revenue derived from the 
 store. Such critics overlooked the fact that such publication 
 might have made the newspapers financially responsible for 
 the failure. During the Panic of 1907 a New York newspaper 
 printed a story that a certain business establishment was on the 
 verge of bankruptcy. It was, and later failed. The owners 
 brought suit against the newspapers and collected heavy damages 
 on the ground that the failure had been caused by the publi- 
 cation of the item. Courts, as Whitelaw Reid, of The New York 
 Tribune, pointed out in his lecture on " Journalism " at Yale 
 University, have been rather harsh on newspapers for publish- 
 ing items of this character and newspapers cannot be blamed for 
 the use of ordinary common sense in such matters. 
 
 One incident, unfortunate and distressing, has been tossed 
 
436 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 about all over the country to show the control of Boston jour- 
 nalism by the department stores. A woman who was shortly to 
 become a mother was arrested at one of the stores on the charge 
 of shoplifting: she was supposed to have secreted on her person 
 goods taken from counters of the store. While being subjected 
 to a search she was taken ill and serious consequences followed. 
 Her husband, after the loss of the child, sued the store for dam- 
 ages as he should and was awarded a verdict rather sub- 
 stantial in amount. The Boston papers, possibly with a single 
 exception, did not as they should not print the story even 
 though the testimony was somewhat sensational. For some rea- 
 son the wishes of the family have been overlooked in a discussion 
 of the incident. If ever there was a just cause for requesting a 
 suppression of news it was here. Such incidents do not concern 
 public welfare and ought to be omitted from the columns of 
 American newspapers. Had there been any miscarriage of jus- 
 tice, there would be some justification for printing the item, 
 but no such condition obtained. 
 
 In another city conditions were quite like those in Boston, 
 only there had been several similar incidents, though less dis- 
 astrous in results. A large store had moved farther uptown and 
 with its larger quarters it had been forced to employ green detec- 
 tives who frequently made errors. In fact, they made so many 
 blunders that managers of other department stores went to the 
 press with the request for publicity in order that the evil might 
 be corrected. One newspaper publisher told the representatives 
 from the stores, "You can't get publicity for such stuff in my 
 paper, even if all of you withdraw your advertising." He was 
 quite right. Such an incident does not properly belong in a book 
 of this character, but has been inserted because of the promi- 
 nence it has been given by critics of journalism. 
 
 Another Boston incident has attracted much attention. A 
 certain department store in that city desired to unite its two 
 buildings by a covered passageway across a city street. As 
 certain legal technicalities interfered with the construction, the 
 attorney-general of the State rendered an opinion that a muni- 
 cipal permit was not sufficient and that special action of the 
 State Legislature was necessary. The Evening Transcript in 
 
JOURNALISM OF TO-DAY 437 
 
 Boston printed the opinion of the attorney-general and the ad- 
 vertising of the department store was temporarily suspended in 
 the columns of The Transcript. Newspaper critics at once jumped 
 to the conclusion that the store withdrew its advertising in an 
 at.tempt to dictate policies to The Transcript or to punish The 
 Transcript for not being more thoughtful of department stores. 
 To these critics the thought never occurred that there might be 
 other reasons for withdrawal of advertising. But even if the 
 critics were right, the incident shows the independence of The 
 Transcript and may have impressed the department store with 
 its dependence on newspaper advertising, for it is now one of the 
 most liberal users of space in that publication. Department 
 stores simply cannot get along without the newspapers. The 
 great newspaper strike in Chicago showed the dependence of 
 department stores upon newspapers a dependence forcibly 
 impressed by the loss of trade through inability to tell patrons 
 about store bargains. Not until the newspapers with their store 
 advertising appeared again on Chicago streets did business be- 
 come normal. 
 
 OPINIONS OF ADVERTISERS 
 
 For some reason critics have not gone to department stores for 
 information. A little investigation shows that department stores 
 feel that they have not been treated squarely by newspapers. 
 They assert that a man cannot have a harmless fit in their 
 buildings without some account getting into the newspapers, 
 while he may have as many fits as he chooses in a smaller store 
 without a single line in the newspapers to record the fact. De- 
 partment stores maintain that every time their delivery wagons 
 have an accident the fact is made known in the press with the 
 name of the store to which the wagon belonged printed conspicu- 
 ously in the account, while horses attached to wagons of smaller 
 stores may run away and do considerable damage with news- 
 paper readers none the wiser about the event. Department 
 stores feel that the newspapers might render a little editorial 
 assistance in matters of public convenience and public safety 
 such as a bridge joining two buildings occupied by the same store : 
 they assert that the newspapers are unwilling to endorse such 
 
438 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 enterprises lest the charge be brought against them of being in- 
 fluenced by advertising. Almost every department store has its 
 tale of woe about the lack of cooperation from newspapers in 
 announcing the welfare movements started among employees. 
 On the whole, department stores present just as strong a case 
 against the newspapers as do the critics. Did not this condition 
 obtain, there would be more reason to suspect truth in the charge 
 that advertising possibly influences the news and editorial 
 columns. 
 
 OPINIONS OF BUSINESS MANAGERS 
 
 Don C. Seitz, business manager of The New York World, has 
 testified as follows about the charge that advertisers run the 
 policy of the newspapers : 
 
 I have been for twenty years in the business office of The New York 
 World and I do not recall a half-dozen attempts on the part of adver- 
 tisers to influence it, and of these attempts only one was a matter of 
 public concern about which there were two very fair opinions. We did 
 not accept the advertiser's view. It is some five years since I have had 
 an advertiser ask me to do anything, even in his personal interests, 
 unless perhaps to print a wedding notice, or the mention of some social 
 affair, and in this I rather think the editors treated him more shabbily 
 than if it had been some one else. Good editors are not interfered with 
 on great newspapers. If they were, there would be neither good edi- 
 tors nor great newspapers. 
 
 Louis Wiley, business manager of The New York Times, in 
 his address on "The Newspaper of To-day" has a long list of 
 items which were published in The Times and which mention 
 specifically department stores where omission might have been 
 desired. The Times on several occasions has been absolutely 
 fearless in printing such news. On a few occasions it avoided 
 even the appearance of evil. For example, it refused to sell a 
 political party several thousand copies of a certain issue con- 
 taining an editorial desired for circulation among voters in an 
 approaching election because it feared that readers might think 
 that the editorial was inspired by party allegiance. 
 
 On this matter of outside dictation, General Charles H. Taylor, 
 of The Boston Globe, once said : 
 
JOURNALISM OF TO-DAY 439 
 
 I can assure those of our friends who are filled with the fear that 
 advertisers and the interests will control the movements, opinions, and 
 news of the prosperous and independent press, that they need not lose 
 any more sleep over The Globe. Advertisers and readers alike know that 
 they will be treated with absolute fairness by The Globe, because that 
 is the bed-rock basis on which this newspaper has been conducted for 
 forty years and it is the rule which will guide it in the years to come. 
 
 In the few instances where powerful interests, whether through 
 ownership or otherwise, have dictated policies which were against 
 the interests of the common welfare, the newspapers thus con- 
 trolled have lost steadily in circulation and become useless even 
 to their dictators because of lack of influence. 
 
 DICTATION OF EDITORIAL POLICY 
 
 Another charge frequently brought against the press, some- 
 what similar to the one just discussed, is that outside financial 
 interests frequently dictate the editorial policy. When Bryan 
 was nominated for President on the Democratic ticket in 1896, 
 there was great consternation among bankers lest his election 
 should disrupt existing monetary standards and ruin the coun- 
 try. While there was no concerted action, independent bankers 
 holding notes of newspapers did have several heart to heart talks 
 with editors and proprietors and threatened to demand im- 
 mediate payment of financial obligations if Bryan was supported. 
 Be it said to the credit of editors who conscientiously believed in 
 the silver standard that they told bankers "where to get off," 
 that editorial policies were not subject to mortgage or demand 
 notes and that they would welcome the issue if it were presented. 
 They said that they would publish the facts in the case for their 
 readers and were positive that they could raise enough money 
 through popular subscription to continue publication. In other 
 instances editors informed bankers that a suit to collect notes 
 might cause a reduction in the size of their newspapers, but they 
 still had funds enough to print handbills stating the reason for 
 change in form. No such drastic action, however, was necessary, 
 as bankers soon saw that the chief asset of a newspaper was its 
 independence. The newspapers which did change, to a certain 
 extent, their party affiliations did so of their own free will be- 
 
440 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 cause they believed, as did the majority of the voters of the 
 country, that debased currency was wrong both in theory and in 
 practice. Numerous editors stood by this principle in spite of the 
 opposition of wealthy owners of the silver mines who likewise 
 tried to dictate editorial policies. In a few cases, where bankers 
 did insist that the amount of indebtedness of newspapers to them 
 should be reduced, on account of business conditions, they were 
 but doing what they were requiring of all borrowers the 
 reduction in loans. 
 
