History of Journalism in the United States/Chapter 25

by George Henry Payne

CHAPTER XXV

EDITORS OF THE NEW SCHOOL

Charles Anderson Dana—His broadness of view—Brook Farm colony—Fourteen years with Tribune—Assistant secretary of war—Editor of Sun—Opposition to Grant—Attitude toward Tweed—Bennett the )rounger and the Herald—The Times—Whitelaw Reid—Henry Watterson—His views on journalism.

Art comes into journalism late, as it comes into so many of the artifices of men. It is impossible to do justice to the life and work of Charles Anderson Dana unless one views him as a journalist in whom the artistic side of his profession was dominant. A common point of view has been that of the literary critic who declared that "in its exercise of its recording functions it (journalism) is a useful trade, and in its commenting office it takes rank as a profession, but it is never an art."^[1]

We have here an old-fashioned criticism, a point of view not so common now as it was before Charles Anderson Dana made of journalism an art. He saw his great profession as no one had seen it before him, as a whole, as a very human whole, and he left an impression on his time that can only be compared to that made by Addison and Steele on the essayists of the early eighteenth century. Despite his cynicism and the errors of taste and judgment into which his personal disappointments led him, his entire period of editorial control was sufifused with such an optimism as regards the intelligence of the American people that one is led to feel that there was much virtue in the "vice" that so aroused his doleful critics.

Dana was born in New Hampshire in 1819 and, when twelve years of age, went to Buffalo to become a clerk in his uncle's store. Here Indians were sometimes customers and he learned the Seneca language, adding to it Latin and Greek, and later on prepared himself to enter Harvard, which he did in 1839. When he was obliged to leave college he joined the Brook Farm Colony and, to pay his way, taught Greek and German in addition to waiting on the table. He was thus early associated with all that was cultured and scholarly in America and it was through his Brook Farm experiences that he came to know Horace Greeley and to be employed by him in February, 1847, as the city editor of the Tribune, at $10 a week. On the Tribune he soon became an important factor, so much so that credit was given to him for many of the editorials that were commonly ascribed to Greeley. His was the broader culture, and Greeley deferred to it, as is shown by the frequent letters that he wrote to him from Washington when, Dana was acting as managing editor and Greeley was writing on the politics of the nation.

On one occasion Dana, who was much interested in the new Opera House, left Greeley's Washington article out of the paper to make way for his favorite subject. Greeley good-naturedly protested:

"What would it cost to burn the Opera House? If the price is reasonable, have it done and send me the bill."

The campaign in the Tribune for an early movement of the northern troops in 1861 was Dana's, though it was Greeley who had to stand for the pleasant suggestion of Bennett that hanging was too good for the man who started the cry "On to Richmond." The parting between Greeley and Dana came, however, as a shock to the younger man. Greeley notified the stockholders that if he, Dana, did not leave, Greeley would. This was a blow to Dana, whose relations with Greeley had recently been most friendly and he thought that some misunderstanding must be at the bottom of it. He sent a friend to Greeley to test him out and found that it was true. Accordingly he resigned on March 28, 1862, and found himself at the age of forty-three, after fourteen years on the Tribune, one of the best equipped newspaper men in America, but with no place open for him.^[2]

His ability, however, was known in Washington and the most important work of his life came through the accident of his non-employment. In 1863 he was asked to come to Washington, and President Lincoln and Secretary of War Stanton employed him, not to spy on General Grant, but to tell them frankly whether it was true, as his enemies declared, that Grant was drinking himself into idiocy. His reports on Grant resulted in the General's receiving from Washington the heartiest cooperation.

The war over, he resigned as Assistant Secretary of War and went to Chicago to become the editor of the Republican. The paper, however, was not sufficiently financed, and again he was the journalist without the journal.

At a time when most men are settled in life, Dana was yet to begin a career. On January 25, 1868, a number of prominent Republicans paid Moses S. Beach $175,000 for the New York Sun and made Dana editor-in-chief. From that time on he was a national figure, not always of the greatest influence, but never in obscurity.

During Grant's first administration Dana became, to the surprise of many, a bitter critic of the President. This was generally ascribed to the fact that Grant had not appointed him Collector of the Port of New York, a position for which he had been urged by his friends. His attack on the President began with the bestowal of public offices in reward for campaign contributions. But he went further and practically accused the President of being responsible for the corruption of the public services. He declared that Grant had "done more to destroy in the public mind all distinction between right and wrong, to make it appear that the great object of life and the chief purpose of official authority is to acquire riches, and that it makes no difference by what means this object is attained. Had Grant been a pure man of high moral sense, a delicate feeling of honesty, and a just conscience, his example, his influence, and his power would long since have sufficed to turn back the rising tide of corruption and to rescue the government from the dangerous evils with which it was struggling."

He accused the President of having twenty-four relatives holding office, and as an evidence of the corruption in Washington he obtained and printed a letter, a phrase of which rapidly became the shibboleth of corruption; it was as follows:—

Treasury Department of Pennsylvania,
Harrisburg, March, 1867.

