History of American Journalism/Chapter 10

by James Melvin Lee

CHAPTER X

PARTY PRESS PERIOD

18121832

THE American press commonly spoke of the War of 1812-15 as Madison's War." The newspapers of New England, where the war was unpopular, were especially bitter in personal at- tacks. The burning of the public buildings at Washington and the reward offered by British agents for scalps of Americans including women and children fanned the press to an edito- rial fury in which many of the papers, heretofore opposed to Madison, joined. As a matter of simple justice, it should be noted that both of these acts of barbarism were severely denounced and to a certain extent repudiated by the press of England.

The newspapers published west of the Alleghanies were more active in their support of Madison. By 1812 the professional press in the new settlements was already exerting considerable political influence. Some of the papers were making a sincere attempt to get the news while it had a timely interest. Among the most enterprising of these sheets was The Reporter started at Lexington, Kentucky, in 1808 by Worseley and Overton, but later conducted exclusively by Worseley. William Worseley was not satisfied with simply the news service of the weekly post- rider. On Friday, for example, he sent his negro servant commonly called " Worseley 's Man Friday" to meet the mail-carrier on the Overland Trail, then to hurry back to the newspaper office with the Washington letter and the Eastern exchanges. The Reporter was unusually active, not only in the gathering of its news, but during the War of 1812 it went out- side of merely printing the news to collect clothing, etc., which it forwarded to the Kentucky volunteers in the army. To The Reporter, therefore, belongs the credit, possibly, of being the first to be something more than a mere newspaper.

THE TOBY PRESS

Papers which opposed taking up arms against England came to be known as the Tory press and held much the same position as that of the Copperhead press during the War of the States. The Tory press was severely rebuked, not only by rival news- papers, but also by William Charles, the real cartoonist of the War of 1812. One of his cartoons had for its title "The Tory Editor and His Apes Giving Their Pitiful Advice to the American Sailors." From the Tory cave, shown in the illustration, came the editor of The Boston Gazette, who was the chief spokesman of the Tory press. His advice to the sailors was according to the cartoon as follows: "Oh! Poor Sailors: Oh! Poor Blue Jackets! Don't go to war with the mother country! Don't go to war with good old England ! You will get hard knocks on the pate ! You will spend your years in English prisons and

prison ships! Do

CARTOON BY WILLIAM CHARLES

n' t submit to the War! You will beg in

the streets or rot in the alms house! Oh! poor sailors! Oh! poor blue jackets!" A reply from one of the sailors in the car- toon was: "We'll stick to our quarters, boys, like true hearted sailors, and may the lubber be slushed home to the gizzard, and scrap'd with a shark's tooth, who would mutiny 'gainst com- mander and desert ship 'cause a hard gale and a tough passage brings him to short allowance. Three cheers for Yankee doodle."

Some of the papers which Charles put in the Tory class and made to ape The Boston Gazette were The New-York Gazette, The Charleston Courier, The Washington Federalist, The Nor- folk Ledger, The New York Evening Post, The Boston Reporter, etc. His cartoon, though crudely drawn, presented in its dia- logue the editorial attitude of the two sections into which the American press was divided on account of the war.

PRESS ON HARTFORD CONVENTION

Republican papers made no end of fun of the Commissioners appointed at the Hartford Convention to go to Washington for the purpose of protesting against the distribution of the Fed- eral taxes and of arranging for better protection of the seaports on the Atlantic Coast. The Commissioners, reaching Wash

ington at the same same time that the Treaty of Peace was made public, and finding that their mission had been in vain, almost immediately left the city. One newspaper, The National Advertiser, printed the following amusing advertisement under the headline " MISSING": -

Three well-looking, respectable men, who appeared to be travelling towards Washington, disappeared from Gadsby's Hotel on Monday evening last, and have not since been heard of. They were observed to be very melancholic on hearing the news of the peace, and one of them was heard to say with a sigh, "Poor Caleb Strong!" They took with them their saddlebags, so that no apprehension is entertained of their having any intention to make away with themselves. Whoever will give any information to the Hartford convention of the date of the un- fortunate and trustful gentlemen by letter (post-paid) will confer a favor upon humanity. The newspapers, particularly the Federalist newspapers, are requested to publish this advertisement in a conspicu- ous place and send in their bills to the Hartford convention.

P.S. One of the gentlemen was called Titus Gates or some such name.

The Federal press, after the Hartford Convention, steadily declined in influence. Some of its most radical organs which had opposed the war with England were forced to suspend publica- tion. Other papers, to escape a similar fate, changed parties an act which often meant a change in name, for Federalist as a title for a newspaper was almost as common at the time as was Gazette in the Colonial Period. By 1820 the Federal Party was without a single electoral vote.

