History of Journalism in the United States/Chapter 4

by George Henry Payne

CHAPTER IV

PHILADELPHIA AND THE BRADFORDS

William Penn, the patron of the press—William Bradford arrival and first trouble with the government—His defence of right to print—Leaves colony for New York—Return ⟨of⟩ Andrew Bradford—His troubles with the government—First newspaper in Philadelphia—Benjamin Franklin ⟨and⟩ his enterprise.

In Boston, Philadelphia and New York, American journalism had its beginnings; strong, characteristic combative beginnings, with many clashes against the authority that sought to stifle it—authority that was in very short time to learn its power. In the development of the press and the growth of the power of public opinion, it was in these three cities that the struggle ⟨for⟩ democratic ideas was keenest, and here, too, the ⟨brains⟩ employed were the ablest. We also see that journalism can function at its best only where it is an active participant, if not the leader, in the fight for democratic ideas and popular rights. In later years the papers throughout the country came to be the great organs of public indignation and reform, achieving success for the causes espoused, and distinction and influence for the journalists who dominated them, but only as they were combative democratic and representative of the people.

"It would be perfectly reasonable to expect that ⟨it⟩ (journalism) would reach its highest development in ⟨the⟩ cities," says J. Allen Smith; "here modern democracy was born; here we find the physical and social conditions which facilitate interchange of thought and concerted action on the part of the people."^[1] In these cities, too, we find public opinion immediately afifecting the daily life of the people, with the result that the cities were more democratic than the country, where there were no newspapers.

It was in Philadelphia that the first printing press outside the New England colonies was established by William Bradford, a Quaker, who came to America with Penn's colonists in 1682. Through his father-in-law, also a Quaker, Bradford, when very young, met William Penn, and the Great Proprietary, when he was about to sail for Pennsylvania, arranged to take young Bradford with him, that the new colony might have the benefit of a printing press. This was a most fortunate situation for the young man; not only did he have the patronage of a great and wealthy proprietor, but Penn's own taste in literature and his attitude toward the press were those of a man of extreme intelligence and liberality.^[2] While it was in Boston that the first newspaper was started, and while New York was the scene of the first notable battle for the freedom of the press, it is to the Philadelphia of William Penn that one would naturally look for leadership in the struggle for a free press, and subsequent history shows how small and apparently unimportant incidents frequently contained within themselves the germ of great influence. It is true that on the Mayflower, with the Pilgrims, came Brewster, with the liberality toward the press that one might assume from his having been a publisher himself, but Pennsylvania's history can more than offset this by pointing to the care that was taken—when the Welcome brought hither William Penn and the men who were to settle the new colony—that a printer should be included among them, with the understanding that his was to be a free press and, above all, that he was to have the power to print the laws for the people.

Himself an author of a notable little book, The Fruits of Solitude,—interesting even at this day,—Penn showed, in times that were dark indeed, a foresight that makes both democracy and journalism in America his everlasting debtors. The great glory of Philadelphia in the history of journalism is the name of Franklin, but it is hard to conceive Franklin attracted to the place, had it not been for the spirit of liberality with which Penn had endowed his colony.

Bradford went back to London, after his visit with Penn, and in 1685 prepared to return here. He brought with him letters of introduction which stated that he was coming over to be a printer of Quakers' books and asked the Quakers of the colonies to patronize him, as they would thus be sure to get genuine Quaker books and not those containing heresy. The first book known to have been issued from his press is an almanac for the year 1686, printed in the latter part of 1685. Bradford, with the genius of his craft, clashed with the government in this publication, by referring to Penn as "Lord Penn." The Provincial Council summoned the man who had edited the almanac for Bradford, ordered the printer to blot out the words "Lord Penn "and warned him that he "was not to print anything but what shall have lycence' from ye Council." ^[3]

In the early part of 1688, at the instance of some of the women of Philadelphia who were opposed to the holding of a fair too far from the fashionable section of the city, Bradford printed a paper of protest which resulted in bringing his efforts once more to the notice of the Council; this time, however, it was the subscribers who were called before them.

