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Title: The Story of the Sun. New York, 1833-1918
Author: O'Brien, Frank M.
Language: English
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1833-1918 ***
[Illustration: THE FIRST HEAD-LINE OF THE NEW YORK SUN]
[Illustration: THE SECOND HEAD-LINE OF THE NEW YORK SUN]
[Illustration: THE STORY OF
The Sun]
[Illustration: BENJAMIN H. DAY, FOUNDER OF “THE SUN”]
THE STORY OF
The Sun.
[Illustration]
NEW YORK, 1833–1918
BY
FRANK M. O’BRIEN
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY EDWARD
PAGE MITCHELL, EDITOR OF “THE
SUN”--ILLUSTRATIONS AND FACSIMILES
NEW YORK: GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
_Copyright, 1918,
By George H. Doran Company_
_Copyright, 1917, 1918, The Frank A. Munsey Company_
_Copyright, 1918, The Sun Printing and Publishing Association_
_Printed in the United States of America_
TO
FRANK A. MUNSEY
AN INTRODUCTION
BY THE EDITOR OF THE SUN
It is truer, perhaps, of a newspaper than of most other complex things
in the world that the whole may be greater than the sum of all its
parts. In any daily paper worth a moment’s consideration the least
fancifully inclined observer will discern an individuality apart from
and in a degree independent of the dozens or hundreds or thousands of
personal values entering at a given time into the composite of its grey
pages.
This entity of the institution, as distinguished from the human beings
actually engaged in carrying it on, this fact of the newspaper’s
possession of a separate countenance, a spirit or soul differentiating
it from all others of its kind, is recognised either consciously or
unconsciously by both the more or less unimportant workers who help
to make it and by their silent partners who support it by buying and
reading it. Its loyal friends and intelligent critics outside the
establishment, the Old Subscriber and the Constant Reader, form the
habit of attributing to the newspaper, as to an individual, qualities
and powers beneficent or maleficent or merely foolish, according to
their mood or digestion. They credit it with traits of character quite
as distinct as belong to any man or woman of their acquaintance. They
personify it, moreover, without much knowledge, if any, of the people
directing and producing it; and, often and naturally, without any
particular concern about who and what these people may be.
On their own side, the makers of the paper are accustomed to
individualise it as vividly as a crew does the ship. They know better
than anybody else not only how far each personal factor, each element
of the composite, is modified and influenced in its workings by the
other personal factors associated in the production, but also the
extent to which all the personal units are influenced and modified
by something not listed in the office directory or visible upon the
payroll; something that was there before they came and will be there
after they go.
Of course, that which has given persistent idiosyncrasy to a newspaper
like the _Sun_, for example, is accumulated tradition. That which has
made the whole count for more than the sum total of its parts, in the
_Sun’s_ case as in the case of its esteemed contemporaries, is the
heritage of method and expedient, the increment of standardised skill
and localised imagination contributed through many years to the fund of
the paper by the forgotten worker as well as by the remembered.
The manner of growth of the great newspaper’s well-defined and
continuous character, distinguishing it from all the rest of the
offspring of the printing press, a development sometimes not radically
affected by changes of personnel, of ownership, of exterior conditions
and fashions set by the popular taste, is a subject over which
journalistic metaphysics might easily exert itself to the verge of
boredom. Fortunately there has been found a much better way to deal
with the attractive theme.
The _Sun_ is eighty-five years old as this book goes to press. In
telling its intimate story, from the September Tuesday which saw the
beginning of Mr. Day’s intrepid and epochal experiment, throughout the
days of the Beaches, of Dana, of Laffan, and of Reick to the time
of Mr. Munsey’s purchase of the property in the summer of 1916, Mr.
O’Brien has done what has never been undertaken before, so far as is
known to the writer of this introduction, for any newspaper with a
career of considerable span.
There have been general histories of Journalism, presenting casually
the main facts of evolution and progress in the special instance.
There have been satisfactory narratives of journalistic episodes,
reasonably accurate accounts of certain aspects or dynastic periods of
newspaper experience, excellent portrait biographies or autobiographies
of journalists of genius and high achievement, with the eminent man
usually in strong light in the foreground and his newspaper seldom
nearer than the middle distance. But here, probably for the first time
in literature of this sort, we have a real biography of a newspaper
itself, covering the whole range of its existence, exhibiting every
function of its organism, illustrating every quality that has been
conspicuous in the successive stages of its growth. The _Sun_ is the
hero of Mr. O’Brien’s “Story of the _Sun_.” The human participants
figure in their incidental relation to the main thread of its life
and activities. They do their parts, big or little, as they pass in
interesting procession. When they have done their parts they disappear,
as in real life, and the story goes on, just as the _Sun_ has gone on,
without them except as they may have left their personal impress on the
newspaper’s structure or its superficial decoration.
During no small part of its four score and five years of intelligent
interest in the world’s thoughts and doings it has been the _Sun’s_
fortune to be regarded as in a somewhat exceptional sense the newspaper
man’s newspaper. If in truth it has merited in any degree this
peculiar distinction in the eyes of its professional brethren it
must have been by reason of originality of initiative and soundness
of method; perhaps by a chronic indifference to those ancient
conventions of news importance or of editorial phraseology which, when
systematically observed, are apt to result in a pale, dull, or even
stupid uniformity of product. Mr. Dana wrote more than half a century
ago to one of his associates, “Your articles have stirred up the
animals, which you as well as I recognise as one of the great ends of
life.” Sometimes he borrowed Titania’s wand; sometimes he used a red
hot poker. Not only in that great editor’s time but also in the time
of his predecessors and successors the _Sun_ has held it to be a duty
and a joy to assist to the best of its ability in the discouragement of
anything like lethargy in the menagerie. Perhaps, again, that was one
of the things that helped to make it the newspaper man’s newspaper.
However this may be, it seems certain that to the students of the
theory and practice of journalism, now happily so numerous in the land,
the chronicler of one highly individual newspaper’s deeds and ways is
affording an object lesson of practical value, a textbook of technical
usefulness, as well as a store of authoritative history, entertaining
anecdote, and suggestive professional information. And a much wider
audience than is made up of newspaper workers present or to come will
find that the story of a newspaper which Mr. O’Brien has told with wit
and knowledge in the pages that follow becomes naturally and inevitably
a swift and charming picture of the town in which that newspaper is
published throughout the period of its service to that town--the most
interesting period in the existence of the most interesting city of the
world.
It is a fine thing for the _Sun_, by all who have worked for it in
its own spirit beloved, I believe, like a creature of flesh and blood
and living intelligence and human virtues and failings, that through
Mr. Munsey’s wish it should have found in a son of its own schooling a
biographer and interpreter so sympathetically responsive to its best
traditions.
EDWARD P. MITCHELL.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
SUNRISE AT 222 WILLIAM STREET
PAGE
_Benjamin H. Day, with No Capital Except Youth and Courage,
Establishes the First Permanent Penny Newspaper.--The
Curious First Number Entirely His Own Work_ 21
CHAPTER II
THE FIELD OF THE LITTLE “SUN”
_A Very Small Metropolis Which Day and His Partner, Wisner,
Awoke by Printing Small Human Pieces About Small Human
Beings and Having Boys Cry the Paper_ 31
CHAPTER III
RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE’S MOON HOAX
_A Magnificent Fake Which Deceived Two Continents, Brought to
“The Sun” the Largest Circulation in the World and, in
Poe’s Opinion, Established Penny Papers_ 64
CHAPTER IV
DAY FINDS A RIVAL IN BENNETT
_The Success of “The Sun” Leads to the Founding of The
“Herald.”--Enterprises and Quarrels of a Furious Young
Journalism.--The Picturesque Webb.--Maria Monk_ 103
CHAPTER V
NEW YORK LIFE IN THE THIRTIES
_A Sprightly City Which Daily Bought Thirty Thousand copies of
“The Sun.”--The Rush to Start Penny Papers.--Day Sells “The
Sun” for Forty Thousand Dollars_ 121
CHAPTER VI
MOSES Y. BEACH’S ERA OF HUSTLE
_“The Sun” Uses Albany Steamboats, Horse Expresses, Trotting
Teams, Pigeons, and the Telegraph to Get News.--Poe’s
Famous Balloon Hoax and the Case of Mary Rodgers_ 139
CHAPTER VII
“THE SUN” IN THE MEXICAN WAR
_Moses Y. Beach as an Emissary of President Polk.--The
Associated Press Founded in the Office of “The Sun.”--Ben
Day’s Brother-in-Law Retires with a Small Fortune_ 164
CHAPTER VIII
“THE SUN” DURING THE CIVIL WAR
_One of the Few Entirely Loyal Newspapers of New York.--Its
Brief Ownership by a Religious Coterie.--It Returns to the
Possession of M. S. Beach, Who Sells It to Dana_ 172
CHAPTER IX
THE EARLIER CAREER OF DANA
_His Life at Brook Farm and His Tribune Experience.--His Break
with Greeley, His Civil War Services and His Chicago
Disappointment.--His Purchase of “The Sun”_ 202
CHAPTER X
DANA: HIS “SUN” AND ITS CITY
_The Period of the Great Personal Journalists.--Dana’s
Avoidance of Rules and Musty Newspaper Conventions.--His
Choice of Men and His Broad Definition of News_ 233
CHAPTER XI
DANA, AS MITCHELL SAW HIM
_A Picture of the Room Where One Man Ruled for Thirty
Years.--The Democratic Ways of a Newspaper Autocrat.--W. O.
Bartlett, Pike, and His Other Early Associates_ 247
CHAPTER XII
DANA’S FIRST BIG NEWS MEN
_Amos J. Cummings, Dr. Wood, and John B. Bogart.--The Lively
Days of Tweedism.--Elihu Root as a Dramatic Critic.--The
Birth and Popularity of “The Sun’s” Cat_ 262
CHAPTER XIII
DANA’S FAMOUS RIVALS PASS
_The Deaths of Raymond, Bennett, and Greeley Leave Him the
Dominant Figure of the American Newspaper Field.--Dana’s
Dream of a Paper Without Advertisements_ 293
CHAPTER XIV
“THE SUN” AND THE GRANT SCANDALS
_Dana’s Relentless Fight Against the Whisky Ring, the Crédit
Mobilier, “Addition, Division, and Silence,” the Safe
Burglary Conspiracy and the Boss Shepherd Scandal_ 304
CHAPTER XV
“THE SUN” AND “HUMAN INTEREST”
_Something About Everything, for Everybody.--A Wonderful
Four-Page Paper.--A Comparison of the Styles of “Sun”
Reporters in Three Periods Twenty Years Apart_ 313
CHAPTER XVI
“SUN” REPORTERS AND THEIR WORK
_Cummings, Ralph, W. J. Chamberlin, Brisbane, Riggs, Dieuaide,
Spears, O. K. Davis, Irwin, Adams, Denison, Wood, O’Malley,
Hill, Cronyn.--Spanish War Work_ 328
CHAPTER XVII
SOME GENIUS IN AN OLD ROOM
_Lord, Managing Editor for Thirty-Two Years.--Clarke, Magician
of the Copy Desk.--Ethics, Fair Play and Democracy.--“The
Evening Sun” and Those Who Make It_ 369
CHAPTER XVIII
THE FINEST SIDE OF “THE SUN”
_Literary Associations of an Editorial Department That
Has Encouraged and Attracted Men of Imagination and
Talent.--Mitchell, Hazeltine, Church, and Their Colleagues_ 402
CHAPTER XIX
“THE SUN” AND YELLOW JOURNALISM
_The Coming and Going of a Newspaper Disease.--Dana’s Attitude
Toward President Cleveland.--Dana’s Death.--Ownerships of
Paul Dana, Laffan, Reick, and Munsey_ 413
_Bibliography_ 435
_Chronology_ 437
_Index_ 439
ILLUSTRATIONS
BENJAMIN H. DAY, FOUNDER OF “THE SUN” _Frontispiece_
PAGE
BENJAMIN H. DAY, A BUST 22
THE FIRST ISSUE OF “THE SUN” 28
THE FIRST HOME OF “THE SUN” 34
THE SECOND HOME OF “THE SUN” 34
BARNEY WILLIAMS, THE FIRST NEWSBOY 50
RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE, AUTHOR OF THE MOON HOAX 68
THE FIRST INSTALMENT OF THE MOON HOAX 96
A MOON SCENE, FROM LOCKE’S GREAT DECEPTION 96
MOSES YALE BEACH, SECOND OWNER OF “THE SUN” 124
AN EXTRA OF “THE SUN” 136
THE THIRD HOME OF “THE SUN” 136
MOSES SPERRY BEACH 166
ALFRED ELY BEACH 170
CHARLES A. DANA AT THIRTY-EIGHT 204
MR. DANA AT FIFTY 224
THE FIRST NUMBER OF “THE SUN” UNDER DANA 236
THE HOME OF “THE SUN” FROM 1868 TO 1915 236
MR. DANA IN HIS OFFICE 248
JOSEPH PULITZER 258
ELIHU ROOT 258
JUDGE WILLARD BARTLETT 258
MR. DANA AT SEVENTY 270
AMOS JAY CUMMINGS 280
DANIEL F. KELLOGG 290
AMOS B. STILLMAN 290
JOHN B. BOGART 290
JAMES GORDON BENNETT, SR. 300
HORACE GREELEY 300
HENRY J. RAYMOND 300
JULIAN RALPH 316
ARTHUR BRISBANE 330
EDWARD G. RIGGS 350
CHESTER SANDERS LORD 370
SELAH MERRILL CLARKE 380
SAMUEL A. WOOD 390
OSCAR KING DAVIS 390
THOMAS M. DIEUAIDE 390
SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS 390
WILL IRWIN 398
FRANK WARD O’MALLEY 398
EDWIN C. HILL 398
PAUL DANA 404
WILLIAM M. LAFFAN 410
WILLIAM C. REICK 416
FRANK A. MUNSEY 422
EDWARD PAGE MITCHELL 430
THE STORY OF “THE SUN”
CHAPTER I
SUNRISE AT 222 WILLIAM STREET
_Benjamin H. Day, with No Capital Except Youth and Courage,
Establishes the First Permanent Penny Newspaper.--The Curious
First Number Entirely His Own Work._
In the early thirties of last century the only newspapers in the city
of New York were six-cent journals whose reading-matter was adapted to
the politics of men, and whose only appeal to women was their size,
perfectly suited to deep pantry-shelves.
Dave Ramsey, a compositor on one of these sixpennies, the _Journal
of Commerce_, had an obsession. It was that a penny paper, to be
called the _Sun_, would be a success in a city full of persons whose
interest was in humanity in general, rather than in politics, and whose
pantry-shelves were of negligible width. Why his mind fastened on the
_Sun_ as the name of this child of his vision is not known; perhaps it
was because there was a daily in London bearing that title. It was a
short name, easily written, easily spoken, easily remembered.
Benjamin H. Day, another printer, worked beside Dave Ramsey in 1830.
Ramsey reiterated his idea to his neighbour so often that Day came to
believe in it, although it is doubtful whether he had the great faith
that possessed Ramsey. Now that due credit has been given to Ramsey for
the idea of the penny _Sun_, he passes out of the record, for he never
attempted to put his project into execution.
Nor was Day’s enthusiasm for a penny _Sun_ so big that he plunged into
it at once. He was a business man rather than a visionary. With the
savings from his wages as a compositor he went into the job-printing
business in a small way. He still met his old chums and still talked of
the _Sun_, but it is likely that he never would have come to start it
if it had not been for the cholera.
There was an epidemic of this plague in New York in 1832. It killed
more than thirty-five hundred people in that year, and added to the
depression of business already caused by financial disturbances and a
wretched banking system. The job-printing trade suffered with other
industries, and Day decided that he needed a newspaper--not to reform,
not to uplift, not to arouse, but to push the printing business of
Benjamin H. Day. Incidentally he might add lustre to the fame of the
President, Andrew Jackson, or uphold the hands of the mayor of New
York, Gideon Lee; but his prime purpose was to get the work of printing
handbills for John Smith, the grocer, or letter-heads for Richard
Robinson, the dealer in hay. Incidentally he might become rich and
powerful, but for the time being he needed work at his trade.
Ben Day was only twenty-three years old. He was the son of Henry Day, a
hatter of West Springfield, Massachusetts, and Mary Ely Day; and sixth
in descent from his first American ancestor, Robert Day. Shortly after
the establishment of the Springfield _Republican_ by Samuel Bowles,
in 1824, young Day went into the office of that paper, then a weekly,
to learn the printer’s trade. That was two years before the birth of
the second and greater Samuel Bowles, who was later to make the
_Republican_, as a daily, one of the greatest of American newspapers.
[Illustration:
BENJAMIN H. DAY
A Bust in the Possession of Mrs. Florence A. Snyder, Summit, N. J.
]
Day learned well his trade from Sam Bowles. When he was twenty, and a
first-class compositor, he went to New York, and worked at the case in
the offices of the _Evening Post_ and the _Commercial Advertiser_. He
married, when he was twenty-one, Miss Eveline Shepard. At the time of
the _Sun’s_ founding Mr. Day lived, with his wife and their infant son,
Henry, at 75 Duane Street, only a few blocks from the newspaper offices.
Day was a good-looking young man with a round, calm, resolute face. He
possessed health, industry, and character. Also he had courage, for
a man with a family was taking no small risk in launching, without
capital, a paper to be sold at one cent.
The idea of a penny paper was not new. In Philadelphia, the _Cent_
had had a brief, inglorious existence. In Boston, the _Bostonian_ had
failed to attract the cultured readers of the modern Athens. Eight
months before Day’s hour arrived the _Morning Post_ had braved it in
New York, selling first at two cents and later at one cent, but even
with Horace Greeley as one of the founders it lasted only three weeks.
When Ben Day sounded his friends, particularly the printers, as to
their opinion of his project, they cited the doleful fate of the
other penny journals. He drew, or had designed, a head-line for
the _Sun_ that was to be, and took it about to his cronies. A. S.
Abell, a printer on the _Mercantile Advertiser_, poked the most fun
at him. A penny paper, indeed! But this same Abell lived to stop
scoffing, to found another _Sun_--this one in Baltimore--and to buy a
half-million-dollar estate out of the profits of it. He was the second
beneficiary of the penny _Sun_ idea.
William M. Swain, another journeyman printer, also made light of
Day’s ambition. He lived to be Day’s foreman, and later to own the
Philadelphia _Public Ledger_. He told Day that the penny _Sun_ would
ruin him. As Day had not much enthusiasm at the outset, surely his
friends did not add to it, unless by kindling his stubbornness.
As for capital, he had none at all, in the money sense. He did have a
printing-press, hardly improved from the machine of Benjamin Franklin’s
day, some job-paper, and plenty of type. The press would throw off
two hundred impressions an hour at full speed, man power. He hired a
room, twelve by sixteen feet, in the building at 222 William Street.
That building was still there, in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge
approach, when the _Sun_ celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 1883;
but a modern six-story envelope factory is on the site to-day.
There is no question as to the general authorship of the first
paper. Day was proprietor, publisher, editor, chief pressman, and
mailing-clerk. He was not a lazy man. He stayed up all the night before
that fateful Tuesday, September 3, 1833, setting with his own hands
some advertisements that were regularly appearing in the six-cent
papers, for he wanted to make a show of prosperity.
He also wrote, or clipped from some out-of-town newspaper, a poem that
would fill nearly a column. He rewrote news items from the West and
South--some of them not more than a month old. As for the snappy local
news of the day, he bought, in the small hours of that Tuesday morning,
a copy of the _Courier and Enquirer_, the livest of the six-cent
papers, took it to the single room in William Street, clipped out or
rewrote the police-court items, and set them up himself. A boy, whose
name is unknown to fame, assisted him at devil’s work. A journeyman
printer, Parmlee, helped with the press when the last quoin had been
made tight in the fourth and last of the little pages.
The sun was well up in the sky before its namesake of New York
came slowly, hesitatingly, almost sadly, up over the horizon of
journalism--never to set! In the years to follow, the _Sun_ was to have
changes in ownership, in policy, in size, and in style, but no week-day
was to come when it could not shine. Of all the morning newspapers
printed in New York on that 3rd of September, 1833, there is only one
other--the _Journal of Commerce_--left.
But young Mr. Day, wiping the ink from his hands at noon, and waiting
in doubt to see whether the public would buy the thousand _Suns_ he had
printed, could not foresee this. Neither could he know that, by this
humble effort to exalt his printing business, he had driven a knife
into the sclerotic heart of ancient journalism. The sixpenny papers
were to laugh at this tiny intruder--to laugh and laugh, and to die.
The size of the first _Sun_ was eleven and one-quarter by eight inches,
not a great deal bigger than a sheet of commercial letter paper, and
considerably less than one-quarter the size of a page of the _Sun_ of
to-day. Compared with the first _Sun_, the present newspaper is about
sixteen times larger. The type was a good, plain face of agate, with
some verse on the last page in nonpareil.
An almost perfect reprint of the first _Sun_ was issued as a supplement
to the paper on its twentieth birthday, in 1853, and again--to the
number of about one hundred and sixty thousand copies--on its fiftieth
birthday, in 1883. Many of the persons who treasure the replicas of
1883 believe them to be original first numbers, as they were not
labelled “Presented gratuitously to the subscribers of the _Sun_,” as
was the issue of 1853. Hardly a month passes by but the _Sun_ receives
one of them from some proud owner. It is easy, however, to tell the
reprint from the original, for Mr. Day in his haste committed an error
at the masthead of the editorial or second page of the first number.
The date-line there reads “September 3, 1832,” while in the reprints
it is “September 3, 1833,” as it should have been, but wasn’t, in the
original. And there are minor typographical differences, invisible to
the layman.
Of the thousand, or fewer, copies of the first _Sun_, only five are
known to exist--one in the bound file of the _Sun’s_ first year, held
jealously in the _Sun’s_ safe; one in the private library of the editor
of the _Sun_, Edward Page Mitchell; one in the Public Library at Fifth
Avenue and Forty-second Street, New York; and two in the library of the
American Type Founders Company, Jersey City.
There were three columns on each of the four pages. At the top of the
first column on the front page was a modest announcement of the _Sun’s_
ambitions:
The object of this paper is to lay before the public, at a
price within the means of every one, ALL THE NEWS OF THE
DAY, and at the same time afford an advantageous medium for
advertising.
It was added that the subscription in advance was three dollars a year,
and that yearly advertisers were to be accommodated with ten lines
every day for thirty dollars per annum--ten cents a day, or one cent a
line. That was the old fashion of advertising. The friendly merchant
bought thirty dollars’ worth of space, say in December, and inserted an
advertisement of his fur coats or snow-shovels. The same advertisement
might be in the paper the following July, for the newspapers made no
effort to coordinate the needs of the seller and the buyer. So long as
the merchant kept his name regularly in print, he felt that was enough.
The leading article on the first page was a semi-humorous story about
an Irish captain and his duels. It was flanked by a piece of reprint
concerning microscopic carved toys. There was a paragraph about a
Vermont boy so addicted to whistling that he fell ill of it. Mr. Day’s
apprentice may have needed this warning.
The front-page advertising, culled from other newspapers and printed
for effect, consisted of the notices of steamship sailings. In one of
these Commodore Vanderbilt offered to carry passengers from New York
to Hartford, by daylight, for one dollar, on his splendid low-pressure
steamboat Water Witch. Cornelius Vanderbilt was then thirty-nine years
old, and had made the boat line between New York and New Brunswick, New
Jersey, pay him forty thousand dollars a year. When the _Sun_ started,
the commodore was at the height of his activity, and he stuck to the
water for thirty years afterward, until he had accumulated something
like forty million dollars.
E. K. Collins had not yet established his famous Dramatic line of
clipper-ships between New York and Liverpool, but he advertised the
“very fast sailing coppered ship Nashville for New Orleans.” He was
only thirty then.
Cooks were advertised for by private families living in Broadway, near
Canal Street--pretty far up-town to live at that day--and in Temple
Street, near Liberty, pretty far down-town now.
On the second page was a bit of real news, the melancholy suicide of
a young Bostonian of “engaging manners and amiable disposition,” in
Webb’s Congress Hall, a hotel. There were also two local anecdotes; a
paragraph to the effect that “the city is nearly full of strangers
from all parts of this country and Europe”; nine police-court items,
nearly all concerning trivial assaults; news of murders committed in
Florida, at Easton, Pennsylvania, and at Columbus, Ohio; a report of an
earthquake at Charlottesville, Virginia, and a few lines of stray news
from Mexico.
The third page had the arrivals and clearances at the port of New
York, a joke about the cholera in New Orleans, a line to say that the
same disease had appeared in the City of Mexico, an item about an
insurrection in the Ohio penitentiary, a marriage announcement, a death
notice, some ship and auction advertisements, and the offer of a reward
of one thousand dollars for the recovery of thirteen thousand six
hundred dollars stolen from the mail stage between Boston and Lynn and
the arrest of the thieves.
The last page carried a poem, “A Noon Scene,” but the atmosphere was of
the Elysian Fields over in Hoboken rather than of midday in the city.
When Day scissored it, probably he did so with the idea that it would
fill a column. Another good filler was the bank-note table, copied from
a six-cent contemporary. The quotations indicated that not much of the
bank currency of the day was accepted at par.
The rest of the page was filled with borrowed advertising. The Globe
Insurance Company, of which John Jacob Astor was a director, announced
that it had a capital of a million dollars. The North River Insurance
Company, whose directorate included William B. Astor, declared its
willingness to insure against fire and against “loss or damage by
inland navigation.” At that time the boilers of river steamboats had an
unpleasant trick of blowing up; hence Commodore Vanderbilt’s mention
of the low pressure of the Water Witch. John A. Dix, then Secretary
of State of the State of New York, and later to be the hero of the
“shoot him on the spot” order, advertised an election. Castleton House
Academy, on Staten Island, offered to teach and board young gentlemen
at twenty-five dollars a quarter.
[Illustration: THE FIRST ISSUE OF “THE SUN”]
Such was the first _Sun_. Part of it was stale news, rewritten. Part
was borrowed advertising. It is doubtful whether even the police-court
items were original, although they were the most human things in
the issue, the most likely to appeal to the readers whom Day hoped
to reach--people to whom the purchase of a paper at six cents was
impossible, and to whom windy, monotonous political discussions were a
bore.
In those early thirties, daily journalism had not advanced very far.
Men were willing, but means and methods were weak. The first English
daily was the _Courrant_, issued in 1702. The _Orange Postman_, put out
the following year, was the first penny paper. The London _Times_ was
not started until 1785. It was the first English paper to use a steam
press, as the _Sun_ was the first American paper.
The first American daily was the _Pennsylvania Packet_, called later
the _General Advertiser_, begun in Philadelphia in 1784. It died in
1837. Of the existing New York papers only the _Globe_ dates back to
the eighteenth century, having been founded in 1797 as the _Commercial
Advertiser_. Next to it in age is the _Evening Post_, started in 1801.
The weakness of the early dailies was largely due to the fact that
their publishers looked almost entirely to advertising for the support
of the papers. On the other hand, the editors were politicians or
highbrows who thought more of a speech by Lord Piccadilly on empire
than of a good street tragedy; more of an essay by Lady Geraldine Glue
than of a first-class report of a kidnapping.
Another great obstacle to success--one for which neither editor
nor publisher was responsible--was the lack of facilities for the
transmission of news. Fulton launched the Clermont twenty-six years
before Day launched the _Sun_, but even in Day’s time steamships
were nothing to brag of, and the first of them was yet to cross the
Atlantic. When the _Sun_ was born, the most important railroad in
America was thirty-four miles long, from Bordentown to South Amboy,
New Jersey. There was no telegraph, and the mails were of pre-historic
slowness.
It was hard to get out a successful daily newspaper without daily
news. A weekly would have sufficed for the information that came in,
by sailing ship and stage, from Europe and Washington and Boston. Ben
Day was the first man to reconcile himself to an almost impossible
situation. He did so by the simple method of using what news was
nearest at hand--the incidental happenings of New York life. In this
way he solved his own problem and the people’s, for they found that the
local items in the _Sun_ were just what they wanted, while the price of
the paper suited them well.
CHAPTER II
THE FIELD OF THE LITTLE “SUN”
_A Very Small Metropolis Which Day and His Partner, Wisner, Awoke
by Printing Small Human Pieces About Small Human Beings and
Having Boys Cry the Paper._
How far could the little _Sun_ hope to cast its beam in a stodgy if not
naughty world? The circulation of all the dailies in New York at the
time was less than thirty thousand. The seven morning and four evening
papers, all sold at six cents a copy, shared the field thus:
MORNING PAPERS
_Morning Courier and New York Enquirer_ 4,500
_Democratic Chronicle_ 4,000
New York _Standard_ 2,400
New York _Journal of Commerce_ 2,300
New York _Gazette and General Advertiser_ 1,500
New York _Daily Advertiser_ 1,400
_Mercantile Advertiser and New York Advocate_ 1,200
EVENING PAPERS
_Evening Post_ 3,000
_Evening Star_ 2,500
New York _Commercial Advertiser_ 2,100
New York _American_ 1,600
-----
Total 26,500
New York was the American metropolis, but it was of about the present
size of Indianapolis or Seattle. Of its quarter of a million
population, only eight or ten thousand lived above Twenty-third Street.
Washington Square, now the residence district farthest down-town, had
just been adopted as a park; before that it had been the Potter’s
Field. In 1833 rich New Yorkers were putting up some fine residences
there--of which a good many still stand. Sixth Street had had its name
changed to Waverley Place in honor of Walter Scott, recently dead, the
literary king of the day.
Wall Street was already the financial centre, with its Merchants’
Exchange, banks, brokers, and insurance companies. Canal Street
was pretty well filled with retail stores. Third Avenue had been
macadamized from the Bowery to Harlem. The down-town streets were
paved, and some were lighted with gas at seven dollars a thousand cubic
feet.
Columbia College, in the square bounded by Murray, Barclay, Church, and
Chapel Streets, had a hundred students; now it has more than a hundred
hundred. James Kent was professor of law in the Columbia of that day,
and Charles Anthon was professor of Greek and Latin. A rival seat of
learning, the University of the City of New York, chartered two years
earlier, was temporarily housed at 12 Chambers Street, with a certain
Samuel F. B. Morse as professor of sculpture and painting. There
were twelve schools, harbouring six thousand pupils, whose welfare
was guarded by the Public School Society of New York, Lindley Murray
secretary. The National Academy of Design, incorporated five years
before, guided the budding artist in Clinton Hall, and Mr. Morse was
its president, while it had for its professor of mythology one William
Cullen Bryant.
Albert Gallatin was president of the National Bank, at 13 Wall Street.
Often at the end of his day’s work he would walk around to the
small shop in William Street where his young friend Delmonico, the
confectioner, was trying to interest the gourmets of the city in his
French cooking. Gideon Lee, besides being mayor, was president of
the Leather Manufacturers’ Bank at 334 Pearl Street. He was the last
mayor of New York to be appointed by the common council, for Dix’s
advertisement in the first _Sun_ called an election by which the people
of the city gained the right to elect a mayor by popular vote.
A list of the solid citizens of the New York of that year would
include Peter Schermerhorn, Nicholas Fish, Robert Lenox, Sheppard
Knapp, Samuel Swartwout, Henry Beekman, Henry Delafield, John Mason,
William Paulding, David S. Kennedy, Jacob Lorillard, David Lydig,
Seth Grosvenor, Elisha Riggs, John Delafield, Peter A. Jay, C. V. S.
Roosevelt, Robert Ray, Preserved Fish, Morris Ketchum, Rufus Prime,
Philip Hone, William Vail, Gilbert Coutant, and Mortimer Livingston.
These men and their fellows ran the banks and the big business of
that day. They read the six-cent papers, mostly those which warned
the public that Andrew Jackson was driving the country to the devil.
It would be years before the _Sun_ would bring the light of common,
everyday things into their dignified lives--if it ever did so. Day,
the printer, did not look to them to read his paper, although he hoped
for some small part of their advertising. It is likely that one of the
Gouverneurs--Samuel L.--read the early _Sun_, but he was postmaster,
and it was his duty to examine new and therefore suspicionable
publications.
Incidentally, Postmaster Gouverneur had one clerk to sort all the mail
that came into the city from the rest of the world. It was a small
New York upon which the timid _Sun_ cast its still smaller beams. The
mass of the people had not been interested in newspapers, because the
newspapers brought nothing into their lives but the drone of American
and foreign politics. A majority of them were in sympathy with Tammany
Hall, particularly since 1821, when the property qualification was
removed from the franchise through Democratic effort.
New York had literary publications other than the six-cent papers. The
_Knickerbocker Magazine_ was founded in January of 1833, with Charles
Hoffman, assistant editor of the _American Magazine_, as editor.
Among the contributors engaged were William Cullen Bryant and James
K. Paulding. The subscription-list, it was proudly announced, had
no fewer than eight hundred names on it. The _Mechanics’ Magazine_,
the _Sporting Magazine_, the _American Ploughboy_, the _Journal of
Public Morals_, and the _Youth’s Temperance Lecturer_ were among the
periodicals that contended for public favour.
Bryant was a busy man, for he was the chief editor of the _Evening
Post_ as well as a magazine contributor and a teacher. Fame had come to
him early, for “Thanatopsis” was published when he was twenty-three,
and “To a Water-fowl” appeared a year later, in 1818. Now, in his
thirties, he was no longer the delicate youth, the dreamy poet. One
April day in 1831 Bryant and William L. Stone, one of the editors of
the _Commercial Advertiser_, had a rare fight in front of the City
Hall, the poet beginning it with a cowskin whip swung at Stone’s head,
and the spectators ending it after Stone had seized the whip. These two
were editors of sixpenny “respectables.”
[Illustration:
THE FIRST HOME OF “THE SUN,” 222 WILLIAM STREET
(_Under the Arrow_)
]
[Illustration:
THE SECOND HOME OF “THE SUN”
Nassau Street, from Frankfort to Spruce, in the Early Forties.
“The Sun’s” Second Home Is Shown at the Right End of the Block.
The Tammany Hall Building Became “The Sun’s” Fourth Home in
1868.
]
Irving and Cooper, Bryant and Halleck, Nathaniel P. Willis and George
P. Morris were the largest figures of intellectual New York. In 1833
Irving returned from Europe after a visit that had lasted seventeen
years. He was then fifty, and had written his best books. Cooper,
half a dozen years younger, had long since basked in the glory that
came to him with the publication of “The Spy,” “The Pilot,” and “The
Last of the Mohicans.” He and Irving were guests at every cultured
function.
Prescott was finishing his first work, “The History of Ferdinand and
Isabella.” Bancroft was beginning his “History of the United States.”
George Ticknor had written his “Life of Lafayette.” Hawthorne had
published only “Fanshawe” and some of the “Twice Told Tales.” Poe was
struggling along in Baltimore. Holmes, a medical student, had written a
few poems. Dr. John William Draper, later to write his great “History
of the Intellectual Development of Europe,” arrived from Liverpool that
year to make New York his home.
Longfellow was professor of modern languages at Bowdoin, and unknown to
fame as a poet. Whittier had written “Legends of New England” and “Moll
Pitcher.” Emerson was in England. Richard Henry Dana and Motley were at
Harvard. Thoreau was helping his father to make lead-pencils. Parkman,
Lowell, and Herman Melville were schoolboys.
Away off in Buffalo was a boy of fourteen who clerked in his uncle’s
general store by day, selling steel traps to Seneca braves, and by
night read Latin, Greek, poetry, history, and the speeches of Andrew
Jackson. His name was Charles Anderson Dana.
The leading newspaperman of the day in New York was James Watson Webb,
a son of the General Webb who held the Bible upon which Washington took
the oath of office as first President. J. Watson Webb had been in the
army and, as a journalist, was never for peace at any price. He united
the _Morning Courier_ and the _Enquirer_, and established a daily
horse express between New York and Washington, which is said to have
cost seventy-five hundred dollars a month, in order to get news from
Congress and the White House twenty-four hours before his rivals.
Webb was famed as a fighter. He had a row with Duff Green in Washington
in 1830. In January, 1836, he thrashed James Gordon Bennett in Wall
Street. He incited a mob to drive Wood, a singer, from the stage
of the Park Theater. In 1838 he sent a challenge to Representative
Cilley, of Maine, a classmate of Longfellow and Hawthorne at Bowdoin.
Cilley refused to fight, on the ground that he had made no personal
reflections on Webb’s character; whereupon Representative Graves, of
Kentucky, who carried the card for Webb, challenged Cilley for himself,
as was the custom. They fought with rifles on the Annapolis Road, and
Cilley was killed at the third shot.
In 1842 Webb fought a duel with Representative Marshall, of Kentucky,
and not only was wounded, but on his return to New York was sentenced
to two years in prison “for leaving the State with the intention of
giving or receiving a challenge.” At the end of two weeks, however, he
was pardoned.
Having deserted Jackson and become a Whig, Webb continued to own and
edit the _Courier and Enquirer_ until 1861, when it was merged with the
_World_. His quarrels, all of political origin, brought prestige to his
paper. Ben Day had no duelling-pistols. His only chance to advertise
the _Sun_ was by its own light and its popular price.
Beyond Webb, Day had no lively journalist with whom to contend at the
outset, and Webb probably did not dream that the _Sun_ would be worthy
of a joust. Perhaps fortunately for Day, Horace Greeley had just
failed in his attempt to run a one-cent paper. This was the _Morning
Post_, which Greeley started in January, 1833, with Francis V. Story, a
fellow printer, as his partner, and with a capital of one hundred and
fifty dollars. It ran for three weeks only.
Greeley and Story still had some type, bought on credit, and they
issued a tri-weekly, the _Constitutionalist_, which, in spite of its
dignified title, was the avowed organ of the lotteries. Its columns
contained the following card:
Greeley & Story, No. 54 Liberty Street, New York, respectfully
solicit the patronage of the public to their business of
letterpress printing, particularly lottery-printing, such as
schemes, periodicals, and so forth, which will be executed on
favorable terms.
It must be remembered that at that time lotteries were not under a
cloud. There were in New York forty-five lottery offices, licensed at
two hundred and fifty dollars apiece annually, and the proceeds were
divided between the public schools and a home for deaf-mutes. That was
the last year of legalized lotteries. After they disappeared Greeley
started the _New Yorker_, the best literary weekly of its time. It was
not until April, 1841, that he founded the _Tribune_.
Doubtless there were many young New Yorkers of that period who would
have made bang-up reporters, but apparently, until Day’s time, with few
exceptions they did not work on morning newspapers. One exception was
James Gordon Bennett, whose work for Webb on the _Courier and Enquirer_
helped to make it the leading American paper.
Nathaniel P. Willis and George P. Morris would probably have been good
reporters, for they knew New York and had excellent styles, but they
insisted on being poets. With Morris it was not a hollow vocation,
for the author of “Woodman, Spare That Tree,” could always get fifty
dollars for a song. He and Willis ran the _Mirror_ and later the _New
Mirror_, and wrote verse and other fanciful stuff by the bushel. Philip
Hone would have been the best reporter in New York, as his diary
reveals, but he was of the aristocracy, and he seems to have scorned
newspapermen, particularly Webb and Bennett.
But somehow, by that chance which seemed to smile on the _Sun_, Ben
Day got clever reporters. He wanted one to do the police-court work,
for he saw, from the first day of the paper, that that was the kind
of stuff that his readers devoured. To them the details of a beating
administered by James Hawkins to his wife were of more import than
Jackson’s assaults on the United States Bank.
When George W. Wisner, a young printer who was out of work, applied to
the _Sun_ for a job, Day told him that he would give him four dollars
a week if he would get up early every day and attend the police-court,
which held its sessions from 4 A.M. on. The people of the city were
quite as human then as they are to-day. Unregenerate mortals got drunk
and fought in the streets. Others stole shoes. The worst of all beat
their wives. Wisner was to be the Balzac of the daybreak court in a
year when Balzac himself was writing his “Droll Stories.”
The second issue of the _Sun_ continued the typographical error of the
day before. The year in the date-line of the second page was “1832.”
The big news in this paper was under date of Plymouth, England, August
1, and it told of the capture of Lisbon by Admiral Napier on the 25th
of July. Day--or perhaps it was Wisner--wrote an editorial article
about it:
To us as Americans there can be little of interest in the
triumph of one member of a royal family of Europe over another;
and although we can but rejoice at the downfall of the modern
Nero who so lately filled the Portuguese throne, yet if rumor
speak the truth the victorious Pedro is no better than he
should be.
The editor lamented the general lack of news:
With the exception of the interesting news from Portugal there
appears to be very little worthy of note. Nullification has
blown over; the President’s tour has terminated; Black Hawk has
gone home; the new race for President is not yet commenced, and
everything seems settled down into a calm. Dull times, these,
for us newspaper-makers. We wish the President or Major Downing
or some other distinguished individual would happen along again
and afford us material for a daily article. Or even if the
sea-serpent would be so kind as to pay us a visit, we should be
extremely obliged to him and would honor his snakeship with a
most tremendous puff.
Theatrical advertising appeared in this number, the Park Theater
announcing the comedy of “Rip Van Winkle,” as redramatized by Mr.
Hackett, who played _Rip_. Mr. Gale was playing “Mazeppa” at the
Bowery. Perhaps these advertisements were borrowed from a six-cent
paper, but there was one “help wanted” advertisement that was not
borrowed. It was the upshot of Day’s own idea, destined to bring
another revolution in newspaper methods:
TO THE UNEMPLOYED--A number of steady men can find employment
by vending this paper. A liberal discount is allowed to those
who buy to sell again.
Before that day there had been no newsboys; no papers were sold in
the streets. The big, blanket political organs that masqueraded as
newspapers were either sold over the counter or delivered by carriers
to the homes of the subscribers. Most of the publishers considered it
undignified even to angle for new subscribers, and one of them boasted
that his great circulation of perhaps two thousand had come unsolicited.
The first unemployed person to apply for a job selling _Suns_ in the
streets was a ten-year-old-boy, Bernard Flaherty, born in Cork. Years
afterward two continents knew him as Barney Williams, Irish comedian,
hero of “The Emerald Ring,” and “The Connie Soogah,” and at one time
manager of Wallack’s old Broadway Theatre.
When Day got some regular subscribers, he sent carriers on routes. He
charged them sixty-seven cents a hundred, cash, or seventy-five cents
on credit. The first of these carriers was Sam Messenger, who delivered
the _Sun_ in the Fulton Market district, and who later became a rich
livery-stable keeper. Live lads like these, carrying out Day’s idea,
wrought the greatest change in journalism that ever had been made,
for they brought the paper to the people, something that could not
be accomplished by the six-cent sheets with their lofty notions and
comparatively high prices.
On the third day of the _Sun’s_ life, with Wisner at the pen and
Barney Flaherty “hollering” in the startled streets, the editor again
expressed, this time more positively, his yearning that something would
happen:
We newspaper people thrive best on the calamities of others.
Give us one of your real Moscow fires, or your Waterloo
battle-fields; let a Napoleon be dashing with his legions
through the world, overturning the thrones of a thousand years
and deluging the world with blood and tears; and then we of the
types are in our glory.
The yearner had to wait thirty years for another Waterloo, but he got
his “real Moscow fire” in about two years, and so close that it singed
his eyebrows.
Lacking a Napoleon to exalt or denounce, Mr. Day used a bit of that
same page for the publication of homelier news for the people:
The following are the drawn numbers of the New York
consolidated lotteries of yesterday afternoon:
62 6 59 46 61 34 65 37 8 42
So Horace Greeley and his partner, with their tri-weekly paper, could
not have been keeping all of the lottery patronage away from the _Sun_.
Over in the police column Mr. Wisner was supplying gems like the
following:
A complaint was made by several persons who “thought it no sin
to step to the notes of a sweet violin” and gathered under a
window in Chatham Street, where a little girl was playing on a
violin, when they were showered from a window above with the
contents of a dye-pot or something of like nature. They were
directed to ascertain their showerer.
The big story on the first page of the fourth issue of the _Sun_ was a
conversation between _Envy_ and _Candor_ in regard to the beauties of
a Miss H., perhaps a fictitious person. But on the second page, at the
head of the editorial column, was a real editorial article approving
the course of the British government in freeing the slaves in the West
Indies:
We supposed that the eyes of men were but half open to this
case. We imagined that the slave would have to toil on for
years and _purchase_ what in justice was already _his own_.
We did not once dream that light had so far progressed as to
prepare the British nation for the colossal stride in justice
and humanity and benevolence which they are about to make.
The abolition of West Indian slavery will form a brilliant
era in the annals of the world. It will circle with a halo of
imperishable glory the brows of the transcendent spirits who
wield the present destinies of the British Empire.
Would to Heaven that the honor of leading the way in this
godlike enterprise had been reserved to our own country! But as
the opportunity for this is passed, we trust we shall at least
avoid the everlasting disgrace of long refusing to imitate so
bright and glorious an example.
Thus the _Sun_ came out for the freedom of the slave twenty-eight years
before that freedom was to be accomplished in the United States through
war. The _Sun_ was the _Sun_ of Day, but the hand was the hand of
Wisner. That young man was an Abolitionist before the word was coined.
“Wisner was a pretty smart young fellow,” said Mr. Day nearly fifty
years afterward, “but he and I never agreed. I was rather Democratic in
my notions. Wisner, whenever he got a chance, was always sticking in
his damned little Abolitionist articles.”
There is little doubt that Wisner wrote the article facing the _Sun_
against slavery while he was waiting for something to turn up in the
police-court. Then he went to the office, set up the article, as well
as his piece about the arrest of Eliza Barry, of Bayard Street, for
stealing a wash-tub, and put the type in the form. Considering that
Wisner got four dollars a week for his break-o’-day work, he made
a very good morning of that; and it is worthy of record that the
next day’s _Sun_ did not repudiate his assault on human servitude,
although on September 10 Mr. Day printed an editorial grieving over the
existence of slavery, but hitting at the methods of the Abolitionists.
These early issues were full of lively little “sunny” pieces, for
instance:
Passing by the Beekman Street church early this morning, we
discovered a milkman replenishing his lacteous cargo with
Adam’s ale. We took the liberty to ask him, “Friend, why do ye
do thus?” He replied, “None of your business”; and we passed
on, determined to report him to the Grahamites.
A poem on Burns, by Halleck--perhaps reprinted from one of the author’s
published volumes of verse--added literary tone to that morning’s _Sun_.
In the next issue was some verse by Willis, beginning:
Look not upon the wine when it
Is red within the cup!
Then, and for some years afterward, the _Sun_ exhibited a special
aversion to alcohol in text and head-lines. “Cursed Effects of Rum!”
was one of its favourite head-lines.
The _Sun_ was a week old before it contained dramatic criticism, its
first subject in that field being the appearance of Mr. and Mrs. Wood
at the Park Theatre in “Cinderella,” a comic opera. The paper’s first
animal story was printed on September 12, recording the fact that on
the previous Sunday about sixty wild pigeons stayed in a tree at the
Battery nearly half an hour.
On September 14 the _Sun_ printed its first illustration--a two-column
cut of “Herschel’s Forty-Feet Telescope.” This was Sir W. Herschel,
then dead some ten years, and the telescope was on his grounds at
Slough, near Windsor, England. Another knighted Herschel with another
telescope in a far land was to play a big part in the fortunes of the
_Sun_, but that comes later. In the issue with the cut of the telescope
was a paragraph about a rumour that Fanny Kemble, who had just
captivated American theatregoers, had been married to Pierce Butler, of
Philadelphia--as, indeed, she had.
Broadway seems to have had its lure as early as 1833, for in the _Sun_
of September 17, on the first page, is a plaint by “Citizen”:
They talk of the pleasures of the country, but would to God I
had never been persuaded to leave the labor of the city for
such woful pleasures. Oh, Broadway, Broadway! In an evil hour
did I forsake thee for verdant walks and flowery landscapes
and that there tiresome piece of made water. What walk is so
agreeable as a walk through the streets of New York? What
landscape more flowery than those of the print-shops? And what
water was made by man equal to the Hudson?
This was followed by uplifting little essays on “Suicide” and
“Robespierre.” The chief news of the day--that John Quincy Adams had
accepted a nomination from the Anti-Masons--was on an inside page.
What was possibly of more interest to the readers, it was announced
that thereafter a ton of coal would be two thousand pounds instead
of twenty-two hundred and forty--Lackawanna, broken and sifted, six
dollars and fifty cents a ton.
On Saturday, September 21, when it was only eighteen days old, the
_Sun_ adopted a new head-line. The letters remained the same, but
the eagle device of the first issue was supplanted by the solar orb
rising over hills and sea. This design was used only until December 2,
when its place was taken by a third emblem--a printing-press shedding
symbolical effulgence upon the earth.
The _Sun’s_ first book-notice appeared on September 23, when it
acknowledged the sixtieth volume of the “Family Library” (Harpers),
this being a biography of Charlemagne by G. P. R. James. “It treats of
a most important period in the history of France.” The _Sun_ had little
space then for book-reviews or politics. Of its attitude toward the
great financial fight then being waged, this lone paragraph gives a
good view:
The _Globe_ of Monday contains in six columns the reasons which
prompted the President to remove the public deposits from the
United States Bank, which were read to his assembled cabinet on
the 18th instant.
Nicholas Biddle and his friends could fill other papers with arguments,
but the _Sun_ kept its space for police items, stories of authenticated
ghosts, and yarns about the late Emperor Napoleon. The removal of
William J. Duane as Secretary of the Treasury got two lines on a page
where a big shark caught off Barnstable got three lines, and the
feeding of the anaconda at the American Museum a quarter of a column.
Miss Susan Allen, who bought a cigar on Broadway and was arrested
when she smoked it while she danced in the street, was featured more
prominently than the expected visit to New York of Mr. Henry Clay,
after whom millions of cigars were to be named. For the satisfaction of
universal curiosity it must be reported that Miss Allen was discharged.
On October 1 of that same year--1833--the _Sun_ came out for better
fire-fighting apparatus, urging that the engines should be drawn by
horses, as in London. In the same issue it assailed the gambling-house
in Park Row, and scorned the allegation of Colonel Hamilton, a British
traveller, that the tooth-brush was unknown in America. Slowly the
paper was getting better, printing more local news; and it could afford
to, for the penny _Sun_ idea had taken hold of New York, and the sales
were larger every week.
Wisner was stretching the police-court pieces out to nearly two
columns. Now and then, perhaps when Mr. Day was away fishing, the
reporter would slip in an Abolition paragraph or a gloomy poem on the
horrors of slavery. But he was so valuable that, while his chief did
not raise his salary of four dollars a week, he offered him half the
paper, the same to be paid for out of the profits. And so, in January
of 1834, Wisner became a half-owner of the _Sun_. Benton, another _Sun_
printer, also wanted an interest, and left when he could not get it.
Before it was two months old the _Sun_ had begun to take an interest
in aeronautics. It printed a full column, October 16, 1833, on the
subject of Durant’s balloon ascensions, and quoted Napoleon as saying
that the only insurmountable difficulty of the balloon in war was the
impossibility of guiding its course. “This difficulty Dr. Durant is now
endeavoring to obviate.” And the _Sun_ added:
May we not therefore look to the time, in perspective, when
our atmosphere will be traversed with as much facility as our
waters?
In the issue of October 17 a skit, possibly by Mr. Day himself, gave a
picture of the trials of an editor of the period:
SCENE--An editor’s closet--editor solus.
“Well, a pretty day’s work of it I shall make. News, I have
nothing--politics, stale, flat, and unprofitable--miscellany,
enough of it--miscellany bills payable, and a miscellaneous
list of subscribers with tastes as miscellaneous as the tongues
of Babel. Ha! Footsteps! Drop the first person singular and
don the plural. WE must now play the editor.”
(Enter Devil)--“Copy, sir!”
(Enter A.)--“I missed my paper this morning, sir, I don’t want
to take it--”
(Enter B.)--“There is a letter ‘o’ turned upside down in my
advertisement this morning, sir! I--I--”
(Enter C.)--“You didn’t notice my new work, my treatise on a
flea, this morning, sir! You have no literary taste! Sir--”
(Enter D.)--“Sir, your boy don’t leave my paper, sir--I live in
a blind alley; you turn out of ---- Street to the right--then
take a left-hand turn--then to the right again--then go under
an arch--then over a kennel--then jump a ten-foot fence--then
enter a door--then climb five pair of stairs--turn fourteen
corners--and you can’t miss my door. I want your boy to leave
my paper first--it’s only a mile out of his way--if he don’t,
I’ll stop--”
(Enter E.)--“Sir, you have abused my friend; the article
against Mr. ---- as a candidate is intolerable--it is
scandalous--I’ll stop my paper--I’ll cane you--I’ll--”
(Enter F.)--“Mr. Editor, you are mealy-mouthed, you lack
independence, your remarks upon Mr. ----, the candidate for
Congress, are too tame. If you don’t put it on harder I’ll stop
my--”
(Enter G.)--“Your remarks upon profane swearing are personal,
d----n you, sir, you mean me--before I’ll patronize you longer
I’ll see you in ----”
(Enter H.)--“Mr. ----, we are very sorry you do not say more
against the growing sin of profanity. Unless you put your veto
on it more decidedly, no man of correct moral principles will
give you his patronage--I, for one--”
(Enter I.)--“Bad luck to the dirty sowl of him, where does he
keep himself? By the powers, I’ll strike him if I can get at
his carcass, and I’ll kick him anyhow! Why do you fill your
paper with dirty lies about Irishmen at all?”
(Enter J.)--“Why don’t you give us more anecdotes and
sich, Irish stories and them things--I don’t like the long
speeches--I--”
(Devil)--“Copy, sir!”
The day after this evidence of unrest appeared the _Sun_ printed,
perhaps with a view to making all manner of citizens gnash their teeth,
a few extracts from the narrative of Colonel Hamilton, “the British
traveler in America”:
In America there are no bells and no chambermaids.
I have heard, since my arrival in America, the toast of “a
bloody war in Europe” drank with enthusiasm.
The whole population of the Southern and Western States are
uniformly armed with daggers.
At present an American might study every book within the limits
of the Union and still be regarded in many parts of Europe,
especially in Germany, as a man comparatively ignorant.
The editorial suggested that the colonel “had better look wild for the
lake that burns with fire and brimstone.”
The union printers were lively even in the first days of the _Sun_,
which announced, on October 21, 1833, that the _Journal of Commerce_
paid its journeymen only ten dollars a week, and added:
The proprietors of other morning papers cheerfully pay twelve
dollars. Therefore, the office of the _Journal of Commerce_
is what printers term a rat office--and the term “rat,” with
the followers of the same profession with Faust, Franklin, and
Stanhope, is a most odious term.
The “pork-barrel” was foreshadowed in an item printed when the _Sun_
was just a month old:
At the close of the present year the Treasury of the nation
will contain twelve million dollars. This rich and increasing
revenue will probably be a bone of contention at the next
session of Congress.
At the end of its first month the _Sun_ was getting more and more
advertising. Its news was lively enough, considering the times. Rum,
the cholera in Mexico, assassinations in the South, the police-court,
the tour of Henry Clay, and poems by Walter Scott were its long suit.
The circulation of the little paper was now about twelve hundred
copies, and the future seemed promising, even if Mr. Day did print,
at suspiciously frequent intervals, articles inveighing against the
debtor’s-prison law.
The Astor House--now half a ruin--was at first to be called the Park
Hotel, for the _Sun_ of October 29, 1833, announced editorially:
THE PARK HOTEL--Mr. W. B. Astor gives notice that he will
receive proposals for building the long-contemplated hotel in
Broadway, between Barclay and Vesey Streets.
An advertisement which the _Sun_ saw fit to notice editorially
was inserted by a young man in search of a wife--“a young woman
who understands the use of the needle, and who is willing to be
industrious.” The editorial comment was:
The advertisement was handed to us by a respectable-looking
young man, and of course we could not refuse to publish
it--though if we were in want of a wife we think we should take
a different course to obtain one.
Sometimes the police items, flecked with poetry, and presumably written
by Wisner, were tantalizingly reticent, as:
Maria Jones was accused of stealing clothing, and committed.
Certain affairs were developed of rather a singular and comical
nature in relation to her.
Nothing more than that. Perhaps Wisner rather enjoyed being questioned
by admiring friends when he went to dinner at the American House that
day.
Bright as the police reporter was, the ship-news man of that day lacked
snap. The arrival from Europe of James Fenimore Cooper, who could have
told the _Sun_ more foreign news than it had ever printed, was disposed
of in twelve words. But it must be remembered that the interview was
then unknown. The only way to get anything out of a citizen was to
enrage him, whereupon he would write a letter. But the _Sun_ did say, a
couple of days later, that Cooper’s newest novel, “The Headsman,” was
being sold in London at seven dollars and fifty cents a copy--no doubt
in the old-fashioned English form, three volumes at half a guinea each.
The _Sun_ blew its own horn for the first time on November 9, 1833:
Its success is now beyond question, and it has exceeded
the most sanguine anticipations of its publishers in its
circulation and advertising patronage. Scarcely two months
has it existed in the typographical firmament, and it has a
daily circulation of upward of two thousand copies, besides
a steadily increasing advertising patronage. Although of a
character (we hope) deserving the encouragement of all classes
of society, it is more especially valuable to those who cannot
well afford to incur the expense of subscribing to a “blanket
sheet” and paying ten dollars per annum.
In conclusion we may be permitted to remark that the penny
press, by diffusing useful knowledge among the operative
classes of society, is effecting the march of intelligence
to a greater degree than any other mode of instruction.
The same article called attention to the fact that the “penny” papers
of England were really two-cent papers. The _Sun’s_ price had been
announced as “one penny” on the earliest numbers, but on October 8,
when it was a little more than a month old, the legend was changed to
read “Price one cent.”
[Illustration:
_From the Collection of Charles Burnham_
BARNEY WILLIAMS, THE COMEDIAN, WHO WAS THE FIRST NEWSBOY OF
“THE SUN”
]
The _Sun_ ran its first serial in the third month of its existence.
This was “The Life of Davy Crockett,” dictated or authorized by the
frontiersman himself. It must have been a relief to the readers to get
away from the usual dull reprint from foreign papers that had been
filling the _Sun’s_ first page. In those days the first pages were
always the dullest, but Crockett’s lively stories about bear-hunts
enlivened the _Sun_.
Other celebrities were often mentioned. Aaron Burr, now old and feeble,
was writing his memoirs. Martin Van Buren had taken lodgings at the
City Hotel. The Siamese Twins were arrested in the South for beating
a man. “Mr. Clay arrived in town last evening and attended the new
opera.” This was “Fra Diavolo,” in which Mr. and Mrs. Wood sang at the
Park Theatre. “It is said that Dom Pedro has dared his brother Miguel
to single combat, which has been refused.” A week later the _Sun_
gloated over the fact that Pedro--Pedro I of Brazil, who was invading
Portugal on behalf of his daughter, Maria da Gloria--had routed the
usurper Miguel’s army.
On December 5, 1833, the _Sun_ printed the longest news piece it had
ever put in type--the message of President Jackson to the Congress.
This took up three of the four pages, and crowded out nearly all the
advertising.
On December 17, in the fourth month of its life, the _Sun_ announced
that it had procured “a machine press, on which one thousand
impressions can be taken in an hour. The daily circulation is now
nearly FOUR THOUSAND.” It was a happy Christmas for Day and Wisner. The
_Sun_ surely was shining!
The paper retained its original size and shape during the whole of
1834, and rarely printed more than four pages. As it grew older, it
printed more and more local items and developed greater interest
in local affairs. The first page was taken up with advertising and
reprint. A State election might have taken place the day before, but on
page 1 the _Sun_ worshippers looked for a bit of fiction or history.
What were the fortunes of William L. Marcy as compared to a two-column
thriller, “The Idiot’s Revenge,” or “Captain Chicken and Gentle Sophia”?
The head-lines were all small, and most of them italics. Here are
samples:
_INGRATITUDE OF A CAT._
_PERSONALITY OF NAPOLEON._
_WONDERFUL ANTICS OF FLEAS._
_BROUGHT TO IT BY RUM._
The news paragraphs were sometimes models of condensation:
PICKPOCKETS--On Friday night a Gentleman lost $100 at the Opera
and then $25 at Tammany Hall.
The Hon. Daniel Webster will leave town this morning for
Washington.
John Baker, the person whom we reported a short time since
as being brought before the police for stealing a ham, died
suddenly in his cell in Bellevue in the greatest agony--an
awful warning to drunkards.
James G. Bennett has become sole proprietor and editor of the
Philadelphia _Courier_.
Colonel Crockett, it is expected, will visit the Bowery Theater
this evening.
RUMOR--It was rumored in Washington on the 6th that a duel
would take place the next day between two members of the House.
SUDDEN DEATH--Ann McDonough, of Washington Street, attempted to
drink a pint of rum on a wager, on Wednesday afternoon last.
Before it was half swallowed Ann was a corpse. Served her right!
Bayington, the murderer, we learn by a contemporary, was
formerly employed in this city on the _Journal of Commerce_. No
wonder he came to an untimely fate.
DUEL--We understand that a duel was fought at Hoboken on
Friday morning last between a gentleman of Canada and a French
gentleman of this city, in which the latter was wounded. The
parties should be arrested.
LAMENTABLE DEATH--The camelopard shipped at Calcutta for New
York died the day after it was embarked. “We could have better
spared a better” _crittur_, as Shakespeare doesn’t say.
The _Sun_, although read largely by Jacksonians, did not take the side
of any political party. It favoured national and State economy and city
cleanliness. It dismissed the New York Legislature of 1834 thus:
The Legislature of this State closed its arduous duties
yesterday. It has increased the number of our banks and fixed a
heavy load of debt upon posterity.
