I LLINOI S UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN PRODUCTION NOTE University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library Brittle Books Project, 2012. COPYRIGHT NOTIFICATION In Public Domain. Published 1923-1977 in the U.S. without printed copyright notice. This digital copy was made from the printed version held by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It was made in compliance with copyright law. Prepared for the Brittle Books Project, Main Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign by Northern Micrographics Brookhaven Bindery La Crosse, Wisconsin 2012 E ti-r qk-y Q .iry P x : II ib {J iiri h~ ~ ?6t of Ne#paer "'4 { / W illiaim A Iril i' ~II r ',A ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ .,~ F .11 +yfi t . . 1iI 1 i -I.,. fl h nwrtg91Kf~ :ri i 5;1 r 1 , a iii y p ' l b { 1 ^ F , .k is, heUnvesty ofKai r tip sj T + 92 i 1i F~a " : ILLINOIS . URBA'A 800KSTAC . Growth of Newspapers in the United States WILLIAM A. DILL Assistant Professor of Journalism University of Kansas A study of the number of newspapers, of the num- ber of subscribers, and of total annual output of the periodical press, from 1704 to 1925, with com- ment on coincident social and economic conditions. Published as a Bulletin by the Department of Journalism April, 1928 CONTENTS Introduction - - - - - - - 3 I Statement of the Problem - - - - 9 II Some Economic Changes and the Press-The Revolutionary Period - - - - - 35 III The Period of Expansion, Centuring in 1850 - 48 IV Newspapers at the Peak - - - - - 66 V Two Centuries and a Quarter - - - - - 70 VI Conclusion - - - - - K - - 75 Appendix I.-Revenues of American Newspapers 76 Appendix II.-Miscellaneous Newspaper Statistics 78 Typograhpy by the author--Printing and binding by the Journalism Pres' THE GROWTH OF NEWSPAPERS IN THE UNITED STATES INTRODUCTION The American people are great readers of newspapers. In fact, records show that year by year, in increasing numbers they are turning to the newspapers and other periodicals for their information. These records show not only an increased number of periodicals, until the last few years, but a rapidly mounting list of subscribers, and rapid increase in the output of the periodical press. In the period covered by this examination of the newspa- pers of America, the United States has grown from 13 colonies and a population of less than 3,000,000 to 48 states, several dependencies, and a population of 115,000,000. Populations have been concentrated in great urban centers until more than half the American people live in communities of 2,500 or more. Manufacturing in factories on a gigantic scale has taken the place of the fireside loom and the blacksmith's forge; the stage- coach and canal packet have given way to 264,000 miles of railroad, and a constantly increasing number of miles of paved motor roads. The tardy mails of Franklin's time have been supplanted by the airplane mail and the instant service of the telegraph and radio. A century ago there were 29 public high schools, today every city and many rural communities have their high schools-more than 16,000 in all. Printing equipment has advanced from the hand-set newspapers of four pages, printed 50 or less copies an hour on a press of Gu- tenberg's model to the modern newspaper, machine-set, illus- trated, and printed 24,000 to 96,000 an hour on stereotype presses. Some of these interesting social phenomena may be the re- sults of increasing numbers of newspapers. On the other hand, many of these social conditions made possible the great number of periodicals of the present, and the huge circulations of some of them. It will be the purpose of this study, then, to examine some of these social and economic conditions, and dis- cover, if possible, how they affect the growth of newspapers. The part that the newspaper has played in the development 3 830916 of the country has been recognized by some of the writers on newspaper subjects, but in other fields the work of the news- paper has been comparatively ignored. Woodrow Wilson's six-volume history of the American people, for example, re- produces a page of a colonial paper, and has one other direct reference to newspapers. Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, is referred to rather as the candidate for the presidency. Occasionally, however, mentions of the press are to be found, and an appraisement attempted as to the effect of the press on American life. Only two volumes, those of 1872 and 1886, of Appleton's American Encyclopedia made any mention of newspapers. In the 1872 volume, appearing soon after Frederic Hudson's History of Journalism in the United States, a paragraph is devoted to newspaper statistics in the write-up of each state (Alabama, Kansas, and Ohio excepted), and in the 1886 vol- ume, suggested probably by the S. N. D. North report in the census of 1880, issued in 1884, a section is devoted to the newspapers and press associations. WORTH SOMETIMES RECOGNIZED Mentions of the worth of newspapers are not entirely lack- ing, however. The Montreal (Can.) Gazette for Dec.. 30, 1925, relates some facts antecedent to its founding in 1778. Quoting Thomas White in a sketch on newspaper history in the pro- vince of Quebec it says: "At the time of the American Revolution, things in Canada apparently favorable to the cause of the Revolution arose. Al- though the population-a little over 10,000-was almost ex- clusively French-Canadian, there were a sufficient number of English residents, claiming on that ground superior advant- ages and treating the majority in nationality and religion with something approaching to contempt, to excite in them feelings the reverse of loyalty. Under these circumstances an at- tempt was made to induce the Canadian colonists to join in the Revolution, and Colonel Hazen, who took command April 1, 1775, set about to obtain a new engine of war. He wrote General Schuyler on the necessity of sending to Canada good generals, a strong army, a good round sum in silver, and a printer. Neither army, generals, nor money were sent; but the printer came. A commission composed of Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase and Rev. Charles Carroll started from Philadelphia for Canada to induce the Canadians to join the Congressional cause; and to found a newspaper. 4 With this latter object they brought material for a printing office and a printer named Fleury Mesplet who had been in employ of Franklin at Philadelphia. . . The commission discovered their cause was a hopeless one in Canada and they returned in May. Mesplet had in the meantime set up his press and, in 1778, started the Gazette. A writer in The Merchants' Journals says: "Where news- papers most prevail, as in Massachusetts, New York, etc. there also are the most schools, the most enterprises, the most wealth, and the most progress. The conclusion is, not that newspapers occasion these results, but that the press and in- telligence go together; mutual helps to each other." "The activity of the press has been at once an index and the instrument of progress in position of the nation in its moral, social and material interests," says the introduction to the report on manufactures, Census of 1860. PUBLIC OPINION IS FINAL TRIBUNAL In "Observations on the Census," the preface to the mor- tality section of the Census of 1860, the writer says: "What is it that controls the different departments of the government and all the varied industrial and social interests within the limits of the republic? "The answer is, emphatically, public opinion educated through the Press, the public being the tribunal from which there is no appeal but to Time. The Press is the real repre- sentative of the people, the great conservative power held by them to guard public and industrial liberty." In the introduction to another volume of the 1860 census, the writer says: "It is thus apparent that the newspaper which now em- ploys so large a proportion of the persons in every part of the country, and is so valuable as a vehicle of public instruc- tion, was an early and favorite offspring of the American press even in colonial times." S. N. D. North, director of the Census, in a most exhaustive survey of the press, published in 1884 as a part of the Census report of 1880, said: "The more newspapers there are in a locality, the more thrifty, intelligent and enterprising that locality is found to be." (p. 65.) The Rev. Dr. Miller, in "Retrospect of the Eighteenth Cen- tury,"2 says: "The newspapers have also become important 1 January, 1834, p. 102. 2 Quoted by Isaiah Thomas in "History of Printing in America," pp. 200-201. in a literary view. There are few of them in the last 20 years which have not added to other political details some cur- ious and useful information on the various subjects of litera- ture, art, and science. They have thus become the means of conveying innumerable scraps of knowledge, which have at once increased the public intelligence. "In ancient times, to sow the seeds of civil discord, or to produce a spirit of union and co-operation through an exten- sive community required time, patience, and a constant series of exertions. The art of printing was unknown, and many of the modern methods of communicating intelligence to distant places not having come into use, the difficulty of conducting public affairs must have been great and embarrassing. The general circulation of the Gazette forms an important era, not only in the moral and literary, but in the political world. The general circulation of this powerful instrument, impres- sions on the public mind, may be made with celerity and to an extent of which our ancestors had no conception, and which cannot but give rise to the most important consequences. "Our country in particular, and especially for the last 12 or 15 years, has exhibited a spectacle never before displayed among men, and even yet without a parallel on earth. It is the spectacle, not of the learned and the wealthy only, but of the great body of people; even a large portion of that class in the community which is destined to daily labor, having free and constant access to the public prints, receiving regular information of every occurrence, attending to the course of political affairs, discussing public measures, and having thus presented to them constant excitements to the acquisition of knowledge." TIMES SEEMED DARK IN BENNETT'S DAY A darker appraisement of the situation early in the nine- teenth century is contained in "Memoirs of James Gordon Bennett and His Times," in which the biographer1 gives Mr. Bennett full credit for arousing and educating the public. Says the biographer, writing in 1855: "There was not any public taste 20 years ago for daily newspapers, and the public had to be educated into the habit of reading and thinking.- The rulers of people wrote and read, but the people neither read nor cared to read. Let it not be forgotten that newspapers then were an expensive luxury, owned and supported by politicians or sectarists who 1 "A Journalist," (Isaac Clark Pray.) 6 found it to their interest to invest money even in losing specu- lation, and who deemed their hired editors to be the convenient tools of caprice and pleasure, while the public was a simple multitude to be cajoled and deceived on every subject. . ." COMPACT COMMUNITIES FOSTER NEWSPAPERS In examining the growth of newspapers, it is proposed not only to seek from such sources as are available, statistics as to the number of publications, at least for significant inter- vals, but to consider also the growth of population and the growth of circulation of these periodicals. There is a necessary and intimate relationship between newspapers and population, for without subscribers, news- papers languish; where there are people, there will be found news periodicals. Mere numbers are not alone sufficient, for it will be found that the more newspapers flourish where the people are gathered in the more populous and closely com- pacted units. For example, the Census of 1850 showed that the whole Pacific slope including California, Oregon territory (Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and part of Montana) and New Mexico (Arizona and New Mexico of the present) had 11 newspapers, to 31 in the city of Baltimore with about the same population. (Pacific slope, 167,438; Baltimore, 169,054.) The same year, the city of Boston, with 136,881 population, had 113 newspapers, or ten times as many as approximately the same number of people on the Pacific slope supported. The city of New York the same year had 104 newspapers to the 61 in the whole state of Missouri, having about the same population. Horace Greeley, in 1851, told a parliamentary committee of the British House of Commons that the general rule in America was for each town to have a newspaper, and, in the free states, each county of 20,000 or more usually had two papers-one for each party.' A county of 50,000 usually had five journals, Mr. Greeley said, and when a town reached 15,000 inhabitants, "or thereabouts," it usually had a daily paper, and at 20,000 it had two. North declares Greeley's summary was practically as true in 1880 as in 1850, but cited numerous exceptions. "The number of weekly publications in a town rarely gets above three without the appearance of a daily, and it is the compe- tion of the weekly papers which frequently supplies a town 1 North, "History of the Newspaper and Periodical Press of the United States," p. 65. with two dailies before it has amassed nutriment for the sustenance of one."1 It will be the purpose of this study, then, to examine the available statistics at certain periods, for three phases of newspaper history, and then trace the growth of newspapers both as to actual numbers,, and in relation to the growth of population. These phases will be the actual number of newspapers and other periodicals at various periods; the total number of sub- scriptions to these publications; and the total output of the periodical press. With these figures as a basis, the amount of increase or growth can be computed, both in respect to actual numbers, but also in relation to the growing population of the country. It will be found that there have been numerous changes in the rate of growth, and endeavor will be made to check pos- sible coincidence between these changes and the economic and social conditions of the country. It will not be the purpose of this study to trace newspaper growth as expressed in the financial reports of cost of opera- tion or of investment, nor will more than passing notice be given the relative development of publications of varying frequency of issue. 2 Ibid., p. 65. CHAPTER I. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM The first step in the problem here undertaken is to get such figures as are to be had along four distinct lines: 1. The actual number of newspapers. 2. The total number of subscribers. 3. The total annual output of the periodical press. 4. Population of the country. The listing of the actual number of papers is complicated by scarcity of early records and by conflicting figures. For the period prior to 1790, the graphic check list of "The First Century of American Newspapers," makes possible a state- ment of the number of papers at any desired year. Isaiah Thomas listed the newspapers of 1810, and a few other estimates are available for dates before the first annual Ayer's Newspaper Directory in 1869. North also lists news- papers in 1810, differing only slightly from Thomas' list, and the Library of Congress has issued a check list of all eigh- teenth century papers of which it has record. "A Century of Population Growth," a Census bureau publication, lists all papers in existence in 1790, and Yale library has issued a check list of its eighteenth century papers. Conflicting figures are not infrequently found, due, probably to two causes: the differing time of year at which censuses were taken, and also to a difference in definition as to "What is a newspaper?" Typographical errors may acccount for a few discrepancies. Changes in the basis of government reports in two respects affect the comparative value of census figures. Beginning in 1904, the Bureau of Manufactures made separate reports of the number and circulation of Sunday papers, thus reporting as two papers the daily that had a Sunday issue, and giving in circulation totals, figures for the daily and for the Sun- day paper, even though the bulk of subscriptions were for daily and Sunday combined. Offsetting this padding of figures was the change in the basis of report, omitting from the census concerns doing less 9 than $5,000 business annually instead of those doing less than $500 as previously. Attention should be called to the unexplained difference in reported circulation of newspapers in 1921, as reported in census reports of 1923, and in similar reports issued in 1926. Again, annual output reported for weekly .papers in 1870 is 52 times the subscriptions, and the output of monthly publica- tions is 12 times the circulation, but the output of dailies is only 310 times the circulation, apparently indicating that on the average daily paper of 1870 skipped all the Sundays and three holidays as well. Except for more or less wild guesses of colonial periods, the number of subscribers for all periodicals is available only from occasional encyclopedia surveys, and from the manufacturing census reports, starting in 1850. Fewer figures on annual output were directly available, but the reports and estimates of colonial and earlier days may be supplemented by computations from detailed statistics of the Bureau of Manufactures. Population prior to the first census is almost invariably estimated. However, something approaching accuracy is pos- sible by comparing various estimates. Population from 1790 in decennial years is definitely shown in the federal census; and for other years. may be computed, based on the average yearly increase for the census period, or found in Census Bu- reau estimates. The term "newspaper" is here used in its general ense to cover all periodical publications. With these observations as to source, numbers of papers, their circulation and annual output are presented in Table I., and represented graphically in Charts I, II, and III. FEW PAPERS BEFORE REVOLUTION At no time prior to the American Revolution were there as many as 100 newspapers in the American colonies, but by the time of the first census in 1790, the number was 106. Then began a steady climb, as gathered from the various census re- ports, newspaper directories, and other authoritative esti- mates. It will be noted there was a slight recession in the number of publications between 1830 and 1835, but this was followed by a rapid period of expansion, especially in the decades of 1870-80 and 1880-90, to a peak of 24,089 papers in 1910. In other words, there were 588 times as many newspapers in the United States in 1921 as at the time of the Revolution, but only 43 times as many persons. 