NEW YORK PAPERS AT CLOSE OF WAR

At the close of the War of 1812, New York had seven daily newspapers. A statement of the circulation of these various papers will not only give an idea of how many papers the lead- ing dailies of the period were printing, but also show to what extent newspapers were being read in the city. The Mercantile Advertiser had a circulation of 2000; The Gazette, 1750; The Eve- ning Post, 1600; The Commercial Advertiser, 1200; The Courier, 920; The Columbian, 870; The National Advocate, 800. In other words, one person out of every fifteen was a newspaper sub- scriber. The small circulation of the last few papers in the list may be explained by the fact that they had been but recently

established in the city. The Columbian was started in 1808 by Charles Holt, after he had set The Bee buzzing first at New Lon- don, Connecticut, and later at Hudson, New York. It was an organ of Jefferson and later of Madison. The National Advocate had only just appeared. It was started by Tammany Hall in order that that organization might have an official organ. The Republican newspapers, not only in New York, but in the other cities, lost no opportunity to criticize the British practice of im- pressing American seamen into service. It is rather remarkable that a little later they should have so completely ignored the French decree about the confiscation of American goods, as this decree was only a little short of being a declaration of war.

The darkest period in the history of American journalism was that which began at the close of the second war with England, a tune truthfully characterized as the " period of black journal- ism," when a greater depth of degradation was reached than was ever touched in the so-called "yellow" period of recent times. Those who look over the papers of this era will find that all of the customary courtesies of life were put aside; that the papers of both parties employed the vilest, grossest epithets found in the English language; that the newspapers advanced the most atrocious charges against those holding public offices and even so forgot themselves as to attack wives and sisters in their dis- graceful accounts of the personal activities of office-holders.

But the pendulum began to swing the other way. Its first push toward the legitimate function of the newspaper was given by Charles Hammond of The Gazette of Cincinnati. He refused to make his paper simply an organ for a great party leader and turned it into a medium for the discussion of the great principles of the Republican Government. In him there was an inborn love of truth for its own sake. Hammond once expressed his opinion of the violent personal journalism of the period as fol- lows: "I am afraid my quondam crony, Mr. Shadrach Penn, of The Louisville Public Advertiser, has kept a great deal of bad company since the days of our political intimacy. He seems to mistake vulgarity for wit and misrepresentation for argument;

errors from which, in days of yore, he was as free as most men. I am sometimes constrained, upon better acquaintance, to think and speak well of men whom I once reprobated. I have never yet felt disposed to vituperate a man that I once esteemed and commended. If such sink into vicious courses, I leave their exposure to others. I should as soon think of assassination as attacking a friend because he differed from me in politics." In- cidentally, it may be remarked that The Public Advertiser just mentioned had started as a weekly in 1818, but became on April 4, 1826, the first daily paper in Kentucky. It was then edited by Shadrach Penn, Jr.

The coarseness, the shallowness, the distortion of news, the use of the press to avenge private wrongs, all this and much more could be excused, but no reason can be found to justify the papers which so often during this period were little short of be- ing blackmailers and blackguards. But such newspapers, as dur- ing the periods which followed, were but a mirror of the times, and their editors were no better, or no worse, than the other men of the day. Even the books of the period were at times so full of scandal and untruth that they had to be suppressed or their publishers, being afraid that they would be prosecuted for libel, either removed the title-pages or cut their names from the imprint. It is important to bear in mind that no better cri- terion exists by which to judge any particular period than the newspapers published during the same era. Before hasty judg- ment is passed upon newspapers, a study should be made of the times in which they were published.

PRESS A MIRROR OF TIMES

Personal fights between editors cannot be understood to-day without a knowledge of the condition of the times. It was a period of personal encounters in the home and of fights in the streets. New York newspapers told of the fights between the Battery boys and the Lispenard Hill's : Boston papers recorded in detail the encounters between the North-Enders and the Charlestown Pigs; Philadelphia papers published the fights be- tween the Chestnut Street boys and the crowd which called themselves the Northern Liberties. Roughly speaking, there

was a "hot time in the old town/' regardless of where the "old town" was located. Such times were naturally mirrored in the press. In the matter of excellence, possibly the newspapers of Boston came first, those of Philadelphia second, and those of New York well down the list. For instance, James G. Brooks, who had edited The Minerva, one of the foremost literary papers of the early nineteenth century, but then editor of The Courier, publicly posted on the walls and fences of New York a bulletin which said, "I publish M. M. Noah of The Enquirer as a coward. James G. Brooks." It is an interesting comment to record that these two New York papers later became more friendly and united under the title, The Courier and Enquirer, on May 25, 1829.

CONTENTS OF NEWSPAPERS

To the party press a most important piece of news was always the report of the official proceedings of Washington. Somehow it never occurred to the typical partisan editor of this period that he might make these reports more interesting if they were pruned of less important items, but instead he gave the routine detail of Congressional debates, no matter how exciting might be the news of his local community, and evidently thought that which came from Washington had additional news value be- cause of its source. Even advertising space was sacrificed to make room for the speech of some representative at Washington who liked to hear himself talk and who was spurred on to talk the longer because his words would probably appear in print. The columns of the party newspaper were always open for com- munications from politicians of the same political faith a courtesy which was usually greatly abused both to the annoy- ance of some readers and many advertisers. In addition, there were usually long-winded editorials which often included a repetition of the matter already stated in other columns. But if it had not been for such full reporting in party organs it would have been extremely doubtful whether the deliberations of Con- gress would have been preserved for posterity.