My Dear Titian,—

Allow me to introduce to you my particular friend Mr. George O. Evans. He has a claim of some magnitude that he wishes you to help him in. Put him through as you would me. He understands Addition, Division, and Silence.

"To Titian J. Coffey, Esq.,
Washington, D. C."

Yours,
"W. H. Kemble."^[3]

The attitude of Charles A. Dana toward the corrupt political boss of New York City, William M. Tweed, has been defended by the historian of his paper on the ground that Dana's support of Tweed was satirical.^[4] The paper on December 7, 1870, printed a short announcement of the fact that ten cents had been sent in to start a monument for Tweed and a semi-sarcastic editorial endorsement of the proposal. Tweed himself was obliged to order the money that had been collected to be returned, but the fact that a considerable sum had been contributed would indicate that a great many people had failed to appreciate the joke of Dana, and were taking it seriously. Two such serious students as Gustavus Myers and Dr. Henry Van Dyke construed the Dana support of the Tweed statue proposal as serious. There was not in Dana's ridicule of Tweed any of the relentless attitude that he showed in his attack on President Grant; and it was for this reason that he lost friends.

What Dana said about journalism was always acute and always sound. When shortly after Greeley's death he was being criticized throughout the country for the manner in which he had supported Greeley's nomination for the presidency, Dana spoke of the profession which none knew better than he and incidentally spoke of himself.

"A great deal of twaddle is uttered by some country newspapers just now over what they call personal journalism. They say that now that Mr. Bennett, Mr. Raymond, and Mr. Greeley are dead, the day for personal journalism is gone by and that impersonal journalism will take its place. That appears to mean a sort of journalism in which nobody will ask who is the editor of a paper or the writer of any class of article, and nobody will care.

"Whenever, in the newspaper profession, a man rises up who is original, strong, and bold enough to make his opinions a matter of consequence to the public, there will be personal journalism; and whenever newspapers are conducted only by commonplace individuals whose views are of no consequence to anybody, there will be nothing but impersonal journalism."^[5]

There was nothing erratic about Dana personally. The men who knew him not only adniired but loved him. He had none of Greeley's passion for reform and although he was perhaps a more profound student than Godkin he had rather a disdain for the seriousness with which Godkin and his associates viewed life. He was accused of not having a high moral outlook; he retaliated by expressing his abhorrence of sham.

It is a strange thing that this man who had such a genius for journalism should have arrived so late in life, but the answer probably is that he loved his books and loved culture more than he really loved success.

Dana's judgment of personal journalism was more than justified by the career of the men who succeeded the three great personal journalists, Greeley, Raymond and Bennett.

The younger Bennett, as he was called, has but recently died. It is interesting that he made his paper the organ—as far as there could be an organ—of the very people who had so publicly expressed their contempt for his father and the New York Herald. If the paper had a fatal defect as a journal it was this very catering to the vanity of snobocracy. It was the younger Bennett's own weakness. He cluttered the office of the Paris Herald with useless and impoverished nobility and in the desire to make a "gentleman's" paper he treated the news from an angle that frequently produced disproportions. His own vanity led him to the most Quixotic measures such as ordering the omission of the Russian Emperor's name from the paper because of some personal affront. The " personal column," on account of which he narrowly escaped being sent to prison, showed how far his sojourn in Paris had led him away from healthy American opinion.^[6]

The immediate successor of Raymond was his partner, George Jones, under whom the Times became a power, particularly in municipal affairs, when it was the instrument by which the corruption of W. M. Tweed was exposed. For a period it lost its influence, but later it came under the ownership of Adolph S. Ochs, by whom it has been developed as a conservative but enterprising journal, one of the most widely read in the country.

The success of Whitelaw Reid more than justified the statement of the editor of the Sun. Reid had hardly assumed control of the Tribune when he was offered in 1878 the appointment of Minister to Germany, an honor far greater than any that ever came within the grasp of Greeley, and an honor that he was wise enough to decline. It was repeated within a few years and again he declined. He afterward became a candidate for Vice-President of the United States, without one-tenth of the effort that Greeley made to obtain a nomination as Lieutenant-Governor of the State of New York. He was made Ambassador to France, he died Ambassador to Great Britain, and his body was brought home under escort of the battleships of two nations.

What Reid, Jones, Bennett, Jr., and Dana realized more than others of their day, and what the later comers, Pulitzer and Hearst, also recognized, was the fact that not so much the views of the editors as the news that the papers contained would sell papers, and all of them made their papers successful by fitting their publications to the spirit of the times. It is this understanding that has made Ochs, the present owner of the Times, the proprietor of possibly the most successful paper, financially, in the country, exclusive of the Chicago Tribune.