10 The details of this change in newspaper numbers, by decades, with special reports at other early dates when avail- able, will be found in the third column of Table I. Figures on the total circulation of all periodicals are harder TABLE I. NUMBER OF NEWSPAPERS, TOTAL CIRCULATION, AND TOTAL ANNUAL OUTPUT, 1704-1925 Number of Year Population Papers 1704 300,000 1 1710 357,500 1 1720 500,0001 3 1725 1,000,000 5 1730 8 1740 12 1750 1,207,0001 14 1760 1,610,0001 21 1770 2,205,0001 29 1775 2,803,000. 48 1776 378 1780 2,580,0001 38 1788 3,660,0002 935 1790 3,929,214 106 1800 5,308,483 1506 1810 7,239,891 3936 3598 3663 1820 9,638,453 861 1828 12,220,5003 8638 8527 8519 1830 12,866,020 1,300 1835 14,000,0004 1,258 1840 17,059,453 1,4038 1,6313 1850 23,191,876 2,5261� 1860 31,443,321 4,0513 3,26611 1870 38,558,371 5,8713 5,983" 1872 40,974,498 5,19513 5,40019 Total Number Total Copies Subscriptions Printed Annually 300 10,200 15,600 3,269 170,000 23,300 77,0005 5,142,17710 13,663,40910 20,842,47510 19,122,418183 19,369,4471'" 11 1,196,000 4,000,000' 22,500,0006 22,321,700? -24,577,400 68,117,7988 90,361,0004 195,838,6738 426,409,97810 927,951,54810 1,508,548,25010 1,372,167,26613 1,375,096,16819 Year Population 1880 50,155,783 1890 62,974,714 1899 74,798,612 1904 82,601,384 1909 90,691,354 1914 97,927,516 1919 105,003,065 1921 108,445,000 1923 111,692,000 1925 115,378,094 Number of Total Number Subscriptions 31,779,68610 69,138,9341o 68,147,61914 106,889,33415 150,009,72315 164,463,04016 205,594,90715 222,481,93815 212,901,93116 210,946,63118 232,042,61416 259,986,45716 Total Copies Printed Annually 2,067,848,20910 4,681,113,53010 4,669,217,75014 7,830,882,30817 10,044,751,77717 11,626,417,32117 14,058,600,1901 15,108,162,93417 15,587,205,53617 15,134,056,85418 16,760,921,98717 17,942,124,56217 1 Estimates by F. B. Dexter, Yale University. 2 Computed on basis of proportional increase throughout decade. 3 Newspaper summary in U. S. Census of 1880, by S. N. D. North; also in Census of 1850, p. lxiv. 4 Frederick Hudson, "History of American Journalism." 5 Census of 1860, mortality section. 6 Isaiah Thomas's "History of Printing in America." 7 Census of 1850, quoting American Almanac for 1830. 8 Coggeshall, quoted by North in Census of 1880, p. 47. 9 Dexter, "History of Education in the United States," p. 506. 10 Report of Manufacturing Industries, Census of 1850, p. lxv. 11 Bogart, "The Economic History of the United States," p. 235. 12 N. W. Ayer's Newspaper directories. 13 Appleton's "American Encyclopedia" for 1872. 14 Special Reports of the Census of Manuufactures for 1905, vol. III. 15 Abstract of the Census of Manufactures. (Businesses more than $500 annually.) 16 Abstract of the Census of Manufactures. (Businesses more than $5,000 annually.) 17 Computed from number of papers of various frequencies of publicca- as reported in the Census. 18 Revised Census figures. 19 See Appendix II, p. 94. NOTE :-Population figures from 1790 on are from reports of the Bureau of the Census; prior to 1790, largely estimates. Compare Ban- croft's estimates for 1688, "History of the United States," vol. I, p. 602, and for 1754, idem. vol. II. p. 389 (quoted also in "Century of Popula- tion Growth") with estimates of H. C. Carey in "Principles of Polit- ical Economy," (1840) part III, pp. 25-6. 12 Papers 11,3148 10,64312 17,6161� 18,12912 18,79314 21,32512 21,84814 22,31212 22,14114 22,72512 22,75414 23,16712 20,48914 20,94112 13,16715 20,88712 13,07715 14,06515 00w ~w C' ~C 'CH ~~N 'Cow - 0~U2~H '0 w'on 00 zH 0 0 . 13 CHART II. NUMBER OF SUBSCRIBERS OF AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS 225,000,000 187,500,000 150,000,000 112,500,000 75,000,000 37.500,000 , I I I I I I I I liii 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1899 '04 '09 '14 '19212325 14 CHART III. TOTAL ANNUAL OUTPUT OF AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS 15,000,000,000 12,500,000,000 10,000,000,000 7,500,000,000 5,000,000,000 2,500,000,000 I 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1899 '04 '09 '14 '19'21'23'25 15 " -- re~ L -~-em~--~~ ~ --~---~~ ~---re~a~- -~-- rrc~aarc~ys---l ~-~C- S~-aPI --~n ~ - --- to get, due to the fact there were no newspaper directories before 1869, and the newspaper historians of earlier days seldom mentioned the circulation of any publication. Isaiah Thomas, the first historian of the press, mentions that the Boston News-Letter probably never printed more than 300 copies of an issue. In fact, Campbell in his News-Letter of Aug. 10, 1719, wrote that the printer "cannot vend 300 at an impression, tho some ignorantly concludes he sells upwards of a thousand." North says it is doubtful if the News-Letter at any time printed more than a thousand copies for an issue. Thomas, in his history of colonial printers, says that in 1747-8, when the Pennsylvania Gazette was making its great- est progress, under Franklin's direction, it had "extensive cir- culation in Pennsylvania and in the neighboring colonies."' Franklin's projected Philadephische Zeitung (in German) died on its second issue because 300 subscribers could not be obtained. Thomas's own Massachusetts Spy, when it was a weekly, had 200 subscribers, but according to his "Memoirs," it had in two years a circulation "larger than that of any other news- paper in Boston." While periodicals had such limited circulations, there were other publications of wide circulation, such as Ames' Almanac, which had editions as large as 10,000 annually. Riviigton's New York Gazette once boasted in the Revolu- tionary period, that it had a circulation of 3,600, but these are the largest figures available for the earlier newspapers. Greeley's Log Cabin, started in May, 1840, with a circula- tion of 30,000, soon ran to 80,000. It would doubtless have attained still wider circulation had the publisher possessed the present facilities for printing and mailing, says Appleton's Encyclopedia.2 The earliest authentic figures of total circulation of Amer- ican newspapers are those of the census of 1850, which gives the total for all publications, numbering 2,526, and total num- ber of subscribers at a little more than 5,000,000. Succeeding decennial censuses carried similar figures until 1890, after which the figures were compiled from the reports of manu- facturing establishments, beginning in 1899 and continuing at five-year intervals. The earlier of these are probably very nearly correct, as they include reports from establishments 1 Thomas, "History of Printing in America," p. 235. 2 First Series, vol. XII, p. 366. 16 doing business as low as $500 annually, but in 1921 the basis was raised to $5,000, and the figures of newspapers reporting (13,167) are far below the number of newspapers known to exist. With the exception of reports for 1872 (which omit at least three states) and 1921, the circulation figures show a con- stantly upward tendency. Even with a falling number of papers at the opening of the twentieth century, the circulation totals increased, people turning to remaining publications when one was discontinued. For details, see column 4 of Table I. It is when computations are made of the total number of copies of all periodicals issued annually that the figures mount most rapidly. Estimates of the total output in the Colonial period are of necessity largely matters of guess, with total output something more than a million copies annually, by the time of the Revolution. In 1923 the total output of the per- iodical press was in excess of 16 billion copies, or 16,000 times as many papers for the readers of 1923 to peruse as were available in Colonial days. INCREASE PUT ON ANNUAL BASIS Not included in the table are circulations and aggregate annual output for 1872, as reported in the separate state write-ups in Appleton's Encyclopedia for that year. Ala- bama, Kansas and Ohio failed to report on newspapers, and the District of Columbia, New Mexico and Utah are not men- tioned at all, but the totals for the rest of the states, aggregat- ing 19,122,418 circulation and 1,372,167;266 aggregate annual output are in line with the census figures. For details of an- nual output, see column 5, Table I. The preceding table had to do with the numbers of news- papers, their number of subscribers, and their annual output, together with population figures at, the various periods for which newspaper figures are available. This table, then, be- comes the basis for some interesting computations, set forth in Tables II and III. Table No. II is intended to show in its first columns the actual increases in numbers of papers, subscriptions, and an- nual output, and in the last three columns the rate of these increases for each year of the various periods. Since the per- iods vary in length from 2 to 65 years, it is the last three columns-the rates of annual increase-that are significant. Table No. II shows, then, that newspapers, when they were first started increased at the average rate of one newspaper 17 00 ~c oJC o t I> ~~cl O 4 00 -ct~t 0 Cf 4o ,Cl j o C {O 00--IC5 G C O r di4 C5 di 00di cal Gil00 t )o )O to O d{ di 000 00 O rI r- 0 00 Gil 000000 0ycal V TJ2 00 CC cC N~i.N r! 00 0 o lO r - Ni 00 0 00 000 0 00r- r H H 0 00 00N0 tc00'1lt'l00-CN co ~ - 0 t c l0 0 0 0 0 0 1 ' 0 v-I0 ' 0l 00 c v- wH k' a Ay + 00Ncd~-I000NN0O00CO o . N 0000 ~ ~ d000O H d ~00t0 N NO 1-I 3v ciN O .C C- O C d - i - -I c1 calt I H Z Cl H C -IC alN - G 0vc N0 0 00v-v- c NNN0000000000C0000000 CCC H~ v-OvIOOIOOOvOr OQOOOOO-OOOOv - rIv I - rI - rI . rIO- T H O 00 00 00 OOH 000 ppH 18 CHART IV ANNUAL INCREASE IN NUMBER OF NEWSPAPERS IN THE UNITED STATES 600 450 300 150 oo o 0 0 o m o 0 -150 1 I 00 0o 0 o 0 - . . .0. = = o 0 0 0 o o -3,600 19 .-I CV + a a r-i rl every four years, while in the 13 years after the Revolution they increased at the rate of 3.46 a year; and at one time grew in numbers almost two a day. The table shows that the greatest rate of increase started soon after the Civil war, and continued into the twentieth century with the exception of the 90's, a period of financial depression. Greatest growth in the number of newspapers came in 1880-90, the decade of settlement of the nation and the founding of great numbers of new towns. The rate of growth was checked abruptly by the World war, and the number of papers actually declined after 1914. In the same way, the annual increase in subscriptions is computed, showing the increasing momentum in the reading habits of the people of the country. The period of greatest increase in subscriptions did not come until the opening of the twentieth century, the increase of subscriptions in 1899- 1904 being at the rate of more than 8,000,000 a year. The five years just before the World war likewise were years of prosperity for the newspapers that were able to keep on. Reference to Table III, following, will show that the aver- age circulation of newspapers, in the period of most rapid growth (1880-90) was less than at later periods, and explains the lagging of the peak of the number of subscriptions behind the peak of the number of papers. This apparent discrepancy is especially noticeable in the period 1914-19, when the rising cost of commodities, due to the war, was putting many weaker newspapers out of business, but the people were turning in large numbers to other established papers for their news. POPULATION ALSO INCREASES The total annual output of the periodical press shows more uniformity than do the figures either for the number of news- papers, or the number of subscriptions. There was a falling off in the 70's (a period of financial depression) even though the number of new publications continued to increase. The panic of '93 apparently did not halt the steady increase in the output of the press, and even the World war and its fa- talities among the newspapers did not halt the growth in output, explainable, probably, by the fact that persons de- prived of weekly papers by their suspension, turned to the dailies, substituting 313 to 365 issues a year of the daily for the 52 issues they had been receiving of the weekly. But all this time the population had been growing, some, times at such a rate that the number of newspapers in rela- tion to population was declining. The whole Revolutionary 20 period from 1770 to 1780 was one of such decline, and again in the decade from 1830 to 1840. Taking 1,000 persons as a unit, the ratio of papers to pop- ulation can be computed. This shows, for example, 14.6 times as many papers in relation to population in 1920 as in 1775. Compare with this the actual 511-fold increase in the number of publications. Table III therefore presents the same general information as Table I, but in relation to population. The figures of Table III are diagrammed in Charts VII, VIII, and IX. It will be noted that the maximum of news- papers in relation to population was reached in 1890, nearly 15 years before the peak in actual number of papers. In 1890 the ratio was 279 papers for each million persons in the nation. Thirty years later, two-thirds as many papers (per thousand of population) averaged more than four times as many sub- scribers. EVERYBODY A SUBSCRIBER TO A PERIODICAL The year 1890 marks the date at which everybody sub- scribed for a newspaper, when the average was 1097.9 papers for each 1,000 persons. As in the case of the actual number of subscriptions, the subscriptions in relation to population reached their maximum long after the number of papers was at its peak. The latter were more numerous (in relation to population) in 1890, while it was 1919 before subscribers per thousand of population were at their highest. Total annual output continued to in- crease throughout the period under consideration. The annual rates of growth of newspapers, subscriptions, and annual output, all in terms of 1,000 popuation, will be found in Table IV. Table No. IV is intended to show in parallel columns some- thing of the rate of growth of the total number of newspapers, of subscriptions (circulation) of American newspapers, and also of the increase in total annual output of the periodical press, all in relation to the number of persons in the country. Population made a slight gain on the growing number of newspapers in 1810-28, and a decided gain in 1835-40. From 1840 to 1890 the number of newspapers, in relation to popula- tion, continued to gain, but the next 30 years witnessed a see- saw race between newspapers and population. If we may accept the guess that the Boston News-Letter had not to exceed 300 subscribers by 1710, that is a growth 21 at the rate of 50 a year from the founding of the paper. From then on, the growth of circulation was steady to the time of the Civil war, when it developed that, while there was still TABLE III NEWSPAPERS IN RELATION TO POPULATION Papers Subscribers Annual Ou No. of per thousand per thousand per thous Year Papers Population Population Populati 1704 1 .0033 1.0 3 1710 ' 1 .0028 4 1720 3 .0063 1725 5 .0050 3.3 17 1730 8 .0107 1740 12 .0135 1750 14 .0108 1760 22 .0118 1770 29 .0154 1775 48 .0171 8.2 42 1780 38 .0137 1788 93 .0252 21.0 1,09 1790 106 .0270 1800 150 .0282 1810 393 .0497 3,1C 1820 861 .0899 1828 852 .0697 5,29 1830 1,300 .1010 1835 1,258 .0899 6,45 1840 1,403 .0822 11,48 1,628 .0954 1850 2,526 .1089 221.7 17,95 1860 4,051 .1288 434.5 28,87 1870 5,871 .1523 540.7 39,12 1880 11,314 .2234 633.6 41,22 1890 17,616 .2797 1,097.9 74,33 1899 18,793 .2506 1,425.2 104,41 1904 21,848 .2652 1,820.8 121,92 1909 22,141 .2449 1,819.8 128,64 1914 22,754 .2334 2,109.2 144,32 1919 . 20,489 .1964 2,132.3 144,8( 1921 13,1671 .12141 1,945.2 139,55 1923 13,0771 .1179' 2,077.5 150,04 1925 14,0651 .1219' 2,253.3 155,5(0 SNote result of changed basis of Census figures. 22 tput and on 34 13 '7 )3 )8 4 T4 30 5 [6 .1 9. 3 1 )3 17 ,9 D1 5 16 )8 Average No. of Subs. Each Paper 300.0 485.4 827.9 2,035.6 3,372.8 3,550.0 2,808.6 3,924.8 5,687.7 6,865.3 7,428.0 9,035.5 10,858.6 16,021.0 17,736.6 18,484.5 0 c r1 z0 -~ 0 CO 0 0o 0 000 O Q 00 0100 01 0- 00 23 growth, it was not at as rapid a rate as it had been. Because of the long period between 1775 and 1850, the annual average is much lower than it would be especially for. the latter years of the period. As has been indicated, in the decade in which occurred the Civil war, the growth in circulation was retarded, but from then on until the end of the century, the total of newspaper subscribers increased 50 to 110 per cent each decade. Then came a lull, another spurt, and then the lull of the World war, when scarcity of paper, and other conservation measures off- set the natural desire of the people for more news because of war conditions. Near the close of the table, the figures show TABLE IV RATE OF GROWTH OF NEWSPAPERS IN RELATION Subs. An. Output 71 13 127 257 666 2,015 2,187 1,159 5,025 2012 6,475 213 10,920 106 10,245 93 2,107 464 33,104 327 30,078 395 17,512 -1 6,724 289 15,682 23 472 -187-5,246 132 20,491 175 5,463 Annual Increase per M. Pop. Papers Subs. Output .00014 8 .00019 3 5 .00059 4 51 .00111 91 .00092 122 .00389 166 .00110 1,005 .00135 32 648 .00199 21 1,092 .00235 11 1,025 .00605 9 211 .00816 46 3,311 -.00453 36 333 .00292 79 3,502 -.00407 6 1,345 -.00223 58 3,136 -.00740 5 94 -.03750 -.00175 .00200 -99-2,623 66 10,246 88 2,731 For 65 years, 1710 to 1775. 2 For 62 years, 1788 to 1850. 3 Increase at rate of 11-100 subscribers yearly. Increase at rate of 99-100 subscribers yearly. Based on larger establishments reported to the Census Bureau 6 Loss 2-10 of a subscriber yearly. 