History of Journalism in the United States/Chapter 1
HISTORY OF JOURNALISM
CHAPTER I
HISTORIC PREPARATION FOR JOURNALISM
Among the one hundred and two passengers on the Mayflower, which brought to this country in 1620 the first body of men who were to give to the American nation its character and tendency, was William Brewster. In addition to being the spiritual guide of the little group, Brewster had the experience, unusual in those days, of having been a practical printer. A man of education, he had been sent to jail for his religious beliefs, and with others of his faith had sought refuge in Holland. He had procured a printing press and in Leyden, where the press was untrammeled, had published a number of books attacking the English authorities.
The day before the Pilgrims landed, they drew up, in the cabin of the Mayflower, their celebrated agreement, based on the idea of equal rights for the general good—"The birth of popular constitutional liberty," Bancroft calls it. In any case, it was the first expression of the democratic idea toward which humanity had been painfully toiling for centuries.
These two facts are important in the history of journalism.
The greatest of all liberties, it is said, is the liberty of opinion. Within a comparatively few years of the Mayflower's sailing, there had come, following the revival of learning and the development of the art of printing, an impetus toward freedom of expression such as the previous centuries had never known. How much the democratic idea—the democratic tendency that came with Christianity—owes to printing and how much the invention of printing owes to the growth of this idea is one of those nicely balanced questions that is not to be entered into here.
In "De Natura Deorum," Cicero put forth the idea of printing books, but there the idea rested for centuries. It was the fact that the world was stirring in the fifteenth century and that the revival of learning had brought about a demand for books, on the part of those who were not able to afford the great vellum manuscripts, that brought the printing press. It has been observed that the processes used in the printing press "are as old as the first medal which was ever struck."
We know that the Romans could have invented the printing press, and probably would have, were it not that slave labor satisfied their wants.[1] There was among them the demand for publication; Dionysius of Halicarnassus tells of "thousands "of writers on the subject of Roman History alone, and Martial reports that copies of his "Epigrams" sold for six sestertii, less than the cost of a book to-day. But slave labor took the place of the printing press, and the ingrained belief that reading as well as thinking belonged to the ruling class rendered the great organ of modern civilization unnecessary.
But the printing press came to awaken man to his possibilities—the philosophies of the ages sweeping down into the great under mass to awaken them to manhood—and one of the first evidences that the apparently inert majority, lying under the governmental impact, were shaking off the lethargy of brutedom, was the interest in "Newes," itself a new word.
As early as 1561 we find references to doggerel reports of recent events that were being printed under the title of "Newes out of Kent" and "Newes out of Heaven and Hell," and during the reign of Elizabeth, papers were printed giving news of the time in order to keep the people interested in the defense of the realm.[2] This was a development of the written news-letter, which had its origin in the idea of keeping the wealthy informed, just as the wealthy Romans were kept informed by letters from Rome.[3] But we must look to the end of the reign of James the First, says the Harleian manuscribe, for the time when "news began to be in fashion."[4] The first attempt to treat of the general "newes," in a regular series of newspapers, issued weekly, was when Nathaniel Butters, acknowledged father of the newspaper; brought out in London, on May 23, 1622, the first issue of the Weekly Newes. This was followed by the establishment, here and there throughout Europe, of the Gazettes, intended in the beginning for the merchants and courts, but soon to pass into the hands of those far removed from Kings and Courts.
The men who came to this country on the Mayflower were men who, with their forbears, had been furnishing England with much news long before they set sail. They were, in the main, of the mass of people. They were men who had been persecuted, who had suffered, who had been jailed in England for their principles and for striving for their liberty, though they had little in common with the Barons who through Magna Charta had wrested from the Crown the power of absolute rule.
These Puritan insurrectionists had been nurtured by the printing press. Beginning with the struggle to hold religious views that were interdicted by the government, they had broadened gradually into unconscious exponents of free government; and the government, seeing that it was from the press that they had gained courage and boldness, subjected the press to a rigorous censorship, printing being forbidden, save in London, Oxford and Cambridge, as far back as Queen Elizabeth's time.
When Brewster and his flock first left England, they went to Leyden, where, as in no other place in Europe, there were free schools, and where, as Motley says,[5] "every child went to school, where almost every individual inhabitant could read and write, where even the middle classes were proficient in mathematics and the classics and could speak two or more modern languages." Campbell says, that during the sixteenth century "this little country published more books than the rest of Europe put together, and while England was suppressing and censoring the press, the author here was free to express his thoughts so long as he committed no libel and wrote nothing to offend the public morals."[6]
When these Pilgrims landed in America, the great wilderness that was to take centuries to subdue, they had, in the fact of Brewster's apprenticeship and the compact referred to, the germ of the free press and the journalism that was to become a world factor in humanity's development.