 A large advertiser in a certain metropolitan daily did with- 
 draw his advertising because the paper supported Bryan in his 
 presidential aspirations, but later, on finding that he was losing 
 business on account of the absence of this advertising, he tried 
 to have it inserted again. The newspaper informed him very 
 plainly in words to the following effect: "You have tried to 
 dictate to this paper through a threat of withdrawal of adver- 
 tising. You need to be taught a lesson. You are now out, and 
 out you stay for one year, that the lesson may be forcibly im- 
 pressed upon your memory." Not until the year was up was he 
 allowed to resume advertising. 
 
 PITILESS PUBLICITY 
 
 Whether newspapers should give full publicity to crime has 
 been a frequent subject of discussion in periodical literature. No 
 conclusive evidence has ever been brought forth to prove that 
 such accounts increase the amount of crime. On the other hand, 
 only the astigmatic or myopic person fails to see that publicity 
 is a most decided deterrent of crime. E. W. Howe, when editor of 
 The Globe, of Atchison, Kansas, expressed this idea very epi- 
 grammatically, "The wages of sin is publicity"; Ralph Waldo 
 Emerson knew whereof he spoke when he asserted, " Light is the 
 great policeman." Unquestionably, great sorrow is brought to 
 wives, children, and other relatives by the newspaper accounts 
 of the acts of criminals. The duty of the newspaper, however, is 
 plain: it must protect other wives, children, and relatives who 
 will be brought to grief unless all forms of rascality are exposed 
 and perpetrators of crime brought to justice. Pitiless publicity 
 it must often be, but it is never heartless. 
 
JOURNALISM OF TO-DAY 441 
 
 But for the newspaper, crime and corruption would often ex-1 
 ist unmolested. A newspaper is a megaphone through which re-l 
 formers call a city to arms and improve conditions. Just as the 
 physician seeks out a diseased organ, even though he has to cut 
 through pus and false flesh, so the newspaper which lives up to 
 its duty must lay bare the cankered spots of the body politic. 
 There can be no question that the public should know about the 
 vice and corruption in order to combat the evil. J. St. Loe 
 Strachey, editor of The London Spectator, thus emphasized this 
 point in his address on "Ethics of Journalism": 
 
 It is good to know, within reasonable limits, the evil that is being 
 done in order that we may lay our plans and bring up our forces to 
 check that evil. 
 
 When the Reverend C. M. Sheldon was editing The Capital 
 at Topeka, Kansas, for a week in 1900 as Christ would have 
 conducted a newspaper, he denned news as "anything in the 
 way of daily events that the public ought to know for its devel- 
 opment and power in a We of righteousness" and therefore 
 excluded details of crime from the columns. In commenting on 
 Dr. Sheldon's attitude toward stories of crime The World of New 
 York City went even farther than Mr. Strachey in the matter of 
 such publicity: 
 
 It is painful, but it is a fact that this world is a vast battlefield 
 between good and evil. This being the case it is of the very highest 
 importance that the armies of the good should have the completest, 
 the most accurate and the quickest information as to what the armies 
 of evil are about. The journalist is an officer in the Department of 
 Intelligence of the Armies of the Good. And whether he is working 
 for his pay or for a principle or for both or without any conscious motive 
 whatever, or even with a bad motive, so long as he remains true to the 
 fundamental canon of his creed "Publicity! Publicity! Publicity!" 
 he is serving the cause of the good. Whenever from any motive, good 
 or bad, he violates that] canon he is a traitor to that cause, a giver of 
 aid and comfort to the enemy. 
 
 LEGITIMATE SUPPRESSION 
 
 The "reasonable limits" mentioned by Mr. Strachey impose 
 an obligation upon the press not to fill its columns with filth and 
 fraud for which there is no justification. In this respect American 
 
442 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 papers are far more conservative than the English: not a single 
 American newspaper begins to print with such fullness of detail 
 the accounts of certain crimes and divorce trials as are found in 
 the great London papers. Mr. Strachey commended very highly 
 in his address the motto of The New York Times, "All the news 
 that's fit to print." 
 
 Contrary to the generally accepted opinion, newspapers, even 
 the most sensational, suppress much more than they print in the 
 matter of criminal news. If suppression would serve the people 
 as a whole better, the story of crime is omitted. One illustration, 
 taken from an address by the city editor of a great metropolitan 
 daily before a state city editors' association, will show how con- 
 scientious is the city editor worthy of that title : 
 
 Since I have been in l there was a minister in one of the larger 
 
 churches there, a high-salaried man, looked up to by his congregation 
 and the city at large and regarded as one of the brightest men in his 
 denomination in the world. It was brought to the ears of a certain city 
 editor not myself that this man had been guilty of immoral 
 practices, and men were put to work to run the stories to earth. Those 
 stories were proved, and if they had been printed they would have been 
 the sensation of the nation for a few days. But they never got beyond 
 the city editor, and for this reason he knew that to print them 
 would disrupt that church, break up several families, and bring sorrow 
 to hundreds of homes. So this is what he did. The minister in question 
 was called in: the facts were shown him and a typewritten agreement 
 handed him. This agreement provided that he was to resign his pulpit, 
 quit the ministry and the city forever, and never again write or speak a 
 word in public. The minister did all that. There was no publicity, and 
 the church was saved, although shocked by the minister's sudden re- 
 tirement. To-day he is living on a farm, a quiet, studious man. 
 
 Had this city editor suppressed the news, without the in- 
 fliction of the penalty given, he would have been false to his 
 trust. On several occasions where irregularities of conduct in 
 priest and rabbi have been simply suppressed, offenders have 
 gone to other parishes only to disgrace the cloth again. Had full 
 publicity been given in the first instance, results would have been 
 different and certain newspapers could have had a clearer con- 
 science. 
 
 1 I have suppressed the name of the city for the same reason the city edi- 
 tor suppressed the story. J. M. L. 
 
JOURNALISM OF TO-DAY 443 
 
 A paper full of the items suppressed for the good of the com- 
 munity would cause a greater sensation than any which has yet 
 been printed. Even the most sensational newspapers suppress 
 many stories of crime in the interest of the public welfare. News 
 thus suppressed is that to which the community is not legiti- 
 mately entitled and shows not the weakness, but the strength, of 
 the American press. Newspapers occasionally make mistakes, 
 they are but human institutions, but on the whole, they serve 
 the community well. 
 
 PKESENT-DAY ETHICS 
 
 In the opinion of the writer the ethics of journalism of to-day 
 are higher than those of any other profession. What the press 
 does is known and read by all men. It does not print one edition 
 for one class of subscribers and another for another. The only 
 exception to this rule was an editor in a Western city who pub- 
 lished a somewhat sensational sheet. After the regular edition 
 was run off, he used to "lift" the stories of crime and fill the 
 spaces with reports of acts of kindness, sermons, etc. The sec- 
 ond edition consisted of but one copy the copy which the 
 editor took home to his aged mother. With this single exception, 
 which really amounts to nothing except as an interesting inci- 
 dent, every reader knows exactly where the paper stands. It 
 may be on the wrong side, but it is publicly labeled so that no 
 one is deceived. What other profession can say as much? 
 
 How The Bulletin, of San Francisco, California, practically 
 unsupported, aroused that city to a realization of the corruption 
 of the Ruef-Schmitz machine is a story too widely known to be 
 retold here. But as The Bulletin had sent Abraham Ruef to jail 
 and then asked for his parole, its readers could not understand 
 the attitude of the paper toward the convicted grafter: to them 
 it seemed paradoxical. In answer to a correspondent who was 
 indignant that The Bulletin should ask that Ruef be set free, 
 Fremont Older, the editor of The Bulletin, explained his change 
 in view as follows: 
 
 I have asked mercy for Ruef because I feel that I did most to bring 
 about his downfall. The Bulletin fought Ruef long before the rest of 
 San Francisco woke up. I attacked him with all the invective I could 
 
444 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 command and all that I could hire. I cartooned him in stripes. I de- 
 scribed him on the way to the penitentiary at San Quentin. 
 
 I was vindictive, unscrupulous, savage. I went to Washington and 
 enlisted Heney in the fight. William J. Burns came and I persuaded 
 Spreckles to help us. At last, after years of a man-hunting and man- 
 hating debauch, Ruef became what I had longed and dreamed that he 
 might become a convict. 
 
 Then I said to myself: "You've got him. He's in stripes. He is help- 
 less, beaten, chained. You've won. How do you like your victor} 7 ? 
 How do you enjoy the picture you have painted? Every savage in- 
 stinct in your nature is expressed in the canvas." 
 