24 TO POPULATION Total Increase per M. Pop. From 1710 1725 1775 1788 1810 1828 1835 1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1899 1904 1909 1914 1919 1921 1923 to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to to No. of Years 1725 15 1775 50 1788 13 1810 22 1828 18 1835 7 1840 5 1850 10 1860 10 1870 10 1880 10 1890 10 1899 9 1904 5 1909 5 1914 5 1919 5 1921 2 - 1923 2 - 1925 2 Papers .0021 .0096 .0081 .0245 .0166 .0236 .0055 .0135 .0199 .0235 .0605 .0816 -.0408 .0146 -.0203 -.0115 -.0370 -.07506 -.00356 .00406 r ) ) r r ): J ) LJ L\ J 6.25 1o 0 COQ 0 0 0 O o 0 0 0D 0 o o 0 0 . 00 0 0 0 -6.25 CHART VI ANNUAL INCREASE IN NUMBER OF NEWSPAPERS PER MILLION OF POPULATION -12.50 -18.75 -25.00 -31.25 25 25 a d+ C .- c o .- .- c c a a c w c - - -+4 0 I-I I I a decrease, probably because of the changed basis for census returns, and the resulting omission of large numbers of smaller publications. Examination of the next figures-the rate of annual in- crease of newspaper subscriptions-shows two decided lulls in an otherwise steady growth of newspaper reading, and both of these were war periods. At the opening of the Civil war, on an average, 434.5 per- sons of each thousand in this country subscribed for a news- paper. In 1870, the number was 540.7 per thousand, showing an average increase through the decade of 11 subscribers a year. This rate of increase was only half the increase for the preceding decade, and only two-thirds of the gain for the decade of 1880-1890. Succeeding decades showed similarity until some unnamed cause in the five-year period of 1904-09 jumped the rate of increase to 70 subscriptions yearly for each thousand of population. The rate of gain before the World war (58 persons out of each thousand in the country) slumped decidedly while the United States was in the war, and turned to an actual decline in subscriptions for the two years following the war. FIRST DAILIES APPEAR An examination of the rate of growth of news-reading ha- bits, as evidenced by the total number of copies annually, in relation to population, gives some other interesting ex- amples of the coincidence of changes in rate of increase with events in American history. The figures of rate of increase in newspaper reading during the pre-Revolutionary period bear out in numbers of actual newspapers the statements that the Colonials were not a news- paper-reading people. With the formation of the new govern- ment of the United States, and the strong political discussions that grew out of the war, and the settling of terms and mean- ings of the new government, there was an increase in news- paper reading, as indicated both by the multiplication of the papers themselves, and of the increasing numbers who were getting newspapers. The actual number of papers in the 13 years from 1775 to 1788 increased each year three times as fast as it did during the 50 years before the Revolution; subscriptions increased nine times as fast, and the total annual output increased ten times as fast. Appearance of the first dailies in the later period accounts for the fact that annual output increased faster than did subscriptions. Whereas sub- scribers to the papers were increasing 1.1 for each 10,000 of 26 population before the Revolution, the annual increase was 9.9 per 10,000 in the 13 years after 1775. The next rapid increase in the number of papers printed yearly was from 1835 to 1840, when the annual increase was one a person, or six times as rapid as it had been in the pre- ceding seven years. The next decade, mounting population cut the rate of increase, but the two succeeding decades, in- cluding the one of the Civil war, showed the reading habits of the people growing as rapidly as in the 1835-40 period. This was followed by a decided slowing up. The panic of 1873 made times hard, and immigration, retarded by the Civil war, recommenced, combining to lessen the ratio of news- papers to readers. Then followed a half century of develop- ment of the country, the settling of state boundaries, and the founding of many new cities and villages throughout the land. Newspaper reading was increasing at substantially the same rate throughout the half-century, except in one period, that of 1904-09. Then came the World war, and paper conservation and coal shortages, and other problems that hampered the newspapers. NOT ALL ARE WEEKLIES Thus far the figures have had to do with newspaper num- bers, circulation, and annual output in the bulk, without con- sideration of the frequency of issue. It is not the purpose here to weigh the relative merits of dailies and weeklies; of tri-weekies and quarterlies, but to hold, with this one di- gression, to a study of newspaper growth as a whole. Before the Revolution, there were no dailies, and few semi- weeklies or tri-weeklies. From the lists of newspapers in existence in 17901 and in 1810, it is possible to obtain fig- ures for these two years, and from 1850 to the present the Bureau of the Census has supplied the detail. Early histor- ians made no detailed report on circulation and output, and most of the later census reports omit the total annual output. This may be computed, of course, accurately for the dailies, weeklies, etc., where number of issues annually is given, and approximately for the "other" group. The number of papers for various frequencies of publica- tion, for years available, will be found in Table V, and the total annual output in Tables VI and VII respectively. Tri-weeklies, it will be noted, never have constituted any 1 For 1790, in "Century of Population Growth," p. 32; for 1810 from Isaiah Thomas "History of Printing in America." 27 considerable portion of the number of papers, and the semi- weeklies have been declining since 1904. Sunday editions of daily papers, when counted separately, added to the total of all publications, but did not decrease the number of dailies. In the same way, total subscriptions and total annual output are increased by the double counting of Sunday issues of daily papers. Both subscriptions and total annual output of weekly pa- pers have not changed greatly in 11 years, but the subscrip- tions and output of the monthly publications have increased much more. Subscriptions and output of the Sunday papers doubled in the 21 years from 1904 to 1925. Daily papers have fallen off slightly in number, but they have increased constantly in circulation and in total output. From these figures may be drawn the following: 1. Three tables of percentage of each frequency of publi- cation to the total publication for each year, one table for the number of papers, one for circulation, and one for total an- nual output. 2. Three tables showing the number of papers, circulation, and annual output in relation to some unit of population- 1,000 persons, for example. 3. A percentage distribution of each of the three tabu- TABLE V. NUMBER OF PUBLICATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES OF VARYING FREQUENCY OF PUBLICATION Tri- Semi- Quar- Year Total Sunday Daily Weekly Monthly weekly weekly terly Other 1790 103 8 73 7 12 3 1810 393 27 289 54 23 1840 1,634 141 1,141 125 227 1850 2,526 254 1,902 100 115 31 19 105 1860 4,051 387 3,173 280 86 79 30 16 1870 5,871 574 4,295 622 107 115 49 109 1880 11,314 971 8,633 1,167 73 133 166 221 1890 17,616 1,731 12,721 2,247 40 214 225 392 1899 18,793 567 2,226 12,979 1,817 62 637 237 268 1904 21,848 494 2,452 15,046 2,600 58 645 353 340 1909 22,141 520 2,600 15,097 2,491 73 635 361 364 1914 22,754 571 2,580 15,172 2,822 84 583 500 442 1919 20,489 604 2,441 13,375 2,647 93 452 489 388 1921 13,167 537 2,343 7,054 1,907 85 423 515 302 1923 13,077 602 2,314 6,887 1,907 79 407 555 326 1925 14,065 597 2,280 7,568 2,271 74 383 553 339 28 C'JCJGOGIJCN C' CSl0 C 00 ClON r^ OCJ~r S O r r C - a a c p r a w S . O LJ G1 O ~ -0 0 o cl -I6 Cf r C) 0 0 0 -C L- - CV 0 r- 0 r- n ^ w w 0)0 p 00cfl 000Lam-N Cp LCDCC + 0 LD C N CJCC C O 0 ) 0 <1 CD C ri r4 ri 4 c Cfl00 l C )~ H 00 ~-NG'C U LCNc0Or{NvNCC0 0 ~- 0 Cl NC 10y- a) a) 0I) 4) NC C)cfd #+rjN0c29 00ooc ~r oo o l0 00 0H c O 0 10 10010010 00 0001 00000 t~+ 00d 000t 00 N0110101000 01 11 c - o +oc c t C 1d N r 000 000000 0101100100 QQI w0 , 0C'C0 O 00 -O -CJ " Ca- 'r d Lm L- il Gi .sd{ 4- 0d 0 sJ-J C'JI20 0 0O G1 00 10 0ct000007 00000cd ,- G' t 01 L-0 -1C OG7G7d O C r-Ir- r 0011 '1QQ10 H 0 0 0 0 0 I?1d2-r 0 r12 00000 00 Ok0 looooC'1C E CT) 1- 0 00 ' ClCl 00 ~000 00 /000000000~ 30 lations suggested in paragraph 2, showing the proportion of each frequency of publication in the figures for each year. Each of the nine tabulations should be illustrated with a graphic chart similar to those used for charting the bulk fig- ures. For the purpose of this study, one phase, that of sub- scriptions in relation to population, will be worked out and charted. These results are to be found in Tables VIII and IX. TABLE VIII. SUBSCRIPTIONS PER THOUSAND OF POPULATION FOR VARYING FREQUENCIES OF PUBLICATION Year Sunday Daily Weekly Monthly Other 1850 32.59 127.30 31.92 29.89 1860 46.93 241.15 108.19 36.24 1870 67.60 275.22 146.53 51.35 1880 71.60 324.40 162.84 73.76 1890 133.94 456.73 311.80 95.33 1900 200.95 456.06 505.95 272.25 1904 274.94 477.05 835.75 233.10 1909 147.4 269.33 451.31 700.62 151.14 1914 168.7 293.18 516.75 822.04 308.49 1919 185.5 307.05 498.96 878.51 266.28 1921 187.0 316.36 409.88 783.94 292.49 1923 223.6 324.85 436.65 833.21 251.30 1925 222.1 329.69 440.42 969.65 291.44 TABLE IX PERCENTAGE OF EACH FREQUENCY OF PUBLICA- CATION, BASED ON NUMBER OF SUBSCRIB- ERS PER THOUSAND POPULATION Year Sunday Daily Weekly Monthly Other 1850 14.9 57.6 14.8 12.7 1860 10.2 55.8 25.4 8.2 1870 12.5 50.9 27.1 8.5 1880 11.3 51.2 25.7 11.8 1890 13.5 45.7 31.3 9.5 1900 14.0 31.1 X5.2 19.7 1904 15.1 26.2 45.9 12.8 1909 8.5 15.7 26.2 40.8 8.8 1914 8.0 13.8 24.5 39.0 14.1 1919 8.7 14.8 23.3 41.2 11.9 1921 9.9 15.3 20.6 39.6 14.6 1923 10.4 15.4 20.6 39.5 14.0 1925 9.9 14.6 19.5 43.0 13.0 31 2400 240O700 ".. " rr Gr~rr~r ""0c.240r 24Q c2240cQ~e-=n. 4 *e~~o.o....ee-e.@.o...e.o....e.e.e....@.e.e....e.e.I 04II 0 0 0- ,O"OeO"Qr "Q.".�.�.Q.Q o " a""."e"e"es . II II 1 11 11 1 11 1 11 11 1 11 1 uni 000 liii '-4ll 40 0 32 .�".m".0.�.~�..�""o" ..QeeQce, CHART VIII PERCENTAGE OF EACH FREQUENCY OF PUBLI- CATION PER THOUSAND POPULATION-1840-1925 It would appear, then, that the growth in the number of newspapers, their lists of subscriptions, and the total output of the periodical press, increasing as it has so vastly from the figures of the pre-Revolutionary period, has not been a steady one, but has reflected in a fairly large measure many of the activities of the people. This study, then, will endeavor to trace some of these social and economic conditions, at what appear to be fairly signifi- cant periods, and try to connect with these conditions the facts as to newspaper numbers and output-in other words, with the newspaper-reading habits of the American people. General economic conditions, including the rise of the fac- tory system in America and the beginnings of the labor move- ment; the increase in general, public education; the move- ment to cities and other concentrated groups of population; improvement of means of transportation; invention of the telegraph and its application to the gathering of news; per- fection of printing machinery; the co-operation of the post- office department; the rapid settlement of the country-all have a connection more or less direct with the growth of the newspaper business and its place in American life. We are not unmindful of the place of the Press in political discussion from pre-Revolutionary times to the present, but it is the purpose of this study to turn more to the social and economic phases of national life, with the thought that, influ- ential as the newspaper may be in community and political leadership, it is also a product of all the conditions that go to make up what we know as American life. 34 CHAPTER II. SOME ECONOMIC CHANGES AND THE PRESS- THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD It is not the purpose of this study to trace the growth of American newspapers and of their circulation for every year, and seek to tie up this varying rate of growth with other his- torical events, but rather to select three or four typical per- iods in American history, trace in a general way their social and economic conditions, and then examine the condition of the newspapers in the light of these conditions. At the outset it must be stated that while most of the fig- ures used come from census reports, or similar publications of authoritative character, other figures are but computations or even estimates. If computations, the foundations are given, and if estimates, the authority is cited. Differences in definitions of what really is a "newspaper" also may ac- count for discrepancies in figures. High school publications and house organs are not listed by newspaper directories, but might be included in some other listings of publications. Probably the greater part of the figures given by an au- thority for aggregate circulations and for aggregate annual output of the periodical press contains some estimates, espe- cially for some of the smaller papers, but the figures are fairly consistent, and are significant and comparable even if they may not be entirely exact. POPULATION GROWTH CONSIDERED This study has included not only the number of newspa- pers, as reported at various times by the newspaper histor- ians, the newspaper directories, and the Census Bureau, but has compared these numbers with the growth of population of the country. The figures, not only of the number of newspapers, but of such fragmentary suggestions as we have of their circulation and total annual output, indicate that the pre-Revolutionary forefathers were not a newspaper-reading people. In his Autobiography, Benjamin Franklin wrote: "At the time I established myself in Philadelphia (1723) there was not a good bookseller's shop in any of the colonies south of Boston. 35 In New York and Philadelphia the printers were indeed sta- tioners, but they sold only paper, almanacs, ballads, and a few common school books." In fact, it was more than 50 years after the introduction of a printing press into the American colonies (that of Ste- phen Daye at Cambridge in 1638) before even an effort was made to issue a news periodical, and that was proposed to be issued more than once a month only "if a glut of occur- rences happened," and fourteen years elapsed before John Campbell began his printed News-Letter in Boston. Fifteen years passed before he had any competition-80 years after the press was established at Cambridge. Not until 1740 were there as many as a dozen newspapers at one time in all the American colonies. In the whole hundred years from the time Benjamin Harris tried to start his Publick Occurrences until the close of 1790, there were only 237 publications started in the colonies, rang- ing from the projected Philadelphische Zeitung of Franklin and the two issues of the Boston Weekly Magazine of Rogers & Fowle, to the Boston News-Letter, which under varying titles continued 72 years until the outbreak of the Revolu- tion put a stop to it. Never more than three score papers were in existence at qne time, for a population that was nearly three million by the time the Revolution started. No NEWSPAPER FOR 275,000 PEOPLE The earlier part of the colonial period was one of con- quering the wilderness and the establishing of small settle- ments along the seacoast and on the larger rivers. Before 1700, only three settlements had reached more than 2,500 pop- ulation. By that date, Boston had 6,700, New York between 4,400 and 4,900, and Philadelphia 4,400.1 And there were no newspapers in all the colonies with their total population of probably 275,000. By 1750 the population had grown to a little more than a million (1,207,000), and there had been 40 publications started in seven of the colonies. Of these publications, all but thirteen had ceased by the year 1750. The period from 1750 to the outbreak of the Revolution, then, may be taken as the first of the periods that shall be examined. As has been indicated, this period just before the Revolu- 1 Estimated populations of groups and cities are from "A Century of Population Growth in the United States, 1790-1900," Bureau of the Census, p. 11. 36 Lording to DeBow, the population of the colonies had in- creased to 2,803,000, nearly one-half of which was in the southern colonies, and one-fourth each in New England and the Middle colonies. Half a dozen cities of more than 5,000 population had grown tion was one of settlement and rapid growth. By 1775, ac- up, and Philadelphia with approximately 30,000 inhabitants was the largest city in the colonies. New York had 21,863 in 1771, and Boston with a falling population had 15,520 in 1770. Charleston, the only large city in the South, had be- tween 12,000 and 15,000. The only other cities of any size were Baltimore (5,924); Salem, (5,337 in 1776) ; and New- port, (5,299 in 1776). Except for the decade 1730-40, the pop- ulation in cities of 8,000 was less than 4 per cent of the total, and it was 1820 before it exceeded 5 per cent. Aside from these few cities, a vast area of 820,000 square miles was settled only by small communities, and scattered outposts, and these mainly were confined to the 239,935 square miles nearer the coastlines. In fact, up to the time of the Revolution, only six of the thirteen colonies had any very definite boundary lines, and as late as the first census (1790) only 417,170 square miles were enumerated, and 178,000 square miles had less than two persons to the square mile. PAPER-MAKING AN EARLY INDUSTRY These scattered people were largely engaged in agriculture and fishing. America's wealth of minerals had hardly been discovered, and England had as a matter of policy discouraged manufacturing in the colonies. Except in the towns, where skilled artisans were developed, each family was sufficient to itself, raising practically all its food, making its own home- spun cloth for clothing, .and depending on itself alone for sustenance. Iron was being mined in a small way, and by the close of the Revolution as many as 76 small foundaries had been estab- lished. Paper-making, too, early claimed attention, and many small mills were erected. The extent of the paper making business before the Revo- lution may be judged from Thomas's1 description of it in 1810. At that time the total annual output was about 50,000 reams, or 500 tons of paper, for the 22,500,000 newspapers printed annually. This paper, Thomas estimates, was worth about $3 a ream, or $300 a ton. Most of the mills had but 1 Thomas, "History of Printing in America," vol. I, p. 25. 