Nothing more. If the readers wanted more they could fly to the ample
bosoms of the sixpennies; but apparently they were satisfied, for
in April of 1834 the _Sun’s_ circulation reached eight thousand, and
Colonel Webb, of the _Courier and Enquirer_, was bemoaning the success
of “penny trash.” The _Sun_ replied to him by saying that the public
had been “imposed upon by ten-dollar trash long enough.” The _Journal
of Commerce_ also slanged the _Sun_, which promptly announced that the
_Journal_ was conducted by “a company of rich, aristocratical men,” and
that it would take sides with any party to gain a subscriber.
The influence of Partner Wisner, the Abolitionist, was evident in many
pages of the _Sun_. On June 23, 1834, it printed a piece about Martin
Palmer, who was “pelted down with stones in Wall Street on suspicion of
being a runaway slave,” and paid its respects to Boudinot, a Southerner
in New York who was reputed to be a tracker of runaways. It was he who
had set the crowd after the black:
The man who will do this will do anything; he would dance on
his mother’s grave; he would invade the sacred precincts of the
tomb and rob a corpse of its winding-sheet; he has no SOUL. It
is said that this useless fellow is about to commence a suit
against us for a libel. Try it, Mr. Boudinot!
During the anti-abolition riots of that year the _Sun_ took a firm
stand against the disturbers, although there is little doubt that many
of them were its own readers.
The paper made a vigorous little crusade against the evils of the
Bridewell in City Hall Park, where dozens of wretches suffered in
the filth of the debtors’ prison. The _Sun_ was a live wire when the
cholera re-appeared, and it put to rout the sixpenny papers which tried
to make out that the disease was not cholera, but “summer complaint.”
Incidentally, the advertising columns of that day, in nearly all the
papers were filled with patent “cholera cures.”
The _Sun_ had an eye for urban refinement, too, and begged the
aldermen to see to it that pigs were prevented from roaming in City
Hall Park. In the matter of silver forks, then a novelty, it was more
conservative, as the following paragraph, printed in November, 1834,
would indicate:
EXTREME NICETY--The author of the “Book of Etiquette,” recently
printed in London, says: “Silver forks are now common at every
respectable table, and for my part I cannot see how it is
possible to eat a dinner comfortably without them.” The booby
ought to be compelled to cut his beefsteak with a piece of old
barrel-hoop on a wooden trencher.
Not even abolition or etiquette, however, could sidetrack the _Sun’s_
interest in animals. In one issue it dismissed the adjournment of
Congress in three words and, just below, ran this item:
THE ANACONDA--Most of those who have seen the beautiful serpent
at Peale’s Museum will recollect that in the snug quarters
allotted to him there are two blankets, on one of which he
lies, and the other is covered over him in cold weather.
Strange to say that on Monday night, after Mr. Peale had fed
the serpent with a chicken, according to custom, the serpent
took it into his head to swallow one of the blankets, which
is a seven-quarter one, and this blanket he has now in his
stomach. The proprietor feels much anxiety.
Almost every newspaper editor in that era had a theatre feud at one day
or another. The _Sun’s_ quarrel was with Farren, the manager of the
Bowery, where Forrest was playing. So the _Sun_ said:
DAMN THE YANKEES--We are informed by a correspondent (though we
have not seen the announcement ourselves) that Farren, the chap
who damned the Yankees so lustily the other day, and who is now
under bonds for a gross outrage on a respectable butcher near
the Bowery Theater, is intending to make his appearance on the
Bowery stage THIS EVENING!
Five hundred citizens gathered at the theatre that night, waited until
nine o’clock, and then charged through the doors, breaking up the
performance of “Metamora.” The _Sun_ described it:
The supernumeraries scud from behind the scenes like quails--the
stock actors’ teeth chattered--_Oceana_ looked imploringly at the
good-for-nothing Yankees--_Nahmeeoke_ trembled--_Guy of Godalwin_
turned on his heel, and _Metamora_ coolly shouldered his tomahawk and
walked off the stage.
The management announced that Farren was discharged. The mayor of New
York and Edwin Forrest made conciliatory speeches, and the crowd went
away.
The attacks of Colonel Stone, editor of the six-cent _Commercial_,
aroused the _Sun_ to retaliate in kind. A column about the colonel
ended thus:
He was then again cowskinned by Mr. Bryant of the _Post_, and
was most unpoetically flogged near the American Hotel. He has
always been the slave of avarice, cowardice, and meanness....
The next time he sees fit to attack the penny press we hope he
will confine himself to facts.
A month later the _Sun_ went after Colonel Stone again:
The colonel ... for the sake of an additional glass of wine
and a couple of real Spanish cigars, did actually perpetrate
a most excellent and true article, the first we have seen of
his for a long time past. Now we have serious thoughts that
the colonel will yet become quite a decent fellow, and may
ultimately ascend, after a long course of training, to a level
with the penny dailies which have soared so far above him in
the heavens of veracity.
It must be said of Colonel Stone that he was a man of literary and
political attainments. He was editor of the _Commercial Advertiser_ for
more than twenty years.
The colonel did not reform to the _Sun’s_ liking at once, but the feud
lessened, and presently it was the _Transcript_--a penny paper which
sprang up when the _Sun’s_ success was assured--to which the _Sun_ took
its biggest cudgels. One of the _Transcript’s_ editors, it said, had
passed a bogus three-dollar bill on the Bank of Troy. Another walked
“on both sides of the street, like a twopenny postman,” while a third
“spent his money at a theatre with females,” while his family was in
want. But, added the _Sun_, “we never let personalities creep in.”
The New York _Times_--not the present _Times_--had also started up, and
it dared to boast of a circulation “greater than any in the city except
the _Courier_.” Said the _Sun_:
If the daily circulation of the _Sun_ be not larger than that
of the _Times_ and _Courier_ both, then may we be hung up by
the ears and flogged to death with a rattle-snake’s skin.
The _Sun_ took no risk in this. By November of 1834 its circulation was
above ten thousand. On December 3 it published the President’s message
in full and circulated fifteen thousand copies. At the beginning of
1835 it announced a new press--a Napier, built by R. Hoe & Co.--new
type, and a bigger paper, circulating twenty thousand. The print paper
was to cost four-fifths of a cent a copy, but the _Sun_ was getting
lots of advertising. With the increase in size, that New Year’s Day,
the _Sun_ adopted the motto, “It Shines for All.” which it is still
using to-day. This motto doubtless was suggested by the sign of the
famous Rising Sun Tavern, or Howard’s Inn, which then stood at the
junction of Bedford and Jamaica turnpikes, in East New York. The sign,
which was in front of the tavern as early as 1776, was supported on
posts near the road and bore a rude picture of a rising sun and the
motto which Day adopted.
In the same month--January, 1835--the bigger and better _Sun_ printed
its first real sports story. The sporting editor, who very likely was
also the police reporter and perhaps Partner Wisner as well, heard that
there was to be a fight in the fields near Hoboken between Williamson,
of Philadelphia, and Phelan, of New York. He crossed the ferry, hired
a saddle-horse in Hoboken, and galloped to the ringside. It was bare
knuckles, London rules, and only thirty seconds’ interval between
rounds:
At the end of three minutes Williamson fell. (Cheers and cries
of “Fair Play!”) After breathing half a minute, they went at it
again, and Phelan was knocked down. (Cheers and cries of “Give
it to him!”) In three minutes more Williamson fell, and the
adjoining woods echoed back the shouts of the spectators.
The match lasted seventy-two minutes and ended in the defeat of
Williamson. The _Sun’s_ report contained no sporting slang, and the
reporter did not seem to like pugilism:
And this is what is called “sports of the ring!” We can
cheerfully encourage foot-races or any other humane and
reasonable amusement, but the Lord deliver us from the “ring.”
The following day the _Sun_ denounced prize-fighting as “a European
practice, better fitted for the morally and physically oppressed
classes of London than the enlightened republican citizens of New York.”
As prosperity came, the news columns improved. The sensational was not
the only pabulum fed to the reader. Beside the story of a duel between
two midshipmen he would find a review of the Burr autobiography, just
out. Gossip about Fanny Kemble’s quarrel with her father--the _Sun_
was vexed with the actress because she said that New York audiences
were made up of butchers--would appear next to a staid report of the
doings of Congress. The attacks on Rum continued, and the _Sun_ was
quick to oppose the proposed “licensing of houses of prostitution and
billiard-rooms.”
The success of Mr. Day’s paper was so great that every printer and
newspaperman in New York longed to run a penny journal. On June 22,
1835, the paper’s name appeared at the head of the editorial column on
Page 2 as _The True Sun_, although on the first page the bold head-line
_THE SUN_, remained as usual. An editorial note said:
We have changed our inside head to _True Sun_ for reasons which
will hereafter be made known.
On the following day the _True Sun_ title was entirely missing, and its
absence was explained in an editorial article as follows:
Having understood on Wednesday (June 21) that a daily paper
was about being issued in this city as nearly like our own as
it could be got up, under the title of _The True Sun_, for the
avowed purpose of benefitting the proprietors at our expense,
we yesterday changed our inside title, being determined to
place an injunction upon any such piratical proceedings.
Yesterday morning the anticipated _Sun_ made its appearance,
and at first sight we immediately abandoned our intention of
defending ourselves legally, being convinced that it is a
mere catchpenny second-hand concern which (had it our whole
list and patronage) would in one month be among the “Things
that were.” It is published by William F. Short and edited
by Stephen B. Butler, who announces that his “politics are
Whig.”... Mr. Short, with the ingenuity of a London pickpocket,
though without the honesty, has made up his paper as nearly
like ours as was possible and given it the name of _The (true)
Sun_ for the purpose of imposing on the public.... We hereby
publish William F. Short and Stephen B. Butler to our editorial
brethren and to the printing profession in general as _Literary
Scoundrels_.
A day later (June 24, 1835) the _Sun_ declared that in establishing
the _True Sun_ “Short, who is one of the printers of the _Messenger_,
actually purloined the composition of his reading matter”; and it
printed a letter from William Burnett, publisher of the _Weekly
Messenger_, to support its charge of larceny.
On June 28, six days after the _True Sun’s_ first appearance, the _Sun_
announced the failure of the pretender. The _True Sun’s_ proprietors,
it said, “have concluded to abandon their piratical course.”
Another _True Sun_ was issued by Benjamin H. Day in 1840, two years
after he sold the _Sun_ to Moses Y. Beach. A third _True Sun_,
established by former employees of the _Sun_ on March 20, 1843, ran for
more than a year. A daily called the _Citizen and True Sun_, started in
1845, had a short life.
When a contemporary did not fail the _Sun_ poked fun at it:
MAJOR NOAH’S SINGULARITY--The _Evening Star_ of yesterday comes
out in favor of the French, lottery, gambling, and phrenology
for ladies. Is the man crazy?
The editor whose sanity was questioned was the famous Mordecai Manuel
Noah, one of the most versatile men of his time. He was a newspaper
correspondent at fifteen. When he was twenty-eight, President Madison
appointed him to be consul-general at Tunis, where he distinguished
himself by his rescue of several Americans who were held as slaves
in the Barbary States. On his return to New York, in 1816, he again
entered journalism, and was successively connected with the _National
Advocate_, the _Enquirer_, the _Commercial Advertiser_, the _Times and
Messenger_, and the _Evening Star_. In 1825 he attempted to establish a
great Jewish colony on Grand Island, in the Niagara River, but he found
neither sympathy nor aid among his coreligionists, and the scheme was a
failure.
Noah wrote a dozen dramas, all of which have been forgotten, although
he was the most popular playwright in America at that day. His _Evening
Star_ was a good paper, and the _Sun’s_ quarrels with it were not
serious.
For their attacks on Attree, the editor of the _Transcript_, Messrs.
Day and Wisner got themselves indicted for criminal libel. They took it
calmly:
Bigger men than we have passed through that ordeal. There is
Major Noah, the Grand Mogul of the editorial tribe, who has not
only been indicted, but, we believe, placed at the bar. Then
there’s Colonel Webb; no longer ago than last autumn he was
indicted by the grand jury of Delaware County. The colonel, it
is said, didn’t consider this a fair business transaction,
and, brushing up the mahogany pistol, he took his coach and
hounds, drove up to good old Delaware, and bid defiance to
the whole posse comitatus of the county. The greatest men in
the country have some time in the course of their lives been
indicted.
A few weeks later, when Attree, who had left the _Transcript_ to write
“horribles” for the _Courier_, was terribly beaten in the street, the
_Sun_ denounced the assault and tried to expose the assailants.
In February, 1835, a few days after the indictment of the partners,
Mr. Wisner was challenged to a duel by a quack dentist whose medicines
the _Sun_ had exposed. The _Sun_ announced editorially that Wisner
accepted the challenge, and that, having the choice of weapons, he
chose syringes charged with the dentist’s own medicine, the distance
five paces. No duel!
It would seem that the _Sun_ owners sought a challenge from the fiery
James Watson Webb of the mahogany pistol, for they made many a dig at
his sixpenny paper. Here is a sample:
OUTRAGEOUS--The _Courier and Enquirer_ of Saturday morning is
just twice as large as its usual size. The sheet is now large
enough for a blanket and two pairs of pillow-cases, and it
contains, in printers’ language, 698,300 ems--equal to eight
volumes of the ordinary-sized novels of the present day. If
the reading matter were printed in pica type and put in one
unbroken line, it would reach from Nova Zembla to Terra del
Fuego. Such a paper is an insult to a civilized community.
A little later, when Colonel Webb’s paper boasted of “the largest
circulation,” the _Sun_ offered to bet the colonel a thousand
dollars--the money to go to the Washington Monument Association--that
the _Sun_ had a circulation twice as great as that of the big sixpenny
daily.
It must not be thought, however, that the _Sun_ did not attempt to
treat the serious matters of the day. It handled them very well,
considering the lack of facilities. The war crisis with France, happily
dispelled; the amazing project of the Erie Railroad to build a line as
far west as Chautauqua County, New York; the anti-abolitionist riots
and the little religious rows; the ambitions of Daniel Webster and the
approach of Halley’s comet--all these had their half-column or so.
When Matthias the Prophet, the Dowie of that day, was brought to trial
in White Plains, Westchester County, on a charge of having poisoned
a Mr. Elijah Pierson, the _Sun_ sent a reporter to that then distant
court. It is possible that this reporter was Benjamin H. Day himself.
At any rate, Day attended the trial, and there made the acquaintance
of a man who that very summer made the _Sun_ the talk of the world and
brought to the young paper the largest circulation of any daily.
CHAPTER III
RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE’S MOON HOAX
_A Magnificent Fake Which Deceived Two Continents, Brought to “The
Sun” the Largest Circulation in the World and, in Poe’s Opinion,
Established Penny Papers._
The man whom Day met at the murder trial in White Plains was Richard
Adams Locke, a reporter who was destined to kick up more dust than
perhaps any other man of his profession. As he comes on the stage, we
must let his predecessor, George W. Wisner, pass into the wings.
Wisner was a good man, as a reporter, as a writer of editorial
articles, and as part owner of the paper. His campaign for Abolition
irritated Mr. Day at first, but the young man’s motives were so pure
and his articles so logical that Day recognized the justice of the
cause, even as he realized the foolish methods employed by some of the
Abolitionists. Wisner set the face of the _Sun_ against slavery, and
Day kept it so, but there were minor matters of policy upon which the
partners never agreed, never could agree.
When Wisner’s health became poor, in the summer of 1835, he expressed
a desire to get away from New York. Mr. Day paid him five thousand
dollars for his interest in the paper--a large sum in those days,
considering the fact that Wisner had won his share with no capital
except his pen. Wisner went West and settled at Pontiac, Michigan.
There his health improved, his fortune increased, and he was at one
time a member of the Michigan Legislature.
When Day found that Locke was the best reporter attending the trial of
Matthias the Prophet, he hired him to write a series of articles on the
religious fakir. These, the first “feature stories” that ever appeared
in the _Sun_, were printed on the front page.
A few weeks later, while the Matthias articles were still being sold
on the streets in pamphlet form, Locke went to Day and told him that
his boss, Colonel Webb of the _Courier and Enquirer_, had discharged
him for working for the _Sun_ “on the side.” Wisner was about to leave
the paper, and Day was glad to hire Locke, for he needed an editorial
writer. Twelve dollars a week was the alluring wage, and Locke accepted
it.
Locke was then thirty-five--ten years senior to his employer. Let his
contemporary, Edgar Allan Poe, describe him:
He is about five feet seven inches in height, symmetrically
formed; there is an air of distinction about his whole
person--the _air noble_ of genius. His face is strongly pitted
by the smallpox, and, perhaps from the same cause, there
is a marked obliquity in the eyes; a certain calm, clear
_luminousness_, however, about these latter amply compensates
for the defect, and the forehead is truly beautiful in its
intellectuality. I am acquainted with no person possessing so
fine a forehead as Mr. Locke.
Locke was nine years older than Poe, who at this time had most of his
fame ahead of him. Poe was quick to recognize the quality of Locke’s
writings; indeed, the poet saw, perhaps more clearly than others of
that period, that America was full of good writers--a fact of which
the general public was neglectful. This was Poe’s tribute to Locke’s
literary gift:
His prose style is noticeable for its concision, luminosity,
completeness--each quality in its proper place. He has that
_method_ so generally characteristic of genius proper.
Everything he writes is a model in its peculiar way, serving
just the purposes intended and nothing to spare.
The _Sun’s_ new writer was a collateral descendant of John Locke, the
English philosopher of the seventeenth century. He was born in 1800,
but his birthplace was not New York, as his contemporary biographers
wrote. It was East Brent, Somersetshire, England. His early American
friends concealed this fact when writing of Locke, for they feared that
his English birth (all the wounds of war had not healed) would keep him
out of some of the literary clubs. He was educated by his mother and
by private tutors until he was nineteen, when he entered Cambridge.
While still a student he contributed to the _Bee_, the _Imperial
Magazine_, and other English publications. When he left Cambridge he
had the hardihood to start the London _Republican_, the title of which
describes its purpose. This was a failure, for London declined to warm
to the theories of American democracy, no matter how scholarly their
expression.
Abandoning the _Republican_, young Locke devoted himself to literature
and science. He ran a periodical called the _Cornucopia_ for about six
months, but it was not a financial success, and in 1832, with his wife
and infant daughter, he went to New York. Colonel Webb put him at work
on his paper.
Locke could write almost anything. In Cambridge and in Fleet Street he
had picked up a wonderful store of general information. He could turn
out prose or poetry, politics or pathos, anecdotes or astronomy.
While he lived in London, Locke was a regular reader of the Edinburgh
_New Philosophical Journal_, and he brought some copies of it to
America. One of these, an issue of 1826, contained an article by Dr.
Thomas Dick, of Dundee, a pious man, but inclined to speculate on the
possibilities of the universe. In this article Dr. Dick suggested the
feasibility of communicating with the moon by means of great stone
symbols on the face of the earth. The people of the moon--if there
were any--would fathom the diagrams and reply in a similar way. Dr.
Dick explained afterward that he wrote this piece with the idea of
satirizing a certain coterie of eccentric German astronomers.
Now it happened that Sir John Frederick William Herschel, the greatest
astronomer of his time, and the son of the celebrated astronomer
Sir William Herschel, went to South Africa in January, 1834, and
established an observatory at Feldhausen, near Cape Town, with the
intention of completing his survey of the sidereal heavens by examining
the southern skies as he had swept the northern, thus to make the first
telescopic survey of the whole surface of the visible heavens.
Locke knew about Sir John and his mission. The Matthias case had blown
over, the big fire in Fulton Street was almost forgotten, and things
were a bit dull on the island of Manhattan. The newspapers were in a
state of armed truce. As Locke and his fellow journalists gathered at
the American Hotel bar for their after-dinner brandy, it is probable
that there was nothing, not even the great sloth recently arrived at
the American Museum, to excite a good argument.
Locke needed money, for his salary of twelve dollars a week could ill
support the fine gentleman that he was; so he laid a plan before Mr.
Day. It was a plot as well as a plan, and the first angle of the plot
appeared on the second page of the _Sun_ on August 21, 1835:
CELESTIAL DISCOVERIES--The Edinburgh _Courant_ says--“We
have just learnt from an eminent publisher in this city that
Sir John Herschel, at the Cape of Good Hope, has made some
astronomical discoveries of the most wonderful description, by
means of an immense telescope of an entirely new principle.”
Nothing further appeared until Tuesday, August 25, when three columns
of the _Sun’s_ first page took the newspaper and scientific worlds by
the ears. Those were not the days of big type. The _Sun’s_ heading read:
GREAT ASTRONOMICAL DISCOVERIES.
LATELY MADE
BY SIR JOHN HERSCHEL, LL.D., F.R.S., &c.
At the Cape of Good Hope.
[_From Supplement to the Edinburgh Journal of Science._]
It may as well be said here that although there had been an Edinburgh
_Journal of Science_, it ceased to exist several years before 1835. The
periodical to which Dr. Dick, of Dundee, contributed his moon theories
was, in a way, the successor to the _Journal of Science_, but it was
called the _New Philosophical Journal_. The likeness of names was not
great, but enough to cause some confusion. It is also noteworthy that
the sly Locke credited to a supplement, rather than to the _Journal of
Science_ itself, the revelations which he that day began to pour before
the eyes of _Sun_ readers. Thus he started:
In this unusual addition to our _Journal_ we have the happiness
of making known to the British public, and thence to the whole
civilized world, recent discoveries in astronomy which will
build an imperishable monument to the age in which we live, and
confer upon the present generation of the human race proud
distinction through all future time. It has been poetically
said that the stars of heaven are the hereditary regalia of man
as the intellectual sovereign of the animal creation. He may
now fold the zodiac around him with a loftier consciousness of
his mental supremacy.
[Illustration:
RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE, AUTHOR OF THE MOON HOAX
From an Engraving in the Possession of His Granddaughter, Mrs.
F. Winthrop White of New Brighton, S. I.
]
After solemnly dwelling on the awe which mortal man must feel upon
peering into the secrets of the sky, the article declared that Sir John
“paused several hours before he commenced his observations, that he
might prepare his own mind for discoveries which he knew would fill the
minds of myriads of his fellow men with astonishment.” It continued:
And well might he pause! From the hour the first human pair
opened their eyes to the glories of the blue firmament above
them, there has been no accession to human knowledge at all
comparable in sublime interest to that which he has been the
honored agent in supplying. Well might he pause! He was about
to become the sole depository of wondrous secrets which had
been hid from the eyes of all men that had lived since the
birth of time.
At the end of a half-column of glorification, the writer got down to
brass tacks:
To render our enthusiasm intelligible, we will state at
once that by means of a telescope, of vast dimensions and
an entirely new principle, the younger Herschel, at his
observatory in the southern hemisphere, has already made the
most extraordinary discoveries in every planet of our solar
system; has discovered planets in other solar systems; has
obtained a distinct view of objects in the moon, fully equal to
that which the unaided eye commands of terrestrial objects at
the distance of one hundred yards; has affirmatively settled
the question whether this satellite be inhabited, and by what
orders of beings; has firmly established a new theory of
cometary phenomena; and has solved or corrected nearly every
leading problem of mathematical astronomy.
And where was the _Journal of Science_ getting this mine of
astronomical revelation for its supplement? The mystery is explained at
once:
We are indebted to the devoted friendship of Dr. Andrew
Grant, the pupil of the elder, and for several years past the
inseparable coadjutor of the younger Herschel. The amanuensis
of the latter at the Cape of Good Hope, and the indefatigable
superintendent of his telescope during the whole period of
its construction and operations, Dr. Grant has been able to
supply us with intelligence equal in general interest at
least to that which Dr. Herschel himself has transmitted to
the Royal Society. For permission to indulge his friendship
in communicating this invaluable information to us, Dr. Grant
and ourselves are indebted to the magnanimity of Dr. Herschel,
who, far above all mercenary considerations, has thus signally
honored and rewarded his fellow laborer in the field of science.
Regarding the illustrations which, according to the implications of
the text, accompanied the supplement, the writer was specific. Most
of them, he stated, were copies of “drawings taken in the observatory
by Herbert Home, Esq., who accompanied the last powerful series of
reflectors from London to the Cape. The engraving of the belts of
Jupiter is a reduced copy of an imperial folio drawing by Dr. Herschel
himself. The segment of the inner ring of Saturn is from a large
drawing by Dr. Grant.”
A history of Sir William Herschel’s work and a description of his
telescopes took up a column of the _Sun_, and on top of this came the
details--as the _Journal_ printed them--of Sir John’s plans to outdo
his father by revolutionary methods and a greater telescope. Sir John,
it appeared, was in conference with Sir David Brewster:
After a few minutes’ silent thought, Sir John diffidently
inquired whether it would not be possible to effect a
_transfusion of artificial light through the focal object of
vision!_ Sir David, somewhat startled at the originality of the
idea, paused a while, and then hesitatingly referred to the
refrangibility of rays and the angle of incidence. Sir John,
grown more confident, adduced the example of the Newtonian
reflector, in which the refrangibility was corrected by the
second speculum and the angle of incidence restored by the
third.
“And,” continued he, “why cannot the illuminated microscope,
say the hydro-oxygen, be applied to render distinct and, if
necessary, even to magnify, the focal object?”
Sir David sprang from his chair in an ecstasy of conviction,
and, leaping half-way to the ceiling, exclaimed:
“Thou art the man!”
Details of the casting of a great lens came next. It was twenty-four
feet in diameter, and weighed nearly fifteen thousand pounds after it
was polished; its estimated magnifying-power was forty-two thousand
times. As he saw it safely started on its way to Africa, Sir John
“expressed confidence in his ultimate ability to study even the
entomology of the moon, in case she contained insects upon her surface.”
Thus ended the first instalment of the story. Where had the _Sun_ got
the _Journal of Science_ supplement? An editorial article answered that
“it was very politely furnished us by a medical gentleman immediately
from Scotland, in consequence of a paragraph which appeared on Friday
last from the Edinburgh _Courant_.” The article added:
The portion which we publish to-day is introductory to
celestial discoveries of higher and more universal interest
than any, in any science yet known to the human race. Now
indeed it may be said that we live in an age of discovery.
It cannot be said that the whole town buzzed with excitement that day.
Perhaps this first instalment was a bit over the heads of most readers;
it was so technical, so foreign. But in Nassau and Ann Streets,
wherever two newspapermen were gathered together, there was buzzing
enough. What was coming next? Why hadn’t they thought to subscribe to
the Edinburgh _Journal of Science_, with its wonderful supplement?
Nearly four columns of the revelations appeared on the following
day--August 26, 1835. This time the reading public came trooping into
camp, for the _Sun’s_ reprint of the _Journal of Science_ supplement
got beyond the stage of preliminaries and predictions, and began to
tell of what was to be seen on the moon. Scientists and newspapermen
appreciated the detailed description of the mammoth telescope and the
work of placing it, but the public, like a child, wanted the moon--and
got it. Let us plunge in at about the point where the public plunged:
The specimen of lunar vegetation, however, which they had
already seen, had decided a question of too exciting an
interest to induce them to retard its exit. It had demonstrated
that the moon has an atmosphere constituted similarly to our
own, and capable of sustaining organized and, therefore, most
probably, animal life.
“The trees,” says Dr. Grant, “for a period of ten minutes were
of one unvaried kind, and unlike any I have seen except the
largest class of yews in the English churchyards, which they in
some respects resemble. These were followed by a level green
plain which, as measured by the painted circle on our canvas
of forty-nine feet, must have been more than half a mile in
breadth.”
The article had explained that, by means of a great reflector, the
lunar views were thrown upon a big canvas screen behind the telescope.
Then appeared as fine a forest of firs, unequivocal firs, as I
have ever seen cherished in the bosom of my native mountains.
Wearied with the long continuance of these, we greatly reduced
the magnifying power of the microscope without eclipsing either
of the reflectors, and immediately perceived that we had been
insensibly descending, as it were, a mountainous district of
highly diversified and romantic character, and that we were
on the verge of a lake, or inland sea; but of what relative
locality or extent, we were yet too greatly magnified to
determine.
On introducing the feeblest achromatic lens we possessed, we
found that the water, whose boundary we had just discovered,
answered in general outline to the Mare Nubicum of Riccoli.
Fairer shores never angel coasted on a tour of pleasure. A
beach of brilliant white sand, girt with wild, castellated
rocks, apparently of green marble, varied at chasms, occurring
every two or three hundred feet, with grotesque blocks of chalk
or gypsum, and feathered and festooned at the summits with the
clustering foliage of unknown trees, moved along the bright
wall of our apartment until we were speechless with admiration.
A column farther on, in a wonderful valley of this wonderful moon, life
at last burst upon the seers:
In the shade of the woods on the southeastern side we beheld
continuous herds of brown quadrupeds, having all the external
characteristics of the bison, but more diminutive than any
species of the _bos_ genus in our natural history. Its tail
was like that of our _bos grunniens_; but in its semicircular
horns, the hump on its shoulders, the depth of its dewlap,
and the length of its shaggy hair, it closely resembled the
species to which I have compared it.
It had, however, one widely distinctive feature, which we
afterward found common to nearly every lunar quadruped we have
discovered; namely, a remarkable fleshy appendage over the
eyes, crossing the whole breadth of the forehead and united to
the ears. We could most distinctly perceive this hairy veil,
which was shaped like the upper front outline of the cap known
to the ladies as Mary Queen of Scots cap, lifted and lowered by
means of the ears. It immediately occurred to the acute mind
of Dr. Herschel that this was a providential contrivance to
protect the eyes of the animal from the great extremes of light
and darkness to which all the inhabitants of our side of the
moon are periodically subjected.
The next animal perceived would be classed on earth as a
monster. It was of a bluish lead color, about the size
of a goat, with a head and beard like him, and a _single
horn_, slightly inclined forward from the perpendicular. The
female was destitute of the horn and beard, but had a much
longer tail. It was gregarious, and chiefly abounded on the
acclivitous glades of the woods. In elegance of symmetry
it rivaled the antelope, and like him it seemed an agile,
sprightly creature, running with great speed and springing from
the green turf with all the unaccountable antics of the young
lamb or kitten.
This beautiful creature afforded us the most exquisite
amusement. The mimicry of its movements upon our white-painted
canvas was as faithful and luminous as that of animals within
a few yards of a camera obscura when seen pictured upon its
tympan. Frequently, when attempting to put our fingers upon
its beard, it would suddenly bound away into oblivion, as if
conscious of our earthly impertinence; but then others would
appear, whom we could not prevent nibbling the herbage, say or
do what we would to them.
So, at last, the people of earth knew something concrete about the live
things of the moon. Goats with beards were there, and every New Yorker
knew goats, for they fed upon the rocky hills of Harlem. And the moon
had birds, too:
On examining the center of this delightful valley we found
a large, branching river, abounding with lovely islands and
water-birds of numerous kinds. A species of gray pelican
was the most numerous, but black and white cranes, with
unreasonably long legs and bill, were also quite common. We
watched their piscivorous experiments a long time in hopes
of catching sight of a lunar fish; but, although we were not
gratified in this respect, we could easily guess the purpose
with which they plunged their long necks so deeply beneath
the water. Near the upper extremity of one of these islands
we obtained a glimpse of a strange amphibious creature of a
spherical form, which rolled with great velocity across the
pebbly beach, and was lost sight of in the strong current which
set off from this angle of the island.
At this point clouds intervened, and the Herschel party had to call
it a day. But it had been a big day, and nobody who read the _Sun_
wondered that the astronomers tossed off “congratulatory bumpers of
the best ‘East India particular,’ and named this place of wonders the
Valley of the Unicorn.” So ended the _Sun_ story of August 26, but an
editorial paragraph assured the patrons of the paper that on the morrow
there would be a treat even richer.
What did the other papers say? In the language of a later and less
elegant period, most of them ate it up--some eagerly, some grudgingly,
some a bit dubiously, but they ate it, either in crumbs or in hunks.
The _Daily Advertiser_ declared:
No article has appeared for years that will command so general
a perusal and publication. Sir John has added a stock of
knowledge to the present age that will immortalize his name and
place it high on the page of science.
The _Mercantile Advertiser_, knowing that its lofty readers were
unlikely to see the moon revelations in the lowly _Sun_, hastened
to begin reprinting the articles in full, with the remark that the
document appeared to have intrinsic evidence of authenticity.
The _Times_, a daily then only a year old, and destined to live only
eighteen months more--later, of course, the title was used by a
successful daily--said that everything in the _Sun_ story was probable
and plausible, and had an “air of intense verisimilitude.”
The New York _Sunday News_ advised the incredulous to be patient:
Our doubts and incredulity may be a wrong to the learned
astronomer, and the circumstances of this wonderful discovery
may be correct.
The _Courier and Enquirer_ said nothing at all. Like the _Journal
of Commerce_, it hated the _Sun_ for a lucky upstart. Both of these
sixpenny respectables stood silent, with their axes behind their backs.
Their own readers, the Livingstons and the Stuyvesants, got not a
line about the moon from the blanket sheets, but they sent down into
the kitchen and borrowed the _Sun_ from the domestics, on the shallow
pretext of wishing to discover whether their employees were reading a
moral newspaper--as indeed they were.
The _Herald_, then about four months old, said not a word about the
moon story. In fact, that was a period in which it said nothing at all
about any subject, for the fire of that summer had unfortunately wiped
out its plant. On the very days when the moon stories appeared, Mr.
Bennett stood cracking his knuckles in front of his new establishment,
the basement of 202 Broadway, trying to hurry the men who were
installing a double-cylinder press. Being a wise person, he advertised
his progress in the _Sun_. It may have vexed him to see the circulation
of the _Sun_--which he had imitated in character and price--bound
higher and higher as he stood helpless.
The third instalment of the literary treasure so obligingly imported by
the “medical gentleman immediately from Scotland” introduced to _Sun_
readers new and important regions of the moon--the Vagabond Mountains,
the Lake of Death, craters of extinct volcanoes twenty-eight hundred
feet high, and twelve luxuriant forests divided by open plains “in
which waved an ocean of verdure, and which were probably prairies like
those of North America.” The details were satisfying:
Dr. Herschel has classified not less than thirty-eight species
of forest trees and nearly twice this number of plants, found
in this tract alone, which are widely different to those found
in more equatorial latitudes. Of animals he classified nine
species of mammalia and five of oviparia. Among the former is
a small kind of reindeer, the elk, the moose, the horned bear,
and the biped beaver.
The last resembles the beaver of the earth in every other
respect than its destitution of a tail and its invariable
habit of walking upon only two feet. It carries its young in
its arms, like a human being, and walks with an easy, gliding
motion. Its huts are constructed better and higher than those
of many tribes of human savages, and from the appearance of
smoke in nearly all of them there is no doubt of its being
acquainted with the use of fire.
The largest lake described was two hundred and sixty-six miles long and
one hundred and ninety-three wide, shaped like the Bay of Bengal, and
studded with volcanic islands. One island in a large bay was pinnacled
with quartz crystals as brilliant as fire. Near by roamed zebras three
feet high. Golden and blue pheasants strutted about. The beach was
covered with shell-fish. Dr. Grant did not say whether the fire-making
beavers ever held a clambake there.
The _Sun_ of Friday, August 28, 1835, was a notable issue. Not yet two
years old, Mr. Day’s newspaper had the satisfaction of announcing that
it had achieved the largest circulation of any daily in the world.
It had, it said, 15,440 regular subscribers in New York and 700 in
Brooklyn, and it sold 2,000 in the streets and 1,220 out of town--a
grand total of 19,360 copies, as against the 17,000 circulation of the
London _Times_. The double-cylinder Napier press in the building at
Nassau and Spruce Streets--the corner where the _Tribune_ is to-day,
and to which the _Sun_ had moved on August 3--had to run ten hours
a day to satisfy the public demand. People waited with more or less
patience until three o’clock in the afternoon to read about the moon.
That very issue contained the most sensational instalment of all the
moon series, for through that mystic chain which included Dr. Grant,
the supplement of the Edinburgh _Journal of Science_, the “medical
gentleman immediately from Scotland,” and the _Sun_, public curiosity
as to the presence of human creatures on the orb of night was satisfied
at last. The astronomers were looking upon the cliffs and crags of a
new part of the moon:
But whilst gazing upon them in a perspective of about half
a mile we were thrilled with astonishment to perceive four
successive flocks of large winged creatures, wholly unlike any
kind of birds, descend with a slow, even motion from the cliffs
on the western side and alight upon the plain. They were first
noticed by Dr. Herschel, who exclaimed:
“Now gentlemen, my theories against your proofs, which you have
often found a pretty even bet, we have here something worth
looking at. I was confident that if ever we found beings in
human shape it would be in this longitude, and that they would
be provided by their Creator with some extraordinary powers of
locomotion. First, exchange for my Number D.”
This lens, being soon introduced, gave us a fine half-mile
distance; and we counted three parties of these creatures, of
twelve, nine, and fifteen in each, walking erect toward a small
wood near the base of the eastern precipices. Certainly they
were like human beings, for their wings had now disappeared,
and their attitude in walking was both erect and dignified.
Having observed them at this distance for some minutes, we
introduced lens H._z_., which brought them to the apparent
proximity of eighty yards--the highest clear magnitude we
possessed until the latter end of March, when we effected an
improvement in the gas burners.
About half of the first party had passed beyond our canvas; but
of all the others we had a perfectly distinct and deliberate
view. They averaged four feet in height, were covered, except
on the face, with short and glossy copper-colored hair, and had
wings composed of a thin membrane, without hair, lying snugly
upon their backs, from the top of the shoulders to the calves
of the legs.
The face, which was of a yellowish flesh-color, was a slight
improvement upon that of the large orang-utan, being more open
and intelligent in its expression, and having a much greater
expanse of forehead. The mouth, however, was very prominent,
though somewhat relieved by a thick beard upon the lower jaw,
and by lips far more human than those of any species of the
_Simia_ genus.
In general symmetry of body and limbs they were infinitely
superior to the orang-utan; so much so that, but for their long
wings, Lieutenant Drummond said they would look as well on a
parade-ground as some of the old cockney militia. The hair on
the head was a darker color than that of the body, closely
curled, but apparently not woolly, and arranged in two curious
semi-circles over the temples of the forehead. Their feet could
only be seen as they were alternately lifted in walking; but
from what we could see of them in so transient a view, they
appeared thin and very protuberant at the heel.
Whilst passing across the canvas, and whenever we afterward saw
them, these creatures were evidently engaged in conversation;
their gesticulation, more particularly the varied action of the
hands and arms, appeared impassioned and emphatic. We hence
inferred that they were rational beings, and, although not
perhaps of so high an order as others which we discovered the
next month on the shores of the Bay of Rainbows, that they were
capable of producing works of art and contrivance.
The next view we obtained of them was still more favorable. It
was on the borders of a little lake, or expanded stream, which
we then for the first time perceived running down the valley to
the large lake, and having on its eastern margin a small wood.
Some of these creatures had crossed this water and were lying
like spread eagles on the skirts of the wood.
We could then perceive that their wings possessed great
expansion, and were similar in structure to those of the bat,
being a semi-transparent membrane expanded in curvilineal
divisions by means of straight radii, united at the back by
the dorsal integuments. But what astonished us very much
was the circumstance of this membrane being continued from
the shoulders to the legs, united all the way down, though
gradually decreasing in width. The wings seemed completely
under the command of volition, for those of the creatures whom
we saw bathing in the water spread them instantly to their full
width, waved them as ducks do theirs to shake off the water,
and then as instantly closed them again in a compact form.
Our further observation of the habits of these creatures, who
were of both sexes, led to results so very remarkable that I
prefer they should be first laid before the public in Dr.
Herschel’s own work, where I have reason to know that they are
fully and faithfully stated, however incredulously they may be
received....
The three families then almost simultaneously spread their
wings, and were lost in the dark confines of the canvas before
we had time to breathe from our paralyzing astonishment. We
scientifically denominated them the _vespertilio-homo_, or
man-bat; and they are doubtless innocent and happy creatures,
notwithstanding some of their amusements would but ill comport
with our terrestrial notions of decorum.
So ended the account, in Dr. Grant’s words, of that fateful day. The
editor of the supplement, perhaps a cousin of the “medical gentleman
immediately arrived from Scotland,” added that although he had of
course faithfully obeyed Dr. Grant’s injunction to omit “these highly
curious passages,” he did not “clearly perceive the force of the
reasons assigned for it,” and he added:
From these, however, and other prohibited passages, which will
be published by Dr. Herschel with the certificates of the
civil and military authorities of the colony, and of several
Episcopal, Wesleyan, and other ministers who, in the month of
March last, were permitted under the stipulation of temporary
secrecy to visit the observatory and become eye-witnesses
of the wonders which they were requested to attest, we are
confident his forthcoming volumes will be at once the most
sublime in science and the most intense in general interest
that ever issued from the press.
New York now stopped its discussion of human slavery, the high cost of
living--apples cost as much as four cents apiece in Wall Street--and
other familiar topics, and devoted its talking hours to the man-bats
of the moon. The _Sun_ was stormed by people who wanted back numbers
of the stories, and flooded with demands by mail. As the text of the
_Journal of Science_ article indicated that the original narrative had
been illustrated, there was a cry for pictures.
Mr. Day was busy with the paper and its overworked press, but he
gave Mr. Locke a free hand, and that scholar took to Norris & Baker,
lithographers, in the Union Building, Wall Street, the drawings which
had been intrusted to his care by the “medical gentleman immediately
from Scotland.” Mr. Baker, described by the _Sun_ as quite the most
talented lithographic artist of the city, worked day and night on his
delightful task, that the illustrations might be ready when the _Sun’s_
press should have turned out, in the hours when it was not printing
_Suns_, a pamphlet containing the astronomical discoveries.
“Dr. Herschel’s great work,” said the _Sun_, “is preparing for
publication at ten guineas sterling, or fifty dollars; and we shall
give all the popular substance of it for twelve or thirteen cents.”
The pamphlets were to be sold two for a quarter; the lithographs at
twenty-five cents for the set.
Most newspapers that mentioned the discovery of human creatures on
the moon were credulous. The _Evening Post_, edited by William Cullen
Bryant and Fitz-Greene Halleck--“the chanting cherubs of the _Post_,”
as Colonel Webb was wont to call them--only skirted the edge of doubt:
That there should be winged people in the moon does not
strike us as more wonderful than the existence of such a
race of beings on earth; and that there does or did exist
such a race rests on the evidence of that most veracious of
voyagers, _Peter Wilkins_, whose celebrated work not only gives
an account of the general appearance and habits of a most
interesting tribe of flying Indians, but also of those more
delicate and engaging traits which the author was enabled to
discover by reason of the conjugal relations he entered into
with one of the females of the winged tribe.
_Peter Wilkins_ was the hero of Robert Paltock’s imaginative book, “The
Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, a Cornish Man,” published in
London in 1750. Paltock’s winged people, said Southey, were “the most
beautiful creatures of imagination that were ever devised.”
The instalment of the discoveries printed on August 29 revealed to the
reader the great Temple of the Moon, built of polished sapphire, with a
roof of some yellow metal, supported by columns seventy feet high and
six feet in diameter:
It was open on all sides, and seemed to contain neither seats,
altars, nor offerings, but it was a light and airy structure,
nearly a hundred feet high from its white, glistening floor to
the glowing roof, and it stood upon a round, green eminence
on the eastern side of the valley. We afterward, however,
discovered two others which were in every respect facsimiles of
this one; but in neither did we perceive any visitants except
flocks of wild doves, which alighted on its lustrous pinnacles.
Had the devotees of these temples gone the way of all living,
or were the latter merely historical monuments? What did the
ingenious builders mean by the globe surrounded with flames?
Did they, by this, record any past calamity of _their_ world,
or predict any future one of _ours_? I by no means despair
of ultimately solving not only these, but a thousand other
questions which present themselves respecting the object in
this planet; for not the millionth part of her surface has yet
been explored, and we have been more desirous of collecting
the greatest possible number of new facts than of indulging in
speculative theories, however seductive to the imagination.
The conclusion of this astounding narrative, which totalled eleven
thousand words, was printed on August 31. In the valley of the temple a
new set of man-bats was found:
We had no opportunity of seeing them actually engaged in any
work of industry or art; and, so far as we could judge, they
spent their happy hours in collecting various fruits in the
woods, in eating, flying, bathing, and loitering about upon the
summits of precipices.
One night, when the astronomers finished work, they neglectfully left
the telescope facing the eastern horizon. The risen sun burned a hole
fifteen feet in circumference through the reflecting chamber, and
ruined part of the observatory. When the damage was repaired, the moon
was invisible, and so Dr. Herschel turned his attention to Saturn.
Most of the discoveries here were technical, as the _Sun_ assured its
readers, and the narrative came to an end. An editorial note added:
This concludes the supplement with the exception of forty pages
of illustrative and mathematical notes, which would greatly
enhance the size and price of this work without commensurably
adding to its general interest. In order that our readers may
judge for themselves whether we have withheld from them any
matter of general comprehension and interest, we insert one of
the notes from those pages of the supplement which we thought
it useless to reprint; and it may be considered a fair sample
of the remainder. For ourselves, we know nothing of mathematics
beyond counting dollars and cents, but to geometricians
the following new method of measuring the height of the
lunar mountains, adopted by Sir John Herschel, may be quite
interesting.
Perhaps the pretended method of measuring lunar mountains was
not interesting to laymen, but it may have been the cause of an
intellectual tumult at Yale. At all events, a deputation from that
college hurried to the steamboat and came to New York to see the
wonderful supplement. The collegians saw Mr. Day, and voiced their
desire.
“Surely,” he replied, “you do not doubt that we have the supplement in
our possession? I suppose the magazine is somewhere up-stairs, but I
consider it almost an insult that you should ask to see it.”
On their way out the Yale men heard, perhaps from the “devil,” that one
Locke was interested in the matter of the moon, that he had handled
the supplement, and that he was to be seen at the foot of the stairs,
smoking his cigar and gazing across City Hall Park. They advanced
upon him, and he, less brusque than Mr. Day, told the scientific
pilgrims that the supplement was in the hands of a printer in William
Street--giving the name and address.
As the Yale men disappeared in the direction of the printery, Locke
started for the same goal, and more rapidly. When the Yalensians
arrived, the printer, primed by Locke, told them that the precious
pamphlet had just been sent to another shop, where certain
proof-reading was to be done. And so they went from post to pillar
until the hour came for their return to New Haven. It would not do to
linger in New York, for Professors Denison Olmsted and Elias Loomis
were that very day getting their first peep at Halley’s comet, about
to make the regular appearance with which it favours the earth every
seventy-six years.
But Yale was not the only part of intellectual New England to be deeply
interested in the moon and its bat-men. The _Gazette_ of Hampshire,
Massachusetts, insisted that Edward Everett, who was then running for
Governor, had these astronomical discoveries in mind when he declared
that “we know not how soon the mind, in its researches into the
labyrinth of nature, would grasp some clue which would lead to a new
universe and change the aspect of the world.”
Harriet Martineau, who was touring America at the time, wrote in
her “Sketches of Western Travel” that the ladies of Springfield,
Massachusetts, subscribed to a fund to send missionaries to the
benighted luminary. When the _Sun_ articles reached Paris, they were at
once translated into illustrated pamphlets, and the caricaturists of
the Paris newspapers drew pictures of the man-bats going through the
streets singing “_Au Clair de la Lune_.” London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow
made haste to issue editions of the work.
Meanwhile, of course, Sir John Herschel was busy with his telescope at
the Cape, all unaware of his expanded fame in the north. Caleb Weeks,
of Jamaica, Long Island, the Adam Forepaugh of his day, was setting out
for South Africa to get a supply of giraffes for his menagerie, and he
had the honour of laying in the great astronomer’s hand a clean copy of
the pamphlet. To say that Sir John was amazed at the _Sun’s_ enterprise
would be putting it mildly. When he had read the story through, he went
to Caleb Weeks and said that he was overcome; that he never could hope
to live up to the fame that had been heaped upon him.
In New York, meanwhile, Richard Adams Locke had spilled the beans.
There was a reporter named Finn, once employed by the _Sun_, but later
a scribe for the _Journal of Commerce_. He and Locke were friends.
One afternoon Gerard Hallock, who was David Hale’s partner in the
proprietorship of the _Journal of Commerce_, called Finn to his office
and told him to get extra copies of the _Sun_ containing the moon
story, as the _Journal_ had decided, in justice to its readers, that it
must reprint it.
Perhaps at the _Sun_ office, perhaps in the tap-room of the Washington
Hotel, Finn met Locke, and they went socially about to public places.
Finn told Locke of the work on which he was engaged, and said that, as
the moon story was already being put into type at the _Journal_ office,
it was likely that it would be printed on the morrow.
“Don’t print it right away,” said Locke. “I wrote it myself.”
The next day the _Journal_, instead of being silently grateful for the
warning, denounced the alleged discoveries as a hoax. Mr. Bennett, who
by this time had the _Herald_ once more in running order, not only
cried “Hoax!” but named Locke as the author.
Probably Locke was glad that the suspense was over. He is said to have
told a friend that he had not intended the story as a hoax, but as
satire.
“It is quite evident,” he said, as he saw the whole country take the
marvellous narrative seriously, “that it is an abortive satire; and I
am the best self-hoaxed man in the whole community.”
But while the _Sun’s_ rivals denounced the hoax, the _Sun_ was not
quick to admit that it had gulled not only its own readers but almost
all the scientific world. Barring the casual conversation between
Locke and Finn, there was no evidence plain enough to convince the
layman that it was a hoax. The _Sun_ fenced lightly and skilfully
with all controverters. On September 16, more than two weeks after
the conclusion of the story, it printed a long editorial article on
the subject of the authenticity of the discoveries, mentioning the
wide-spread interest that had been displayed in them:
Most of those who incredulously regard the whole narrative as
a hoax are generously enthusiastic in panegyrizing not only
what they are pleased to denominate its ingenuity and talent,
but also its useful effect in diverting the public mind, for
a while, from that bitter apple of discord, the abolition of
slavery, which still unhappily threatens to turn the milk of
human kindness into rancorous gall. That the astronomical
discoveries have had this effect is obvious from our exchange
papers. Who knows, therefore, whether these discoveries in
the moon, with the visions of the blissful harmony of her
inhabitants which they have revealed, may not have had the
effect of reproving the discords of a country which might be
happy as a paradise, which has valleys not less lovely than
those of the Ruby Colosseum, of the Unicorn, or of the Triads;
and which has not inferior facilities for social intercourse to
those possessed by the _vespertiliones-homines_, or any other
_homines_ whatever?
Some persons of little faith but great good nature, who
consider the “moon story,” as it is vulgarly called, an adroit
fiction of our own, are quite of the opinion that this was the
amiable moral which the writer had in view. Other readers,
however, construe the whole as an elaborate satire upon the
monstrous fabrications of the political press of the country
and the various genera and species of its party editors. In
the blue goat with the single horn, mentioned as it is in
connection with the royal arms of England, many persons fancy
they perceive the characteristics of a notorious foreigner who
is the supervising editor of one of our largest morning papers.
We confess that this idea of intended satire somewhat shook our
own faith in the genuineness of the extracts from the Edinburgh
_Journal of Science_ with which a gentleman connected with our
office furnished us as “from a medical gentleman immediately
from Scotland.”
Certain correspondents have been urging us to come out and
confess the whole to be a hoax; but this we can by no means do
until we have the testimony of the English or Scotch papers
to corroborate such a declaration. In the mean time let every
reader of the account examine it and enjoy his own opinion.
Many intelligent and scientific persons will believe it true,
and will continue to do so to their lives’ end; whilst the
skepticism of others would not be removed though they were in
Dr. Herschel’s observatory itself.
The New York showmen of that day were keen for novelty, and the moon
story helped them to it. Mr. Hannington, who ran the diorama in the
City Saloon--which was not a barroom, but an amusement house--on
Broadway opposite St. Paul’s Church, put on “The Lunar Discoveries; a
Brilliant Illustration of the Scientific Observation of the Surface of
the Moon, to Which Will Be Added the Reported Lunar Observations of
Sir John Herschel.” Hannington had been showing “The Deluge” and “The
Burning of Moscow,” but the wonders of the moon proved to be far more
attractive to his patrons. The _Sun_ approved of this moral spectacle:
Hannington forever and still years afterward, say we! His
panorama of the lunar discoveries, in connexion with the
beautiful dioramas, are far superior to any other exhibition in
this country.
Not less popular than Hannington’s panorama was an extravaganza put
on by Thomas Hamblin at the Bowery Theatre, and called “Moonshine, or
Lunar Discoveries.” A _Sun_ man went to review it, and had to stand up;
but he was patient enough to stay, and he wrote this about the show:
It is quite evident that Hamblin does not believe a word of the
whole story, or he would never have taken the liberties with
it which he has. The wings of the man-bats and lady-bats, who
are of an orange color and look like angels in the jaundice,
are well contrived for effect; and the dialogue is highly witty
and pungent. Major Jack Downing’s blowing up a whole flock of
winged lunarians with a combustible bundle of Abolition tracts,
after vainly endeavoring to catch a long aim at them with his
rifle, is capital; as are also his puns and jokes upon the
splendid scenery of the Ruby Colosseum. Take it altogether, it
is the most amusing thing that has been on these boards for a
long time.
Thus the moon eclipsed the regular stars of the New York stage. Even
Mrs. Duff, the most pathetic _Isabella_ that ever appeared in “The
Fatal Marriage,” saw her audiences thin out at the Franklin Theatre.
Sol Smith’s drolleries in “The Lying Valet,” at the Park Theatre, could
not rouse the laughter that the burlesque man-bats caused at the Bowery.
All this time there was a disappointed man in Baltimore; disappointed
because the moon stories had caused him to abandon one of the most
ambitious stories he had attempted. This was Edgar Allan Poe, and the
story he dropped was “Hans Pfaall.”
In the spring of 1835 the Harpers issued an edition of Sir John
Herschel’s “Treatise on Astronomy,” and Poe, who read it, was
deeply interested in the chapter on the possibility of future lunar
investigations:
The theme excited my fancy, and I longed to give free rein to
it in depicting my day-dreams about the scenery of the moon; in
short, I longed to write a story embodying these dreams. The
obvious difficulty, of course, was that of accounting for the
narrator’s acquaintance with the satellite; and the equally
obvious mode of surmounting the difficulty was the supposition
of an extraordinary telescope.
Poe spoke of this ambition to John Pendleton Kennedy, of Baltimore,
already the author of “Swallow Barn,” and later to have the honour of
writing, as the result of a jest by Thackeray, the fourth chapter of
the second volume of “The Virginians.” Kennedy assured Poe that the
mechanics of telescope construction were so fixed that it would be
impossible to impart verisimilitude to a tale based on a superefficient
telescope. So Poe resorted to other means of bringing the moon close to
the reader’s eye:
I fell back upon a style half plausible, half bantering, and
resolved to give what interest I could to an actual passage
from the earth to the moon, describing the lunar scenery as if
surveyed and personally examined by the narrator.
Poe wrote the first part of “Hans Pfaall,” and published it in the
_Southern Literary Messenger_, of which he was then editor, at
Richmond, Virginia. Three weeks afterward the first instalment of
Locke’s moon story appeared in the _Sun_. At the moment Poe believed
that his idea had been kidnapped:
No sooner had I seen the paper than I understood the jest,
which not for a moment could I doubt had been suggested by
my own _jeu d’esprit_. Some of the New York journals--the
_Transcript_, among others--saw the matter in the same light,
and published the moon story side by side with “Hans Pfaall,”
thinking that the author of the one had been detected in the
author of the other.
Although the details are, with some exceptions, very
dissimilar, still I maintain that the general features
of the two compositions are nearly identical. Both are
hoaxes--although one is in a tone of mere banter, the other of
down-right earnest; both hoaxes are on one subject, astronomy;
both on the same point of that subject, the moon; both
professed to have derived exclusive information from a foreign
country; and both attempt to give plausibility by minuteness of
scientific detail. Add to all this, that nothing of a similar
nature had even been attempted before these two hoaxes, the one
of which followed immediately upon the heels of the other.
Having stated the case, however, in this form, I am bound to
do Mr. Locke the justice to say that he denies having seen my
article prior to the publication of his own; I am bound to add,
also, that I believe him.
Nor can any unbiassed person who reads, for purpose of comparison, the
“Astronomical Discoveries” and “Hans Pfaall” suspect that Locke based
his hoax on the story of the Rotterdam debtor who blew his creditors
to bits and sailed to the moon in a balloon. Chalk and cheese are much
more alike than these two products of genius.
Poe may have intended to fall back upon “a style half plausible,
half bantering,” as he described it, but there is not the slightest
plausibility about “Hans Pfaall.” It is as near to humour as the great,
dark mind could get. “Mere banter,” as he later described it, is
better. The very episode of the dripping pitcher of water, used to wake
_Hans_ at an altitude where even alcohol would freeze, is enough proof,
if proof at all were necessary, to strip the tale of its last shred
of verisimilitude. No child of twelve would believe in _Hans_, while
Locke’s fictitious “Dr. Grant” deceived nine-tenths--the estimate is
Poe’s--of those who read the narrative of the great doings at the Cape
of Good Hope.
Locke had spoiled a promising tale for Poe--who tore up the second
instalment of “Hans Pfaall” when he “found that he could add very
little to the minute and authentic account of Sir John Herschel”--but
the poet took pleasure, in later years, in picking the _Sun’s_ moon
story to bits.
“That the public were misled, even for an instant,” Poe declared in his
critical essay on Locke’s writings, “merely proves the gross ignorance
which, ten or twelve years ago, was so prevalent on astronomical
topics.”
According to Locke’s own description of the telescope, said Poe,
it could not have brought the moon nearer than five miles; yet Sir
John--Locke’s Sir John--saw flowers and described the eyes of birds.
Locke had an ocean on the moon, although it had been established beyond
question that the visible side of the moon is dry. The most ridiculous
thing about the moon story, said Poe, was that the narrator described
the entire bodies of the man-bats, whereas, if they were seen at all by
an observer on the earth, they would manifestly appear as if walking
heels up and head down, after the fashion of flies on a ceiling.
And yet the hoax, Poe admits, “was, upon the whole, the greatest hit
in the way of sensation--of merely popular sensation--ever made by any
similar fiction either in America or Europe.” Whether Locke intended it
as satire or not--a debatable point--it was a hoax of the first water.
It deceived more persons, and for a longer time, than any other fake
ever written: and, as the _Sun_ pointed out, it hurt nobody--except,
perhaps, the feelings of Dr. Dick, of Dundee--and it took the public
mind away from less agreeable matters. Some of the wounded scientists
roared, but the public, particularly the New York public, took the
exposure of Locke’s literary villainy just as Sir John Herschel
accepted it--with a grin.
As for the inspiration of the moon story, the record is nebulous.
If Poe was really grieved at his first thought that Locke had taken
from him the main imaginative idea--that the moon was inhabited--then
Poe was oversensitive or uninformed, for that idea was at least two
centuries old.
Francis Godwin, an English bishop and author, who was born in 1562, and
who died just two centuries before the _Sun_ was first printed, wrote
“The Man in the Moone, or a Discourse of a Voyage Thither by Domingo
Gonsales, the Speedy Messenger.” This was published in London in 1638,
five years after the author’s death.
In the same year there appeared a book called “The Discovery of a World
in the Moone,” which contained arguments to prove the moon habitable.
It was written by John Wilkins--no relative of the fictitious _Peter_
of Paltock’s story, but a young English clergyman who later became
Bishop of Chester, and who was the first secretary of the Royal
Society. Two years later Wilkins added to his “Discovery of a World” a
“Discourse Concerning the Possibility of a Passage Thither.”
Cyrano de Bergerac, he of the long nose and the passion for poetry and
duelling, later to be immortalized by Rostand, read these products
of two Englishmen’s fancy, and about 1650 he turned out his joyful
“Histoire Comique des Etats et Empires de la Lune.” But Bergerac had
also been influenced by Dante and by Lucian, the latter being the
supposed inspiration of the fanciful narratives of Rabelais and Swift.
Perhaps these writers influenced Godwin and Wilkins also; so the
trail, zigzagged and ramifying, goes back to the second century. It is
hard to indict a man for being inspired, and in the case of the moon
story there is no evidence of plagiarism. If “Hans Pfaall” were to be
compared with Locke’s story for hoaxing qualities, it would only suffer
by the comparison. It would appear as the youthful product of a tyro,
as against the cunning work of an artist of almost devilish ingenuity.
Is there any doubt that the moon hoax was the sole work of Richard
Adams Locke? So far as concerns the record of the _Sun_, the comments
of Locke’s American contemporaries, and the belief of Benjamin H. Day,
expressed in 1883 in a talk with Edward P. Mitchell, the answer must
be in the negative. Yet it must be set down, as a literary curiosity
at least, that it has been believed in France and by at least one
English antiquary of repute that the moon hoax was the work of a
Frenchman--Jean Nicolas Nicollet, the astronomer.
Nicollet was born at Cluses, in Savoy, in 1786. First a cowherd, he did
not learn to read until he was twelve. Once at school his progress was
rapid, and at nineteen he become preceptor of mathematics at Chambry.
He went to Paris, where in 1817 he was appointed secretary-librarian
of the Observatory, and he studied astronomy with Laplace, who refers
to Nicollet’s assistance in his works. In 1823 he was appointed to the
government bureau of longitudes, and at the same time was professor of
mathematics in the College of Louis le Grand.
He became a master of English, and through this knowledge and his own
mathematical genius he was able to assemble, for the use of the French
life-insurance companies, all that was known, and much that he himself
discovered, of actuarial methods; this being incorporated in his letter
to M. Outrequin on “Assurances Having for Their Basis the Probable
Duration of Human Life.” He also wrote “Memoirs upon the Measure of an
Arc of Parallel Midway Between the Pole and the Equator” (1826), and
“Course of Mathematics for the Use of Mariners” (1830).