Next to giving his readers all the political gossip of the time, the editor of the period thought he ought to provide a choice

miscellany of all sorts. There was more excuse for the insertion of such matter, for the magazines had not yet come into their own and books were still too expensive for purchase by any save the rich. In almost every newspaper, regardless of party affilia- tion, there was a column or more for original verse through which local poets rode wild-shod, for poets and politicians were great seekers, then, as now, for publicity. Incidentally, it may be remarked that much of the poetry of the day dealt with political topics, so that subscribers might get good measure in political matters. The most interesting reading, even in some of the most important papers, was found in the letters of old inhabitants who had left to seek their fortunes beyond the Alle- ghanies and then had written about the new settlements of the West. Letters were expensive because of the high rate of pos- tage; consequently their writers boiled down the news. Not yet had editors realized the real news value of local happenings.

FIRST HIGH TARIFF PAPERS

In spite of the fact that the press of the period was bitterly partisan in character, independent papers began to spring up in various sections of the country, chiefly in New England. Here, professing absolute neutrality in politics, they became the advocates of a strong protective policy for American indus- tries. Especially important was The Manufacturers' and Far- mers' Journal and Providence and Pawtucket Advertiser, which first issued from the printing-office of Miller and Hutchins in the Old Coffee-House in Providence on January 3, 1820. In- stead of being a party organ, it was the official spokesman for the Rhode Island Society for the Encouragement of Domestic Industries. It was at the start published semi-weekly and be- cause of its non-partisan character had a circulation among those of all political faiths. So carefully did it avoid having any connection with political parties that even when so important a matter as the Missouri Compromise was before the people it made no mention of the bill save in its reports of the proceed- ing of Congress. Its name was later shortened to The Providence Journal, and because of its constantly increasing patronage was able to appear daily on and after July 21, 1829, one day

later than the first appearance of The Daily Advertiser in Provi- dence.

The Journal from that time on continued to be one of the most influential papers of Rhode Island and during the great Euro- pean War which broke out in the second decade of the twen- tieth century it often " scooped" in its news items the majority of the larger papers of the metropolitan cities.

At the time The Manufacturers 1 and Farmers 1 Journal and Providence and Pawtucket Advertiser appeared, the tariff ques- tion was attracting considerable attention in the press. The papers along the Atlantic Coast, from The Argus in Portland to The Enquirer of Richmond, wece taking up in their columns the discussion of protection of industries. The Boston Courier was started with the help of Daniel Webster as a daily news- paper in Boston on March 2, 1824, to protect "infant manu- facturers and cotton and woolen clothes and all agricultural and mechanical products against foreign competition." The leading exponent in New York of protection to American indus- tries was The Statesman. These early papers devoted to pro- tection were most severely criticized, on the ground that they were advocating a Japanese system of economy and would even- tually shut out America from commercial intercourse with other nations. A few years, however, showed a very radical change in the attitude of many Northern papers toward the subject of protection. At the beginning of the period the great majority of the Republican newspapers, strange to say, was in favor of a high tariff because of political hostility felt toward Great Britain, while the Federal press was in favor of unre- strictive commerce. The "Tariff of Abominations," passed by Congress during the Session of 1827-28, brought about a very radical change in the tone of the press. Editorial policies were completely reversed: protection became popular in New Eng- land and free trade in the South. Some of the oldest papers in the country were included in this change : The Pittsburgh Gazette which had been started in a log house on the Monongahela River on July 29, 1786, and was the first paper published west of the Alleghanies, had long been a Federal organ in favor of free trade, but became an earnest advocate of a protective

Id8 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM

tariff and the purchase of home-made goods. This change in journalism was practically simultaneous with the change of heart on the part of many prominent statesmen of the period.

PARTY ORGAN IN MAINE

Party organs had sprung up in new territory. In Maine, for example, The Eastern Argus was established at Portland on Sep- tember 8, 1803, by Calvin Day and Nathaniel Willis to promote the interest of the Republican Party called by The Argus and many other papers the Jacobin Party after the liberalists of France. When Willis about a year later, November 8 to be exact, became the sole publisher, he was so radical in his po- litical comment that he landed in jail a circumstance that greatly added to. the popularity of The Argus. Week by week he printed in his paper: "[Such and such] week of the impris- onment of the editor for daring to avow sentiments of political freedom." With every week of imprisonment the circulation of The Argus increased. On January 7, 1808, Willis took in Francis Douglas as partner, but later, wanting to make The Argus a religious newspaper and not receiving enough encouragement from the clergy in Portland, he sold out his interest and went to Boston to carry out this idea in The Recorder, started on Jan- uary 3, 1816, possibly the first religious weekly in the country. Douglas ran The Argus from October 6, 1808, until his death September 3, 1820, when his widow took into partnership Thomas Todd. The Argus became a semi-weekly in 1824, a tri- weekly in 1832, and daily in 1835. The Argus during the Civil War Period was a severe critic of Greeley because of his dic- tatorial attitude toward the Administration. Greeley retali- ated with this editorial comment on September 20, 1862 about The Argus : "Boy: take the tongs and throw the foul sheet out of the window and never let another come into the Office." It is now the oldest newspaper in Maine.