37 two vats, and employed 12 or more men, turning out 2,000 to 3,000 reams annually. A capital of $10,000 was required for the mills of that time. In addition to the making of paper, early printers made some efforts to provide their own presses and type, even be- fore the Revolution. As early as 1750 Christopher Sower, printer of a German newspaper at Germantown, Penn., sup- erintended the construction of a printing press, and shortly after 1775 there were well estabished factories for the mak- ing of printing presses at Philadelphia and at Hartford, Conn. As early as 1768, a Mr. Michelson .tried to cast some type at Boston, so Thomas says,' and iI 1769 Abel Buel of Killing- worth, Conn., a jeweler, made a little. In 1772, Christopher Sower, Jr., established a foundry at Germantown, the scene, 84 years before, of the first paper mill in America. TYPE FOUNDERIES STARTED Sower had imported the molds and machinery from Ger- many, and was prepared to cast only German type, but his apprentice, Justus Fox, who was put in charge of the type- making machinery, repaired deficiencies of the originals and cut molds for several sizes of Roman and italic type for Eng- lish works. Necessity for faster presses and for mechanical means for assembling type had not arisen, and the natural human in- ertia made Sower content, apparently, with the same general equipment as that used by Gutenberg and Stephen Daye. Means of transportation were of the crudest, and consisted of the coastwise craft which sailed on indeterminate sched- ules, and meagre highways through the forests. These high- ways were literally little more than trails, and at best were not suited to the hauling of produce and the consequent de- velopment of commerce. As a result, there was little incen- tive for any farmer to grow more than he could consume himself or dispose of in his immediate vicinity. Passenger travel was by sea or by stagecoach, but by either method the rate was not rapid. An advertisement in the Massachusetts Spy for Jan. 5, 1786, was for a stage line from Portsmouth, N. H., to Savannah, Ga. The splendid service was noted, since a passenger leaving Boston on Monday morn- ing "precisely at 5 o'clock," would reach New York Thursday evening. 1 Thomas, "History of Printing in America," v. I, pp. 27-28. 38 About the only things that entered into general commerce were salt fish, salt, rum, and tools and utensils. Facilities in the home were crude. The houses were sim- ple, heated by fireplaces and lighted by candles. Sanitation was almost an unknown science, and pestilence was not un- common, especially in the larger towns. That is why Bos- ton's population fell off in 1770. By the time of the Revolution, the idea of general educa- tion had taken fair hold of the northern states, and there were in most towns elementary schools, which were operated a few months in the winter for the boys and in the summer for girls. In Massachusetts, for example, each town of 50 householders, was required to maintain a schoolmaster who would teach the children to read and write; and each town of 100 householders was required to have a grammar school. By 1790, fourteen colleges had been established-Harvard, Yale, and William and Mary dating from 1700 or before, but even Yale had not to exceed 250 students, and the graduating class of all the colleges in 1789 was not more than 170.1 Law and theology were the principal studies in the colleges of Massachusetts, and medicine and science (due to Frank- lin's influence) in the schools of Philadelphia. In 1750, there were 14 newspapers in all the colonies-five in Massachusetts, four in Pennsylvania, two in New York, and one each in Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina. Be- tween that date and the outbreak of the Revolution, there were 67 started and 33 discontinued, leaving 48 in existence at the opening of the conflict. MASSACHUSETTS Massachusetts, it has been indicated, was the first of the English colonies in America to have a printing press, and that was soon after the establishment of colonies about Mass- achusetts bay. Stephen Daye, who had been induced in 1638 to come to America, had his press in operation long before the Revolution. Thomas lists at least three printers at Cam- bridge, all of whom apparently operated the Harvard press. It was not until 1676-a century before the Revolution- that a press was established in Boston proper, and it was nearly another century before a press was established at any inland point in Massachusetts. Half a dozen different print- ers are named by Thomas as having operated printing presses in Boston before 1700, but whether there were six separate plants or the same plants used by two or more, it is hard to 1 "A Century of Population Growth," p. 32. 39 say. In 1690, when Benjamin Harris attempted to start his Publick Occurrences, Bartholomew Green also had a plant at Boston, but John Foster, Samuel and Richard Pierce had dis- continued their presses. In all, nearly thirty different plants were operated in Massachusetts before the Revolution. In 1750 there were in existence five newspapers, all of them papers of fairly long history. The oldest of these, of course, was the Boston Weekly News-Letter, which had been established April 24, 1704, by Postmaster John Campbell as the Boston News-Letter. This paper continued throughout the period under discussion, ceasing in 1776 when the British withdrew from Boston, for the News-Letter, under its vary- ing titles, had been an organ of the Tories. The second newspaper was the Boston Gazette or Weekly Journal, which had been established in 1741 by the combina- tion of William Brooker's Boston Gazette of 1719 and Samuel Kneeland's New England Weekly Journal. The Gazette con- tinued under several minor changes in title until 1798. It was published at Watertown from June 5, 1775, to Nov. 4, 1776. "EVENING POST" NOT A DAILY The third paper of 1750 was the Boston Evening Post (not a daily as the name now would indicate, but a paper delivered to subscribers on the afternoon of publication day). The Post was established in 1735 by Thomas Fleet, printer, who for several years had been in charge of the Weekly Rehearsal, which had been established in 1731 by Jeremiah Gridley. The Boston Evening Post continued under that name until April 24, 1775. Strangely enough, that last issue has only a bare reference to the conflict at Lexington and Concord, which had occurred nearly a week before. The fourth newspaper of 1750 was the Boston Post-Boy, established in October, 1734, as the Boston Weekly Post-Boy by Ellis Huske, and changed in title in June, 1750. Four years later the paper was discontinued, and Aug. 22, 1757, Green & Russell revived the paper under the title of the Boston Weekly Advertiser, and continued it under various titles until April 17, 1775. For about a year in 1769 the paper was under the title of Massachusetts Gazette and the Boston Post-Boy & Advertiser, and published in conjunction with the Massachu- setts Gazette, and the Boston Weekly News-Letter a page of legal notices and other official matter. Rogers & Fowle's Independent Advertiser is included in the list of newspapers of 1750, although one authority lists it as having been discontinued in December, 1749. The paper 40 was started Jan. 4, 1748, and the Boston Morning Advertiser of the present dates its numbers from 1748. However, three newspaper authorities list the paper as having been discon- tinued in 1750 to 1752. Before 1750, only half a dozen other attempts had been made to establish newspapers, the most notable of which was the New England Courant, established in 1721 by James Franklin, and running a stormy career until June 4, 1725. Throughout this period, the population of Boston contin- ued in the neighborhood of 15,000, disease counteracting the natural tendency of the new community to grow. Massachu- setts colony, however, increased from 165,000 to 291,147 population, indicating the springing up of new communities. The newspaper record shows establishment of papers before the Revolution at Worcester, Newburyport, and Salem, in addition to those at Boston. Salem, a town of 4,500, was the first of the points outside of Boston to have a newspaper. In fact, for a time it had two, before one removed to Boston. The first was the Essex Gazette, founded early in August, 1768, by Samuel Hall, and continued until the Revolution. The other Salem paper was the Salem Gazette and New- burn & Marblehead Advertiser, established in June or July, 1774, and continued for eighteen months by Ezekiel Russell. A third paper established in this period, and perhaps one of the most important of the pre-Revolutionary period in Massachusetts Spy, established in Boston, Aug. 17, 1770, by Isaiah Thomas. The next year he changed the name to the Massachusetts Spy or Thomas' Boston Journal, and with the beginning of hostilities in May, 1775, moved the plant to Worcester and continued the publication as the Massachusetts Spy or American Oracle of Liberty. The latter part of 1773, Thomas established at Newbury- port the Essex Journal, which continued to the close of the century. PENNSYLVANIA While Pennsylvania did not have as early a start as did Massachusetts, either in settlement or in the publication of newspapers, both the colony and the city of Philadelphia were in population nearly on a par with Massachusetts and Boston by 1750. Population of Pennsylvania in 1749 was 150,000 compared with Massachusetts' 165,000 in 1750, and Philadelphia had about 13,000 population, compared with Boston's 15,731. 41 Both Philadelphia and Boston at the opening of the 1750-75 period had four newspapers and as in the case of Boston, two or three of the Philadelphia papers of 1750 were long estab- lished and long continued publications. The first Pennsyl- vania publications, of course, had been at Philadelphia, with one fairly early at Germantwon, nearby. Just as in Massachusetts, there had been printers long be- fore there were any newspapers, so in Pennsylvania. Will- iam Bradford had established his print shop in Philadelphia before 1690 and had printed the official documents of the government and books for the booksellers until 1693, when the governor of New York induced him to come to that city. He had arrived in the colony in 1682 and had settled "near Philadelphia," Thomas says, probably at Chester, or at Bur- lington, in New Jersey. ENTER BEN FRANKLIN Whether there was a press in the Penn colony between 1693 and 1712 it is hard to say, but Thomas is of the opinion that Bradford left some minor equipment there in charge of Rein- ier Jansen, on some partnership basis, until his son, Andrew Bradford, reached his majority. From 1712 to 1723, An- drew Bradford operated the only press in the colony, and it was during this time that he started the third paper in the colonies-The American Weekly Mercury-which continued until 1747. The important paper of 1750 was Benjamin Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette, which he had taken over from Sam Keimer in 1729. Keimer had opened a print shop in Phila- delphia in 1723 and was a competitor of Bradford when Franklin came to the city. In fact, Franklin was for a time employed in the Keimer shop. Franklin had been planning a second publication in opposition to Bradford's Mercury, but Keimer got wind of it, and entered the field first, coming out Dec. 24, 1728, with the Universal Instructor in All the Arts and Sciences and Pennsylvania Gazette. The story of Franklin's connection with the Gazette is fa- miliar through his own autobiography and other publications. The fate of the Gazette is more in doubt. Frederick Hudson, writing a newspaper history in 1870, says: "The Gazette skipped a few issues in 1804, and was sold in 1845 to the Philadelphia North American." S. N. D. North, in a news- paper review appended to the census of 1880, says, "Sus- pended, 1824." James Melvin Lee, in 1920, writes: " . . 42 suspended Oct. 11, 1815, and plant disposed of to Philadel- phia printers." W. S. Rossiter, chief clerk of the Census Bureau, in "A Century of Population Growth in the United States," lists all publications of 1790, and in a column "Remarks" for the Gazette says: "Became Saturday Evening Post in 1821." John Clyde Oswald, editor of the American Printer, and an authority on matters relating to Franklin, in his publica- tion for Jan. 20, 1924, writes: " . . . suspended Sept. 10, 1777 to Jan. 5, 1779 (during British occupation) and sold in 1821 to Samuel C. Atkinson and Charles Alexander, who changed policy, dress, subscription price, and name to Satur- day Evening Post." The latter two statements would be at least partly in line with the front-cover statement each week on the Saturday Evening Post that it was "Founded A. D. 1728 by Benj. Franklin." The second paper of importance in 1750 was the Pennsyl- vania Journal & Weekly Advertiser, founded in 1742 by Will- iam Bradford, grandson of the first William Bradford. The paper continued in the hands of the Bradford family until 1797 or later. The other two publications in Pennsylvania in 1750 were in the German language. As early as 1732 Franklin had at- tempted to publish the Philadelphische Zeitung, but not be- ing able to get 300 subscribers, issued a second sheet to an- nounce the failure of the attempt. As has been indicated, only one of the four papers of 1750 suspended before the Revolution (Ambruster's Zeitung). Both the colony and the city of Philadelphia were more pros- perous than Massachusetts and Boston, and in the 25 years after 1750 the colony doubled in population and the city in- creased from 13,000 to 34,400. This growth in population was reflected in the greater in- crease in newspapers, compared with Massachusetts. While the northern colony had a net increase of three papers in 25 years, Pennsylvania had an increase of six, thirteen being started and seven ceasing publication. GERMAN PAPERS STARTED Included in the papers started in this period and continu- ing into the Revolutionary war years were: Der Wochent- liche Philadelphische Staatsbote, started Jan. 18, 1762, by Hienry (Henrich) Miller, and the Pennsylvania Evening Post, 43 started Jan. 24, 1775, by Benjamin Towne, and continued until the British evacuated Philadelphia in 1779. The Staatsbote continued at least until 1812. The third and most important of the new publications of this period was the Pennsylvania Pacquet or General Adver- tiser, started in October or November, 1771, by John Dunlop. It was important, for it became after the Revolution, the American Daily Advertiser, the first American daily, and in 1840 became a part of the Philadelphia North American. The latter was absorbed by the Public Ledger in 1925. It was published at Lancaster during the British occupation, and be- fore becoming a daily was issued as tri-weekly, semi-weekly, and tri-weekly again, each for comparatively short periods. D. C. Claypoole was the partner of Dunlop in the daily ven- ture. Unsuccessful attempts to start magazines tell the story of some of the short-lived papers of the period. For a short time in 1764, C. Sower, Jr., ran Ein Geistliches Magazien, the first religious periodical in America, and Anton Ambruster published Fama a short time in 1763. Lewis Nicolle ran an American Magazine, the third of that name in Philadelphia, throughout the year 1769, and in January, 1775, Robert Aiken published the Pennsylvania Magazine or American Monthly Museum, until the war ended it. NEW YORK While the city of New York was.nearly the same size as Philadelphia in 1750, if not a trifle larger, the colony of New York was only about one-half as populous as was Pennsyl- vania. Nor did either city or colony increase in population as rapidy as had Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. William Bradford had taken a printing press to New York in 1793, and three years later, at the direction of Gov. Benj. Fletcher, had reprinted an issue of the London Gazette, con- taining some important war news. Thirty years later, (Nov. 16, 1725) Bradford started a periodical of his own, the New York Gazette, which continued until 1743, when James Parker took it over and made it the New York Gazette or Weekly Post-Boy.. It suspended after a time and was revived in 1747 as the New York Gazette, Revived in the Weekly Post-Boy. This publication finally ceased in 1772, covering the greater part of the period 1750-75. The only paper to continue throughout the period was John Peter Zenger's New York Weekly Journal, which he had estab- lished late in 1733, and published in spite of libel suits and 44 frequent other difficulties with the authorities until 1752 and revived again in 1767 under John Holt. When Revolutionary activities became too great near New York, the paper was moved to Kingston (July 7, 1777) and the next year to Poughkeepsie, until the war was over. Four publications started during the 1750-75 period con- tinued over into the conflict, and only one continued beyond the date of peace. One of the most enterprising of the new papers was the New York Mercury, established Aug. 3, 1752, by Hugh Gaine and continued until 1783.- Another newspaper of note was Jlames Rivington's Royal Gazette or Royal Gazetteer. started in 1762, and likewise continued until the close of the war. His paper is said to have had a circulation of 3,600 copies weekly at one time. Samuel Loudon's New York Packet and American Advertis- er, said to have been a revival of some paper called the Pacquet of 1763, was established Jan. 4, 1776, and was in existence in 1835. It was published at Fishkill 1781-83. Thomas makes mention of a paper called John Englishman, in Defense of the English Constitution, published for, three months by Parker & Weyman, but no dates are given, nor is the place of publication indicated. Yale library has copies dated from May 20, to July 5, 1755. The shorter-lived publications of the period included James Parker's Independent Reflector, 1752-54; Alex and James Robertson's New York Chronicle, 1768-71; John Anderson's Constitutional Gazette, which ran a few months in 1775; James Parker's New American Magazine, 1758, and the Amer- ican Chronicle, published a short time in 1762 at Troy by Samuel Farley. After discontinuing the Chronicle, A. & J. Robertson went to Albany and established the Albany Post-Boy, which they continued until 1775. Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina were the only other colonies to have newspapers in 1750, and they had but one each. Maryland had a newspaper at a comparatively early period, when William Parks started the Maryland Gazette, Sept. 19, 1727, at Annapolis, and continued it for eight or ten years. Jan. 17, 1745, Jonas Green revived the publication, and it continued throughout the pre-Revolutionary period and was in the Green family as late as 1839. The paper published its second centennial number in September, 1927. 45 William Goddard's Maryland Journal, started at Baltimore Aug. 20, 1773, became the Baltimore American in 1799. Virginia was more backward about the newspaper business. In fact, Governor Barclay had expressed thanks that there were no newspapers nor schools in the colony, "for these had brought dissensions into the world." "GAZETTE" IS A POPULAR NAME After discontinuing the Maryland Gazette, William Parks went to Williamsburg and started (Aug. 6, 1736) the Virginia Gazette, which he continued until about 1750. Early in 1751 William Hunter revived this Gazette, and in 1766 Thomas Rind started another Virginia Gazette, at the same place. It continued for ten years. A third Virginia Gazette was is- sued at Williamstown by Alex. Purdy, Feb. 3, 1775, and con- tinued until 1779. Thomas Whitemarsh tried to start a newspaper in South Carolina before 1750, but his South Carolina Gazette con- tinued only from Jan. 8, 1732 until Sept. 1733. The following February Peter Timothy revived the Gazette, and it continued, barring interruptions by war, until the close of the century and was all that time under the direction of Timothy or of his widow. Robert Wells' South Carolina Weekly Gazette continued from .1758 to 1782, and Charles Crouch's South Carolina Gazette and Country Journal, established in November or December, 1765, was taken by his widow to Salem, Mass., at the outbreak of the Revolution. South Carolina, in the 25 years before the war, had grown from 64,000 to 175,000 population, and Charleston had be- come a city of 10,000 or 12,000. Thus, in six of the thirteen colonies, there were no news- papers in 1750, but by the time the Revolution broke out, all of them had had some sort of regular publication, and singularly enough, the name "Gazette" was given the first or at latest the second paper in each colony. Connecticut for some reason, in spite of a late start, seems to have been a good newspaper field. No cities of 5,000 or more developed during the Revolutionary period, but the colony grew from an estimated 100,000 in 1749 to a counted 196,088 in 1774, and five newspapers were established. All but one were able to survive the Revolution, and continue into the nineteenth century. James Parker and John Holt ran a Connecticut Gazette 46 at New Haven from Jan. 1, 1755 to 1767, and at Hartford, Thomas Green, Oct. 29, 1764, started the Connecticut Courant, which has continued until this day. Other Connecticut papers were the New London Summary, edited by Timothy Green, Jr., and the Connecticut Journal and New Haven Post-Boy. Three newspapers were established in New Hampshire be- fore the Revolution. One of these, the New Hampshire Ga- zette, started Sept. 7, 1756 by Daniel Fowle, has continued to the present, and is the oldest newspaper in the United States which has not changed its name. Half a dozen papers were started in North Carolina be- tween 1755 and 1775, but with few exceptions they were of short life. Efforts to start a paper in New Jersey were not permanently successful. Two newspapers started in Rhode Island and one in Geor- gia, continued into the Revolutionary period. The newspaper history of the pre-Revolutionary period has thus been covered somewhat in detail because of the fewness of the papers, and because these few papers are so represen- tative of the journalism to follow. The limited number listed is in sharp contrast with the numbers of the present. It is proposed now to advance to the nineteenth century and examine newspaper conditions and the related social and economic conditions in 1850. This date is chosen because it is just a century after the be- ginning of the period just discussed; also because it repre- sents the period of greatest conquest of the continent, for the territories on the Pacific had been established and state and territorial boundaries were .taking form on the west bank of the Mississippi. But more especially is it chosen for investi- gation since it marks a high point in changes in economic con- ditions in this country, and marks also the inception of many of the modern labor saving devices of the present. In 1850 most of the great newspapers of today-news- papers that came from the "penny press" era-had been established. The year 1850 was the time of Greeley, Dana, Raymond, Bennett, and the rest of the giants of the Ameri- can newspaper world. Comparison with newspaper condi- tions of a century before will be illuminating, for the changes will be great. 47 CHAPTER III. THE PERIOD OF EXPANSION, CENTERING IN 1850 Examination has just been made of the newspaper situa- tion in the 25 years before the Revolutionary war, and the roll of the newspapers has been called, partly because of the contrast with the huge directory lists of today, and also be- cause out of that early period came a number of the notable journals of the present. It is proposed now to advance 100 years to 1850 and examine the newspaper situation of that period, and see how it is reflected in social and economic con- ditions. Among these conditions to be considered will be: 1. Spread of population over the nation. 2. Development of the factory system. 3. Development of transportation systems and the various means of communication. 4. The postal system, especially in its relation to newspaper mail. 5. Growth of general education. 6. Inventions for use of the publisher. 7. The situation with regard to the newspapers them- selves. The year 1850 is desirable also as a point of investigation, for that census year marks the period of practically com- pleted continental territorial expansion. The 820,000 square miles of 1790 had expanded by the addition of great sections of territory until in 1850 continental United States contained 2,974,142 square miles, a million more than in the nation a decade before. The border lines of the 1850 were, therefore, much like those of the present, with states east of the Mississippi much as they are now, and four states west of the Mississippi following present-day lines. Minnesota territory took in most of the Dakotas, and Oregon territory lapped over into Mon- tana and Wyoming. The great prairie states and westward to the crest of the Rockfes was "Indian Territory," and only Texas and California approximated present boundaries. 48 So sparsely settled was this vast area that little more than one-half of it was enumerated for the 1850 census, and one- third of that enumerated was not "settled," that is, did not have as many as two persons to the square mile. The first postoffice west of the Rockies (Astoria, Ore.) had been in use but three years. With a population so widely dispersed, newspapers were out of the question. Territorial expansion carried with it growth of population but not to the same extent. Whereas there were in the col- onies in 1750 only about a million and a quarter persons, the number had grown in 1850 to 23,191,876, of whom 14,569,584 were within the territory that was enumerated at the first census. Less than 9,000,000 persons, then, were to be found in 1850 in all the territory from the Appalachians westward to the Pacific, and no cities had developed to any size in this western domain except Cincinnati and New Orleans. Chicago, now with its three million or more, in 1850 had 29,963, and Detroit, a few more than 21,000. Kansas City did not even appear in the census returns, and the two large cities of the Pacific coast, Los Angeles and San Francisco, now with more than a half million each. then had 1,610 and 42,261 respectively. WHOLE NATION IS DEVELOPED In the east, however, settlement had progressed to a point where there were but 17,000 square miles of territory that was enumerated in 1790 that did not have at least two per- sons to the square mile. New York had grown to a city of two-thirds of a million, and there were a half dozen cities of more than 100,000 population. In 1925 there were 81 cities of more than 100,000 population in the United States. Population of towns of 8,000 or more represented almost exactly one-eighth (12.49 per cent) of the population, where- as at the time of the Revolution and for two or three decades afterward, the percentage was between four and five. The drift city-ward was therefore well under way. As between 1750 and 1850, the following expansion had taken place 1750 1850 Area, square miles ...................----------------.. 820,377 2,943,142 Area settled ........... . ........ ---------------------200,000 979,249 Population ............... ......---------------------..1,207,000 23,191,576 Cities of 5,000 or more ... ....--------------- 4 41 How this growth had expanded into the west--the Missis- 1 New York, 696,115; Baltimore, 169,054; Boston, 136,881; Philadel- phia, 121,376; New Orleans, 116,375; Cincinnati, 115,436. 49 sippi valley especially-is shown by these figures from the Compendium of the 1850 census (p. 41.) : 1790 1850 Area Pct. Population Pct. Pacific slope .................. 117,271 0.5 Mississippi valley 205,280 5.3 8,641,702 37.2 Atlantic slope ................3,708,116 94.3 12,729,859 54.8 Gulf, east of Mississippi 16,431 .4 414,598 6.1 Gulf, west of Mississippi 288,394 1.2 Gulf and Mississippi-...... 221,711 5.7 10,344,746 44.6 Totals --------------.. ..3,929,827 23,191,876 This same Compendium of the 1850 census publishes a table of percentages of state population increase by decades. This table, too, indicates the crest of the westward wave of emigration. For example, in the decade from 1790 to 1800 populations in Kentucky and Tennessee increased 194.22 and 186.47 per cent respectively, while in the next decade the states with large relative growth were Indiana (421.95 per cent.), Ohio (408.26 per cent.), Mississippi (344.56 per cent.) Tennessee (135.39 per cent), and Kentucky, (80.26 per cent.) BEGINNINGS OF FACTORIES The tendency of the population to gather into towns and cities has already been noted. One large contributing factor in this was the introduction of the factory system of manu- facture. As has been pointed out, the colonial period was one of home and farm labor. There were a few small paper mills, employing a dozen persons each, and there were a few fac- tories for the manufacture of cotton and woolen cloth. It was not until after the Revolution and the introduction of the steam engine that the factory system really started. The first complete cotton factory in the country was es- tablished at Pawtucket, R. I., in 1789 by Samuel Slater. De- velopment was so slow that by 1804 there were only four in the country. "The so-called factories were small and short lived (before 1800), says Bogart.' Alexander Hamilton's "Report on Manufacturing in the United States" in 1791 listed only seventeen different indus- tries. The factory system calls for the employment of large groups of workers, living at convenient distances from the factory. In 1850 there were, according to the census, 121,855 individ- uals and establishments engaged in manufacturing, mining, 1 Bogart, "Economic History of the United States," p. 152. 50 and the mechanic arts, employing 719,479 men and 225,512 women at an annual wage of $229,736,377. This increase in population and the introduction of fac- tories, insofar as they brought people together in larger units, made it possible for newspapers to increase in numbers and circulation, because there were sufficient bodies of population to support the newspapers. Not only this, but the bringing of people into compact groups makes for increased neighborly interest, and for increased consideration of public questions. Where families are living remote from each other, there is little need for concerted action and little interest in the doings of the distant neighbor. When grouped in towns and cities, matters of health, water supply, sanitation, and police pro- tection become subjects of group interest. The projects must be undertaken jointly and usually after much public discus- sion. As these problems became pressing, discussion passed from the town forum to the press, and thus was added an in- centive for subscribing for a newspaper. Add to this incen- tive curiosity about people one knows (more possible in the city than in rural districts) and impelling causes are at hand for rapid increase of newspaper reading. TRANSPORTATION Accompanying the great territorial expansion of the United States, which reached approximately its present continental extent in 1850, was the movement for improved transporta- tion. As has been indicated, highways of the colonial period were the open sea, the rivers, and the few rugged highways through the forests. With the establishment of the new government came the desire to explore and to settle new territories. The waterways and the turnpikes were familiar to the people, and they were improved gradually for the aid of the traveler. Before the war of 1812, 37,000 miles of postroads had been laid out. These roads were by no means the fine, hard-sur- face roads of the present. In fact, one historian relates that when it was found that the Cumberland Pike was costing too much, the contractor was urged to go on more rapidly, leaving the stumps of trees in the right of way, taking care only that the stump did not protrude more than a foot above the ground. Soon after the War of 1812, more progressive spirits turned to the new invention, the steam engine, as a meaus of solv- ing transportation problems, and in the late 20's and 30's many projects were discussed and a few were started. Both 51 Baltimore and Washington wanted to do something to coun- teract New York's commercial advantage from the Erie canal, but it had been found by surveys that Washington's project of a Chesapeake and Ohio canal would cost $22,375,000. This was considered too expensive. FIRST RAILROADS OPERATED Experiments in England with steam locomotives, and one or two "railroads" with horse-propelled cars in America, had stirred the imagination of two Baltimore merchants, and af- ter long struggles, thirteen miles of track, from Baltimore to Ellicott's Mills, were used by an American-built locomotive. By 1850 the railroad situation was about this: Total mileage of all railroads in 26 states, 9,021. The Baltimore and Ohio, which had operated the first steam train in America in 1830, had completed enough line so that the celebration for the completion of the line to Cumberland was held in 1851. Trains were running into Wheeling on Dec. 24, 1853. The Erie, from Piermont, 24 miles from New York, to Dun- kirk, on Lake Erie, was nearing completion, with the railhead at Corning, N. Y., on Jan. 1, 1850. It was completed to the Lake in the spring of 1851. The Pennsylvania extended only from Philadelphia to the foothills of the Alleghanies, and it was the last of 1852 be- fore trains operated from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. West of Chicago, many roads had been projected, but the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific had made only a start, and had laid only ten miles of track. The importance of 1850 in the railroad world is reflected in a sentence from the census report of 1860: "The commerce re- sulting from our railroads, consequently, has been. . . . the creation of the last decade. (1850-1860.)" RAILROADS AID SETTLEMENT This brief review is made of the railroads of 1850 to show the beginnings of what was to become a vast network of steam highways throughout the nation. This network has made possible the rapid movement of the people for their pleasure and their profit, and has made possible the develop- ment of the tremendous volume of traffic that has built busi- ness prosperity, and at the same time this network of roads has made possible the rapid and wide distribution of news- papers. By the railroads was conquest of the continent made possi- ble. Settlers in the many new sections of the country had 52 interests back in their formier homes, and they desired the newspapers in order to keep in touch. Rail transportation made possible the early delivery of newspapers, even to the interior of the country. For the New York Herald is claimed the first use and the popularization of express service for dis- patch of newspapers. Along with the building of the railroads came construction of the telegraph, although telegraph dispatches were not used for directing train movements until 1851. Soon after S. F. B. Morse had sent his message, "What hath God wrought ?" on May 24, 1844, a public message was sent over the wires from the Democratic national convention at Baltimore to Silas Wright at Washington advising him of his nomination for the vice-presidency. His reply, declining the nomination, was not believed by the convention, which adjourned for a day, await- ing confirmation. The press, however, early seized on the telegraph as an aid. A telegraph. line was completed later in 1844 from Washing- ton to Wilmington, and was at once used for press dispatches, or rather, for calling attention to important items in papers that were being forwarded by mail. In 1848-9, half a dozen New York newspapers* organized for the joint use of tele- graph wires, forming the first Associated Press. North reports that in 1880, 228 of the 438 morning papers and 127 of 533 evening papers received telegraphic news. Importance of the telegraph to the newspapers was recog- nized by James Gordon Bennett of the New York Herald. An editorial from the Herald