In 1831 Nicollet failed in speculation, losing not only his own fortune
but that of others. He came to the United States, arriving early in
1832, the very year that Locke came to America. It is probable that
he was in New York, but there is no evidence as to the length of
his stay. It is known, however, that he was impoverished, and that
he was assisted by Bishop Chanche, of Natchez, to go on with his
chosen work--an exploration of the Mississippi and its tributaries.
He made astronomical and barometrical observations, determined the
geographical position and elevation of many important points, and
studied Indian lore.
The United States government was so well pleased with Nicollet’s
work that it sent him to the Far West for further investigations,
with Lieutenant John C. Frémont as assistant. His “Geology of the
Upper Mississippi Region and of the Cretaceous Formation of the Upper
Missouri” was one of the results of his journeys. After this he tried,
through letters, to regain his lost standing in France by seeking
election to the Paris Academy of Sciences, but he was black-balled,
and, broken-hearted, he died in Washington in 1843.
The Englishman who believed that Nicollet was the author of the moon
hoax was Augustus De Morgan, father of the late William De Morgan, the
novelist, and himself a distinguished mathematician and litterateur.
He was professor of mathematics at University College, London, at the
time when the moon pamphlet first appeared in England. His “Budget
of Paradoxes,” an interesting collection of literary curiosities
and puzzles, which he had written, but not carefully assembled, was
published in 1872, the year after his death.
[Illustration:
THE FIRST INSTALLMENT OF THE MOON HOAX
]
[Illustration:
A MOON SCENE, FROM LOCKE’S GREAT DECEPTION
]
Two fragments, printed separately in this volume, refer to the moon
hoax. The first is this:
“Some Account of the Great Astronomical Discoveries Lately
Made by Sir John Herschel at the Cape of Good Hope.”--Second
Edition, London, 12mo, 1836.
This is a curious hoax, evidently written by a person versed in
astronomy and clever at introducing probable circumstances and
undesigned coincidences. It first appeared in a newspaper. It makes Sir
J. Herschel discover men, animals, _et cetera_, in the moon, of which
much detail is given. There seems to have been a French edition, the
original, and English editions in America, whence the work came into
Britain; but whether the French was published in America or at Paris
I do not know. There is no doubt that it was produced in the United
States by M. Nicollet, an astronomer, once of Paris, and a fugitive of
some kind.
About him I have heard two stories. First, that he fled to America with
funds not his own, and that this book was a mere device to raise the
wind. Secondly, that he was a protégé of Laplace, and of the Polignac
party, and also an outspoken man. That after the Revolution he was so
obnoxious to the republican party that he judged it prudent to quit
France; which he did in debt, leaving money for his creditors, but
not enough, with M. Bouvard. In America he connected himself with an
assurance office. The moon story was written, and sent to France,
chiefly with the intention of entrapping M. Arago, Nicollet’s especial
foe, into the belief of it. And those who narrate this version of the
story wind up by saying that M. Arago _was_ entrapped, and circulated
the wonders through Paris until a letter from Nicollet to M. Bouvard
explained the hoax.
I have no personal knowledge of either story; but as the poor man had
to endure the first, it is but right that the second should be told
with it.
The second fragment reads as follows:
“The Moon Hoax; or, the Discovery That the Moon Has a Vast
Population of Human Beings.” By Richard Adams Locke.--New
York, 1859.
This is a reprint of the hoax already mentioned. I suppose “R. A.
Locke” is the name assumed by M. Nicollet. The publisher informs us
that when the hoax first appeared day by day in a morning newspaper,
the circulation increased fivefold, and the paper obtained a permanent
footing. Besides this, an edition of sixty thousand was sold off in
less than one month.
This discovery was also published under the name of A. R. Grant.
Sohnke’s “Bibliotheca Mathematica” confounds this Grant with Professor
R. Grant of Glasgow, the author of the “History of Physical Astronomy,”
who is accordingly made to guarantee the discoveries in the moon. I
hope Adams Locke will not merge in J. C. Adams, the codiscoverer of
Neptune. Sohnke gives the titles of three French translations of “The
Moon Hoax” at Paris, of one at Bordeaux, and of Italian translations at
Parma, Palermo, and Milan.
A correspondent, who is evidently fully master of details, which he has
given at length, informs me that “The Moon Hoax” first appeared in the
New York _Sun_, of which R. A. Locke was editor. It so much resembled
a story then recently published by Edgar A. Poe, in a Southern paper,
“Adventures of Hans Pfaall,” that some New York journals published
the two side by side. Mr. Locke, when he left the New York _Sun_,
started another paper, and discovered the manuscript of Mungo Park;
but this did not deceive. The _Sun_, however, continued its career,
and had a great success in an account of a balloon voyage from England
to America, in seventy-five hours, by Mr. Monck Mason, Mr. Harrison
Ainsworth, and others.
I have no doubt that M. Nicollet was the author of “The Moon Hoax,”
written in a way which marks the practised observatory astronomer
beyond all doubt, and by evidence seen in the most minute details.
Nicollet had an eye to Europe. I suppose that he took Poe’s story
and made it a basis for his own. Mr. Locke, it would seem, when he
attempted a fabrication for himself, did not succeed.
In his remark that “there seems to have been a French edition, the
original,” Augustus De Morgan was undoubtedly misled, for every
authority consultable agrees that the French pamphlets were merely
translations of the story originally printed in the _Sun_; and De
Morgan had learned this when he wrote his second note on the subject.
The M. Arago whom De Morgan believes Nicollet sought to entrap was
Dominique François Arago, the celebrated astronomer. In 1830, as a
reward for his many accomplishments, he was made perpetual secretary
of the Paris Academy of Sciences, and in the following year--the
year of Nicollet’s fall from grace--he was elected to the Chamber of
Deputies. As to the intimation that Arago was really misled by the moon
story, it is unlikely. W. N. Griggs, a contemporary of Locke, insists
in a memoir of that journalist that the narrative was read by Arago to
the members of the Academy, and was received with mingled denunciation
and laughter. But hoaxing Arago in a matter of astronomy would have
been a difficult feat. Surely the discrepancies pointed out by Poe
would have been noticed immediately.
It is, however, easy to understand De Morgan’s belief that Nicollet
was the author of the moon story. Much of the narrative, particularly
parts which have here been omitted, is made up of technicalities which
could have come only from the pen of a man versed in the intricacies
of astronomical science. They were not put into the story to interest
_Sun_ readers, for they are far over the layman’s head, but for the
purpose of adding verisimilitude to a yarn which, stripped of the
technical trimmings, would have been pretty bald.
It was plain to De Morgan that Nicollet was one of the few men alive in
1835 who could have woven the scientific fabric in which the hoax was
disguised. It was also apparent to him that Nicollet, jealous of the
popularity of Arago, might have had a motive for launching a satire, if
not a hoax. And then there was Nicollet’s presence in America at the
time of the moon story’s publication, Nicollet’s knowledge of English,
and Nicollet’s poverty. The coincidences are interesting, if nothing
more.
* * * * *
Let us see what the French said about Nicollet and the story that came
to the _Sun_ from “a medical gentleman immediately from Scotland.” In
a sketch of Nicollet printed in the “Biographie Universelle” (Michaud,
Paris, 1884), the following appears:
There has been attributed to him an article which appeared in
the daily papers of France, and which, in the form of a letter
dated from the United States, spoke of an improvement in the
telescope invented by the learned astronomer Herschel, who was
then at the Cape of Good Hope. It has been generally and with
much probability attributed to Nicollet.
With the aid of this admirable improvement Herschel was
supposed to have succeeded in discovering on the surface of the
moon live beings, buildings of various kinds, and a multitude
of other interesting things. The description of these objects
and the ingenious method employed by the English astronomer to
attain his purpose was so detailed, and covered with a veneer
of science so skilfully applied, that the general public was
startled by the announcement of the discovery, of which North
America hastened to send us the news.
It has even been said that several astronomers and physicists
of our country were taken in for a moment. That seems hardly
probable to us. It was easy to perceive that it was a hoax
written by a learned and mischievous person.
The “Nouvelle Biographie Générale” (Paris, 1862), says of Nicollet:
He is believed to be the author of the anonymous pamphlet
which appeared in 1836 on the discoveries in the moon made by
Herschel at the Cape of Good Hope.
Cruel, consistent Locke, never to have written down the details of
the conception and birth of the best invention that ever spoofed the
world! He leaves history to wonder whether it be possible that, with
one word added, the French biographer was right, and that it was “a
hoax written by a learned and _a_ mischievous person.” Certain it is
that Nicollet never wrote all of the moon story; certain, too, that
Locke wrote much, if not all of it. The calculations of the angles of
reflection might have been Nicollet’s, but the blue unicorn is the
unicorn of Locke.
No man can say when the germ of the story first took shape. It might
have been designed at any time after Herschel laid the plans for his
voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, and that was at least two years before
it appeared in the _Sun_. Was Nicollet in New York then, and did he and
Locke lay their heads together across a table at the American Hotel and
plan the great deceit?
There was one head full of figures and the stars; another crammed with
the imagination that brought forth the fire-making biped beavers and
the fascinating, if indecorous, human bats. If they never met, more is
the pity. Whether they met, none can say. Go to ask the ghosts of the
American Hotel, and you find it gone, and in its place the Woolworth
Building, earth’s spear levelled at the laughing moon.
Whatever happened, the credit must rest with Richard Adams Locke.
Even if the technical embellishments of the moon story were borrowed,
still his was the genius that builded the great temple, made flowers
to bloom in the lunar valleys, and grew the filmy wings on the
_vespertilio-homo_. His was the art that caused the bricklayer of
Cherry Street to sit late beside his candle, spelling out the rare
story with joyous labour. It must have been a reward to Locke, even to
the last of his seventy years, to know that he had made people read
newspapers who never had read them before; for that is what he really
accomplished by this huge, complex lie.
“From the epoch of the hoax,” wrote Poe, “the Sun shone with
unmitigated splendor. Its success firmly established the ‘penny system’
throughout the country, and (through the _Sun_) consequently we are
indebted to the genius of Mr. Locke for one of the most important steps
ever yet taken in the pathway of human progress.”
CHAPTER IV
DAY FINDS A RIVAL IN BENNETT
_The Success of “The Sun” Leads to the Founding of the
“Herald.”--Enterprises and Quarrels of a Furious Young
Journalism.--The Picturesque Webb.--Maria Monk._
The usefulness of Richard Adams Locke as a _Sun_ reporter did not end
with the moon hoax. Far from expressing regret that its employee had
gulled half the earth, the _Sun_ continued to meet exposure with a
calm and almost flippant front, insisting that it would never admit
the non-existence of the man-bats until official contradiction arrived
from Edinburgh or the Cape of Good Hope. The paper realized the value,
in public interest, of Locke’s name, and was proud to announce, in
November of 1835, that it had commissioned Locke to write another
series of articles, telling the story of the “Life and Adventures of
Manuel Fernandez, otherwise Richard C. Jackson, convicted of the murder
of John Roberts, and to be executed at the Bellevue Prison, New York,
on Thursday next, the 19th instant.”
This was a big beat, for the young men of the _Courier and Enquirer_,
and perhaps of the _Herald_, had been trying to get a yarn from
the criminal, a Spaniard who had served in foreign wars, had been
captured by savages in Africa, and had had many other adventures.
Fernandez was convicted of killing another sailor for his attention
to Fernandez’s mistress, a Mrs. Schultz; and for about three weeks
Locke spent several hours a day in the condemned man’s cell. The “Life
and Adventures,” which was printed on the first page of the _Sun_, ran
serially from November 14 to November 25, and was read with avidity.
It was ironical that the hero of the story, who had expressed to Locke
an eagerness to have his career set before the public in its true
light, was prevented from reading the later instalments; for the law,
taking no cognizance of the literary side of the matter, went about its
business, and Fernandez was hanged in the Bellevue yard on the 19th, a
morning when the _Sun’s_ narrative had wrecked the sailor off the coast
of Wales. Mr. Locke reported the execution and drew upon the autopsy to
verify the “Adventures.”
It is an interesting fact that the corpse of Fernandez
exhibited marks of all those serious injuries which are
recorded in the course of our narrative of his life, more
particularly that dreadful fracture of his vertebræ which he
suffered in Leghorn.
The mere word of a “medical gentleman immediately from Scotland” was no
longer to be relied upon!
The _Sun’s_ story of the great fire of December, 1835, sounds like
Locke, but it may have been written by one of the other bright young
men who worked for Benjamin H. Day. Among them were William M. Prall,
who succeeded Wisner as the court reporter, and Lucius Robinson.
“Robinson seemed to be a young man of excellent ideas, but not very
highly educated,” Mr. Day remarked about fifty years later.
Perhaps the Day standards were very high. Robinson was twenty six when
he worked on the _Sun_. He had been educated at an academy in Delhi,
New York, and after that had studied law and been admitted to the bar.
He was too poor to practise at once, and went into newspaper work to
make a living. After leaving the _Sun_ he was elected district attorney
of Greene County, and in 1843 was appointed master of chancery in
New York. He left the Democratic party when the Republican party was
organized, but returned to his old political allegiance after the Civil
War. In 1876 he was elected Governor of New York--an achievement which
still left him a little less famous than his fellow reporter, Locke.
“Give us one of your real Moscow fires,” sighed the _Sun_ in the first
week of its existence.
The prayer was answered a little more than two years later, when about
twenty blocks south of Wall Street, between Broad Street and the
East River, were consumed. The fire started late in the evening of
Wednesday, December 16, and all that the _Sun_ printed about it the
next morning was one triple-leaded paragraph:
POSTSCRIPT--HALF PAST 1 O’CLOCK--A TREMENDOUS CONFLAGRATION
is now raging in the lower part of the city. The Merchants’
Exchange is in flames. Nearly all the blocks in the triangle
bounded by William and Wall Streets and the East River are
consumed! Several hundred buildings are already down, and the
firemen have given out. God only knows when the fire will be
arrested.
On Friday morning the _Sun_ had two and a half columns about the fire,
and gave an approximately correct estimate that seven hundred buildings
had been burned, at a loss of twenty million dollars. The calamity
provided an opportunity for the fine writing then indulged in, and the
fire reporter did not overlook it; nor did he forget Moscow. Here are
typical extracts:
Where but thirty hours since was the rich and prosperous
theater of a great and productive commerce, where enterprise
and wealth energized with bold and commanding efforts, now
sits despondency in sackcloth and a wide and dreary waste of
desolation reigns.
It seemed as if God were running in his anger and sweeping away
with the besom of his wrath the proudest monuments of man.
Destruction traveled and triumphed on every breeze, and billows
of fire rolled over and buried in their burning bosoms the
hopes and fortunes of thousands. Like the devouring elements
when it fed on Moscow’s palaces and towers, it was literally
a “sea of fire,” and the terrors of that night of wo and ruin
rolling years will not be able to efface.
The merchants of the First Ward, like Marius in the ruins of
Carthage, sit with melancholy moans, gazing at the graves of
their fortunes, and the mournful mementoes of the dreadful
devastation that reigns.
On the afternoon of the following day the _Sun_ got out an extra
edition of thirty thousand copies, its normal morning issue of
twenty-three thousand being too small to satisfy the popular demand.
The presses ran without stopping for nearly twenty-four hours.
On Monday, the 21st, the _Sun_ had the enterprise to print a map of
the burned district. Copies of the special fire editions went all over
the world. At least one of them ran up against poetic justice. When it
reached Canton, China, six months after the fire, the English newspaper
there classed the story of the conflagration with Locke’s “Astronomical
Discoveries,” and begged its readers not to be alarmed by the new hoax.
The _Sun_ had grown more and more prosperous. In the latter part of
1835 its four pages, each eleven and one-half by eighteen inches,
were so taken up with advertising that it was not unusual to find
reading-matter in only five of the twenty columns. Some days the
publisher would apologize for leaving out advertisements, on other
days, for having so little room for news. He promised relief, and it
came on January 4, 1836, when the paper was enlarged. It remained a
four-page _Sun_, but the pages were increased in size to fourteen by
twenty inches. In announcing the enlargement, the third in a year, the
_Sun_ remarked:
We are now enabled to print considerably more than twenty-two
thousand copies, on both sides, in less than eight hours. No
establishment in this country has such facilities, and no daily
newspaper in the world enjoys so extensive a circulation.
In the first enlarged edition Mr. Day made the boast that the _Sun_
now had a circulation more than double that of all the sixpenny
respectables combined. He had a word, too, about the penny papers that
had sprung up in the _Sun’s_ wake:
One after another they dropped and fell in quick succession
as they had sprung up; and all, with but one exception worth
regarding, have gone to the “receptacle of things lost upon
earth.” Many of these departed ephemerals have struggled hard
to keep within their nostrils the breath of life; and it is
a singular fact that with scarcely an exception they have
employed, as a means of bringing a knowledge of their being
before the public, the most unlimited and reckless abuse
of ourselves, the impeachment of our character, public and
private; the implications, moral and political; in short,
calumny in all its forms.
As to the last survivor of them worth note, which remains, we
have only to say, the little world we opened has proved large
enough for us both.
The exception to the general rule of early mortality was of course the
_Herald_. In spite of this broad attitude toward his only successful
competitor, Day could not keep from swapping verbal shots with
Bennett. The _Sun_ said:
Bennett, whose only chance of dying an upright man will be that
of hanging perpendicularly upon a rope, falsely charges the
proprietor of this paper with being an infidel, the natural
effect of which calumny will be that every reader will believe
him to be a good Christian.
Day had a dislike for Colonel Webb, of the _Courier and Enquirer_,
almost as great as his enmity toward Bennett; so when Webb assaulted
Bennett on January 19, 1836, it was rather a hard story to write. This
is the _Sun’s_ account of the fray:
Low as he had fallen, both in the public estimation and his
own, we were astonished to learn last evening that Colonel
Webb had stooped so far beneath anything of which we had ever
conceived it possible for him to be guilty, as publicly,
and before the eyes of hundreds who knew him, to descend to
a public personal chastisement of that villainous libel on
humanity of all kinds, the notorious vagabond Bennett. But so
it is.
As the story is told to us by an eye-witness, the colonel met
the brawling coward in Wall Street, took him by the throat,
and with a cowhide striped the human parody from head to foot.
For the space of nearly twenty minutes, as we are told, did
the right arm of the colonel ply his weapon with unremitted
activity, at which time the bystanders, who evidently enjoyed
the scene mightily, interceded in behalf of the suffering,
supplicating wretch, and Webb suffered him to run.
Had it been a dog, or any other decent animal, or had the
colonel himself with a pair of good long tongs removed a
polecat from his office, we know not that we would have been so
much surprised; but that he could, by any possibility, have so
far descended from himself as to come in public contact with
the veriest reptile that ever defiled the paths of decency, we
could not have believed.
Webb’s quarrel with Bennett grew out of the _Herald’s_ financial
articles. Bennett was the first newspaperman to see the news value of
Wall Street. When he was a writer on the _Courier and Enquirer_, and
one of Webb’s most useful men, he made a study of stocks, not as a
speculator, but as an investigator. He had a taste for money matters.
In 1824, five years after his arrival in America from the land of his
birth, Scotland, he tried to establish a commercial school in New York
and to lecture on political economy. He could not make a go of it, and
so returned to newspaper work as reporter, paragrapher, and poet.
In 1828 he became Washington correspondent of the _Enquirer_, and
it was at his suggestion that Webb, in 1829, bought that paper and
consolidated it with his own _Courier_. Bennett was a Tammany Society
man, therefore a Jacksonian. He left Webb because of Webb’s support of
Nicholas Biddle, and started a Jackson organ, the _Pennsylvanian_, in
Philadelphia. This was a failure.
Meanwhile Bennett had seen the _Sun_ rise, and he felt that there
must be room for another penny paper in New York. With his knowledge
of stocks he believed that he could make Wall Street news a telling
feature. In his second issue of the _Herald_, May 11, 1835, he printed
the first money-market report, and three days later he ran a table
of sales on the Stock Exchange. At this time, and for three years
afterward, Bennett visited Wall Street daily and wrote his own reports.
His flings at the United States Bank, of which Webb’s friend Biddle
was president, and his stories of alleged stock speculations by the
colonel himself, were the cause of Webb’s animosity toward his former
associate. Bennett took Webb’s assault calmly, and even wrote it up
in the _Herald_, suggesting at the end that Webb’s torn overcoat had
suffered more damage than anything else.
Day’s quarrel with Bennett, which never reached the physical stage, was
the natural outcome of an intense rivalry among the most successful
penny papers of that period--the _Sun_, the _Herald_, and the
_Transcript_. Against the sixpenny respectables these three were one
for all and all for one, but against one another they were as venomous
as a young newspaper of that day felt that it had to be to show that it
was alive.
Day’s antagonism toward Webb was sporadic. Most of the time the young
owner of the _Sun_ treated the fiery editor of the _Courier and
Enquirer_ as flippantly as he could, knowing that Webb liked to be
taken seriously. Day’s constant _bête noire_ was the commercial and
foreign editor of Webb’s paper, Mr. Hoskin, an Englishman.
On January 21, 1836, the _Sun_ charged that Webb and Hoskin had
rigged a “diabolical plot” against it. The sixpenny papers had formed
a combination for the purpose of sharing the expense of running
horse-expresses from Philadelphia to New York, bringing the Washington
news more quickly than the penny papers could get it by mail. The _Sun_
and the _Transcript_ then formed a combination of their own, and in
this way saved themselves from being beaten on Jackson’s message, sent
to Congress in December, 1835.
In January, 1836, Jackson sent a special message to Congress. It
was delivered on Monday, the 18th, and on Wednesday, the 20th, the
_Sun_ published a column summary of it. Webb made the charge that his
messenger from Washington had been lured into Day’s offices, and that
the _Sun_ got its story by opening the package containing the message
intended for the _Courier and Enquirer._ The _Sun_ replied that it
received the message legitimately, and that the whole thing was a
scheme to discredit Mr. Day and his bookkeeper, Moses Y. Beach:
The insinuation of Webb that we violated the sanctity of a seal
we hurl back in proud defiance to his own brow.
Webb went to the police and to the grand jury, and for a few days it
looked as if the hostile editors might reach for something of larger
calibre than pens. Thus the _Sun_ of January 22:
We were informed yesterday at the police office, and
subsequently by a gentleman from Wall Street, that Webb, of
the _Courier and Enquirer_, had openly threatened to make a
personal assault upon us. It was lucky for him that we did not
hear this threat; but we can now only say that if such, or
anything similar to it, be his intention, he will find each of
the three editors of the _Sun_ always provided with a brace
of “mahogany stock” pistols, to accommodate him in any way he
likes, or may not like.
The specification of “mahogany stock” referred to Colonel Webb’s own
supposed predilection for pistols of that description. Mr. Day and his
aids may have carried these handsome weapons, but it is not on record
that they made use of them, or that they had occasion to do so. Persons
gunning for editors seemed to neglect Mr. Day in favour of Mr. Bennett.
No sooner was this fierce clash with Webb over than the _Sun_ found
itself bombarded from many sides in the war over Maria Monk. This
woman’s “Awful Disclosures” had just been published in book form
by Howe & Bates, of 68 Chatham Street, New York. They purported to
be “a narrative of her sufferings during a residence of five years
as a novice and two years as a black nun in the Hôtel Dieu Nunnery
at Montreal.” On January 18, 1836, the _Sun_ began to publish these
shocking stories, in somewhat condensed and expurgated form. It did
not vouch for their truth, but declared that it printed them from an
“imperative sense of duty.” “We have no better means than are possessed
by any reader,” it cautiously added, “to decide upon their truth or
falsehood.”
The “Disclosures” ran in the _Sun_ for ten days, during which time
about one-half of the book was printed. Maria Monk herself was in
New York, and so cleverly had she devised the imposture that she was
received in good society as a martyr. Such was the public interest that
it was estimated by Cardinal Manning, in 1851, that between two hundred
and two hundred and fifty thousand copies of the volume were sold in
America and England. The Know-Nothing Party used it for political
capital, and anti-Catholic riots in several cities were the result of
its publication.
Its partial appearance in the _Sun_, while it may have helped the
circulation of the book, undoubtedly hastened the exposure of the
fraud. The editor of the _Commercial Advertiser_, William Leete Stone,
liked nothing better than to show up impostors. He had already written
a life of Matthias the Prophet, and he decided to get at the truth of
Maria Monk’s revolting story.
Stone was at this time forty-four years old. He had been editor of
the Herkimer _American_, with Thurlow Weed as his journeyman; of the
_Northern Whig_, of Hudson, New York; of the Albany _Daily Advertiser_,
and of the Hartford _Mirror_. In 1821 he came to New York and succeeded
Zachariah Lewis as editor of the _Commercial Advertiser_. As a Mason
he had a controversy with John Quincy Adams, who was prominent in the
anti-Masonic movement.
Stone was prominent politically. In 1825 he and Thurlow Weed
accompanied Lafayette in his tour of the United States. In 1841
President William Henry Harrison appointed him minister to The Hague,
but when Harrison died he was recalled by President Tyler. He was also
the first superintendent of the New York public schools--an office
which he held at the time of his death, in 1844.
Stone went to Montreal, visited the Hôtel Dieu, and minutely compared
the details set down by the Monk woman in regard to the inmates of the
nunnery and the plan of the building. The result of his investigation
was to establish the fact that the “Awful Disclosures” were fiction,
and he exposed the impostor not only in his newspaper, but in his book,
“Maria Monk and the Nunnery of the Hôtel Dieu.” The adherents of the
woman abused Stone roundly for this, and the general belief in her fake
was not entirely dissipated for years; not even after her own evil
history was told, and after the Protestant residents of Montreal had
held a mass-meeting to denounce her. Maria Monk died in the city prison
in New York fourteen years after she had created the most unpleasant
scandal of the time.
News matters of a genuine kind diverted the types from Maria Monk.
There was the celebrated murder of Helen Jewett, a case in which Mr.
Bennett played detective with some success, and the Alamo massacre.
Crockett, Bowie, and the rest of that band of heroes met their death on
March 6, 1836, but the details did not reach New York for more than a
month; it was April 12 when the _Sun_ gave a column to them.
Texas and the Seminole War kept the news columns full until May 10,
when Colonel Webb again pounced upon James Gordon Bennett. Said the
_Sun_:
Upon calculating the number of public floggings which that
miserable scribbler, Bennett, has received, we have pretty
accurately ascertained that there is not a square inch of his
body which has not been lacerated somewhere about fifteen
times. In fact, he has become a common flogging property; and
Webb has announced his intention to cowskin him every Monday
morning until the Fourth of July, when he will offer him a
holiday. We understand that Webb has offered to remit the
flogging upon the condition that he will allow him to shoot
him; but Bennett says:
“No; skin for skin, behold, all that a man hath will he give
for his life!”
The _Sun_ beat the town on a great piece of news that spring.
“Triumphant News from Texas! Santa Anna Captured!” the head-lines ran.
This appeared on May 18, four weeks after Sam Houston had taken the
Mexican president; but it was the first intimation New York had had of
the victory at San Jacinto.
During the investigation of the murder of Helen Jewett and the trial
of Richard P. Robinson, the suspect, the _Sun_ attacked Bennett for
the manner in which the _Herald_ handled the case. Bennett saw a good
yellow story in the murder, for the house in which the murdered girl
had lived could not be said to be questionable; there was no doubt
about its character. Bennett’s interviewing of the victim’s associates
did not please the _Sun_, which pictured the unfortunate women “mobbed
by several hundred vagabonds of all sizes and ages--amongst whom the
long, lank figure of the notorious Bennett was most conspicuous.”
When it was not Bennett, it was Colonel Webb or one of his men. The
_Sun_ went savagely after the proprietor of the _Courier and Enquirer_
because he led the hissing at the Park Theatre against Mr. and Mrs.
Joseph Wood, the English opera-singers. The offence of the Woods lay
in giving a performance on an evening when a benefit was announced for
Mrs. Conduit, another popular vocalist. The town was divided upon the
row, but as the Woods and Mrs. Conduit were all English-born, it was
not a racial feud like the Macready-Forrest affair. The _Sun_ rebuked
Colonel Webb particularly because, after booing at the Woods, he had
refused Mr. Wood’s offer to have it out over pistols and coffee.
Wood was not a lily-finger. He had been plain Joe Wood, the pugilist,
before he married the former Lady Lennox and embraced tenor song in
a serious way. Society rather took the part of the Woods, for after
the Park Theatre row a dinner in their compliment was arranged by
Henry Ogden, Robert C. Wetmore, Duncan C. Pell, John P. Hone, Carroll
Livingston, and other leading New Yorkers.
The fearlessness of the _Sun_ did not stop with saucing its
contemporaries. When Robinson was acquitted of the Jewett murder, after
a trial which the _Sun_ reported to the extent of nearly a page a day,
the _Sun_ editorially declared:
Our opinion, calmly and dispassionately formed from the
evidence, is that Richard P. Robinson is guilty of the wilful
and peculiarly atrocious murder of Helen Jewett.... Any
good-looking young man, possessing or being able to raise
among his friends the sum of fifteen hundred dollars to retain
Messrs. Maxwell, Price, and Hoffman for his counsel, might
murder any person he chose with perfect impunity.
Robinson’s acquittal was credited largely to Ogden Hoffman, whose
summing up the _Sun_ described as “the most magnificent production of
mind, eloquence, and rhetorical talent that ever resounded in a hall of
justice.” This was the Ogden Hoffman of whom Decatur said, when Hoffman
left the navy in 1816, that he regretted that the young man should have
exchanged “an honourable profession for that of a lawyer.” Hoffman
and his partner Maxwell, who shared in this tremendous fee of fifteen
hundred dollars, had been district attorneys of New York before the
time of the Jewett murder, and the _Sun_ inquired what would have been
Robinson’s fate if Hoffman, and not Phenix, had been the prosecutor.
On August 20, 1836, the _Sun_ announced that its circulation averaged
twenty-seven thousand copies daily, or fifty-six hundred more than the
combined sale of the eleven six-cent papers. Of the penny papers the
Sun credited the _Herald_ with thirty-two hundred and the _Transcript_
with ten thousand, although both these rivals claimed at least twice
as much. Columns were filled with the controversy which followed upon
the publication of these figures. The _Sun_ departed from a scholarly
argument with the _Transcript_ over the pronunciation of “elegiac,” and
denounced it as a “nestle-tripe,” whatever that was.
There was a little room left for the news. Aaron Burr’s death got a
stick; Marcy’s nomination for Governor of New York, an inch; Audubon’s
arrival in America, four lines. News that looks big now may not have
seemed so imposing then, as this _Sun_ paragraph of September 22, 1836,
would show:
Two more States are already spoken of for addition to the
Union, under the names of Iowa and Wisconsin.
Richard Adams Locke left the _Sun_ in the fall of 1836, and on October
6, in company with Joseph Price, started the _New Era_, a penny paper
for which the _Sun_ wished success. In less than a month, however,
Locke and his former employer were quarrelling about the price of meals
at the Astor House. That famous hotel was opened in May, 1836, with
all New York marvelling at the wonders of its walnut furniture, so
much nicer than the conventional mahogany! Before it was built, it was
referred to as the Park Hotel. When it opened it was called Astor’s
Hotel, but in a few months it came to be known by the name which stuck
to it until it was abandoned in 1913.
But to return to our meal. Said Mr. Locke’s _New Era_:
A paragraph is going the rounds of the papers abusing the Astor
House. Nothing can be more groundless. Where the arrangements
are complete, the charges, of course, must be corresponding. We
suppose the report has been set afloat by some person who was
kicked out for not paying his bill.
To this horrid insinuation Day replied:
The report they speak of was set afloat by ourselves, after
paying $1.25 for a breakfast for a lady and her infant a year
and a half old, served just one hour and seven minutes after
it was ordered, with coffee black as ink and without milk, and
that, too, in a room so uncleanly as to be rather offensive.
Locke wanted to make the _New Era_ another _Sun_, but he failed. His
second hoax, “The Lost Manuscript of Mungo Park,” which purported to
tell hitherto unrelated adventures of the Scottish explorer, fell down.
The public knew that the _New Era_ was edited by the author of the moon
story. When the _New Era_ died, Locke went to the Brooklyn _Eagle_,
just founded, and he succeeded Henry C. Murphy, the proprietor and
first editor, when that famous lawyer and writer was running for mayor
of Brooklyn. Locke afterward was a custom-house employee. He died on
Staten Island in 1871.
Squabbling with his former friend Locke over hotel service was no
such sport for Day as tilting at the owner of the _Herald_. The _Sun_
attacked Bennett in the fall of 1836 for his attitude toward the
Hamblin benefit. Thomas Sowerby Hamblin was made bankrupt by the Bowery
Theatre fire on September 22, for the great fires of the previous
December had ruined practically all the fire-insurance companies of
New York, and there was not a policy on the theatre which this English
actor-manager, with James H. Hackett, had made the leading playhouse
of America. Hamblin did not like Bennett’s articles and the _Sun_ thus
noted the result of them:
Alas, poor Bennett! He seems destined to be flogged into
immortal fame, and become the common buffet-block of all
mankind. Mr. Hamblin paid him a complimentary visit last
evening [November 17] in his editorial closet and lathered
him all into lumps and blotches, although the living lie was
surrounded by his minions and had a brace of loaded pistols
lying on his desk when the outraged visitor first laid hands on
him.
When the _Sun’s_ advertising business had increased until its income
from that source was more than two hundred dollars a day, it bought
two new presses of the Napier type from Robert Hoe, at a cost of seven
thousand dollars. These enabled Mr. Day to run off thirty-two hundred
papers an hour on each press. On the 2nd of January, 1837, the size
of the _Sun_ was slightly increased, about an inch being added to the
length and width of each of its four pages.
In February, 1837, the price of flour rose from the normal of about
$5.50 a barrel to double that amount. The _Sun_ declared that the
increase was not natural, but rather the result of a combination--a
suspicion which seems to have been shared by a large number of
citizens. The bread riots of February 13 and later were the result of
an agitation for lower prices.
The _Journal of Commerce_ denounced the _Sun_ as an inciter of the
riots, and suggested that the grand jury should direct its attention
toward Mr. Day. The _Sun_ not only refused to recede from its stand,
but suggested that the foreman of the grand jury, the famous Philip
Hone, had himself incited a riot--the riot against the Abolitionists,
July 11, 1834--which had a less worthy purpose than the _Sun’s_ stand
on the matter of flour prices. The _Sun_ was virtuously indignant,
even more than it had been a short time before, when the Transcript
charged the _Sun’s_ circulation man, Mr. Young, with biting two of the
_Transcript’s_ carriers!
The beginning of regular transatlantic steamship service did not find
in the _Sun_ a completely joyous welcome--thanks, perhaps, to the
temperament of Lieutenant Hosken, R.N. He was an officer of the Great
Western, a side-wheeler of no less than thirteen hundred and forty
tons, with paddles twenty-eight feet in diameter. This new ship, built
at Bristol, and a marvel of its time, reached New York, April 23, 1838,
after a passage of only sixteen days! The Sirius, another new vessel,
got in a few hours ahead of the Great Western, after a voyage of
eighteen days. The _Sun_ said of this double event:
Of the conduct of the officers in command of the Great Western,
we regret that we are compelled by reports to place it in no
very favorable contrast with the gentlemanly demeanor of the
officers of the Sirius. Every attention has been paid her,
citizens have turned out to welcome her arrival, she was
saluted by the battery on Ellis’s Island, _et cetera, et
cetera_, and thousands of other demonstrations of courtesy
were made, which proved only throwing pearls before swine.
A news boat was ordered to keep off or be run down, and
the hails of that boat and others were answered through a
speaking-trumpet in a manner which would have done toward the
savage of Nootka Sound, but is not exactly the style in which
to meet the courtesies of members of a community upon which
the line of packets depends in a large part for success. One
would have thought that all the impudence of Europe was put
on board a vessel built of large tonnage expressly for its
embarkation. By the time our corporation officers have run the
suspender-buttons off their breeches in chase of Lieutenant
Hosken, R. N., they will discover that they have been fools for
their pains.
Reverse this account entirely, and it will apply to the
Sirius--testimony which we are happy to make.
So the _Sun_ was not obsequiously grateful for the arrival of a ship
whose speed enabled it to announce on April 24 that Queen Victoria had
issued, on the 6th, the proclamation of the details of her coronation
at Westminster on June 26, and that O’Connell was taking steps to
remove the civil disabilities from the Jews.
All this time the _Sun_ was not neglecting the minor local happenings
about which its patrons liked to read. The police-courts, the theatres,
and the little scandals had their column or two.
CHAPTER V
NEW YORK LIFE IN THE THIRTIES
_A Sprightly City Which Daily Bought Thirty Thousand Copies of “The
Sun.”--The Rush to Start Penny Papers.--Day Sells “The Sun” for
Forty Thousand Dollars._
No dull city, that New York of Ben Day’s time! Almost a dozen theatres
of the first class were running. The Bowery, the first playhouse in
America to have a stage lighted with gas, had already been twice burned
and rebuilt. The Park, which saw the American début of Macready, Edwin
Forrest, and James H. Hackett, was offering such actors as Charles
Kean, Charles and Fanny Kemble, Charles Mathews, Sol Smith, Mr. and
Mrs. Joseph Wood, and Master Joseph Burke, the Irish Roscius. Forrest,
then talked of as a candidate for Congress, was the favourite of New
York. On his appearance, said a _Sun_ review of his acting in “King
Lear,” the audience uttered “the roar of seven thunders.”
There was vaudeville to be enjoyed at Niblo’s Garden, a circus at
Vauxhall Garden. Drama held the boards at the Olympic and the National.
The Franklin was one of the new theatres. It was in Chatham Street,
between James and Oliver, and it was there that Barney Williams,
the _Sun’s_ pioneer newsboy, made his first stage appearance, as a
jig-dancer, when he was about fifteen years old.
Charlotte Cushman, Hackett, Forrest, and Sol Smith were the leading
American actors of that day, although Junius Brutus Booth had achieved
some prominence. Edwin Booth, Joseph Jefferson, William J. Florence,
and Maggie Mitchell were children, all a little older than the _Sun_.
John T. Raymond was born at Buffalo in 1836, John E. McCullough in
Ireland the next year, and Lawrence Barrett at Paterson, New Jersey, in
1838.
The hotels were temples of plenty. English travellers, going to the new
Astor, the American, Niblo’s, or the New York House, recoiled in horror
at the appetite of the Yankee. At breakfast they saw the untutored
American break two or three boiled eggs into a tumbler and eat them
therefrom--and then they wrote letters to the London _Times_ about
it. At dinner, served in the hotels about noon--three o’clock was the
fashionable hour in private houses--the hungry New Yorker, including
Mr. Day and his brother-in-law, Mr. Beach, would sit down to roast
beef, venison, prairie-chicken, and a half-dozen vegetables. Bottles of
brandy stood in the centre of the table for him who would; surely not
for Mr. Day, who printed daily pieces about the effects of strong drink!
There was gambling on Park Row--Chatham Row, it was called then--games
in the Elysian Fields of Hoboken on Sundays, and duels there on
week-days; picnickings in the woods about where the Ritz-Carlton stands
to-day; horse-racing on the Boulevard, now upper Broadway, and rowing
races on the Harlem. Those who liked thoroughbred racing went to the
Union Course on Long Island, or to Saratoga.
Club life was young. Cooper, Halleck, Bryant, and other literary moguls
had started the Bread and Cheese Club in 1824. The Hone Club, named for
Mayor Hone, sprang up in 1836, and gave dinners for Daniel Webster,
William H. Seward, and other great Whigs. In that same year the Union
Club was founded--the oldest New York club that is still in existence.
The _Sun_ was not as popular in the clubs as it is to-day. A clubman of
1837 caught reading any newspaper except the _Courier and Enquirer_,
the _Evening Post_, or one of their like, would have been frowned upon
by his colleagues.
The _Sun_ found plenty to print.
“We write,” it boasted, “more original editorial matter than any other
paper in the city, great or small.”
It poked with its paragraphs at the shinplaster, that small form of
currency issued by private bankers. It made fun of phrenology, then one
of the fads. It jeered at animal magnetism, another craze. It had the
Papineau rebellion, the Patriot War, Indian uprisings, and the belated
news from Europe. It printed extracts from the “Pickwick Papers.”
Dickens was all the rage.
The _Sun’s_ comment on “Nicholas Nickleby,” when Dickens’s fourth book
reached New York in 1838, was that it was as well written as “Oliver
Twist,” and “not so gloomy.” Yet the grimness of the earlier novel had
a fascination for the youth of that day. It was this book, read by
candle-light after the store was closed, that so weakened the eyes of
Charles A. Dana--still clerking in Buffalo--that he believed he would
have to become a farmer.
The _Sun_ did not mention, in its report of the Patriot War, that Dana
was a member of the Home Guard in Buffalo, and had ideas of enlisting
as a regular soldier. The _Sun_ did not know of the youth’s existence;
nor is it likely that he read Mr. Day’s paper.
A piece of “newspaper news” was printed in the _Sun_ of June 1, 1837--a
description of the first so-called endless paper roll in operation. Day
still printed on small, flat sheets, but evidently he was impressed
with the novelty. The touch about the rag-mill, of course, was fiction:
We have been shown a sheet of paper about a hundred feet in
length and two feet wide, printed on both sides by a machine at
one operation. This extraordinary invention enables a person
to print off any length of paper required for any number of
copies of a work or a public journal without a single stop, and
without the assistance of any person except one to put in the
rags at the extremity of the machine.
This wonderful operation is effected by the placing of the
types on stereotype plates on the surface of two cylinders,
which are connected with the paper-making machinery. The paper,
as it issues from the mill, enters in a properly moistened
state between the rollers, which are evenly inked by an
ingenious apparatus, and emerges in a printed form. The number
of copies can be measured off by the yard or mile. The work
which we have seen from this press is “Robinson Crusoe,” and
consists of one hundred and sixty duodecimo pages.
The Bible could be printed off and almost disseminated among
the Indians in one continuous stream of living truth. The _Sun_
would occupy a roll about seven feet in diameter, and our issue
to Boston, Philadelphia, and other cities would be not far from
a quarter of a mile long, each. The two cents postage on this
would be but a trifle. The whole length of our paper would be
about seventy-seven thousand feet, a papyrus which it must be
confessed it would take Lord Brougham a longer time to unroll
than the vitrified scrolls of Herculaneum and Pompeii.
All that it is necessary for a man to do on going into a
paper-mill is to take off his shirt, hand it to the devil who
officiates at one extremity, and have it come out “Robinson
Crusoe” at the other. We should like to exchange some of our
old shirts in this way, as we cannot afford the expense, during
these hard times, of getting them washed.
Mr. Thomas French, the inventor, is from Ithaca, and is now
in this city. He has one roll about six inches in diameter
which is six hundred feet long.
[Illustration: (_From a Picture in the Possession of Mrs. Jennie Beach
Gasper_)
MOSES YALE BEACH, SECOND OWNER OF “THE SUN”]
No display advertising was printed in the _Sun_ of those years, but
there was a variety of “liners.” These were adorned with tiny cuts
of ships, shoes, horses, cows, hats, dogs, clocks, and what not. For
example--
Came to the premises of F. Reville, Gardener, on the 16th
inst., a COW, which has since calved. The owner is requested to
call, prove property, and pay expenses. Bloomingdale, between
fifth and sixth mile-stones.
That is nearly five miles north of the City Hall, on the West
Side--a region where now little grows except the rentals of palatial
apartment-houses. Here are two other advertisements characteristic of
the time:
A CARD--TO BUTCHERS--Mr. Stamler, having retired to private
life, would be glad to see his friends, the Butchers, at his
house, No. 5 Rivington Street, this afternoon, between the
hours of 2 and 5 P.M., to partake of a collation.
SIX CENTS REWARD!--Run away from the subscriber, on the 30th
of May, Charles Eldridge, an indented apprentice to the
Segar-Making business, about 16 years of age, 4 feet high,
broken back. Had on, when he left, a round jacket and blue
pantaloons. The above reward and no charges will be paid for
his delivery to
JOHN DIBBEN, No. 354 Bowery.
On June 15, 1837, the name of Benjamin H. Day, which had appeared at
the masthead of the _Sun_ since its beginning, disappeared. In its
place was the legend: “Published daily by the proprietor.” This gave
rise to a variety of rumours, and about a week later, on June 23, the
_Sun_ said editorially:
Several of our contemporaries are in a maze of wonder because
we have taken our beautiful cognomen from the imprint of the
_Sun_. Some of the loafers among them have even flattered
themselves that our humble self in person had consequently
disappeared. Not so, gentlemen--for though we may not be
ambitious that our thirty thousand subscribers should daily
pronounce our name while poring over advertisements on the
first page, we nevertheless remain steadily at our post, and
shall thus continue during the pleasure of a generous public,
except, perchance, an absence of a few months on a trip to
Europe, which we purpose to make this season.
With regard to a certain report that we had lost twenty
thousand dollars by shaving notes, we have nothing to say. Our
private business transactions cannot in the least interest the
public at large.
Day’s name never went back. The reason for its disappearance was a
libel-suit brought by a lawyer named Andrew S. Garr. On May 3, 1837,
the _Sun_ printed a report of a case in the Court of Chancery, in which
it was incidentally mentioned that Garr had once been indicted for
conspiracy to defraud. The reporter neglected to add that Garr had been
acquitted. At the end of the article was the quotation:
When rogues get quarreling, the truth will out.
Garr sued Day for ten thousand dollars, and Day not only took his name
from the top of the first column of the first page, but apparently made
a wash sale of the newspaper.
The case was tried in February, 1838, and on the 16th of that month
Garr got a verdict for three thousand dollars--“to be extracted,” as
the _Sun_ said next morning, “from the right-hand breeches-pocket
of the defendant, who about a year since ceased replenishing that
fountain of the ‘needful’ from the prolific source of the _Sun’s_ rays
by virtue of a total, unconditional, and unrevisionary sale of the same
to its present proprietor.”
The name of that “present proprietor” was not given; but on June 28,
1838, the following notice appeared at the top of the first page:
Communications intended for the _Sun_ must be addressed to
Moses Y. Beach, 156 Nassau Street, corner of Spruce.
Day was really out of the _Sun_ then, after having been its master for
five years lacking sixty-seven days, and the paper passed into the
actual ownership of Beach, who had married Day’s sister, and who had
acted as the bookkeeper of the _Sun_ almost from its inception. There
were those, including Edgar Allan Poe, who believed that Beach was the
boss of the _Sun_ even in the days of the moon hoax, but they were
mistaken. The paper, as the _Sun_ itself remarked on December 4, 1835,
was “altogether ruled by Benjamin H. Day.”
“I owned the whole concern,” said Mr. Day in 1883, “till I sold it to
Beach. And the silliest thing I ever did in my life was to sell that
paper!”
And why did Day sell, for forty thousand dollars, a paper which had the
largest circulation in the world--about thirty thousand copies? The
answer is that it was not paying as well as it had paid.
There were a couple of years when his profits had been as high as
twenty thousand dollars. The net return for the six months ending
October 1, 1836, as announced by the _Sun_ on April 19, 1837, was
$12,981.88; but at the time when Day sold out, the _Sun_ was about
breaking even. The advertising, due to general dulness in business--for
which the bank failures and the big fire were partly to blame--had
fallen off. It was costing Day three hundred dollars a week more
for operating expenses and materials than he got for the sales of
newspapers, and this loss was barely made up by the advertising
receipts. With what he had saved, and the forty thousand paid to him by
Beach, he would have a comfortable fortune. He was only twenty-eight
years old, and there might be other worlds to conquer.
From nothing at all except his own industry and common sense Day had
built up an enterprise which the _Sun_ itself thus described a few days
before the change of ownership:
Some idea of the business done in the little three-story
building at the corner of Nassau and Spruce Streets occupied by
the _Sun_ for the publication of a penny paper may be formed
from the fact that the annual outlay for material and wages
exceeds ninety-three thousand dollars--very nearly two thousand
a week, and more than three hundred a day for the six working
days. On this outlay we circulate daily thirty thousand papers.
Allowing the other nine morning papers an average of three
thousand circulation--which may fall short in two or three
cases, while it is a large estimate for all the rest--it will
appear that the circulation of the _Sun_ newspaper is daily
more than of all the others united.
That this is not mere gasconade, but susceptible of proof, we
refer the curious to the paper-makers who furnish the stock for
this immense circulation; to the type-founders who give us a
new dress three times a year, and to the Messrs. Hoe & Co., who
built our two double-cylinder Napier presses, which throw off
copies of the _Sun_ at the rate of four thousand per hour. We
invite newspaper publishers to visit our establishment when the
presses are in operation, and we shall be happy to show them
what would have astonished Dr. Faust, with all his intimacy
with a certain _nil admirari_ potentate.
As for the influence of the paper among the people, the _Sun_ dealt
in no vain exaggeration when it said of itself, a year before Day’s
departure:
Since the _Sun_ began to shine upon the citizens of New
York there has been a very great and decided change in the
condition of the laboring classes and the mechanics. Now every
individual, from the rich aristocrat who lolls in his carriage
to the humble laborer who wields a broom in the streets, reads
the _Sun_; nor can even a boy be found in New York City or the
neighboring country who will not know in the course of the day
what is promulgated in the _Sun_ in the morning.
Already can we perceive a change in the mass of the people.
They think, talk, and act in concert. They understand their
own interest, and feel that they have numbers and strength to
pursue it with success.
The _Sun_ newspaper has probably done more to benefit the
community by enlightening the minds of the common people than
all the other papers together.
Day found New York journalism a pot of cold, stale water, and left it
a boiling caldron; not so much by what he wrote as by the way in which
he made his success. There were better newspapermen than Day before and
during his time, plenty of them. They had knowledge and experience,
they knew style, but they did not know the people. In their imagination
the “gentle reader” was a male between the ages of thirty-five and
ninety, with a burning interest in politics, and a fancy that the
universe revolved around either Andrew Jackson or Daniel Webster. Why
write for any one who did not have fixed notions on the subject of the
United States Bank or Abolition?
To the mind of the sixpenny editor, the man who did not have six cents
to spend was a negligible quantity. Nothing was worth printing unless
it carried an appeal to the professional man or the merchant.
The _Courier and Enquirer_, under Colonel Webb, belched broadsides of
old-fashioned Democratic doctrine, and Webb hired the best men he could
find to load the guns. He had Bennett, Noah, James K. Paulding, and,
later, Charles King and Henry J. Raymond. These were all good writers,
most of them good newspapermen; but so far as the general public was
concerned, Colonel Webb might as well have put them in a cage.
The _Journal of Commerce_ was a great sixpenny, but it was not for the
people to read. From 1828 until the Civil War its editor was Gerard
Hallock, an enterprising journalist who ran expensive horse-expresses
to Washington to get the proceedings of Congress, but would not admit
that the public at large was more interested in a description of
the murdered Helen Jewett’s gowns than in a new currency bill. The
clipper-ships that lay off Sandy Hook to get the latest foreign news
from the European vessels cost Hallock and Webb, who combined in this
enterprise, twenty thousand dollars a year--probably more than they
spent on all their local news.
In the solemn sanctum of the _Evening Post_, William Cullen Bryant
and William Leggett wrote scholarly verse and free-trade editorials.
They were live men, but their newspaper steed was slow. Leggett could
urge Bryant to give a beating to Stone, the editor of the _Commercial
Advertiser_, and he himself fought a duel with Blake, the treasurer of
the Park Theatre; but these great men had little steam when it came
to making a popular newspaper. The great editors were of a cult. They
revolved around one another, too far aloft for the common eye.
Charles King was the most conservative of them all. He was a son of
Rufus King, Senator from New York and minister to England, and he was
editor of the _American_, an evening sixpenny, from 1827 to 1845.
He lacked nothing in scholarship, but his paper was miserably dull,
and rarely circulated more than a thousand copies. He remained at his
editorial desk for four years after the _American_ was absorbed by
the _Courier and Enquirer_, and then he became president of Columbia
College, a place better suited to him.
Such were the men who ruled the staid, prosy, and expensive newspapers
of New York when Day and his penny _Sun_ popped up. Most of them are
better known to fame than Day is, but not one of them did anything
comparable to the young printer’s achievement in making a popular,
low-priced daily newspaper--and not only making it, but making it
stick. For Day started something that went rolling on, increasing in
size and weight until it controlled the thought of the continent.
Day was the Columbus, the _Sun_ was the egg. Anybody could do the
trick--after Day showed how simple it was.
Bennett and his _Herald_ were the first to profit by the example of the
young Yankee printer. It should have been easy for Bennett, yet he had
already failed at the same undertaking. He was at work in the newspaper
field of New York as early as 1824, nine years before Day started the
_Sun_. He failed as proprietor of the Sunday _Courier_ (1825), and he
failed again with the Philadelphia _Pennsylvanian_. He had a wealth of
experience as assistant to Webb and as the Washington correspondent of
the _Enquirer_.
It was no doubt due to the success of the _Sun_ that Bennett, after two
failures, established the _Herald_. He saw the human note that Ben Day
had struck, and he knew, as a comparatively old newspaperman--he was
forty when he started the _Herald_--what mistakes Day was making in the
neglect of certain news fields, such as Wall Street. But the value of
the penny paper Day had already proved, and Day had established, ahead
of everybody else, the newsboy system, by which the man in the street
could get a paper whenever he liked without making a yearly investment.
Bennett may have written the constitution of popular journalism, but
it was Day who wrote its declaration of independence. If it had not
been for the untrained Day, fifteen years younger than Bennett, it
is possible that there would have been no _Herald_ to span nearly a
century under the ownership of father and son; and the two James Gordon
Bennetts not only owned but absolutely _were_ the _Herald_ from May 10,
1835, when the father started the paper, until May 14, 1918, when the
son died.
It had been said of Bennett that he discovered that “a paper
universally denounced will be read.” Day learned that much a year
before the _Herald_ was started. Day was sensational, and he seemed
to court the written assaults of the sixpenny editors. Bennett also
sought abuse, and did not care when it brought physical pain with it.
He was still more sensational than Day. If there was nothing else, his
own personal affairs were made the public’s property. He was about to
marry, so the _Herald_ printed this:
TO THE READERS OF THE HERALD--Declaration of Love--Caught at
Last--Going to be Married--New Movement in Civilization.
My ardent desire has been through life to reach the highest
order of human excellence by the shortest possible cut.
Association, night and day, in sickness and in health, in war
and in peace, with a woman of the highest order of excellence
must produce some curious results in my heart and feelings,
and these results the future will develop in due time in the
columns of the _Herald_. Meantime I return my heartfelt thanks
for the enthusiastic patronage of the public, both of Europe
and of America. The holy estate of wedlock will only increase
my desire to be still more useful. God Almighty bless you
all--JAMES GORDON BENNETT.
James Parton described Bennett as “a man of French intellect and Scotch
habits.” Bennett was not of Scottish blood, his parents being of
French descent, but his youth in Scotland, where he was born, probably
impregnated him with the thrift of his environment. He established
the no-credit system in the _Herald_ business office. Probably he had
observed that Colonel Webb had lost a fortune in unpaid subscriptions
and advertisements.
Bennett was a good business man and an energetic editor. He used all
the ideas that Day had proved profitable, and many of his own. Perhaps
the most valuable thing he learned from Day was that it was unwise
to be a slave to a political party. But his own experience with the
luckless _Pennsylvanian_, a Jackson organ, may have convinced him of
the futility of the strictly partisan papers, which neglected the news
for the sake of the office-holders.
Day’s success with the _Sun_ was responsible for the birth, not only
of the _Herald_, but of a host of American penny papers, which were
established at the rate of a dozen a year. Of the New York imitators
the _Jeffersonian_, published by Childs & Devoe, and the _Man_,
owned by George H. Evans, an Englishman who was the Henry George of
his day, were not long for this world. The _Transcript_, started in
1834, flashed up for a time as a dangerous rival of the _Sun_. Three
compositors, William J. Stanley, Willoughby Lynde, and Billings
Hayward, owned it. Its editor was Asa Greene, erstwhile physician
and bookseller and always humorist. He wrote “The Adventures of Dr.
Dodimus Duckworth,” “The Perils of Pearl Street,” and “The Travels of
Ex-Barber Fribbleton in America”--this last a travesty on the books of
travel turned out by Englishmen who visited the States.
William H. Attree, a former compositor, wrote the _Transcript’s_
lively police-court stories, the _Sun’s_ rival having learned how
popular was crime. The _Transcript_ lasted five years, the earlier of
them so prosperous that the proprietors thought they were going to be
millionaires. But Reporter Attree went to Texas with the land-boomers,
and Lynde, who wrote the paragraphs, died. When the paper failed, in
1839, Hayward went to the _Herald_, where he worked as a compositor all
the rest of his life.
The other penny papers that sprang up in New York to give battle--while
the money lasted--to the _Sun_, the _Transcript_, and the _Herald_,
were the _True Sun_, started by some of Day’s discharged employees;
the _Morning Star_, run by Major Noah, of the _Evening Star_; the _New
Era_, already mentioned, which Richard Adams Locke started in 1836
in company with Jared D. Bell and Joseph Price; the _Daily Whig_, of
which Horace Greeley was Albany correspondent in 1838; the _Bee_, the
_Serpent_, the _Light_, the _Express_, the _Union_, the _Rough Hewer_,
the _News Times_, the _Examiner_, the _Morning Chronicle_, the _Evening
Chronicle_, the _Daily Conservative_, the _Censor_, and the _Daily
News_. All these bobbed up, in one city alone, in the five years during
which Ben Day owned the _Sun_.
Most of them were mushrooms in origin and morning-glories by nature.
They could not stand the _Sun’s_ rays.
Notable exceptions were two evening papers, the _Express_ and the
_Daily News_. The _Express_ was established in June, 1836, under the
editorship of James Brooks and his brother Erastus, graduates of the
_Advertiser_, of Portland, Maine. It was devoted to Whig politics and
the shipping of New York. The _Daily News_ took no considerable part in
journalism until twenty-five years later, when Benjamin Wood bought it.
In other parts of the country the one-cent newspaper, properly
conducted, met with the favour which the public had showered upon Ben
Day. William M. Swain, who has been mentioned as a fellow compositor
with Ben Day, and who tried to dissuade his friend from the folly
of starting the _Sun_, saw the wisdom of the penny paper, and saw,
also, that the New York field was filled. He went to Philadelphia and
established the _Public Ledger_, the first issue appearing on March 25,
1836. The _Ledger_ was not the first penny sheet to be published in
Philadelphia, the _Daily Transcript_ having preceded it by a few days.
These two newspapers soon consolidated, however.
Swain’s _Ledger_ was at once sensational and brave. It came out for
the abolition of slavery, and its office was twice mobbed. It was
mobbed again in 1844, during the Native American riots. Swain was a
big, hard-working man. George W. Childs, his successor as proprietor
of the _Ledger_, wrote of him that for twenty years it was his habit
to read every paragraph that went into the paper. Swain made three
million dollars out of the _Ledger_; but when, during the Civil War,
the cost of paper compelled nearly all the newspapers to advance
prices, he tried to keep the _Ledger_ at one cent, and lost a hundred
thousand dollars within a year. Childs, who had been a newsdealer and
book-publisher, bought the paper from Swain in 1864, and raised its
price to two cents.
When Swain went to Philadelphia he had two partners, Arunah S. Abell
and Azariah H. Simmons, both printers, and, like Swain, former
associates of Day. Simmons remained with Swain on the _Ledger_ until
his death in 1855, but Abell--the man who poked more fun than anybody
else at Day for his penny _Sun_ idea--went to Baltimore and there
established a _Sun_ of his own, the first copy coming out on May 17,
1837. It was a success from the start. How well it paid Abell to follow
Ben Day’s scheme may be judged by the fact that thirty years later
Abell bought Guilford, a splendid estate near Baltimore, and paid
$475,000 for it.
Both Swain and Abell were friends of S. F. B. Morse, and they helped
him to finance the electric telegraph. The Baltimore _Sun_ published
the famous message--“What hath God wrought?”--sent over the wire from
Washington to Baltimore on May 24, 1844, when the telegraph first came
into practical use. Abell was the sole proprietor of the Baltimore
_Sun_ from 1837 to 1887. He died in 1888 at the age of eighty-two.
Other important newspapers started in the ten years that followed Day’s
founding of the _Sun_ were the Detroit _Free Press_, the St. Louis
_Republic_, the New Orleans _Picayune_, the Burlington _Hawkeye_, the
Hartford _Times_, the New York _Tribune_, the Brooklyn _Eagle_, the
Cincinnati _Enquirer_, and the Cleveland _Plain Dealer_.
In 1830 there were only 852 newspapers in the United States, which then
had a population of 12,866,020, and these newspapers had a combined
yearly circulation of 68,117,000 copies. Ten years later the population
was 17,069,453, and there were 1,631 newspapers with a combined yearly
circulation of 196,000,000 copies. In other words, while the population
increased 32 per cent. in a decade, the total sale of newspapers
increased 187 per cent. The inexpensive paper had found its readers.
[Illustration:
AN EXTRA OF “THE SUN”
These Special Editions Were Issued on the Arrival of Every Mail
Ship from England.
]
[Illustration:
THE THIRD HOME OF “THE SUN”
Beach and Bennett, Rival Publishers, Had Offices Opposite Each
Other at Fulton and Nassau Streets.
]
In his report on newspapers for the Census of 1880, S. N. D. North says
that from 1830 to 1840--
By the sheer force of its superior circulation, the penny press
exerted the most powerful newspaper influence that was felt
in the United States, and during this interval its beneficial
influence was the most apparent. It taught the higher-priced
papers that political connection was properly subordinated
to the other and higher function of the public journal--the
function of gathering and presenting the news as it is, without
reference to its political or other effect upon friend or foe.