Two years later the Governor and the people became involved in a dispute as to the extent of their respective rights, and one of the leaders of the colony, Joseph Growden, had Bradford print the charter. Party spirit ran high, and Bradford, scenting trouble, was careful enough to send out the work without his imprint. Once more he was in clash with the government, this time called by the Governor, is he says, to accuse himself. In the course of an ingenious evasion, he declared that one of the things for which William Penn had asked him to come to the colony was to print the laws, and the only reason why he had not printed them was that he had no particular orders to do so. Bradford held out for the right to print the laws, declaring that the charter had been printed in England, and showed a fine sense of his rights by refusing to answer questions until he was faced by his accuser.^[4]

In his next clash with the authorities Bradford, on trial for printing a seditious pamphlet for one of the warring factions, showed that he had a fundamental understanding of the rights of publishers. He conducted his own examination, and objected to two of the jurors on the ground that they had already formed an opinion. In the conduct of his case, he laid the ground-cloth for the many libel dramas that were to follow—notably in the case of Zenger—the successful issue of which meant so much to the colonies in their struggle for freedom.

Bradford was permitted to go free, but as he had been interfered with from the first publication he had attempted, he was heartily sick of the colony, especially as the Quakers themselves, in their church council, had decided that he ought to submit to them in addition to the censorship already established by the government. The council of the City of New York in 1693, acquainted with the conditions in Philadelphia, passed a resolution at the instigation of Governor Fletcher, declaring that "if a printer will come and settle in the City of New York for the printing of our Acts of Assembly and Publick Papers " they will give him forty pounds for his salary and he could "have the benefit of his printing besides what serves the Publick." Bradford promptly accepted.

This was the beginning in New York, a beginning mosi auspicious and interesting; reflecting great credit or Fletcher, who, though not the most liberal or understanding of governors, was nevertheless a good friend to Bradford, and saw to it, as long as he was in office, that the printer received those increases in salary and those little extra allowances which were so welcome, even to a pioneer in the cause of journalism and the free press.

From this time to the establishment, in 1725, of the New York Gazette, the first newspaper in New Yorli City, Bradford's life was uneventful, although fairly successful. He became a well-known vestryman of Trinit) Church and was a conspicuous person in the community of decidedly different mold from the complaining anc complacent Campbell of Boston. In 1709, with an eye tc the future, he sought to establish his son Andrew, whc had now come to man's estate, in Rhode Island, where the prospects of liberal treatment were good. The negotiations evidently came to naught, and in 1712 Andrew was established in Philadelphia, as his father's partner.

Here, temporarily, we must leave old Bradford, bu1 not without commenting on the ability and foresight ol the man. If the pioneers of journalism were in Boston it was Philadelphia and New York, but especially Philadelphia, that first produced the men who gave it vigor, force, reason and character.

Andrew Bradford was seven years of age when his father moved to New York, where, under his tutelage, the boy was versed in the trade that he was destined to follow. In 1712 he moved back to Philadelphia, and in 17 14, by arrangement with the assembly, he issued "Bradford's Law of 1714."

From 1712 until Samuel Keimer, Benjamin Franklin's first employer, appeared on the scene in 1723, Bradford was the only printer in Pennsylvania. In addition to his printing, he ran what would to-day be called a general store, where he sold, as he advertised, a variety of goods from "beaver hats "to "pickled sturgeon."

Although his father, from the time of his removal to New York and his occupation of the position of official printer to the end of his life, showed Tory leanings, Andrew Bradford was decidedly of the Whig faith. There is, however, consistency in the fact that it was the son, representing the spirit of free discussion, who started a newspaper in Philadelphia several years before the father started one in New York.

The American Weekly Mercury, the third paper in the colonies, made its first appearance on December 22, 1719. It resembled the New England journals, was 15 inches by 12½ inches in size, and appeared weekly, generally on Tuesday. Like the New England papers, it printed little of the local news, with which everybody was supposed to be conversant, but was made up principally of extracts from foreign journals.

Like his father in his younger days, Andrew Bradford was soon in a clash with the government, for in the issue of January 2, 1721, a paragraph appeared expressing the hope that the General Assembly "will find some eflfectual remedy to revive the dying credit of the Province and restore to us our former happy circumstances." For this implied criticism he was haled before the Provincial Council, where his defense was that the paragraph had been written and inserted without his knowledge by a journeyman.

In 1 72 1 Andrew Bradford eliminated the name of his former partner, John Cobson, and from that time on the imprint read "Philadelphia: printed and sold by Andrew Bradford at the Bible in Second Street and also by William Bradford in New York where advertisements are taken in," the fact of the same paper being sold in New York and Philadelphia tending to broaden the views and the outlook of the citizens of both cities.

It is interesting to note Bradford's "editorials," as showing that the editors, even in those early days when there were but three or four of them and they were far apart, were watching each other; and that while James Franklin was having his trouble with the Colonial Government in New England, Andrew Bradford, whom Benjamin Franklin calls illiterate, was defending the New England Courant and its publishers.