PRESS AND POLITICS

After the Tariff of Abominations had been passed in Con- gress, some of the most bitter papers in the South urged a separa- tion from the Union and a few even recommended an alliance

with Great Britain. The suggestion was even made that a few seats in the House of Commons should be set aside for the Ameri- can delegates. If newspaper accounts may be believed, and there is no reason to doubt them, the suggestion was not un- kindly received in England: it was asserted that seats in Par- liament might be secured upon the condition that no formal endorsement of slavery would be demanded. This condition completely changed the editorial tone of the papers which ad- vocated the alliance.

The party organs of Jackson bitterly assailed the Adminis- tration of John Quincy Adams, on account of its so-called extravagance and waste of public funds. An " awful howl" appeared in the press when the charge was found for " payment of blacking the boots of the Indian delegates at Washington." These delegates wore only moccasins.

The papers which sprang up to support the nomination and then the election of Andrew Jackson were literally too numerous to mention. Some notice must be made, however, of a most loyal party organ, The Patriot, of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Its editor, Isaac Hill, was rewarded for service rendered to Jack- son by the nomination of Second Comptroller of the Treasury. The Senate, however, refused to confirm the nomination, but New Hampshire later retaliated by electing Hill United States Senator. The Patriot was thus placed in a strategic position, to start the war upon the United States Bank. Of this war, more will be said later in the chapter.

PAKT PLAYED BY PRESS IN POLITICS

The way party organs controlled politics in New York was fairly typical of that in other States. The political leaders would have a conclave at Albany at which they would decide upon a man to run for Governor. Some little party organ in a rural section would then be selected to be the first to suggest the fit- ness of such a man for the position. The suggestion would then be taken up by other rural organs in various parts of the State. Such a nomination would be warmly seconded, even though coming from the rural sections, by the party organs in the "up- state cities." The chief party organ at Albany would then sum

up the situation somewhat as follows: "From all over the state

comes a unanimous demand for the nomination of .

While he is not the first choice of this newspaper, there seems to be such an overwhelming demand that the paper is forced to yield to the will of the majority. He should get the nomination and should receive the loyal support of every member of the party at the coming election." A cut-and-dried editorial in praise of the man would then be inserted in the Albany organ. This editorial would then be reprinted with other kind words of commendation by all the party organs of the State. The party voter, thus convinced of the universal demand of the man as Governor, would promptly fall in line. The party press had done its work and done it well.

PARTY PRESS IN ALBANY

Since the newspapers prior to 1830 were political mouth- pieces and were filled chiefly with political squibs and reports of stump speeches, Albany, the Capital of New York State, was an important news center. The Albany Register, established in 1788 by John and Robert Barber, was the spokesman for De- Witt Clinton. When he left office the paper soon after "went into his big ditch," the Erie Canal. It was revived, however, in 1818 by Israel W. Clark who had previously published The Watch Tower, a Democratic paper started at Cherry Valley, New York, in 1813, but removed to Cooperstown, New York, in 1814. Under his editorship it fed once again at the State printing crib.

Martin Van Buren needed some one to preach partisan gos- pel in Albany, and so with Jesse Buel in the pulpit he started The Albany Argus on January 1, 1813. Van Buren knew whereof he spoke when he asserted, in 1823: "Without a paper, thus edited at Albany, we may hang our harps on the willows. With it, a party can survive a thousand convulsions." In that year Edwin Croswell became the editor of The Argus, and while al- ways mindful of his master's voice he succeeded in injecting a literary taste and some journalistic skill into the vulgarity of the acrimonious political journalism of the time. The Argus was a member of the famous Van Buren triumvirate; its other two

members were The Globe, edited by Blair at Washington, and The Enquirer, edited by Ritchie at Richmond, Virginia.

THE GREAT NEWS DISTRIBUTOR

The most important newspaper of the era was not a daily, or even a semi- weekly; it was The Weekly Register established at Baltimore, September 7, 1811, by Ezekiah Niles, an editor of The Evening Post of that city. In its pages the political and economic news of the country was reported with a fairness and fidelity which characterized no other paper of the time. It achieved a national circulation and was extensively quoted by other papers. In fact, it was a sort of general distributor of news for its contemporaries. So accurate was it that it has been quoted by historians and other writers upon American history more than >any other single newspaper in the history of this country. Niles conducted it until 1836 when it was continued by his son, William Ogden Niles, who had attempted to estab- lish The Journal at Albany, New York, not the present Eve- ning Journal of that city, in 1825, but who, upon the failure of that sheet, became associated with his father on The Register in 1827. The younger Niles conducted the paper until June 27, 1849. Its motto was, "The Past the Present for the Fu- ture." The entire series of The Weekly Register has been re- printed in seventy-five volumes and its advertisements told the truth when they asserted that no library was complete without it. The Register was discontinued because the newspapers of the country more and more performed the same service for their readers. The nearest approach to The Register which may be found to-day is The Literary Digest.