It was not until 1639 that the first printing press was imported into this country; even then the settlers were living under such conditions of savagery as England had not known for nearly a thousand years.
Wilderness that it was, these Pilgrims had brought with them very definite ideas, many of them gained during the sojourn in Holland; while in many respects they were still only keeping pace with those of their class in England in intellectual growth, they were far advanced in political thought. A small community of not more than a few thousand was more easily influenced than the population of the thickly settled country whence they came. Such an event, therefore, as the founding of Harvard University and the legacy of Brewster's library, in which there were eight books that he himself had published in Leyden, was bound to have its influence on the intelligent section of the public mind. Not only were those in the colony affected by these and similar evidences of liberal thought, but the character of immigration was affected, as we see from the fact that between 1630 and 1647, one hundred university men came to New England from the continent. Such immigration could not do otherwise than broaden the current.
New England, however, was still a colony under the rule of the mother country, and was still greatly influenced by the thoughts of those Englishmen who had remained on the other side. A second printing press was brought over in 1660. Two years later, with only two presses in the colony, the Government of Massachusetts, following the example of the mother country, appointed a licensor of the press, and in 1664 a law was passed permitting printing only in Cambridge, and then only by those licensed.
In the time elapsing between the sailing of the Mayflower and the establishment of the censorship, a little more than forty years, the folks in the colonies had been hearing of strange happenings at home. Journalism in England had been born. The first newspaper. The Weekly Newes, had appeared, but at a time when authors, printers and importers of prohibited books were being subjected to the most barbarous persecutions, treatment that recalled to the Pilgrims the conditions that had driven them to Holland.
Despite all persecutions, the fight in England was on in bitter earnest. More than thirty thousand political pamphlets and "newspapers "were issued between 1640 and the Restoration, two thousand bound volumes of which are now to be found in the British Museum.[7]
While Charles the Second was a less vindictive persecutor of the press than either his grandfather or his father had been, he had to deal with a refractory Parliament, without which the beginning of journalism would never have been written in the seventeenth century. It was a period, too, which saw the rise of political parties in England, the Whigs and the Tories. Both upheld the monarchy, but the Whigs stood for the limitation of authority within the law, while the Tories were for absolutism in both Church and State.[8]
It was in his desire to cope with the growing evil of publication and the free press that King Charles fanned the flames that he would fain have quenched. He appointed, in 1663, Sir Roger L'Estrange as licensor of the press and surveyor of the printing offices.
Americans are not accustomed to think of this remarkable cavalier and journalist as connected with the newspaper history of this country; yet connected he is in the most interesting way—directly through Benjamin Harris, as we shall see in another chapter, and indirectly through his persecutions and general whacking of heads, both of editors and publishers, toughening the fiber of those who were founding the Fourth Estate, and providing examples of heroism for those editors in this country who in their turn went to jail as part of the routine of a not over-respected profession.
It was L'Estrange who was selected to answer Milton's "Areopagitica," which he did under the brutal title, "No Blind Guides Needed," a fair sample of his wit. From pamphleteer he became, on his appointment as licensor of the press, a full-fledged journalist, issuing in 1663 the Public Intelligencer. For this posterity is indebted to him, for an able journalist he was; considering that his business was to suppress printing and prosecute printers, he set about it in the very best way calculated to encourage the one and stiffen the other.
The Public Intelligencer gave way in 1665 to the London Gazette, the first official newspaper in English, a purely governmental publication, containing in the most meager and formal fashion such news as the government wished to publish. But the damage was done, for what the government could do others could do, and despite the licensor, pillories and prisons, the printers became busy with their defense of a free press and popular rights. When it is realized that thirty thousand of these pamphlets were printed in a comparatively few years, it is seen that they were no mean workers.
The Licensing Act, which had been passed shortly after the accession of Charles II, expired in 1679, and for a short while several newspapers—the Protestant Intelligence, the True News, etc.—were published by the Whigs, but the twelve justices, under Chief Justice Scroggs, declared that it was a criminal act at common law to publish any political news without the King's license.[9]
As this allowance was given only to the London Gazette and to L'Estrange's new paper. The Observator, life for the journalists was just as unbearable as when the license act was in force. James II, however, was not satisfied with this common-law protection, which was ample enough, as the printers and writers, who had served in jail under it, could testify, and in 1685, immediately after his accession, censorship of the press was revived.
Those were sad years for our Protestant Pilgrims on the edge of the wilderness in New England, but not dull ones. There was no need of any license law to keep them from printing seditious pamphlets or newspapers, for Indian wars, smallpox and the severe New England winters kept them engrossed without the aid of political discussion, while their material troubles divided their attention with the struggle against heresy and sin. Though they were all of the same sect and religious belief, it was no easy matter to maintain harmony in matters spiritual.