The advent of the penny press concluded the transition period
in American journalism, and had three effects which are
easily traceable. It increased the circulation, decreased the
price of daily newspapers, and changed the character of the
reading-matter published.
As Charles H. Levermore wrote in an article on the rise of metropolitan
journalism in the _American Historical Review_:
Independent journalism, as represented first by the _Sun_
and the _Herald_, won a complete victory over old-fashioned
partizan journalism. The time had forever departed when an
Albany regency could tune the press of the State as easily and
simply as Queen Elizabeth used to tune the English pulpits. As
James Parton said, “An editorial is only a man speaking to men;
but the news is Providence speaking to men.”
Thus Ben Day’s _Sun_ remade American journalism--more by accident than
design, as he himself remarked at a dinner to Robert Hoe in 1851.
It is evident that Day soon regretted the sale of the _Sun_, for in
1840 he established a penny paper called the _True Sun_. This he
presently sold for a fair price, but his itch for journalism did not
disappear. He started the _Tatler_, but it was not a success. In 1842,
in conjunction with James Wilson, he founded the monthly magazine,
_Brother Jonathan_, which reprinted English double-decker novels
complete in one issue. This later became a weekly, and Day brought out
illustrated editions semi-annually.
This was a new thing, at least in America, and Day may be called the
originator of our illustrated periodicals as well as of our penny
papers. His right-hand men in the editing of _Brother Jonathan_ were
Nathaniel P. Willis, the poet, and Horatio H. Weld, who was first a
printer, next an editor, and at last a minister.
Day sold _Brother Jonathan_ for a dollar a year. When the paper famine
hit the publishing business in 1862, he suspended his publication and
retired from business. He was well off, and he spent the remaining
twenty-seven years of his life in ease at his New York home. He died
on December 21, 1889. His son Benjamin was the inventor of the Ben Day
process used in making engravings.
Day always watched the fortunes of the _Sun_ with interest, but he
did not believe that his immediate successors ran it just the right
way. When the paper passed into the hands of Charles A. Dana, in 1868,
Day--then not yet threescore--said:
“He’ll make a newspaper of it!”
And it was then he added that the silliest thing he himself ever did
was to sell the _Sun_.
CHAPTER VI
MOSES Y. BEACH’S ERA OF HUSTLE
_“The Sun” Uses Albany Steamboats, Horse Expresses, Trotting Teams,
Pigeons, and the Telegraph to Get News.--Poe’s Famous Balloon
Hoax and the Case of Mary Rogers._
The second owner of the _Sun_, Moses Yale Beach, was, like Ben Day,
a Yankee. He was born in the old Connecticut town of Wallingford on
January 7, 1800. He had a little education in the common schools, but
showed more interest in mechanics than in books. When he was fourteen
he was bound out to a cabinet-maker in Hartford. His skill was so fine
that he saw the needlessness of serving the customary seven years, and
his industry so great that he was able, by doing extra work in odd
times, to get together enough money to buy his freedom from his master.
He set up a cabinet-shop of his own at Northampton, Massachusetts.
When Beach was twenty, he made the acquaintance of Miss Nancy Day,
of Springfield, the sister of Benjamin was the inventor of the Ben
Day process used in Day were married in 1821, and as the business at
Northampton was not prospering, they settled down in Springfield.
The young man was a good cabinet-maker, but his mind ran to inventions
rather than to chests and high-boys. Steamboat navigation had not
yet attained a commercial success, but Beach was a close student of
the advance made by Robert Fulton and Henry Bell. First, however, he
devoted his talents as an inventor to a motor in which the power came
from explosions of gunpowder. He tried this on a boat which he intended
to run on the Connecticut River between Springfield and Hartford. When
it failed, he turned back to steam, and he undoubtedly would have made
a success of this boat line if his money resources had been adequate.
Beach then invented a rag-cutting machine for use in paper-mills, and
he might have had a fortune out of it if he had taken a patent in time,
for the process is still used. As it was, the device enabled him to get
an interest in a paper-mill at Saugerties, New York, where he removed
in 1829. This mill was prosperous for some years, but in 1835 Beach
found it more profitable to go to work for his young brother-in-law,
Mr. Day, who had by this time brought the _Sun_ to the point of assured
success.
Beach was a great help to Day, not only as the manager of the _Sun’s_
finances, but as general supervisor of the mechanical department. In
the three years of his association with Day he picked up a good working
knowledge of the newspaper business. He recognized the features that
had made the _Sun_ successful--chiefly the presentation of news that
interested the ordinary reader--and saw the neglect of this policy was
keeping the old-fashioned sixpenny papers at a standstill.
He did not underestimate other news. “Other news,” in that day, meant
the proceedings of Congress and the New York State Legislature, the
condensed news of Europe, as received from a London correspondent or
rewritten from the English journals, and such important items as might
be clipped from the newspapers of the South and West. Many of these
American papers sent proof-sheets of news articles to the _Sun_ by mail.
When Beach bought the paper there was no express service. There had
been, in fact, no express service in America except the one which
Charles Davenport and N. S. Mason operated over the Boston and Taunton
Railway. But in March, 1839, about a year after Beach got the _Sun_,
William F. Harnden began an express service--later the Adams Express
Company--between New York and Boston, using the boats from New York to
Providence and the rail from Providence to Boston.
This was a big help to the New York papers, for with the aid of the
express the English papers brought by ships landing at Boston were in
the New York offices the next day. To a city which still lacked wire
communication of any kind this was highly important, and there was
hardly an issue of the _Sun_ in the spring of 1839 that did not contain
a paragraph laudatory of Mr. Harnden’s enterprise.
The steamship, still a novelty, was the big thing in newspaperdom.
While the _Sun_ did not neglect the police-court reports and the animal
stories so dear to its readers, the latest news from abroad usually
had the place of honour on the second page. The first page remained
the home of the advertisement and the haunt of the miscellaneous
article. It was by ship that _Sun_ readers learned of Daguerre and his
picture-taking device; of Cobden and the Anti-Corn-Law League; of the
war between Abd-el-Kader and the French; of Don Carlos and his ups and
downs--mostly downs; of the first British invasion of Afghanistan.
There was the young queen, Victoria, always interesting, and there were
the doings of actors known to America:
At the queen’s desire, her tutor, Dr. Davys--father to the Miss
Davys whose ears the queen boxed--has been appointed Bishop of
Marlborough.
Charles Kean’s friends say he has been offered the sum of sixty
pounds a night for sixty nights in New York.
On June 1, 1839, the _Sun_ got out an extra on the arrival, at three
o’clock that morning, of the Great Western, after a passage of thirteen
days--the fastest trip up to that time--and fifty-seven thousand
copies of the paper were sold. The _Sun’s_ own sailing vessels met the
incoming steamships down the bay. The _Sun_ boasted:
In consequence of our news-boat arrangements we receive our
papers more than an hour earlier than any other paper in this
city. On the arrival of the Liverpool [July 1, 1839], we
proceeded to issue an extra, which will reach Albany with the
news twelve hours before it will be published in the regular
editions of their evening papers, and twenty-four hours ahead
of the morning papers.
The _Sun_ had woodcuts made of all the leading ships, and these, with
their curly waves, lit up a page wonderfully, if not beautifully. When
the British Queen arrived on July 28, 1839, there was a half-page
picture of her. She was the finest ship that had ever been built in
Great Britain, with her total length of two hundred and seventy-five
feet--less than one-third as much as some of the modern giants--and her
paddle-wheels with a diameter of thirty-one feet. Small wonder that the
_Sun_ favoured New York with a Sunday paper in honour of the event, and
that the Monday sale, with the same feature, was forty-nine thousand.
Quoth the _Sun_:
Who will wonder, after this, that the lazy, lumbering
_lazaroni_ of Wall Street stick up their noses at us?
In January, 1840, when the packet-ships United States and England
arrived together, the _Sun_ gave the story a front-page display, and
actually used full-faced type for the subheads of the article.
A tragedy is recalled in one paragraph of the _Sun’s_ account of the
arrival of the Great Western on April 26, 1841:
Up to the closing of the mail from Liverpool to London on the
7th, the steamer President had not arrived.
The President never arrived, and her fate is one of the secrets of
the sea. She sailed from New York on March 11, 1841, with thirty-one
passengers, including Tyrone Power, the Irish actor, who had just
concluded his second American tour. It is conjectured that the
President sank during the great gale that sprang up her second night
out.
In getting news from various parts of the United States, the _Sun_ took
a leaf from the book of Colonel Webb and other journalists who had
used the horse express. In January, 1841, on the occasion of Governor
William H. Seward’s message to the Legislature, the _Sun_ beat the
town. The Legislature received the message at 11 A.M. on January 5:
An express arriving exclusively for the _Sun_ then started, it
being one o’clock, and at six this morning reached our office,
thus enabling us to repeat the triumph achieved by us last year
over the whole combined press of New York, large and small.
It is but just to say that our express was brought on by the
horses of the Red Bird Line with unparalleled expedition, in
spite of wind, hail, and rain.
Nowadays a Governor’s message is in the newspaper-offices days before
it is sent to the Legislature, and there, treated in the confidence
that is never betrayed by a decent newspaper, it is prepared for
printing, so that it may be on the street five minutes after it is
delivered, if its importance warrants. In the old days the message,
borne by relays of horse vehicles down the snow-covered post-road from
Albany to New York, was more important to the newspapers than the
messages of this period appear to be. With newspapers, as with humans,
that which is easy to get loses value.
In October, 1841, the _Sun_ spent money freely to secure a quick report
of the momentous trial of Alexander McLeod for the murder of Amos
Durfee. War between the United States and Great Britain hinged on the
outcome. During the rebellion in Upper Canada, in 1837, the American
steamer Caroline was used by the insurgents to carry supplies down the
Niagara River to a party of rebels on Navy Island. A party of loyal
Canadians seized and destroyed the Caroline at Grand Island, and in the
fight Durfee and eleven others were killed. The Canadian, McLeod, who
boasted of being a participant, was arrested when he ventured across
the American border in 1840.
The British government made a demand for his release, insisting that
what McLeod had done was an act of war, performed under the orders of
his commanding officer, Captain Drew. President Van Buren replied that
the American government had several times asked the British government
whether the destruction of the Caroline was an act of war, and had
never received a reply; and further, that the Federal government had
no power to prevent the State of New York from trying persons indicted
within its jurisdiction.
The whole country realized the hostile attitude of the British
ministry, and accepted its threat that war would be declared if McLeod
were not released. The trial took place at Utica, New York, and the
_Sun_ printed from two to five columns a day about it. It ran a special
train from Utica to Schenectady. There a famous driver, Otis Dimmick,
waited with a fine team of horses to take the story to the Albany boat,
the fastest means of transportation between the State capital and the
metropolis. The _Sun_ declared that one day Dimmick and his horses made
the sixteen miles between Schenectady and Albany in forty-nine minutes.
And the end of it all was proof that McLeod, who had boasted of
killing “a damned Yankee,” had been asleep in Chippewa on the night
of the Caroline affair, and was nothing worse than a braggart. So the
war-cloud blew over.
Beach was a man of great faith in railroads and all other forms of
progress. When the Boston and Albany road was finished, the _Sun_
related how a barrel of flour was growing in the field in Canandaigua
on a Monday--the barrel in a tree and the flour in the wheat--and on
Wednesday, transformed and ready for the baker, it was in Boston.
Sperm candles manufactured by Mr. Penniman at Albany on
Wednesday morning were burning at Faneuil Hall and at the
Tremont, in Boston, on the evening of the same day.
The _Sun_ had faith in Morse and his telegraph from the outset. The
invention was born in Nassau Street, only a block or two from the
_Sun’s_ office. Morse put the wire into practical use between Baltimore
and Washington on May 24, 1844. That was a Friday. The _Sun_ said
nothing about it the next day, and had no Sunday paper; but on Monday
it said editorially:
MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH--The new invention is completed from
Baltimore to Washington. The wire, perfectly secured against
the weather by a covering of rope-yarn and tar, is conducted
on the top of posts about twenty feet high and one hundred
yards apart. The nominations of the convention this day are to
be conveyed to Washington by this telegraph, where they will
arrive in a few seconds. On Saturday morning the batteries were
charged and the regular transmission of intelligence between
Washington and Baltimore commenced.... At half past 11 A.M.,
the question being asked, what was the news at Washington, the
answer was almost instantaneously returned: “Van Buren stock is
rising.” This is indeed the annihilation of space.
It is hardly necessary to say that the convention referred to was the
Democratic national convention at Baltimore, that Van Buren’s stock,
high early in the proceedings, fell again, and that James K. Polk was
the nominee.
But as New York was not fortunate enough to have the first commercial
telegraph-line, the _Sun_ had to rely on its own efforts for speedy
news from the convention. It ran special trains from Baltimore,
“beating the United States mail train and locomotive an hour or two.”
The _Sun_ soon afterward expressed annoyance at a report that it was
itself a part of a monopoly which was to control the telegraph, and
that it had bought a telegraph-line from New York to Springfield,
Massachusetts. It insisted that there should be no monopoly, and that
the use of the telegraph must be open to all. There was no suggestion
that Morse intended to control his invention improperly, but the _Sun_
was not quite satisfied with the government’s lassitude. Morse had
offered his rights to the government for one hundred thousand dollars,
and Congress had sneered.
It was not until 1846 that the telegraph was extended to New York,
and in the meantime the New York papers used such other means as they
could for the collection of news. Besides trains, ships, horses, and
the fleet foot of the reporter, there were pigeons. Beach went in for
pigeons extensively. When the _Sun_ moved from 156 Nassau Street, in
the summer of 1842, it took a six-story building at the southwest
corner of Nassau and Fulton Streets, securing about three times as much
room as it had in the two-story building at Spruce Street. On the top
of the new building Beach built a pigeon-house, which stood for half a
century.
The strange, boxlike cote attracted not only the attention of Mr.
Bennett, whose _Herald_ was quartered just across the street, but
of all the folk who came and went in that busy region. So many were
the queries from friends and the quips from enemies concerning the
pigeon-house that the _Sun_ (December 14, 1843), vouchsafed to explain:
Why, we have had a school of carrier-pigeons in the upper
apartments of the _Sun_ office since we have occupied the
building. Did our contemporaries believe that we ever could be
at fault in furnishing the earliest news to our readers? Or did
they indulge the hope that in newspaper enterprise they could
ever catch us napping?
Carrier-pigeons have long been remarked for their sagacity
and admired for their usefulness. They are, of all birds,
the most invaluable, and as auxiliary to a newspaper cannot
be too highly prized. Part of the flock in our possession
were employed by the London _Morning Chronicle_ in bringing
intelligence from Dublin to London, and from Paris to London,
crossing both channels; therefore they are not novices in the
newspaper express.
If there was delay in the arrival of the Boston steamer, and
the weather clear, we despatched our choice pigeon, Sam Patch,
down the Sound, and he invariably came back with a slip of
delicate tissue-paper tied under his wing, containing the news.
We thus are apprised of the arrival of the steamer some two
hours before any one else hears of her. Our men are at their
cases; the steam is up in our pressroom, and our extras are
always out first.
We sometimes let one of our carriers fly to the Narrows, and in
twenty minutes or so we know what is coming in, thirty miles
from Sandy Hook Light. We despatch them as far as Albany, on
any important mission; frequently to New Jersey, and in the
summer-time they sometimes look in at Rockaway and let us know
what is going on at the pavilion. We have a small sliding door
in our observatory, on the top of the _Sun_ office, through
which the little aerials pass. By sending off one every little
while, we ascertain the details of whatever is important or
interesting at any given point.
They often fly at the rate of sixty miles an hour, easy! For
example, a half-dozen will leave Washington at daylight this
morning and arrive here about noon, beating the mail generally
ten hours or so. They can come through from Albany in about
two hours and a half, solar time. They fly exceedingly high,
and keep so until they make the spires of the city, and then
descend. We have not lost one by any accident, and believe ours
is the only flock of value or importance in the country.
We give this brief detail of “them pigeons” because our prying
friends and neighbors in the newspaper way have such a meager,
guesswork account of them; and because we dislike any mystery
or artifice in our business operations.
Speed and more speed was the newspaper demand of the hour, particularly
among the penny papers. The _Sun_ and the _Herald_ had been battling
for years, with competitors springing up about them, usually to die
within the twelvemonth. Now the _Tribune_ had come to remain in the
fray, even if it had not as much money to spend on news-gathering as
the _Sun_ and the _Herald_.
Edgar Allan Poe saw the fever that raged among the rivals. He had just
returned to New York from Philadelphia with his sick wife and his
mother. He was a recognized genius, but his worldly wealth amounted
to four dollars and fifty cents. He had written “The Narrative of A.
Gordon Pym,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Gold Bug,” and other
immortal stories, but his livelihood had been precarious. He had
been in turn connected with the _Southern Literary Messenger_, the
_Gentleman’s Magazine_, and _Graham’s Magazine_, and had twice issued
the prospectuses for new periodicals of his own, fated never to be born.
His fortunes were at their lowest when he arrived in New York on April
6, 1844. He and his family found rooms in Greenwich Street, near Cedar,
now the thick of the business district. “The house is old and looks
buggy,” he wrote to a friend, but it was the best he could do with less
than five dollars in his pocket.
He had to have more money. The newspapers seemed to be the most
available place to get it, and the _Sun_ the livest of them.
Speed--that was what they wanted. They had been having ocean steamers
until they were almost sick. Railroads were unromantic. Horses were an
old story. The telegraph was still regarded as theory, and it hardly
appealed to the imagination.
Pigeons? Perhaps there was inspiration in the sight of Sam Patch
preening himself on a cornice of the _Sun’s_ building. A magnified
pigeon would be an air-ship. Poe sat him down, wrote the “balloon
hoax,” and sold it to Mr. Beach. It appeared in the _Sun_ of April 13,
1844.
Beneath a black-faced heading that was supplemented by a woodcut of
three race-horses flying under the whips of their jockeys and the
subtitle “By Express,” was the following introduction:
ASTOUNDING INTELLIGENCE BY PRIVATE EXPRESS FROM CHARLESTON,
VIA NORFOLK!--THE ATLANTIC OCEAN CROSSED IN THREE
DAYS!!!--ARRIVAL AT SULLIVAN’S ISLAND OF A STEERING BALLOON
INVENTED BY MR. MONCK MASON.
We stop the press at a late hour to announce that by a private express
from Charleston, South Carolina, we are just put in possession of
full details of the most extraordinary adventure ever accomplished by
man. _The Atlantic Ocean has actually been traversed in a balloon,
and in the incredibly brief period of three days!_ Eight persons have
crossed in the machine, among others Sir Everard Bringhurst and Mr.
Monck Mason. We have barely time now to announce this most novel and
unexpected intelligence, but we hope by ten this morning to have ready
an extra with a detailed account of the voyage.
P. S.--The extra will be positively ready, and for sale at our counter,
by ten o’clock this morning. It will embrace all the particulars yet
known. We have also placed in the hands of an excellent artist a
representation of the “Steering Balloon,” which will accompany the
particulars of the voyage.
The promised extra bore a head of stud-horse type, six banks in all,
and as many inches deep.
“Astounding News by Express, _via_ Norfolk!” it announced. “The
Atlantic Crossed in Three Days!--Signal Triumph of Mr. Monck Mason’s
Flying-Machine!!!--Arrival at Sullivan’s Island, Near Charleston, of
Mr. Mason, Mr. Robert Holland, Mr. Henson, Mr. Harrison Ainsworth,
and Four Others in the Steering Balloon Victoria, after a Passage of
Seventy-Five Hours from Land to Land--Full Particulars of the Voyage!!!”
The great problem is at length solved. The air, as well as
the earth and the ocean, has been subdued by science, and
will become a common and convenient highway for mankind. The
Atlantic has been actually crossed in a balloon! And this, too,
without difficulty--without any great apparent danger--with
thorough control of the machine--and in the inconceivably brief
period of seventy-five hours from shore to shore!
By the energy of an agent at Charleston, South Carolina, we
are enabled to be the first to furnish the public with a
detailed account of this most extraordinary voyage, which
was performed between Saturday, the 6th instant, at 11 A.M.
and 2 P.M. on Tuesday, the 9th instant, by Sir Everard
Bringhurst, Mr. Osborne, a nephew of Lord Bentinck; Mr. Monck
Mason, and Mr. Robert Holland, the well-known aeronauts; Mr.
Harrison Ainsworth, author of “Jack Sheppard,” _et cetera_,
and Mr. Henson, the projector of the late unsuccessful
flying-machine--with two seamen from Woolwich--in all, eight
persons.
The particulars furnished below may be relied on as authentic
and accurate in every respect, as with a slight exception they
are copied verbatim from the joint diaries of Mr. Monck Mason
and Mr. Harrison Ainsworth, to whose politeness our agent is
indebted for much verbal information respecting the balloon
itself, its construction, and other matters of interest. The
only alteration in the MS. received has been made for the
purpose of throwing the hurried account of our agent, Mr.
Forsyth, into a connected and intelligible form.
The story that followed was about five thousand words in length. To
summarize it, Monck Mason had applied the principle of the Archimedean
screw to the propulsion of a dirigible balloon. The gas-bag was an
ellipsoid thirteen feet long, with a car suspended from it. The screw
propeller, which was attached to the car, was operated by a spring. A
rudder shaped like a battledore kept the air-ship on its course.
The voyagers, according to the story, started from Mr. Osborne’s
home near Penstruthal, in North Wales, intending to sail across the
English Channel. The mechanism of the propeller broke, and the balloon,
caught in a strong northeast wind, was carried across the Atlantic at
the speed of sixty or more miles an hour. Mr. Mason kept a journal,
to which, at the end of each day, Mr. Ainsworth added a postscript.
The balloon landed safely on the coast of South Carolina, near Fort
Moultrie.
The names of the supposed voyagers were well chosen by Poe to give
verisimilitude to the hoax. Monck Mason and Robert Holland, or Hollond,
were of the small party which actually sailed from Vauxhall Gardens,
London, on the afternoon of November 7, 1836, in the balloon Nassau and
landed at Weilburg, in Germany, five hundred miles away, eighteen hours
later. Harrison Ainsworth, the novelist, was then one of the shining
stars of English literary life. The others named by Poe were familiar
figures of the period.
Poe adopted the plan, used so successfully by Locke in the moon hoax,
of having real people do the thing that they would like to do; but
there the resemblance of the two hoaxes ends, except for the technical
bits that Poe was able to inject into his narrative. The moon hoax
lasted for weeks; the balloon hoax for a day. Even the _Sun_ did not
attempt to bolster it, for it said the second day afterward:
BALLOON--The mails from the South last Saturday night not
having brought confirmation of the balloon from England, the
particulars of which from our correspondent we detailed in our
extra, we are inclined to believe that the intelligence is
erroneous. The description of the balloon and the voyage was
written with a minuteness and scientific ability calculated to
obtain credit everywhere, and was read with great pleasure and
satisfaction. We by no means think such a project impossible.
About a week later, when the _Sun_ was still being pounded by its
contemporaries, a few of which had been gulled into rewriting the
story, another editorial article on the hoax appeared:
BALLOON EXPRESS--We have been somewhat amused with the comments
of the press upon the balloon express. The more intelligent
editors saw its object at once. On the other hand, many of
our esteemed contemporaries--those who are too ignorant to
appreciate the pleasant satire--have ascribed to us the worst
and basest motives. We expected as much.
The “pleasant satire” of which the _Sun_ spoke was evidently meant to
hold up to view the craze of the day for speed in the transmission of
news and men. Yet the _Sun_ itself, as the leader of penny journalism,
had been to a great extent the cause of this craze. It had taught the
people to read the news and to hanker for more.
There was another story which Poe and the _Sun_ shared--one that will
outlive even the balloon hoax. Almost buried on the third page of the
_Sun_ of July 28, 1841, was this advertisement in agate type:
Left her home on Sunday morning, July 25, a young lady; had
on a white dress, black shawl, blue scarf, Leghorn hat,
light-colored shoes, and parasol light-colored; it is supposed
some accident has befallen her. Whoever will give information
respecting her at 126 Nassau shall be rewarded for their
trouble.
The next day the _Sun_ said in its news columns:
☞ The body of a young lady some eighteen or twenty years of age
was found in the water at Hoboken. From the description of her
dress, fears are entertained that it is the body of Miss Mary
C. Rogers, who is advertised in yesterday’s paper as having
disappeared from her home, 126 Nassau Street, on Sunday last.
The fears were well grounded, for the dead girl was Mary Cecilia
Rogers, the “beautiful cigar-girl” who had been the magnet at John
Anderson’s tobacco-shop at Broadway and Duane Street; the tragic figure
of Poe’s story, “The Mystery of Marie Roget,” a tale which served to
keep alive the features of that unsolved riddle of the Elysian Fields
of Hoboken. To the _Sun_, which had then no Poe, no _Sherlock Holmes_,
the murder was the text for a moral lesson:
There can be no question that she had fallen a victim to the
most imprudent and reprehensible practise, which has recently
obtained to a considerable extent in this city, of placing
behind the counters and at the windows of stores for the sale
of articles purchased exclusively by males--especially of
cigar-stores and drinking-houses--young and beautiful females
for the purpose of thus attracting the attention, exciting the
interest (or worse still), and thus inducing the visits and
consequent custom, of the other sex--especially of the young
and thoughtless.
It was by being placed in such a situation, in one of the
most public spots in the city, that this unfortunate girl
was led into a train of acquaintances and associations which
has eventually proved not only her ruin, but an untimely and
violent death in the prime of youth and beauty. From being
used as an instrument of cupidity--as a sort of “man-trap”
to lure by her charms the gay and giddy into the path of the
spendthrift and of constant dissipation--she has become the
victim of the very passions and vices which her exposure to
the public gaze for mercenary gain was so well calculated to
engender and encourage.
The _Sun_ and the other papers might have pursued the Mary Rogers
mystery further than they did had it not been that in a few weeks a
more tangible tragedy presented itself, when John C. Colt, a teacher
of bookkeeping, and the brother of Samuel Colt, the inventor, killed
Samuel Adams, one of the leading printers of New York. Adams had gone
to Colt’s lodgings at Broadway and Chambers Street to collect a bill,
and Colt, who had a furious temper, murdered him with a hammer, packed
the body in a box, and hired an innocent drayman to haul it down to
the ship Kalamazoo, for shipment to New Orleans. This affair drove
the Rogers murder out of the types, and left it for Poe to preserve in
fiction with the names of the characters thinly veiled and the scene
transferred to Paris.
The great social event of the town in 1842 was the visit of Charles
Dickens. He had been expected for several years. In fact, as far back
as October 13, 1838, the _Sun_ remarked:
Boz is coming to America. We hope he will not make a fool of
himself here, like a majority of his distinguished countrymen
who preceded him.
The _Sun_ got out an extra on the day when Dickens landed, but it
was not in honour of Boz, but rather because of the arrival of
the Britannia with a budget of foreign news. Buried in a mass of
Continental paragraphs was this one:
Among the passengers are Mr. Charles Dickens, the celebrated
author, and his lady.
The ship-news man never even thought to ask Dickens how he liked
America. But society was waiting for Boz, and he was tossed about on a
lively sea of receptions and dinners. The _Sun_ presently thought that
the young author was being exploited overmuch:
Mr. Dickens, we have no doubt, is a very respectable gentleman,
and we know that he is a very clever and agreeable author. He
has written several books that have put the reading world in
most excellent good humor. In this way he has done much to
promote the general happiness of mankind, and honestly deserves
their gratitude.
Having crossed the water for the purpose of traveling in
America, where his works have been extensively read and
admired, he is, of course, received and treated with marked
civility, attention, and respect. We should be ashamed of our
countrymen if it were otherwise. During his stay at Boston the
citizens gave him a public dinner. At New Haven he received
a similar token of kind regard. In this city a ball has been
given him. All these attentions were right and proper, and
as far as we can learn they have been uniformly conducted in
a gentlemanly and respectable manner, becoming alike to the
characters of those who gave and him who received them.
But a few penny-catchers of the press are determined to make
money out of Boz. The shop-windows are stuffed with lithograph
likenesses of him, which resemble the original just about as
much as he resembles a horse. His own wife would not recognize
them in any other way than by the word “Boz” written under them.
Then a corps of sneaking reporters, most of them fresh from
London, are pursuing him like a pack of hounds at his heels to
catch every wink of his eye, every motion of his hands, and
every word that he speaks, to be dished up with all conceivable
embellishments by pen and pencil, and published in extras,
pamphlets, and handbills. To make all this trash sell well in
the market, the greatest possible hurrah must be made by the
papers interested in the speculations, and therefore the whole
American people are basely caricatured by them, and represented
as one vast mob following Dickens from place to place, and
striving even to touch the hem of his garment.
That our readers at a distance may not be induced to suppose
that the good people of New York are befooling themselves in
this way, we beg leave to assure them that all these absurd
reports are ridiculous caricatures, hatched from the prolific
brains of a few reckless reporters for a few unprincipled
papers. They do in truth make as great fools of themselves as
they represent the public to be generally. But beyond their
narrow and contemptible circle we are happy to know that Mr.
Dickens is treated with that manly and sincere respect which
is so justly his due, and which must convince him that he is
amongst a warm-hearted people, who know both how to respect
their guest and themselves.
When Dickens sailed for home, in June, the _Sun_ bade him _bon voyage_
with but a paragraph. It was more than a year afterward that it came to
him again; and meanwhile he had trodden on the toes of America:
The appearance of the current number of “The Life and
Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit” will not add to the happiness
of retrospections. Where is that Boston committee, where the
renowned getters-up of the City Hotel dinner and the ball at
the Park Theater, with its _tableaux vivants_, its splendid
decorations, and tickets at ten dollars each?
The scene is passing now before our memory--the crammed
theater, full up to its third tier, the dense crowd opening
a passage for Mr. Dickens and the proud and happy committee
while he passes up the center of the stage amid huzzas and the
waving of handkerchiefs, while the band is playing “God Save
the Queen” and “See, the Conquering Hero Comes.” And _our_
Irving, _our_ Halleck, _our_ Bryant passed around in the crowd,
unnoticed and almost unknown. Shame! Let our cheeks crimson, as
they ought.
The _Sun_ itself was doing very nicely. On its tenth birthday,
September 3, 1843, it announced that it employed eight editors and
reporters, twenty compositors, sixteen pressmen, twelve folders and
counters, and one hundred carriers. The circulation of the daily paper
was thirty-eight thousand, of the _Weekly Sun_ twelve thousand.
Mr. Beach owned the _Sun’s_ new home at Fulton and Nassau Streets and
the building at 156 Nassau Street which he had recently vacated, and
which was burned down in the fire of February 6, 1845. He had a London
correspondent who ran a special horse express to carry the news from
London to Bristol. A _Sun_ reporter went to report Webster’s speech on
the great day when the Bunker Hill Monument was finished. He got down
correctly at least the last sentence: “Thank God, I--I also--am an
American!”
With a circulation by far the largest in the world, the _Sun_ was
obliged to buy a new dress of type every three months, for the day of
the curved stereotype plate was still far off. Early in 1846 two new
presses, each capable of six thousand _Suns_ an hour, were put in at a
cost of twelve thousand dollars.
The size of the paper grew constantly, although Beach stuck to a
four-page sheet because of the limitations of the presses. Instead of
adding pages, he added columns. From Day’s little three-column _Sun_
the paper had grown, by April of 1840, to a width of seven columns. Of
the total of twenty-eight columns in an issue twenty-one and a half
were devoted to advertising, three to mixed news and editorials, two
and a half to the court reports, and one column to reprint.
With the page seven columns wide, Beach thought that the two
words--“_The Sun_”--looked lonely, and to fill out the heading he
changed it to read “_The New York Sun_.” This continued from April 13
to September 29, 1840, when the proprietor saw how much more economical
it would be to cut out “New York” and push the first and seventh
columns of the first page up to the top of the paper. Then it was “_The
Sun_” once more in head-line as well as body.
The paper is never the _New York Sun_, Eugene Field’s poem to the
contrary notwithstanding. It is the _Sun_, universal in its spirit, and
published in New York by the accident of birth.
Three years after that the _Sun_ became an eight-column paper, and
there were no more sneers at the blanket sheets, for the _Sun_ itself
was getting pretty wide.
It was in the reign of Moses Y. Beach as owner of the _Sun_, that
Horace Greeley came to stay in New York journalism. He had been fairly
successful as editor of the _New Yorker_, and his management of the
campaign paper called the _Log Cabin_, issued in 1840 in the interest
of General Harrison, was masterly. With the prestige thus obtained, he
was able, on April 10, 1841, to start the _Tribune_.
In the first number he announced his intention of excluding the
police reports which had been so valuable to “our leading penny
papers”--meaning the _Sun_ and the _Herald_--and of making the
_Tribune_ “worthy of the hearty approval of the virtuous and refined.”
It was a week before the _Sun_ mentioned its former friend, and then it
was only to say:
A word to Horace Greeley--if he wishes us to write him or any
of his sickly brood of newspapers into notice, he must first go
to school and learn a little decency. He must further retract
the dirty, malignant, and wholesale falsehood which he procured
to be published in the Albany _Evening Journal_ a year ago last
winter, with the hope of injuring the _Sun_. He must then deal
in something besides misstatements of facts.... Until he does
all this we shall feel very indifferent to any thrusts that he
can make at us with his dagger of lath.
Soon afterward the _Sun_ rubbed it in by quoting the Albany _Evening
Journal_:
Galvanize a large New England squash, and it would make as
capable an editor as Horace.
But Greeley was a lively young man, in spite of his eccentric ways and
his habit of letting one leg of his trousers hang out of his unpolished
boots. Only thirty when he started the _Tribune_, he had had a lot
of experience, particularly with politicians and with fads. He still
believed in some of the fads, including temperance--which was then
considered a fad--vegetarianism, and Abolition. He had been, too, a
poet; and his verses lived to haunt his mature years. He had to give
away most of the five thousand copies that were printed of the first
number of the _Tribune_, but in a month he had a circulation of six
thousand, and in two months he doubled this.
Greeley had the instinct for getting good men, but not always the knack
of holding them. One of his early finds was Henry J. Raymond, who
attracted his attention as a boy orator for the Whig cause. Raymond
worked for Greeley’s _New Yorker_ and later for the _Tribune_. He was a
good reporter, using a system of shorthand of his own devising.
On one occasion, at least, he enabled the _Tribune_ to beat the other
papers. He was sent to Boston to report a speech, and he took with
him three printers and their cases of type. After the speech Raymond
and his compositors boarded the boat for New York, and as fast as the
reporter transcribed his notes the printers put the speech into type.
On the arrival of the boat at New York the type was ready to be put
into the forms, and the _Tribune_ was on the street hours ahead of its
rivals.
Greeley paid Raymond eight dollars a week until Raymond threatened to
leave unless he received twenty dollars a week. He got it, but Greeley
made such a fuss about the matter that Raymond realized that further
increases would be out of the question. Presently he went to the
_Courier and Enquirer_, and from 1843 to 1850 he tried to restore some
of the glory that once had crowned Colonel Webb’s paper.
In this period Raymond and his former employer, Greeley, fought their
celebrated editorial duel--with pens, not mahogany-handled pistols--on
the subject of Fourierism, that theory of social reorganization which
Greeley seemed anxious to spread, and which was zealously preached
by another of his young men, Albert Brisbane, now perhaps better
remembered as the father of Arthur Brisbane. But Colonel Webb’s paper
would not wake wide enough to suit the ambitious Raymond, who seized
the opportunity of becoming the first editor of the New York _Times_.
Other men who worked for Greeley’s _Tribune_ in its young days were
Bayard Taylor, who wrote articles from Europe; George William Curtis,
the essayist; Count Gurowski, an authority on foreign affairs; and
Charles A. Dana.
Beach soon recognized Greeley as a considerable rival in the morning
field, and there was a long tussle between the _Sun_ and the
_Tribune_. It did not content itself with words, and there were street
battles between the boys who sold the two papers. Stung by one of
Beach’s articles, Greeley called the _Sun_ “the slimy and venomous
instrument of Locofocoism, Jesuitical and deadly in politics and
grovelling in morals.” The term Locofoco had then lost its original
application to the Equal Rights section of the Democratic party and was
applied--particularly by the Whigs--to any sort of Democrat.
Moses Y. Beach had no such young journalists about him as Dana or
Raymond, but he had two sons who seemed well adapted to take up the
ownership of the _Sun_. He took them in as partners on October 22,
1845, under the title of “M. Y. Beach & Sons.” The elder son, Moses
Sperry Beach, was then twenty-three years old, and had already been
well acquainted with the newspaper business, particularly with the
mechanical side of it. Before his father took him as a partner, young
Moses had joined with George Roberts in the publication of the Boston
_Daily Times_, but he was glad to drop this and devote himself to the
valuable property at Fulton and Nassau Streets.
If a genius for invention is inheritable, both the Beach boys were
richly endowed by their father. Moses S. invented devices for the
feeding of rolls of paper, instead of sheets, to flat presses; for
wetting news-print paper prior to printing; for cutting the sheets
after printing; and for adapting newspaper presses to print both sides
of the sheet at the same time.
Alfred Ely Beach was only nineteen when he became partner in the _Sun_.
After leaving the academy at Monson, Massachusetts, where he had been
schooled, he worked with his father in the _Sun_ office, and learned
every detail of the business. The inventive vein was even deeper in
him than in his brother. When he was twenty he formed a partnership
with his old schoolmate, Orson D. Munn, of Monson, and they bought the
_Scientific American_ from Rufus Porter and combined its publishing
business with that of soliciting patents.
Alfred Beach retained his interest in the _Sun_ for several years, but
he is best remembered for his inventions and for his connection with
scientific literature. In 1853 he devised the first typewriter which
printed raised letters on a strip of paper for the blind. He invented
a pneumatic mail-tube, and a larger tube on the same principle, by
which he hoped passengers could be carried, the motive power being the
exhaustion of air at the far end by means of a rotating fan.
He was the first subway-constructor in New York. In 1869 he built a
tunnel nine feet in diameter under Broadway from Warren Street to
Murray Street, and the next year a car was sent to and fro in this
by pneumatic power. A more helpful invention, however, was the Beach
shield for tunnel-digging--a gigantic hogs-head with the ends removed,
the front circular edge being sharp and the rear end having a thin iron
hood. This cylinder was propelled slowly through the earth by hydraulic
rams, the dislodged material being removed through the rear.
Mr. Beach was connected with the _Scientific American_ until his death
in 1896. His son, Frederick Converse Beach, was one of the editors of
that periodical, and his grandson, Stanley Yale Beach, is still in the
same field of endeavour.
CHAPTER VII
“THE SUN” IN THE MEXICAN WAR
_Moses Y. Beach as an Emissary of President Polk.--The Associated
Press Founded in the Office of “The Sun.”--Ben Day’s
Brother-in-Law Retires with a Small Fortune._
The Beaches, father and sons, owned the _Sun_ throughout the Mexican
War, a period notable for the advance of newspaper enterprise; and
Moses Yale Beach proved more than once that he was the peer of Bennett
in the matter of getting news.
Shortly before war was declared--April 24, 1846--the telegraph-line was
built from Philadelphia to Fort Lee, New Jersey, opposite New York.
June found a line opened from New York to Boston; September, a line
from New York to Albany. The ports and the capitals of the nation were
no longer dependent on horse expresses, or even upon the railroads, for
brief news of importance. Morse had subdued space.
For a little time after the Mexican War began there was a gap in the
telegraph between Washington and New York, the line between Baltimore
and Philadelphia not having been completed; but with the aid of special
trains the _Sun_ was able to present the news a few hours after it left
Washington. It was, of course, not exactly fresh news, for the actual
hostilities in Mexico were not heard of at Washington until May 11,
more than two weeks after their accomplishment.
The good news from the battle-fields of Palo Alto and Resaca de la
Palma was eighteen days in reaching New York. All Mexican news came by
steamer to New Orleans or Mobile, and was forwarded from those ports,
by the railroad or other means, to the nearest telegraph-station. Moses
Y. Beach was instrumental in whipping up the service from the South,
for he established a special railroad news service between Mobile and
Montgomery, a district of Alabama where there had been much delay.
On September 11, 1846, the _Sun_ uttered halleluiahs over the spread of
the telegraph. The line to Buffalo had been opened on the previous day.
The invention had been in every-day use only two years, but more than
twelve hundred miles of line had been built, as follows:
New York to Boston 265
New York to Albany and Buffalo 507
New York to Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington 240
Philadelphia to Harrisburg 105
Boston to Lowell 26
Boston toward Portland 55
Ithaca to Auburn 40
Troy to Saratoga 31
-----
Total 1,269
England had then only one hundred and seventy-five miles of telegraph.
“This,” gloated the _Sun_, “is American enterprise!”
The _Sun_ did not have a special correspondent in Mexico, and most of
its big stories during the war, including the account of the storming
of Monterey, were those sent to the New Orleans _Picayune_ by George W.
Kendall, who is supposed to have put in the mouth of General Taylor the
words--
“A little more grape, Captain Bragg!”
Moses Yale Beach himself started for Mexico as a special agent of
President Polk, with power to talk peace, but the negotiations between
Beach and the Mexican government were broken off by a false report of
General Taylor’s defeat by Santa Anna, and Mr. Beach returned to his
paper.
The more facilities for news-getting the papers enjoyed, the more
they printed--and the more it cost them. Each had been doing its bit
on its own hook. The _Sun_ and the _Courier and Enquirer_ had spent
extravagant sums on their horse expresses from Washington. The _Sun_
and the _Herald_ may have profited by hiring express-trains to race
from Boston to New York with the latest news brought by the steamships,
but the outflow of money was immense. The news-boats--clipper-ships,
steam-vessels, and rowboats--which went down to Sandy Hook to meet
incoming steamers cost the _Sun_, the _Herald_, the _Courier and
Enquirer_, and the _Journal of Commerce_ a pretty penny.
With the coming of the Mexican War there were special trains to be run
in the South. And now the telegraph, with its expensive tolls, was
magnetizing money out of every newspaper’s till. Not only that, but
there was only one wire, and the correspondent who got to it first
usually hogged it, paying tolls to have a chapter from the Bible, or
whatever was the reporter’s favourite book, put on the wire until his
story should be ready to start.
It was all wrong, and at last, through pain in the pocket, the
newspapers came to realize it. At a conference held in the office of
the _Sun_, toward the close of the Mexican War, steps were taken to
lessen the waste of money, men, and time.
[Illustration:
MOSES SPERRY BEACH
A Nephew of Benjamin H. Day and a Son of Moses Yale Beach. He
Held “The Sun” Until Dana’s Time. This Picture is Reproduced
from the First Edition of Mark Twain’s “Innocents Abroad.” Mr.
Beach Was One of Clemens’s Fellow Voyagers.
]
At this meeting, presided over by Gerard Hallock, the veteran editor
of the _Journal of Commerce_, there were represented the _Sun_, the
_Herald_, the _Tribune_--the three most militant morning papers--the
_Courier and Enquirer_, the _Express_, and Mr. Hallock’s own paper.
The conference formed the Harbour Association, by which one fleet
of news-boats would do the work for which half a dozen had been
used, and the New York Associated Press, designed for cooperation in
the gathering of news in centres like Washington, Albany, Boston,
Philadelphia, and New Orleans. Alexander Jones, of the _Journal of
Commerce_, became the first agent of the new organization. He had been
a reporter on both sides of the Atlantic, and it was he who invented
the first cipher code for use in the telegraph, saving time and tolls.
Thus in the office where some of the bitterest invective against
newspaper rivals had been penned, there began an era of good feeling.
So busy had the world become, and so full of news, through the new
means of communication afforded by Professor Morse, that the invention
of opprobrious names for Mr. Bennett ceased to be a great journalistic
industry.
As an example of the change in the personal relations of the newspaper
editors and proprietors, the guests present at a dinner given by Moses
Y. Beach in December, 1848, when he retired from business and turned
the _Sun_ over to his sons Moses and Alfred, were the venerable Major
Noah, then retired from newspaper life; Gerard Hallock, Horace Greeley,
Henry J. Raymond, of the _Courier and Enquirer_, and James Brooks, of
the _Express_. All praised Beach and his fourteen years of labour on
the _Sun_, but there was never a word about Benjamin H. Day. Evidently
that gentleman’s re-entry into the newspaper field as the proprietor of
the _True Sun_ had put him out of tune with his brother-in-law. Richard
Adams Locke was there, however--the only relic of the first régime.
What the _Sun_ thought of itself then is indicated in an editorial
printed on December 4, when the Beach brothers relieved their father,
who was in bad health:
We ask those under whose eyes the _Sun_ does not shine from
day to day--our _Sun_, we mean; this large and well-printed
one-cent newspaper--to look it over and say whether it is not
one of the wonders of the age. Does it not contain the elements
of all that is valuable in a diurnal sheet? Where is more
effort or enterprise expended for so small a return?
Of this effort and enterprise we feel proud; and a circulation
of over fifty thousand copies of our sheet every day among at
least five times that number of readers, together with the
largest cash advertising patronage on this continent, convinces
us that our pride is widely shared.
The _Sun_ that Ben Day had turned over to Moses Y. Beach was no longer
recognizable. Fifteen years had wrought many changes from the time when
the young Yankee printer launched his venture on the tide of chance.
The steamship, the railroad, and the telegraph had made over American
journalism. The police-court items, the little local scandals, the
animal stories--all the trifles upon which Day had made his way to
prosperity--were now being shoved aside to make room for the quick, hot
news that came in from many quarters. The _Sun_ still strove for the
patronage of the People, with a capital P, but it had educated them
away from the elementary.
The elder Beach was enterprising, but never rash. He made the _Sun_ a
better business proposition than ever it was under Day. Ben Day carried
a journalistic sword at his belt; Beach, a pen over his ear. Perhaps
Day could not have brought the _Sun_ up to a circulation of fifty
thousand and a money value of a quarter of a million dollars; but, on
the other hand, it is unlikely that Beach could ever have started the
_Sun_.
Once it was started, and once he had seen how it was run, the task of
keeping it going was fairly easy for him. He was a good publisher. Not
content with getting out the _Sun_ proper, he established the _Weekly
Sun_, issued on Saturdays, and intended for country circulation, at
one dollar a year. In 1848 he got out the _American Sun_, at twelve
shillings a year, which was shipped abroad for the use of Europeans who
cared to read of our rude American doings. Another venture of Beach’s
was the _Illustrated Sun and Monthly Literary Journal_, a sixteen-page
magazine full of woodcuts.
Mr. Beach had for sale at the _Sun_ office all the latest novels in
cheap editions. He wrote a little book himself--“The Wealth of New
York: A Table of the Wealth of the Wealthy Citizens of New York City
Who Are Estimated to Be Worth One Hundred Thousand Dollars or Over,
with Brief Biographical Notices.” It sold for twenty-five cents.
Perhaps Beach was the father of the newspaper syndicate. In December,
1841, when the _Sun_ received President Tyler’s message to Congress
by special messenger, he had extra editions of one sheet printed for
twenty other newspapers, using the same type for the body of the
issue, and changing only the title-head. In this way such papers as
the _Vermont Chronicle_, the Albany _Advertiser_, the Troy _Whig_, the
Salem _Gazette_, and the Boston _Times_ were able to give the whole
text of the message to their readers without the delay and expense of
setting it in type.
Here is Dana’s own estimate of the second proprietor of the _Sun_:
Moses Y. Beach was a business man and a newspaper manager
rather than what we now understand as a journalist--that is
to say, one who is both a writer and a practical conductor
and director of a newspaper. Mr. Beach was a man noted for
enterprise in the collection of news. In the latter days when
he owned and managed the _Sun_ in New York, the telegraph was
only established between Washington and Boston, though toward
the end of his career it was extended, if I am not mistaken, as
far towards the South as Montgomery in Alabama. The news from
Europe was then brought to Halifax by steamers, just as the
news from Mexico was brought to New Orleans. Mr. Beach’s energy
found a successful field in establishing expresses brought by
messengers on horseback from Halifax to Boston and from New
Orleans to Montgomery, thus bringing the news of Europe and
the news of the Mexican War to New York much earlier than they
could have arrived by the ordinary public conveyance. With him
were associated, sooner or later, two or three of the other
New York papers; but the energy with which he carried through
the undertaking made him a conspicuous and distinguished
figure in the journalism of the city. The final result was the
organization of the New York Associated Press, which has now
become a world-embracing establishment for the collection of
news of every description, which it furnishes to its members in
this city and to other newspapers in every part of the country.
Under the stimulus of Mr. Beach’s energetic intellect, aided by
the cheapness of its price, the _Sun_ became in his hands an
important and profitable establishment. Yet he is scarcely to
be classed among the prominent journalists of his day.
Through conservatism, good business sense, and steady work, Moses Y.
Beach amassed from the _Sun_ what was then a handsome fortune, and when
he retired he was only forty-eight. His last years were spent at the
town of his birth, Wallingford, where he died on July 19, 1868, six
months after the _Sun_ had passed out of the hands of a Beach and into
the hands of a Dana.
[Illustration:
(_From Photo in the Possession of Mrs. Jennie Beach Gasper_)
ALFRED ELY BEACH
A Son of Moses Y. Beach; He Left “The Sun” to Conduct the
“Scientific American.”
]
Beach Brothers, as the new ownership of the _Sun_ was entitled, made
but one important change in the appearance and character of the paper
during the next few years.
Up to the coming of the telegraph the _Sun_ had devoted its first page
to advertising, with a spice of reading-matter that usually was in the
form of reprint--miscellany, as some newspapermen call it, or bogus, as
most printers term it. But when telegraphic news came to be common but
costly, newspapers began to see the importance of attracting the casual
reader by means of display on the front page. The Beaches presently
used one or two columns of the latest telegraph-matter on the first
page; sometimes the whole page would be so occupied.
In 1850, from July to December, they issued an _Evening Sun_, which
carried no advertising.
On April 6, 1852, Alfred Ely Beach, more concerned with scientific
matters than with the routine of daily publication, withdrew from the
_Sun_, which passed into the sole possession of Moses S. Beach, then
only thirty years old. It was reported that when the partnership was
dissolved the division was based on a total valuation of two hundred
and fifty thousand dollars for the paper which, less than nineteen
years before, Ben Day had started with an old hand-press and a hatful
of type. Horace Greeley, telling a committee of the British parliament
about American newspapers, named that sum as the amount for which the
_Sun_ was valued in the sale by brother to brother.
“It was very cheap,” he added.
CHAPTER VIII
“THE SUN” DURING THE CIVIL WAR
_One of the Few Entirely Loyal Newspapers of New York.--Its Brief
Ownership by a Religious Coterie.--It Returns to the Possession
of M. S. Beach, Who Sells It to Dana._
In 1852, when Moses Sperry Beach came into the sole ownership of the
_Sun_, it was supposed that the slavery question had been settled
forever, or at least with as much finality as was possible in
determining such a problem. The Missouri Compromise, devised by Henry
Clay, had acted as a legislative mandragora which lulled the United
States and soothed the spasms of the extreme Abolitionists. Even
Abraham Lincoln, now passing forty years, was losing that interest in
politics which he had once exhibited, and was devoting himself almost
entirely to his law practice in Springfield, Illinois.
The _Sun_ had plenty of news to fill its four wide pages, and its daily
circulation was above fifty thousand. The Erie Railroad had stretched
itself from Piermont, on the Hudson River, to Dunkirk, on the shore of
Lake Erie. The Hudson River Railroad was built from New York to Albany.
The steamship Pacific, of the Collins Line, had broken the record by
crossing the Atlantic in nine days and nineteen hours. The glorious
yacht America had beaten the British Titania by eight miles in a race
of eighty miles.
Kossuth, come as the envoy plenipotentiary of a Hungary ambitious for
freedom, was New York’s hero. Lola Montez, the champion heart-breaker
of her century, danced hither and yon. The volunteer firemen of New
York ran with their engines and broke one another’s heads. The Young
Men’s Christian Association, designed to divert youth to gentler
practices, was organized, and held its first international convention
at Buffalo in 1854. Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant, of the United States
army, was in California, recently the scene of the struggle between
outlawry and the Vigilantes, and was not very sure that he liked the
life of a soldier.
Messrs. Heenan, Morrissey, and Yankee Sullivan furnished, at frequent
intervals, inspiration to American youth. The cholera attacked New York
regularly, and as regularly did the _Sun_ print its prescription for
cholera medicine, which George W. Busteed, a druggist, had given to
Moses Yale Beach in 1849, and which is still in use for the subjugation
of inward qualms. The elder Beach, enjoying himself in Europe with his
son Joseph Beach, sent articles on French and German life to his son
Moses Sperry Beach’s paper.
Literature was still advancing in New England. Persons of refinement
were reading Hawthorne’s “Scarlet Letter” and “The House of Seven
Gables,” Ik Marvel’s “Reveries of a Bachelor,” Irving’s “Mahomet,” and
Parkman’s “Conspiracy of Pontiac.” Marion Harland had written “Alone.”
Down in Kentucky young Mary Jane Holmes was at work on her first novel,
“Tempest and Sunshine.” But brows both high and low were bent over the
instalments in the _National Era_ of the most fascinating story of the
period, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
The writing of news had not gone far ahead in quality. Most of the
reporters still wrote in a groove a century old. Every chicken-thief
who was shot, “clapped his hand to his heart, cried out that he was a
dead man, and presently expired.” But the editorial articles were well
written. On the _Sun_ John Vance, a brilliant Irishman, was turning out
most of the leaders and getting twenty dollars a week. In the _Tribune_
office Greeley pounded rum and slavery, while his chief assistant,
Charles A. Dana, did such valuable work on foreign and domestic
political articles that his salary grew to the huge figure of fifty
dollars a week.
Bennett was working harder than any other newspaper-owner, and was
doing big things for the _Herald_. Southern interests and scandal
were his long suits. “We call the _Herald_ a very bad paper,” said
Greeley to a Parliamentary committee which was inquiring about American
newspapers. He meant that it was naughty; but naughtiness and all, its
circulation was only half as big as the _Sun’s_.
Henry J. Raymond was busy with his new venture, the _Times_, launched
by him and George Jones, the banker. With Raymond were associated
editorially Alexander C. Wilson and James W. Simonton. William Cullen
Bryant, nearing sixty, still bent “the good grey head that all men
knew” over his editor’s desk in the office of the _Evening Post_. With
him, as partner and managing editor, was that other great American,
John Bigelow.
J. Watson Webb, fiery as ever in spirit, still ran the _Courier and
Enquirer_, “the Austrian organ in Wall Street,” as Raymond called
it because of Webb’s hostile attitude toward Kossuth. Webb had been
minister to Austria, a post for which Raymond was afterward to be
nominated but not confirmed. The newspapers and the people were all
pretty well satisfied with themselves. And then Stephen A. Douglas put
his foot in it, and Kansas began to bleed.
Douglas had been one of the _Sun’s_ great men, for the _Sun_ listed
heavily toward the Democratic party nationally; but it did not disguise
its dislike of the Little Giant’s unhappily successful effort to
organize the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska on the principle of
squatter sovereignty. After the peace and quiet that had followed the
Missouri Compromise, this attempt to bring slavery across the line of
thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes by means of a local-option scheme
looked to the _Sun_ very much like kicking a sleeping dragon in the
face.
After Douglas had been successful in putting his bill through
Congress, the _Sun_ still rejected its principles. Commenting on the
announcements of certain Missourians that they would take their slaves
into the new Territory, the _Sun_ said:
They may certainly take their slaves with them into the new
Territory, but when they get them there they will have no law
for holding the slaves. Slavery is a creation of local law,
and until a Legislature of Kansas or Nebraska enacts a law
recognizing slavery, all slaves taken into the Territory will
be entitled to their freedom.
It was at this time that the germs of Secession began to show
themselves on the culture-plates of the continent. The _Sun_ was hot at
the suggestion of a division of the Union:
It can only excite contempt when any irate member of Congress
or fanatical newspaper treats the dissolution of the Union as
an event which may easily be brought about. There is moral
treason in this habit of continually depreciating the value of
the Union.
The _Sun_ saw that Douglas’s repeal of the Missouri Compromise was a
smashing blow delivered by a Northern Democrat to the Democracy of the
North; but the sectional hatred was not revealed in all its intensity
until 1856, when Representative Preston S. Brooks, of South Carolina,
made his murderous attack on Senator Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts,
in the Senate Chamber. This and its immediate consequences were well
covered by the _Sun_, not only through its Associated Press despatches,
but also in special correspondence from its Washington representative,
“Hermit.” It had a report nearly a column long of Sumner’s speech,
“The Crime Against Kansas,” which caused Brooks to assault the great
opponent of slavery.
That year was also the year of the first national convention of the
Republican party, conceived by the Abolitionists, the Free Soilers, and
the Know-nothings, and born in 1854. The _Sun_ had a special reporter
at Philadelphia to tell of the nomination of John C. Frémont, but
the paper supported Buchanan. Its readers were of a class naturally
Democratic, and although the paper was not a party organ, and had no
liking for slavery or Secession, the new party was too new, perhaps too
much colored with Know-nothingism, to warrant a change of policy.
On the subject of the Dred Scott decision, written by Chief Justice
Taney and handed down two days after Buchanan’s inauguration, the _Sun_
was blunt:
We believe that the State of New York can confer citizenship on
men of whatever race, and that its citizens are entitled, by
the Constitution, to be treated in Missouri as citizens of New
York State. To treat them otherwise is to discredit our State
sovereignty.
John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry was found worthy of a column in the
_Sun_, but space was cramped that morning, for four columns had to be
given to a report of the New York firemen’s parade. The firemen read
the _Sun_.
But Mr. Beach sent a special man to report Brown’s trial at
Charlestown, Virginia. The editorial columns echoed the sense of the
correspondence--that the old man was not having a fair show. Besides,
the _Sun_ believed that Brown was insane and belonged in a madhouse
rather than on the gallows. It printed a five-thousand-word sermon
by Henry Ward Beecher on Brown’s raid. Beecher and the Beaches were
very friendly, and there is still in Beecher’s famous Plymouth Church,
Brooklyn, a pulpit made of wood brought from the Mount of Olives by
Moses S. Beach.
When John Brown was hanged, December 2, 1859, the _Sun_ remarked:
The chivalry of the Old Dominion will breathe easier now....
But, while Brown cannot be regarded as a common murderer, it is
only the wild extravagance of fanatical zeal that will attempt
to elevate him to the rank of a martyr.
In the Illinois campaign of 1858 the _Sun_ was slow to recognize
Abraham Lincoln’s prowess as a speaker, although Lincoln was then
recognized as the leading exponent of Whig doctrine in his State.
Referring to the debates between Lincoln and Douglas in their struggle
for the Senatorship, the _Sun_ said:
An extraordinary interest is attached by the leading men of all
parties to the campaign which Senator Douglas is conducting in
the State of Illinois. His rival for the Senatorial nomination,
Mr. Lincoln, being no match for the Little Giant in campaign
oratory, Senator Trumbull has taken the stump on the Republican
side.
Two years later, when Lincoln was nominated for President, the _Sun_
saw him in a somewhat different light:
Mr. Lincoln is an active State politician and a good stump
orator. As to the chances of his election, that is a matter
upon which we need not at present speculate.
But the time for the _Sun_ to speculate came only three days later (May
22, 1860), when it frankly stated:
It is now admitted that Mr. Lincoln’s nomination is a strong
one.... He is, emphatically, a man of the people.... That he
would, if elected, make a good President, we do not entertain a
doubt. His chances of election are certainly good. The people
are tired of being ruled by professional politicians.
That was written before the Democratic national convention. The _Sun_
wanted the Democrats to nominate Sam Houston. It saw that Douglas had
estranged the anti-slavery Democrats of the North. When Douglas was
nominated, the _Sun_ remarked:
Of the six candidates in the field--Lincoln, Bell, Houston,
Douglas, Breckinridge, and Gerrit Smith--Lincoln has
unquestionably the best chance of an election by the people.
The _Sun_ had no illusions as to the candidacy of John C. Breckinridge,
the Vice-President under Buchanan, when he was nominated for President
by the Democrats of the South, who refused to flock to the colours of
Douglas:
The secessionists do not expect that Breckinridge will be
elected. Should Lincoln and Hamlin be elected by the votes of
the free States, then the design of the conspirators is to come
out openly for a disruption of the Union and the erection of a
Southern confederacy.
“The Union cannot be dissolved,” the _Sun_ declared on August 4,
“whosoever shall be elected President!”
And on the morning of Election Day the _Sun_, which had taken little
part except to criticise the conduct of the Democratic campaign, said
prophetically: “History turns a leaf to-day.” Its comment on the
morning after the election was characteristic of its attitude during
the canvass:
Mr. Lincoln appears to have been elected, and yet the country
is safe.
In a paragraph of political gossip printed a week later the _Sun_ said
that Horace Greeley could have the collectorship of the port of New
York if he resigned his claims to a seat in the Cabinet, and that--
For the postmastership Charles A. Dana of the _Tribune_,
Daniel Ullman, Thomas B. Stillman, and Armor J. Williamson are
named. Either Mr. Dana or Mr. Williamson would fill the office
creditably.
That was probably the first time that Charles A. Dana got his name into
the _Sun_.
Although unqualifiedly opposed to Secession, the _Sun_ did not believe
that military coercion was the best way to prevent it. It saw the
temper of South Carolina and other Southern States, but thought that it
saw, too, a diplomatic way of curing the disorder. South Carolina, it
said, had a greater capacity for indignation than any other political
body in the world. Here was the way to stop its wrath:
Open the door of the Union for a free and inglorious egress,
and you dry up the machine in an instant.