in 1845 is quoted in "Memoirs of James Gordon Bennett and His Times." (pp.363-4.) It fol- lows: BENNETT FORESEES IMPORTANCE OF TELEGRAPH "The Telegraph may not affect magazine literature, or those newspapers which have some peculiar characteristic; but the mere newspapers-the circulators of intelligence merely- must submit to destiny and go out of business. That Journal- ism, however, which possesses intellect, mind, originality, will not suffer. Its sphere of action will be widened. It will be more influential than ever. The public mind will be stimu- lated to greater activity by the rapid circulation of news. The swift communication of tidings of great events will awake in the masses of the community still keener interest in public affairs..... "The revolutions and changes which this instrumentality is destined to effect throughout society, cannot now at all be 53 realized. Speculation itself, in the very wildness of its con- jectures, may fall far short of the mighty results which are thus to be produced. One thing, however, is certain. This means of communication will have a prodigious, cohesive, and conservative influence on the republic. No better bond of union for a great confederacy of states could have been de- vised. Steam has been regarded, and very properly so, as a most powerful means of preserving the unity, and augmenting the strength of a great nation, by securing rapid intercom- munication between its different cities and communities; but the agency of steam is far inferior to the Magnetic Telegraph, which communicates with the rapidity of lightning from one point to another. The whole nation is thus impressed with the same idea at the same moment . "In the hands of government-controlled by the people- and conducted on a large scale with energy and success, this agency will be productive of the most extraordinary effects on society, government, commerce, and the progress of civ- ilization; but we cannot predict its results. When we look at it, we almost feel as if we were gazing on the mysterious garniture of the skies-trying to fathom infinite space, or groping our way into the field of eternity." NEWSPAPER POSTAGE RATES IN 1850 Newspaper postage rates in 1850 were those established by an Act of 1845, which imposed rates much higher than those that had prevailed, in actual practice, previously, and higher, also, than the general one-cent-a-pound rate that prevailed for the 35 years from 1883 until the World war. The Act .of 1793, in the days when practically every paper in America was a four-page sheet of four or five columns, established a rate of one cent for each paper, anywhere within the state of publication, or to a point not more than 100 miles from the city of publication. Beyond these limits the rate was one and one-half cent for each paper. These rates were materially less than the rates for letters, and were made so on the theory that newspapers were necessary for the forma- tion of governmental policies, and the enlightenment of the people. In fact, in the early 30's there was agitation for the entire abolition of newspaper postage, in order further to encourage newspaper reading. Postmaster General Barry opposed the *New York Journal of Commerce, Courier and Enquirer, Tribune, Herald, Sun, and Express. 54 plan, however, pointing out that some of the metropolitan pa- pers had grown to great size, and the city papers therefore en- joyed a distinct advantage over the smaller papers of the in- terior cities. He argued if postage were abolished, the smaller papers would be forced out of business, for people would sub- scribe to the much larger city paper in preference to the smaller local one. Postmaster General Amos Kendall, in 1838, reported to Con- gress that the New York Courier and Enquirer, for example, was carried for 1 1-2c a distance for which the letter postage on a parcel of the same weight would have been $1.75. SIZE BECOMES POSTAGE FACTOR Accordingly, the Act of 1845 took cognizance of the differ- ences in sizes, by providing one rate for newspapers of not more than 1,900 square inches, and another rate-the pam- phlet rate-for those exceeding 1,900 inches, and raising rates on weight as well as on distance. In his report to Congress that year (1845), Postmaster General Johnson had urged a higher rate for newspapers on the ground that newspapers were not paying anywhere near the cost of moving them, and in addition, were delaying the transmission of the first class mail. He suggested, also, that newspaper postage should be pre- paid. He declared the postmasters were lax in collecting the postage from the newspaper subscribers, and the government was losing much revenue. The prepayment of postage by the publisher was established in the Act of 1852. It was not until 1874 that zone rates were abolished, and newspapers carried entirely by weight. For newspapers published once a week or oftener the rate was 2c a pound, and for those published less frequently it was 3c a pound. Nine years later postage was reduced to 1c a pound anywhere, with free mailing privilege for weeklies in the county of publication. Throughout the period in which newspaper postage was be- ing reduced, service was being extended. The 4,500 postof- fices of 1820 had become 18,417 in 1850, and post routes in- creased in those years from 72,492 to 178,672 miles. It is doubtful whether, without the co-operation of the post office department American newspapers could have had anything like the growth in number and circulation that they had. While the United States was expanding territorially and increasing in population and wealth, with yearly additions to the means of transportation through canals and highways and railroads, changes were likewise taking place in the in- 55 terests of the people. The Revolutionary war interrupted what interest there had been in education, and it was not fully re-established until after the War of 1812. In the interim, education was largely a matter of the fundamentals of read- ing, writing, spelling, arithmetic, and declamations. Gram- mar and geography were added when suitable texts became available. The year 1850 marked the passing of the period of the academies, and the firm establishment of the general system of free public education for the young people of the country. Boston, in 1821, had established a free high school in the "English Classical School," and 17 years later started the Central High school. Baltimore, Providence, and Hartford, before 1850, had established high schools, and New York in 1848 had a free academy, now the College of the City of New York. Throughout this period, the interest in popular education was widespread. As early as 1829-30, one of the planks in the platform of the workingmen's party was a demand for better educational facilities, and in 1830 a workingman's com- mittee of Philadelphia made a detailed report condemning the lack of educational facilities in the state. In 1850, Horace Mann, who had spent ten years in popu- larizing education, by speeches and printed matter, especially in Massachusetts, was a member of the national house of rep- resentatives. By his numerous meetings with the people, and publication of the Common School Journal, and his seven not- able annual reports, he had overcome much of the idea that education was only for the well-to-do, and had obtained laws permitting establishment of libraries. Thus did one repre- sentative of the periodical press have a strong influence in educating the people to use and demand more education and more newspapers. "ELECTORS NEED EDUCATION" The old political cry of '75 "all men are created equal" con- tinued its effect and found expression in the demand for full manhood suffrage, and for educational advantages for the workingmen's children equal to those of the children of the well-to-do. The election of Jackson (1829)-a "man of the people"-to the presidency, marks the turning point. Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York, in a speech in 1835, had declared, "if an elective republic is to endure for any length of time, every elector must have sufficient information not only to accumu- 56 late wealth . . . but to direct wisely the legislature, the ambassadors, and the executive of the nation-for some part of all these . . . falls to every freeman." Education for women was still (in 1850) in its infancy. Boston had failed in 1826 to start a high school for girls, and the Philadelphia Girls' high school of 1840 was chiefly for teacher-training. Mary Lyon had had less than 1,000 gradu- ates from her Mt. Holyoke seminary, and none of the great women's colleges of today, Vassar, Smith, Wellesley, and Bryn Mawr, had been established. Oberlin college had been co- educational since 1833. High schools, which had been started in Boston in 1821, multiplied, but it was not until after the Kalamazoo case of 1872 that the right of the state to use tax funds for higher ed- ucation was well established. It was 1848 before Boston had so classified its school stu- dents that there was a teacher for each class of the elemen- tary grades. School health service, and manual training were far in the future. Michigan, in 1850, asked the national government for 50,- 000 acres of government land for an agricultural school, and this was finally granted to Michigan and other states under the Morrill Act of 1862. Up to the close of 1853, according to the compendium of the 1850 census, federal land grants for educational purposes were for schools, 48,909,535 acres; for universities, 40,600,704 acres. Other testimony of the increasing interest in education is found in the figures of colleges, public schools and academies reported in the 1850 census: Number Students 1840 1850 1840 1850 Colleges ... ................... 173 239 16,233 27,821 Public schools ............... 47,209 80,978 1,845,244 3,354,011 Academies and gram- mar Schools 3,242 6,085 164,159 263,096 Totals ......................--------------50,624 87,302 2,025,636 3,644,928 Illiterates ........... 549,693 *1,053,420 Population 17,069,453 23,191,876 Percentage of population in school ....... 11.8 17.6 Percentage of illiterates to population.... 3.2 4.5 * "Cannot read and write." The doubling of the number of illiterates from 1840 to 1850, in the face of an increase of 36 per cent in population 57 and of 80 per cent in school attendance is disconcerting, but is probably due to difference in the form in which the census enumerators asked their questions. Army tests for the World war also disclosed the unreliability of general illiteracy sta- tistics. All the testimony of educators is that the first half of the nineteenth century was a period of great popularization of education. This revival of interest in education had begun in the early 20's and continued until free public education be- came the accepted thing. By 1840-50 the children of the 20's were grown and were establishing homes of their own, thus becoming potential newspaper subscribers. Just how far this increase in the general educational level added to the purchase of newspapers is hard to say, but undoubtedly it was one of the contributing factors. As the general level of education was raised, the growth in number and circulation of newspapers increased. Mention has been made of the invention of the telegraph as one of the devices of benefit to the newspapers. Within the business itself, invention had been at work on presses and paper, and 1850 saw the newspapers far better equipped to handle their business than ever before. The old press of Gu- tenburg's time, modeled after a cider press or cheese press, did duty for nearly 300 years with little modification. PRINTING EQUIPMENT IS BETTERED The nineteenth century was 16 years old before George Clymer of Philadelphia substituted a system of levers for the tedious screw in operating the press, and it was 1822 before an Englishman devised the powerful toggle joint. In the meantime, however, efforts were being made to de- vise a press with a rotating cylinder. The first practical one was operated in England in 1790, and Frederick Koenig in 1806 brought out one with two cylinders. In 1814, the Lon- don Times began operating its presses with steam power. In America, in the 30's was founded the press-building firm of R. Hoe & Co., which tried out many innovations in printing presses. One that came into fairly general use for the larger dailies was one in which the type was locked onto a large cyl- inder, V-chaped column rules helping to lock the type se- curely on the revolving cylinder. With four impression cylin- ders it was possible to print 8,000 copies an hour. The first use of steam power in operating printing presses in America was in 1823 or 1825, and the New York Sun, when 58 it was started in 1835, was printed on a power press. That same year, Sir Rowland Hill patented in England a process of printing from a roll of paper, but the first Hoe perfecting press (printing from a roll of paper on both sides of the sheet) was not available until 1857. Stereotyping as a means of making curved plates and there- fore faster and safer presses, was not invented until 1861. The printing press, then, of 1850, was a very crude affair. All except the larger and more prosperous journals were printed on the old flat, hand-operated press of the Washing- ton or Rammage type. For the larger dailies there were a number of forms of press, largely experimental, that would print from 1,800 to 6,000 an hour. Steam power was used only in the larger offices. Rollers as substitute for the original ink balls, for inking the type, were not invented until 1817. Type, almost without exception, was set in the old hand method of Gutenburg. The larger the paper, the more type and the more printers required. Large-faced type for ad- vertising or headline display was almost unknown. If the advertiser wanted particular display he either repeated the. same line a dozen or more times before going on to the next line of his copy, or he formed a word by outlining each letter in the size desired, using body-size letters to outline each letter. For example: TTTTTTT T T T T T Paper, in 1850, was still made largely from rags, but in- ventors were at work on processes to use materials less ex- pensive. Just the year before, D. and J. Ames of Spring- field, Mass., had made white paper in quantity from straw. By 1857, this paper had come into general use for newspapers, and continued so until after the Civil war. Paper making machinery was improved until it was possible to make paper in continuous strips instead of the single sheets of the old, hand-making days In the colonial period, the small paper mills used stamping rods to reduce the cloth scraps to pulp. Forty pairs of rods could prepare 100 pounds of rags in 24 hours. This pulp, di- luted with water, was spread on wire frames about 20 by 30 inches in size, and when the water had drained out, the wet 59 sheets were placed in a pile, alternating with felt blankets, subjected to pressure, and allowed to dry. The first improvement was in the form of preparing the pulp. The Hollander engine, consisting of a rotating cylinder carrying many blades that passed close to similar blades mounted in the bed-plate of the machine, is used to the pres- ent in the preparation of pulp. The next step was to apply machinery to the forming of the paper web, and it was found that a continuous strip could be produced from which sheets of the desired size could be cut later. Patents for such processes were taken out in France before the close of the eighteenth century, but it was 1816 before Joshua Gilpin patented such a process in America. By use of his machine, he turned out an excellent piece of writing paper 27 inches wide and 1,000 feet long. He presented it to the American Philosophical society at Philadelphia. His first customer for the new paper was Poulson's Daily Adver- tiser of Philadelphia. SEARCH IS MADE FOR PULP MATERIAL After the invention of improved machinery, attention was turned to pulp-making processes and search made for sub- stitutes for rags for pulp. Corn husks, curriers' shavings, seaweed, and straw were tried as paper sources. Of these, straw gave fair results, especially for wrapping paper. About 1830 it was discovered that chlorine would bleach materials, and thus old sail cloth, cordage, and refuse from the cotton mills became available. Then attention turned to wood as a source for pulp, and there was then started a business that now required thousands of acres of timberland annually. A patent issued in 1815 protected a method of prepar- ing wood pulp by a caustic soda process, and a few years later patents were issued for a mechanical grinder for re- ducing wood. The sulphite process was not invented until after the Civil war. Thus, when newspaper circulation was reaching its maxi- mum under old manufacturing conditions, inventions came to its aid with faster printing devices and cheaper print paper. Processes had by no means reached the perfection of the pres- ent, but they were a vast improvement over the methods of the days of Franklin and Bradford and Thomas. With all the economic changes in American life that have just been noted as having taken place between the time of the Revolution and 1850, and with all the inventions that made it 60 possible to publish newspapers more easily and distribute them more widely, it is natural to suppose there would be increase in the number and circulation of newspapers. How wide- spread the newspaper business had become in 1850 is shown in Table X. This shows newspapers in 33 states, and in greatly increased numbers in the original thirteen states. Because the newspapers did not spread completely over America, the states have been arranged in regions roughly similar in character and interests. This arrangement makes it possible, too, to compare the newspaper growth in the older regions, and point out the regions in which the great west- ward spread of newspapers took place. To make the comparison a bit more vivid, take regional totals from Table X. and compare the regions, together with some available figures for 1790. Circulation figures for 1790 are not available, but the num- ber of papers is. Regional totals from Table X. combined with the 1790 newspaper figures give a graphic presentation of the 1850 newspaper situation. In the North Atlantic region, for example, the number of newspapers had multiplied 16 times and the number of per- sons per paper in the region was less than one-third as great as at the close of the preceding century. These comparisons are set forth in Table XI. The high ratio of subscribers per thousand of population is shown in the closely settled New England in sharp contrast with the scattered population of the Mountain region. THE NEW WEST IS SETTLED Thus, in less than a lifetime, two great sections of the country had become settled, and newspapers had become established. The northern colonies had become the most populous of the new states, and the most aggressive. The southern Appalachians tended to shut off emigration to the west, but the open valleys across New York, and the compar- atively low passes of western Pennsylvania, together with the wonderful westward-flowing waterway of the Ohio im- pelled the greater part of the settlement to center first in the valley of the Ohio. The year 1850 offers the cross sec- tion that shows this northeast central section of the country making its most rapid development. Whereas, in 1790, a few years after the establishment of the Republic, there was but one newspaper in all that terri- tory, and hardly enough people to be enumerated in the first census, there was in 1850, a population of more than five and 61 TABLE X. NEWSPAPERS OF 1850 No. of Papers New England 396 Maine 49 New Hampshire 38 Vermont 35 Massachusetts 209 Rhode Island 19 Connecticut 46 North Atlantic 885 New York 428 New Jersey 51 Delaware 10 Pennsylvania 310 Maryland 68 Dist. of Columbia 18 South Atlantic 245 Virginia 87 West Virginia North Carolina 51 South Carolina 46 Georgia 51 Florida 10 Northeast Central 641 Ohio 261 Indiana 107 Michigan 58 Wisconsin 46 Illinois 107 Kentucky 62 Southern 258 Tennessee 50 Alabama 60 Mississippi 50 Louisiana 55 Arkansas 9 Oklahoma Texas 34 Circu- lation 966,079 63,887 60,176 45,956 716,969 25,975 53,116 2,283,600 1,022,779 44,454 7,500 983,218 124,287 101,362 265,922 89,134 36,839 55,715 67,484 5,750 737,724 415,109 63,352 52,718 33,236 88,623 84,686 240,578 67,877 34,597 30,870 80,847 7,250 19,137 Subs. per M. of Pop. 109 189 146 721 176 577 523 91 82 425 213 1,960 63 42 83 74 66 Persons per Paper 11,901 8,366 8,918 4,758 7,766 8,060 7,237 9,599 9,153 7,457 8,574 2,871 16,341 17,040 14,533 17,768 8,745 66 7,570 65 9,228 132 6,856 109 6,639 104 7,958 86 15,845 68 20,054 45 12,860 51 12,130 154 9.412 35 23,322 90 6,252 62 TABLE X.