 Well, my soul revolted. I thought over my own life, the many un- 
 worthy things I have done to others, the injustice, the wrongs, I have 
 been guilty of, the human hearts I have wantonly hurt, the sorrow I 
 have caused, the half truths I have told, the mitigating truths I have 
 withheld, the lies I have allowed to go undenied. I see myself now 
 stripped of all sham and pretense and self-righteousness, holding the 
 key to another man's cell. If society will let me, I want to unlock that 
 barred door and for the rest of my life try to get nearer the spirit of 
 Christ. 
 
 In a letter to the writer of this book, Mr. Older enlarged still 
 further upon this change: 
 
 I thought when I wrote the letter, and I think now, that we all ap- 
 proached the graft situation in the wrong spirit. We believed that there 
 was only one way to put an end to municipal corruption and that was 
 by discovering legal evidence against the grafters, indict them, try them 
 in the courts, convict them and send them to the penitentiary. We did 
 not know we were dealing with a disease and that there was no more 
 occasion for hatred and denunciation than there would have been if the 
 city had become infected with a contagious malady, and we had led a 
 crusade to eliminate it. But in those days none of us had any doubt that 
 the jail was the only cure. That was because we had no background of 
 human experience. We believed that men were either definitely good or 
 definitely bad, and that men deliberately decided to be either good or 
 bad, just as a young man would choose a career. So we proceeded on that 
 theory and expended vast sums of money, time, and energy in trying to 
 put the grafters in prison. It happened that the men who had been buy- 
 ing privileges of Schmitz and Ruef were wealthy, and being wealthy 
 were influential, highly respected, and belonged to our most exclusive 
 social circles. Naturally, they did n't relish the idea of wearing stripes 
 in a penitentiary. So they fought back hard and the conflict developed 
 into a bitter war which lasted several years. 
 
 If we had used the money, time, and energy in making a quiet in- 
 vestigation of the graft in our city, and had not stopped as soon as we 
 
JOURNALISM OF TO-DAY 445 
 
 thought we had sufficient evidence to convict, the work would have been 
 more valuable. I think we could have secured more complete confessions 
 from those implicated if we had given them to understand that prison 
 punishment would only be resorted to in the event of their withholding 
 any part of their corrupt activities. We could then have made a com- 
 plete expose* which would have been educational, and would have had 
 tremendous value to those who are interested in making our civic life 
 cleaner and our methods more efficient. But we did the best we knew 
 at the time. It was certainly a liberal education for me. Some of the 
 others still fail to see it as I do. They cling doggedly to the jail and the 
 prison as the only cure for evil. 
 
 UNFAIRNESS OF PAPERS 
 
 Still another charge brought against the American newspaper 
 is that it seldom, if ever, prints a speech of any length unless 
 delivered by the President of the United States or some other 
 very distinguished official. Attention is called to the fact that 
 the report often contains nothing except the startling, foolish, 
 or inflammatory utterances of the speaker. A contrast is drawn 
 between the newspapers of to-day and those of Greeley's time 
 when speeches were often reported at length. Such critics, how- 
 ever, fail to make a comparison of the sizes of the newspapers 
 printed during these periods. The average New York newspaper 
 is not much larger to-day than it was then, except for advertis- 
 ing columns often it has fewer columns devoted to the news. 
 Yet the number of men who make speeches in that city has 
 multiplied to such an extent that a detailed report is now quite 
 an impossibility. Very often, the words quoted of the speaker 
 constitute the only new thing given in the speech, devoted for 
 the most part to generalizations often much better expressed by 
 others. The reading public, like the men of Athens, in Paul's 
 time, is chiefly interested in the new thing and unless the new 
 thing be said, readers prefer newspaper stories of deeds rather 
 than those of speech. 
 
 In discussing a complaint of Professor Scott Nearing that he 
 had not been treated fairly by the newspapers, The World, of 
 New York, spoke as follows in an editorial: 
 
 It is always a pleasure to discuss journalism with an honest man who 
 knows nothing about it. Professor Scott Nearing, for example, believes 
 that most newspapers are biased or corrupt because they are not dis- 
 
446 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 posed to embellish their pages with his long and not very convincing 
 arguments against measures for national defense. 
 
 Nothing in this world is easier than for an excited individual to 
 imagine that his failure to make a profound impression is due to some- 
 body's prejudice or dishonesty. Many a humbug gets great space in 
 newspapers for a season. Many a man of one idea figures briefly in 
 the big headlines. But many a person profoundly in earnest is taken up 
 and quickly set down again because it is found that, after all, he has no 
 true message. 
 
 There is hardly a day that does not develop hi some line of thought a 
 man or woman, generally young, who has discovered that the inherited 
 experience of the human race in its social and political relations is 
 worthless. If the humdrum newspapers which deal in their ignorant 
 way with life as it is and has been were to accept all these prophets at 
 their self-valuations, this world would be more of a bedlam than it is. 
 
 Truth sometimes has to fight for a hearing, but never hopelessly. 
 Folly and presumption are much more likely to receive hasty atten- 
 tion. In most cases it is when folly and presumption have been found 
 out and dropped that we hear of the unfriendliness of the press. Truth 
 recognized and established presents no resolutions of thanks and throws 
 no bouquets. Truth is the great silencer. 
 
 Professor Nearing speaks of journalism as a game, which it is not. 
 Journalism is about as serious a profession as sober men ever engaged 
 in. It has its eye upon the past for instruction and upon the future for 
 inspiration guided by that instruction. We wish that Professor Nearing 
 and all other reformers who are in a hurry could be similarly actuated. 
 
 POLITICAL ADVERTISING 
 
 A criticism brought against the newspaper is that it ought not 
 to allow the insertion of advertisements which advocate policies 
 directly opposed to those stated in the editorial columns. Es- 
 pecially is this true of political advertising inserted by the party 
 whose principles are not advocated by the paper.. The justice of 
 this charge is without foundation. It is a gopA thing for a Re- 
 publican to read in his party paper the advertisements of the 
 Democratic Party. The advertisement, being officially prepared, 
 is positive assurance to him that its contents have not been col- 
 ored or warped by the editorial policies of the paper: it is a yard- 
 stick by which he may measure the accuracy of the news re- 
 ports of the rival party. On the basis of sound advertising theory, 
 political advertising should be given, not to papers of like policy, 
 but to opposition papers; the advertising manager of a paper 
 
 
JOURNALISM OF TO-DAY 447 
 
 with Republican leanings presented the case squarely when he 
 said to the manager of a Democratic press bureau who objected 
 to the editorial policies of the paper in question: " Whom are you 
 trying to reach, through your political advertising, those who 
 are going to vote for Wilson, or those who are now thinking of 
 voting against him? When you have reached your decision, 
 remember this fact, our paper guarantees a larger circulation 
 among those who are now opposing Wilson than any other paper 
 in the city." To the credit of this Democratic press bureau, be it 
 said that it used large space in the Republican sheet. Political 
 advertising should be inserted not solely to reward papers for 
 party allegiance, but to spread partisan doctrine where it will 
 do the most good; it is for this purpose that people contribute 
 funds to the campaign expenses of the great parties. It must be 
 confessed that in the past much of this political advertising has 
 been too personal and too bitter to be effective among intelligent 
 newspaper readers. More and more, however, political adver- 
 tising is being prepared on the same sound principles as those 
 which govern general advertising. 
 
 EDITORIAL PROSTITUTION 
 
 Another so-called weakness of modern journalism is that edi- 
 torial writers must on special occasions write opinions not be- 
 lieved to be just and right because the chief-of -staff insists that 
 these policies are those of the newspaper. Tiffany Blake, chief 
 editorial writer of The Chicago Tribune, put the case in its proper 
 light when he gave this justification of such work. He thought, 
 when a writer was, on the whole, in sympathy with the editorial 
 policies, he might, in minor cases, support certain measures with 
 which he did not agree. Such conduct, Mr. Blake pointed out, 
 was in keeping with the religious and political life of any in- 
 dividual; a man in joining a political party does not necessarily 
 imply that he supports every plank of the platform, but that he 
 thinks that this party comes the nearest to agreeing with his 
 views about the questions of the day; a man joining a church or 
 religious sect may not agree with every article of the creed, but 
 he chooses to become a member because this religious denomina- 
 tion in its larger doctrines favors his views on matters of ethics 
 
448 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 and spiritual welfare. As a matter of practice, however, an edi- 
 torial writer on the larger dailies seldom has the disagreeable 
 task of writing what he does not believe. A question is thrashed 
 out at the editorial council and after a decision has been reached 
 as to where the paper shall stand, the writing of the editorial is 
 given to the man to whom the subject most appeals because ex- 
 perience has shown that he can generally produce the most forci- 
 ble and convincing appeal on the subject. 
 