NATIONAL REPUBLICAN ORGAN

A political organ which attracted much attention in New York was The American, an evening paper established by Charles King March 3, 1819. (Its daily edition began March 8, 1820.) At the start The American was distinctly a Tammany sheet, or, what amounted to the same thing, a buck-tail paper. It was a loyal supporter of Van Buren, but later was forced to withdraw from its affiliation with the Democratic Party. A new Tarn

many sheet, The New York Patriot, was started largely through the instrumentality of John C. Calhoun. The American then became a National Republican paper until February 16, 1845, when it united with The Courier and Enquirer. During all this time King was editor of The American and after the merger took place became associated with James Watson Webb and Henry J. Raymond in the editorial direction of The Courier and Enquirer until he was called to the presidency of Columbia Col- lege. King was an exceptionally able editorial writer, but he failed to recognize the value of news something to which the penny press was then devoting a great deal of attention. The American felt quickly this competition with the one-cent papers and on May 1, 1843, reduced its price from six to two cents per copy. The change in price, however, failed to increase the circu- lation and the paper united with The Courier and Enquirer, as has already been mentioned. At one time, however, it exerted great political influence among the more aristocratic circles of New York on account of its able editorials.

EMBREE AND GARRISON

The first abolition paper did not appear in the North, but was started in Tennessee in 1820 ten years before William Lloyd Garrison brought out The Liberator in Boston. On April 30, 1820, Elihu Embree, a member of the religious Society of Friends, started in Jonesboro, Tennessee, The Emancipator, a radical exponent of the abolition cause. One of the cardinal principles of the Society of Friends was that no member in good standing could ever hold a person in bondage. Embree was the son of a Quaker preacher and lived in Pennsylvania, before he came to Tennessee to make his home in Washington County. Of him a leading Tennessee paper said at the close of the war: "He was the stuff of which martyrs are made." After teaching and preaching the doctrine of emancipation he started The Emancipator, which he continued for eight months when sick- ness and death finally overcame him. In every possible way he sought to increase the circulation of this paper. To the Gov- ernor of each of the States he sent a copy gratis. The Governors of Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina returned their copies

sealed, so that Embree must pay letter postage, which, in the case of the package from the Governor of North Carolina, amounted to one dollar, the subscription price of the paper. When other men to whom he had sent sample copies turned the same trick, he gave them a free advertisement, in which, after mentioning what had been done, he concluded with "Without entering into any nice dispositions to discover whether such conduct is any better than pocket-picking, I leave my readers to judge." The South as a matter of strict accuracy has of late been more prompt to accept the honesty of purpose of this pioneer of the abolition of slavery than has been the North.

In striking contrast with the paper just mentioned was a daily started on August 1, 1831, at Charleston, South Carolina. In view of its editorial policy, it was correctly named The State's Rights and Free Trade Evening Post. It had at the head of its editorial column the following quotation from Thomas Jeffer- son, " Nullification is the rightful remedy," and was a prophecy of what the press of South Carolina was to be at a later time when it became the source of inspiration for the secession press.

In the North the most violent advocate of the abolition of slavery was The Liberator, started in Boston on January 1, 1831. Its editor, William Lloyd Garrison, was one of the most fearless men who ever sat in an editorial chair. Threatened repeatedly with applications of tar and feathers, mobbed in the streets of Boston, hung in effigy all over the country, he kept up an in- cessant fight for the freedom of slaves until victory was his. Important as was The Liberator in American history, it was not distinctly a newspaper, and its influence has been told over and over again in general histories. Such works, however, have overlooked the fact that this influence was exerted very often through the editorials in the secular press which commented either pro or con about the contents of The Liberator. The coarseness of the editors' invectives was characteristic of the period. The Liberator was discontinued on December 29, 1865.

WANDERING JEW JOURNALIST

One of the most interesting characters in the history of American journalism was Mordecai Noah, a journalist of fertile

imagination. He conceived the idea of bringing the scattered tribes of Israel to an American settlement; he also believed that the Indians were descendants of the lost tribes and proposed that a certain part of the land should be set aside for them. He had other idiosyncracies of which it is no editorial fib to say that they were too numerous to mention. One of them, however, de- serves special notice : he seemed to want to edit as many papers as possible. He began his newspaper career hi 1810 by editing The City Gazette in Charleston, South Carolina. When Tam- many Hall, quite a different organization from the present one of that name, repudiated its organ and established another, The National Advocate secured Noah as the second editor of that paper. In 1826, after a quarrel with the publishers, Noah started another paper with the same name. Prevented by legal steps in this attempt to have two papers of the same name, he called his paper Noah's New York National Advocate. Again getting into legal difficulties, he made another change and called the sheet The New York Enquirer. When this paper was merged in 1829 with The Morning Courier, Noah still kept up an edi- torial connection with the union as its associate editor. In 1834 he established The New York Evening Star, a Whig organ to support William Henry Harrison. When The Star united with The Commercial Advertiser, Noah became editor of The Morn- ing Star. In 1842 Noah edited a Tyler organ in New York called The Union. It lasted about a year, and then he commenced in 1843 Noah's Weekly Messenger which after a short time united with The Sunday Times. He remained editor of this paper until his death in 1851.