This was somewhat on a plane with Horace Greeley’s advice in the
_Tribune_--“Let the erring sisters go in peace.” The _Sun_, however,
was more Machiavellian:
Our proposition is that the Constitution be so amended as
to permit any State, within a limited period, and upon her
surrender of her share in the Federal property, to retire
from the confederacy [the Union] in peace. It is a plan to
emasculate Secession by depriving it of its present stimulating
illegality. Does any one suppose that even South Carolina would
withdraw from the Union if her withdrawal were normal?
This was printed on December 8, 1860, some weeks before the fate of the
Crittenden Compromise, beaten by Southern votes, showed beyond doubt
that the South actually preferred disunion.
With mingled grief and indignation the _Sun_ watched the Southern
States march out of the Union. It poured its wrath on the head of
the mayor of New York, Fernando Wood, when that peculiar statesman
suggested, on January 7, 1861, that New York City should also secede.
“Why may not New York disrupt the bonds which bind her to a venal and
corrupt master?” Wood had inquired.
The _Sun_ had more faith in Lincoln than most of its Democratic
contemporaries exhibited. Of his inaugural speech it said:
There is a manly sincerity, geniality, and strength to be felt
in the whole address.
The day after the fall of Fort Sumter the _Sun_ found a moment to turn
on the South-loving _Herald_:
We state only what the proprietor of the _Herald_ undoubtedly
believes when we say that if the national ensign had not been
hung out yesterday from its windows, as a concession to the
gathering crowd, the issue of that paper for another day would
have been more than doubtful.
Shortly afterward the _Sun_ charged that the _Herald_ had had in
its office a full set of Confederate colours, “ready to fling to the
breeze of treason which it and the mayor hoped to raise in this city.”
Later in the same year the _Sun_ accused the _Daily News_ and the
_Staats-Zeitung_ of disloyalty, and intimated that the _Journal of
Commerce_ and the _Express_ were not what they should be. The owner
of the _Daily News_ was Ben Wood, a brother of Fernando Wood. In its
youth the _News_ had been a newspaper of considerable distinction. It
was an offshoot of the _Evening Post_, and one of its first editors was
Parke Godwin, son-in-law of William Cullen Bryant. Another of its early
editors was Samuel J. Tilden.
Wood, who was a Kentuckian by birth, made the _News_ a Tammany organ
and used it to get himself elected to Congress, where he served as a
Representative from 1861 to 1865, constantly opposing the continuation
of the war. The _Sun’s_ accusation of disloyalty against the _News_
was echoed in Washington, and for eighteen months, early in the war,
the _News_ was suppressed. The _Staats-Zeitung_, also included in the
_Sun’s_ suspicion, was then owned by Oswald Ottendorfer, who had come
into possession of the great German daily in 1859, by his marriage to
Mrs. Jacob Uhl, widow of the man who established it as a daily.
Presence in the ranks of the copperhead journalists was disastrous to
the owner of the _Journal of Commerce_, Gerard Hallock, who had been
one of the great figures of American journalism for thirty years. In
the decade before the war Hallock bought and liberated at least a
hundred slaves, and paid for their transportation to Liberia; yet he
was one of the most uncompromising supporters of a national proslavery
policy. When the American Home Missionary Society withdrew its support
from slave-holding churches in the South, Hallock was one of the
founders of the Southern Aid Society, designed to take its place.
In August, 1861, the _Journal of Commerce_ was one of several
newspapers presented by the grand jury of the United States Circuit
Court for “encouraging rebels now in arms against the Federal
government, by expressing sympathy and agreement with them.” Hallock’s
paper was forbidden the use of the mails. He sold his interest in the
_Journal of Commerce_, retired from business, never wrote another line
for publication, and died four years later.
Another contemporary of the _Sun_ which suffered during the war was
the _World_, then a very young paper. It had first appeared in June,
1860, as a highly moral daily sheet. Its express purpose was to give
all the news that it thought the public _ought_ to have. This meant
that it intended to exclude from its staid columns all thrilling police
reports, slander suits, divorce cases, and details of murders. It
refused to print theatrical advertising.
The _World_ had a fast printing-press and obtained an Associated Press
franchise. It hired some good men, including Alexander Cummings, who
had made his mark on the Philadelphia _North American_, James R.
Spalding, who had been with Raymond on the _Courier and Enquirer_, and
Manton Marble. But the _World_, stripped of lively human news, was a
failure. After two hundred thousand dollars had been sunk in a footless
enterprise, the religious coterie retired, and left the _World_ to the
worldly.
Its later owners were variously reported to be August Belmont, Fernando
Wood, and Benjamin Wood; but it finally passed entirely into the hands
of Manton Marble, who made it a free-trade Democratic organ. Marble had
learned the newspaper business on the _Journal_ and the _Traveler_
in Boston, and in 1858 and 1859 he was on the staff of the _Evening
Post_. In July, 1861, the _World_ and the _Courier and Enquirer_ were
consolidated, and Colonel J. Watson Webb, who had owned and edited the
latter paper for thirty-four years, retired from newspaper life.
During the Civil War the _World_ was strongly opposed to President
Lincoln’s administration. Perhaps this fact accounts for the punishment
which befell it through the misdeed of an outsider.
In May, 1864, there was sent to most of the morning-newspaper offices
what purported to be a proclamation by the President, appointing a
day of fasting and prayer, and calling into military service, by
volunteering and draft, four hundred thousand additional troops. This
was a fake, engineered by Joseph Howard, Jr., a newspaperman who had
been employed on the _Tribune_, and who put out the hoax for the
purpose of influencing the stock-market. The _Sun_, the _Tribune_, and
the _Times_ did not fall for the hoax, but the _Herald_, the _World_,
and the _Journal of Commerce_ printed it, stopping their presses when
they learned the truth.
General John A. Dix seized the offices of the _Herald_, the _World_,
and the _Journal of Commerce_, put soldiers to guard them, and
suppressed the papers for several days--all this by order of the
President. Howard, the forger, was arrested, and on his confession was
sent to Fort Lafayette, where he was a prisoner for several weeks.
Manton Marble wrote a bitter letter to Lincoln in protest against what
he considered an outrage on the _World_. Marble remained at the head of
the paper until 1876.
The _Sun_ took the setback of Bull Run with better grace than most of
the papers--far better than Horace Greeley, who yelled for a truce. It
seemed to see that this was only the beginning of a long conflict,
which must be fought to the end, regardless of disappointments. On
August 15, 1861, it declared:
Let there be but one war. Better it should cost millions
of lives than that we should live in hourly dread of wars,
contiguous to a people who could make foreign alliances and
land armies upon our shores to destroy our liberties.
On the subject of the war’s cost it said:
No more talk of carrying on the war economically! The only
economy is to make short and swift work of it, and the people
are ready to bear the expense, if it were five hundred millions
of dollars, to-day.
This was printed when the war was very young; when no man dreamed that
it would cost the Federal government six times five hundred millions.
The _Sun’s_ editorial articles were not without criticism of the
conduct of the war. It was one of the many papers that demanded the
resignation of Seward at a time when the Secretary of State was
generally blamed for what seemed to be the dilly-dallying of the
government. Lincoln himself was still regarded as a politician as well
as a statesman--a view which was reflected in the _Sun’s_ comment on
the preliminary proclamation of emancipation, September 22, 1862:
As the greatest and most momentous act of our nation, from its
foundation to the present time, we would rather have seen this
step disconnected from all lesser considerations and from party
influences.
The inference in this was that Lincoln had deliberately made his great
stroke on the eve of the Republican State convention in New York.
The _Tribune_ declared that the proclamation was “the beginning of the
end of the rebellion.” “The wisdom of the step is unquestionable,” said
the _Times_; “its necessity indisputable.” The businesslike _Herald_
remarked that it inaugurated “an overwhelming revolution in the system
of labour.” The _World_ said that it regretted the proclamation and
doubted the President’s power to free the slaves. “We regard it with
profound regret,” said the _Journal of Commerce_. “It is usurpation of
power!” shouted the _Staats-Zeitung_.
Such was the general tone of the New York morning newspapers during
the war. Only three--the _Sun_, the _Tribune_, and the _Times_--could
be described as out-and-out loyalists. The _Sun_ was for backing up
Lincoln whenever it believed him right, and that was most of the time;
yet it was free in its criticism of various phases of the conduct of
the war.
Like most of the Democrats of New York, the _Sun_ was an admirer of
General McClellan, and it believed that his removal from the command
of the army was due to politics. But when the election of 1864 came
around, the _Sun_ refused to join its party contemporaries in wild
abuse of Lincoln and Johnson. On the morning after the Republican
nominations it said:
It is no time to quarrel with those men who honestly wish to
crush the rebellion on the ground that they have nominated a
rail-splitter and a tailor. It would be more consistent with
true democracy if these men were honored for rising from an
humble sphere.
The _Sun_ supported McClellan, praising him for his repudiation of the
plank in the Democratic platform which declared the war a failure; but
in the last days of the campaign it was frank in its predictions that
Lincoln would be elected. On the morning after election it had this to
say:
The reelection of Abraham Lincoln announces to the world how
firmly we have resolved to be a free and united people.
After the assassination of President Lincoln the _Sun_ said:
In the death of Mr. Lincoln the Southern people have lost
one of the best friends they had at the North. He would have
treated them with more gentleness than any other statesman.
From him they would have obtained concessions it is now almost
impossible for our rulers and people to grant.
The _Sun’s_ attitude toward the copperheads and deluded pacifists of
the North is reflected in an editorial article published on June 5,
1863. The North was then in its worst panic. Only a month previously
Lee had defeated Hooker at Chancellorsville, and the victorious
Confederates were marching through Maryland into Pennsylvania. At
a mass-meeting in Cooper Union, George Francis Train and other
copperheads denounced the war, praised Vallandigham, of Ohio, who had
been banished into the South for his unpatriotic conduct, and declared
for “peace and reunion.” It was largely a Democratic meeting, but the
_Sun_ would not stomach the disloyal outburst:
The fact that over ten thousand people assembled in and about
Cooper Union on Thursday evening to listen to speeches and
adopt an address and resolutions prepared under that “eye
single to the public welfare,” discloses the ease with which
a few political tricksters may present false issues to the
unthinking and, in the excitement of the moment, induce their
hearers to applaud sentiments that, when calmly considered,
are unworthy of a great and free people. Taking advantage of
the blunders of the present administration, these self-styled
Democrats raise their banners and, under the guise of
proclaiming peace, in reality proclaim a war upon those very
principles it is the highest boast of every true Democrat to
acknowledge.
The Democratic party is essentially the peace party of the
present rebellion; but it will sanction no peace that is
obtained by compromising the vital principles that give force
to our form of government. They will not ask for peace at the
expense of the Union, and desire no Democratic victories that
do not legitimately belong to them as an expression of the
confidence of the people in their fidelity to the Union and the
Constitution.
The late meeting, then, should not be sanctioned by any true
Democrat. It was in no sense Democratic; it was in reality an
opposition meeting, and only as such will it be looked upon as
having any important bearing upon the great questions of the
hour, and if rightly interpreted by the administration will
exert no evil influence upon the future destinies of this great
nation.
The methods of gathering war news, early in the conflict, were
haphazard. The first reports to reach New York from Southern fields
were usually the government bulletins, but they were not as trustworthy
as the official bulletins of the European war.
On the morning after the first battle of Bull Run, the _Sun’s_ readers
were treated to joyous head-lines:
A GREAT BATTLE--SEVENTY THOUSAND REBELS IN IT--OUR ARMY
VICTORIOUS--GREAT LOSS OF LIFE--TWELVE HOURS’ FIGHTING--RETREAT
OF THE REBELS--UNITED STATES FORCES PRESSING FORWARD.
But on the following morning the tune changed:
RETREAT OF OUR TROOPS--OUR ARMY SCATTERED--ONLY TWENTY-TWO
THOUSAND UNION TROOPS ENGAGED--ENEMY NINETY THOUSAND
STRONG--OUR CANNON LEFT BEHIND.
As a matter of fact, only about eighteen thousand troops were engaged
on each side.
The _Sun_ had no famous correspondents at the front. It sent three
reporters to Virginia in 1861, and these sent mail stories and some
telegraph matter, which was of value in supplementing the official
bulletins, the Associated Press service, the specials from “Nemo”
and “Hermit,” the _Sun_ correspondents in Washington, and the matter
rewritten from the Philadelphia and Western newspapers.
The _Sun_ was still a local paper, with a constituency hungry for news
of the men of the New York regiments. To the _Sun_ readers the doings
of General Meagher, of the Irish Brigade, or Colonel Michael Corcoran,
of the Sixty-Ninth Regiment, were more important than the strategic
details of a large campaign.
The _Sun_, like all the Northern papers, was frequently deceived
by false reports of Union victories. Federal troops were in
Fredericksburg--on the front page--weeks before they were in it in
reality; in Richmond, years too soon. But there was no doubt about
Gettysburg, although the North did not get the news until the 5th of
July. The _Sun_ came out on Monday, the 6th, with these head-lines:
VICTORY!--INVASION COMES TO GRIEF--LEE UTTERLY ROUTED--HIS
DISASTROUS RETREAT--ALL FEDERAL PRISONERS RECAPTURED--EIGHTEEN
THOUSAND PRISONERS CAPTURED--MEANS OF ESCAPE DESTROYED.
On April 10, 1865, the head-lines were sprinkled with American flags
and cuts of Columbia, and the types carried the welcome news for which
the North had waited for four long years:
OUR NATION REDEEMED--SURRENDER OF LEE AND HIS WHOLE ARMY--THE
TERMS--OFFICERS AND MEN PAROLED AND TOLD TO GO HOME--THE
COUNTRY WILD WITH JOY, ETC., ETC., ETC.
The “etc., etc., etc.,” suggests that the head-writer was too wild with
joy to go into more details.
It was not until May, 1862, that the _Sun_ abandoned the ancient custom
of giving a large part of the first page to advertising. This reform
came late, perhaps because Moses S. Beach was out of the _Sun_ in the
early months of the war.
On August 6, 1860, the control of the paper had passed from Mr. Beach
to Archibald M. Morrison, a rich young man of religious fervour, who
was prompted by other religious enthusiasts to get the _Sun_ and use
it for evangelical purposes. Mr. Morrison gave Mr. Beach one hundred
thousand dollars for the good-will of the paper, and agreed to pay
a rental for the material. Mr. Beach retained the ownership of the
building, of the presses, and, indeed, of every piece of type.
The new proprietors of the _Sun_ held a prayer-meeting at noon every
day in the editorial rooms. They also injected a bit of religion into
the columns by printing on the first page reports of prayer-meetings
in the Sailors’ Home and of the doings of missionaries in Syria and
elsewhere. In spite of the new spirit that pervaded the office,
however, it was still possible for the unregenerate old subscriber to
find some little space devoted to the fistic clashes of Heenan and
Morrissey. Flies are not caught with vinegar.
The new management made a sort of department paper of the _Sun_, the
front page being divided with the headings “Financial,” “Religious,”
“Criminal,” “Calamities,” “Foreign Items,” “Business Items,” and
“Miscellaneous.” It was not a bad newspaper, and it was quite possible
that some business men would prefer it to the Beach kind of sheet; but
it is certain that the advertisers were not attracted and that some
readers were repelled. One of the latter climbed the stairs of the
building at Fulton and Nassau Streets early one morning and nailed
to the door of the editorial rooms a placard which read: “Be ye not
righteous overmuch!”
During the Morrison régime the _Sun_ refused to accept advertisements
on Sunday. Of course, the printers worked on Sunday night, getting out
Monday’s paper, but that was something else. The _Sun_ went so far
(July 23, 1861) as to urge that the Union generals should be forbidden
to attack the enemy on Sundays. “Our troops must have rest, and need
the Sabbath,” it said.
William C. Church, one of the rising young newspapermen of New York,
was induced to become the publisher under the _Sun’s_ new management.
He was only twenty-four years old, but he had had a good deal of
newspaper experience in assisting his father, the Rev. Pharcellus
Church, to edit and publish the New York _Chronicle_. After a few weeks
in the _Sun_ office, however, Mr. Church saw that the paper, though
daily treated with evangelical serum, was not likely to be a howling
success; and on December 10, 1860, four months after he took hold as
publisher, it was announced that Mr. Church had “withdrawn from the
publication of the _Sun_ for the purpose of spending some months in
European travel and correspondence for the paper.”
Mr. Church wrote a few letters from Europe, but when the Civil War
started he hurried home and went with the joint military and naval
expedition headed by General T. W. Sherman and Admiral S. F. Dupont.
He was present at the capture of Port Royal, and wrote for the
_Evening Post_ the first account of it that appeared in the North.
Later he acted as a war-correspondent of the _Times_, writing under the
pseudonym “Pierrepont.” In October, 1862, he was appointed a captain of
volunteers, and toward the close of the war he received the brevets of
major and lieutenant-colonel.
During the war Mr. Church and his brother, Francis Pharcellus Church,
established the _Army and Navy Journal_, and in 1866 they founded that
brilliant magazine, the _Galaxy_--later merged with the _Atlantic
Monthly_--which printed the early works of Henry James. Colonel Church
owned the _Army and Navy Journal_, and was its active editor, until his
death, May 23, 1917, at the age of eighty-one. He was the biographer
and literary executor of John Ericsson, the inventor, and he wrote also
a biography of General Grant. He and his brother Francis were the most
distinguished members of a family which, in its various branches, gave
no less than seventeen persons to literature.
Francis P. Church’s connection with the _Sun_ was longer and more
pleasant than William’s. His writings for it ranged over a period of
forty years. He was one of the _Sun’s_ greatest editorial writers, and
was the author of the most popular editorial article ever written--“Is
There a Santa Claus?” But that comes in a later and far more brilliant
period than the one in which William C. Church served the _Sun_ all too
briefly.
At the end of 1861, what with the expense of getting war news, and
perhaps with the reluctance of the readers to absorb piety, the _Sun’s_
cash-drawer began to warp from lack of weight, and Mr. Beach, who had
never relinquished his rights to all the physical part of the paper,
took it back. This is the way he announced his resumption of control on
New Year’s morning, 1862:
Once more I write myself editor and sole proprietor of the
New York _Sun_. My day-dream of rural enjoyment is broken,
and I am again prisoner to pen and types. For months I sought
to avoid the surrender, but only to find resistance without
avail.... But I congratulate myself on my surroundings. Never
was prisoner more royally treated.
What, then, to the readers of the _Sun_? Nothing save the
announcement that I am henceforth its publisher and manager.
They require no other prospectus, program, or platform.
MOSES S. BEACH.
John Vance, who is said to have worked twelve years without a vacation,
left the _Sun_ about that time because Mr. Beach refused to name him as
editor-in-chief. Vance was a good writer, but he and Beach were often
at odds over the _Sun’s_ policies. It probably was Vance’s influence
that kept the paper in line for Douglas in the Presidential campaign of
1860--a campaign in which the _Sun_ was run for two months by Beach and
for three months by the Morrisonites. Vance, in spite of his leaning
toward Douglas, was an intimate friend of Elihu Burritt, the Learned
Blacksmith, who was an Abolitionist and an advocate of universal
brotherhood.
On Beach’s return to the _Sun_ he set out to recover its lost
advertising and to restore some of the livelier news features that had
been suppressed by the Morrison group. Early in the summer of 1862 he
began to shift advertising from the front page, to make room for the
big war head-lines that had been run on the second page. He also used
maps and woodcuts of cities, ships, and generals. The _Sun’s_ pictures
of the Monitor and the Merrimac were printed in one column by deftly
standing the gallant iron-clads on their sterns.
It was in this summer that Beach reduced expenses and speeded up the
issue of the paper by adopting the stereotyping process, one of the
greatest advances in newspaper history:
About a week ago we commenced printing the _Sun_ by a new
process--that of stereotyping and printing with two presses. We
are much gratified to-day in being able to say that the process
has proved eminently successful. From this time forth we may
expect to present a clean face to our many readers every day.
We have completed one stereotype within seventeen minutes and a
quarter, and two within nineteen minutes and a half.
That was rapid work for 1862, but the stereotypers of the present
day will take a form from the composing-room, make the papier-mâché
impression, pour in the molten metal, and have the curved plate ready
for the press in twelve minutes.
The new process saved Beach a lot of money as well as much precious
time. Before its coming, when the paper was printed directly from the
face of the type, the _Sun_ had to buy a full new set of type six or
eight times a year, at an annual cost of six thousand dollars.
The war played havoc with newspaper finances. The price of news-print
paper rose to twenty-four cents a pound. All the morning papers except
the _Sun_ raised their prices to three or four cents in 1862. The _Sun_
stayed at its old penny.
On January 1, 1863, in order to meet advancing costs and still sell
the _Sun_ for one cent, Beach found it necessary to “remove one column
from each side of the page”--a more or less ingenuous way of saying
that the _Sun_ was reduced from seven columns to five. The columns were
shortened, too, and the whole paper was set in agate type. The _Sun_
then looked much as it had appeared twenty years before.
With these economies Beach was able to keep the price at one cent until
August 1, 1864, when the _Sun_ slyly said:
We shall require the one cent for the _Sun_ to be paid in gold,
or we will receive as an equivalent two cents in currency.
Apologies or explanations are needless. An inflated currency
has raised the price of white paper nearly threefold.
Of course nobody had one cent in gold, so the _Sun_ readers grinned and
paid two cents in copper.
From that day on the price of the _Sun_ was two cents until July 1,
1916, when Frank A. Munsey bought the _Sun_, combined his one-cent
newspaper, the New York _Press_, with it, and reduced the price to
one cent. On January 26, 1918, by reason of heavy expenses incidental
to the war, the _Sun_, with all the other large papers of New York,
increased its price to two cents a copy. In its eighty-five years
the _Sun_ has been a penny paper thirty-two years, a two-cent paper
fifty-three years.
The _Sun_ was constantly profitable in the decade before the Civil
War. The average annual profits from 1850 to 1860 were $22,770.
The high-water mark in that period was reached in 1853, when the
advertising receipts were $89,964 and the net profits $42,906. Its
circulation in September, 1860, was fifty-nine thousand copies daily,
of which forty-five thousand were sold on the island of Manhattan.
One of the secrets of the _Sun’s_ popularity in the years when it had
no such news guidance as Bennett gave to the _Herald_, no such spirited
editorials as Greeley put into the _Tribune_, no such political
prestige as Raymond brought to the _Times_, was Moses S. Beach’s belief
that his public wanted light fiction. The appetite created by Scott
and increased by Dickens was keen in America. True, the penny _Sun’s_
literary standards were not of Himalayan height. Hawthorne was too
spiritual for its readers, Poe too brief. They wanted wads of adventure
and dialogue, dour squires, swooning ladies, hellish villains, handsome
heroes, and comic character folk. The young mechanic had to have
something he could understand without knitting his brows. For him,
“The Grocer’s Apprentice; a Tale of the Great Plague,” and “Dick Egan;
or, the San Francisco Bandits,” written for the _Sun_ by H. Warren
Trowbridge.
In the days before the Civil War, wives snatched the _Sun_ from
husbands to read “Maggie Miller; or, Old Hagar’s Secret,” “written
expressly for the _Sun_” by Mary J. Holmes, already famous through
“Lena Rivers” and “Dora Deane.” Ephemeral? They are still reading “Lena
Rivers” in North Crossing, Nebraska.
Horatio Alger, Jr., wrote several of his best tales for Mr. Beach, who
printed them serially in the _Sun_ and the _Weekly Sun_. To the New
York youth of 1859, who dreamed not that in three years he would be
clay on the slope at Fredericksburg, it was the middle of a perfect day
to pick up the _Sun_, read a thrilling news story about Blondin cooking
an omelet while crossing the Niagara gorge on a tight rope, and then,
turning to the last page, to plunge into “The Discarded Son; or, the
Cousin’s Plot,” by the author of “The Secret Drawer,” “The Cooper’s
Ward,” “The Gipsy Nurse,” and “Madeline the Temptress”--for all these
were written expressly for the _Sun_ by young Mr. Alger. He was only
twenty-five then, with the years ahead when, a Unitarian minister, he
should see fiction material in the New York street-boy and write the
epics of _Ragged Dick_ and _Tattered Tom_.
What did the women readers of the _Sun_ care about the discovery of oil
in Pennsylvania or the wonderful trotting campaign of Flora Temple,
when they could devour daily two columns of “Jessie Graham; or, Love
and Pride”? The _Sun_ might condense A. T. Stewart’s purchase of two
city blocks into a paragraph, but there must be no short measure of
“Gerald Vane’s Lost One,” by Walter Savage North.
When the religious folk held the reins of the _Sun_ they tried to
compromise by printing “Great Expectations” as a serial, but the wise
Mr. Beach, on getting the paper back, quickly flung to his hungry
readers “Hunted Down,” by Ann S. Stephens. Later in the war he catered
to the martial spirit with “Running the Blockade,” by Captain Wheeler,
United States army.
One column of foreign news, one of city paragraphs, one of editorial
articles, one of jokes and miscellany, one of fiction, and nineteen
of advertising--that was about the make-up of Beach’s _Sun_ before
the Civil War; that was the prescription which enabled the _Sun_ to
sell nearly sixty thousand copies in a city of eight hundred thousand
people. It was a fairly well condensed paper. In February, 1857, when
it printed one day two and a half columns about the mysterious murder
of Dr. Harvey Burdell, the rich dentist of Bond Street, it broke its
record for length in a police story.
It was in Moses S. Beach’s time that the Atlantic cable, second only
to the telegraph proper as an aid to newspapers, was laid. On August
6, 1858, when Cyrus W. Field telegraphed to the Associated Press from
Newfoundland that the ends of the cables had reached both shores of the
sea, the _Sun_ said that it was “the greatest triumph of the age.”
Eleven days later the _Sun_ contained this article:
We received last night and publish to-day what purports to be
the message of Queen Victoria, congratulating the President of
the United States on the successful completion of the Atlantic
telegraph. We are assured that the message is genuine, and
that it came through the Atlantic cable. It is not surprising,
however, that the President, on receiving it, doubted its
genuineness, as among the hundreds who crowded our office last
evening the doubters largely preponderated.
The message, accepting it as the queen’s, is, in style and
tone, utterly unworthy of the great event which it was designed
to celebrate.
The message is so shabbily like royalty that we cannot believe
it to be a fabrication.
Perhaps that was written by John Vance, the Irish exile. And perhaps
the editorial article which appeared the following day was written by
Beach himself:
Victoria’s message ... in its complete form, as it appears in
our columns to-day, is friendly and courteous, though rather
commonplace in expression and style.
New York had a great celebration over the laying of the cable that
week. The _Sun’s_ building bore a sign illuminated by gaslight:
S. F. B. MORSE AND CYRUS W. FIELD,
WIRE-PULLERS OF THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY.
The first piece of news to come by cable was printed in the _Sun_ of
August 27, 1858, and ran:
A treaty of peace has been concluded with China, by which
England and France obtain all their demands, including the
establishment of embassies at Peking and indemnification for
the expenses of the war.
It will be remembered that this first cable was not a success, and
that permanent undersea telegraph service did not come until 1866; but
the results produced in 1858 convinced the world that Field and his
associates were right, and that perseverance and money would bring
perfect results.
After the war, when paper became cheaper, Beach preferred to enlarge
the _Sun_ rather than reduce its price to one cent. He never printed
more than four pages, but the lost columns were restored, with
interest, so that there were eight to a page. Even at two cents a copy
it was still the cheapest of the morning papers; still the beloved of
the working classes and the desired of the politicians. Just after the
war ended the _Sun_ declared that it was read by half a million people.
On January 25, 1868, when the _Sun_ had been in the possession of
the Beaches for about thirty of its thirty-five years, a new editor
and manager, speaking for a new ownership of the _Sun_, made this
announcement at the head of the editorial column:
THE SUN
THE OLDEST CHEAP PAPER IN NEW YORK.
Notice is hereby given that the _Sun_ newspaper, with its
presses, types, and fixtures, has become the property of an
association represented by the undersigned, and including
among its prominent stockholders Mr. M. S. Beach, recently the
exclusive owner of the whole property. It will henceforth be
published in the building known for the last half-century as
Tammany Hall, on the corner of Nassau and Frankfort Streets.
Its price will remain as heretofore at two cents a copy, or
six dollars per annum to mail subscribers. It will be printed
in handsome style on a folio sheet, as at present; but it will
contain more news and other reading matter than it has hitherto
given.
In changing its proprietorship, the _Sun_ will not in any
respect change its principles or general line of conduct. It
will continue to be an independent newspaper, wearing the
livery of no party, and discussing public questions and the
acts of public men on their merits alone. It will be guided, as
it has been hitherto, by uncompromising loyalty to the Union,
and will resist every attempt to weaken the bonds that unite
the American people into one nation.
The _Sun_ will support General Grant as its candidate for the
Presidency. It will advocate retrenchment and economy in the
public expenditures, and the reduction of the present crushing
burdens of taxation. It will advocate the speedy restoration of
the South, as needful to revive business and secure fair wages
for labor.
The _Sun_ will always have all the news, foreign, domestic,
political, social, literary, scientific, and commercial. It
will use enterprise and money freely to make the best possible
newspaper, as well as the cheapest.
It will study condensation, clearness, point, and will endeavor
to present its daily photograph of the whole world’s doings in
the most luminous and lively manner.
It will not take as long to read the _Sun_ as to read the
London _Times_ or Webster’s Dictionary, but when you have
read it you will know about all that has happened in both
hemispheres. The _Sun_ will also publish a semiweekly edition
at two dollars a year, containing the most interesting articles
from the daily, and also a condensed summary of the news
prepared expressly for this edition.
The _Weekly Sun_ will continue to be issued at one dollar
a year. It will be prepared with great care, and will also
contain all the news in a condensed and readable form. Both
the weekly and semiweekly will have accurate reports of the
general, household, and cattle markets. They will also have an
agricultural department, and will report the proceedings of
the Farmers’ Club. This department will be edited by Andrew
S. Fuller, Esq., whose name will guarantee the quality of his
contributions.
We shall endeavor to make the _Sun_ worthy the confidence of
the people in every part of the country. Its circulation is
now more than fifty thousand copies daily. We mean that it
shall soon be doubled; and in this, the aid of all persons who
want such a newspaper as we propose to make will be cordially
welcomed.
CHARLES A. DANA,
Editor and Manager.
New York, January 25, 1868.
Beneath this announcement was a farewell message from Moses Sperry
Beach to the readers whom he had served for twenty years:
With unreserved confidence in the ability of those who are to
continue this work of my life, I lay aside an armor which in
these latter years has been too loosely borne.
So Moses S. Beach retired from journalism at forty-five. With the
$175,000 paid to him for the _Sun_, and the profits he had made in his
many years of ownership, he was easily rich enough to realize his dream
of quiet rural life--a realization that lasted until his death in 1892.
But who was this Dana who was taking up at forty-eight the burden that
a younger man was almost wearily laying down?
It is very likely that he was not well known to the readers of the
_Sun_. The newspaper world knew him as one who had been the backbone of
Greeley’s _Tribune_ in the turbulent period before the Civil War and
for a year after the war was on. The army world knew him as the man who
had been chosen by Lincoln and Stanton for important and confidential
missions. Students knew him as one of the editors of the “New American
Encyclopedia.” By many a fireside his name was familiar as the compiler
of the “Household Book of Poetry.” Highbrows remembered him as one of
the group of geniuses in the Brook Farm colony.
In none of these categories were many of the men who ran with the
fire-engines, voted for John Kelly, and bought the _Sun_. But the _Sun_
was the _Sun_; it was their paper, and they would have none other; and
they would see what this Dana would do with it.
CHAPTER IX
THE EARLIER CAREER OF DANA
_His Life at Brook Farm and His Tribune Experience.--His
Break with Greeley, His Civil War Services and His Chicago
Disappointment.--His Purchase of “The Sun.”_
Day and Dana each did a great thing for the _Sun_ and incidentally
for journalism and for America. Day made humanity more intelligent by
making newspapers popular. Dana made newspapers more intelligent by
making them human.
Day started the _Sun_ at twenty-three and left it at twenty-eight. Dana
took the _Sun_ at forty-eight and kept it for thirty years. Each, in
his time, was absolute master of the paper.
“The great idea of Day’s time,” wrote E. P. Mitchell on the _Sun’s_
fiftieth birthday, fifteen years after Dana took hold, “was cheapness
to the buyer. The great idea of the _Sun_ as it is, was and is interest
to the reader.”
Of the nine men who have been owners of the _Sun_, seven were of
down-east Yankee stock, and six of the seven were born in New England.
Of the editors-in-chief of the _Sun_--except in that brief period of
the lease by the religious coterie--all have been New Englanders but
one, and he was the son of a New Englander.
Dana was born in Hinsdale, New Hampshire, on August 8, 1819. His father
was Anderson Dana, sixth in descent from Richard Dana, the colonial
settler; and his mother, Ann Denison, came of straight Yankee stock.
The father failed in business at Hinsdale when Charles was a child,
and the family moved to Gaines, a village in western New York, where
Anderson Dana became a farmer. Here the mother died, leaving four
children--Charles Anderson, aged nine; Junius, seven; Maria, three, and
David, an infant. The widower went to the home of Mrs. Dana’s parents
near Guildhall, Vermont, and there the children were divided among
relatives. Charles was sent to live with his uncle, David Denison, on a
farm in the Connecticut River Valley.
There was a good teacher at the school near by, and at the age of ten
Charles was considered as proficient in his English studies as many
boys of fifteen. When he was twelve he had added some Latin to the
three R’s. In the judgment of that day he was fit to go to work. His
uncle, William Dana, was part owner of the general store of Staats &
Dana, in Buffalo, New York, whither the boy was sent by stage-coach. He
made himself handy in the store and lived at his uncle’s house.
Buffalo, a distributing place for freight sent West on the Erie Canal,
had a population of only fifteen thousand in 1831. Many of Staats &
Dana’s customers were Indians, and young Charles added to the store’s
efficiency by learning the Seneca language. At night he continued his
pursuit of Latin, tackled Greek, read what volumes of Tom Paine he
could buy at a book-shop next door, and followed the career, military
and political, of the strenuous Andrew Jackson. When he had a day off
he went fishing in the Niagara River or visited the Indian reservation.
He was a normal, healthy lad, even if he knew more Latin than he
should. When war threatened with Great Britain over the Caroline
affair, Dana joined the City Guard and had a brief ambition to be a
soldier. He was of slender build, but strong. He belonged to the
Coffee Club, a literary organization, and he made a talk to it on early
English poetry.
“The best days of my life,” he called this period.
Staats & Dana failed in the panic of 1837, and Charles, then eighteen,
and the possessor of two hundred dollars saved from his wages, decided
to go to Harvard. He left Buffalo in June, 1839, although his father
did not like the idea of letting him go to Harvard.
“I know it ranks high as a literary institution, but the influence
it exerts in a religious way is most horrible--even worse than
Universalism.”
Anderson Dana had a horror of Unitarianism, and had heard that Charles
was attending Unitarian meetings.
“Ponder well the paths of thy feet,” he wrote in solemn warning to his
perilously venturesome son, “lest they lead down to the very gates of
hell.”
Dana entered college without difficulty, and devoted much of his time
to philosophy and general literature. He wrote to his friend, Dr.
Austin Flint, whom he had met in Buffalo, and who had advised him to go
to Harvard.
I am in the focus of what Professor Felton calls
“supersublimated transcendentalism,” and to tell the truth,
I take to it rather kindly, though I stumble sadly at some
notions.
This was not strange, for besides hearing Unitarian discourse, young
Dana was attending Emerson’s lectures at Harvard and reading Carlyle.
[Illustration:
CHARLES A. DANA AT THIRTY-EIGHT
A Photograph Taken in 1857 When He Was Managing Editor of the
New York “Tribune.”
]
In his first term Dana stood seventh in a class of seventy-four. In the
spring of 1840 he left Cambridge, but pursued the university studies at
the home of his uncle in Guildhall, Vermont. Here, at an expense of
about a dollar a week, he put in eight hours a day at his books, and
for diversion went shooting or tinkered in the farm shop. His sister,
then fifteen years old, was there, and he helped her with her studies.
Dana returned to Harvard in the autumn, but not for long. His purse was
about empty, and he found no means of replenishing it at Cambridge.
In November the faculty gave him permission to be absent during the
winter to “keep school.” Dana went to teach at Scituate, Massachusetts,
getting twenty-five dollars a month and his board.
His regret at leaving college was keen, for it meant that he would miss
Richard Henry Dana’s lectures on poetry, and George Ripley’s on foreign
literature.
Young Dana’s mind was full in those days. There was the eager desire
for education, with poverty in the path. He thought he saw a way around
by going to Germany, where he could live cheaply at a university and be
paid for teaching English. There was also a religious struggle.
I feel now an inclination to orthodoxy, and am trying to
believe the real doctrine of the Trinity. Whether I shall
settle down in Episcopacy, Swedenborgianism, or Goethean
indifference to all religion, I know not. My only prayer is,
“God help me!”
But the immediate reality was teaching school in a little town where
most of the pupils were unruly sailors, and Dana faced it with
good-natured philosophy. At the end of a day’s struggle to train some
sixty or seventy Scituate youths, he went back to the home of Captain
Webb, with whose family he boarded, and read Coleridge for literary
quality, Swedenborg for religion, and “Oliver Twist” for diversion.
Candles and whale-oil lamps were the only illuminants, and Dana’s
eyes, never too strong, began to weaken.
He returned to college in the spring of 1841, but his eyes would stand
no more. He was about to find work as an agricultural labourer when
Brook Farm attracted him. Through George Ripley he was admitted to
that association, which sought to combine labour and intellect in a
beautiful communistic scheme. He agreed to teach Greek and German and
to help with the farm work.
Dana subscribed for three of the thirty shares--at five hundred dollars
a share--of the stock of the Brook Farm Institute of Agriculture and
Education, as the company was legally titled. Brook Farm was a fine
place of a hundred and ninety-two acres, in the town of Roxbury,
about nine miles from Boston. It cost $10,500 and, as most of the
shareholders had no money to pay on their stock, mortgages amounting
to eleven thousand dollars were immediately clapped on the place--a
feat rare in the business world, at once to mortgage a place for more
than its cost. Dana, now twenty-three years old, was elected recording
secretary, one of the three trustees, and a member of the committees on
finance and education.
He remained as a Brook Farmer to the end of the five years that the
experiment lasted. There he met Hawthorne, who lingered long enough to
get much of the material for his “Blithedale Romance”; Thoreau, who
had not yet gone to Walden Pond; William Ellery Channing, second, the
author and journalist; Albert Brisbane, the most radical of the group
of socialists of his day; and Margaret Fuller, who believed in Brook
Farm, but did not live there.
Brook Farm was the perfect democracy. The members did all the work,
menial and otherwise, and if there was honour it fell to him whose
task was humblest. The community paid each worker a dollar a day, and
charged him or her about two dollars and fifty cents a week for board.
It sold its surplus produce, and it educated children at low rates.
George Ripley, the Unitarian minister, was chief of the cow-milking
group, and Dana helped him. Dana, as head waiter, served food to John
Cheever, valet to an English baronet then staying in Boston.
“And it was great fun,” Dana said, in a lecture delivered at the
University of Michigan forty years afterward. “There were seventy
people or more, and at dinner they all came in and we served them.
There was more entertainment in doing the duty than in getting away
from it.”
It was at Brook Farm that Dana first made the acquaintance of Horace
Greeley, who, himself a student of Fourier, was interested in the
Roxbury experiment, so much more idealistic than Fourierism itself.
Dana took Brook Farm seriously, but he was not one of the poseurs
of the colony. No smocks for him, no long hair! He wore a full,
auburn beard, but he wore a beard all the rest of his life. He was a
handsome, slender youth, and he got mental and physical health out of
every minute at the farm. By day he was busy teaching, keeping the
association’s books, milking, waiting on table, or caring for the
fruit-trees. He was the most useful man on the farm. At night, when the
others danced, he was at his books or his writings.
He wrote articles for the _Harbinger_, and for the _Dial_,
which succeeded the _Harbinger_ as the official organ of the
Transcendentalists. Dr. Ripley was the editor of the _Harbinger_, and
he had such brilliant contributors as James Russell Lowell and George
William Curtis; but Dana was his mainstay. He wrote book-reviews,
editorial articles and notes, and not a little verse. His “Via Sacra”
is typical of the thoughtful youth:
Slowly along the crowded street I go,
Marking with reverent look each passer’s face,
Seeking, and not in vain, in each to trace
That primal soul whereof he is the show.
For here still move, by many eyes unseen,
The blessed gods that erst Olympus kept;
Through every guise these lofty forms serene
Declare the all-holding life hath never slept;
But known each thrill that in man’s heart hath been,
And every tear that his sad eyes have wept.
Alas for us! The heavenly visitants--
We greet them still as most unwelcome guests,
Answering their smile with hateful looks askance,
Their sacred speech with foolish, bitter jests;
But oh, what is it to imperial Jove
That this poor world refuses all his love?
A Mrs. Macdaniel, a widow, came to Brook Farm from Maryland with
her son and two daughters. One of the daughters brought with her
an ambition for the stage, but her destiny was to be Mrs. Dana. On
March 2, 1846, in New York, Charles A. Dana and Eunice Macdaniel were
married. That day, coincidentally, the fire insurance on the main
building at Brook Farm lapsed, perhaps through the preoccupation of
the recording secretary; and the next day this building, called the
Phalanstery, was burned.
That was the beginning of the end of Brook Farm and of Dana’s secluded
life. He went to work on the Boston _Daily Chronotype_ for five dollars
a week. It was a Congregational paper, owned and edited by Elizur
Wright. When Wright was absent, Dana acted as editor, and on one of
these occasions he caused the _Chronotype_ to come out so “mighty
strong against hell,” that Mr. Wright declared, years afterward, that
he had to write a personal letter to every Congregational minister
in Massachusetts, explaining that the apparent heresy was due to
his having left the paper in the charge of “a young man without
journalistic experience.”
In February, 1847, Dana went to New York, and Horace Greeley made him
city editor of the _Tribune_ at ten dollars a week. Later in that year
Dana insisted on an increase of salary, and Greeley agreed to pay him
fourteen dollars a week--a dollar less than his own stipend; but in
consideration of this huge advance Dana was obliged to give all his
talents to the _Tribune_.
Dana still nursed his desire to see Europe, but he had given up the
idea of teaching in a German university. Newspaper work had captured
him. Germany was still attractive, but now as a place of news, for the
rumblings against the rule of Metternich were being heard in central
Europe. And in France there was a sweep of socialism, a subject which
still held the idealistic Dana, and the beginning of the revolution in
Paris (February 24, 1848).
Dana told Greeley of his European ambition, but Greeley threw cold
water on it, saying that Dana--not yet thirty--knew nothing about
foreign politics. Dana asked how much the _Tribune_ would pay for a
letter a week if he went abroad “on his own,” and Greeley offered ten
dollars, which Dana accepted. He made a similar agreement with the New
York _Commercial Advertiser_ and the Philadelphia _North American_, and
contracted to send letters to the _Harbinger_ and the _Chronotype_ for
five dollars a week.
“That gave me forty dollars a week for five letters,” said Dana
afterward; “and when the _Chronotype_ went up, I still had thirty-five
dollars. On this I lived in Europe nearly eight months, saw plenty of
revolutions, supported myself there and my family in New York, and
came home only sixty-three dollars out for the whole trip.” Not a bad
outcome for what was probably the first correspondence syndicate ever
attempted.
The trip did wonders for Dana. He saw the foreign “improvers of
mankind” in action, more violent than visionary; saw theory dashed
against the rocks of reality. He came back a wiser and better
newspaperman, with a knowledge of European conditions and men that
served him well all his life. There is seen in some of his descriptions
the fine simplicity of style that was later to make the _Sun_ the most
human newspaper.
Social experiments still interested Dana after his return to New York
in the spring of 1849, but he was able to take a clearer view of their
practicability than he had been in the Brook Farm days. He still
favoured association and cooperation, and every sane effort toward the
amelioration of human misery, but he now knew that there was no direct
road to the millennium.
Once home, however, and settled, not only as managing editor, but as
a holder of five shares of stock in the _Tribune_, Dana was kept busy
with things other than socialistic theories. Slavery and the tariff
were the overshadowing issues of the day.
Greeley was the great man of the _Tribune_ office, but Dana, in the
present-day language of Park Row, was the live wire almost from the day
of his return from Europe. When Greeley went abroad, Dana took charge.
Greeley now drew fifty dollars a week; Dana got twenty-five, Bayard
Taylor twenty, George Ripley fifteen. Dana’s five shares of stock
netted him about two thousand dollars a year in addition to his salary.
Here is a part of a letter which Dana wrote in 1852 to James S. Pike,
the Washington correspondent of the _Tribune_:
KEENEST OF PIKES:
What a desert void of news you keep at Washington! For
goodness’ sake, kick up a row of some sort. Fight a duel,
defraud the Treasury, set fire to the fueling-mill, get Black
Dan [Webster] drunk, or commit some other excess that will make
a stir.
The solemn phrases of transcendentalism had vanished from the tip of
Dana’s pen.
In the fight over slavery in the fifties, the effort of Greeley
and Dana was against the further spread of the institution over
new American territory, rather than for its complete overthrow.
When Greeley was at the helm, the _Tribune_ appeared to admit the
possibility of secession, a forerunner of “Let the erring sisters
depart in peace.” But when Dana was left in charge, the editorials
pleaded for the integrity of the Union at any cost. Greeley was heart
and soul for liberty, but his fist was not in the fight. Of the
political situation in 1854, Henry Wilson wrote, in his “Rise and Fall
of the Slave Power”:
At the outset Mr. Greeley was hopeless, and seemed disinclined
to enter the contest. He told his associates that he would
not restrain them; but, as for himself, he had no heart for
the strife. They were more hopeful; and Richard Hildreth, the
historian; Charles A. Dana, the veteran journalist; James S.
Pike, and other able writers, opened and continued a powerful
opposition in its columns, and did very much to rally and
assure the friends of freedom and nerve them for the fight.
Dana went farther than Greeley cared to go, particularly in his attacks
on the Democrats; so far, in fact, that Greeley often pleaded with him
to stop. Greeley wrote to James S. Pike:
Charge Dana not to slaughter anybody, but be mild and
meek-souled like me.
Greeley wrote to Dana from Washington, where Dana’s radicalism was
making his colleague uncomfortable:
Now I write once more to entreat that I may be allowed to
conduct the _Tribune_ with reference to the mile wide that
stretches either way from Pennsylvania Avenue. It is but a
small space, and you have all the world besides. I cannot stay
here unless this request is complied with. I would rather cease
to live at all.
If you are not willing to leave me entire control with
reference to this city, I ask you to call the proprietors
together and have me discharged. I have to go to this and that
false creature--Lew Campbell, for instance--yet in constant
terror of seeing him guillotined in the next _Tribune_ that
arrives, and I can’t make him believe that I didn’t instigate
it. So with everything here. If you want to throw stones at
anybody’s crockery, aim at my head first, and in mercy be sure
to aim well.
Again Greeley wrote to Dana:
You are getting everybody to curse me. I am too sick to be out
of bed, too crazy to sleep, and am surrounded by horrors.... I
can bear the responsibilities that belong to me, but you heap a
load on me that will kill me.
With all Dana’s editorial work--and he and Greeley made the _Tribune_
the most powerful paper of the fifties, with a million readers--he
found time for the purely literary. He translated and published a
volume of German stories and legends under the title “The Black Ant.”
He edited a book of views of remarkable places and objects in all
countries. In 1857 was published his “Household Book of Poetry,” still
a standard work of reference. He was criticised for omitting Poe from
the first edition, and at the next printing he added “The Raven,” “The
Bells,” and “Annabel Lee.” Poe and Cooper were among the literary gods
whom Dana refused to worship in his youth, but in later life he changed
his opinion of the poet.
With George Ripley, his friend in Harvard, at Brook Farm, and in the
_Tribune_ office, Dana prepared the “New American Encyclopedia,” which
was published between 1858 and 1863. It was a huge undertaking and a
success. Dana and Ripley carefully revised it ten years afterward. In
1882, with Rossiter Johnson, Dana edited and published a collection of
verse under the title “Fifty Perfect Poems.”
Although Dana persisted that the Union must not fall, Greeley still
believed, as late as December, 1860, that it would “not be found
practical to coerce” the threatening States into subjection. When war
actually came, however, Greeley at last adopted the policy of “No
compromise, no concessions to traitors.”
The _Tribune’s_ cry, “Forward to Richmond!” sounded from May, 1861,
until Bull Run, was generally attributed to Dana. Greeley himself made
it plain that it was not his:
I wish to be distinctly understood as not seeking to be
relieved from any responsibility for urging the advance of the
Union army in Virginia, though the precise phrase, “Forward
to Richmond!” was not mine, and I would have preferred not to
reiterate it. Henceforth I bar all criticism in these columns
on army movements. Now let the wolves howl on! I do not believe
they can goad me into another personal letter.
As a matter of fact, “Forward to Richmond!” was phrased by Fitz-Henry
Warren, then head of the _Tribune’s_ correspondence staff in
Washington. He came from Iowa, where in his youth he was editor of the
Burlington _Hawkeye_. He resigned from the _Tribune_ late in 1861 to
take command of the First Iowa Cavalry, which he organized. In 1862 he
became a brigadier-general, and he was later brevetted a major-general.
In 1869 he was the American minister to Guatemala. From being one of
the men around Greeley he became one of the men with Dana, and in
1875–1876 he did Washington correspondence for the _Sun_, and wrote
many editorial articles for it.
In 1861 Dana was an active advocate of Greeley’s candidacy for the
United States Senate, and almost got him nominated. If Greeley had
gone to the Senate, Dana might have continued on the _Tribune_; but
it became evident, before the war was a year old, that one newspaper
was no longer large enough for both men. The sprightly, aggressive,
unhesitating, and practical Dana, and the ambitious, but eccentric
and somewhat visionary Greeley found their paths diverging. The
circumstances under which they parted were thus described by Dana in a
letter to a friend:
On Thursday, March 27, I was notified that Mr. Greeley had
given the stockholders notice that I must leave, or he would,
and that they wanted me to leave accordingly. No cause of
dissatisfaction being alleged, and H. G. having been of late
more confidential and friendly than ever, not once having said
anything betokening disaffection to me, I sent a friend to him
to ascertain if it was true, or if some misunderstanding was at
the bottom of it. My friend came and reported that it was true,
and that H. G. was immovable.
On Friday, March 28, I resigned, and the trustees at once
accepted it, passing highly complimentary resolutions and
voting me six months’ salary after the date of my resignation.
Mr. Ripley opposed the proceedings in the trustees, and,
above all, insisted on delay in order that the facts might be
ascertained; but all in vain.
On Saturday, March 29, Mr. Greeley came down, called another
meeting of the trustees, said he had never desired me to
leave, that it was a damned lie that he had presented such an
alternative as that he or I must go, and finally sent me a
verbal message desiring me to remain as a writer of editorials;
but has never been near me since to meet the “damned lie”
in person, nor written one word on the subject. I conclude,
accordingly, that he is glad to have me out, and that he really
set on foot the secret cabal by which it was accomplished. As
soon as I get my pay for my shares--ten thousand dollars less
than I could have got for them a year ago--I shall be content.
That was the undramatic and somewhat disappointing end of Dana’s
fourteen years on the _Tribune_. He was forty-three years old and not
rich. All he had was what he got from the sale of his _Tribune_ stock
and what he had saved from the royalties on his books.
From the literary view-point he was doubtless the best-equipped
newspaperman in America, but there was no great place open for him then.
Dana’s work on the _Tribune_ had attracted the attention of most of
the big men of the North, including Edwin M. Stanton, who in January,
1862, was appointed Secretary of War in place of Simon Cameron. Stanton
asked Dana to come into the War Department, and assigned him to service
upon a commission to audit unsettled claims against the quartermaster’s
department. While in Memphis on this work he first met General Grant,
then prosecuting the war in the West.
In the autumn of 1862, Stanton offered to Dana a post as second
Assistant Secretary of War, and Dana, having accepted, told a
newspaperman of his appointment. When the news was printed, the
irascible Stanton was so much annoyed--although without any apparent
reason--that he withdrew the appointment. Dana then became a partner
with George W. Chadwick, of New York, and Roscoe Conkling, of Utica, in
an enterprise for buying cotton in that part of the Mississippi Valley
which the Union army occupied.
Dana and Chadwick went to Memphis in January, 1863, armed with letters
from Secretary Stanton to General Grant and other field commanders.
But no sooner had their cotton operations begun than Dana saw the
evil effect that this traffic was having. It had aroused a fever of
speculation. Army officers were forming partnerships with cotton
operators, and even privates wanted to buy cotton with their pay. The
Confederacy was being helped rather than hindered.
Disregarding his own fortunes, Dana called upon General Grant and
advised him to “put an end to an evil so enormous, so insidious and so
full of peril to the country.” Grant at once issued an order designed
to end the traffic, but the cotton-traders succeeded in having it
nullified by the government.
Then Dana went to Washington, saw President Lincoln and Secretary
Stanton, and convinced them that the cotton trade should be handled by
the Treasury Department. As a result of Dana’s visit, Lincoln issued
his proclamation declaring all commercial intercourse with seceded
States to be unlawful. Thus Dana patriotically worked himself out of a
paying business.
Yet his unselfishness was not without a reward. It reestablished his
friendly relations with Stanton, and won for him the President’s
confidence.
Just then there was an important errand to be done. Many complaints
had been made against General Grant. Certain temperance people had
told Lincoln that Grant was drinking heavily, and although Lincoln
jested--“Can you tell me where Grant buys his liquor? I would
like to distribute a few barrels of the same brand among my other
major-generals”--he really wished to have all doubts settled.
The President and Mr. Stanton chose Dana for the mission. It was an
open secret. If Grant did not know that Dana was coming to make a
report on his conduct, all the general’s staff knew it. General James
Harrison Wilson, biographer of Dana--and, with Dana, biographer of
Grant--wrote of this situation:
It was believed by many that if he [Dana] did not bring plenary
authority to actually displace Grant, the fate of that general
would certainly depend upon the character of the reports which
the special commissioner might send to Washington in regard to
him.
Wilson was at this time the inspector-general of Grant’s army. He
consulted with John A. Rawlins, Grant’s austere young adjutant-general
and actual chief of staff, and the two officers agreed that Dana must
be taken into complete confidence. Wilson wrote:
We sincerely believed that Grant, whatever might be his faults
and weaknesses, was a far safer man to command the army than
any other general in it, or than any that might be sent to it
from another field.
Dana and Wilson and Rawlins made the best of a delicate, difficult
situation. Dana was taken into headquarters “on the footing of an
officer of the highest rank.” His commission was that of a major of
volunteers, but his functions were so important that he was called “Mr.
Dana” rather than “Major Dana.” Dana himself never used the military
title.
Dana sent his first official despatches to Stanton in March, 1863,
from before Vicksburg. Grant’s staff made clear to him the plan of the
turning movement by which the gunboats and transports were to be run
past the Vicksburg batteries while the army marched across the country,
and Dana made most favourable reports to Washington on the general’s
strategy.
Dana saw not only real warfare, but a country that was new to him.
After a trip into Louisiana he wrote to his friend, William Henry
Huntington:
During the eight days that I have been here, I have got new
insight into slavery, which has made me no more a friend of
that institution than I was before.... It was not till I saw
these plantations, with their apparatus for living and working,
that I really felt the aristocratic nature of it.
Under a flag of truce Dana went close to Vicksburg, where he was met by
a Confederate major of artillery:
Our people entertained him with a cigar and a drink of whisky,
of course, or, rather, with two drinks. This is an awful
country for drinking whisky. I calculate that on an average a
friendly man will drink a gallon in twenty-four hours. I wish
you were here to do my drinking for me, for I suffer in public
estimation for not doing as the Romans do.
Dana was with Grant on the memorable night of April 16, 1863, when the
squadron of gunboats, barges, and transports ran the Vicksburg forts.
From that time on until July he accompanied the great soldier. It was
Dana who received and communicated Stanton’s despatch giving to Grant
“full and absolute authority to enforce his own commands, and to remove
any person who, by ignorance, inaction, or any cause, interferes with
or delays his operations.”
Dana was in many marches and battles. Like the officers of Grant’s
staff, he slept in farmhouses, and ate pork and hardtack or what the
land provided. The move on Vicksburg was a brilliant campaign, and
in ten days Dana saw as much of war as most men of the Civil War saw
in three years. Dana sent despatches to Washington describing the
battles at Champion’s Hill and the Big Black Bridge, the investment of
Vicksburg, and the establishment of a line of supply from the North.
Through Dana’s eyes the government began to see Grant as he really was.
Dana, with either Grant or Wilson, rode over all the country of the
Vicksburg campaign, often under fire. He was present at Grant’s
councils, and rode into Vicksburg with him after its surrender. Dana’s
view of the great soldier’s personality is given in something he wrote
many years later, long after their friendship was ended:
Grant was an uncommon fellow--the most modest, the most
disinterested, and the most honest man I ever knew, with a
temper that nothing could disturb, and a judgment that was
judicial in its comprehensiveness and wisdom. Not a great
man, except morally; nor an original or brilliant man, but
sincere, thoughtful, deep, and gifted with courage that never
faltered. When the time came to risk all, he went in like a
simple-hearted, unaffecting, unpretending hero, whom no ill
omens could deject and no triumph unduly exalt. A social,
friendly man, too; fond of a pleasant joke and also ready
with one; but liking above all a long chat of an evening,
and ready to sit up with you all night talking in the cool
breeze in front of his tent. Not a man of sentimentality, not
demonstrative in friendship; but always holding to his friends
and just even to the enemies he hated.
Here is Dana’s picture of Rawlins, sent to Stanton on July 12,
1863--eight days after the fall of Vicksburg:
He is a lawyer by profession, a townsman of Grant, and has
great influence over him, especially because he watches him
day and night, and whenever he commits the folly of tasting
liquor, hastens to remind him that at the beginning of the war
he gave him [Rawlins] his word of honor not to touch a drop as
long as it lasted. Grant thinks Rawlins a first-rate adjutant,
but I think this is a mistake. He is too slow, and can’t write
the English language correctly without a great deal of careful
consideration.
In spite of this criticism, Dana admired Rawlins. Without him, he said,
Grant would not have been the same man.
After Vicksburg and Gettysburg, Dana returned to Washington. He was now
an Assistant Secretary of War, and his success as an official reporter
on the conduct of the Army of the Tennessee had been so great that
Stanton sent him to cover, in the same way, the operations of the Army
of the Cumberland, going first to General Rosecrans at Chattanooga.
Dana saw the hottest of the great fight at Chickamauga, and galloped
twelve miles to send his despatches about it to Stanton. He made blunt
reports to the government on the unfitness of Rosecrans:
I consider this army to be very unsafe in his hands, but I know
of no one except Thomas who could now be safely put in his
place.
After a conference at Louisville between Stanton and Grant, Rosecrans
was relieved and Thomas became commander of the Army of the Cumberland.
A fine soldier and a modest man, Thomas was disinclined to supplant a
superior.
“You have got me this time,” he said to Dana, “but there is nothing
for a man to do in such a case but obey orders.”
Dana’s despatches had made Stanton realize the importance of holding
Chattanooga, and the Secretary of War ordered Thomas to defend it at
all hazards.
“I will hold the town till we starve!” replied Thomas.
Dana was not only a useful eye for the government, but he was a valued
companion for General Wilson and other officers who went with him on
his missions. He knew more poetry than any other man in the army except
General Michael Lawler, an Illinois farmer, whose boast it was that on
hearing any line of standard English verse he could repeat the next
line. Dana, the compiler of the “Household Book of Poetry,” would try
to catch Lawler, but in vain. Dana was not so literal as the Illinois
general, but General Wilson says that he “seemed never to forget
anything he had ever read.”
The great advantage of Dana’s despatches to Stanton was that they gave
a picture of the doings in his field of work that was not biased by
military pride or ambition. He wrote what he saw and knew, without
counting the effect on the generals concerned. For one illuminating
example, there was his story of the final attack in the battle of
Missionary Ridge. To read Grant or Sherman, one would suppose that the
triumphant assault was planned precisely as it was executed; but Dana’s
account of that fierce day is the one that must be relied upon:
The storming of the ridge by our troops was one of the greatest
miracles in military history. No man that climbs the ascent by
any of the roads that wind along its front could believe that
eighteen thousand men were moved up its broken and crumbling
face, unless it was his fortune to witness the deed. It seems
as awful as the visible interposition of God. Neither Grant nor
Thomas intended it. Their orders were to carry the rifle-pits
along the base of the ridge and capture their occupants; but
when this was accomplished, the unaccountable spirit of the
troops bore them bodily up those impracticable steeps, over
bristling rifle-pits on the crest, and thirty cannon enfilading
every gully. The order to storm appears to have been given
simultaneously by Generals Sheridan and Wood, because the men
were not to be held back, dangerous as the attempt appeared
to military prudence. Besides, the generals had caught the
inspiration of the men, and were ready themselves to undertake
impossibilities.
No wonder that even when Lincoln was confined to his chamber by
illness, Dana’s despatches were brought to him; “not merely because
they are reliable,” as Assistant Secretary of War Watson wrote to Dana,
“but for their clearness of narrative and their graphic pictures of
the stirring events they describe.” A conservative tribute to the best
reporter of the Civil War.
Dana returned to Washington about the beginning of 1864 to take up
office tasks, and particularly the reorganization of the Cavalry
Bureau. Dishonest horse-dealers were plundering the government, and
Dana never rested until he had sent enough of these rogues to prison to
frighten the rest of the band. Dana was a good office man; he worked,
says James Harrison Wilson, “like a skilful bricklayer.” And as he
relieved Stanton of much of the routine of the War Department, the
Secretary supported him in his assaults on dishonest contractors, even
when the political pressure brought to bear for their protection was at
its highest.