 SIGNED EDITORIALS 
 
 This practice in editorial offices shows how impossible are the 
 recommendations of William Jennings Bryan and others that 
 editorial articles should be signed by the names of their writers. 
 In thrashing out a problem at the editorial council different 
 phases of a subject are presented by various members of the 
 staff. The man who writes the editorial frequently accepts ideas 
 from every member of the staff hi his presentation of the subject, 
 and he would be guilty of plagiarism if he should attach his name 
 to the editorial. The editorial " we" is the real author of the edi- 
 torial : the staff, through an individual writer, has spoken for the 
 paper. Only where the editorial staff consists of a single member 
 would there be justification for using Mr. Bryan's suggestion of 
 signed editorials. 
 
 CHARTING THE NEWS 
 
 A distinguished educator went over a certain New York paper 
 systematically for three months during which time he charted 
 the news as follows: demoralizing, 2295 items; unwholesome, 
 1684; trivial, 2100; worth-while, 3900 or thirty-nine per cent, 
 of the total. The New York World thought that the educator 
 made out a fairly good case for the newspapers; that thirty-nine 
 per cent, of worth-while news was up to the average quality of 
 achievement in most human activities such as the preaching of 
 sermons, painting of pictures, writing of novels, or what-not. 
 
 Other newspapers thought that the newspaper average of 
 worth-while items was higher than thirty-nine per cent. The 
 Evening Tribune of Providence, Rhode Island, expressed its views 
 as follows: 
 
JOURNALISM OF TO-DAY 449 
 
 Nobody familiar with the legitimate objects of a newspaper, the 
 ends which it very properly endeavors to serve, would argue that all 
 items that are demoralizing or unwholesome in the sense that they have 
 to do with the misconduct of human beings, with murder or robbery 
 or arson or with worse, if possible, should be entirely ignored. It has 
 been asserted, and with truth, surely, that it will be a sorry day for this 
 or any other country when newspapers are forced to regard what is 
 unwholesome or demoralizing as so commonplace, so much a matter of 
 course, as to be undeserving of treatment as a matter of news, happen- 
 ings not only of interest, but doings with which all adult persons should 
 be made acquainted. There would speedily be formed a very false and 
 wholly misleading conception of actual conditions of society and the 
 state of [the body politic as it is, were all reference to what is demoraliz- 
 ing or unwholesome suppressed. Comparisons by which progress in 
 civilization and moral advance could be measured would be out of the 
 question, of course. Such an ostrich-like procedure or departure would 
 leave us in utter ignorance of existence and its environments; of the life 
 that is being lived; it would tempt us to plume ourselves on virtues that 
 we do not possess; on civic righteousness which is wanting. As for the 
 trivial things of life, who shall draw the line between the important and 
 the unimportant? A very wise philosopher has declared that " under 
 God's mysterious dispensation there are no trifles." 
 
 LOCAL INFLUENCE OF READERS 
 
 Several writers on journalism have pointed to Charleston, 
 South Carolina, as an example of where newspapers were vir- 
 tually owned and controlled by a powerful social organization. 
 Attention has been repeatedly called to how the newspapers of 
 that city never report the balls and social activities of the St. 
 Cecilia Society. Critics have overlooked the important fact that 
 newspaper readers have moulded journalism in that city where 
 there is a resentment against publicity, not only about the balls 
 of the St. Cecilia Society, but also about weddings and other 
 social events. Charleston newspaper readers have spoken in no 
 uncertain terms about these matters. No evidence has yet been 
 produced that the newspapers of Charleston have suppressed 
 news to which the public was legitimately entitled and for which 
 there could be any difference of opinion about its affecting the 
 welfare of the city. 
 
450 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 The assertion has been made by publicists that if the European 
 countries had had newspapers like those found hi America there 
 would never have been the Great War of the World. Be that as 
 it may, there can be no question that the permanence of the 
 American Republic is linked by inseparable bonds to the inde- 
 pendence of the press. No man has seen this fact more clearly 
 than ex-president Charles William Eliot, of Harvard University. 
 His conclusion, not that of one intimately associated with the 
 profession, but rather that of one who sees American life in all 
 its ramifications, may well be the concluding paragraph of this 
 book: 
 
 Another new and effective bulwark of state is to be found in the ex- 
 treme publicity with which all American 'activities are carried on. 
 Many people are in the habit of complaining bitterly of the intrusion 
 of the newspaper reporter into every nook and corner of the State and 
 even into the privacy of the home; but in this extreme publicity is 
 really to be found a new means of social, industrial, and governmental 
 reform and progress. There are many exaggerations, perversions, and 
 inaccuracies in this publicity; but on the whole it is a beneficent and a 
 new agency for the promotion of the public welfare. ... So new is this 
 force in the world that many people do not yet trust it, or perceive its 
 immense utility. In case of real industrial -grievances and oppressions, 
 publicity would be by far the quickest and surest means of cure 
 vastly more effective for all just ends than secret combinations of 
 either capitalists or laborers. The newspapers which are the ordinary 
 instruments of this publicity, are as yet very imperfect instruments, 
 much of their work being done so hastily -and so cheaply as to pre- 
 clude accuracy; but as a means of publicity. they visibly improve from 
 decade to decade and taken together with -the magazines and the con- 
 troversial pamphlet, they shed more light on the social, industrial, and 
 political life of the people of the United States than was ever shed be- 
 fore on the doings and ways of any people. This force is distinctly new 
 within the century, and it affords a new and strong guarantee for the 
 American Republic. 
 
 THE END 
 
INDEX 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abbot, Willis J., 412 
 Abell, A. S., 192 
 Abolition paper, 152, 262 
 Abominations, Tariff of, 148 
 Accuracy and Fair Play, Bureau of, 
 
 401 
 
 Acta Diurna, 3 
 Adams, Abijah, 102 
 Adams, Isaac, 160 
 Adams, James, 56 
 Adams, John, 105, 132 
 Adams, John Q., 149 
 Adams, Osborn, 232 
 Adams, Samuel, 409 
 Adams, S. H., 226 
 Adams, W. L., 238 
 Adless daily paper, 408 
 Advertisements, Civil War Period, 312 
 Colonial Period, 70 
 liquors, lotteries, etc., 
 
 of, 332 
 news in, 74 
 political, 446 
 " Rags Wanted," 97 
 Revolutionary Peri- 
 od, 93 
 
 tax on, 110, 112, 346 
 Advertiser, Albany, 135 
 
 Bache's General, 103, 104 
 Baltimore, 94 
 Boston Daily, 155 
 Boston Daily (Polar Star), 
 
 120 
 
 Charleston, 92 
 Independent, 55 
 Louisville, 143 
 Mercantile, 142, 159 
 Milwaukee, 231 
 National, 142 
 New York Commercial, 134, 
 
 321 
 
 New York Daily, 120 
 Pennsylvania Daily, 118, 
 
 155 
 
 Portland Daily, 237 
 South Carolina General, 119 
 Advertising, agency, 74 
 
 Civil War Period, 312 
 honest laws, 394 
 increase in, 355 
 
 Advertising, medicinal, 72, 225, 390 
 
 newspaper, 355, 390, 392 
 Alabama, early papers, 180 
 Albright, Samuel J., 246 
 Alien and Sedition Laws, 102 
 AUa California, 337 
 American, Nashville, 379 
 
 New York (Hearst), 373 
 New York (King), 161 
 Antony, 2 
 Archer, Thomas, 6 
 Argus, Albany, 150, 360 
 
 Denver, 252 
 
 Memphis, 289 
 
 New York, 103 
 
 Oregonian, 238 
 
 Portland, 147, 148 
 Arizona, early papers, 249 
 Arkansas, early papers, 182 "* 
 Army Organs, 90, 261, 301, 426 
 Associated Press, 343, 384, 415 
 
 Bailey, Francis, 90 
 Baker, N. A., 252, 254 
 Bangs, Samuel, 183 
 Bank, United States, 156 
 Banner, Abbeville, 282 
 Nashville, 335 
 Beach, Moses S., 268, 276 
 Beach, Moses Y., 188 
 Bee, Hudson, 143 
 
 New London, 103, 143 
 New Orleans, 289 
 New York, 189, 224 
 Omaha, 246, 337 
 Beginnings in States and Territories: 
 
 Alabama, 180 
 
 Arizona, 249 
 
 Arkansas, 182 
 
 California, 239 
 
 Colorado, 250 
 
 Connecticut, 51 
 
 Delaware, 56 
 
 Dist. of Columbia, 172 
 
 Florida, 165 
 
 Georgia, 58 
 
 Idaho, 252 
 
 Illinois, 181 
 
 Indiana, 177 
 
 Iowa, 234 
 

 454 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Beginnings in States and Territories: 
 