Persecutions in the mother country had helped largely to increase emigration to the colonies, although the newcomers soon found that on this side of the ocean government was far from humane,—Radcliffe's ears had been cut off, and he had been banished from the colony because he criticized the government and the church. It was a cruel age, and perhaps it would be too much to expect that these men, cast off into a new world, would develop refining processes over and above those of their mother country.
Another new-comer, Roger Williams, soon clashed with the intolerant authorities, and the over-bold innovator was driven out of the colony to found a more liberal one of his own.
A woman was another conspicuous disturber of the colony's smug self-content. Mrs. Hutchinson arrived in 1634 with an apparently harmless message, but one calculated to disturb the colonists. "She brought with her," said Governor Winthrop, "two dangerous errors; that the person of the Holy Ghost dwells in a justified person, and that no sanctification can help to evidence to us our justification." Of course, no self-respecting Puritan government could stand such heresy, but the plain people, with an aptitude for theological hair-splitting that later generations can scarcely appreciate, took Mrs. Hutchinson and her two heresies to their bosoms; in order that there might be peace and unanimity in the community—according to the Puritan idea of a good community—it was necessary to banish Mrs. Hutchinson and several important men of the colony who had become converts.
The importance of Mrs. Hutchinson is due to the fact that about the time of her appearance there began to be great nervousness over the problem of witchcraft. Winthrop, in his journal, suggested that her devilish doctrines might have been inspired by a real witch.
Despite these troubles, the colony prospered, spiritually as well as materially. Harvard College was founded in 1636. By 1645 the colonists were producing more than they needed, exporting was begun, and vessels were built, the latter industry thriving so well that by 1665 they had built about eighty ships of from twenty to forty tons and twelve of over one hundred tons.[10]
England began to take notice of this colony, whose prosperity was being noised about. In 1673 the colony had five iron-works, the products of which were used exclusively by the colonists, and along with this opulence, the people began to get beyond the control of the church so that we hear more and more about sin and its allure. In 1675 King Philip's War broke out, and for two years there was a sanguinary conflict. In the same year the first fire of importance swept away forty-five dwellings and several large warehouses, but the greatest catastrophe was when King James, on his accession to the throne, took away the charter of the colony and appointed Governor Andros to rule over these sturdy believers in their right—and their ability—to rule themselves. All the annoyances possible from a tyrannical representative of a tyrannical king, Andros inflicted. Though the colonists murmured and met in secret, it was not until they had learned of the Revolution in England and of the invasion by the Prince of Orange, that they seized Andros and his associates, restoring the old form of government.
Despite these activities and interests, the colonists were far from indifferent toward the spirit of the times, and the happenings across the seas. Many ships brought news of the home-land, and the news-letters, direct precursors of the newspapers, not only brought news from the other side but developed the habit of wanting news about themselves. Religious news was the most important item, as might be expected in a community of eight thousand inhabitants where the intense religious fervor, of the type that this generation knows as the spasmodic revival, was not a matter of a week or a month, but had been the business of the colony from the time when their grandparents had come into the wilderness and, with the aid of God, had built up a thriving city.
There were book-stores and culture of a kind, but just as we see cities, communities and nations influenced and swayed by dominant intellects, so here the dominating intellects were men whose culture was narrow; men who, representing generations of persecution for their beliefs, had grown to hate all not closely allied with their own sect; men who, like Cotton Mather—though he was a leader, with none quite like him—saw God only in the thunder and the storm, and never dreamed that humanity could be led to reverence the Deity through the simple processes of Eternal Law, unfolding and unraveling man's liberty, equality and happiness.
- ↑ H. M. Alden, "Why the Ancients had no Printing Press," in Harper's Monthly, Vol. XXXVII, p. 397.
- ↑ For account of the interesting forgery of a newspaper in Elizabeth's time, see Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature; Andrews, History of British Journalism, Vol. 1, p. 22; Chalniers, Life of Ruddiman, p. 114. See Appendix, Note A.
- ↑ See Cicero and Horace.
- ↑ See Appendix, Note A.
- ↑ History of the United Netherlands, Vol. IV, p. 137.
- ↑ Campbell, The Puritan in Holland, England and America, Vol. II p. 343; Rogers, Story of Holland, p. 220.
- ↑ See Knight's Old Printer and Modern Press, also Disraeli's Curiosities.
- ↑ May, Constitutional History of England, Vol. II, p. 31.
- ↑ May, Constitutional History of England, ii, 105; State Trials, vii, 929.
- ↑ Skelton, Story of New England, 96.