-Continued. Newspapers of 1850 Northwest Central Missouri Kansas Nebraska Iowa Minnesota North Dakota South Dakota Mountain Montana Idaho Wyoming Utah Colorado Arizona New Mexico Coast Washington Oregon California Nevada No. of Papers 90 61 29 2 2 9 2 7 Circu- lation 93,480 70,480 Subs. per M. of Pop. 104 Persons per Paper 11,181 23,000 120 6,628 900 900 5,734 1,134 4,600 14 30,773 87 50 6,647 13,228 TABLE XI. Region Papers 1790 1850 New England _38 396 North Atlantic ... 53 885 South Atlantic ....14 245 Northeast Centr'1 1 641 Southern ..----------........ 258 Northwest Centrl 90 Mountain 2 Pacific Coast 9 Totals ...-.106 2526 West of the Mississippi....... 199 Circu- Subs per lation M. Pop. 1850 1850 966,079 354 2,283,600 345 265,922 68 737,724 134 240,578 72 93,480 106 900 12 4,600 43 4,594,017 207,348 104 63 Inhabitants per paper 1790 1850 26,563 6,888 25,235 7,486 105,213 16,134 8,589 12,950 9,782 36,464 11,777 10,047 a half million, and 641 newspapers-nearly as many as there were in the North Atlantic from New York and Philadelphia, which had had newspapers for a century and a quarter, and a half more than all New England, the cradle of American journalism. The newness of this western country, though settled by people from the North Atlantic and New England regions, is shown by the fact that the number of newspaper subscrib- ers in relation to population, was little more than one-third as great as in the more settled territory. The ratio of news- paper to population, however, was about the same as in the northern Atlantic states. Of that vast territory west of the Mississippi, that event- ually was to become 22 states, only eight states had papers, and the total of publications was less than 200. Iowa and Miss- ouri of the plains states, and Louisiana and Texas of the Gulf, were the chief newspaper states, with scattering publi- cations in the Mountain and Coast regions. Much of the TABLE XII. AVERAGE CIRCULATION OF NEWSPAPERS OF 1850 BY STATES New England Maine New Mampshire Vermont Massachusetts Rhode Island Connecticut North Atlantic New York New Jersey Delaware Pennsylvania Maryland Dist. of Columbia South Atlantic Virginia North Caroina South Carolina Georgia Florida 2465 1304 1584 1313 3430 1366 1155 2580 2387 871 750 3171 1828 5620 1086 1025 722 1211 1323 575 N. E. Central Ohio Indiana Michigan Wisconsin Illinois Kentucky Southern Tennessee Alabama Louisiana Arkansas Texas N. W. Central Missouri Iowa Mountain New Mexico Pacific Coast Oregon California 64 1151 1590 592 909 722 847 1366 933 1357 576 1470 805 563 1059 1155 793 450 450 637 567 659 Missouri valley was still "Indian Territory," unsettled and consequently without newspapers. Circulation figures by states are not available for 1790, but it is possible to make some comparisons as to the in- creased ratio of newspapers to population. In the New Eng- land states in 1790, there were more than 26,000 persons for each newspaper published, but in 1850, in the same territory, there were only 6,888 persons for each newspaper. In the North Atlantic region the ratios were about the same, with a few less persons for each newspaper in 1790 and a few more for each paper in 1850, than in the New England region. The South in 1790 was only one-fourth as well supplied with newspapers as the more northern regions, but in 1850 it had nearly one-half as many newspapers in relation to population, as did the northern seacoast states. In New England, in 1850, Massachusetts had the bulk of the newspaper circulation, with three persons out of every four, subscribers of some newspaper. In Connecticut, more than half were subscribers to newspapers. Ina like manner, New York and Pennsylvania supplied the bulk of circulation for the North Atlantic region, with approximately one-half the population subscribers to news- papers. Part of this preponderance in the two states may be due to wide circulation of New York and Philadelphia papers in New Jersey and Delaware-states which from early days had had few newspapers, compared with their neighbors, and few subscribers of local papers. Another basis of comparison may be found in the average number of subscribers for each paper. Pennsylvania and New York, with larger newspapers of the country, bring the average for the papers of this region to 2,580 subscribers each, or four times the circulation of the few publications on the Pacific slope. State honors, however, must go to Massachu- setts, where the newspapers had an average circulation of 3,430. The details by states are shown in Table XII. Thus the newspaper tables for 1850 visualize strikingly the industrial development of the north Atlantic seaboard, and the settlement of the Ohio valley, with fingers of colon- ization crossing the Mississippi in three or four places. 65 CHAPTER IV. NEWSPAPERS AT THE PEAK It would be interesting to take two or three other dates in the settlement of the nation and make a cross-section of the newspaper history of the time. Data in plenty is to be had, for since 1869 there have been yearly issues of newspaper di- rectories, and at frequent intervals the government has gath- ered statistics, or made estimates as to the number of publi- cations, their circulation, and their yearly output. As was indicated in the preceding chapter, 1850 marked the breaking across the Mississippi of the westward flow of emigration. Gold discoveries in California carried the most of the flow unstopped across the plains states to settle the Pacific slope, and then came the Civil war and its interrup- tion of main lines of development. When the war had been readjusted, through the panic of 1873, settlement of the whole western country began with renewed vigor, and even the Dakotas, until then almost unsettled, had their first news- papers. The movement reached its greatest height in the 80's and by 1890 the country was ready for a period of de- velopment to take the place of the period of pioneering. A NATION FULLY SETTLED The year 1890 would make an interesting point for another cross-section, for by that time, present day social, economic, and educational conditions had come into being, and nearly all the present-day facilities of the newspaper business were available. Railroads had been extended to all parts of the country, totalling 167,000 miles. The telegraph and the long distance telephone reached all the important cities, and hundreds of smaller ones. Public education for all was the accepted standard. Nearly 13,000,000 of the 18,500,000 persons between the ages of 5 and 18 were in public schools, and 657 colleges and universities reported 56,449 students in attendance.. Except in the most backward sections-the South and slums of great cities, and in remote sections-all the children were being taught to read. School attendance in proportion to population was almost twice what it was in 1840. 66 Industrial development included formation of trusts for the more efficient manufacture and marketing of goods, and for- eign imports and exports reached more than a billion and a half for the year-a sum not greatly exceeded at any time for a decade. The postal law of 1880, by far the most favorable American newspapers ever had, had resulted in the most rapid expansion of the number of newspapers in the history of the United States. The price of print paper was the lowest it had ever been, and printing equipment of present types had been invented and was in fairly general use, especially for the rapid production of newspapers. HAND-SET TYPE SUPPLANTED After persisting for 450 years, the old, hand-set type of Gutenberg's invention was about to be superceded by ma- chines. Several more or less practical type-setting machines were on the market, and the slug-casting machine of Mergen- thaler was in use in some of the larger daily newspaper of- fices. The colored supplement had been devised, and the "yel- low" journel was already flourishing. By 1915, railroads had reached within a few hundred miles of their maximum mileage in the United States (253,789 miles) making smaller the mesh of the network that 25 years before had reached all corners of the nation. The foreign trade which in 1890 had been little more than a billion and a half, by 1915 was four and a half billion dollars. The telephone, which had not been invented in 1850, and was serving 227,000 stations in 1890, had been expanded into a service for ten and a half million patrons. The tele- graph lines of at least two companies reached even remote hamlets, the wireless telegraph had been demonstrated, and wireless telephony was being started. Educationally, 19,693,000, or 75 per cent of the children from 5 to 12, were enrolled in the public schools, which were being maintained at a cost of $600,000,000 annually. College and university attendance nearly doubled in the decade from 1910. (Enrollment 521,754 in 1920.) Illiteracy was down to 6 per cent of the whole population, and 4 per cent of the population between 5 and 10 years of age. By 1915, all present-day devices for rapid printing of newspapers had been worked out. Metropolitan papers had batteries of stereotype perfecting presses, each capable of turning out 24,000 24-page papers an hour, and even moderate 67 sized dailies had their stereotype press. Flat-bed perfecting presses provided rapid service for smaller dailies. For quality work, presses as good as any of the present had been 'devised, and were used for the high grade periodicals, making beautiful letter-press and pictures possible in black and white as well as in color. The present-day rotogravure press alone was missing. Slug casting composing machines were in use on all metro- politan newspapers, some being equipped with 40 or 50 of the machines, and even country weeklies of moderate circu- lation were installing these labor-saving devices. Wood pulp paper was available in abundance at low prices, for the war in Europe had not yet brought paper shortages and advancing prices. It would be too cumbersome to attempt to trace state by state the increase in the number of newspapers or their cir- culation in 1915 as was done in 1850. However, by taking the same regional grouping as that used in the 1850 discus- sion, the general increase in newspapers in 65 years and the changing ratio of newspapers to population may be found. This is shown in Table XIII. The newspaper regional statistics for 1915 show a new dis- tribution of newspapers. All sections of the country showed increase in the actual number of papers, but by no means in the same proportion. In New England, the number of papers TABLE XIII. NUMBER OF NEWSPAPERS AT THREE PERIODS New England North Atlantic South Atlantic N. E. Central Southern N. W. Central Mountain ........... Pacific Coast N f Ne 790 38 53 14 1 umber 3wspapers 1850 1915 396 1,230 885 4,189 245 1,500 641 5,417 258 3,008 90 4,841 2 1,218 S9 1,687 United States ....106 2,526 23,090 West of the Mississippi 199 10,679 Inc. p.c. Inhabitants 1850 to for Each Paper 1915 1790 1850 1915 211 26,563 6,888 5,671 373 25,235 7,486 5,432 512 105,213 16,134 7,412 745 8,589 4,101 1,066 12,950 5,257 5,279 9,782 2,499 60,800 36,464 2,385 18,644 11,777 2,941 814 37,068 9,181 4,281 5,261 10,047 2,762 68 had little more than doubled, but in the Mountain region they had increased 600 fold. With the settlement of the country had come a leveling up of the newspapers in relation to population. In 1850, news- papers were more than five times as numerous (in relation to population) in New England as they were in the mountain regions, but in 1915 conditions were somewhat reversed. The mountain region, now best supplied with newspapers for its population, was only about three times as well supplied as the South Atlantic region, with its 7,400 persons for each newspaper. Whereas, in 1850, the Atlantic seaboard and the northeast central section had fewer persons than the average of the United States for each newspaper, and consequently more than the average papers for the population, in 1915 the con- ditions were reversed, and all this territory and the South added had fewer than the average newspapers. NEWSPAPERS EVENLY DISTRIBUTED In 1915, it would seem, the territory which in 1850 was so sparsely settled that it had few newspapers, was now well settled, with newspapers printed in many communities that were even smaller than similar communities of the older sec- tions that likewise had their newspapers. In other words, the 1915 tabulation shows a fairly even distribution of news- papers over the whole nation. Distances between cities of the west compared with distances between cities of the east, likewise tended to increase the number of newspapers in re- lation to population, for it is to be noted the figures relate to newspapers, not to circulation. It is to be noted, also, the figures for 1790, and to a large degree those of 1850 may be taken as an index of the period- ical-reading habits of the people of the regions mentioned, for before the Civil war there were few publications not of rather local character and circulation. Of course, New York and Philadelphia papers circulated in New Jersey, but there were few if any really national publications. In 1915, how- ever, there were scores of publications in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago which were national in their scope, and numbered among their readers persons in all sec- tions of the country. State totals, computed from publications from within the state, are often misleading. Three of the larger cities of Missouri, for example, are on state boundaries, and their newspapers circulate freely in adjoining states. 69 CHAPTER V. TWO CENTURIES AND A QUARTER In preceding chapters, pause has been made at three or four points to examine the newspapers, as well as the social and economic conditions of the time. In some instances a backward look, and occasionally a forward look has been taken to make the conditions of a given period a trifle more clear. A bringing together of these various cross-sections is now proposed. In the statement of the problem, in Chapter I, the actual figures were submitted for three phases of newspaper growth: the number of newspapers themselves; the number of sub- scriptions; and the total annual output. Fortunately for this study, the early statisticians did not get returns on total pages printed in a given period, as for example, did the New York Times, which reported for November, 1925, the publication of 1,012,533,184 pages. Each page contained about as much reading matter as any whole paper of the pre-Revolutionary days. Paper consumed by The Times for the month was 7,650 tons, or 38 times as much as all the newspapers in the United States used in 1810. On a single night in September, 1927, the Chicago Tribune consumed 550 tons-an amount for one newspaper exceeding the total American consumption in 1810. All three phases of newspaper history are important as showing the growing demands of the American people for more and more reading matter, and that largely of a local nature. The growth of the actual number of publications is inter- esting, particularly when the papers appear in new territory, and are not a source of duplicated circulation. Newspapers are to such a large extent local in their distribution that the increasing number of publications, in various sections of the country, is at least a partial index of the public interest ii public affairs. It is not a full measure, however, for the multiplication of many small, poorly edited and poorly supported publications would not indicate as high a regard for the information ob- tainable from the press as would half the number if they were 70 well edited papers, each with twice the subscription lists. On the other hand, the greater- the number of publications in a given reader-population, the greater the possible range of opinion and viewpoint Reference to the tables of Chapter II shows the period of most rapid growth in the number of newspapers was one in which the reading-demand of the people was being surpassed, for the average circulation dropped decidedly in that partic- ular decade, and it was nearly 20 years before the old average was regained, and the real peak of gain in subscriptions was reached. The number of subscriptions, then, whether distributed among many or few newspapers, is probably a better guide to public interest in newspapers. Annual output offers an interesting further light on the support the public gives the press, differing from circulation only as public support shifted fro mdailies to weeklies or vice versa. (A "subscription" would count as four copies yearly of a quarterly, 52 of a weekly, and 313 to 365 of a daily.) Similar trends are found in an examination of the three phases of newspaper statistics-number of papers, number of subscriptions, and annual output-when taken in relation to the growth of population. MANY FORCES AT WORK The outstanding result of the study is the fact that only large forces, or at least combinations of several smaller ones, affect the rate of growth of the press and its general cir- culation. Population of the United States increased rapidly through- out the first hundred years, but the press far outstripped it. From 1790 to 1890 the population increased from a few less than 4,000,000 to more than 60,000,000, multiplying.thus more than 15 times. The number of newspapers increased from 106 to 17,616, a number more than 170 times as great as at the beginning of the Republic. In terms of subscriptions and copies of periodicals annually, following are the census figures: 1790 1910 Number of families ---___---------393,403 15,963,965 No. copies printed annually . _...... 