 Kansas, 232 
 
 Kentucky, 169 
 
 Louisiana, 165 
 
 Maine, 167 
 
 Maryland, 45 
 
 Massachusetts, 17-29 
 
 Michigan, 179 
 
 Minnesota, 240 
 
 Mississippi, 177 
 
 Missouri, 178 
 
 Montana, 253 
 
 Nebraska, 245 
 
 Nevada, 248 
 
 New Hampshire, 55 
 
 New Jersey, 59 
 
 New Mexico, 233 
 
 New York, 36 
 
 North Carolina, 53 
 
 North Dakota, 255 
 
 Ohio, 174 
 
 Oklahoma, 235 
 
 Oregon, 236 
 
 Pennsylvania, 31 
 
 Rhode Island, 48 
 
 South Carolina, 47 
 
 South Dakota, 246 
 
 Tennessee, 174 
 
 Texas, 183 
 
 Utah, 242 
 
 Vermont, 166 
 
 Virginia, 50 
 
 Washington, 244 
 
 West Virginia, 171 
 
 Wisconsin, 231 
 
 Wyoming, 254 
 
 Beginnings of daily journalism, 118 
 Bellow, A. H., 339 
 Benjamin, Park, 198 
 Bennett, James Gordon, 193, 274, 302, 
 
 304 
 
 Benton, Thomas H., 158, 179 
 Biddle, Nicholas, 156 
 Bigelow, Horatio, 183 
 "Black Journalism," 143 
 Blaine, James G., 169, 363 
 Blair, Francis P., 157, 222, 283 
 Blake, Henry Ingraham, 154, 264 
 Blanket Sheets, 162 
 Borden, Gail, 216 
 Boston, First Daily, 120 
 Bowles, Samuel, 276, 319, 351, 402 
 Boycott, New York Tribune, 362 
 Boyd, Adam, 55 
 Boys, News, 87, 200, 272, 307 
 Bradford, Andrew, 31 
 Bradford, John, 169 
 
 Bradford, William, 31, 36, 39, 62, 65 
 
 Brisbane, Arthur, 364, 373, 381, 429 
 
 Broadsides, 8 
 
 Brooker, William, 29 
 
 Brooks, James G.; 145, 169 
 
 Bruce, John P., 254' 
 
 Bryan, William J., 363, 439 
 
 Bryant, William Cullen, 136, 276, 321, 
 
 340 
 
 Buchanan, John, 253 
 Buckingham, Joseph Tinker, 26, 132 
 Buel, Jesse, 150 
 Bulletin, Boston, 185 
 
 Philadelphia, 336 
 
 San Francisco, 337, 379, 443 
 Bulletin Boards, 3, 159 
 Bulls, Papal, 4 , 
 Burk, John, 120 
 Burr, Aaron, 138 
 Butler, J. S., 252 
 Butler, T. J., 252 
 Butter, Nathaniel, 6 
 Byers, William N., 251 
 
 Cselius, 3 
 
 Csesars as journalists, 3 . 
 
 Calhoun, John, 152, 157, 173, 227 
 
 California, Daily Alta, 379 
 
 California, editions, 263 
 
 California, early papers, 239 
 
 California journalism, 263 
 
 Call, San Francisco, 337 
 
 Campaign organs, 208 
 
 Campbell, John, 17, 21, 70 
 
 Canal Record, 408 
 
 Capital Topeka, 413 
 
 Cartoons, 78, 84, 131, 141, 302, 303, 
 
 304, 318, 321, 362 
 Censorship of press, 28, 29Q.J23 
 Census Reports, 228~"" 
 Cent, Philadelphia, 186 
 Centinel, Massachusetts, 109 
 Charles, William, 141 
 Charless, Joseph, 178 
 Charleston journalism, 449 
 Cherokee newspapers, 235 
 Chicago Day Book, 408 
 Chicago, newspapers after fire, 342 
 
 journalism, 374 
 Childs, Francis, 120 
 
 George W., 192 
 China, conditions in, 7 
 Christian Science Monitor, 414 
 Chronicle, American, 66 
 
 New York, 38 
 
 New York Morning, 138 
 
 Pennsylvania, 44 
 
INDEX 
 
 455 
 
 Chronicle, Washington, 336 
 Wilmington, 66 
 San Francisco, 337, 360, 379 
 Church, W. C., 268 
 Cicero, 3 
 
 Circulation, statement, 95, 142 
 Citizen, Vicksburg, 307 
 Civic societies, influence of, 400 
 Civil War Period, 285 
 
 reactions, 318 
 Clay, Henry, 222 
 Claypoole, 118 
 Clemens, S. E., 248 
 Cleveland, Grover, 362 
 Coleman, William, 107, 135 
 Collins, Isaac, 60 
 Colonial Period, 62 
 Colorado, early papers in, 250 
 Colton, Walter, 239 
 Combination of publishers, 114, 275, 
 
 386 
 
 Connecticut, early papers in, 61 
 Conrad, R. T., 267 
 Contents of first daily paper, 118 
 Continent, New York, 373 
 Cooper, J. F., 221 
 Cooperative newspapers, 339 
 Copperhead press, 285 
 Cotten, G. B., 183 
 Country weeklies, 304 
 Courant, Connecticut, 52 
 
 Constitutional, 84 
 
 Delaware, 57 
 
 Hartford, 355 
 
 New England, 29, 33, 48 
 "Court Paper," 173 
 Courier, Charleston, 139, 334 
 Courier-Journal, Louisville, 340, 379 
 Craig, D. H., 217, 276 
 Craske, Charles, 311 
 Crime, treatment, 223, 441, 449 
 Cummings, Alexander, 267, 269 
 Curry, George L., 237 
 
 Dailies, first in America, 118 
 
 oldest in New York, 134 
 Daily Acts, 3 
 
 Daily, contents of first, 118 
 Dana, Charles Anderson, 210, 321, 325, 
 
 374 
 
 Dana, Paul, 374 
 Davis, James, 63 
 Davis, Jefferson, 261 
 Day, Benjamin Henry, 187 
 DeForeest, Henry, 39 
 Delaware, early papers, 56 
 Denver, early papers, 400 
 
 Departments for women, 392 
 
 Department Stores, influence of, 431 
 
 District of Columbia, 172 
 
 Dix, Dorothy, 389 
 
 Draft riots, 286 
 
 Draper, John, 25 
 
 Draper, Richard, 25 
 
 Duncan, Matthew, 181 
 
 Dunlop, George, 374, 411 
 
 Eagle, Brooklyn, 220, 370 
 Eddy, Mary Baker, 414 
 Edes, B., 85 
 Edes, P., 168 
 Editorial, changes, 100 
 
 combats, 212 v 
 
 corrections, 402 
 
 giants, 276 - 
 
 leading of period, 294 
 
 Page, influenced by adver- 
 tisers, 439 
 
 Page, revival of, 422 " 
 
 prayer meeting, 268 ~^ 
 
 prostitution, 447 
 
 of secession, 296 
 
 signed, 448 
 
 Editors jailed, 41, 55, 102, 148 
 Editors of West, 378 
 Eliot, Charles William, 450 
 Ellis, Albert, 232 
 Emancipator, 152 
 Embree, Elihu, 152 
 English, W. B., 192 
 Enquirer, Cincinnati, 378 
 Ethics, newspaper, 388, 390, 413, 441, 
 
 443 
 
 European War, effect of, 419 
 Evasion of law, 1 1 
 Evening papers, 341, 382, 421 
 Examiner, San Francisco, 337, 360 
 Exorbitant war rates, 307 
 Expresses, pigeon, 217 
 
 pony, 219, 252, 258 
 
 steam, 212 
 Extras, first, 24 
 
 sporting, 382 
 war, 93, 367 
 Exposures by newspapers, 239 
 Extramural activities of newspapers, 
 357, 377 
 
 Farley, Samuel, 66 
 
 Feature paper, first, 133 
 
 Federalist, The, 121 
 
 Federal supervision, 226, 394, 396 
 
 Feminizing newspaper, 389 
 
 Fenno, John, 122 
 
456 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Ferber, Thomas, 56 
 
 Field, David Dudley, 326 
 
 Fleet, Thomas, 69 
 
 Florida, early papers, 165 
 
 Forney, J. W., 276, 336 
 
 Fowle, Darnel, 55 
 
 Franco-Prussian War, 328 
 
 Franklin, Benjamin, 30, 32, 34, 44, 47, 
 
 51, 65, 68, 75, 78, 94, 102 
 Franklin, James, 29, 48, 72 
 Free postage, 75 
 
 Free Press, Detroit, 246, 338, 379, 412 
 Freedom of press, 31, 127, 450 
 Freeman, F. K., 323 
 Freeman, R. L., 323 
 French-English papers, 165 
 Freneau, Philip, 88, 90, 92, 106, 113, 
 