"My Lord Coke observes," commented Bradford, in the first newspaper defense of a free press, "that to punish first, and then inquire, the law abhors; but here Mr. Franklin has a severe sentence passed upon him, even to the taking away of his livelihood, without being called to make an answer. An indifferent person would judge by this vote against courts, that the Assembly of Massachusetts Bay is made up of oppressors and bigots, who make religion the only engine of destruction to the people, and the rather because the first letter in the Courant, of the 14th of January, which the assembly censures, so nat urally represents and expresses the hypocritical pretenders to religion. This much we could not forbear saying, out of compassion to the distressed people of the province, who must resign all pretences to sense and reason, and submit to the tyranny of priestcraft and hypocrisy."^[5]

Naturally, therefore, when young Benjamin Franklin ran away from Boston and arrived in New York, it was to William Bradford, a printer famous even to young Franklin, that he applied for work. Franklin tells us that Bradford advised him to go to Philadelphia, informing him that his son Andrew had lost his only workman. When he called at Andrew's house in Philadelphia, father Bradford had arrived in Philadelphia before him, having traveled on horseback. He introduced Franklin to his son, who received him civilly and gave him a breakfast. Bradford had at the time no need for a new employee, but told Franklin of another printer in town, one Keimer, who perhaps would employ him. If not, Franklin was told, he would be welcome to lodge at Bradford's house, and a little work would be found for him to do now and then until the situation bettered. This is Franklin's own statement; yet he does not hesitate to refer slightingly to both the son and the older man, who even went to the trouble of taking him to see the new printer, Keimer.

It was while he was in this same Keimer's office that Franklin came under the notice of the Governor of Pennsylvania, Sir William Keith, who took a fancy to him and proposed one day "over the Madeira "that the young man should set up a printing shop of his own. On the strength of Keith's promises Franklin went abroad to purchase supplies, but when he arrived in London found that Keith had no credit there. For eighteen months he worked in various printing-houses and, the vehture into commercial life having failed, went back to Philadelphia and worked for Keimer until 1728, when he and one of his associates, Hugh Meredith, set up a printing plant for themselves. He was hardly established in this when the idea of a newspaper of his own came to him. He was preparing to issue it when his former employer, Keimer, hearing of the project, anticipated them, and issued, in 1728, the first number of the Universal Instructor in All Arts and Sciences, or the Pennsylvania Gazette.

This publication, as might be expected from its origin and the ignorance with which Franklin endows Keimer, made little impression on the community. Keimer struggled along up to the twenty-seventh number of the paper, when there was a week's delay, which he later explained as being due to the fact that he had been "awak'd when fast asleep in Bed, about Eleven at Night, over-tir'd with the Labour of the Day, and taken away from my Dwelling, by a Writ and Summons, it being based and confidently given out, that I was that very Night about to run away, tho' there was not the least Colour or Ground for such a vile Report."

He was released, through the forbearance of his creditors, and struggled on until number 39, when, the circulation being reduced to ninety subscribers, the paper was sold for a small price to Franklin and his partner Meredith, and continued as the Pennsylvania Gazette, the second paper established in Pennsylvania.

Of Franklin, as editor and publisher of his own paper, it is to be said that, in this year, 1728, he came to his task—one might even say his mission—unusually well equipped. From the age of twelve, when he was apprentice to his brother James, to the time when he took hold of the Pennsylvania Gazette, he had been steadily gaining experience such as had fallen to the lot of no other man in the colonies. He tells us himself that he studied style by copying Addison and Steele when a mere child. With his brother, he had suffered because of the autocratic spirit of the times when James Franklin and his associates were making, in their small way, an interesting beginning in the battle for a free press.

He knew the Bradfords, William and Andrew, personally. He knew the personnel of the printers in the colonies as probably no other man did. He had had an interesting and intensive training in England for eighteen months, and the philosophical bent that he showed in the first essay written for his brother's paper, the New England Courant, was now to be given full sway, with a development that was to hold two continents in rapt admiration and a result that was to make his native country his everlasting debtor, for Franklin, the great editorial-political genius used the success that came to him to swell the current of influence that was making for liberty and democracy.

In the meantime the advent of Bradford the elder marked the beginning of truly historical developments in the colony of New York.

1. Spirit of American Government, 251.
2. Edward Armstrong, Address before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, November 8, 1851.
3. Minutes of Provincial Council, i, 115.
4. An account of this interview in Bradford's own handwriting now hangs in the Hall of the New York Historical Society.
5. Mercury, February 26, 1723.