Credit has been given to Godkin of the Post and Dana of the Sun for their influence on the journalism of the country; it would be an injustice to Whitelaw Reid to fail to point out the credit due to him for the liberalizing influence which the Tribune had on the American press, both during the war, when he was managing editor under Greeley, and after he had become the chief owner. As did Bowles and the Springfield Republican, Reid set a standard for the politically independent paper and showed that it could not only live, but that it could lead. The Chicago Tribune, Cincinnati Commercial and the Louisville Courier Journal were papers that breathed the same spirit. Later, it is true, Reid made the Tribune the organ of the Republican party, but it was a chastened and refreshed Republican party and the independence he had shown in the time referred to had its effect on the growth of American independent journalism.

Of the personal journalism that Dana said was bound to arrive whenever the newspaper had back of it a strong figure, no greater exemplar could have been conceived than another journalist who rose contemporaneously with Reid, Henry Watterson of the Louisville Courier-Journal, the successor of George D. Prentice.

No journalist, no individual, in the country has done so much since the Civil War to bring about a better understanding between the North and the South.^[7] No one was better fitted for the task and he has for years been the "Well-Beloved" of the profession, endeared to many who opposed him politically. He was one of those ardent journalists who led the liberal movement in 1872 and he has since been a leader, and nearly always a liberal. His recently published reminiscences have shed new light on that interesting time. Watterson, Samuel Bowles of the Springfield Republican, Horace White of the Chicago Tribune and Murat Halstead of the Cincinnati Commercial were the men who ran the national convention in that year. With Carl Schurz they formed a combination to control the nominations. Whitelaw Reid was present as a representative of Horace Greeley and the Tribune, and when he heard of the "combine" he insisted that the Tribune should be admitted.

Watterson urged Reid's admission, on the ground that Greeley never would be considered as a candidate, and the seemingly ingenuous and very polite young man from New York was taken into camp. As a matter of fact, as he wrote in later years, Reid knew full well what he was doing; it later proved to be themselves and not Reid that had been taken in, for Greeley was nominated.

The combination took to itself much credit for the formation of the convention, although outside of the circle were many men of influence and power, men of the type of Alexander K. McClure of the Philadelphia Times, an ardent supporter and friend of Lincoln during the war, and one of the most insistent of the reformers who brought about the liberal movement.

Watterson is now eighty years of age. He is one of the few men living who knew the great men of the country before the Civil War; he is the only great editor who was friendly with the giants of that time. He has loved his profession, he has dignified it, it is as much indebted to him as he is to it. He speaks therefore of the mission of journalism with authority.

"Assuming journalism equally with medicine and law to be a profession," he writes, "it is the only one of the three in which versatility is not a disadvantage. Specialism at the bar or by the bedside leads to perfection and attains results. The great doctor is the great surgeon or the great prescriptionist—he cannot be great in both—and the great lawyer is rarely great, if ever, as counselor and advocate.

"The great editor is by no means the great writer, but he ought to be able to write and must be a judge of writing. The newspaper office is a little kingdom. The able editor needs to know and does know every range of it between the editorial room, the composing room and the pressroom. He must hold well in hand everybody and every function, having risen, as it were, step by step from the ground floor to the roof. He should be levelheaded yet impressionable; sympathetic yet self-possessed; able quickly to sift, detect and discriminate; of varied knowledge, experience and interest; the cackle of the adjacent barnyard the noise of the world to his eager mind and pliant ean Nothing too small for him to tackle, nothing too great, he should keep to the middle of the road and well in rear of the moving columns; loving his art—for such it is—for art's sake; getting his sufficiency, along with its independence, in the public approval and patronage, seeking never anything further for himself. Disinterestedness being the soul of successful journalism, unselfish devotion to the noble purpose in public and private life, he should say to preferment as to bribery, 'Get behind me, Satan.'

"Whitelaw Reid, to take a ready and conspicuous example, was a great journalist; but rather early in life he abandoned journalism for office and became a figure in politics and diplomacy so that, as in the case of Franklin, whose example and footsteps in the main he followed, he will be remembered rather as the ambassador than as the editor.

"More and more must these requirements be fulfilled by the aspiring journalist. As the world passes from the rule of force—force of prowess, force of habit, force of convention—to the rule of numbers, the daily journal is destined, if it survives as a power, to become the teacher—the very Bible of the people. The people are already beginning to distinguish between the wholesome and the meretricious in their newspapers. Newspaper owners likewise are beginning to realize the value of character. Instances might be cited where the public, discerning some sinister but unseen power behind its press, has slowly yet surely withdrawn its confidence and support. However impersonal it pretends to be, with whatever of mystery it affects to envelop itself, this public insists upon some visible presence. In many states the law requires it. Thus personal journalism cannot be escaped and whether the one-man power emanates from the counting room or the editorial room, as they are called, it must be clear and answerable, responsive to the common weal, and, above all, trustworthy."

1. Boynton, Journalism and Literature, 5.
2. O'Brien, Story of the Sun, 215.
3. Wilson, Life of Charles A. Dana, 427.
4. O'Brien, Story of the Sun.
5. New York Sun, December 6, 1872.
6. See appendix, Note G.
7. Had he lived, Henry W. Grady, of the Atlanta Constitution, would undoubtedly have been not only one of the great editors of the country but one of its leading statesmen.