Lincoln sent Dana to report Grant’s progress in the Virginia campaign
that opened in May, 1864. On the 26th, three weeks after the march
began, he was able to notify Washington of an entire change in the
morale of the contending armies:
The rebels have lost all confidence, and are already morally
defeated. This army has learned to believe that it is sure of
victory. Even our officers have ceased to regard Lee as an
invincible military genius.... Rely upon it, the end is near as
well as sure.
In the eventful weeks of that early summer Dana became an observer for
Grant as well as for the government. It was evident to Dana that the
great soldier, and not Washington, must decide what was to be done. In
a despatch from Washington, whither he had returned at Grant’s request,
Dana said to the general:
Until you direct positively and explicitly what is to be done,
everything will go on in the fatal way in which it has gone on
for the past week.
Longstreet’s Confederates were coming down the Shenandoah Valley,
and Grant, taking heed of Dana’s significant message, sent Sheridan
to dispose of them. Then, as Grant himself was stationed in front of
Petersburg, Dana resumed his activities in the office at Washington.
“It has fallen to the lot of no other American,” says General Wilson,
“to serve as the confidential medium of communication between the army
and the government and between the government and the general-in-chief,
as it did to Dana during the War of the Rebellion.”
One pleasant errand which fell to Dana was the delivery to Sheridan,
after his victory over Early at Cedar Creek, of his promotion to
major-general. This entailed a journey on horseback through the Valley
of Virginia, and the constant danger of capture by Mosby’s guerrillas;
but Dana, who greatly admired Sheridan, was glad to take the chance.
When the news came to Washington of the fall of Richmond, in April,
1865, Secretary Stanton sent Dana to the Confederate capital to gather
up its archives. Many of these historically valuable papers had been
removed and scattered, but Dana collected what he could and sent them
to Washington. He wanted to be present with Grant at Lee’s surrender,
but fate kept him in Richmond, for Lincoln was there, and needed him.
When at last he got away, Grant had left Appomattox. Dana joined him
_en route_, and together they reached Washington on the day before the
President’s assassination.
It was on the day of his arrival that Dana went to the President to ask
him whether it would be well to order the arrest of Jacob Thompson, a
Confederate commissioner who was trying to go from Canada to Europe
through Maine. Lincoln returned the historic reply:
“No, I rather think not. When you have got an elephant by the
hind leg, and he is trying to run away, it’s best to let him
run!”
A few hours after the President’s death, however, Stanton ordered Dana
to obtain Thompson’s arrest.
Dana was active in unearthing the conspiracy that led to the
assassination. A month later, acting under Stanton’s injunctions,
he wrote the order to General Miles authorizing him to manacle and
fetter Jefferson Davis and Clement C. Clay, Jr., whenever he thought
it advisable, the Secretary of War being in fear that some of the
prisoners of state might escape or kill themselves.
[Illustration:
MR. DANA AT FIFTY
From a Photograph Taken in 1869, a Year After He Obtained
Control of “The Sun.”
]
Dana then and afterward resented the suggestion that the president
of the fallen Confederacy had met with cruelty or injustice while he
was confined in Fortress Monroe. In his “Recollections of the Civil
War,” he said:
Medical officers were directed to superintend his meals and
give him everything that would excite his appetite. As it was
complained that his quarters in the casemate were unhealthy and
disagreeable, he was, after a few weeks, transferred to Carroll
Hall, a building still occupied by officers and soldiers. That
Davis’s health was not ruined by his imprisonment at Fort
Monroe is proved by the fact that he came out of prison in
better condition than when he went in, and that he lived for
twenty years afterward, and died of old age.
A new newspaper, the _Daily Republican_, was started in Chicago, a few
weeks after the close of the Civil War, by Senator Trumbull and other
prominent Illinoisans. They asked Dana to become its editor. His work
in the War Department was done, and he had hoped to go into business,
for his own estimate of his power as a journalist was not as flattering
as the opinions of those who knew him. Yet the Chicago proposition was
attractive on paper, for its capital was fixed at the large sum of five
hundred thousand dollars--an amount sufficient, in those days, to carry
on any intelligently managed journal.
Dana resigned as Assistant Secretary of War on July 1, 1865, went
to Chicago, and became editor of the _Republican_. No man was more
intellectually fit for the editorship of a newspaper in that hour of
reconstruction. He had been a real Republican from the founding of the
party. He cared little for the new President, Andrew Johnson, and the
_Republican_ was more inclined toward the side of Stanton, who differed
with Johnson as to the methods which should be used in the remaking of
the South. Of Johnson, Dana wrote to General Wilson:
The President is an obstinate, stupid man, governed by
preconceived ideas, by whisky, and by women. He means one thing
to-day and another to-morrow, but the glorification of Andrew
Johnson all the time.
The statement that the capital stock of the _Republican_ was fixed at
half a million dollars must now be qualified. It was fixed on paper,
but not in the banks. Little of the money was actually paid in, and
some of the subscribers were not solvent. Dana worked hard with his
pen, but the _Republican_ had not enough backing to hold it up. After
one year of it Dana resigned and came East, determined to start a paper
in New York.
He had friends of influence and wealth who were glad to be associated
with him. These included:
Thomas Hitchcock
Isaac W. England
Charles S. Weyman
John H. Sherwood
M. O. Roberts
George Opdyke
E. D. Smith
F. A. Palmer
William H. Webb
Roscoe Conkling
A. B. Cornell
E. D. Morgan
David Dows
John C. Hamilton
Amos R. Eno
S. B. Chittenden
Freeman Clarke
Thomas Murphy
William M. Evarts
Cyrus W. Field
E. C. Cowdin
Salem H. Wales
Theron R. Butler
Marshall B. Blake
F. A. Conkling
A. A. Low
Charles E. Butler
Dorman B. Eaton
The most eminent of this distinguished group was, of course, William
M. Evarts, then the leader of the American bar. He had been counsel
for the State of New York in the Lemmon slave case, pitted against
Charles O’Connor, counsel for the State of Virginia. He became chief
counsel for President Johnson in the impeachment proceedings of 1868,
and later was Johnson’s Attorney-General. He was chief counsel for the
United States in the Alabama arbitration, senior counsel for Henry
Ward Beecher in the Tilton case, Secretary of State under Hayes, and a
United States Senator from 1885 to 1891.
Roscoe Conkling was a United States Senator from New York at the time
when Dana bought the _Sun_. He was one of Grant’s strongest supporters,
and led the third-term movement in 1880. His brother, Frederick
Augustus Conkling, was the Republican candidate for mayor of New York
in the first year that Dana controlled the _Sun_, although later he
changed his politics, supporting Tilden in 1876, and Hancock in 1880.
Edwin D. Morgan was Conkling’s colleague in the Senate, where he served
from 1863 to 1869. He was Governor of New York from 1858 to 1862. He,
like most of Dana’s associates, was a Grant man, and it was Morgan who
managed Grant’s second Presidential campaign.
Alonzo B. Cornell, then only thirty-six years old, had risen from
being a boy telegrapher to a directorship in the Western Union. He was
already prominent in the Republican politics of New York State, and was
afterward Governor for three years (1880–1882).
George Opdyke, a loyal Lincoln man, had been mayor of New York in the
trying years of 1862 and 1863.
Cyrus W. Field had won world-wide distinction as the Columbus of modern
times, as John Bright called him. Two years before Dana bought the
_Sun_ Field had succeeded, after many reverses, in making the Atlantic
cable a permanent success.
Amos R. Eno, merchant and banker, was the man who had made New York
laugh by building the Fifth Avenue Hotel so far north--away up at
Twenty-Third Street--that it was known as Eno’s Folly. This he did
nearly ten years before Dana went to the _Sun_, and in 1868 the hotel
was not only the most fashionable in the United States, but the most
profitable.
A. A. Low was a merchant and the father of Seth Low, later mayor of
New York. William H. Webb was a big ship-builder. Thomas Murphy was
a Republican politician whom Grant made collector of the port of New
York, and who gave Grant his place at Long Branch as a summer home.
At least three of the men in the list were active in the _Sun_
office. Thomas Hitchcock was a young man of wealth and scholarship
who had become acquainted with Dana when both were interested in
Swedenborgianism. He wrote, among other books, a catechism of that
doctrine. For many years he contributed to the _Sun_, under the name
“Matthew Marshall,” financial articles which appeared on Mondays, and
which were regarded as the best reviews and criticisms of their kind.
Charles S. Weyman got out the _Weekly Sun_, and edited that delightful
column, “Sunbeams.”
Salem H. Wales was a merchant whose daughter became Mrs. Elihu Root.
Dorman B. Eaton was one of the pioneers of civil-service reform.
Marshall O. Roberts, F. A. Palmer, David Dows, and E. C. Cowdin were
great names in the business and financial world.
Why Dana and his friends did not start a new paper is explained in the
following letter, written by Dana to General Wilson:
Just as we were about commencing our own paper, the purchase of
the _Sun_ was proposed to me and accepted. It had a circulation
of from fifty to sixty thousand a day, and all among the
mechanics and small merchants of this city. We pay a large
sum for it--$175,000--but it gives us at once a large and
profitable business.
If you have a thousand dollars at leisure, you had better
invest it in the stock of our company, which is increased to
$350,000 in order to pay for the new acquisition. Of this sum
about $220,000 is invested in the Tammany Hall real estate,
which is sure to be productive, independent of the business of
the paper.
The “Tammany Hall real estate” was the building at the corner of
Nassau and Frankfort Streets, where Tammany kept its headquarters
from 1811, when it moved from Martling’s Long Room, at Nassau and
Spruce Streets, to 1867, when Dana and his friends bought the building
with the expectation of starting a new paper. If Moses S. Beach had
attracted Dana’s attention to the _Sun_ in time, he might have sold
him, as well as the paper, his own building at Nassau and Fulton
Streets. But the Tammany Hall building was a better-placed home for the
_Sun_ than its old quarters. It faced City Hall Park and was a part of
Printing-House Square. Dana was right about the productiveness of the
real estate, for no spot in New York sees more pedestrians go by than
the Nassau-Frankfort corner. The _Sun_ lived there for forty-three
years, and its present home, taken when the old hall became too small
and ancient, is only a block away.
The first number of the _Sun_ issued under Dana--Monday, January 27,
1868--contained a long sketch of Tammany Hall and its former home,
concluding:
Peace succeeds to strife. No new Halleck can sing:
There’s a barrel of porter at Tammany Hall,
And the Bucktails are enjoying it all the night long;
In the time of my boyhood ’twas pleasant to call
For a seat and cigar ’mid the jovial throng.
So far as the corner of Nassau and Frankfort Streets is
concerned, _L’Empire est paix_. The _Sun_ shines for all; and
on the site of old Tammany’s troubles and tribulations we turn
back the leaves of the past, dispel the clouds of discord, and
shed our beams far and near over the Regenerated Land.
Dana changed the appearance of the _Sun_ overnight. He kept it as a
folio, for he always believed in a four-page paper, even when he was
printing ten pages, but he reduced the number of columns on a page from
eight to seven, widening each column a little.
The principal head-lines, which had been irregular in size and two to
the page, were made smaller and more uniform, and four appeared at the
top of the front page. The editorial articles, which had been printed
in minion, now appeared a size larger, in brevier, and the heads on
them were changed to the simple, dignified full-face type of the size
that is still used.
Dana changed the title-head of the _Sun_ from Roman, which it had
been from the beginning, to Old English, as it stands to-day. He also
changed the accompanying emblem. It had been a variation of the seal
of the State of New York, with the sun rising in splendour behind
mountains; on the right, Liberty with her Phrygian cap held on a staff,
gazing at an outbound vessel; on the left, Justice with scales and
sword, so facing that if not blindfolded she would see a locomotive and
a train of cars crossing a bridge. These classic figures were kept, but
the eagle--the State crest--which brooded above the sunburst in Beach’s
time, was removed, so that the rays went skyward without hindrance.
Dana liked “It Shines for All,” the _Sun’s_ old motto--everybody liked
it, but only one newspaper, the _Herald_, ever had the effrontery to
pilfer it--but he took it from the scroll in the emblem and replaced
there the State motto, “Excelsior.”
The _Sun_, under its new master, rose auspiciously--master, not
masters, for in spite of the number of his financial associates,
Dana was absolute. The men behind him realized the folly of dividing
authority. The _Sun_, whether under Day or one of the Beaches, had
always been a one-man paper. Therefore it succeeded, just as the
_Herald_, another journal governed by an autocrat, went ahead; but with
the _Tribune_, where the stockholders ruled and argued, things were
different.
Dana was the boss. As General Wilson wrote in his biography:
From this time forth it may be truthfully said that Dana was
the _Sun_, and the _Sun_ Dana. He was the sole arbiter of its
policy, and it was his constant practice to supervise every
editorial contribution that came in while he was on duty. The
editorial page was absolutely his, whether he wrote a line in
it or not, and he gave it the characteristic compactness of
form and directness of statement which were ever afterward its
distinguishing features.
Dana was a man whose natural intellectual gifts had been augmented by
his travels, his experience on the _Tribune_, his exploits in the war,
and his association with the big men of his time. Add to all this his
solid financial backing and his acquirement of a paper with a large
circulation, and the combination seemed an assurance of success. Yet,
had Dana lacked the peculiarly human qualities that were his, the
indefinable newspaper instinct that knows when a tom-cat on the steps
of the City Hall is more important than a crisis in the Balkans, the
_Sun_ would have set.
Only genius could enable a lofty-minded Republican, with a Republican
aristocracy behind him, to take over the _Sun_ and make a hundred
thousand mechanics and tradesmen, nearly all Democrats, like their
paper better than ever before. And that is what Dana did, except
that he added to the _Sun’s_ former readers a new army of admirers,
recruited by the magic of his pen.
CHAPTER X
DANA: HIS “SUN” AND ITS CITY
_The Period of the Great Personal Journalists.--Dana’s Avoidance of
Rules and Musty Newspaper Conventions.--His Choice of Men and His
Broad Definition of News._
When Dana came into control of the _Sun_, the city of New York, which
then included only Manhattan and the Bronx, had less than a million
population, yet it supported, or was asked to support, almost as many
newspapers as it has to-day. That was the day of the great personal
editor. Bennett had his _Herald_, with James Gordon Bennett, Jr.,
as his chief helper. Horace Greeley was known throughout America as
the editor of the _Tribune_. Henry J. Raymond was at the head of
the _Times_. Manton Marble--who died in England in 1917--was the
intellectual chief of the highly intellectual _World_.
The greatest Republican politician of that day, Thurlow Weed, was
the editor of the _Commercial Advertiser_. He had just changed his
political throne from the Astor House to the comparatively new Fifth
Avenue Hotel. Weed was seventy-one years old, but not the Nestor of New
York editors, for William Cullen Bryant was three years his senior and
still the active editor of the _Evening Post_. The _Evening Express_,
later to be incorporated with the _Mail_, was ruled by the brothers
Brooks, James as editor-in-chief and Erastus as manager. David M. Stone
ran the _Journal of Commerce_. Ben Wood owned the only penny paper
in town--the _Evening News_. Marcus M. Pomeroy, better known as Brick
Pomeroy, had just started his sensational sheet, the _Democrat_, on
the strength of the reputation he had won in the West as editor of the
La Crosse _Democrat_. Later he changed the title of the _Democrat_ to
_Pomeroy’s Advance Thought_.
These were the men who assailed or defended the methods of the
reconstruction of the South; who stood up for President Johnson, or
cried for his impeachment; who supported the Presidential ambitions of
Grant, then the looming figure in national politics, or decried the
elevation of one whose fame had been exclusively military; who hammered
at the wicked gates of Tammany Hall, or tried to excuse its methods.
Tweed had not yet committed his magnificent atrocities of loot, but he
was practically the boss of the city, at the same time a State Senator
and the street commissioner. John Kelly, then forty-six--two years the
senior of the boss--was sheriff of New York. Richard Croker, who was
to succeed Kelly as Kelly succeeded Tweed at the head of the wigwam,
was then a stocky youth of twenty-five, engineer of a fire-department
steamer and the leader of the militant youth of Fourth Avenue. He was
already actively concerned in politics, allied with the Young Democracy
that was rising against Tweed. In the year when Dana took the _Sun_,
Croker was elected an alderman.
A slender boy of ten played in those days in Madison Square Park, hard
by his home in East Twentieth Street, just east of Broadway. His name
was Theodore Roosevelt.
New York’s richest man was William B. Astor, with a fortune of perhaps
fifty million dollars. He was then seventy-six years old, but he walked
every day from his home in Lafayette Place--from its windows he could
see the Bowery, which had been a real bouwerie in his boyhood--to the
little office in Prince Street where he worked all day at the tasks
that fell upon the shoulders of the Landlord of New York. He probably
never had heard of John D. Rockefeller, a prosperous young oil man in
the Middle West.
Cornelius Vanderbilt, only two years younger than Astor, was president
of the New York Central Railroad, and was linking together the great
railway system that is now known by his name, battling the while
against the strategy of Jay Gould and his sinister associates. By
far the most imposing figure in financial America, Vanderbilt had
everything in the world that he wanted--except Dexter, and that great
trotter was in the stable of Robert Bonner, who was not only rich
enough to keep Dexter, but could afford to pay Henry Ward Beecher
thirty thousand dollars for a novel, “Norwood,” to be printed serially
in the _Ledger_.
Only one other New Yorker of 1868 ranked in wealth with Astor and
Vanderbilt--Alexander T. Stewart, whose yearly income was perhaps
greater than either’s. He was then worth about thirty million dollars,
and he had astonished the business world by building a retail shop on
Broadway, between Ninth and Tenth Streets--now half of Wanamaker’s--at
a cost of two millions and three-quarters.
In Wall Street the big names were August Belmont, Larry Jerome, Jay
Gould, Daniel Drew, and Jim Fisk. Gould and Fisk were doing what
they pleased with Erie stock. They and the leaders of Tammany Hall,
like Tweed and Peter B. Sweeny and Slippery Dick Connelly, hatched
schemes for fortunes as they sat either in the Hoffman House, where
Fisk sometimes lived, or at dinner in the house in West Twenty-Third
Street, where the only woman at table was Josie Mansfield.
Of the great hotels of that day not more than one or two are left. The
Fifth Avenue then took rank not only as the finest hostelry in New
York, but perhaps in the world. The Hoffman House was running as a
European-plan hotel. It had not yet become a Democratic headquarters,
for the Democrats still preferred the New York, on the American plan.
The other big “everything included” hotels were the St. Nicholas, where
Middle West folk stayed, and the Metropolitan, where the exploiter of
mining-stock held forth. Among the smaller and European-plan hotels
were the St. James, the St. Denis, the Everett, and the Clarendon,
all more or less fashionable, and the Brevoort and the Barcelona,
patronized largely by foreigners.
The restaurants were limited in number, for New York had not acquired
the restaurant habit as strongly as it has it now. When you have
mentioned Delmonico’s, Taylor’s, Curet’s, and the Café de l’Université,
you have almost a complete list of the places to which fashion drove in
its brougham after the theatre.
The playhouses were plentiful enough, considering the size of the
city. None was north of Twenty-Fourth Street. Wallack’s, at Broadway
and Thirteenth Street, was considered the best theatre in America. The
Grand Opera House, at Eighth Avenue and Twenty-Third Street, was called
the handsomest. Surely it was costly enough, for Jim Fisk, who had his
own way with Erie finances, paid eight hundred thousand dollars of the
railroad stockholders’ gold for it, to buy it from the railroad later
with some of its own stock, of problematical value.
[Illustration:
THE FIRST NUMBER OF “THE SUN” UNDER DANA
The Title Heading Has Remained Unchanged for Fifty Years.
]
[Illustration:
THE HOME OF “THE SUN” FROM 1868 TO 1915
The Famous Old Building at Nassau and Spruce Streets.
]
The Academy of Music, at Fourteenth Street and Irving Place, housed
Italian opera. The Théâtre Français, also on Fourteenth Street,
but near Sixth Avenue, was the original home in this country of opera
bouffe. Opera burlesque prevailed at the Fifth Avenue Opera House,
on West Twenty-Fourth Street. The Olympic, on Broadway near Houston,
had been built for Laura Keene; it was there that Edward A. Sothern
first appeared under his own name. Barney Williams, the _Sun’s_ first
newsboy, was managing the Broadway Theatre, in Broadway near Broome
Street. Edwin Booth was building a fine theatre of his own at Sixth
Avenue and Twenty-Third Street--destined to score an artistic but not a
financial success.
Club life was well advanced. In the house of the Century Club, then
in East Fifteenth Street, the member would come upon Bayard Taylor,
George William Curtis, Parke Godwin, William Allen Butler, Edwin
Booth, Lester Wallack, John Jacob Astor, August Belmont. The Union
League was young, and was just about to move from a rented home at
Broadway and Seventeenth Street to the Jerome house, at Madison Avenue
and Twenty-Sixth Street, where it remained until 1881, then to go to
its present home in Fifth Avenue at Thirty-Ninth Street. In the Union
League could be seen John Jay, Horace Greeley, William E. Dodge, and
other enthusiastic Republicans. Upon occasion Mr. Dana went there, but
he was not an ardent clubman.
All in all, the New York of Dana’s first year as an absolute editor
was an interesting island, with just about as much of virtue and vice,
wisdom and folly, sunlight and drabness, as may be found on any island
of nine hundred thousand people. He did not set out to reform it. He
did not try to turn the general journalism of that day out of certain
deep grooves into which it had sunk. He had his own ideas of what news
was, how it should be written, how displayed; but they were ideas, not
theories. He was not perturbed because the _Sun_ had not handled a big
story just the way the _Herald_ or the _Tribune_ dished it up; nor was
it of the slightest consequence to him what Mr. Bennett or Mr. Greeley
thought of the way the _Sun_ used the story.
Dana made no rules. Other newspapers have printed commandments for
their writers, but the _Sun_ has never wasted a penny’s worth of
paper on rules. If there ever was a rule in the office, it was “Be
interesting,” and it was not only an unwritten rule, but generally an
unspoken one.
Dana’s realization that journalism was a profession which could be
neither guided nor governed by set rules was expressed in a speech made
by him before the Wisconsin Editorial Association at Milwaukee, in 1888:
There is no system of maxims or professional rules that I
know of that is laid down for the guidance of the journalist.
The physician has his system of ethics and that sublime oath
of Hippocrates which human wisdom has never transcended. The
lawyer also has his code of ethics and the rules of the courts
and the rules of practice which he is instructed in; but I
have never met with a system of maxims that seemed to me to be
perfectly adapted to the general direction of a newspaperman. I
have written down a few principles which occurred to me, which,
with your permission, gentlemen, I will read for the benefit of
the young newspapermen here to-night:
Get the news, get all the news, get nothing but the news.
Copy nothing from another publication without perfect credit.
Never print an interview without the knowledge and consent of
the party interviewed.
Never print a paid advertisement as news-matter. Let every
advertisement appear as an advertisement; no sailing under
false colors.
Never attack the weak or the defenseless, either by argument,
by invective, or by ridicule, unless there is some absolute
public necessity for so doing.
Fight for your opinions, but do not believe that they contain
the whole truth or the only truth.
Support your party, if you have one; but do not think all the
good men are in it and all the bad ones outside of it.
Above all, know and believe that humanity is advancing; that
there is progress in human life and human affairs; and that, as
sure as God lives, the future will be greater and better than
the present or the past.
In other words, don’t loaf, don’t cheat, don’t dissemble, don’t bully,
don’t be narrow, don’t grouch. Mr. Dana’s maxims were as applicable to
any other business as to his own. In a lecture delivered at Cornell
University in 1894--three years before his death--Mr. Dana uttered more
maxims “of value to a newspaper-maker”:
Never be in a hurry.
Hold fast to the Constitution.
Stand by the Stars and Stripes. Above all, stand for liberty,
whatever happens.
A word that is not spoken never does any mischief.
All the goodness of a good egg cannot make up for the badness
of a bad one.
If you find you have been wrong, don’t fear to say so.
All these maxims were quite as useful to the merchant as to the
newspaperman. They related to the broad conduct of life. They
counselled against folly, so far as the making of newspapers was
concerned, but they did not convey the mysterious prescription with
which Dana revived American journalism from that trance in which it
had forgotten that everybody is human and that the English language is
alive and fluid.
If there had been rules by which a living newspaper could be made
from men and ink and wood-pulp, Dana would have known them; but there
were none, nor are there now. The present editor of the _Sun_, E. P.
Mitchell, who knew Dana better than any other man knew him, said in an
address at the Pulitzer School of Journalism a few years ago:
Mr. Dana used to lecture on journalism sometimes, when he was
invited, but in the bottom of my heart I don’t believe he had
any theories of journalism other than common sense and free
play for individual talent when discovered and available.
And I do remember distinctly that when he sent Mr. Joseph
Pulitzer, then fresh from St. Louis, on to Washington to
report in semieditorial correspondence the critical stage of
the electoral controversy of 1876, Mr. Dana did not think it
necessary to instruct that correspondent to assimilate his
style to the _Sun’s_ methods and traditions. Never was a job of
momentous journalistic importance better done in the absence
of plain sailing directions; but that, perhaps, was due partly
to the fact that Mr. Pulitzer was somewhat of an individualist
himself.
For the ancient common law of journalism, as derived from
England, and perhaps before that from away back in Bœotia, Mr.
Dana didn’t care one comic supplement. If anybody had asked
Mr. Dana to compile a set of specific directions for running a
newspaper, his reply, I am sure, would have been something like
this:
“Heaven bless you, young man, there aren’t any rules! Go ahead
and write when you have something to say, not when you think
you ought to say something. I’ll edit out the nonsense. And,
by the way, unless there happens to have been born into your
noddle a little bit of the native aptitude, you ought to go and
be a lawyer or a farmer or a banker or a great statesman.”
Mr. Dana had no regard for typographical gymnastics. To him a head-line
was something to fill the mind rather than the eye. He knew the utter
impossibility of trying to startle the reader eight times in as many
adjacent columns--a feat which Mr. Bennett and some of his imitators
seemed to consider feasible. Surprise is not the only emotion upon
which a newspaper can play. The _Sun_ stretched all the human octaves
from horror to amusement, but the keys of horror were only touched when
it was necessary.
Make rules for news? How is it possible to make a rule for something
the value of which lies in the fact that it is the narrative of what
never had happened, in exactly the same way, before? John Bogart, a
city editor of the _Sun_ who absorbed the Dana idea of news and the
handling thereof, once said to a young reporter:
“When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often.
But if a man bites a dog, that is news.”
The _Sun_ always waited for the man to bite the dog.
Here is Mr. Dana’s own definition of news:
The first thing which an editor must look for is news. If the
newspaper has not the news it may have everything else, yet
it will be comparatively unsuccessful; and by news I mean
everything that occurs, everything which is of human interest,
and which is of sufficient interest to arrest and absorb the
attention of the public or of any considerable part of it.
There is a great disposition in some quarters to say that the
newspapers ought to limit the amount of news that they print;
that certain kinds of news ought not to be published. I do not
know how that is. I am not prepared to maintain any abstract
proposition in that line; but I have always felt that whatever
the divine Providence permitted to occur I was not too proud to
report.
A belief has been accepted in some quarters that the _Sun_ of Dana’s
time preferred college men for its staff. This was in a way false, but
it is true that a great many of the _Sun’s_ young men came from the
colleges. Mr. Dana’s views on the matter of educational equipment were
quite plainly expressed by himself:
If I could have my way, every young man who is going to be a
newspaperman, and who is not absolutely rebellious against it,
should learn Greek and Latin after the good old fashion. I had
rather take a young fellow who knows the “Ajax” of Sophocles,
and has read Tacitus, and can scan every ode of Horace--I would
rather take him to report a prize-fight or a spelling-match,
for instance, than to take one who has never had those
advantages.
At the same time, the cultivated man is not in every case the
best reporter. One of the best I ever knew was a man who could
not spell four words correctly to save his life, and his verb
did not always agree with the subject in person and number; but
he always got the fact so exactly, and he saw the picturesque,
the interesting, the important aspect of it so vividly, that it
was worth another man’s while, who possessed the knowledge of
grammar and spelling, to go over the report and write it out.
Now, that was a man who had genius; he had a talent the most
indubitable, and he got handsomely paid in spite of his lack of
grammar, because after his work had been done over by a scholar
it was really beautiful. But any man who is sincere and earnest
and not always thinking about himself can be a good reporter.
He can learn to ascertain the truth; he can acquire the habit
of seeing.
When he looks at a fire, what is the most important thing about
that fire? Here, let us say, are five houses burning; which is
the greatest? Whose store is that which is burning? And who has
met with the greatest loss? Has any individual perished in the
conflagration? Are there any very interesting circumstances
about the fire? How did it occur? Was it like Chicago, where a
cow kicked over a spirit-lamp and burned up the city?
All these things the reporter has to judge about. He is the eye
of the paper, and he is there to see which is the vital fact
in the story, and to produce it, tell it, write it out.
Dana saw the usefulness to a reporter of certain qualities which are
acquired neither at school nor in the office:
In the first place, he must know the truth when he hears it
and sees it. There are a great many men who are born without
that faculty, unfortunately. But there are some men that a
lie cannot deceive; and that is a very precious gift for a
reporter, as well as for anybody else. The man who has it is
sure to live long and prosper; especially if he is able to tell
the truth which he sees, to state the fact or the discovery
that he has been sent out after, in a clear and vivid and
interesting manner.
The invariable law of the newspaper is to be interesting.
Suppose you tell all the truths of science in a way that bores
the reader; what is the good? The truths don’t stay in the
mind, and nobody thinks any the better of you because you have
told the truth tediously. The reporter must give his story in
such a way that you know he feels its qualities and events and
is interested in them.
Dana was catholic not only in his taste for news, but in his idea of
the manner of writing it. Nothing gave him more uneasiness than to find
that a _Sun_ man was drifting into a stereotyped way of handling a news
story or writing an editorial article. Even as he advised young men to
read everything from Shakespeare and Milton down, he repeatedly warned
them against the imitation, unconscious or otherwise, of another’s
style:
Do not take any model. Every man has his own natural style, and
the thing to do is to develop it into simplicity and clearness.
Do not, for instance, labor after such a style as Matthew
Arnold’s--one of the most beautiful styles that has ever been
seen in any literature. It is no use to try to get another
man’s style or to imitate the wit or the mannerisms of another
writer. The late Mr. Carlyle, for example, did, in my judgment,
a considerable mischief in his day, because he led everybody to
write after the style of his “French Revolution,” and it became
pretty tedious.
If a writer could not keep on without aping the literary fashion of
another, then he was not for the _Sun_. Dana wanted good English
always, but a constant spice of variety in the treatment of a subject,
and in the style itself; therefore he chose a variety of men.
If he believed that the best report of a ship-launching could be
written by a longshoreman, he would have hired the hard-handed toiler
and assigned him to the job. He wanted men who would look at the world
with open eyes and find the new things that were going on. Dana knew
that they were going on. His vision had not been narrowed by too close
application to newspaper offices where editors and managing editors had
handled the stock stories year in and year out in the same wearisome
way.
To Dana life was not a mere procession of elections, legislatures,
theatrical performances, murders, and lectures. Life was everything--a
new kind of apple, a crying child on the curb, a policeman’s epigram,
the exact weight of a candidate for President, the latest style in
whiskers, the origin of a new slang expression, the idiosyncrasies
of the City Hall clock, a strange four-master in the harbour, the
head-dresses of Syrian girls, a new president or a new football coach
at Yale, a vendetta in Mulberry Bend--everything was fish to the great
net of Dana’s mind.
Human interest! It is an old phrase now, and one likely to cause lips
to curl along Park Row. But the art of picking out the happenings of
every-day life that would appeal to every reader, if so depicted that
the events lived before the reader’s eye, was an art that did not exist
until Dana came along. Ben Day knew the importance of the trifles of
life and the hold they took on the people who read his little _Sun_,
but it remained for Dana to bring out in journalism the literary
quality that made the trifle live. Whether it was an item of three
lines or an article of three columns, it must have life, or it had no
place in the _Sun_.
Dana did not teach his men how to do it. If he taught them anything,
it was what not to do. His men did the work he wanted them to do, not
by following instructions, but by being unhampered by instructions. He
set the writer free and let him go his own way to glory or failure.
There were no conventions except those of decency, of respect for the
English language. Because newspapermen had been doing a certain thing
in a certain way for a century, Dana could not see why he and his
men should go in the same wagon-track. With a word or an epigram he
destroyed traditions that had fettered the profession since the days of
the Franklin press.
One day he held up a string of proofs--a long obituary of Bismarck, or
Blaine, or some celebrity who had just passed away.
“Mr. Lord,” he said to his managing editor, “isn’t that a lot of space
to give to a dead man?”
Yet the next day the same Dana came from his office to the city
editor’s desk to inquire who had written a certain story two inches
long, and, upon learning, went over to the reporter who was the author.
“Very good, young man, very good,” he said, pointing to the item. “I
wish I could write like that!”
Names of writers meant nothing to Dana. He judged everything that was
printed in the _Sun_, or offered to it for publication, on its own
merits. He went through manuscript with uncanny speed, the gaze that
seemed to travel only down the centre of the page really taking in the
whole substance. A dull article from a celebrity he returned to its
envelope with the note “Respectfully declined,” and without a thought
of the author’s surprise, or possibly rage. But over a poem from an
up-State unknown he might spend half an hour if the verses contained
the germ of an idea new to him.
One clergyman who had come into literary prominence offered to write
some articles for the _Sun_. Dana told him he might try. The clergyman
evidently had a notion that the _Sun’s_ cleverness was a worldly,
reckless devilishness, and he adapted the style of his first article to
what he supposed was the tone of the paper. Dana read it, smiled, wrote
across the first page “This is too damned wicked,” and mailed it back
to the misguided author.
He was a patient man. A clerk in the New York post-office copied by
hand Edward Everett Hale’s story, “The Man Without a Country,” and
offered it to the _Sun_--as original matter--for a hundred dollars. It
was suggested to Mr. Dana that the poor fool should be exposed.
“No,” said Dana, “mark it ‘Respectfully declined,’ and send it back to
him. He has been honest enough to enclose postage-stamps.”
CHAPTER XI
DANA, AS MITCHELL SAW HIM
_A Picture of the Room Where One Man Ruled for Thirty Years.--The
Democratic Ways of a Newspaper Autocrat.--W. O. Bartlett, Pike,
and His Other Early Associates._
The English historian, Kinglake, wrote a description of John T.
Delane, the most famous editor of the London _Times_, which Mr. Dana’s
associate, Mr. Mitchell, liked to quote as a picture of what Mr.
Dana was _not_. It is a fine limning of the great editor, as great
editors were supposed to be before Dana showed his disregard for the
journalistic dust of the ages:
From the moment of his entering the editor’s room until four or
five o’clock in the morning, the strain he had to put on his
faculties must have been always great, and in stirring times
almost prodigious. There were hours of night when he often had
to decide--to decide, of course, with great swiftness--between
two or more courses of action momentously different; when,
besides, he must judge the appeals brought up to the paramount
arbiter from all kinds of men, from all sorts of earthly
tribunals; when despatches of moment, when telegrams fraught
with grave tidings, when notes hastily scribbled in the Lords
or Commons, were from time to time coming in to disturb,
perhaps even to annul, former reckonings; and these, besides,
were the hours when, on questions newly obtruding, yet so
closely, so importunately, present that they would have to be
met before sunrise, he somehow must cause to spring up sudden
essays, invectives, and arguments which only strong power of
brain, with even much toil, could supply. For the delicate
task any other than he would require to be in a state of
tranquillity, would require to have ample time. But for him
there are no such indulgences; he sees the hand of the clock
growing more and more peremptory, and the time drawing nearer
and nearer when his paper must, _must_ be made up.
That, mark you, was Delane, not Dana. When Mr. Dana counselled the
young men at Cornell never to be in a hurry, he meant it. Fury was
never a part of his system of life and work. Probably he viewed with
something like contempt the high-pressure editor of his own and former
days. There was no agony in the daily birth of the _Sun_. Mr. Mitchell
said of his chief:
Mr. Dana has always been the master, and not the slave, of the
immediate task. The external features of his journalism are
simplicity, directness, common sense, and the entire absence
of affectation. He would no more think of living up to Mr.
Kinglake’s ideal of a great, mysterious, and thought-burdened
editor, than of putting on a conical hat and a black robe
spangled with suns, moons, and stars, when about to receive a
visitor to his editorial office in Nassau Street.
That office in Nassau Street, of which every reader of the _Sun_, and
surely every newspaperman in America, formed his own mental picture!
To some imaginations it probably was a bare room, with a desk for the
editor and, close by, the famous cat. To other imaginations, whose
owners were familiar with Mr. Dana’s love for the beautiful, the office
may have been a studio unmarred by the presence of a single unbeautiful
object. Both visions were incorrect.
[Illustration:
(_Drawn from Life by Corwin Knapp Linson_)
MR. DANA IN HIS OFFICE
]
Surroundings were nothing to Dana. To him an office was a place to
work, to convert ideas into readable form. What would works of art be
in such a place to a man who took more interest in the crowds that
went to and fro on Park Row beneath his window? Let the room itself be
described by Mr. Mitchell, who set down this picture of it after he had
spent hours in it with Mr. Dana almost daily for twenty years:
In the middle of the small room a desk-table of black walnut
of the Fulton Street style and the period of the first
administration of Grant; a shabby little round table at
the window, where Mr. Dana sits when the day is dark; one
leather-covered chair, which does duty at either post, and
two wooden chairs, both rickety, for visitors on errands of
business or ceremony; on the desk a revolving case with a
few dozen books of reference; an ink-pot and pen, not much
used except in correcting manuscript and proofs, for Mr. Dana
talks off to a stenographer his editorial articles and his
correspondence, sometimes spending on the revision of the
former twice as much time as was required for the dictation;
a window-seat filled with exchanges, marked here and there
in blue pencil for the editor’s eyes; a big pair of shears,
and two or three extra pairs of spectacles in cache against
an emergency--these few items constitute what is practically
the whole objective equipment of the editor of the _Sun_. The
shears are probably the newest article of furniture in the
list. They replaced, three or four years ago, another pair of
unknown antiquity, besought and obtained by Eugene Field, and
now occupying, alongside of Mr. Gladstone’s ax, the place of
honor in that poet’s celebrated collection of edged instruments.
For the non-essentials, the little trapezoid-shaped room
contains a third table containing a file of the newspaper for
a few weeks back, and a heap of new books which have passed
review; an iron umbrella-rack; on the floor a cheap Turkish
rug; and a lounge covered with horsehide, upon which Mr. Dana
descends for a five minutes’ nap perhaps five times a year.
The adornments of the room are mostly accidental and
insignificant. Ages ago somebody presented to Mr. Dana, with
symbolic intent, a large stuffed owl. The bird of wisdom
remains by inertia on top of the revolving bookcase, just as
it would have remained there if it had been a stuffed cat or a
statuette of “Folly.” Unnoticed and probably long ago forgotten
by the proprietor, the owl solemnly boxes the compass as Mr.
Dana swings the case, reaching in quick succession for his
Bible, his Portuguese dictionary, his compendium of botanical
terms, or his copy of the Democratic national platform of 1892.
On the mantelpiece is an ugly, feather-haired little totem
figure from Alaska, which likewise keeps its place solely
by possession. It stands between a photograph of Chester
A. Arthur, whom Mr. Dana liked and admired as a man of the
world, and the japanned calendar-case which has shown him
the time of year for the last quarter of a century. A dingy
chromolithograph of Prince von Bismarck stands shoulder to
shoulder with George, the Count Joannes.
The same mingling of sentiment and pure accident marks the rest
of Mr. Dana’s picture-gallery. There is a large and excellent
photograph of Horace Greeley, who is held in half-affectionate,
half-humorous remembrance by his old associate in the
management of the _Tribune_. Another is of the late Justice
Blatchford, of the United States Supreme Court; it is the
strong face of the fearless judge whose decision from the
Federal bench in New York twenty years ago blocked the attempt
to drag Mr. Dana before a servile little court in Washington to
be tried without a jury on the charge of criminal libel, at the
time when the _Sun_ was demolishing the District Ring.
Over the mantel is Abraham Lincoln. There are pictures of the
four Harper brothers and of the Appletons. Andrew Jackson is
there twice, once in black and white, once in vivid colors.
An inexpensive Thomas Jefferson faces the livelier Jackson.
A framed diploma certifies that Mr. Dana was one of several
gentlemen who presented to the State a portrait in oils of
Samuel J. Tilden. On different sides of the room are William
T. Coleman, the organizer of the San Francisco Vigilantes, and
a crude colored print of the Haifa colony at the foot of Mount
Carmel in Syria. Strangest of all in this singular collection
is a photograph of a tall, lank, and superior-looking New
England mill-girl, issued as an advertisement by some
Connecticut concern engaged in the manufacture of spool-cotton.
For a good many years the most available wall-space in Mr.
Dana’s office was occupied by a huge pasteboard chart, showing
elaborately, in deadly parallel columns, the differences
in the laws of the several States of the Union respecting
divorce. It was put there, and it remained there, serving no
earthly purpose except to illustrate the editor’s indifference
as to his immediate surroundings, until it disappeared as
mysteriously as it had come.
Such were Mr. Dana’s surroundings, with nothing to indicate, as Mr.
Mitchell remarked, that the occupant “knew Manet from Monet, or old
Persian lustre from Gubbio.”
It is twenty years since Dana went out of that room for the last time,
and the room and the old building are no more, but the stuffed owl
is still at his post in the office of the editor of the _Sun_. He
is an older if not wiser bird, and he is no longer subjected to the
revolutions of the bookcase, for Mr. Mitchell has given him a firmer
perch beside his door. From a nearby wall Mr. Dana’s pictures of the
four Harpers keep vigil, too.
Dana was interested in everything, read everything, saw almost
everybody. His own office was almost as free as the great main office
of the _Sun_, where sat everybody from the managing editor down to the
office-boy. One day Dana, coming into the big room, saw carpenters
building a partition between the room and the head of the stairs that
led to the street. It was explained to him that the public was inclined
to be unnecessarily intrusive at times.
“Take the partition down,” he said. “A newspaper is for the public.”
That this was not always a desirable plan is illustrated in a story
about Dana, probably apocryphal, but characteristic. One night the city
editor rushed into his chief’s room.
“Mr. Dana,” he said, “there’s a man out there with a cocked revolver.
He is very much excited, and he insists on seeing the editor-in-chief.”
“Is he very much excited?” inquired Mr. Dana, returning to the proof
that he was reading. “If you think it is worth while, ask Amos Cummings
if he will see the gentleman and write him up.”
Persons in search of alms would enter Mr. Dana’s room without ceremony.
If they were Sisters of Charity, as often was the case, Mr. Dana would
walk up and down, telling them of his visit with the Pope, and would
finish by giving them one of the silver dollars of which his pocket
seemed to have an endless supply. Almost every day, when he despatched
a boy to a nearby restaurant for his sandwich and bottle of milk, he
would give him a five-dollar bill and instruct him to bring back the
change all in silver. He liked to jingle the coins in his pocket and to
have them ready for alms-giving.
Dana was never fussy, never overbearing with his men. He bore patiently
with the occasional sinner, and tried to put the best face on a mistake.
The Dana patience extended also to outsiders. On one occasion William
M. Laffan, then the dramatic critic and later the owner of the _Sun_,
wrote a severe criticism of a performance by Miss Ada Rehan. Augustin
Daly hurried to Mr. Dana’s office the next afternoon.
“Mr. Dana,” he said, “I have called to try to convince you that you
should discharge your dramatic editor. He has--”
“I see,” said Dana, smiling. “Well, Mr. Daly, I will speak to Mr.
Laffan about the matter, and if he thinks that he really deserves to be
discharged, I will most certainly do it!”
Thirty or forty years ago the belief was not uncommon, among those
ignorant of editorial methods and the limitations of human powers,
that Mr. Dana wrote every word that appeared on the editorial page of
the _Sun_. It is likely that this flattering myth came to his ears and
caused him more than one chuckle. Dana wrote pieces for the _Sun_, many
of them, but he never essayed the superhuman task of filling the whole
page with his own self. Nobody knew better than he what a bore a man
becomes who flows opinion constantly, whether by voice or by pen.
For Dana, not the eternal verities in allopathic doses, but the
entertaining varieties, carefully administered. He might be immensely
interested in the destruction of the Whisky Ring, and in writing about
that infamy articles which would scorch the ears of Washington; but
he knew that not every man, woman, and child who read the _Sun_ was
furious about the Whisky Ring or cared to read columns of opinion about
it every day. They must have pabulum in the form of an article about
the princely earnings of Charles Dickens, or the identification of
Mount Sinai, or the mysterious murder of a French count.
So he hired men who could compare Dickens’s lectures with Thackeray’s,
or were familiar with the controversy over Mount Barghir, or who knew a
murder mystery when they saw it. They wrote, and he read and sometimes
edited, but usually approved, for he knew that newspaper success lay
not so much in a choice of topics as in a choice of men. He knew that
the success of an editorial page came less from inside opinions than
from outside interest. Dana’s remarkable success in the exaltation
of journalism to literary heights was won not so much through what he
wrote, but through what he left other men free to write.
His own work as a writer for the _Sun_ took but a fraction of his busy
day. He dictated his articles to Tom Williams, his stenographer, a
Fenian and a bold man.
“Can you write as fast as I talk?” asked Dana when Williams applied for
the job.
“I doubt it, Mr. Dana,” said Williams; “but I can write as fast as any
man ought to talk.”
For twenty years Tom Williams transcribed articles that absorbed the
readers of the _Sun_, but his own heart was down the bay, near his
Staten Island home, where he spent most of his spare time in fishing
and sailing. It was always a grief to Williams to enter the office on
an election or similarly important night, and to find that no one paid
any attention to his stories about how the fish were biting.
Dana had no doubt--nor had any one, least of all those who came under
his editorial condemnation--of his own ability as a trenchant writer.
The expression of thought was an art which he had studied from boyhood.
Whatever of the academic appeared in his early work had been driven out
during his service on the _Tribune_ and in the war, particularly the
latter, for as a reporter for the government he learned to avoid all
but the salients of expression. But as the editor of the _Sun_ he found
less delight in his own product than in the work of some other man
whose literary ability answered his own standards of terseness, vigour,
and illumination. The new man would help the _Sun_, and that was all
that Dana asked.
That another man’s work should be mistaken for his own, or his own for
another man’s, was to Dana nothing at all, except perhaps a source of
amusement. The anonymity of the writers on the _Sun_ was so complete
that the public knew their work only as a whole; but whenever anything
particularly biting or humorous appeared, the same public instantly
decided that Dana must have written it.
No king, no clown, to rule this town!
That line, born in the _Sun’s_ editorial page, will live as long as
Shakespeare. In eight words it embodied the protest of New York against
the arrogance and stupidity of machine political rule. Ten thousand
times, at least, it has been credited to Dana, but as a matter of fact
it was written by W. O. Bartlett.
Bartlett was one of those great newspaper writers whose fate--or
choice--it is never to own a newspaper and never to attract public
attention through the writing of signed articles or books. Writing
was not primarily his profession, and by the older men of New York
who remember him he is recalled as a brilliant lawyer rather than
as a writer. He met Dana through Secretary Stanton, and he was the
_Sun’s_ attorney soon after Dana and his friends bought the paper. His
law-offices were in the Sun Building, directly below Mr. Dana’s own
offices. There, and also at the Hoffman House, where he lived when he
was not on his estate at Brookhaven, Long Island, Mr. Bartlett wrote
his articles for the _Sun_.
Bartlett was a writer of the school of simplicity. His style of
reducing a proposition to its most elementary form, so that it was
clear to even the Class B intellect, was the admiration and envy of
all who knew his articles. It was an inspiration, too, to many young
newspapermen of his day.
The manner of Mr. Arthur Brisbane of the _Evening Journal_, luring
the reader into a sociological dissertation by first inquiring
whether he knows “Why a Flea Jumps So Far,” is the Bartlett manner,
with such modifications as are necessary to reach the attention of a
group intellectually somewhat different from Bartlett’s readers. Only
Bartlett did not spend too much time on the flea. Of the three men
whose articles have most distinguished the first column of the _Sun’s_
editorial page, each has had his own weapon when leading to attack.
Dana struck with a sword. Mitchell used--and uses--the rapier. Bartlett
swung the mace. It was jewelled with the gems of language, but still
it was a mace; and if it crushed the skull of the enemy at the first
blow, so much the better. It was Bartlett, for instance, who wrote
the article in which the Democratic candidate for President in 1880,
General Hancock, was referred to as “a good man, weighing two hundred
and forty pounds.”
W. O. Bartlett wrote for the _Sun_ from 1868 until his death in 1881.
He was the foremost figure in the group of older men around Dana--the
men who had been prominent in political and literary life before the
Civil War. Other notable men of middle age who were chosen by Mr. Dana
to write editorial articles were James S. Pike, Fitz-Henry Warren,
Henry B. Stanton, and John Swinton.
James Shepherd Pike’s articles appeared more frequently in the columns
of the _Sun_ than Pike himself appeared in the office, for most of his
work was done in Washington. He was about eight years older than Mr.
Dana, but they were great friends from the earliest days of Dana’s
_Tribune_ experience. For five years, beginning in 1855, Pike was
a Washington correspondent and one of the associate editors of the
_Tribune_. During the Civil War he was United States minister to the
Netherlands, a reward for his services in his home State, Maine, where
he was useful in uniting the anti-slavery forces. He was a brother of
Frederick A. Pike, a war-time Representative from Maine, whose “Tax,
fight, emancipate!” was the Republican watchword from its utterance in
1861.
Pike was one of the group that supported Greeley for the Presidency in
1872. He was one of the really great publicists of his day. He wrote
“The Restoration of the Currency,” “The Financial Crisis,” “Horace
Greeley in 1872,” “A Prostrate State”--which was a description of the
Reconstruction era in South Carolina--and “The First Blows of the Civil
War,” this last a volume of reminiscent correspondence, some newspaper,
some personal. The friendship and literary association of Pike and Dana
lasted more than thirty years, and ended only with Pike’s death in
1882, just after he had passed threescore and ten.
Fitz-Henry Warren, who has been already referred to in this narrative
as the author of the _Tribune’s_ cry, “On to Richmond!” wrote many
editorial articles for Dana, who had conceived a great admiration for
Warren when both were in the service of the _Tribune_, Dana as managing
editor and Warren as head of the Washington bureau. Warren emerged from
the Civil War not only a major-general, but a powerful politician, and
it was not until several years later, after he had served in the Iowa
Senate and as minister to Guatemala, that Dana was able to bring the
pen of this transplanted New Englander to the office of the _Sun_. Once
there, it did splendid work.
It is not easy to identify the editorials that appeared in the _Sun_
under the Dana régime; not so much because of the lapse of years, but
because the spirit of Dana so permeated everything that was printed on
his page that it is difficult to say with certainty, “This Dana wrote,
this Bartlett, this Mitchell, this Warren, and this Pike.” But, for
the purpose of giving some small idea of the grace and magnificence of
Warren’s style, here is a paragraph from an editorial article known to
have been written by him on the death of Charles Sumner in March, 1874:
Men spoke softly on the street; their very voices betokened the
impending event, and even their footfalls are said to have been
lighter than common. But in the neighborhood of the Senator’s
house there was a sense of singular and touching interest.
Splendid equipages rolled to the corner, over pavements
conceived in fraud and laid in corruption, to testify the
regard of their occupants for eminent purity of life. Liveried
servants carried hopeless messages from the door of him who was
simplicity itself, and to whom the pomp and pageantry of this
evil day were but the evidences of guilty degeneracy. Through
all those lingering hours of anguish the sad procession came
and went.
On the sidewalk stood a numerous and grateful representation
of the race to whom he had given the proudest efforts and the
best energies of his existence. The black man bowed his head
in unaffected grief, and the black woman sat hushing her babe
upon the curbstone, in mute expectation of the last decisive
intelligence from the chamber above.
General Warren continued to write for the _Sun_ until 1876, and he
died two years afterward, when he was only sixty-two years old, in
Brimfield, Massachusetts, the town of his birth.
[Illustration: JOSEPH PULITZER]
[Illustration: ELIHU ROOT]
[Illustration: JUDGE WILLARD BARTLETT]
Although Henry Brewster Stanton was a comparatively old man when
he began writing for the _Sun_, his activities in that line lasted
for nearly twenty years. In 1826, when he was twenty-one years old,
he entered newspaper work on Thurlow Weed’s _Monroe Telegraph_,
published in Rochester. Soon afterward he became an advocate of the
anti-slavery cause. In 1840 he married Elizabeth Cady, and with her
went abroad, where in Great Britain and France they worked for the
relief of the slaves in the United States. It was during that journey
that Elizabeth Cady Stanton signed the first call for a woman’s rights
convention.
On his return to America Stanton studied law with his father-in-law,
Daniel Cady. After his admission to the bar he practised in Boston, but
he returned to New York and politics in 1847. He left the Democratic
party to become one of the founders of the Republican party.
Dana met Stanton when the latter was a writer for the _Tribune_, and
when Dana came into the control of the _Sun_ he secured the veteran
as a contributor. Stanton knew politics from A to Z, and his brief
articles, filled with political wisdom and often salted with his
dry humour, were just the class of matter that Dana wanted for the
editorial page. Stanton was also a capable reviewer of books. He wrote
for the _Sun_ from 1868 until his death in 1887. Henry Ward Beecher
said of him:
“I think Stanton has all the elements of old John Adams--able, staunch,
patriotic, full of principle, and always unpopular. He lacks that sense
of other people’s opinions which keeps a man from running against them.”
John Swinton was one of the few of Dana’s men who might be described
as a “character.” He lived a double intellectual life, writing
conservative articles in his newspaper hours and making socialistic
speeches when he was off duty. Yet it was a double life without
duplicity, for there was no concealment in it, no hypocrisy, and
no harm. When he had finished his day in the office of the _Sun_,
perhaps at writing some instructive paragraphs about the possibilities
of American trade in Nicaragua, he would take off his skull-cap,
place a black soft hat on his gray head, and go forth to dilate on
the advantages of super-Fourierism to some sympathetic audience of
socialists.
There was a story in the office that one evening Mr. Swinton, making a
speech at a socialistic gathering, referred hotly to the editor of the
_Sun_ as one of the props of a false form of government, and added that
“some day two old men will come rolling down the steps of the _Sun_
office,” and that at the bottom of the steps he, Swinton, would be on
top.
This may be of a piece with the story about Mr. Dana and the man with
the revolver; but the young men in the reporters’ room liked to tell
it to younger men. It probably had its basis in the fact that on the
morning after a particularly ferocious assault on capital, John Swinton
would poke his head into Mr. Dana’s room to tell him how he had given
him the dickens the night before--information which tickled Mr. Dana
immensely. And Dana never went to the bottom of the _Sun_ stairs except
on his own sturdy legs.
Swinton was a Scotsman, born in Haddingtonshire in 1830. He emigrated
to Canada as a boy, learned the printer’s trade, and worked at the case
in New York. After travels all over the country, he lived for a time
in Charleston, South Carolina, and there acquired an abhorrence for
slavery. He went to Kansas and took part in the Free Soil contest, but
returned to New York in 1857 and began the study of medicine.
While so engaged he contributed articles to the New York _Times_, and
Henry J. Raymond, who liked his work, took him as an editorial writer.
He was the managing editor of the _Times_ during the Civil War, and
had sole charge during Raymond’s absences. At the end of the war
Swinton’s health caused him to resign from the managing editorship, but
he continued to write for the editorial page. He went to work on the
_Sun_ about 1877.
His specialty was paragraphs. Dana liked men who could do anything, but
he also preferred that every man should have some specialty. Swinton
had the imagination and the light touch of the skilful weaver of
small items. Also, he was much interested in Central America, and his
knowledge of that region was of frequent use to the _Sun_.
Swinton left the _Sun_ in 1883 to give his whole time to _John
Swinton’s Paper_, a weekly journal in which he expounded his
labour-reform and other political views. He was the author of many
pamphlets and several books, including a “Eulogy of Henry J. Raymond”
and an “Oration on John Brown.”
Such were the editorial writers of what may be called the iron age of
the _Sun_; the men who helped Dana to build the first story of a great
house. As they passed on, younger men, some greater men, trained in the
Dana school, took their places and spanned the _Sun’s_ golden age--such
men as E. P. Mitchell, Francis P. Church, and Mayo W. Hazeltine.
Meanwhile, on the other side of a partition on the third floor of the
old brick building at the corner of Frankfort Street, another group of
men were doing their best to advance Dana’s _Sun_ by making it the best
newspaper as well as the best editorial paper in America. These, too,
were giants.
CHAPTER XII
DANA’S FIRST BIG NEWS MEN
_Amos J. Cummings, Dr. Wood, and John B. Bogart.--The Lively Days
of Tweedism.--Elihu Root as a Dramatic Critic.--The Birth and
Popularity of “The Sun’s” Cat._
Managing editors did not come into favour in American newspaper offices
until the second half of the last century. As late as 1872 Frederic
Hudson, in his “History of Journalism in the United States,” grumbled
at the intrusion of a new functionary upon the field:
If a journal has an editor, and editor-in-chief, it is fair to
assume that he is also its managing editor.
That historian (he was a _Herald_ man, and Bennett would have no
managing editor) had not been reconciled to the fact that between
the editor of a newspaper--the director of its policies and opinions
and general style and tone--and the subeditors to whose various
desks comes the flood of news there must be some one who will act
as a link, lightening the labours of the editor and shouldering the
responsibilities of the desk men. He may never write an editorial
article; may never turn out a sheet of news copy or put a head on an
item; may never make up a page or arrange an assignment list--but he
must know how to do every one of these things and a great deal more.
A managing editor is really the newspaper’s manager of its employees
in the news field. He is an editor to the extent that he edits men.
He may appear to spend most of his time and judgment on the acceptance
or rejection of news matter, the giving of decisions as to the length
or character of an article, its position in the paper, and, more
broadly, the general make-up of the next day’s product; but a man
might be able to perform all these professional functions wisely and
yet be impossible as a managing editor through his inability to handle
newspapermen.
The _Tribune_ was the first New York paper to have a managing editor.
He was Dana. Serene, tactful, and a man of the world, he was able
by judicious handling to keep for the _Tribune_ the services of men
like Warren and Pike, who might have been repelled by the sometimes
irritable Greeley. The title came from the London _Times_, where it had
been used for years, perhaps borrowed from the _directeur gérant_ of
the French newspapers.
The _Sun_ had no managing editor until Dana bought it, Beach having
preferred to direct personally all matters above the ken of the city
editor. The _Sun’s_ first managing editor was Isaac W. England, whom
Dana had known and liked when both were on the _Tribune_. England
was of Welsh blood and English birth, having been born in Twerton, a
suburb of Bath, in 1832. He worked at the bookbinding trade until he
was seventeen, and then came to the United States and made his living
at bookbinding and printing. He used to tell his _Sun_ associates of
his triumphal return to England, when he was twenty, for a short visit,
which he spent in the shop of his apprenticeship, showing his old
master how much better the Yankees were at embossing and lettering.
England returned to America in the steerage and saw the brutal
treatment of immigrants. This he described in several articles and
sold them to the _Tribune_. Greeley gave him a job pulling a hand-press
at ten dollars a week, but later made him a reporter. He was city
editor of the _Tribune_ until after the Civil War, and then he went
with his friend Dana to Chicago for the short and profitless experience
with the Chicago _Republican_. In the period between Dana’s retirement
from the _Republican_ and his purchase of the _Sun_, England was
manager of the Jersey City _Times_.
England was managing editor of the _Sun_ only a year, then becoming
its publisher--a position for which he was well fitted. An example of
his business ability was given in 1877, when Frank Leslie went into
bankruptcy. England was made assignee, and he handled the affairs of
the Leslie concern so well that its debts were paid off in three years.
This was only a side job for England, who continued all the time to
manage the business matters of the _Sun_. When he died, in 1885, Dana
wrote that he had “lost the friend of almost a lifetime, a man of
unconquerable integrity, true and faithful in all things.”
The second managing editor of the _Sun_ was that great newspaperman
Amos Jay Cummings. He was born to newspaper work if any man ever was.
His father, who was a Congregational minister--a fact which could not
be surmised by listening to Amos in one of his explosive moods--was
the editor of the _Christian Palladium and Messenger_. This staid
publication was printed on the first floor of the Cummings home at
Irvington, New Jersey. Entrance to the composing-room was forbidden the
son, but with tears and tobacco he bribed the printer, one Sylvester
Bailey, who set up the Rev. Mr. Cummings’s articles, to let him in
through a window. Cummings and Bailey later set type together on the
_Tribune_. They fought in the same regiment in the Civil War. They
worked together on the _Evening Sun_, and they are buried in the same
cemetery at Irvington.
The trade once learned, young Amos left home and wandered from State
to State, making a living at the case. In 1856, when he was only
fourteen, he was attracted by the glamour that surrounded William
Walker, the famous filibuster, and joined the forces of that daring
young adventurer, who then had control of Nicaragua. The boy was one of
a strange horde of soldiers of fortune, which included British soldiers
who had been at Sebastopol, Italians who had followed Garibaldi, and
Hungarians in whom Kossuth had aroused the martial flame.
Like many of the others in Walker’s army, Cummings believed that the
Tennessean was a second Napoleon, with Central America, perhaps South
America, for his empire. But when this Napoleon came to his Elba by his
surrender to Commander Davis of the United States navy, in the spring
of 1857, Cummings decided that there was no marshal’s baton in his own
ragged knapsack and went back to be a wandering printer.