FIKST STAR REPORTER

Henry Ingraham Blake, the Father of American Reporting, belonged to this period. Connected with The New England Pal- ladium, a Boston paper started on January 1, 1793, as The Massachusetts Mercury, but later, in January, 1801, changed to The Mercury and New England Palladium, he was the first to go after news without waiting for items to come to the news- paper office. Though he occasionally reported local matters in and around the city, he made his reputation as a gatherer of ship

news. Newspaper tradition in Boston still asserts that he knew the names of the owner, the captain, and most of the crew of every boat that docked in Boston Harbor in his day. Instead of going to the coffee-houses to get the news retold there by sea captains, he would go down to the wharves, get into a boat, and often go out alone to meet the incoming vessels without regard to what the weather was or to what time of day the vessel would dock. After getting the news from the captain or some member of the crew, he would rush back to the office of The Palladium and there, with the help of his wonderful memory and by a few notes on his cuffs or on his finger nails, he would put the matter into type as he sang to himself in a monotone. If the item was unusually important he never hesitated to stop the press of the paper in order to secure its insertion. In this way he secured for the Marine Department of The Palladium a reputation which put the shipping news of the other Boston papers in the " also-ran" column. Scant justice has been done to "Harry" Blake, who was the father of reporting hi the mod- ern sense of this term. After he left The Palladium, the paper lost its most valuable asset and soon began to lose its subscribers, who no longer found its ship news worth reading. The Palla- dium passed through various hands until it became in 1840 a part of The Boston Daily Advertiser, which had been started on March 3, 1813, and was the first daily paper of any importance in New England.

POULSON OF PHILADELPHIA

The grand old man of the period was Zachariah Poulson, Jr., the editor and publisher of Paulson's American Daily Advertiser in Philadelphia. His life links the journalism of the Early Re- public with the Era of the Penny Press. In September, 1800, Poulson purchased for ten thousand dollars The American Daily Advertiser, the first daily paper in America, and gave it his own name and continued to publish it until December, 1839, when he sold it to the owners of the youngest Philadelphia daily, The North American. When his paper was merged with The North American, The Saturday Evening Post published this tribute to Poulson: "No man probably in this country has ever enjoyed so

undisturbed a connection with a newspaper as Mr. Poulson. Commencing at a time when competition for public favor was unknown, he has strictly pursued the even tenor of his way, without departing from the rules which he adopted in the out- set of his course. While his younger brethren were struggling and striving with each other adopting all means to secure patronage enlarging their sheets, and employing new and extraordinary means to win success he looked calmly on, and continued as he commenced, nothing doubting that his old and tried friends would adhere to him. Nor was he disappointed in this expectation, since up to the moment of his dissolution The Daily Advertiser has neither abated in usefulness, interest, or profit." Mr. Poulson's greatest contribution to American journalism was the training which he gave to a large num- ber of journalists who later went east and west to establish papers upon the sound principles learned while working on Poulson's Daily Advertiser. Though a strong Whig, Poulson had a natural propensity to look at political questions from all angles, and in his political criticism he was unquestionably honest and remarkably free both by conviction and by senti- ment from using the press to advance personal aspirations.

UNITED STATES BANK AND PRESS

Notwithstanding what academic historians may say on the subject, one of the worst corruptors of the press toward the close of the period was the Bank of the United States at Philadelphia. Its directors knew that its charter was soon to expire and began to count its friends in the press. In spite of its best efforts it encountered so much newspaper opposition and so little favor- able comment that it finally passed, on March 11, 1831, a reso- lution authorizing its president, Nicholas Biddle, to print what he chose to defend the Bank and to pay for the same without accountability. Between that date and the end of 1834 Biddle spent "without vouchers" $29,600 a sum that would go much farther in those days than now in corrupting the press. When Biddle was accused of using the whole press of the coun- try to aid him in his fight with President Jackson and was charged with being criminally profuse in his accommodations

to newspapers which favored a new charter for the Bank, he pointed to a number of papers to which loans had been made and which, when the notes were given, were opposed to rechartering the Bank. Among these were The Washington Telegraph, edited by General Duff Green, and The New York Courier and En- quirer, edited by Mordecai Manuel Noah and James Watson Webb.

At the time Green applied for the loan to The Telegraph he intimated that the accommodation should carry with it no change in the editorial policy of his paper. To this Biddle re- plied: "The Bank is glad to have friends from conviction; but seeks none from interest. For myself, I love the freedom of the press too much to complain of its occasional injustice to me." He even went so far as to indicate that he would be willing to write on the notes, "Editorial indorsement of the Bank not necessary."

