and obtained bills of lading of all shipments out of St. Louis. He paid no attention to any save those of distilled liquors. The dis- crepancies between these bills of lading and the records furnished the internal revenue office gave him the material for his great exposure. After The St. Louis Democrat had once started the work, it was materially aided by many newspapers in other cities. Yet so powerful was the Ring that a congressional amendment in the matter of libel, called by the newspapers the "Press Gag Law," was passed. Just as the Sedition Law, men- tioned in an earlier chapter, aided in the defeat of the Federal Party, so the Press Gag Law undoubtedly had much to do with the Democratic victories which followed in 1874 in many of the States. Several men whom Grant had appointed to public office were involved in these whiskey scandals.
REVIVAL OF RELIGIOUS JOURNALISM
At the time of the relapse into bitter personal journalism, there was in the East a revival of religious journalism. Among the few daily newspapers with religious leanings started during this time was The Boston Daily News which began publication "every forenoon and afternoon" on July 19, 1869. Its editor, E. P. Marvin, asked his subscribers, on October 11, 1869, to wait a day for the marriage of The Boston Daily News with The Boston Daily Tribune, as the object of the union was to "increase the strength and permanency of the advocacy of the great moral questions of the day of which temperance is prominent."
With the issue of December 24, 1869, the Reverend E. D. Winslow, who had had practical experience with church week- lies, became associated with The Daily News. In 1870 The Boston Daily News boasted of being "a moral, religious daily." It called attention to the fact that it gave "all the news for a penny a day." In May, 1875, the Reverend Winslow bought The Boston Post, but in completing the transaction he made the "trifling" mistake of committing forgery, which was not dis- covered, however, until several months later. When the facts of the case were made public, Winslow fled to Holland and The News continued publication for a short time, but on February 11, 1876, it announced its last edition with that issue because the