 120, 122 
 
 Fresh-air funds, 358 
 Frontier Index, 322 
 Frothingham, David, 103 
 
 Gaine, Hugh, 87, 93, 98 
 Gales, Joseph, Jr., 173, 223 
 Gales, Joseph, Sr., 106 
 Garrison, William Lloyd, 152, 186 
 Gazette, popularity of name, 44 
 Gazette, Albany, 97 
 
 Arkansas, 182 
 
 Boston, 22, 29, 72, 78, 85, 92, 
 98, 110, 141 
 
 Charleston City, 154 
 
 Cincinnati, 143, 276 
 
 Connecticut, 51 
 
 Delaware, 56 
 
 Detroit, 180 
 
 Falmouth, 167 
 
 Florida, 165 
 
 Game's New York, 87, 98 
 
 Georgia, 58 
 
 Halifax, 84 
 
 Hudson, 97 
 
 Illinois, 181 
 
 Indiana, 178 
 
 Kentucky, 169 
 
 Knoxville, 174 
 
 Louisiana, 166, 282 
 
 Maine, 168 
 
 Maryland, 45, 83, 97 
 
 Massachusetts, 26 
 
 Mississippi, 177 
 
 Missouri, 178 
 
 Nashville, 174 
 
 National, 105, 122 
 
 New Hampshire, 55, 95 
 
 New Jersey, 59, 98 
 
 New London, 52 
 
 Gazette, New York, 32, 36, 65, 74, 78 
 
 New York Daily, 115, 122, 141, 
 159 
 
 North Carolina, 53, 97 
 
 Parker's New York, 67 
 
 Pennsylvania, 34, 65, 67, 71, 
 75, 78, 84 
 
 Pittsburg, 147, 338 
 
 Porcupine, 101 
 
 Providence, 49, 92, 98 
 
 Rhode Island, 48 
 
 Rivington's New York Loyal, 
 88,95 
 
 Royal, 48 
 
 Royal Georgia, 58 
 
 Royal South Carolina, 91 
 
 South Carolina, 47, 48, 73, 78, 
 83 
 
 State of Georgia, 58 
 
 Tennessee, 174 
 
 Texas, 183 
 
 Vermont, 103, 106 
 
 Virginia, 50, 78 
 
 Washington, 172 
 
 Wheeling, 172 
 Georgia, early papers, 58 
 Gerrymander, cartoon, 131 
 Gibson, G. R., 234 
 Globe, Boston, 438 
 St. Paul, 379 
 Washington, 157, 222, 227 
 Globe-Democrat, St. Louis, 379 
 Goddard, Morrill, 380 
 Goddard, William, 49, 94, 96 
 Gold, news of, 262 
 Government newspaper, 408 
 regulations, 389 
 
 Grant, U. S., 325, 327, 345, 361 
 Greeley, Horace, 148, 186, 207, 209, 
 213, 273, 276, 277, 283, 295, 302, 312, 
 320, 323, 352, 404 
 Green, Bartholomew, 24 
 Green, Jonas, 45 
 Green, Samuel, 8 
 Green, Timothy, 2d, 52 
 Guthrie Get-up, 236 
 
 Hadley, Arthur T., 429 
 Hale, David, 219 
 Hale, Samuel, 49 
 Hall, David, 34 
 Hall, Edmund, 45 
 Hallock, Gerard, 276 
 Hamilton, Alexander, 122 
 Hammond, Charles, 143 
 Hammond, John Hayes, 250 
 Harris, Benjamin, 9, 15 
 
INDEX 
 
 457 
 
 Harrison, William Henry, 173, 208, 220 
 
 Hartford Convention, 141 
 
 Haskell, D. M., 186 
 
 Hay, John, 342 
 
 Headlines, 93, 367, 422 
 
 Hearst, William Randolph, 337, 372 
 
 He,iss, J. P., 261 
 
 Henry, Robert, 171 
 
 Herald, Boston, 191, 262 
 
 Chicago, 375 
 
 New York, 193, 262, 263, 287, 
 311, 318, 342, 356, 345, 357 
 
 Omaha, 246 
 
 San Francisco, 263 
 High-tariff papers, 146 
 Hildreth, 108 
 Hill, Isaac, 149 
 Hitchcock, G. M., 246 
 Holly, Alanson, 231 
 Holt, Charles, 103 
 Holt, Hamilton, 409 
 Holt, John, 52, 85, 88, 95 
 Hough, George, 167 
 Howells, William Dean, 210, 338 
 Hudson, Frederic, 200 
 Hunter, 51 
 
 Hurlburt, William H., 370 
 Hyde, William, 338 
 
 Ice funds, 357 
 
 Idaho, early papers, 252 
 
 Illinois, early papers, 181 
 
 Indian papers, 232, 235 
 
 Indiana, early papers, 177 
 
 Inks, printing, 63, 308, 386 
 
 Innovations of New York Herald, 198 
 
 Iowa, early papers, 234 
 
 Irving, John, 138 
 
 Irving, Peter, 138 
 
 Irving, Washington, 138 
 
 Irving, William, 138 
 
 Isler, Peter, 171 
 
 Jackson, Andrew, 149, 162, 173, 189, 
 
 193, 227, 279, 340 
 Jay, John, 121 
 
 Jefferson, Thomas, 105, 112, 122 
 Jennings, L. J., 329 
 Johnson, James, 58 
 Jones, George, 270 
 Journal, Boston, 259, 263, 336 
 
 Chicago, 265, 281, 342 
 
 Commerce, of, 200 
 
 Connecticut, 62 
 
 Dayton, 378 
 
 Detroit, 412 
 
 Freeman's, 90 
 
 Journal, Holt's New York, 85, 88 
 Maryland, 94, 96 
 Milwaukee, 360 
 Minneapolis, 300, 379 
 New Hampshire, 133 
 New Jersey, 61, 87 
 New York Evening, 367 
 New-York Weekly, 38, 43 
 Ohio State, 338 
 Pennsylvania, 82, 90 
 Providence, 146, 425 
 South Carolina Weekly, 47 
 Journalism, beginnings in colonies. See 
 Beginnings in States and Territories 
 beginnings in Rome, 2 
 birth of English, 6 
 Chicago, 374 
 commercial, 352 
 history repeated, 264 
 origin of sensational, 4 
 religious, 413 
 rural, 404 
 Siamese Twins, 26 
 Washington, 291 
 
 Kansas, early papers, 232 
 
 journalism, 280 
 Kansas-Nebraska Bill, 280 
 Keeley, James, 375, 393, 509 
 Keimer, Samuel, 33 
 Kendall, Amos, 226 
 Kendall, G. W., 259 
 Kensey, S. A., 248 
 Kentucky, early papers, 169 
 Kenyon, Frank, 252 
 Killen, Jacob, 56 
 Kimmel, S. H., 181 
 King, Henry, 322 
 King, John, 234 
 Kingsley, J. L., 189 
 Kollock, Shepard, 61, 90, 135 
 
 Label for advertisements, 397 
 
 Labor conditions, 96, 277 
 
 Land-grab exposure, 272 
 
 Laws, honest advertising, 394 
 
 Leader, Des Moines, 378 
 
 Ledger, Philadelphia, 278 
 
 Lee, H. G., 237 
 
 Leggett, William, 203, 214, 224, 369 
 
 Letters, to editors, 318 
 
 Libel suits, Cooper vs. Commercial 
 
 Advertiser, 222 
 Cooper vs. Courier & En- 
 quirer, 221 
 
 Cooper vs. New York Trib- 
 une, 222 
 
458 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Libel Suits, Crosby vs. Zenger, 42 
 
 Government vs. New York 
 
 World, 407 
 McKean vs. Cobbett, 101 
 
 Liberator, 153 
 
 License for journalism, 403 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham, 283, 285, 291, 294, 
 295, 303 
 
 Literary daily, 138 
 
 Log cabin, 208 
 
 Logotypes, 279 
 
 Location, papers, 108, 348 
 
 Louisiana, early papers, 165 
 
 Lounsberry, Clement A., 255 
 
 Lowell, J. R., 258 
 
 Madison, James, 112, 140, 143 
 Maine, early papers, 167 
 Marble, Manton, 321, 352, 370, 372 
 Marion, J. H., 250 
 Martinez, Antonio, 233 
 Maryland, early papers, 45 
 Massachusetts, early papers, 17, 29 
 Massacre, Boston, 86 
 Mather, Increase, 8, 30 
 Maxwell, William, 174 
 Maverick, Augustus, 341 
 McClure, A. K., 363 
 McClure, S. S., 330 
 McKelway, St. Clair, 221, 370 
 Mecom, Benjamin, 52 
 Medicinal advertising, 72, 225, 390 
 Medill, Joseph, 265, 276, 352 
 Meeker, Jotham, 232 
 Mercury, American Weekly, 31 
 