Nevertheless, after the loan The Telegraph did change its policy and came out for the Bank. When word of the change was taken to President Jackson he wrote in an unpublished letter: "I have barely time to remark that the conduct of Gen- eral D. Green is such as I suspected. . . . The truth is he has professed to me to be heart and soul against the Bank but his idol" John C. Calhoun to whom Green owed his position on The Telegraph "controls him as much as the shewman does his puppets, and we must get another organ to announce the policy and defend the administration, in his hands it is more injured than by all the opposition." The new "organ" was The Washington Globe started December 7, 1830, and edited by Francis P. Blair. Political office-holders, in a none too delicate way were given to understand that they should subscribe to The Globe and to do everything in their power to promote its circulation.

No sooner was The Globe revolving nicely than one of the offi- cers of the Bank offered to pay Mr. Blair whatever might be the charge for the insertion of a report prepared by Biddle. Blair refused to accept any compensation, but did print, as a public document, the statement prepared by the Bank. Later a friend of the Bank left with a member of Presi dent Jackson's

Cabinet a large check to be given to Mr. Blair "as an expres- sion of the respect the donor entertained for the labors of the editor of The Globe" The check was returned and Blair con- tinued his attacks on the Bank.

In New York The Courier and Enquirer in a savage and al- most brutal attack, had charged the Bank with " furnishing capi- tal and thought at the same moment," with " buying men and votes as cattle in the market," and with "withering, as by a subtle poison the liberty of the press." After these charges had been made, the Bank of the United States continued to loan money to The Courier and Enquirer until the notes of that news- paper totaled $52,975. When the press published the figures the Bank attempted to justify its position by claiming that the loans were considered a "safe and legitimate business trans- action." In 1833 notes for part of the paper's indebtedness ($18,600) were protested by the Bank: two years later The Cou- rier and Enquirer offered to settle for "ten cents on the dollar." James Gordon Bennett, who was at the time connected with The Courier and Enquirer, once made this re'sume' of the situa- tion for that newspaper in particular and for others in general : "The Courier and Enquirer was in some financial difficulty at the period the war was made by the Bank, and Mr. Noah when he saw the breeches pocket of Mr. Biddle open, entered it imme- diately and presented the chief exemplar of inconsistency and tergiversation."

In defense of the Bank it may be said that the institution was fighting a life or death battle and was often unjustly at- tacked by a bitter and vindictive opposition press. The Bank was forced, so its defenders asserted, to fight enemies who held out to editors the appointments to office : it could only use in the conflict such means as it possessed loans and subsidies to newspapers.

Thomas H. Benton, the spokesman for Jackson in the war against the Bank, charged that the institution was criminally profuse in its accommodations to editors who favored the grant- ing of a new charter. In the newspaper war which grew out of the conflict The New York Courier and Enquirer found itself attacked for criticizing the Bank while at the sa me time being

a debtor. At various times, as already mentioned, it borrowed sums until its total indebtedness amounted to $52,975. To jus- tify this position The Courtier and Enquirer published a state- ment as to its financial condition. Whether the condition of the paper was sufficient to warrant such a loan is open to discussion. The statement, however, did show a number of interesting facts about publishing a blanket sheet. According to the memoran- dum compiled by Colonel Webb, there were 3300 daily sub- scribers who paid an annual subscription price of $10; 2300 hundred weekly or semi-weekly subscribers whose average sub- scriptions amounted to $4.50; 275 yearly advertisers at the flat rate of $30. The annual gross income amounted to $60,750, from which the annual expenses of $35,000, when subtracted, showed a profit at least on the books of $25,750. Accord- ing to Colonel Webb, The Courier and Enquirer was worth fully $150,000. If it were, it steadily lost in value, for at a later period it found itself unable to meet expenses and was finally absorbed by The World.

BULLETIN BOARDS THEN AND NOW

Bulletin boards on which a re'sume' of the news was posted first appeared during the second decade of the eighteenth cen- tury. By 1815 The New York Mercantile Advertiser and The New York Gazette were posting on boards nailed to their front doors brief statements of the more important items which came to their offices. Other papers in distant cities soon followed the example set by the New York papers and the bulletin board be- came an established adjunct of American journalism. The Mexican War and the War of the States increased their useful- ness. At one time most of the provincial press got its news of outside happenings from correspondents who visited these bulletin boards and then forwarded the contents to their re- spective papers first by letter and then later by wire. Not until the close of the nineteenth century did these pony reports for the smaller dailies completely disappear. The bulletin board has possibly reached its highest development in reporting ath- letic events. Because of the great interest taken by the Ameri- can public in baseball, the bulletin board has frequently blocked

city streets with its crowd of interested spectators who wanted the news even before it could appear in "Sporting Extras." The speed with which news has been told by metropolitan bulletin boards is one of the most remarkable mechanical achievements of American journalism. In a baseball game when the ball has been batted out into the field and has been caught by the center- fielder, this fact has been recorded on a bulletin board fifteen hundred miles away from the game before the ball could reach the home plate in an attempt to put out a man running bases after the fly had been caught.