1,196,000 7,830,882,308 Copies yearly for each family 3.04 491.8 Copies yearly for each person _..-.... .4268 104.7 Copies per family annually, in 1900, 161 times that of 1775. Mere increase in numbers of people is not the only reason 71 for the increase in the number of papers. Nor would it be possible to draw a parallel between increase of newspapers or readers, and any increase in the number of some supposed minimum unit of population that could support a newspaper. What might such a unit be? Tombstone, Ariz., with a pop- ulation of less than 1,000, had two daily papers in 1880. Railroad transportation was not an essential factor in the growth of newspapers, for newspapers were well estabished before there were any railroads. Railroads aided, however, for along every new rail line, especially those beyond the Mississippi, towns sprang up at intervals, and in almost every place a newspaper appeared. TELEGRAPH SPREADS NEWS Soon after the inception of the railroads, and the rapid transportation, which made it possible to distribute news- papers quickly and widely, came the telegraph by which in- formation could be distributed instantly, as far as desired. The effect of transportation on the press was more indirect. It made possible the dissemination of the population and the development of commerce. With these came added demand for newspapers, and also added ability to subscribe for them. The labor movement in a three-fold way affected the rise of the newspapers. In a purely incidental way, the labor press added its numbers of papers, subscribers, and general annual output. In a broader way, labor, in seeking to find itself, created much discussion of public questions, especially education, and thus made for an increased desire to read the newspapers. In the third place, by raising the scale of wages and standards of living, united labor made it possible for the workers to subscribe for at least the "popular priced" per- iodicals. WARS AFFECT NEWSPAPERS Education has had a bearing on the growth of newspapers. It would be unfair to the educated people of Colonial days, or even later, to blame the slow newspaper growth of those years on lack of education. The spread of popular education of the early days of the Republic undoubtedly had its part in the upturn of the growth curve with the coming of the "penny press" of the 30's and 40's. Education is not alone. It required cheaper paper and improved printing machines. Wars are popularly supposed to "make" newspapers. Wars probably do develop newspaper initiative, and it is not unlikely 72 that the larger journals do profit by war times. But for the newspapers as a whole, the statistics are not so optimistic. " . continued until the Revolution." is not an infre- quent phrase in Thomas's story of the Colonial press. Newspapers continued to increase during the Civil war decade, but not much faster than in the preceding decade. In fact, subscriptions increased more slowly in 1860-70 than they did in 1850-60. The Spanish-American war was too short to have any per- ceptible effect on newspaper figures in the bulk. The many suspensions, consolidations, and limitation of size during the World war are still fresh in memory, and statistics bear out the impression. Science and invention have had their part in newspaper progress, but not until compelled to do so. Old fashioned, hand-made paper was used until it was almost impossible to get enough of it for the demand, even at high prices. No radical changes were made in presses until demands of circu- lation made the time consumed by old methods all out of rea- son. Type set by hand, after the method of Gutenberg, con- tinued until late in the nineteenth century even in metropoli- tan shops. Recognized slowness of the method, and restric- tions of labor organizations led some of the larger publishers to provide funds for development of various ideas, the most promising of which turned out to be Mergenthaler's slug- casting machine, the linotype. PANICS CUT NUMBER OF NEWSPAPERS General economic conditions also had some effect on the growth of newspapers. The "Panic of '73" is reflected in the lessened rate of growth of total circulation, and the "Panic of '93" seems to have cut in decidedly on the increase in the number of newspapers. On the other hand, it was not "hard times" in 1914 that set the number of newspapers and circu- lations to falling and barely allowed annual output to hold its own. In 1915, Printers' Ink statute was suggested, making for honesty in advertising. At this time was developing a new attitude toward the newspaper as a business. The editor ceased, in general, to brag of his poverty-stricken situation, and the newspaper took its place with other business enter- prises, with the doctrine that a newspaper that cannot pay expenses is a poor excuse for a newspaper. More business- like methods both were demanded by increasing costs of pro- 73 duction, and reacted to help build up newspaper properties of great value.' If one decade were to be selected from the two and a quar- ter centuries covered in this study, it had probably better be the 1880's. That decade marks the years of the most rapid multiplication of newspapers in America-a net gain of al- most two new publications a day for a ten-year period. That decade marks completion of transcontinental rail- roads, and the most intense settlement of the American con- tinent and the founding of many cities. That decade marks a rapidly rising tide in education and in interest in public affairs. By that decade, invention had come to the aid of the printer with cheap paper, adequate printing machinery, and most of the present methods for the instant assembling of the news. Postal rates were low. Newspaper concepts of public service, "scoops," and enterprise, worked out by the pioneer, personal journalists of the "penny press" era, were the ac- cepted thing, and many of those giants of journalism were yet in their prime. Altogether, it was a golden age for news- papers. True, the greatest growth in subscriptions did not come for 10 or 15 years, nor the greatest annual output for an even longer period, but the '80's marked a period of sharp in- crease over the preceding decades, and gave promise of what was in store. Without the vastly increased population, and that an edu- cated population, such growth would have been impossible. Without improved machinery, bettered transportation and cheap paper the growth would have been almost impossible. Without means of instant communication for the gathering of news, and favoring postal laws for its distribution, the growth of newspapers would have been greatly hampered. No one of the factors is alone responsible for the great in- crease in American newspapers and their circulation, but all the factors, taken together, have made it possible for America to be the nation best supplied by the periodical press. 1 The Chicago News, founded in 1876 by Victor Lawson, was sold to the staff, following Mr. Lawson's death, for $9,000,000, and in 1926, the Kansas City Star was sold by the Nelson estate for $11,000,000. 74 CHAPTER VI. CONCLUSION This preliminary study of newspaper growth has taken but two of several possible steps. It has considered the actual increase in numbers of papers, circulation, and annual output, and also these same phases in relation to the growth of pop- ulation, showing in general there has been a similar upward curve under both conditions, but that the one in relation to population has been somewhat more irregular. Only a hint has been given here of the possibility of study- ing the growth of publications of varying frequencies of publication, and no effort has been made to study the growth of different kinds of publications, as the political, the literary, the religious, farm, or other class publications. The growth by states of the publications in general has been touched on only briefly. Census returns of the Bureau of Manufactures, in recent years would give material for a state-by-state study for the larger states, but in many cases desired figures for a given state are too likely to be hidden under the heading "Other states." Some few scattering results, both for state-by-state study, and also frequency of publication, compiled from var- ious sources, are appended to this study. This study has omitted also the business growth of the newspaper enterprise, both as to volume of business and as to the amounts invested. Appendix I supplies the figures on gross business from 1880 to 1925. Further search could well be made in the contemporary literature for appraisements of the place of the press in the economic structure of the country. A few have been included in this paper, but they are elusive things, and represent a vast amount of chaff for each bit of wheat found. 75 APPENDIX I. REVENUES OF AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS Figures as to the volume of business of American newspa- pers are lacking prior to census reports of 1880, when the gross business of all newspapers reporting was $89,009,074. In 1925, 35 years later, the gross business was $1,321,575,273, or almost 15 times as great as it was in 1880. The significant factor is the disproportionate growth of advertising and subscriptions. Advertising revenues, which in 1880 were 44 per cent of the total, were, in 1925, almost 70 per cent of the total. Advertising, therefore, was almost 25 times as great in 1925 as it was in 1880, while subscription revenues had multiplied barely eight times. Compare this with the number of subscriptions (p. 12) of 31,179,686 in 1880 and 259,986,457 in 1925, the latter being 8.2 times those for 1880. The figures by years (all from reports of the Bureau of the Census) are as follows: REVENUES OF AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS Total Amount of Advertising $ 39,136,306 71,243,361 95,861,127 145,517,591 202,533,245 255,421,144 528,299,378 676,986,710 793,893,469 923,237,273 Subscriptions $ 49,872,768 72,343,087 79,928,483 111,298,691 135,063,043 163,427,563 278,006,382 328,283,545 360,892,708 398,338,000 Percentage of Advs. Subs. 44.0 56.0 49.6 50.4 54.6 45.4 56.6 43.4 60.0 40.0 61,0 39.0 65.5 34.5 67.3 32.7 68.7 31.3 69.9 30.1 76 Year 1880 1890 1899 1904 1909 1914 1919 1921 1923 1925 ' CHART IX REVENUES OF AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS Advertising Revenue *"***********o* ...**** Subscription Revenue o ooo o' O 75 pc. 0 O 1 0 2 o o 50 pe. 25 pc. ll J oIo o 1 0 000 1000 0 0 0 o000 o 00 00 -i " 0.0 ll ll V JV 00c 00 * 0? *00 * 00 Ong e * i 4 i 000 O 0CO 0 r 00 00 00 0000 OCOCOCOCO CO CO 0000000000000 i r r r r $300,000,000 $150,000,000 SLi i " o " , V i SC.) $900,000,000 $750,000,000 $600,000,000 i i $450- 000,000 i i i i i i i i i i i i i I iO iO i O i i 0 ii I . 0 o 1880 1890 1899 1904 1909 1914 1919 1921 1923 1925 77 ~, I -IL APPENDIX II. MISCELLANEOUS NEWSPAPER STATISTICS Number of Newspapers, by States,-1710-1775 Maine New Hampshire Vermont Massachusetts Rhode Island Connecticut New York New Jersey Pennsylvania Deleware Maryland Dist. Columbia Virginia North Carolina South Carolina Georgia Totals 1710 1720 1730 1740 1750 17501 1760 1770 17751 1 1 1 1 2 3 5 5 6 4 6 1 1 2 2 3 1 2 2 1 3 3 1 1 2 3 3 2 4 6 9 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 2 1 2 1 1 1 1 2 3 1 3 8 12 14 13 21 29 37 NOTES 1 "History of Education in the United States," Dexter, p. 506. 2 W. T. Coggeshall, quoted in Census of 1880, p. 47. 3 Census of 1850, quoting the American Almanac for 1830, and earlier issues of the National Intelligencer. 4 Census of 1840. 5 From detailed tables on page , following. The states are arranged regionally to show the flow of the news- paper flood from its start in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. Variations are to be noted as follows: For 1790, "Century of Population Growth," (p. 32) gives Pennsyl- vania 23, Connecticut 9, District of Columbia none, total 103. For 1810, Coggeshall has list like Dexter's, except Pennsylvania 72 and total 359. See also Thomas' list totalling 393 (p. 91, following). North's summary (Census of 1840, p. 45.) gives Vermont 15, Conn- ecticut 12, New York 67, Pennsylvania 75, Kentucky 17, District of Columbia 6, Florida none, Louisiana 6, Delaware 3, Michigan 1, Or- leans 10, total 366. For 1828, Dexter has Arkansas 1 and Total 851, while Coggeshall gives Rhode Island 24 and total of 861. 78 APPENDIX II. MISCELLANEOUS NEWSPAPER STATISTICS Number of Newspapers, by States, 1776-1872 17762 1780 1790 18101 1828 18402 18404 18506 18725 Maine 2 29 36 41 49 65 New Hampshire 1 1 6 12 17 27 33 38 51 Vermont 2 14 21 30 33 35 47 Massachusetts 7 7 14 32 78 91 105 209 259 Rhode Island 2 3 4 7 14 16 18 19 32 Connecticut 4 4 10 11 33 33 44 46 71 New York 4 5 14 66 161 245 302 428 835 New Jersey 2 3 8 22 33 44 51 122 Pennsylvania 9 7 24 71 185 187 229 310 540 Delaware 2 2 4 6 8 10 17 Maryland 2 9 21 37 45 49 68 88 Dist. Columbia 1 6 9 14 17 18 Virginia 2 2 9 23 34 51 56 87 114 West Virginia 42 North Carolina 2 1 10 20 27 29 51 64 South Carolina 3 3 2 10 16 17 21 46 55 Georgia 1 1 2 13 18 34 40 51 110 Florida 1 2 10 10 10 23 Alabama 10 28 28 60 79 Mississippi 4 6 30 34 50 111 Louisiana 10 9 34 37 55 92 Tennessee 6 8 46 56 50 91 Kentucky 1 17 23 38 46 62 89 Ohio 11 66 123 143 261 Indiana 17 73 76 107 293 Michigan 2 32 33 58 211 Illinois 4 43 52 107 505 Missouri 5 35 35 61 279 Arkansas 1 9 9 9 56 Wisconsin 6 6 46 190 Minnesota 85 Iowa 4 4 29 233 Nebraska 59 Kansas 121 Texas 34 112 New Mexico 2 5 Nevada 18 California 7 201 Oregon 2 35 Totals 37 35 106 358 851 1403 1634 2526 5400 79 Number of Papers, No. of Papers Circulation, and Output, 1850 and 1872. Total Circulation Aggregate Annual Output State 1850 1872 1850 1872 1850 1872 Alabama 60 79 34,597 4.5,504 2,662,741 2,929,000 Arkansas 9 56 7,250 29,830 377,000 1,824,860 California 7 201 4,600 491,903 761,200 47,472,756 Connecticut 46 71 53,116 203,725 4,267,932 17,454,740 Deleware 10 17 7,500 20,860 421,200 1,607,840 Dist. of Col. 18 101,362 11,127,236 Florida 10 23 5,750 10,545 319,800 649,220 Georgia 51 110 67,484 150,987 4,070,866 15,539,724 Illinois 107 505 88,623 1,722,541 5,102,276 113,140,492 Indiana 107 293 63,352 363,542 4,316,828 26,964,984 Iowa 29 233 23,000 219,090 1,512,800 16,403,380 Kansas 121 Kentucky 62 89 84,686 197,130 6,582,838 18,270,160 Louisiana 55 92 80,847 84,165 12,416,224 13,755,690 Maine 49 65 63,887 170,690 4,203,064 9,867,680 Maryland 68 88 124,287 235,450 19,612,724 33,497,680 Massachus'ts 209 259 716,969 1,692,124 64,820,564 129,691,266 Michigan 58 211 52,718 253,774 3,247,736 19,686,978 Minnesota 85 110,778 9,543,656 Mississippi 50 111 30,870 71,868 1,752,504 4,703,336 Missouri 61 279 70,480 522,866 6,195,560 47,980,422 Nebraska 42 31,600 3,388,500 Nevada 18 11,300 257,200 N. Hampshire 38 51 60,176 173,919 3,067,552 7,237,588 New Jersey 51 122 44,454 205,500 4,098,678 18,625,740 New Mexico 2 5 900 1,525 46,800 New York 428 835 1,022,779 7,561,497 115,385,473 471,741,744 N. Carolina 51 64 36,839 64,820 2,020,564 6,684,950 Ohio 261 415,109 30,473,407 Oregon 2 35 1,134 45,750 58,968 3,657,300 Pennsylvania 310 540 983,218 3,419,765 84,898,672 241,170,540 Rhode Island 19 32 25,975 82,050 2,756,950 9,781,500 S. Carolina 46 55 55,715 80,900 7,145,930 8,901,400 Tennessee 50 91 67,877 225,152 6,940,750 18,300,844 Texas 34 112 19,137 55,250 1,296,924 4,214,800 Utah Vermont 35 47 45,956 71,390 2,567,662 4,055,300 Virginia 87 114 89,134 143,840 9,223,068 13,319,578 West Virginia 59 54,432 4,012,400 Wisconsin 46 190 33,236 543.385 2,665,487 28,762,920 Totals 2526 5400 4,583,017 19,369,447 423,117,978 1,375,096,168 Average 2051.5 3,681 NOTE-Figures for 1850 are from tables in Compendium of the Census for 1850, pp. 157-8. Figures for 1872 are from state descriptions in Appleton's Encyclopedia for 1872, except the following: Alabama papers and circulation from Berney's Hand- book, and annual circulation estimated; Kansas papers from Wilder's Annals of Kan- sas; New Mexico (for 1870) from Bancroft's Works. 80 This book is a preservation facsimile produced for the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. It is made in compliance with copyright law and produced on acid-free archival 60# book weight paper which meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (permanence of paper). Preservation facsimile printing and binding by Northern Micrographics Brookhaven Bindery La Crosse, Wisconsin 2012