 Cape Fear, 55 
 
 Charleston, 332 
 
 Newport, 49 
 
 New York, 77, 80, 83, 87, 93 
 
 Portsmouth, 56 
 Mergenthaler machines, 317 
 Meridith, Hugh, 33 
 Merrick, J. L., 251 
 
 Mexican War to Civil War Period, 258 
 Michigan, early papers, 179 
 Military exceptions for journalists, 310 
 Miller, Samuel, 180 
 Minnesota, early papers, 240 
 Mississippi, early papers, 177 
 Mitchell, E. P., 374 
 Montana, early papers, 253 
 Moore, J. H., 236 
 Mormons, 246 
 Morton, J. S., 246 
 Morton, Thomas, 245 
 Mother Goose Rhymes, 69 
 Moury, Sylvester, 249 
 
 Mowry, John, 166 
 Municipal newspapers, 410 
 Munsey, Frank A., 373 
 
 National Era, 262 
 National Republican organ, 151 
 Nebraska, early papers, 245 
 Nelson, William R., 376 
 Nevada, early papers, 248 
 New Hampshire, early papers, 55 
 New Jersey, early papers, 59 
 New Mexico, early papers, 233 
 New York, early papers, 36 
 
 evening papers, 341 
 newspaper generals, 302 
 News, Boston Daily, 331 
 
 Chicago Daily, 360, 376, 390 
 Dallas, 330 
 Deseret, 242 
 Detroit, 379, 412 
 Galveston, 339 
 Indianapolis, 336, 359 
 Los Angeles Municipal, 410 
 Portland, 237 
 Rocky Mountain, 378 
 San Francisco, 264 
 News, associations, city, 317, 375 
 "boiled down," 67 
 charted, 448 
 desire for, 1 
 mode of treatment, 67, 92, 260, 
 
 292 
 
 suppression of, 430, 441 
 News-Letter, Boston, 17, 19, 70 
 News-Letters, Campbell's printed, 18, 
 
 27, 69, 70 
 
 Campbell's written, 17 
 English, 6 
 Roman, 2 
 Newspaper, adless, 408 
 
 advertising, 355, 390, 392 
 advertising label, 397 
 battles, 211 
 
 beginnings in colonies. See 
 Beginnings in States 
 and Territories 
 changes, 335 
 conditions in North, 309 
 conditions in West, 310 
 cost of production, 69, 159 
 disinfected, 107 
 endowed, 409 
 ethics, 388, 390, 413, 441, 
 
 443 
 
 federal supervision of, 226 
 first use of word, 7 
 literary influences, 81 
 
INDEX 
 
 459 
 
 Newspaper, manners, 320 
 
 military criticism of, 302 
 
 municipal, 410 
 
 near, 9 
 
 office mobbed, 89 
 
 oral, 5, 15, 179, 263 
 
 organ of postmasters, 29 
 
 ownership, statement of, 
 
 394 
 
 political tracts, 101 
 printed on wall-paper, 306 
 printed on wrapping-pa- 
 per, 310 
 printing trading stamps, 
 
 412 
 Publishers' Association, 
 
 386 
 
 precursors of American, 8 
 readjustment, 353 
 spoken, 5, 15, 179, 263 
 subscription rates raised, 
 
 307, 423 
 subscriptions for limited 
 
 periods, 306 
 Sunday, 309, 379, 419 
 tickets, 308 
 written, 5, 15, 179, 244, 
 
 248 
 
 Niles, Ezekiah, 151 
 Noah, Mordecai, 145, 153, 157, 198 
 North, S. N. B., 348 
 North American, Philadelphia, 266, 
 
 269, 390 
 
 North Carolina, early papers, 53 
 North Dakota, early papers, 255 
 Norton, B. H., 190 
 Nye, E. W., 255 
 
 Ohio, early papers, 174 
 Oklahoma, early papers, 235 
 Older, Fremont, 443 
 "Oldstyle, Jonathan," 138 
 Oral newspapers, 5, 15, 179, 263 
 Oregon, early papers, 236 
 Oregonian, Portland, 379 
 Organs, abolition, 152, 262 
 
 army, 90, 261, 301, 426 
 
 carpet-baggers, 333 
 
 Ku-Klux Klan, 334 
 Otis, Harrison Gray, 377 
 
 Pacific Coast journalism, 230, 262, 310 
 
 newspapers, 310 
 Paper, scarcity, 69, 97, 182, 243, 305, 
 
 422 
 
 made from pulp, 346, 386 
 mills, 62, 70, 98, 386 
 
 Parker, James, 43, 51, 95 
 Parks, William, -1 
 Party organ in Maine, 148 
 patronage, 223 
 press in Albany, 150 
 Peek, Alvin S., 383 
 Pennsylvania, early papers, 31 
 Penny Press, in Boston, I'M) 
 
 in New York, 185 
 in Philadelphia, 192 
 Periods, newspaper, 
 
 Colonial Period, 62 
 Revolutionary Period, 82 
 Period of Early Republic, 100 
 Party Press Period, 140 
 Transition Period, 206 
 Mexican War to Civil War 
 
 Period, 258 
 Civil War Period, 285 
 Reconstruction Period, 317 
 Period of Financial Readjust- 
 ment, 352 
 Period of Social Readjustment, 
 
 388 
 
 Peripatetic papers, 299, 322 
 Personal journalism, 318, 319, 321 
 Philadelphia journalism, 90, 336, 431 
 Phillips, Eleazer, 46 
 Pickering, Loring, 337 
 Picric journalism, 319, 321 
 Pigeon expresses, 217 
 Plaindealer, Cleveland, 338, 378 
 Political advertising, 446 
 Polk, J. K., 261 
 Pony express, 219, 252, 258 
 Post, Boston Daily, 270, 331 
 
 Boston Evening, 69, 79, 84, 331 
 Boston Penny, 190" 
 Charleston Morning, 91 
 Chicago, 336, 342 
 New York Daily Evening, 114, 135, 
 
 141, 280, 308, 368, 398, 433 
 New York Evening, 39, 42 
 New York Morning, 186 
 Pennsylvania Evening, 90, 93 
 San Francisco, 337 
 Postal organs of Massachusetts, 29 
 
 regulations, 75, 95, 112, 161, 314, 
 
 347, 394 
 Post-Boy, Boston, 26 
 
 New York, 74 
 Post-office printing, 305 
 Post-offices as advertising agencies, 74 
 Post vs. press, 95 
 Post-riders, 113 
 Poulson, Zachariah, Jr., 155 
 Prentice, George D., 340 
 
460 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Present state of New-English affairs, 8 
 Press, Grand Rapids, 359 
 
 Philadelphia, 276, 336 
 
 Pittsburg, 358 
 
 St. Paul Pioneer, 379 
 Press, and pestilence, 106 
 
 and politics, 148 
 
 and U.S. Bank, 156 
 
 vs. Presidents, 105 
 
 as detective, 360 
 
 Associated, 343, 384, 415 
 
 Associations, 275, 384 
 
 battle of statesmen, 124 
 
 censorship, 28, 290, 423 
 
 divided, 104 
 
 freedom of, 107, 110, 450 
 
 gag law, 331 
 
 mirror of times, 100, 144, 197 
 
 modesty of politicians, 215 
 
 party, 115, 118, 140,223 
 
 personal attacks of, 101 
 
 regulation of, 389 
 
 sensational, 368, 371 
 
 Tory, 141 
 
 United, 385 
 
 wheels, on, 322 
 Presses, printing, 63, 95, 160, 278, 317, 
 
 386 
 
 Proclamations, forged by press, 297 
 Prohibition, effects on journalism, 398 
 Public-Ledger, Philadelphia, 192 
 Publicity, pitiless, 440 
 Publick-Ocourrences, 9, 19 
 Puclot, L., 165 
 Pulitzer, Albert, 372 
 Pulitzer, Joseph, 339, 370, 372 
 Punchinello, 321 
 Purdy, Alexander, 51 
 