Cummings was setting type in the _Tribune_ office when the Civil War
began. He hurried out and enlisted as a private in the Twenty-Sixth New
Jersey Volunteer Infantry. He fought at Antietam, Chancellorsville, and
Fredericksburg. At Marye’s Hill, in the battle of Fredericksburg, his
regiment was supporting a battery against a Confederate charge. Their
lines were broken and they fell back from the guns. Cummings took the
regimental flag from the hands of the colour-sergeant and ran alone,
under the enemy’s fire, back to the guns. The Jerseymen rallied, the
guns were recovered, and Cummings got the Medal of Honor from Congress.
He left the service as sergeant-major of the regiment and presently
appeared in Greeley’s office, a seedy figure infolded in an army
overcoat.
“Mr. Greeley,” said Amos, “I’ve just got to have work.”
“Oh, indeed!” creaked Horace. “And why have you got to have work?”
Cummings said nothing, but turned his back on the great editor,
lifted his coat-tails and showed the sad, if not shocking, state of
his breeches. He got work. In 1863, when the _Tribune_ office was
threatened by the rioters, Amos helped to barricade the composing-room
and save it from the mob.
Cummings served as editor of the _Weekly Tribune_ and as a political
writer for the daily. This is the way he came to quit the _Tribune_:
John Russell Young, the third managing editor of the _Tribune_, got
the habit of issuing numbered orders. Two of these orders reached
Cummings’s desk, as follows:
Order No. 756--There is too much profanity in this office.
Order No. 757--Hereafter the political reporter must have his
copy in at 10.30 P.M.
Cummings turned to his desk and wrote:
Order No. 1234567--Everybody knows ---- well that I get most of
the political news out of the Albany _Journal_, and everybody
knows ---- ---- well that the _Journal_ doesn’t get here until
eleven o’clock at night, and anybody who knows anything knows
---- ---- well that asking me to get my stuff up at half past
ten is like asking a man to sit on a window-sill and dance on
the roof at the same time.
CUMMINGS.
The result of this multiplicity of numbered orders was that shortly
afterward Cummings presented himself to the editor of the _Sun_.
“Why are you leaving the _Tribune_?” asked Mr. Dana.
“They say,” replied Amos, “that I swear too much.”
“Just the man for me!” replied Dana, according to the version which
Cummings used to tell.
At any rate, Amos went on the _Sun_ as managing editor, and he
continued to swear. The compositors now in the _Sun_ office who
remember him at all remember him largely for that.
The union once set apart a day for contributions to the printers’-home
fund, and each compositor was to contribute the fruits of a thousand
ems of composition. Cummings, who was proud of being a union printer,
left his managing-editor’s desk and went to the composing-room.
“Ah, Mr. Cummings,” said Abe Masters, the foreman, “I’ll give you some
of your own copy to set.”
“To hell with my own copy!” said Cummings, who knew his handwriting
faults. “Give me some reprint.”
Green reporters got a taste of the Cummings profanity. One of them put
a French phrase in a story. Cummings asked him what it meant, and the
youth told him.
“Then why the hell didn’t you write it that way?” yelled Cummings.
“This paper is for people who read English!”
In those days murderers were executed in the old Tombs prison in Centre
Street. Cummings, who was full of enterprise, sought a way to get
quickly the fall of the drop. The telephone had not been perfected,
but there was a shot-tower north of the _Sun’s_ office and east of the
Tombs. Cummings sent one man to the Tombs, with instructions to wave a
flag upon the instant of the execution. Another man, stationed at the
top of the shot-tower, had another flag, with which he was to make a
sign to Cummings on the roof of the Sun Building, as soon as he saw the
flag move at the prison.
The reporter at the Tombs arranged with a keeper to notify him just
before the execution, but the keeper was sent on an errand, and
presently Cummings, standing nervously on the roof of the Sun Building,
heard the newsboys crying the extras of a rival sheet. The plan had
fallen through. No blanks could adequately represent the Cummings
temper upon that occasion.
Cummings was probably the best all-round news man of his day. He
had the executive ability and the knowledge of men that make a good
managing editor. He knew what Dana knew--that the newspapers had yet to
touch public sympathy and imagination in the news columns as well as in
editorial articles; and he knew how to do it, how to teach men to do
it, how to cram the moving picture of a living city into the four pages
of the _Sun_. He advised desk men, complimented or corrected reporters,
edited local articles, and, when a story appealed to him strongly, he
went out and got it and wrote it himself.
In such brief biographies of Cummings as have been printed you will
find that he is best remembered in the outer world as a managing
editor, or as the editor of the _Evening Sun_, or as a Representative
in Congress fighting for the rights of Civil War veterans, printers’
unions, and letter-carriers; but among the oldest generation of
newspapermen he is revered as a great reporter. He was the first real
human-interest reporter. He knew the news value of the steer loose in
the streets, the lost child in the police station, the Italian murder
that was really a case of vendetta. The _Sun_ men of his time followed
his lead, and a few of them, like Julian Ralph, outdid him, but he was
the pioneer; and a thousand _Sun_ men since then have kept, or tried
to keep, on the Cummings trail.
It was Cummings who sent men to cover the police stations at night and
made it possible for the _Sun_ to beat the news association on the
trivial items which were the delight of the reader, and which helped,
among other things, to shoot the paper’s daily circulation to one
hundred thousand in the third year of the Dana ownership.
The years when Cummings was managing editor of the _Sun_ were years
stuffed with news. Even a newspaperman without imagination would have
found plenty of happenings at hand. The Franco-Prussian War, the gold
conspiracy that ended in Black Friday (September 24, 1869), the Orange
riot (July 12, 1871), the great Chicago fire, the killing of Fisk by
Stokes, Tweedism--what more could a newspaperman wish in so brief a
period? And, of course, always there were murders. There were so many
mysterious murders in the _Sun_ that a suspicious person might have
harboured the thought that Cummings went out after his day’s work was
done and committed them for art’s sake.
When men and women stopped killing, Cummings would turn to politics.
Tweed was the great man then; under suspicion, even before 1870, but a
great man, particularly among his own. The _Sun_ printed pages about
Tweed and his satellites and the great balls of the Americus Club,
their politico-social organisation. It described the jewels worn by
the leaders of Tammany Hall, including the two-thousand-dollar club
badge--the head of a tiger with eyes of ruby and three large diamonds
shining above them.
Everybody who wanted the political news read the _Sun_. As Jim Fisk
remarked one evening as he stood proudly with Jay Gould in the lobby
of the Grand Opera House--proud of his notoriety in connection with
the Erie Railroad jobbery, proud of the infamy he enjoyed from the fact
that he owned two houses in the same block in West Twenty-third Street,
housing his wife in one and Josie Mansfield in the other; proud of his
guilty partnership in Tweedism--
“The _Sun’s_ a lively paper. I can never wait for daylight for
a copy. I have my man down there with a horse every morning,
and just as soon as he gets a _Sun_ hot from the press he jumps
on the back of that horse and puts for me as if all hell was
after him.
“Gould’s the same way; he has to see it before daylight, too.
My man has to bring him up a copy. You always get the news
ahead of everybody else. Why, the first news I got that Gould
and me were blackballed in the Blossom Club we got from the
_Sun_. I’m damned if I’d believe it at first, and Gould says,
‘What is this Blossom Club?’ Just then Sweeny came in. I asked
Sweeny if it was true, and Sweeny said yes, that Tweed was the
man that done it all. There it was in the _Sun_, straight’s a
die.”
The _Sun_ reporter who chronicled this--it may have been Cummings
himself--had gone to ask Fisk whether he and his friends had hired a
thug to black-jack the respectable Mr. Dorman B. Eaton, a foe of the
Erie outfit; but he took down and printed Fisk’s tribute to the _Sun’s_
enterprise. As there was scarcely a morning in those days when the
_Sun_ did not turn up some new trick played by the Tweed gang and the
Erie group, their anxiety to get an early copy was natural.
Tweed and his philanthropic pretences did not deceive the _Sun_. On
February 24, 1870--a year and a half before the exposure which sent
the boss to prison--the _Sun_ printed an editorial article announcing
that Tweed was willing to surrender his ownership of the city upon the
following terms:
[Illustration:
(_From a Photograph by Paul Dana_)
MR. DANA AT SEVENTY
]
To give up all interest in the court-house swindle.
To receive no more revenue from the department of survey and
inspection of buildings; and he hopes the people of New York
will remember his generosity in giving up this place, inasmuch
as his share amounts to over one hundred thousand dollars a
year.
Tweed was liked by many New Yorkers, particularly those who knew him
only by his lavish charities. One of these wrote the following letter,
which the _Sun_ printed on December 7, 1870, under the heading “A
Monument to Boss Tweed--the Money Paid In”:
Enclosed please find ten cents as a contribution to erect a
statue to William M. Tweed on Tweed Plaza. I have no doubt that
fifty thousand to seventy-five thousand of his admirers will
contribute. Yours, etc.,
SEVENTEENTH WARD VOTER.
On December 12 the _Sun_ said editorially:
Has Boss Tweed any friends? If he has, they are a mean set.
It is now more than a week since an appeal was made to them
to come forward and put up the ancillary qualities to erect a
statue of Mr. Tweed in the centre of Tweed Plaza; but as yet
only four citizens have sent in their subscriptions. These were
not large, but they were paid in cash, and there is reason for
the belief that they were the tokens of sincere admiration
for Mr. Tweed. But the hundreds, or, rather, thousands, of
small-potato politicians whom he has made rich and powerful
stand aloof and do not offer a picayune.
We propose that the statue shall be executed by Captain
Albertus de Groot, who made the celebrated Vanderbilt bronzes,
but we have not yet decided whether it shall represent the
favorite son of New York afoot or ahorseback. In fact, we
rather incline to have a nautical statue, exhibiting Boss Tweed
as a bold mariner, amid the wild fury of a hurricane, splicing
the main brace in the foretopgallant futtock shrouds of his
steam-yacht. But that is a matter for future consideration. The
first thing is to get the money; and if those who claim to be
Mr. Tweed’s friends don’t raise it, we shall begin to believe
the rumor that the Hon. P. Brains Sweeny has turned against
him, and has forbidden every one to give anything toward the
erection of the projected statue.
Ten days later the _Sun_ carried on the editorial page a long news
story headed “Our Statue of Boss Tweed--the Readers of the _Sun_
Going to Work in Dead Earnest--The _Sun’s_ Advice Followed, Ha!
Ha!--Organisation of the Tweed Testimonial Association of the City of
New York--A Bronze Statue Worth Twenty-Five Thousand Dollars to Be
Erected.”
Sure enough, the ward politicians had taken the joke seriously. Police
Justice Edward J. Shandley, Tim Campbell, Coroner Patrick Keenan,
Police Commissioner Smith, and a dozen other faithful Tammany men were
on the list of trustees. They decided upon the space then known as
Tweed Plaza, at the junction of East Broadway and New Canal and Rutgers
Streets as the site for the monument.
The _Sun_ added to the joke by printing more letters from contributors.
One, from Patrick Maloy, “champion eel-bobber,” brought ten cents and
the suggestion that the statue should be inscribed with the amount of
money that Tweed had made out of the city. This sort of thing went
on into the new year, the _Sun_ aggravating the movement with grave
editorial advice.
At last the jest became more than Tweed could bear, and from his
desk in the Senate Chamber at Albany, on March 13, 1871, he sent
the following letter to Judge Shandley, the chairman of the statue
committee:
MY DEAR SIR:
I learn that a movement to erect a statue to me in the city of
New York is being seriously pushed by a committee of citizens
of which you are chairman.
I was aware that a newspaper of our city had brought forward
the proposition, but I considered it one of the jocose
sensations for which that journal is so famous. Since I left
the city to engage in legislation the proposition appears to
have been taken up by my friends, no doubt in resentment at the
supposed unfriendly motive of the original proposition and the
manner in which it had been urged.
The only effect of the proposed statue is to present me
to the public as assenting to the parade of a public and
permanent testimonial to vanity and self-glorification which
do not exist. You will thus perceive that the movement, which
originated in a joke, but which you have made serious, is doing
me an injustice and an injury; and I beg of you to see to it
that it is at once stopped.
I hardly know which is the more absurd--the original
proposition or the grave comments of others, based upon the
idea that I have given the movement countenance. I have been
about as much abused as any man in public life; I can stand
abuse and bear even more than my share; but I have never yet
been charged with being deficient in common sense.
Yours very truly,
WM. M. TWEED.
This letter appeared in the _Sun_ the next day under the facetious
heading: “A Great Man’s Modesty--The Most Remarkable Letter Ever
Written by the Noble Benefactor of the People.” Editorial regret
was expressed at Tweed’s declination; and, still in solemn mockery,
the _Sun_ grieved over the return to the subscribers of the several
thousand dollars that had been sent to Shandley’s committee. William J.
Florence, the comedian, had put himself down for five hundred dollars.
Was it utterly absurd that the Tweed idolaters should have taken
seriously the _Sun’s_ little joke? No, for so serious a writer as
Gustavus Myers wrote in his “History of Tammany Hall” (1901) that “one
of the signers of the circular has assured the author that it was a
serious proposal. The attitude of the _Sun_ confirms this.” And another
grave literary man, Dr. Henry Van Dyke, set this down in his “Essays on
Application” (1908):
William M. Tweed, of New York, who reigned over the city for
seven years, stole six million dollars or more for himself and
six million dollars or more for his followers; was indorsed at
the heights of his corruption by six of the richest citizens of
the metropolis; had a public statue offered to him by the New
York _Sun_ as a “noble benefactor of the city,” etc.
Of course Mr. Myers and Dr. Van Dyke had never read the statue articles
from beginning to end, else they would not have stumbled over the brick
that even Tweed, with all his conceit, was able to perceive.
In July, 1871, when the New York _Times_ was fortunate enough to have
put in its hands the proof of what everybody already suspected--that
Senator Tweed, Comptroller Connolly, Park Commissioner Sweeny, and
their associates were plundering the city--the _Sun_ was busy with
its own pet news and political articles, the investigation of the
Orange riots and the extravagance and nepotism of President Grant’s
administration.
The _Sun_ did not like the _Times_, which had been directed, since
the death of Henry J. Raymond, in 1869, by Raymond’s partner, George
Jones, and Raymond’s chief editorial writer, Louis J. Jennings; but
the _Sun_ liked the Tweed gang still less. It had been pounding at it
for two years, using the head-lines “Boss Tweed’s Legislature,” or
“Mr. Sweeny’s Legislature,” every day of the sessions at the State
capital; but neither the _Sun_ nor any other newspaper had been able to
obtain the figures that proved the robbery until the county bookkeeper,
Matthew J. O’Rourke, dug them out and took them to the _Times_.
The books showed that the city had been gouged out of five million
dollars in one item alone--the price paid in two years to a Tweed
contracting firm, Ingersoll & Co., for furniture and carpets for the
county court-house. Enough carpets had been bought--or at least paid
for--to cover the eight acres of City Hall Park three layers deep. And
that five million dollars was only a fraction of the loot.
In September, 1871, after the mass-meeting of citizens in Cooper Union,
the _Sun_ began printing the revelations of Tweedism under the standing
head, “The Doom of the Ring.”
Tweed engaged as counsel, among others, William O. Bartlett, who was
not only counsel for the _Sun_ but, next to Mr. Dana, the paper’s
leading editorial writer at that time. The boss may have fancied that
in retaining Bartlett he retained the _Sun_, but it is more likely that
he sought Bartlett’s services because of that lawyer’s reputation as
an aggressive and able counsellor. If Tweed had any delusions about
influencing the _Sun_, they were quickly dispelled. On September 18, in
an editorial article probably written by Dana, the _Sun_ said:
While Mr. Bartlett, in his able argument before Judge Barnard
on Friday, vindicated Mr. Tweed from certain allegations set
forth in the complaint of Mr. Foley, he by no means relieved
him from all complicity in the enormous frauds and robberies
that have been committed in the government of this city. With
all his ability, that is something beyond Mr. Bartlett’s
power; and it is vain to hope that either of the leaders of
the Tammany Ring can ever regain the confidence of the public,
or for any length of time exercise the authority of political
office. They must all go, Sweeny, Tweed, and Hall, as well as
Connolly.
Mr. Tweed must not imagine that he can buy his way out of
the present complication with money, as he did in 1870. The
next Legislature will be made up of different material from
the Republicans he purchased, and the people will exercise a
sterner supervision over its acts.
A good picture of Tweed’s popularity, which he still retained among his
own people, was drawn in an editorial article in the _Sun_ of October
30, 1871, three days after the boss had been arrested and released in a
million dollars’ bail:
In the Fourth District William M. Tweed is sure to be
re-elected [to the State Senate]. The Republican factions,
after a great deal of quarreling, have concentrated on
O’Donovan Rossa, a well-known Fenian, but his chance is
nothing. Even if it had been possible by beginning in season to
defeat Tweed, it cannot be done with only a week’s time.
Besides, his power there is absolute. The district comprises
the most ignorant and most vicious portion of the city.
It is full of low grog-shops, houses of ill-fame, low
gambling-houses, and sailor boarding-houses, whose keepers
enjoy protection and immunity, for which they pay by the most
efficient electioneering services. Moreover, the district is
full of sinecures paid from the city treasury. If, instead
of having stolen millions, Mr. Tweed were accused of a dozen
murders, or if, instead of being in human form, he wore the
semblance of a bull or a bear, the voters of the Fourth
District would march to the polls and vote for him just as
zealously as they will do now, and the inspectors of election
would furnish for him by fraudulent counting any majority that
might be thought necessary in addition to the votes really
given.
Tweed was re-elected to the State Senate by twelve thousand plurality.
The great robber-boss was a source of news from his rise in the late
sixties to his death in 1878. As early as March, 1870, the _Sun_ gave
its readers an intimate idea of Tweed’s private extravagances under
the heading: “Bill Tweed’s Big Barn--Democratic Extravagance Versus
That of the White House--Grant’s Billiard Saloon, Caligula’s Stable,
and Leonard Jerome’s Private Theatre Eclipsed--Martin Van Buren’s Gold
Spoons Nowhere--Belmont’s Four-in-Hand Overshadowed--a Picture for
Rural Democrats.”
Beneath this head was a column story beginning:
The Hon. William M. Tweed resides at 41 West Thirty-sixth
Street. The Hon. William M. Tweed’s horses reside in East
Fortieth Street, between Madison and Park Avenues.
That was the _Sun’s_ characteristic way of starting a story.
Tweed was, in a way, responsible for the appearance of a _Sun_ more
than four pages in size. Up to December, 1875, there was no issue of
the _Sun_ on Sundays. In November of that year it was announced that
beginning on December 5 there would be a Sunday _Sun_, to be sold at
three cents, one cent more than the week-day price, but nothing was
said, or thought, of an increase In size.
On Saturday, December 4, Tweed, with the connivance of his keepers,
escaped from his house in Madison Avenue. This made a four-column story
on which Mr. Dana had not counted. Also, the advertisers had taken
advantage of the new Sunday issue, and there were more than two pages
of advertisements. There was nothing for it but to make an eight-page
paper, for which Dana, who then believed that all the news could be
told in a folio, apologised as follows:
We confess ourselves surprised at the extraordinary pressure of
advertisements upon our pages this morning; and disappointed
in being compelled to present the _Sun_ to our readers in a
different form from that to which they are accustomed. We
trust, however, that they will find it no less interesting
than usual; and, still more, that they will feel that although
the appearance may be somewhat different, it is yet the same
friendly and faithful _Sun_.
But the Sunday issue of the _Sun_ never went back to four pages, for
the eight-page paper had been made so attractive with special stories,
reprint, and short fiction that both readers and advertisers were
pleased. It was ten years, however, before the week-day _Sun_ increased
its size. Even during the Beecher trial (January, 1875) when the
_Sun’s_ reporter, Franklin Fyles, found himself unable to condense the
day’s proceedings within a page of seven columns, the _Sun_ still gave
all the rest of the day’s news.
Cummings’s right-hand man in the news department of the _Sun_ was Dr.
John B. Wood, the Great American Condenser. All the city copy passed
through his hands. He was then nearing fifty, a white-haired man who
wore two pairs of glasses with thick lenses, these crowned with a green
shade. He had been a printer on several papers and a desk man on the
_Tribune_, whence Dana brought him to the _Sun_. Wood’s sense of the
value of words was so acute that he could determine, as rapidly as his
eye passed along the pages of a story, just what might be stricken out
without loss. It might be a word, a sentence, a page; sometimes it
would be ninety-eight per cent of the article.
Even when his sight so failed that he was unable to read copy
continuously, Dr. Wood performed the remarkable feat of condensing
through a reader. Willis Holly read copy to him for months, six hours
a night. Holly might read three pages without interruption, while Wood
sat as silent as if he were asleep. Then----
“Throw out the introduction down to the middle of the second page,
begin with ‘John Elliott killed,’ and cut it off at ‘arrested him.’”
Joseph C. Hendrix, who became a member of Congress and a bank
president, was a _Sun_ cub reporter. One night he was assigned to read
copy to Dr. Wood. He picked up a sheet and began:
“‘The application of Mrs. Jane Smith for divorce from her husband, John
Smith--’”
“Cut out ‘her husband,’” said Wood.
“‘--who alleges cruelty,’” Hendrix continued, “‘in that he--’” Here the
reporter’s writing was blurred, and Hendrix, who could not decipher it,
said “Damn!”
“Cut out the ‘damn,’” said Dr. Wood.
In keeping news down to the bone Wood was of remarkable value to the
_Sun_ in those years when Dana showed that it was possible to tell
everything in four pages. New York was smaller then, and display
advertising had not come to be a science. The _Sun_ got along nicely on
its circulation, for the newsdealers paid one and one-third cents for
each copy. With the circulation receipts about fourteen hundred dollars
a day, the advertising receipts were clear profit. Amos Cummings had
such a fierce disregard for the feelings of advertisers that often,
when a good piece of news came in late, he would throw out advertising
to make room for it.
The city editors of the _Sun_ under Cummings were, in order, John
Williams, Lawrence S. Kane, Walter M. Rosebault, William Young, and
John B. Bogart. Williams, who had been a Methodist preacher, left the
_Sun_ in 1869 to become religious editor of the _Herald_. Kane, a big
blond Irishman with mutton-chop whiskers, held the city desk until the
summer of 1870 and then returned to the reportorial staff. Rosebault,
who had been one of the _Sun’s_ best young reporters, resigned from the
city editorship late in 1870 in order to study law. He afterward went
to San Francisco to be principal editorial writer of the _Chronicle_,
but soon returned to New York and for many years, while practising
law, he contributed editorial and special articles to the _Sun_. Mr.
Rosebault, who is still an active lawyer, told the present writer, in
July, 1918, that of all the reporters who served on his staff when
he was city editor of the _Sun_ only one, Sidney Rosenfeld, later a
dramatist and the first editor of _Puck_, was still alive.
The first telegraph editor of the _Sun_ was an Episcopalian clergyman,
Arthur Beckwith, afterward connected with the Brooklyn _Eagle_ and the
Brooklyn _Citizen_ as a law reporter. When he left the telegraph desk
of the _Sun_ his place was taken by Colonel Henry Grenville Shaw, a
Civil War veteran. Colonel Shaw left the _Sun_ to become night editor
of the San Francisco _Chronicle_ and was succeeded by Amos B. Stillman,
a ninety-pound man from Connecticut. He was a newspaperman in his
native state until the Civil War, and after Appomattox he went back
to Connecticut. He went on the _Sun_ in 1870 as telegraph editor, and
stayed on the same desk for forty-five years.
In the early days of Dana’s _Sun_ there were no night editors, for
it had not been found necessary to establish a central desk where
all the news of all the departments could be gathered together for
judgment as to relative value. Each desk man sent his own copy to the
composing-room, and the pages were made up by the managing editor or
the night city editor after midnight. Leisurely nights, those, with
no newspaper trains to catch and no starting of the presses until four
o’clock in the morning!
[Illustration:
AMOS JAY CUMMINGS
]
One evening in that period the other desk men in the news department of
the _Sun_ observed that Amos Stillman was extraordinarily busy and more
than usually silent. He scribbled away, revising despatches and writing
subheads, and it was after twelve o’clock when he got up, stretched,
and uttered one sentence:
“Quite a fire in Chicago!”
That was the October evening in 1871 when Mrs. O’Leary’s cow started
the blaze that consumed seventeen thousand buildings. To Deacon
Stillman it was just a busy night.
Deacon Stillman was born only eighteen months after the _Sun_--Ben
Day’s _Sun_; but even as this is being written he is strolling up and
down a corridor in the _Sun_ office, waiting for another old-timer,
some mere lad of sixty, to come out and have dinner with him.
Under Cummings was developed a young man who turned out to be one of
the great city editors of New York--John B. Bogart, of whom Arthur
Brisbane wrote that he was the best teacher of journalism that America
had produced. He was in most respects the opposite of Cummings. He had
all of Cummings’s love for the business, but not his tremendous rush.
Cummings was an explosion, Bogart a steady flame. Cummings roared,
Bogart was gentle.
Like Cummings and Stillman, Bogart was a Union veteran. In 1861, when
he was only sixteen years old, he left the New Haven store where
he was a clerk and enlisted in the Seventh Connecticut Volunteers.
After serving three years in the army, he returned home to become a
bookkeeper in a dry-goods store. He went on the _Sun_ February 21,
1871, as a general reporter. On March 17, 1873--his twenty-eighth
birthday--he was made city editor, the former city editor, William
Young, having been promoted to the managing editor’s desk to take the
place of Cummings, whose health was poor.
John Bogart remained at the city desk for seventeen years of tireless
work. He was a master of journalistic detail, a patient follower-up of
the stories which, like periscopes, appear and reappear on the sea of
events.
“He was a whole school of journalism in himself,” Brisbane wrote of
Bogart years afterward. “He could tell the young men where to go for
their news, what questions to ask, what was and what was not worth
while. Above all, he could give enthusiasm to his men. He worked by
encouraging, not by harsh criticism.”
Bogart always asked a young reporter whether he had read the _Sun_ that
morning. If one confessed that he had read only part of it, Bogart
would invite him to sit down, and would say:
“Mr. Jones, it is one of the salutary customs of this paper that every
reporter shall read everything in it before appearing for duty. Don’t
even skip the advertisements, because there are stories concealed in
many of them. The _Sun_ is good breakfast-food.”
The custom of Bogart’s time is the custom still, but a reporter has to
go harder at his reading than he did in the days of the four-page _Sun_.
If a new reporter had not absorbed the _Sun_ style, Bogart gently tried
to saturate him with it.
“I notice,” he said to a man who had covered a little fire the night
before, “that you begin your story with ‘at an early hour yesterday
morning,’ and that you say also that ‘smoke was seen issuing from an
upper window.’”
“Isn’t that good English?” asked the young man.
“It is excellent English,” Bogart replied calmly, “and it has been
indorsed by generations of reporters and copy-readers. If you look in
the other papers you will find that some of them also discovered smoke
issuing from an upper window at an early hour yesterday morning. We do
not deny that it is good English; but it is not good _Sun_ English.”
Never again did smoke issue from an upper window of that reporter’s
copy.
Under Cummings and Bogart the _Sun_ turned out _Sun_ men. A young
man from Troy, Franklin Fyles, was one of their first police-station
reporters. He did not know as many policemen as did Joseph Josephs,
who wore a silk hat and a gambler’s mustache, and who covered the West
Side stations, but he wrote well. He did not know as many desperate
characters as were honoured with the acquaintance of David Davids, the
East Side police reporter, but he knew a _Sun_ story when he saw it.
In 1875, five years after Fyles came on the _Sun_, he was the star
reporter, and he reported the Beecher trial. Ten thousand words a
day in longhand was an easy day’s work for the reports of that great
scandal. Fyles became the dramatic critic of the _Sun_ in 1885, and
continued as such until 1903. In that period he wrote several plays,
including “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” in which David Belasco was his
collaborator; “Cumberland ’61,” and “The Governor of Kentucky.” Fyles
died in 1911 at the age of 64.
Another police-station reporter of the _Sun_ was Edward Payson Weston,
who had been an office-boy in various newspaper offices until about
the beginning of the Civil War and had then become a reporter. Before
Dana bought the _Sun_ Weston had walked from Portland, Maine, to
Chicago--thirteen hundred and twenty-six miles--in twenty-six days.
Forty years later he walked it in twenty-five days.
Cummings liked Weston. Whatever faults there may have been in his
literary style, his knee action was a perfect poem. He could bring a
story down from the Bellevue morgue faster than all the horse-cars. He
was the best “leg man” in the history of journalism. In 1910, more than
four decades after the _Sun_ first took him on, Weston, then a man of
seventy years, walked from Los Angeles to New York in seventy-seven
days.
Henry Mann, a Civil War veteran, was the _Sun’s_ principal court
reporter. He covered the Tweed and Stokes trials and the impeachment of
Judge Barnard. Later he was exchange editor and he is remembered also
as the author of “The History of Ancient and Medieval Republics.”
Other _Sun_ reporters were Tom Cook, who came from California, had
the shiniest silk hat on Park Row, and knew Fisk and the rest of the
Erie crowd; Big Jim Connolly, one of the best news writers of his day;
the McAlpin brothers, Robert and Tod; and Chester S. Lord, who was to
become the managing editor of the _Sun_ and serve it in that capacity
for a third of a century.
William Young, who was city editor when Lord went on the paper, gave
him his first assignment--to get a story about the effect of the
Whisky Ring’s work on the liquor trade. Lord wrote a light and airy
piece which indicated that the ring’s operations would bring highly
moral results by decreasing the supply of intoxicants; but when the
copy-reader got through with the story this is the way it read:
A _Sun_ reporter interviewed several leading wholesale
liquor-dealers yesterday concerning the despatch from
Louisville, saying that all the old whisky in the country had
been purchased by a Western firm for a rise. They said that
they had sold their accumulated stock of prime whisky months
ago. One firm, the largest in the city, had sold nearly two
thousand barrels, stored since 1858. One shrewd dealer said it
was reported that Grant was in the ring, and that he wanted to
secure a supply to fall back on in his retirement.
Mark Maguire, the celebrated “Toppy,” was the chief of the sporting
writers. He was about the oldest man in the _Sun_ office, born before
Napoleon went to Elba. He was the first king of the New York newsboys,
and Barney Williams, the boy who first sold Ben Day’s _Sun_, once
worked for him.
Maguire had as customers, when they visited New York, Jackson, Webster,
Clay, and Calhoun. When prosperity came to him he opened road-houses
that were the resorts of horse-owners like Commodore Vanderbilt and
Robert Bonner. His Cayuga House, at McComb’s Dam, was named after his
own fast trotter, Cayuga Girl. Maguire’s intimacy with Bonner was such
that the hangers-on in the racing game believed that Bonner owned the
_Sun_ and transmitted his views to Dana through “Toppy.” Maguire worked
for the _Sun_ up to his death in 1889.
When Amos Cummings had an evening to spare from his regular news work
he would go with Maguire to a prize-fight and write the story of it.
Maguire invented the chart by which a complete record of the blows
struck in a boxing match is kept--one circle for the head and one
for the body of each contestant, with a pencil-mark for every blow
landed. After an evening in which Jem Mace was one of the entertainers,
Maguire’s chart looked like a shotgun target, but Cummings, who watched
the fighters while Mark tallied the blows, would make a live story from
it.
The _Sun_ of that day had women reporters; indeed, it had the first
real woman reporter in American journalism, Mrs. Emily Verdery Battey.
She worked on fashion stories, women’s-rights stories, and general-news
stories. She was one of the Georgia Verderys, and she went on the _Sun_
shortly after Mr. Dana took hold. Her brother, George Verdery, was
also a _Sun_ reporter. Another _Sun_ woman of that time was Miss Anna
Ballard, who wrote, among other things, the news stories that bobbed up
in the surrogates’ court.
The dramatic criticisms of the _Sun_, in the first three or four years
of the seventies, were written by two young lawyers recently graduated
from the law school of New York University, Willard Bartlett and Elihu
Root. Bartlett was a year the younger, but he ranked Root as a critic
because of his acquaintance--through his father, W. O. Bartlett--with
newspaper ways. If Lester Wallack was putting on “Ours,” that would be
Mr. Bartlett’s assignment, while Mr. Root went to report the advance
of art at Woods’s Museum, where was the Lydia Thompson troupe. If it
befell that on the same evening Edwin Booth produced “Hamlet” in a new
setting and George L. Fox appeared in a more glorious than ever “Humpty
Dumpty,” Critic Bartlett would see Booth; Assistant Critic Root, Fox.
In time these young journalists passed on to be actors in that more
complex and perhaps equally interesting drama, the law, which for
fourteen years they practised together. Mr. Bartlett figured as one of
Mr. Dana’s counsel in several of the _Sun’s_ legal cases. After thirty
years on the bench, retiring from the chief judgeship of the Court of
Appeals of the State of New York through the age statute in 1916, Judge
Bartlett is still actively interested in the _Sun_, and many of its
articles on legal and literary topics are contributed by him.
As for Mr. Root, his friendship with the _Sun_ has been unbroken for
almost fifty years, and he has made more news for it than most men.
Under such circumstances even the most jealous newspaper is willing to
forgive the desertion of an assistant dramatic critic.
It was Willard Bartlett, incidentally, who was the inventor of the
_Sun’s_ celebrated office cat. One night in the eighties the copy of
a message from President Cleveland to Congress came to the desk of
the telegraph editor. It was a warm evening, and the window near the
telegraph desk was open. The message fluttered out and was lost in
Nassau Street. The _Sun_ had nothing about it the next morning, and in
the afternoon, when Mr. Bartlett called on Mr. Dana, the matter of the
lost message was under discussion. The editor remarked that it was a
matter difficult to explain to the readers.
“Oh, say that the office cat ate it up,” suggested Bartlett.
Dana chuckled and dictated a paragraph creating the cat. Instantly the
animal became famous. Newspapers pictured it as Dana’s inseparable
companion, and the _Sun_ presently had another, and longer, editorial
article about the wonderful beast:
The universal interest which this accomplished animal has
excited throughout the country is a striking refutation that
genius is not honored in its own day and generation. Perhaps no
other living critic has attained the popularity and vogue now
enjoyed by our cat. For years he worked in silence, unknown,
perhaps, beyond the limits of the office. He is a sort of
Rosicrucian cat, and his motto has been “to know all and to
keep himself unknown.” But he could not escape the glory his
efforts deserved, and a few mornings ago he woke up, like
Byron, to find himself famous.
We are glad to announce that he hasn’t been puffed up by the
enthusiastic praise which comes to him from all sources.
He is the same industrious, conscientious, sharp-eyed, and
sharp-toothed censor of copy that he has always been, nor
should we have known that he is conscious of the admiration
he excites among his esteemed contemporaries of the press had
we not observed him in the act of dilacerating a copy of the
_Graphic_ containing an alleged portrait of him.
It was impossible not to sympathize with his evident
indignation. The _Graphic’s_ portrait did foul injustice to his
majestic and intellectual features. Besides, it represented him
as having a bandage over one eye, as if he had been involved
in controversy and had had his eye mashed. Now, aside from the
fact that he needs both eyes to discharge his literary duties
properly, he is able to whip his weight in office cats, and
his fine, large eyes have never been shrouded in black, and we
don’t believe they ever will be. He is a soldier as well as a
scholar.
We have received many requests to give a detailed account
of the personal habits and peculiarities of this feline
Aristarchus. Indeed, we have been requested to prepare a full
biographical sketch to appear in the next edition of “Homes of
American Authors.” At some future day we may satisfy public
curiosity with the details of his literary methods. But genius
such as his defies analysis, and the privacy of a celebrity
ought not to be rudely invaded.
It is not out of place, however, to indicate a few traits which
illustrate his extraordinary faculty of literary decomposition,
so to speak. His favorite food is a tariff discussion. When
a big speech, full of wind and statistics, comes within his
reach, he pounces upon it immediately and digests the figures
at his leisure. During the discussion of the Morrison Bill he
used to feed steadily on tariff speeches for eight hours a day,
and yet his appetite remained unimpaired.
When a piece of stale news or a long-winded, prosy article
comes into the office, his remarkable sense of smell instantly
detects it, and it is impossible to keep it from him. He always
assists with great interest at the opening of the office mail,
and he files several hundred letters a day in his interior
department. The favorite diversion of the office-boys is to
make him jump for twelve-column articles on the restoration of
the American merchant marine.
He takes a keen delight in hunting for essays on civil-service
reform, and will play with them, if he has time, for hours.
They are so pretty that he hates to kill them, but duty
is duty. Clumsy and awkward English he springs at with
indescribable quickness and ferocity; but he won’t eat it. He
simply tears it up. He can’t stand everything.
We don’t pretend he is perfect. We admit that he has an
uncontrollable appetite for the _Congressional Record_. We have
to keep this peculiar publication out of his reach. He will sit
for hours and watch with burning eyes the iron safe in which
we are obliged to shut up the _Record_ for safe-keeping. Once
in a while we let him have a number or two. He becomes uneasy
without it. It is his catnip.
With the exception of this pardonable excess he is a blameless
beast. He mouses out all the stupid stuff and nonsense that
finds its way into the office and goes for it tooth and claw.
He is the biggest copyholder in the world. And he never gets
tired. His health is good, and we have not deemed it necessary
to take out a policy on any one of his valuable lives.
Many of our esteemed contemporaries are furnishing their
offices with cats, but they can never hope to have the equal of
the _Sun’s_ venerable polyphage. He is a cat of genius.
The cat may have contracted his hatred of the dull and prosy from the
men who worked in the _Sun_ office when Amos Cummings smiled and swore
and got out the greatest four-page paper ever seen, singing the while
the song of Walker’s filibusters:
How would you like a soldier’s life
On the plains of Nicara-goo?
Marching away and fighting all day,
Nothing to eat and as much to pay--
We do it all for glory, they say,
On the plains of Nicara-goo.
Not a bit of breakfast did I see,
And dinner was all the same to me;
Two fried cats and three fried rats
Was a supper at Nicara-goo.
Marching away and fighting all day,
Nothing to eat and as much to pay--
We do it all for glory, they say,
On the plains of Nicara-goo!
Cummings worked so hard that in 1873 he broke down and the _Sun_ sent
him to Florida. There he wandered about, exploring rivers, studying
the natives, and writing for the _Sun_, over the signature of “Ziska,”
a series of travel letters as interesting as any that ever appeared
in a newspaper. When he returned to New York in 1876, John Kelly,
then endeavouring to raise Tammany from the mire into which Tweed had
dropped it, persuaded Cummings to become managing editor of the New
York _Express_. Cummings did not stay long on the _Express_, being
disgusted with Kelly’s hostility toward Tilden’s candidacy for the
presidential nomination, and he went back to the _Sun_.
[Illustration:
DANIEL F. KELLOGG
]
[Illustration:
AMOS B. STILLMAN
]
[Illustration:
JOHN B. BOGART
]
For the next ten years his efforts were mostly in the direction of
improving the weekly issue. In 1886 he was elected to the House
of Representatives from a West Side district, but he maintained
his connection with the _Sun_, and in 1887 he became editor of the
_Evening Sun_, then just started. In 1888 Cummings resigned from the
House, saying that he was too poor to be a Congressman, but on the
death of Representative Samuel Sullivan (“Sunset”) Cox he consented
to take the vacant place and continue Cox’s battles for the welfare
of the letter-carriers. His service in the House lasted fifteen
years. Cummings was a great labour advocate, not only in behalf
of letter-carriers, but of printers, navy-yard employees, and
musicians. He had the last-named in mind when he said in a speech on an
alien-labour bill:
As the law now stands, when a German student, or one of those
fellows that swill beer along the Rhine, desires to come here
for the summer, all he has to do is to get a saxophone or some
other kind of musical instrument, call himself an artist, and
be allowed to land here.
That was Amos’s convincing, if inelegant, style. When he introduced a
bill to compensate navy-yard men for labour already performed, but not
paid for, Representative Holman, of Indiana, asked:
“How much money will it take out of the Treasury?”
“None of your business!” snapped Cummings. “The government must pay its
just debts.”
While he was in the House, Cummings wrote a series of articles on the
big men of Washington. He was a delegate to the Democratic national
conventions of 1892 and 1896. He died in Baltimore May 2, 1902, and
a Republican House of Representatives voted a public funeral to this
militant Democrat.
Greater news men than Cummings followed him, undoubtedly, but there was
no newspaperman in New York before his time who knew better what news
was or how to handle it; not even the elder Bennett, for that great man
knew only the news that looked big. Cummings was the first to know the
news that felt big.
It was Cummings and his work that Henry Watterson had in mind when he
one day remarked to Mr. Dana:
“The _Sun_ is a damned good paper, but you don’t make it.”
That statement undoubtedly pleased the editor of the _Sun_, for it was
evidence from an expert that he had carried his theory to success.
He had set men free to write what they saw, as they saw it, in their
own way. It was the _Sun_ way, and that was what he wanted. As Dana
himself handed down this heritage of literary freedom in his editorial
page to Mitchell, so he gave to the men on the news pages, through Amos
Cummings and Chester S. Lord and their successors, the right to watch
with open eyes the world pass by, and to describe that parade in a
different way three hundred and sixty-five days a year.
CHAPTER XIII
DANA’S FAMOUS RIVALS PASS
_The Deaths of Raymond, Bennett, and Greeley Leave Him the Dominant
Figure of the American Newspaper Field.--Dana’s Dream of a Paper
Without Advertisements._
Four years after he became the master of the _Sun_, and a quarter
of a century before death took him from it, Dana found himself the
Nestor of metropolitan journalism. Of the three other great New York
editors of Dana’s time--three who had founded their own papers and
lived with those papers until the wing of Azrael shut out the roar of
the presses--Raymond had been the first, and the youngest, to go; for
his end came when he was only forty-nine, eighteen years after the
establishment of his _Times_.
Bennett, the inscrutable monarch of the _Herald_, died in 1872, three
years after Raymond, but Bennett, who did not establish the _Herald_
until he was forty, had owned it, and had given every waking hour to
its welfare, for thirty-seven years. The year of Bennett’s death saw
the passing of the unfortunate Greeley, broken in body and mind from
his fatuous chase of public office, within three weeks of his defeat
for the presidency. As the sprightly young editor of the Louisville
_Courier-Journal_, Colonel Henry Watterson, wrote in his paper in
January, 1873:
Mr. Bryant being no longer actively engaged in newspaper work,
Mr. Dana is left alone to tell the tale of old-time journalism
in New York. He, of all his fellow editors of the great
metropolis, has passed the period of middle age; though--years
apart--he is as blithe and nimble as the youngest of them,
and has performed, with the _Sun_, a feat in modern newspaper
practice that entitles him to the stag-horns laid down at his
death by James Gordon Bennett. Mr. Dana is no less a writer and
scholar than an editor; as witness his sketch of Mr. Greeley,
which for thorough character-drawing is unsurpassed. In a word,
Mr. Dana at fifty-three is as vigorous, sinewy, and live as a
young buck of thirty-five or forty.
His professional associates were boys when he was managing
editor of the _Tribune_. Manton Marble was at college at
Rochester, and Whitelaw Reid was going to school in Ohio. Young
Bennett and Bundy were wearing short jackets.
They were rough-and-tumble days, sure enough, even for New
York. There was no Central Park. Madison Square was “out of
town.” Franconi’s Circus, surnamed a “hippodrome,” sprawled its
ugly wooden towers, minarets, and sideshows over the ground
now occupied by the Fifth Avenue Hotel. _Miss Flora McFlimsy_
of the opposite square had not come into being; nay, Madison
Square itself existed in a city ordinance merely, and, like the
original of Mr. Praed’s Darnell Park, was a wretched waste of
common, where the boys skated and played shinny.
The elder Harpers stood in the shoes now worn by their
sons, who were off at boarding-school. George Ripley was as
larky as John Hay is. Delmonico’s, down-town, was the only
Delmonico’s. The warfare between the newspapers constituted
the most exciting topic of the time. Bennett was “Jack Ketch,”
Raymond was the “little villain,” and Greeley was by turns an
“incendiary,” a “white-livered poltroon,” and a “free-lover.”
Parke Godwin and Charles A. Dana were managing editors
respectively; both scholars and both, as writers, superior to
all the rest, except Greeley, who, as a newspaper writer, never
had a superior.
The situation is changed completely. Bennett, Greeley, and
Raymond are dead. Dana and Godwin, both about of an age, stand
at the head of New York journalism; while Reid, Marble, and
Jennings, all young men, wear the purple of a new era.
Will it be an era of reforms? There are signs that it will be.
Marble is a recruit. Reid is essentially a man of the world.
Jennings is an Englishman. One would think that these three,
led by two ripe scholars and gentlemen like Godwin and Dana,
would alter the character of the old partisan warfare in one
respect at least, and that if they have need to be personal,
they will be wittily so, and not brutally and dirtily personal;
the which will be an advance.
There will never be an end to the personality of journalism.
But there is already an end of the efficacy of filth. In this,
as in other things, there are fashions. What ill thing, for
example, can be said personally injurious of Reid, Marble,
Jennings, Bundy, and the rest, all hard-working, painstaking
men, without vices or peculiarities, who do not invite attack?
On the whole, the newspaper prospect in New York is very good.
There will be, perhaps, less of what we call “character” in New
York journalism, but more usefulness, honesty, and culture and
as the New York dailies, like the New York milliners, set the
fashion, these excellent qualities will diffuse themselves over
the country. They may even reach Nashville and Memphis. It is
an age of miracles. Who can tell?
“There will never be an end to the personality of journalism.” It is
curious to note in passing that Henry Watterson, who retired from the
active editorship of the _Courier-Journal_ on August 7, 1918, after
fifty years’ service, was the last of the men who, according to the
measure of forty years ago, were “personal journalists.” “Dana says,”
“Greeley says,” “Raymond says”--such oral credits are no longer given
by the readers of the really big and reputable newspapers of New York
to the men who write opinions. “Henry Watterson says” was the last of
the phrases of that style.
Dana believed in personal journalism and thought it would not pass
away. A few days after the death of Horace Greeley, the editor of the
_Sun_ printed his views on the subject:
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 be 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 interest to the
world and of no consequence to anybody, there will be nothing
but impersonal journalism.
And this is the essence of the whole question.
For all that, Dana must have felt lonely, for at that moment, at any
rate, the new chiefs of the _Sun’s_ rivals did not measure up to the
heights of their predecessors. To Dana, the trio that had passed
were men worthy of his steel, and worthy, each in his own way, of
admiration. Toward Greeley, in spite of the circumstances under which
Dana left the _Tribune_, the editor of the _Sun_ showed a kindly
spirit; not only in his support of Greeley for the presidency, which
may have sprung from Dana’s aversion to Grantism, but in his general
attitude toward the brilliant if erratic old man. As for Bennett, Dana
frankly believed him to be a great newspaperman, and never hesitated to
say so.
What Dana thought of the three may be judged by his editorial article
in the _Sun_ on the day after Greeley’s funeral:
In burying Mr. Greeley we bury the third founder of a newspaper
which has become famous and wealthy in this city during the
last thirty-five years. Mr. Raymond died three years and Mr.
Bennett barely six months ago.
These three men were exceedingly unlike each other, yet each of
them possessed extraordinary professional talents. Mr. Raymond
surpassed both Mr. Bennett and Mr. Greeley in the versatility
of his accomplishments, and in facility and smoothness as a
writer. But he was less a journalist than either of the other
two. Nature had rather intended him for a lawyer, and success
as a legislative debater and presiding officer had directed his
ambition toward that kind of life.
Mr. Bennett was exclusively a newspaperman. He was equally
great as a writer, a wit, and a purveyor of news; and he never
showed any desire to leave a profession in which he had made
himself rich and formidable.
Horace Greeley delighted to be a maker of newspapers, not so
much for the thing itself, though to that he was sincerely
attached, as for the sake of promoting doctrines, ideas, and
theories in which he was a believer; and his personal ambition,
which was very profound and never inoperative, made him wish to
be Governor, Legislator, Senator, Cabinet Minister, President,
because such elevation seemed to afford the clearest possible
evidence that he himself was appreciated and that the cause he
espoused had gained the hearts of the people. How incomplete,
indeed, would be the triumph of any set of principles if
their chief advocate and promoter were to go unrecognized and
unhonored!
It is a most impressive circumstance that each of these three
great journalists has had to die a tragic and pitiable death.
One perished by apoplexy long after midnight in the entrance
of his own home; another closed his eyes with no relative near
him to perform that last sad office; and the third, broken down
by toils, excitements, and sufferings too strong to be borne,
breathed his last in a private madhouse. What a lesson to the
possessors of power, for these three men were powerful beyond
others! What a commentary upon human greatness, for they were
rich and great, and were looked upon with envy by thousands
who thought themselves less fortunate than they! And amid such
startling surprises and such a prodigious conflict of lights
and shadows, the curtain falls as the tired actor, crowned with
long applause, passes from that which seems to that which is.
Louis J. Jennings succeeded Raymond as the editor of the _Times_, and
acted as such until 1876, when he returned to England, his desk being
taken by John Foord. Jennings went into politics in England, and was
elected a member of Parliament. He also wrote a life of Gladstone and
edited a collection of Lord Randolph Churchill’s speeches.
Bennett was followed in the possession of the _Herald_ by his son
and namesake. Whitelaw Reid took Greeley’s place at the head of the
_Tribune_. Dana did not like Reid in those days. In a “Survey of
Metropolitan Journalism” which appeared in the editorial columns of the
_Sun_ on September 3, 1875--the _Sun’s_ forty-second birthday--Dana
dismissed his neighbour of the then “tall tower” with--
We pass the _Tribune_ by. Our opinion of it is well known. It
is Jay Gould’s paper, and a disgrace to journalism.
Dana’s attitude toward the other big newspapers was more kindly:
The _Times_ is a very respectable paper, and more than that, a
journal of which the Republican party has reason to be proud.
It is not a servile organ, but a loyal partisan. We prefer for
our own part to keep aloof from the party politicians. They are
disagreeable fellows to have hanging about a newspaper office,
and their advice we do not regard as valuable. But we do not
decry party newspapers. They have their field, and must always
exist. The _Times_ is a creditable example of such a newspaper.
It would be better, however, if Mr. Jennings himself wrote the
whole editorial page.
The mistake of the _Times_ was in lapsing into the dulness of
respectable conservatism after its Ring fight. It should have
kept on and made a crusade against frauds of all sorts.
The _Herald_ has improved since young Mr. Bennett’s return. We
are attracted toward this son of his father. He has a passion
for manly sports, and that we like. If the shabby writers who
make jest of his walking-matches had an income of three or
four hundred thousand dollars a year, perhaps they would drive
in carriages instead of walking and dawdle away their time
on beds of ease or the gorgeous sofas of the Lotos Club. Mr.
Bennett does otherwise. He strides up Broadway with the step of
an athlete, dons his navy blue and commands his yacht, shoots
pigeons, and prefers the open air of Newport to the confinement
of the _Herald_ office.
The _World_ is a journal which pleases us on many accounts ...
but occasionally there is a bit of prurient wit in its columns
that might better be omitted. The _World_ is also too often
written in too fantastic language. Its young men seem to vie
with each other in tormenting the language. They will do better
when they learn that there is more force in simple Anglo-Saxon
than in all the words they can manufacture. We advise them to
read the Bible and Common Prayer Book. Those books will do
their souls good, anyway, and they may also learn to write less
affectedly.
The _Sun_ was as frank in discussing its own theories and ambitions
as it was in criticising its contemporaries for dulness and poor
writing. Dana’s dream, never to be realized, was a newspaper without
advertisements. He believed that by getting all the news, condensing
it into the smallest readable space, and adding such literary matter
as the readers’ tastes demanded, a four-page paper might be produced
with a reasonable profit from the sales, after paper and ink, men and
machinery, had been paid for.
An editorial article in the _Sun_ on March 13, 1875, was practically a
prospectus of this idea:
Until Robert Bonner sagaciously foresaw a handsome profit to
be realized by excluding advertisements and crowding a small
sheet with such choice literature as would surely attract a
mighty throng of readers, never did the owner of any serial
publication so much as dream of making both ends meet without
a revenue from advertisements. The _Tribune_, the _Times_, and
the _Herald_ at length ceased to expect a profit from their
circulation, and then they came to care for large editions only
so far as they served to attract advertisers.
It was then that the _Sun_ conceived the idea of a daily
newspaper that should yield more satisfactory dividends from
large circulation than had ever been declared by the journals
that had looked to the organism of political parties and to
enterprising advertisers for the bulk of their income. It saw
in New York a city of sufficient population to warrant the
experiment of a two-cent newspaper whose cost should equal that
of the four-cent dailies in every respect, the cost of white
paper alone excepted. Accordingly we produced the _Sun_ on a
sheet that leaves a small margin for profit, and by restricting
the space allotted to advertisers and eliminating the verbiage
in which the eight-page dailies hide the news, we made room in
the _Sun_ for not only all the real news of the day, but for
interesting literature and current political discussion as well.
It was an enterprise that the public encouraged with avidity.
The edition rapidly rose to one hundred and twenty thousand
copies daily, and it is now rising; while the small margin
of profit on that enormous circulation makes the _Sun_
able to exist without paying any special attention to
advertising--approaching very closely, in fact, to the
condition of a daily newspaper able to support itself on the
profits of its circulation alone.
Only a single further step remains to be taken. That step was
recently foreshadowed in a leader in which the _Sun_ intimated
that the time was not far distant in which it would reject more
advertising than it would accept. With a daily circulation of
fifty or a hundred thousand more, there is little doubt that
the _Sun_ would find it necessary to limit the advertisers as
the reporters and other writers for its columns are limited,
each to a space to be determined by the public interest in his
subject.
It will be a long stride in the progress of intellectual
as distinguished from commercial journalism, and the _Sun_
will probably be the first to make it, thus distancing the
successors of Raymond, Bennett, and Greeley in the great
sweepstakes for recognition as the Journal of the Future.
[Illustration:
JAMES GORDON BENNETT, SR.
]
[Illustration:
HORACE GREELEY
]
[Illustration:
HENRY J. RAYMOND
]
It must be remembered, in recalling the failure of Dana’s dream of a
paper _sans_ advertising, that his mind was not usually the port of
vain dreams. He was a practical man, with more business sense than any
other editor of his time, Bennett alone excepted. In him imagination
had not swallowed arithmetic, and there is no possible doubt that he
had good reason to believe in the practicability of the program he
so candidly outlined to his readers. It was part and parcel of his
faith in a four-page newspaper--a faith so strong, so well grounded on
results, that for the first twenty years of the Dana régime the _Sun_
never appeared in more than four pages, except in emergencies.
In the end, of course, the scheme was beaten by the very excellence of
its originator’s qualities. The _Sun_, by its popularity, drew more
and more advertising. By its good English, its freedom from literary
shackles, and the spirit of its staff, it attracted more and more
writers of distinction, each unwilling to be denied his place in the
_Sun_. Dana always had unlimited space for a good story, just as the
cat had an insatiable appetite for a bad one; and thus, through his
own genius, he destroyed his own dream, but not without having almost
proved that it was possible of realisation.
Dana believed that most of the newspapers of his day--particularly in
the seventies--were tiring out not only the reader, but the writer.
Commenting on a decline in the newspaper business in the summer of
1875, the _Sun_ said:
Some of our big contemporaries have been overdoing the thing.
They seem to think that to secure circulation it is necessary
to overload the stomachs of their readers.
The American newspaper-reader demands of an editor that he
shall not give him news and discussions in heavy chunks, but
so condensed and clarified that he shall be relieved of the
necessity of wading through a treatise to get at a fact, or
spending time on a dilated essay to get a bite at an argument.
Six or seven dreary columns are filled with leading
articles, no matter whether there are subjects to discuss of
public interest, or brains at hand to treat them. Our big
contemporaries exhaust their young men and drive them too
hard. The stock of ideas is not limitless, even in a New York
newspaper office.
Another thing has been bad. Men with actual capacity of
certain sorts for acceptable writing have been frightened off
from doing natural and vigorous work by certain newspaper
critics and doctrinaires who are in distress if the literary
proprieties are seemingly violated, and if the temper and
blood of the writer actually show in his work. They measure
our journalistic production by an English standard, which lays
it down as its first and most imperative rule that editorial
writing shall be free from the characteristics of the writer.
This is ruinous to good writing, and damaging to the sincerity
of writers.... If we choose to glow or cry out in indignation,
we do so, and we are not a bit frightened at the sound of our
own voice.
Dana himself had that peculiar faculty, as indescribable as instinct,
of knowing, when he saw an article in the paper, just how much work
the author of it had put in--particularly in cases where the labour
had been in leaving out, rather than in writing. As a result of this
intuition he never drove his men. He would accept three lines or three
columns for a day’s work, and his admiration might go out more heartily
to the three lines. As for the appearance of characteristics in men’s
writing, that was as necessary, in Dana’s opinion, as it was wicked in
the judgment of the ancient editors.
CHAPTER XIV
“THE SUN” AND THE GRANT SCANDALS
_Dana’s Relentless Fight Against the Whisky Ring, Crédit Mobilier,
“Addition, Division, and Silence,” the Safe Burglary Conspiracy
and the Boss Shepherd Scandal._
The first ten years of Dana’s service on the _Sun_ were marked by
the uprooting of many public evils. To use the mild phrasing of the
historian John Fiske, “Villains sometimes succeeded in imposing upon
President Grant, who was an honest, simple-hearted soldier without
much knowledge of the ways of the world.” To say it more concretely,
hardly a department of the national government but was alive with
fraud. The _Sun_, which had supported Grant in the election of
1868, turned against his administration in its first months, and
for years it continued to keep before the public the revelations of
corruption--which were easily made, so bold were the scoundrels, so
coarse their manner of theft.
Among the scandals which the _Sun_ either brought to light or was most
vigorous in assailing, these were the principal:
The Crédit Mobilier Scandal--This involved the names of many Senators
and Representatives who were accused of accepting stock in the Crédit
Mobilier of America, the fiscal company organised to build the Union
Pacific Railroad, as a reward for using their influence and votes in
favour of the great enterprise.
The Navy Department Scandal--In this the _Sun_ accused George M.
Robeson, Secretary of the Navy, of having permitted double payment
to contractors and of violating the law in making large purchases
without competitive bidding. Mr. Dana appeared as a witness in the
Congressional investigation of Robeson, who, in the end, while not
convicted of personal corruption, was censured for the laxity of his
official methods.
The Whisky Ring--This evil combination cheated the government out
of millions of dollars. It was made up of distillers, wholesale
liquor-dealers, and employees of the internal revenue office, these
conspiring together to avoid the payment of the liquor tax. The first
attack on the corrupt alliance was made in the _Sun_ of February
3, 1872, in an article by “Sappho,” one of the _Sun’s_ Washington
correspondents. Other great newspapers took up the fight, but the _Sun_
was the chief aggressor. As a result of the exposure, two hundred and
thirty-eight men were indicted and many of them, including the chief
clerk of the Treasury Department, were sent to prison.
“Addition, Division, and Silence”--On March 20, 1867, W. H. Kemble,
State Treasurer of Pennsylvania and one of the Republican bosses, wrote
the following letter to Titian J. Coffey, a lawyer and claim-agent in
Washington:
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.
W. H. KEMBLE.
When this letter fell into the hands of the _Sun_, which had already
made war on the ring formed for the collection of war claims, it saw
in Kemble’s last four words the sententious platform of wide-spread
fraud. It printed the letter, and kept on printing it, with that
iteration which Dana knew was of value in a crusade. In a few months
the whole country was familiar with the phrase so suggestive of plunder.
Kemble was a politician with a thick skin, but he at last became so
enraged at the repetition of “addition, division, and silence,” whether
uttered by street urchins or printed all over America as the watchword
of corruption--“honest graft,” he would have called it, if that phrase
had then been common--that he sued out a writ of criminal libel against
Mr. Dana and had him arrested as he was passing through Philadelphia.
The only result of this was to make the phrase more common than before.
Kemble was afterward convicted of trying to bribe Pennsylvania
legislators, and was sent to prison for a year.
The Post-Trader Scandal--William W. Belknap, Grant’s Secretary of
War, was charged with receiving from Caleb P. Marsh fifteen hundred
dollars in consideration for the appointment of John S. Evans to
maintain a trading-establishment at Fort Sill, in the Indian Territory.
The scandal came to the surface through the remark of Mrs. Belknap
that Mrs. Evans would have no place in society, “as she is only a
post-trader’s wife,” and the retort of Mrs. Evans, upon hearing of
this, that “a post-trader’s wife is as good as the wife of an official
who takes money for the appointment of a post-trader.”
The _Sun_ laid the story of bribery wide open, and the Senate proceeded
to impeach the Secretary of War. He escaped punishment by resigning
his office, twenty-five Senators voting “not guilty” on the ground
that Belknap’s resignation technically removed him from the Senate’s
jurisdiction. Thirty-five Senators voted “guilty,” but a two-thirds
vote was necessary to punish.
The Salary Grab--This was the act of Congress of March 3, 1873, which
raised the President’s salary from twenty-five thousand dollars to
fifty thousand, and the salaries of Senators and Representatives
from five thousand to seventy-five hundred. Its evil lay not in the
increases, but in the retroactive clause which provided that each
Congressman should receive five thousand dollars as extra pay for
the two-year term then ending. The assaults of the _Sun_ and other
newspapers so aroused public indignation that Congress was obliged to
repeal the act in January, 1874, and many Members returned their share
of the spoil to the Treasury.
The Boss Shepherd Scandal--The _Sun_ printed an article from Washington
accusing Alexander Shepherd, vice-president of the Board of Public
Works of the District of Columbia, and Henry D. Cooke, governor of the
District, with having a financial interest in the Metropolitan Paving
Company, which had many street contracts in the national capital.