PRINTING-PRESSES OF PERIOD

During 1822 steam was first used in America as the motive power to run a printing-press : this was seven years before steam turned the wheel of the first locomotive in England. Daniel Treadwell of Boston built the pioneer power press : its frame was constructed of wood and its mechanism was clumsy but it worked. Another Yankee, Isaac Adams, perfected the press and made it more practical. Called to New York in 1827 to repair a Treadwell press, he soon saw the possibilities of im- provement and in 1830 he successfully put his own press on the market. Later, the demand was so great that he took his brother, Seth Adams, into partnership. The Adams press differed from the hand-press in that, after the type had been put on a flat bed, "the bed was raised and lowered by straightening and bending a toggle joint by means of a cam, thus giving the impression upon the iron platen fixed above it" to quote a technical description. Isaac Adams "automatized the printing- press." Automatically his press inked the type; automatically it drew the sheet between the type-bed and the platen for the impression; automatically it took the sheet now printed from the type-bed; automatically it "flirted," after registering, the sheet to a pile by a "fly" invented by Adams and still used on cylinder presses. The various patents of Adams passed in 1858 to Robert Hoe, who by that time had made many improvements but those make a story for another chapter. About one thou- sand sheets per hour was the maximum speed of the improved Adams press.

Up to the close of the period the use of steam, however, was still in the experimental state. Hand-power from "crank men," who turned a large wheel, was sufficient to print the papers even of the daily journals. Frederick Koenig, a Saxon, assisted by Thomas Bensley, a London printer, succeeded in printing from a revolving cylinder in 1812. To have a cylinder roll over a type-bed was bound to be faster than to press an iron platen against it. Robert Hoe, who had started to make printing- presses in New York in 1805, saw the advantage of the changes and began the construction of cylinder presses. In the earlier models that part of the cylinder not used in making the impres- sion was "trimmed down" to allow the type to pass back and forth without touching it. The daily papers used the hand- turned, large-cylinder presses to print their editions. The old- fashioned hand variety still sufficed for provincial newspapers of small circulation.

POSTAL REGULATIONS OF PERIOD

Until the war increased the operating expenses of the Postal Department, newspapers circulated under the provisions of the first Federal Postal Act of 1793. Complaints about poor service were frequent in appearance, but nothing was done except to increase the postal routes. To increase the postage was the last thing the newspapers wanted, yet the first change made just such provisions.

From February 1, 1815, to March 31, 1816, postage on news- papers was increased fifty per cent to raise revenue on account of war expenses. In April of this year (1816), in spite of the re- duction on letter postage, it was continued with the exception that postage would be reduced to one cent on papers delivered in the same State in which they were printed even though car- ried more than one hundred miles. By an act of 1825 newspapers were required to pay one quarter of the annual postage in ad- vance.

A bill for the abolition of postage on newspapers was intro- duced in 1832. The committee on Public Offices to which it was referred reported adversely on May 19, 1832. In its report it said:

162 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM'

The postage on newspapers is not a tax. It is no more in the nature of a tax than is the freight paid on merchandise. It is money paid for a fair and full equivalent in service rendered, and paid by the person for whose benefit and by whose venture the service is performed. The law does not require newspapers to be distributed by the mails. It only extends to their proprietors that privilege when it becomes their interest to avail themselves of it in preference to other and more uncertain and expensive modes of conveyance. There does not appear any sufficient reason why the public should pay for transporting printers' articles or merchandise to a distant market any more than the productions of other kinds of industry. In all cases the expense must be defrayed either by a tax or by the person for whom the service is performed; and the committee cannot perceive a more equitable way than for each one to pay for the services actually rendered to himself for his own benefit and by his own order.

Considerable complaint had been made by the papers pub- lished outside of the larger cities that the postal laws discrimi- nated in favor of the metropolitan newspapers.

As newspapers increased in the amount of news printed, they did not add more pages, but simply increased the size of the sheet. The result was the publication of those mammoth news- papers which were commonly called " blanket sheets"; some of them in fact were about the size of a bed quilt. By the postal laws a small folio paper in the country paid the same rate as these larger papers printed in New York.

CONDITIONS AFFECTING PRESS

The "reign of Andrew Jackson" was an important one in the history of American journalism. The population had increased to over twelve millions more than double what it was at the opening of the century. The area was more than twice what it was in Jefferson's day. The chapter on "The Beginnings of Journalism in States and Territories" not numbered among the thirteen original colonies shows how the printing-press had fol- lowed the trail blazed by the settler to his pioneer home. The frontier newspaper was but a repetition of the early journalism on the Atlantic Coast. In spite of migration westward the popu- lation in the cities had increased, due to the development of new industries and to the extension of the merchant marine.

Schools and colleges sprang up to supplement the work of older institutions. Courses both in the grammar and in the high schools were lengthened. Postal routes were extended. Stage lines were numerous and even the railroads started to carry passengers. Journalism, which is ever linked with the social and economic growth of a country, was bound to be affected most materially by these changes. Education made more people readers of newspapers and improved transportation facilities permitted not only a quicker, but also a larger distribution of the papers. Popularizing the newspaper, however, came from the reduction in cost. Journalism never fully came to its own until a newspaper could be purchased for a penny. Until Jack- son's Administration only the wealthy could afford a daily paper. Till then it was a mark of distinction to subscribe to a newspaper, but after the day of the cheap press no such condi- tion ever obtained.