 Rags, advertisements for, 97 
 
 Ray, C. H., 293 
 
 Raymond, Henry Jarvis, 211, 226, 269, 
 273, 276, 283, 302 
 
 Reconstruction journalism, 317 
 
 Record, Chicago, 375 
 
 Register, Weekly, 151 
 
 Regulation of press, 389 
 
 Reid, Whitelaw, 210, 379, 429, 435 
 
 Religious journalism, 331 
 
 Religious dailies, 266 
 
 in New York, 267 
 in Philadelphia, 266 
 
 Reporter, First Star, 154 
 
 Republican, Chicago, 336 
 Omaha, 379 
 St. Louis, 338, 379 
 
 Revere, Paul, 86 
 
 Revival of newspapers; 290 
 
 Revolutionary period, 82 
 
 Reynolds, J. S., 253 
 
 Rhett, BarnweU, 332 
 
 Rhode Island, early papers, 48 
 
 Richard, Rev. Father Gabriel, 16, 179 
 
 Richards, D. H., 231 
 
 Richards, William, 242 
 
 Rind, William, 51 
 
 Ritchie, Thomas, 261 
 
 Rivington, James, 88, 95, 96 
 
 Roman journalism, 2 
 
 Rosewater, Edward, 246, 337 
 
 Roulstone, George, 174 
 
 Russell, Benjamin, 129 
 
 San Francisco dailies, 263 
 
 Sargent, Eppes, 186 
 
 Scarcity of paper, 69, 97, 243, 305, 422 
 
 Scripps, James E., 338 
 
 papers of, 416, 417 
 
 Seaton, W. W., 173 
 
 Secession, Southern press on, 282 
 
 Sedition Laws, passage of, 102 
 
 Seitz, Don C., 381, 409, 438 
 
 Semple, Robert, 239 
 
 Senate, press restriction of, 222 
 
 Sensational journalism, 4, 223, 368, 371 
 
 Service work, 393 
 
 Seward, W. H., 207, 222, 283 
 
 Sheldon, Rev. Charles, 413, 441 
 
 Shepard, H. D., 186 
 
 Siamese Twins in journalism, 26 
 
 Simonton, J. W., 272, 343 
 
 Slack, A. E., 255 
 
 Slavery discussions, 279 
 
 Slaves, sold by newspapers, 93 
 
 Smith, S. H., 106, 173 
 
 South Carolina, early papers, 47 
 
 South Dakota, early papers, 246 
 
 Southern press, 334 
 
 Spain, war with, 364 
 
 Spanish-English papers, 234 
 
 Spoken newspapers, 5, 15, 179 
 
 Spooner, J. P., 167 
 
 Spy, Massachusetts, 85, 97, 111 
 
 Stamp Act, 1765, 82 
 
 Massachusetts, 1755, 78 
 Massachusetts, 1785, 109 
 New York, 1756, 79 
 repeal of, 84 
 
 Star, Kansas City, 376 
 
 Washington, 336, 374, 375 
 
 State-exemption for journalists, 310 
 
 State-subsidized newspaper, 69 
 
 Statistics, 227, 348, 349, 350, 418 
 
 Steam expresses, 212 
 
INDEX 
 
 461 
 
 Stereotyping improvements, 189, 311 
 
 Stewart, Andrew, 64 
 
 Stokes, Benjamin, 177 
 
 Stone, Melville E M 42, 376, 386, 413, 416 
 
 Storey, Wilbur F., 286 
 
 Stout, Elihu, 177 
 
 Stowe, H. B., 262 
 
 Strike, first printers', 96 
 
 Subscribers, poor pay, 38, 43, 68, 65, 
 
 68, 113, 178, 383 
 Summary, New London, 62 
 Sun, Baltimore, 190, 219, 259 
 
 New (York, 187, 212, 267, 309, 325, 
 368, 385 
 
 Shawanoe, 232 
 
 San Francisco, 264 
 
 True, 188 
 
 Sunday newspapers, 309, 379, 419 
 Suppression of news, 430, 441, 442 
 Suspension of Southern newspapers, 
 289 
 
 Tabloid newspapers, 373 
 Tariff newspapers, 146 
 Taxes, Massachusetts, 79 
 
 Newspapers on, 79 
 
 New York, 80 
 
 United States, 346 
 
 Virginia, 275 
 Taylor, Charles H., 438 
 Taylor, Zachary, 262 
 Tea Party, Report of, 86 
 Telegram, Toledo, 378 
 Telegraph, 273, 317, 353 
 Tennessee, early papers, 174 
 Tennessean, Nashville, 335, 360 
 Texas, early papers, 216 
 Texas Republic journalism, 216 
 Thomas, Isaiah, 36, 85, 116, 133 
 Tilden, S. J., 327, 341 
 Time, eleven days lost, 77 
 Times, Boston, 191 
 
 Chicago, 286 
 
 Los Angeles, 377 
 
 New York, 226, 279, 288, 298, 
 312, 318, 438 
 
 Philadelphia, 363 
 
 Troy, 359 
 
 Times-Star, Cincinnati, 378 
 Timothy, Lewis, 47 
 Timothy, Peter, 48 
 Titcomb, Benjamin, Jr., 168 
 Topliff, Samuel, 185, 217 
 Tory press, 141 
 Towne, Benjamin, 90 
 Trading stamps, with newspapers, 412 
 Transcript, Albany, 190 
 
 Transcript, Baltimore, 190 
 Boston, 436 
 New York, 188 
 Philadelphia, 190, 193 
 Transition Period, 206 
 Tribune, Boston, 331 
 
 Chicago, 265, 276, 281, 342, 
 
 390, 426, 447 
 Detroit, 379 
 Kansas, 233, 281 
 Minneapolis, 379 
 New York, 209, 213, 222, 258, 
 272, 276, 281, 285, 287, 291, 
 295,298,311,318,323,362, 
 379 I 
 
 Triumvirate, Van Buren, 150 
 Tweed Ring exposed, 329 
 Tyler, Moses C. f 81 
 Typographical unions, 277, 362, 368 
 Typography, 62, 64, 279, 317 
 
 United Press, 375, 385, 416 
 United States Bank, 156, 192 
 United States Daily, 412 \ 
 Universal Instructor in all the Arts and 
 Sciences; and Pennsylvania Gazette, 34 
 Utah, early papers, 242 
 Utah war, 243 
 
 Van Anden, Isaac, 20 
 Van Buren, Martin, 150, 193, 208, 261 
 Van Buren triumvirate, 150 
 Vanity Fair, 283 
 Vault, William, 236 
 Vermont, early papers, 166 
 Villard, Oswald G., 416, 431 
 "Villain Raymond," 272 
 Vincent, George E., 430 
 Vindicator, 236 
 Virginia, early papers, 50 
 Vituperation of press, 143, 197, 319 
 
 Wait, Aaron E., 238 
 
 Wait, Thomas B., 167 
 
 Wall-paper editions, 306 
 
 Walter, Cornelia, 185 
 
 Walter, Lynde N., 185 
 
 War, correspondents, 260, 288, 289, 
 
 293, 294, 364, 427 
 expenses, 328, 365 
 newspaper, 29, 38 
 Warner, Charles Dudley, 74, 226, 363, 
 
 355 
 
 Washington, attack on, 104 
 Washington, early papers, 244 
 Watterson, Henry, 300, 326, 341, 379, 
 
 388 
 
462 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Wayland, L., 135 
 
 Webb, James Watson, 167, 159, 198, 
 
 212, 222, 276 
 Webb, Joseph, 248 
 Weed, Thurlow, 207, 222, 270 
 Weekly Newes, 6 
 
 Webster, Daniel, 147, 173, 262, 270 
 Webster, Noah, 134 
 Wells, Robert, 48 
 Wells, William, 165 
 West Virginia, early papers, 171 
 Western editors, 321, 378 
 W T hiskey Ring exposed, 330 
 White, Horace, 266, 276 
 White, Isaac D., 360, 402 
 White, W. A., 406 
 Whitman, Walt, 221 
 Whitmarsh, Thomas, 47 
 Wild West weeklies, 382 
 Wiley, J. W., 239, 244 
 Wiley, Louis, 438 
 Willis, Nathaniel, 172, 175 
 Willis, N. Parker, 172 
 
 Wilson, James, 57 
 
 Winter weather and news, 65, 247 
 
 Wisconsin, early papers, 231 
 
 Wisconsin, Milwaukee, 379 
 
 Woodruff, W. E., 182 
 
 Wordless journalism, 131 
 
 World, New York, 269, 285, 298, 339, 
 
 352, 360, 362, 365, 370, 381, 380, 
 
 401, 407, 438, 441 
 Written newspapers, 1, 5, 6, 15, 179, 
 
 244, 248 
 Wyoming, early papers, 254 
 
 Yachts, news, 219 
 Yerba Buena paper, 240 
 Young, Brigham, 242 
 Young, Charles de, 337 
 Young, M. H. de, 338 
 
 Zane, J. H., 247 
 
 Zenger, John Peter, 38, 39, 43 
 
 Ziebach, Frank M., 246 
 
RETURN CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT 
 
 LOAN PERIOD 1 
 HOME USE 
 
 2 
 
 a R 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS 
 
 Renewals and Recharges may be made 4 days prior to the due date. 
 
 Books may be Renewed by calling 642-3405 
 
 DUE AS STAMPED BELOW 
 
 SEtfTONILL 
 
 
 
 AU6 2 * 1995 
 
 
 
 U. C. BERKELEY 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 FORM NO. DD6 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY 
 BERKELEY, CA 94720 
 
 General Library 
 
 Unjyersiry of California 
 
 Berkeley 
 
 
$ I 
 
 - : > = ' i ' ffSMVI 
 
 ^^H 
 
 ' ' : ' J