Page:History of American Journalism.djvu/369

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for The Times and The Tribune during the year 1863 of the Civil War:


Expense


Tribune


Times


Editors and correspondence not war


$49,228 25,706 49,547 12,623 9,000


$45,660 14,040 45,741 7,817 4,730


\Var Correspondence


Compositors


Special telegraphing


Supplements, Tribune, 21, Times, 11



At just about the time that The Tribune would have reaped the benefits of its Franco-Prussian enterprise, it was over- shadowed by the activities of The New York Times in exposing the famous Tweed Ring.

EXPOSURE OF TWEED RING

After the death of Raymond, Lewis J. Jennings became the editor of The New York Times. How Boss Tweed and his Ring had secured control of New York at a loss to the city of mil- lions of dollars is a story, too long to be told in this book. Attacks on their graft appeared in The Times long before that paper had absolute proof of the facts, though of the frauds of the Ring there could be no question. On July 28, 1871, The Times came out with a special supplement in which it exposed the gigantic frauds of the Ring, and published the astounding bills of furniture dealers, carpenters, plasterers, and plumbers in other words, $9,789,482.16 had been signed away without ques- tion for repairs and furniture for the new Court-House, etc. This issue of The Times sold by hundreds of thousands. Even the Mayor of New York was forced to admit that the bills were perhaps exorbitant. But Tweed only asked the cynical question "What are you going to do about it?" The accounts of the swindle in The Times, aided by the cartoons of Nast in Harper's Weekly, so aroused the people that they overthrew the Tweed Ring and sent many of its members to jail. All of this is, of course, an old story, but it permitted The Times to say with Othello, to quote a quotation of the present editor of that paper, "I have done the State