Shepherd and Cooke laid a complaint of criminal libel against Mr. Dana,
and an assistant district attorney of the District of Columbia came
to New York and procured from United States Commissioner Davenport a
warrant for the editor’s arrest.
It was the intent of the prosecution to hale Dana to a Washington
police-court, where he would be tried without a jury. Dana had gone
willingly, even eagerly, to Washington when summoned in the Robeson
case, but the Shepherd strategy was so manifestly an attempt to
railroad him that an appeal was taken to the Federal court for the
southern district of New York. The historic decision of the district
judge--Samuel Blatchford, subsequently promoted to the United States
Supreme Court--may be summed up in one of its paragraphs:
The Constitution says that all trials shall be by jury, and
the accused is entitled, not to be first convicted by a court
and then to be convicted by a jury, but to be convicted or
acquitted _in the first instance_ by a jury.
As the _Sun_ said of this decision, important to the freedom of the
individual as well as to that of the press:
Those who sought to murder liberty, where they looked for a
second Jeffreys, found a second Mansfield.
The Safe Burglary Conspiracy--Columbus Alexander, a reputable citizen
of Washington, was active in the movement to smash the Washington
contractors’ ring. He sought to bring certain contractors’ books into
court and exposed the false set that was produced. The ringsters hired
a man to go to Mr. Alexander with a story that he could bring him the
genuine books. Then the gang, which included men in the secret-service
departments of the government, placed some of the genuine books in the
safe of the district attorney’s office and employed three professional
burglars to blow open the safe.
The books, taken from the safe, were carried to Alexander’s home by the
man who had approached him. Close behind came police, who were prepared
to arrest Alexander as soon as he received the “stolen property.”
He was to be accused of hiring the burglars to crack the district
attorney’s safe. But the hour was early in the morning, Alexander was
sleeping the deep sleep of the just, and the criminal rang his doorbell
in vain.
The ringsters then “arrested” the “thief,” and caused him to sign
a false confession, accusing Alexander; but the failure of their
theatricals had broken the hireling’s nerve as well as their own, and
the conspiracy collapsed. Two of the hired criminals turned state’s
evidence at the trial, but the powerful politicians of the ring were
able to bring about a disagreement of the jury.
These were the greatest of the scandals which the _Sun_ exposed in its
news columns and denounced on its editorial page. It was the cry of the
ringsters, and even of some honest men, that the _Sun’s_ assaults on
the evils that marred Grant’s administration were the result of Dana’s
personal dislike of the President. More specifically it was declared
that Dana was a disappointed office-seeker, and that the place of
collector of customs at the port of New York was the office he sought.
We have it on the unimpeachable testimony of General James Harrison
Wilson, the biographer of Dana, and, with Dana, a biographer of Grant,
that General Rawlins, Grant’s most intimate friend, told Dana’s
associates, and particularly General Wilson, that Dana was to be
appointed collector. There is no evidence that Dana ever asked Grant,
or any other man, for public office. One place, that of appraiser of
merchandise at the port of New York, was offered him, and he refused
it. The _Sun_ said editorially, replying to an insinuation made by the
_Commercial Advertiser_ that if Dana had been made collector his paper
would not denounce the administration:
The idea that the editor of the _Sun_, which shines for all,
could consent to become collector of the port of New York is
extravagant and inadmissible. It would be stepping down and out
with a vengeance.
And yet we do not mean that the collector of New York need be
other than an upright man. Moses H. Grinnell was such, and Tom
Murphy, though a politician, a crony of Boss Grant, and one
of the donors of Boss Grant’s cottage, certainly never took a
dollar of money from the Federal Treasury to which he was not
entitled. General Arthur, the present collector, is a gentleman
in every sense of the word.
The office of collector is respectable enough, but it is not
one that the editor of the _Sun_ could desire to take without
deserving to have his conduct investigated by a proceeding _de
lunatico_.
Dana and the _Sun_ lost friends because of the assaults on Grantism.
The warfare was bitter and personal. In the case of Belknap, for
instance, the _Sun_ was attacking a man whom Dana, having known him as
a good soldier, had recommended for appointment as Secretary of War.
But it must be recalled that at the very height of his antagonism to
Grant, the President, Dana never receded from his opinion that Grant,
the general, was the Union’s greatest soldier. And the _Sun_ was quick
to applaud him as President when, as in currency matters, he took a
course which Dana considered right.
The friends of Grant, nevertheless, turned against Dana and his
paper. Some of them, stockholders in the Sun Printing and Publishing
Association, quit the concern when they found themselves unable to turn
Dana from his purpose. All their pleadings were vain.
“A few years from now,” Dana would reply, “I shall be willing to accept
whatever judgment the nation passes on my course of action; but now I
must do as I think right.”
So far as the material prosperity of the _Sun_ was concerned, the
desertion of Grant’s friends hurt it not a whit. For every reader lost,
four or five were won. Men may stop reading a paper because it disgusts
them; they rarely quit it because it is wounding them.
“I don’t read the _Sun_,” said Henry Ward Beecher during his trial,
“and don’t allow anybody to read it to me. What’s the good of a man
sticking pins into himself?”
The _Sun_ made this reply to Beecher’s assertion:
Everybody reads the _Sun_--the good, that they may be
stimulated to do better; the bad, in fear and trembling lest
their wickedness shall meet its deserts.
In Beecher’s case, as in Grant’s, the _Sun_ believed that it was doing
a public service in laying open wrongful conditions. In answer to one
who criticised its brutal candour about the Plymouth Church scandal the
_Sun_ said:
The exposure of the moral nastiness in Brooklyn is a salutary
thing. If, when the exposure of the scandal took place, the
people had been indifferent--as indifferent as Beecher assumed
to be--and had received no shock to their sense of purity
and propriety, then the Jeremiahs might well have bewailed
the turpitude of society and prophesied evil things for the
country. Then, indeed, the poison would have been in the whole
social atmosphere....
The Plymouth pastor, if a guiltless man, has brought all this
trouble on himself by his cowardly course in dealing with the
accusations against him....
If he is not a bold man, strong in the truth and in purity,
what business has he to preach the religion of the Apostles
to his fellow men--he who distributed Sharp’s rifles to the
Kansas combatants with slavery, who denounced sin and bore
his head high as a man of freedom of thought and action? To
have kept himself consistent, he should not have dallied with
Tilton and Moulton in secret, but if entrenched in innocence
he should have dragged out their slanders and torn to pieces
their plans from the pulpit where he had preached courage under
difficulties, divine faith under sorrow, and bold encounter
with sin. This would soon have expelled the poison lurking in
the social atmosphere, but Beecher did not do it.
Perhaps Beecher’s thanks were not due to Dana, but Grant’s surely were.
It is impossible that scandals like those of the Whisky Ring could
have lain hidden forever. If they had not been exposed when they were,
they would have come to the top later, perhaps after Grant went out of
office, and when his cry, “Let no guilty man escape!” would have been
in vain.
The _Sun’s_ fights against the scandals of the Grant period were no
more bitter than its attacks on the frauds attending the Presidential
election of 1876, although Dana had no cause for personal animosity
toward Hayes. The _Sun’s_ chief Washington correspondent, A. M. Gibson,
who handled many of the Grant scandals, wrote most of the news stories
about the theft of the Presidency by Mr. Hayes’s managers. He also
published in book form an official history of the fraud.
Joseph Pulitzer, then newly come from the West, was assigned by Dana
to cover the proceedings of the Electoral Commission in semieditorial
style. Pulitzer was later, in 1878, a European correspondent of the
_Sun_.
CHAPTER XV
“THE SUN” AND “HUMAN INTEREST”
_Something About Everything, for Everybody.--A Wonderful Four-Page
Paper.--A Comparison of the Styles of “Sun” Reporters in Three
Periods Twenty Years Apart._
The political scandals made good reading, but the _Sun_ was not
content to feed its readers on investigations. It put a little bit of
everything on their breakfast-plates--the Moody and Sankey revivals,
Mr. Keely’s motor, which didn’t work, and young Edison’s multiple
telegraph, which did; the baseball games of the days when Spalding
pitched for Boston and Anson and Reach were at first and second base,
respectively, for the Philadelphia Athletics; the presentation of a
cup to John Cable Heenan, the prize-fighter, as the handsomest and
best-dressed man at the ball of the Shandley Association; an interview
with Joaquin Miller on Longfellow; the wiggles of the sea-serpent
off Swampscott; a ghost-story from Long Island, with a beautiful
spook lashed to the rigging of a spectral bark; the arrival of New
York’s first Chinese laundryman; Father Tom Burke’s lectures on
Ireland; the lectures of Tyndall on newly-discovered phenomena of
light; the billiard-matches between Cyrille Dion and Maurice Daly; a
tar-and-feathers party in Brooklyn--the _Sun_ skimmed the pan of life
and served the cream for two cents.
The familiar three-story head-line, which was first used by the
_Sun_ on the day of Grant’s inauguration, and which stayed the same
until long after Mr. Dana’s death, attracted readers with the magic
of the head-writers’ art. “The Skull in the Chimney,” “Shaved by a
Lady Barber,” “A Man Hanged by Women,” “Burned Alive for $5,000,”
“The Murder in the Well,” “Death Leap in a Theatre,” “An Aged Sinner
Hanged,” “The Duel in the Bedroom,” “Horrors of a Madhouse,” “A Life
for a Love-Letter”--none could glance at the compelling titles of the
_Sun_ stories without remaining to read. They are still fascinating in
an age when lady barbers would attract no attention.
A typical _Sun_ of 1874 might contain, in its four pages, six columns
about the Beecher-Tilton case; four columns of editorial articles;
a letter from Eli Perkins (Melville DeLancey Landon) at Saratoga,
declaring that the spa was standing still commercially because of its
lack of good drinking-water; a column, also from Saratoga, describing
the defeat of Preakness by Springbok; the latest in the strange case
of Charley Ross; a column headed “Life in the Metropolis--Dashes Here
and There by the _Sun’s_ Reporters”; a column of “Sunbeams,” a column
about trout-fishing, two columns of general news, and five columns of
advertisements.
Instead of Eli Perkins’s letter, there might be a critique by Leopold
Damrosch, from Baireuth, of Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung,” just presented;
or a dissection, by “Monsieur X,” of E. A. Sothern’s _Dundreary_.
“Monsieur X” was Napoleon Leon Thiéblin, who was for years one of the
_Sun’s_ most distinguished critics and essayists. He was that kind of
newspaperman who could--and did--write on Saturday of the political
news of Bismarck and on Sunday of the crowd at Coney Island.
Thiéblin, who was of French blood, was born in St. Petersburg in 1834.
He was graduated at the Russian Imperial Academy of Artillery, and
commanded forty pieces of cannon at the siege of Sebastopol. At the
close of the Crimean War he went to London and became a member of the
staff of the _Pall Mall Gazette_, reporting for that journal the French
side of the war with Germany in 1870–71, and the atrocities of the
Commune, over the pen-name of “Azamet Batuk.” He reported the Carlist
War in Spain for the New York _Herald_, and then came to America to
lecture, but Dana persuaded him to join the _Sun_ staff. He contributed
to the _Sun_ many articles on foreign affairs, including a series
on European journalism; “The Stranger’s Note-Book,” which was made
up of New York sketches; letters from the Centennial Exposition at
Philadelphia; and the Wall Street letters signed “Rigolo.”
In the “Sunbeams” column were crowded the vagrant wit and wisdom of
the world. The items concerned everything from great men in European
chancelleries to organ-grinders in Nassau Street:
The mules are all dying in Arkansas.
A printer in Texas has named his first-born Brevier Fullfaced
Jones.
Real estate is looking up at New Orleans.
Translations from Hawthorne are becoming popular in France.
Venison costs six cents a pound in St. Paul.
Queen Victoria says every third woman in Cork is a beauty.
Goldwin Smith is coming to the United States.
The Pope denounces short dresses.
The same terseness is seen in the “Footlight Flashes,” begun in 1876:
Clara Morris takes her lap-dog out for a daily drive.
Miss Claxton is meeting with indifferent success in
“Conscience.”
Not less than $30,000 was spent last evening in the theatres of
New York.
John T. Raymond drew excellent houses as _Colonel Sellers_ at
the Brooklyn Theatre.
For the term of their appearance in “King Lear,” Lawrence
Barrett will receive $1,200 a week; E. E. Sheridan, $1,000;
Frederick B. Warde, $500.
The interview, invented by the elder Bennett, was becoming more and
more popular. The _Sun_ used it, not only as the vehicle of acquired
information, but sometimes as the envelope of humour. Take, for
example, this bit, printed in 1875, but as fresh in style and spirit as
if it were of the product of a reporter of 1918:
INTERVIEWING VANDERBILT
ANOTHER REPORTER COMES AWAY FREIGHTED WITH VALUABLE INFORMATION
Commodore Vanderbilt was eighty-one years old yesterday. He
spent the day in his Fourth Avenue offices, taking his usual
drive in the afternoon. A _Sun_ reporter visited him in the
evening to inquire about a favorable time for selling a few
thousands of New York Central.
“This,” said the commodore, slowly and solemnly, as he entered
the drawing-room, “is my birthday.”
“Indeed!” said the reporter. “Do you think the preferred
stock----”
“To-day,” the commodore interrupted, “I am eighty-one years
old. I am stronger----”
“Is there any prospect of an immediate rise?”
“I have never gone into the late-supper business,” the
commodore answered, apparently not catching the drift of the
question; “and I have always been a very temperate man. But how
did you find out that this was my birthday?”
“You hinted at the fact yourself,” the reporter replied. “Will
the Erie troubles----”
“The Erie troubles will not prevent me from beginning my
eighty-second year with a young heart and a clear conscience.”
“And with the prospect of seeing a good many more birthday
anniversaries?” the reporter asked.
“That, my dear boy,” said the commodore, “is one of those
things that no fellow can tell about.”
“Do you think that this is a good time to sell?”
“No, it’s never a good time to sell after banking-hours.”
“Good evening!”
“Good evening! Drop in again.”
[Illustration:
JULIAN RALPH
]
How did the _Sun_ reporters of the seventies compare with those of
later years? As no two reporters are alike in vision and style, no
two occasions identical in incident, no two dramatic moments twin, it
is better to make comparison by choosing arbitrarily scenes far apart
in years, but set on similar stages, and to lay before the reader
the work of the _Sun_ reporter in each case. Let us take, because of
their resemblance in public interest and the similarity of physical
surroundings, the close of the trials, twenty years apart, of Edward
S. Stokes for the murder of James Fisk, Jr.; of Lizzie Borden for the
killing of her father and step-mother, and of Charles Becker for the
assassination of Herman Rosenthal.
The following is from the _Sun_ of January 6, 1873:
Stokes took his accustomed place, and his relatives sat down
facing the jurors. The judge entered and took his place. Then,
amid the most solemn silence, the twelve jurymen filed in and
seated themselves. The awful conclusion at which they had
arrived could be read in their faces. Each juror’s name was
called, and with the usual response.
The judge turned toward them, and in a low, clear voice asked:
“Gentlemen, have you agreed on a verdict?”
The foreman of the jury arose and said, “We have.”
Clerk of the Court: “Gentlemen of the jury, rise. Prisoner,
stand up. Gentlemen of the jury, look upon the prisoner.
Prisoner, look upon the jury. What say you, gentlemen of the
jury? Do you find the prisoner at the bar guilty or not guilty?”
Foreman of the Jury: “Guilty of murder in the first degree.”
A passionate wail that made men’s hearts leap rose from the
group that clustered round the prisoner, and the head of the
horror-stricken girl, from whose bosom the anguished cry was
rent, fell upon the shoulder of her doomed brother.
The jury was polled by request of the prisoner’s counsel. No
sooner had the last man answered “Yes” to the question whether
all agreed on the verdict than the prisoner, erect and firm,
turned his face full upon Mr. Beach (of the prosecution), who
at one time had been his counsel in a civil case.
“Mr. Beach,” the prisoner said, slowly and in a full-toned
voice, “you have done your work well. I hope you have been well
paid for it.”
Then the prisoner sank slowly into his seat. Mr. Beach made
no reply. Mr. Fellows, assistant district attorney, explained
that he had refused to try the case unless Mr. Beach and Mr.
Fullerton were associated with him. They had consented to join
him at the request of District Attorney Garvin, and without any
fee from any member of Colonel Fisk’s family.
The prisoner half-arose and, sweeping the air with his clenched
fist, said:
“Mr. Fellows, say that they were hired by Jay Gould. Please say
that!”
The sensation in court was such as is seldom known. You could
hear it as you hear the wind stirring the trees of the forest.
Then the court discharged the jury and the people began to move.
The following was printed in the _Sun_ of June 21, 1893, under date of
New Bedford, Massachusetts:
“Lizzie Andrew Borden,” said the clerk of the court, “stand
up!”
She arose unsteadily, with a face as white as marble.
“Gentlemen, have you agreed upon a verdict?” said the clerk to
the jury.
It was so still in court that the flutter of two fans made a
great noise.
“We have,” said Foreman Richards boldly.
The prisoner was gripping the rail in front of the dock as if
her standing up depended upon its keeping its place.
“Lizzie Andrew Borden,” said the clerk, “hold up your right
hand. Jurors, look upon the prisoner. Prisoner, look upon the
foreman.”
Every juryman stood at right-about-face, staring at the woman.
There was such a gentle, kindly light beaming in every eye that
no one questioned the verdict that was to be uttered. But God
save every woman from the feelings that Lizzie Borden showed
in the return look she cast upon that jury! It was what is
pictured as the rolling gaze of a dying person. She seemed not
to have the power to move her eyes directly where she was told
to, and they swung all around in her head. They looked at the
ceiling; they looked at everything, but they saw nothing. It
was a horrible, a pitiful sight, to see her then.
“What say you, Mr. Foreman?” said the gentle old clerk.
“Not guilty!” shouted Mr. Richards.
At the words the wretched woman fell quicker than ever an ox
fell in the stockyards of Chicago. Her forehead crashed against
the heavy walnut rail so as to shake the reporter of the _Sun_
who sat next to her, twelve feet away, leaning on the rail.
It seemed that she must be stunned, but she was not. Quickly,
with an unconscious movement, she flung up both arms, threw
them over the rail, and pressed them under her face so that it
rested on them. What followed was mere mockery, but it was the
well-governed order of the court and had to be gone through
with.
And finally, this is from the _Sun_ of May 23, 1914:
“Charles Becker to the bar!”
Once more the door that gives entrance toward the Tombs as well
as to the jury-room was opened. A deputy sheriff appeared, then
Becker, then a second deputy. One glance was all you needed to
see that Becker had himself under magnificent control. His iron
nerve was not bending. He swung with long strides around the
walls and came to a stand at the railing. Those who watched him
did not see a sign of agitation. He was breathing slowly--you
could see that from the rise and fall of his powerful
chest--and smiling slightly as he glanced toward his counsel.
He looked for the first time toward the jurors. There was
confidence and hope shining in his eyes. Coolly, without haste,
he studied the face of every man in the box. Not one of them
met his eye. Foreman Blagden gazed at the floor. Frederick G.
Barrett, Sr., juror No. 12, studied the ceiling. The others
gazed into space or turned their glance toward the justice.
There was the most perfect silence in the court-room. The
movements of trolley-cars in Centre Street made a noise like
rolling thunder. A pneumatic riveter at work on a building
close by set up a tremendous din.
And yet such sounds and annoyances were forgotten, ceased to be
of consequence, when Clerk Penny bent toward the foreman and
slowly put the customary question:
“Gentlemen of the jury, have you agreed upon your verdict?”
Mr. Blagden’s reply was barely audible; many in the room sensed
its import, but failed to grasp the actual words. It was
obvious that the foreman, having to express the will of his
associates, was stirred by such feeling as seldom comes to any
man.
“Guilty as charged in the indictment,” he breathed more than
spoke.
Becker’s right hand was then gripped to the railing. He held
his straw hat in his left hand, which, as his arm was bent
backward and upward, rested against the small of his back. It
is the plain truth that he took the blow without a quiver.
After a second, it may be, he coughed just a little; a mere
clearing of the throat. But his mouth was firm. His dark face
lost no vestige of color. His black eyes turned toward the
jurymen, who still avoided his glance, who looked everywhere
but at the man they had condemned.
If comment were needed, it would be that the _Sun_ reporter in the
court-room at New Bedford had the advantage of describing a protagonist
who, by her sex and by the very mystery that was left unsolved at her
acquittal, was a far more dramatic figure than Stokes or the police
lieutenant. The climaxes quoted are useful as an illustration of the
advance of reporting from 1873, when the _Sun_ style was still forming,
to 1893 and 1914, when it was fully formed; not as a comparison between
what may not have been the best work of the reporter of the Stokes
trial, Henry Mann, and the stories by Julian Ralph, who saw Lizzie
Borden fall, and Edwin C. Hill, who wrote the Becker article.
The _Sun_ omitted the weary introductions that had been the fashion in
newspapers--leading paragraphs which told over again what was in the
head-lines and were merely a prelude to a third and detailed telling.
The _Sun_ reporter began at the beginning, thus:
The Hon. John Kelly, wearing a small bouquet in the lapel
of his coat, stepped out of his coach in front of Cardinal
McCloskey’s residence in Madison Avenue just before eight
o’clock yesterday morning. A few minutes later three other
coaches arrived, and their occupants entered the house. Many
of the neighbors knew that a niece of the cardinal was to be
married to Mr. Kelly, and they strained their eyes through
plate-glass windows in the hope that they might see the bride
and the groom. Cardinal McCloskey, having been apprized of the
arrival of the wedding-party, went to the chapel in the other
part of the house, and at about a quarter past eight, the time
fixed for the mass _pro sponsis_, the marriage ceremony was
begun.
In the longer and more important stories, the rule was adhered to as
closely as possible. Prolixity, fine writing, and hysteria were taboo.
Mark the calmness with which the _Sun_ reporter began his story of the
most sensational crime of the late seventies:
Two little mounds of red-colored earth around a small hole in
the ground, and a few feet of downtrodden grass, were all that
marked the last resting-place of Alexander T. Stewart yesterday
morning. In the dead of the night robbers had dug into the
earth above the vault, removed one of the stones that covered
it, and stolen the body of the dead millionaire.
The human lights of life were caught by the _Sun_ men and transferred
to every page of every issue. In 1878 a _Sun_ reporter was sent to
Menlo Park, New Jersey, to see how a young inventor there, who had just
announced the possibility of an incandescent electric light, worked:
Here Mr. Edison dropped his cigar-stump from his mouth, and,
turning to Griffin, asked for some chewing-tobacco. The private
secretary drew open his drawer and passed out a yellow cake as
large as a dinner-plate. The professor tore away a chew, saying:
“I am partly indebted to the _Sun_ for this tobacco. It printed
an article saying that I chewed poor tobacco. That was so. The
Lorillards saw the article and sent me down a box of the best
plug that ever went into a man’s mouth. All the workmen have
used it, and Grif says there is a marked moral improvement in
the men. It seems, however, to have the opposite effect on
Grif. You see that he has salted away the last cake for his own
use.”
Nearly forty years later _Sun_ reporters still went to see Mr. Edison
borrow white magic from nature and chewing-tobacco from his employees,
and to describe both interesting processes.
With Dana’s knowledge of what people wanted to read was mixed a
curiosity, sometimes frankly expressed in the _Sun_, as to just why
they wanted to read some things a great deal more than other things.
It must be remembered that even in the seventies and eighties not
everybody read a newspaper every day; some reserved their pennies
and their eyes for great climaxes. The _Sun_, a paper which paid
much attention to political matters, naturally found its circulation
sharply affected by important political happenings. It sold ninety-four
thousand extra copies on the morning after the Tilden-Hayes
election--two hundred and twenty-two thousand copies, in all, being
disposed of before eight o’clock in the morning. In 1875, when the
pugilist, John Morrissey, who was supported by the _Sun_ for the State
Senate because he was anti-Tammany, defeated Fox, the _Sun_ sold
forty-nine thousand extra copies on the day after the election.
The assassination of the Czar Alexander II of Russia did not sell an
extra paper, but the hanging of Foster, the “car-hook murderer,” sent
the sales up seventeen thousand. The deaths of Cornelius Vanderbilt
and Alexander T. Stewart had no effect on the _Sun’s_ circulation, the
passing of Napoleon III raised it only one thousand for the day, and
the death of Pius IX caused only four thousand irregular readers to
buy the paper; but the execution of Dolan, a murderer now practically
forgotten, sent the sales up ten thousand. The beginning of coercive
measures in Ireland by the arrest of Michael Davitt sold no extra
papers in a city full of Irishmen, but the Fenian invasion of Canada
meant the sale of ten thousand copies more than usual.
Tweed’s death caused an increase of five thousand; the death of
President Garfield, of seventy-four thousand. Only thirteen thousand
extras were sold after the Brooklyn Theatre fire, while the Westfield
steamboat explosion sold thirty-one thousand. Twenty-one thousand
irregular readers bought the _Sun_ to read about the first blasting of
Hell Gate in 1876, while only eight thousand were interested in the
fact that Tilden had been counted out by the Electoral Commission.
The flare-up of the Beecher scandal, in August, 1874, sold as many
extras--ten thousand--as the shooting of Fisk.
The beginning of the Crédit Mobilier exposé added only a thousand to
the normal circulation, but on the morning after a big walking-match
the presses had to run off forty thousand more than their usual daily
grist. The resignation of Roscoe Conkling and Thomas C. Platt from the
United States Senate hoisted the circulation only two thousand, but
the fight between John L. Sullivan and Paddy Ryan meant a difference
of eleven thousand. The opening of the Centennial Exposition in
Philadelphia caused extra sales of three thousand; an international
rifle-match at Creedmoor, ten thousand.
In 1882 the _Sun_ made the calculation that the average effect of
certain sorts of news in increase of circulation was about as follows:
Presidential elections 82,000
State and city elections 42,000
Last days of walking-matches 25,000
October State elections in Presidential years 21,000
Great fires 10,000
Notable disasters 9,000
Hangings in or near New York 8,000
The _Sun_ expressed a curiosity to know--
Who are the eighty or ninety thousand people, not regular
readers of the _Sun_, that buy the paper after a Presidential
election? Where do they live? Do they read the papers only
after exciting events?
On its fiftieth birthday--September 3, 1883--the _Sun_ printed a table
showing the high-tide marks of its circulation:
November 8, 1876--Presidential election 222,390
Sept. 20, 1881--Garfield’s death 212,525
Nov. 3, 1880--Presidential election 206,974
July 13, 1871--Orange riots 192,224
Sept. 21, 1881--Second day after Garfield’s death 180,215
Nov. 3, 1875--State and city election 177,588
July 3, 1881--Garfield shot 176,093
In the same article, a page review written by Mr. Mitchell, the reasons
for the _Sun’s_ success were succinctly given:
No waste of words, no nonsense, plain, outspoken expressions of
honest opinion, the abolishment of the conventional measures of
news importance, the substitution of the absolute standard of
real interest to human beings, bright and enjoyable writing,
wit, philosophical good humor, intolerance of humbug, hard
hitting from the shoulder on proper occasions--do we not see
all these qualities now in our esteemed contemporaries on every
side of us, and in every part of the land?
By this time Dana had framed a newspaper organisation more nearly
perfect than any other in America. Grouping about him men suited to
the _Sun_, to himself, and to one another, he had created a literary
world of his own--a seeing, thinking, writing world of keen objective
vision. Men of a hundred various minds, each with his own style, his
own ambition, his own manner of life, the _Sun_ staff focused their
abilities into the one flood of light that came out every morning. It
was a bohemia of brightness, not of beer; unconventional in its manner
of seeing and writing, but not in its collars or its way of living. The
_Sun_ spirit, unquenchable then as now, burned in every corner of the
shabby old rooms. It was the spirit of unselfish devotion, not so much
to Dana or his likable lieutenants as to the invisible god of a machine
in which each man was a pinion, meshing smoothly with his neighbour.
That these pinions did mesh without friction was due, in largest part,
to Dana’s intuitive faculty of choosing men who would “fit in” rather
than men who could merely write. It was by his choosing that the _Sun_
came to have for its editorial page writers like W. O. Bartlett and
E. P. Mitchell, M. W. Hazeltine and N. L. Thiéblin, Henry B. Stanton
and John Swinton, James S. Pike and Fitz-Henry Warren, Paul Dana and
Thomas Hitchcock, Francis P. Church and E. M. Kingsbury. It was by
his choosing that the Sun had managing editors like Amos J. Cummings
and Chester S. Lord, city editors like John B. Bogart and Daniel F.
Kellogg, and night city editors like Henry W. Odion, Ambrose W. Lyman,
and S. M. Clarke.
Managing editors and city editors hired men, hundreds of them, but
always according to the Dana plan--first find the man, then find the
work for him. Chester S. Lord, who took more men on the _Sun_ than
any other of its executives, was fully familiar with the Dana method
when he began, in 1880, a career as managing editor that lasted for
thirty-two years of brilliant achievement; and he followed it until he
retired. He had been on the _Sun_ since 1872, shortly after he came
out of Hamilton College, and he had served as a reporter, as editor
of suburban news, as assistant night city editor under Lyman, and
as assistant managing editor in the brief period when Ballard Smith
succeeded Cummings and Young as chief of the _Sun’s_ news department.
At the beginning of his service as managing editor Lord found himself
with a staff which included Bogart, Dr. Wood, Stillman, Odion, E. M.
Rewey, Garrett P. Serviss, and Cyrus C. Adams, all trained desk men and
most of them good reporters as well; and such first-class reporters and
correspondents as Julian Ralph, S. S. Carvalho, Willis Holly, and E. J.
Edwards. To these, by the time the _Sun_ reached its half-century mark,
had been added the great night city editor Clarke and reporters like
John R. Spears and Arthur Brisbane. Other great newspapermen were soon
to join the army of Mr. Lord in that long campaign of which the editor
of the _Sun_ said, on the occasion of Mr. Lord’s retirement:
Every night of his ten thousand nights of service has been a
Trafalgar or a Waterloo. He has fought ten thousand battles
against the world, the flesh, and the devil; the woman
applicant, the refractory citizen, the liar at the other end of
the wire, and the ten thousand demons which make up the great
army of nervous prostration.
CHAPTER XVI
“SUN” REPORTERS AND THEIR WORK
_Cummings, Ralph, W. J. Chamberlin, Brisbane, Riggs, Dieuaide,
Spears, O. K. Davis, Irwin, Adams, Denison, Wood, O’Malley, Hill,
Cronyn.--Spanish War Work._
There is an unconventional club which has no home except on the one
night each year when it holds a dinner in a New York hotel. Its members
are men who have been writers on the _Sun_, and who, though they have
left the paper, love it. They meet for no purpose except to toast the
_Sun_ of their day and this. They call themselves the Sun Alumni.
From the ranks of the novelists and magazine editors and writers come
men like Will Irwin, Samuel Hopkins Adams, Robert Welles Ritchie,
Albert W. Atwood, Henry James Forman, Cameron Mackenzie, Kirk Munroe,
Charles Mason Fairbanks, Robert R. Whiting, James L. Ford, E. J.
Edwards, Arthur F. Aldridge, George B. Mallon, Gustav Kobbé, and
Frederick Kinney Noyes.
From the lists of newspaper owners and editors come Arthur Brisbane,
of the Washington _Times_; Edward H. Mott, of the Goshen _Republican_;
Frank H. Simonds, of the New York _Tribune_; Martin J. Hutchins, of the
Chicago _Journal_; C. L. Sherman, of the Hartford _Courant_.
From the staffs of other New York newspapers come Charles Selden, Carr
V. Van Anda, and Richard V. Oulahan, of the _Times_; William A. Willis,
of the _Herald_; Rudolph E. Block, of the _American_; J. Arthur
Seavey, of the _Tribune_; and Lindsay Denison, of the _Evening World_.
From the bench come Judges Willard Bartlett, Warren W. Foster, and
Willard H. Olmsted; from government work, Stephen T. Mather, Robert
Sterling Yard, and E. W. Townsend; from business, Edward G. Riggs,
Willis Holly, Collin Armstrong, Oscar King Davis, Robert Grier Cooke,
John H. O’Brien, and Roy Mason. If the racing season is over in Cuba,
C. J. Fitzgerald is present. If business on the San Diego _Sun_ is not
too brisk, its editor, Clarence McGrew, crosses the continent to be
at the feast. Until his death in 1917, Franklin Matthews, associate
professor of journalism at Columbia University, who was with the _Sun_
from 1890 to 1909 in many capacities, was one of the leading spirits of
the Alumni. Dr. Talcott Williams, chief of the school of journalism, is
another enthusiastic alumnus.
These men, the outsider observes, gather and talk in groups. The men of
the eighties recall the wonders of the four-page _Sun_ and its Bogarts,
Ralphs, and Cummingses. Men of the nineties chat of the feats of
“Jersey” Chamberlin and “Commodore” Spears. The alumni who matriculated
in the present century speak of Riggs and Irwin, Denison and O’Malley
and Hill. But all talk of the _Sun_, and of Dana and Mitchell and Lord
and Clarke.
It is only when they speak of reporters that there is a grouping of
heroes. That is because it is a natural and pleasant practice, if an
illogical one, for newspapermen of the present and previous decades to
look back to this or that period of a paper and say:
“That was _the_ day! The names of the men on the staff prove it.”
An old _Sun_ man will point, for instance, to the _Sun’s_ roster of
reporters in 1893, when the local staff included:
Julian Ralph
John R. Spears
Oscar K. Davis
C. J. Fitzgerald
Carr V. Van Anda
David Graham Phillips
George B. Mallon
Samuel Hopkins Adams
Daniel F. Kellogg
C. M. Fairbanks
Lawrence Reamer
W. J. Chamberlin
Edward G. Riggs
E. W. Townsend
Rudolph E. Block
Samuel A. Wood
E. D. Beach
E. O. Chamberlin
Victor Speer
Joseph Vila
W. A. Willis
Collin Armstrong
The weak place in this sort of retrospection is that after twenty-five
years the observer’s focus is twisted. Julian Ralph was a great
reporter in 1893, but W. J. Chamberlin, whose name is linked with
Ralph’s among great _Sun_ reporters, was only just arriving. John
R. Spears had made his reputation, but Riggs’s fame as a political
writer was not yet established. Townsend had tickled New York with his
“Chimmie Fadden” stories, but Sam Adams was a cub. Wood, Vila, and
Reamer were not as important to the _Sun_ in 1893 as they are at this
writing.
The men of 1893 probably agreed that there was no staff like the
staff of 1868, just as the men of 1942 may gaze with proud regret at
the staff list of 1917. Distance, like pay-day, lends enchantment;
and newspaper history is a little more hazy than most other kinds of
history, because the men who write what happens to other people have no
time to set down what happens to themselves.
The anonymity of the _Sun_ reporter has been almost complete. If
Julian Ralph had never gone into the field of books and magazines, he
would have been as little known to the general public as the _Sun’s_
best reporter is to-day; but newspapermen would not have undervalued
him. There is better quality in the things he wrote hastily and
anonymously for the _Sun_ than in some of the eight or nine published
volumes that bear his name, and the reason for this is that he was
primarily a newspaperman.
[Illustration:
ARTHUR BRISBANE
]
He entered the game at fifteen, as an apprentice in the office of the
Red Bank (New Jersey) _Standard_. At seventeen he was a city editor and
a writer of humour. At eighteen he had founded the Red Bank _Leader_--a
failure. At nineteen he was one of the editors of the Webster
(Massachusetts) _Times_, and at twenty he was a reporter on the New
York _Graphic_. At twenty-two he was on the _Sun_, where he remained
from 1875 to 1893.
Ralph was a news man who lacked none of the large reportorial
qualities. He enjoyed seeing new places and new people. He liked to
hunt news--an instinct missing in some good writers who fail to be
great reporters. He liked to write--a taste found too seldom among
men who write well, and too frequently among the graphomaniacs who
fancy that everything is worth writing, and that perfection lies in an
infinite number of words.
Some one said of Ralph that he “could write five thousand words about
a cobblestone.” If he had done that, it would have been an interesting
cobblestone. He had a passion for detail, but it was not the lifeless
and wearisome detail of the realistic novelist. When he wrote half
a column about a horse eating a woman’s hat, the reader became well
acquainted with the horse, the woman, and the crowd that had looked on.
Ralph was untiring in mind, legs, and fingers. He liked the big one-man
news story, such as an inauguration or a parade, or the general
introduction of a national convention. His quiet, easy style, his
ability to cover an event of many hours and much territory, were shown
to good advantage in his description of the funeral of General Grant
in August, 1885. He wrote it all--a full front page of small type--in
about seven hours, and with a pencil. It began:
There have not often been gathered in one place so many men
whose names have been household words, and whose lives have
been inwoven with the history of a grave crisis in a great
nation’s life, as met yesterday in this city. The scene was
before General Grant’s tomb in Riverside Park; the space was
less than goes to half an ordinary city block, and the names
of the actors were William T. Sherman, Joe Johnston, Phil
Sheridan, Simon B. Buckner, John A. Logan, W. S. Hancock, Fitz
John Porter, Chester A. Arthur, Thomas A. Hendricks, John
Sherman, Fitzhugh Lee, John B. Gordon, David D. Porter, Thomas
F. Bayard, John L. Worden, and a dozen others naturally linked
in the mind with these greater men. Among them, like children
amid gray-heads, or shadows beside monuments, were other men
more newly famous, and famous only for deeds of peace in times
of quiet and plenty--a President, an ex-President, Governors,
mayors, and millionaires. And all were paying homage to the
greatest figure of their time, whose mortal remains they
pressed around with bared, bowed heads.
That was the beginning of a story of about eleven thousand words, all
written by Ralph in one evening. It told everything that was worth
reading about the burial--the weather, the crowded line of march, the
people from out of town, the women fainting at the curbs, the uniforms
and peculiarities of the Union and Confederate heroes who rode in the
funeral train; told everything from eight o’clock in the morning,
when the sightseers began to gather, until the bugler blew taps and
the regiments fired their salute volleys. It was a story typical of
Ralph, who saw everything, remembered everything, wrote everything. In
detail it is unlikely that any reporter of to-day could surpass it. In
dramatic quality it has been excelled by half a dozen _Sun_ reporters,
including Ralph himself.
For example, there is the story of a similar event--Admiral Dewey’s
funeral--written in January, 1917, by Thoreau Cronyn, of the _Sun_,
with a dramatic climax such as Ralph did not reach. This is the end of
Cronyn’s story--the incident of the old bugler whose art failed him in
his grief:
Chattering of spectators in the background hushed abruptly. A
light breeze, which barely rumpled the river, set a few dry
leaves tossing about the tomb of Farragut, Dewey’s mentor at
Mobile. The voice of Chaplain Frazier could be heard repeating
a prayer, catching, and then going on smoothly.
A second of silence, then the brisk call of the lieutenant
commanding the firing-squad of Annapolis cadets.
“Load!”
Rifles rattling.
“Aim!”
Rifles pointed a little upward for safety’s sake, though the
cartridges had no bullets.
“Fire!”
Twenty rifles snapped as one. This twice repeated--three
volleys over the tomb into which the twelve sailors had just
carried the admiral’s body.
And now came the moment for Master-at-Arms Charles Mitchell,
bugler on the Olympia when Dewey sank the Spanish fleet, to
perform his last office for the admiral. Raising the bugle to
his lips and looking straight ahead at the still open door of
the tomb, he sounded “taps.” The first three climbing notes and
the second three were perfect. Then the break and the recovery,
and the funeral was over.
Julian Ralph saw more of the world, and made more copy out of what he
saw, than any other newspaperman. While still on the _Sun_ he was
making books out of the material he picked up on his assignments. In
the early nineties, while still on the _Sun_ staff, he made two tours
for _Harper’s Magazine_ and wrote “On Canada’s Frontier,” “Our Great
West,” and “Chicago and the World’s Fair,” the last of which was the
official book of the Columbian Exposition. After his experiences in the
Boer War he wrote “Towards Pretoria,” “War’s Brighter Side” (with Conan
Doyle), and “An American with Lord Roberts.” His other books are “Alone
in China,” “Dixie; or, Southern Scenes and Sketches,” “People We Pass,”
and a novel, “The Millionairess.” He was the author of the “German
Barber” sketches, which appeared almost weekly in the _Sun_ for a long
time, and which are remembered as among the genuine examples of real
humour in dialect. During the Boer War, Ralph joined the staff of the
London _Daily Mail_, and after returning from South Africa he made his
home in London until his death in 1903.
A tradition about Ralph, indicating the pleasure that his articles
gave to his own colleagues as well as to the public, concerns one
of the great football-games of the eighties. John Spears discovered
the picturesqueness of the Yale-Princeton games, usually played
on Thanksgiving Day, and the _Sun_ featured them year after year.
Reporters hungered for the job, for it meant not only money, but the
opportunity to write a fine story.
When Ralph’s turn came he wrote such a good article that the copy-desk
let it run for five columns. Lord admired it, Clarke was enthusiastic
over it, and the other men in the office took turns in reading the
story in the proofs, so happily was it turned. It was not until the
first edition was off the press that an underling, who cared more for
football than for literature, suggested that the story ought to contain
the score of the game. Ralph had forgotten to state it, and all the
desks, absorbed in the thrill of the article itself, had overlooked the
omission.
Ralph reported for the _Sun_ the outrages of the Molly Maguires in the
Pennsylvania coal-fields. After the execution of two of the outlaws for
murder, he was bold enough to follow their bodies back to their village
where they had lived, in order to describe the wake. He was warned to
leave the place before sunset, on pain of death, and he went, for there
was nothing to be gained by staying.
On another assignment, a murder mystery, the relatives of the victim,
who were ignorant and superstitious people, suspected Ralph of being
the murderer. When he came into their house to see the body, they
demanded that he should touch it, their belief being that the body
would turn over, or the wounds reopen, if touched by the murderer.
There was an implied threat of death for the reporter if he refused,
but Ralph walked out without complying.
Ralph was a believer in the sixth sense of journalists, that
inexplicable gift by which a man, and particularly a newspaperman,
comes to a clairvoyant knowledge that something is about to happen--in
other words, an exalted hunch. John B. Bogart, city editor in Ralph’s
_Sun_ days, had this sense, and he called it a “current of news.” He
thus described its workings to Ralph:
One day I was walking up Broadway when suddenly a current
of news came up from a cellar and enveloped me. I felt the
difference in the temperature of the air. I tingled with the
electricity or magnetism in the current. It seemed to stop me,
to turn me around, and to force me to descend some stairs which
reached up to the street by my side.
I ran down the steps, and as I did so a pistol-shot sounded in
my ears. One man had shot another, and I found myself at the
scene upon the instant.
While acting as the legislative correspondent of the _Sun_ at Albany,
Ralph was in the habit of walking to one of the local parks to enjoy
the view across a valley southwest of the city. One day, while gazing
across the valley, he was seized with a desire to go to the mountains
in the distance beyond it. The impulse remained with him for two days,
and then, on the third day, he read of a news happening that had
occurred in the mountains on the very day when the current of news had
thrilled him.
Ralph reported the Dreyfus court-martial at Rennes, in France. One
morning he could not sleep after five o’clock. As he was on his way to
court he said to George W. Steevens, of the London _Daily Mail_, who
was walking with him:
“Wait a moment while I go into the telegraph office and wire my paper
that I expect exciting news to-day.”
At that hour there was no apparent reason to expect any news out of
the ordinary, but it was only a few hours later that Maître Labori,
Dreyfus’s counsel, was shot down on his way to court.
Young newspapermen who are fortunate enough to be possessed of--or
by--the sixth sense must remember, however, that it cannot be relied
upon to sound the alarm on every occasion. Mr. Bogart, who felt that
he had a friend in the current of news, kept close track of the
assignment-book. As a city editor he was unsurpassed for his diligence
in following up news stories. One day he assigned Brainerd G. Smith,
afterward professor of journalism at Cornell, to report the first
reception given by Judge Hilton after the death of the judge’s partner,
A. T. Stewart.
“And above all,” Mr. Bogart wound up, “don’t leave the house without
asking Judge Hilton whether they’ve found Stewart’s body yet.”
Julian Ralph attributed his success as a journalist chiefly to three
things--a liking for his work, the ability to get what he was sent for,
and good humour. He omitted mention of something which distinguished
him and Chamberlin and all other great reporters--hard work. Ralph
himself gives a brief but complete picture of a day’s hard work in his
description, in “The Making of a Journalist,” of the way in which he
reported the inauguration of a President:
I had myself called at five o’clock in the morning, and, having
a cab at hand, mounted the box with the negro driver and
traveled about the city from end to end and side to side. I did
this to see the people get up and the trains roll in and the
soldiers turn out--to catch the capital robing like a bride for
her wedding.
After breakfast, eaten calmly, I made another tour of the
town, and then began to approach the subject more closely,
calling at the White House, mingling with the crowds in the
principal hotels, moving between the Senate and the House of
Representatives, to report the hurly-burly of the closing
moments of a dying administration. I saw the old and the new
President, and then witnessed the inauguration ceremonies and
the parade.
Then, having seen the new family in place in the White House, I
took a hearty luncheon, and sat down at half past one o’clock
to write steadily for twelve hours, with plenty of pencils
and pads and messenger-boys at hand, and with my notebook
supplemented by clippings from all the afternoon papers,
covering details to which I might or might not wish to refer.
Cigars, a sandwich or two at supper-time, and a stout horn of
brandy late at night were my other equipments.
As Ralph remarked, that was hard work, but it was nothing when compared
with the job of reporting a national convention. “One needs only to
_see_ an inauguration,” he said. “In a national convention one must
_know_.”
Wilbur J. Chamberlin’s name is not in any book of American biography.
In library indexes his name is found only as the author of “Ordered
to China,” a series of letters he wrote to his wife while on the
assignment to report the Boxer rebellion--one of the many pieces of
_Sun_ work which he did faithfully and well. He never found time to
write books, although he wished to do so. He was a _Sun_ man from the
day he went on the staff, in 1890, until the day of his death, August
14, 1901.
Chamberlin was born in Great Bend, Pennsylvania, March 12, 1866. While
he was still a boy he went to Jersey City, where he worked in newspaper
offices and became the local correspondent of several newspapers,
including the _Sun_. He came to be known as “Jersey” Chamberlin to
the _Sun_ men who did not know how much he detested the nickname.
His intimates called him Wilbur, and the office knew him generally
as “W. J.”--an easy way of distinguishing him from other Chamberlins
and Chamberlains. He lacked Ralph’s rather distinguished personal
appearance, but his strong personality, his courage, ability, and
industry overshadowed any lack of fashion.
Like Ralph, he was indefatigable. Like his brother, E. O. Chamberlin,
he let nothing stop him in the pursuit of news. Like Henry R.
Chamberlain, he had the gift of divining rapidly the necessary details
of any intricate business with which his assignment dealt. If a bank
cashier had gone wrong, “W. J.” was the man to describe how the sinner
had manœuvred the theft; to wring from usually unwilling sources the
story which appeared in the bank only in figures, but which must appear
in the _Sun_ in terms of human life. The world of finance was more
dumb then than it is now, for Wall Street had not learned the wisdom of
uttering its own pitiless publicity.
Chamberlin had one idiosyncrasy and one hatred. The mental peculiarity
was a wish to conceal his own age. Unlike most successful men, he
wished to be thought older than he was; and he looked older. He was
only thirty-five when he died in Carlsbad, on his way home from China;
yet he had packed into that brief life the work of an industrious man
of fifty.
His single enmity was directed against cable companies, and he had good
reason to dislike them. One day, during the Spanish-American War he
boarded the _Sun_ boat, the Kanapaha, and ran to Port Antonio, Jamaica,
with an exclusive story. The women clerks in the telegraph office took
his despatch and counted the words three times before they would start
sending it. They told Chamberlin the cost, about a hundred dollars,
which he promptly paid in cash.
Three or four days later he went back to Port Antonio with another
important despatch. The cable clerk told him that on his previous visit
their count had been one word short.
“That’s all right,” said Chamberlin, and he threw down a shilling to
pay for the one word.
“Thank you,” said the lady. “_Now_ we can send the message!”
The cable hoodoo pursued Chamberlin to China. As soon as he arrived
in Peking he began sending important news stories by telegraph to
Tientsin, where he had left a deposit of three hundred dollars with
the cable company that was to forward the messages to New York. After
working in Peking for two weeks, he discovered that all his stories
were lying in a pigeonhole at Tientsin; not one had been relayed.
A third time an important despatch was held up overnight because it had
not been written on a regular telegraph-blank. But Chamberlin’s most
bitter grudge against the cable companies was the result of his adding
to a message sent to the _Sun_ on Christmas Eve, 1900, the words “Madam
Christmas greeting.” This was a short way of saying, “Please call
up Mrs. Chamberlin and tell her that I wish her a Merry Christmas.”
Under the cable company’s rules nothing could be sent at the special
newspaper rate except what was intended for publication. Chamberlin got
a despatch from the manager of the cable company as follows:
Your cable _Sun_ New York December 24 words “Madam Christmas
greeting” not intended for publication. Please explain.
There was nothing for Chamberlin to do but assure the cable manager
that if the _Sun_ had wished to print “Madam Christmas greeting” in its
columns it was welcome to do so.
In spite of his cable misfortunes Chamberlin got more news to the _Sun_
about the Boxer troubles than any other correspondent obtained. He was
the first reporter in China who told the truth about the outrageous
treatment of the Chinese by some of the so-called Christians. He was
particularly frank in describing the brutality of Count von Waldersee’s
German soldiers. In November, 1900, he wrote to his wife:
As you have probably noticed in my despatches, I have not much
use for the German soldiers anyhow. They are a big lot of
swine, if human beings ever are swine.
Chamberlin had a reputation for possessing the ability to write any
kind of a story, no matter how technical or how delicate. Edward G.
Riggs was sitting beside him in the Populist convention of July, 1896,
when the suspenders of the sergeant-at-arms of the convention, who was
standing on a chair, cheering, surrendered to cataclasm. Riggs turned
to his colleague and said triumphantly:
“At last, W. J., there’s one story you can’t write!”
But Chamberlin wrote it:
He clutched, but he clutched too late. He dived and grabbed
once, twice, thrice, but down those trousers slipped. Mary
E. Lease was only three feet away. Miss Mitchell, of Kansas,
was less than two feet away. Helen Gougar was almost on the
spot. Mrs. Julia Ward Pennington was just two seats off, and
all around and about him were gathered the most beautiful and
eloquent women of the convention, and every eye was upon the
unfortunate Deacon McDowell.
Then he grabbed, and then again, again, and again they eluded
him. Down, down he dived. At last victory perched on him. He
got the trousers, and, with a yank that threatened to rip them
from stem to stern, he pulled them up. At no time had the
applause ceased, nor had there been any sign of a let-up in the
demonstration. Now it was increased twofold. The women joined
in.
McDowell, clutching the truant trousers closely about him,
attempted to resume his part in the demonstration, but it
was useless, and after frantic efforts to show enthusiasm
he retired to hunt up tenpenny nails. When it was over, an
indignant Populist introduced this resolution:
“Resolved, that future sergeants-at-arms shall be required to
wear tights.”
The chairman did not put the resolution.
The number of Chamberlains and Chamberlins in the history of American
journalism is enough to create confusion. The _Sun_ alone had four at
one time. They were Wilbur J. Chamberlin and his almost equally valued
brother, Ernest O. Chamberlin, who later became managing editor of the
_Evening World_; Henry Richardson Chamberlain, and Henry B. Chamberlin.
E. O. Chamberlin went on the _Sun’s_ local staff while Wilbur was still
engaged in small work in Jersey City. In the late eighties he was a
colabourer with reporters like Daniel F. Kellogg, Edward G. Riggs,
William McMurtrie Speer, Charles W. Tyler, Robert Sterling Yard, Samuel
A. Wood, Paul Drane, and Willis Holly.
Henry Richardson Chamberlain, who was born in Peoria, Illinois, became
a _Sun_ reporter in May, 1889. He was then thirty years old, and had
had twelve years’ experience in Boston and New York. In 1888 he had
served as managing editor of the New York _Press_. He was particularly
valuable to the _Sun_ on the stories most easily obtained by reporters
of wide acquaintance, such as business disasters. In 1891 he returned
to Boston to become managing editor of the Boston _Journal_, but he was
soon back on the _Sun_.
In 1892 he was sent to London as the _Sun’s_ correspondent there,
and it was at this post that he won his greatest distinction. He had
a news eye that looked out over political Europe and an imagination
that compelled him to concern himself as much with the future of the
continent as with its past and present. The Balkans and their feuds
interested him strongly, and he was forever writing of what might come
from the complications between the little states through their own
quarrels and through their tangled relations with the powers. It was
the habit of some newspapermen, both in London and New York, to stick
their tongues in their cheeks over “H. R. C.’s war-cloud articles.”
“H. R. is always seeing things,” was a common remark, even when the
logic of what he had written was undeniable. There couldn’t be a
general war in Europe, said his critics, kindly; it was impossible.
Besides having general supervision over the _Sun’s_ European news,
Chamberlain personally reported the Macedonian disturbances, the Panama
Canal scandal in France, the Russian crisis of 1906, and the Messina
earthquake. He was the author of many short stories and of one book,
“Six Thousand Tons of Gold.” He died in London in 1911, while still
in the service of the _Sun_; still believing in the impossibility of
putting off forever the great war which so often rose in his visions.
Henry B. Chamberlin’s service on the _Sun_ was briefer than that of
the Chamberlin brothers or H. R. Chamberlain. He came to New York from
Chicago, where he had been a reporter on the _Herald_, the _Tribune_,
the _Inter-Ocean_, the _Times_, and the _Record_. After 1894, when he
left the _Sun_, he was again with the Chicago _Record_, and in that
paper’s service he saw the Santiago sea-fight from his boat--the only
newspaper boat with the American squadron.
Nor must any of these Chamberlins and Chamberlains be confused with
some of their distinguished contemporaries not of the _Sun_--Joseph
Edgar Chamberlin, who was the Cuban correspondent of the New York
_Evening Post_ in 1898, and later an editorial writer on the New York
_Evening Mail_ and the Boston _Transcript_; Eugene Tyler Chamberlain,
one-time editor of the Albany _Argus_; and Samuel Selwyn Chamberlain,
son of the famous Ivory Chamberlain of the New York _Herald_, founder
of the _Matin_ of Paris, and at various times editor of the San
Francisco _Examiner_ and the New York _American_.
Edward G. Riggs, who left the _Sun_ on February 1, 1913, to become
a railroad executive, had been a _Sun_ reporter and political
correspondent for twenty-eight years. He joined the staff in 1885 as
a Wall Street reporter. Though he never lost interest in the world of
finance and its remarkable men, he soon gravitated toward politics. He
became, indeed, the best-known writer of political news in America. He
wrote at every national convention from 1888--when Ambrose W. Lyman,
then the Washington correspondent of the _Sun_, was at the head of a
staff that included Julian Ralph and E. O. Chamberlin--until 1912. In
1892 Ralph was in charge of the _Sun’s_ national convention work, with
Riggs as his first lieutenant; but Riggs was the _Sun’s_ top-sawyer at
the conventions of 1896, 1900, 1904, 1908, and 1912.
Riggs had a closer view of the wheels of the political machines of New
York State than any other political writer. His intimate acquaintance
with Senators Platt and Hill, Governors Odell and Flower, and the
other powers of the State brought to him one hundred per cent of the
political truths of his time--the ten per cent that can be printed and
the ninety per cent that can’t.
Riggs never became a regular correspondent at either Washington or
Albany. He preferred to rove, going where the news was. In Washington
he knew and was welcomed by Presidents Harrison, Cleveland, McKinley,
Roosevelt, and Taft; by Senators like Hanna and Quay; by Cabinet
members like Hay and Knox; by House leaders like Reed and Bland. He
knew J. P. Morgan and William C. Whitney as well as he knew William J.
Bryan and Peffer, the Kansas Populist.
Between Presidential elections, when political affairs were quiet in
New York, Riggs acted as a scout for the _Sun_ with the whole country
to scan. Mr. Dana had an unflagging interest in politics, and he relied
on Riggs to bring reports from every field from Maine to California.
“Riggs,” Dana once remarked to a friend, “is my Phil Sheridan.”
It was through Riggs that Thomas C. Platt, then the Republican
master of New York State, sent word to Dana that he would like to
have the _Sun’s_ idea of a financial plank for the Republican State
platform of 1896. The plank was written by Mr. Dana and the _Sun’s_
publisher--afterward owner--William M. Laffan. It denounced the
movement for the free coinage of silver and declared in favour of the
gold standard. The State convention, held in March, adopted Dana’s
plank, and the national convention in June accepted the same ideas
in framing the platform upon which Major McKinley was elected to the
Presidency.
It was Riggs who carried a message from Dana to Platt, in 1897, asking
the New York Senator to withdraw his opposition to the nomination of
Theodore Roosevelt as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Platt complied,
and Roosevelt got the position.
Some years ago, in response to a question as to the difference between
a political reporter and a political correspondent, Riggs wrote:
There was a vast difference between the two. The political
reporter is he who begins at the foot of the ladder when he
reports the actual facts at a ward meeting. The political
correspondent is he who has run the gamut of ward meetings,
primaries, Assembly district, Senate district, and Congress
district conventions, city conventions, county conventions,
State conventions, and national conventions, and who builds his
articles to his newspaper on his information of the situation
in the State or nation, based upon circumstances and facts
arising out of all of the aforesaid conventions.
A political reporter and a political correspondent occupy in
newspaper life the same relative positions as the cellar-digger
and the architect in the building-trade world. Cellar-digger
is just as important in his sphere as architect. The most
superb architects were the most superb cellar-diggers. No man
can be a successful political correspondent unless he has
been a successful political reporter. Judges are made out of
lawyers, generals and admirals out of cadets. Only the most
ordinary of human virtues are necessary for the equipment of a
successful political reporter and correspondent--cleanliness,
sobriety, honesty, and truthfulness.
Writing of Riggs as the dean of American political correspondents,
Samuel G. Blythe said in the _Saturday Evening Post_:
He has made it his business to know men in all parts of the
country, and to know them so they will tell him as much of
the truth as they will tell anybody. He is tenacious of his
opinions and loyal to his friends. He is jolly, good-natured,
companionable, and a fine chap to have around when he is in
repose. Wherever men spoke the English language he was known as
“Riggs--of the _Sun_.”
Reputation and success in newspaper work demand the highest
and most unselfish loyalty to one’s paper. It must be the
paper first and nothing else second. Loyalty is Riggs’s first
attribute, even better than his courage.
The influence of a man like Riggs cannot be estimated. There is
no way of computing this, but there is no person who will deny
that he has been a power. He has not had his head turned by
flattery. He has been “Riggs--of the _Sun_.”
One of Mr. Riggs’s last great pieces of newspaper work was a
twenty-thousand-word history of national conventions which appeared
in the _Sun_ in 1912--the first history of its kind ever written. Mr.
Riggs was also a frequent contributor to the editorial page.
Arthur Brisbane, when he became a _Sun_ reporter in 1882, was
almost the youngest reporter the _Sun_ had had; he went to work on
his eighteenth birthday. He had been intensively educated in America
and abroad. In his first three or four months he was a puzzle to his
superiors, his colleagues, and perhaps to himself.
“He sat around,” said one of his contemporary reporters, “like a fellow
who didn’t understand what it was all about--and then he came out of
his trance like a shot from a gun and seemed to know everything about
everything.”
Brisbane was well liked. He was a handsome, athletic youth, interested
in all lines of life and literature, cheerful, and eager for
adventurous assignment. After two years of reportorial work he went to
France to continue certain studies, and while he was there the _Sun_
offered to him the post of London correspondent, which he accepted.
In March, 1888, when John L. Sullivan and Charley Mitchell went to
Chantilly, in France, for their celebrated fight, Brisbane went with
them and wrote a good two-column story about it--a story that contained
never a word of pugilistic slang but a great deal of interest. He saw
the human side:
Deeply interested were the handfuls of Frenchmen who gathered
and watched from such a safe and distant pavilion as we would
select to look upon a hyena fight.
And, when other reporters were deafened by the battle, Brisbane heard
the plaintive appeal of Baldock, Mitchell’s tough second:
“Think of the kids, Charley, the dear little kids, a calling
for you at home and a counting on you for bread! Think what
their feelings will be if you don’t knock the ear off him, and
knock it off him again!”
Not but what the correspondent paid conscientious attention to the
technique of the fray:
A detailed report of each of the thirty-nine rounds taken by
me shows that out of more than a hundred wild rushes made by
Sullivan, and of which any one would have been followed by
a knockout in Madison Square, not half a dozen resulted in
anything.
A couple of years after the establishment of the _Evening Sun_ Brisbane
was made its managing editor--a big job for a man of twenty-three
years. In 1890 he went to the _World_, where he became the editor of
the Sunday magazine and the most illustrious exponent of that startling
form of graphic art which demonstrates to the reader, without calling
upon his brain for undue effort, how much taller than the Washington
Monument would be New York’s daily consumption of dill pickles, if
piled monumentwise.
Seven years later Mr. Hearst took Brisbane from Mr. Pulitzer and made
him editor of the _Evening Journal_--a position eminently suited to
his talents, for here he was able to write as he wished in that clear,
simple style which had endeared him to the _Sun_.
Brisbane’s newspaper style goes directly back to the writing of William
O. Bartlett. It has its terse, cutting qualities, the avoidance of
all but the simplest words, and the direct drive at the object to be
attained. Brisbane, too, adopted the Dana principle that nothing was
more valuable in editorial writing, for the achievement of a purpose,
than iteration and reiteration. This was the plan that Dana always
followed in his political battles--incessant drum-fire. Brisbane uses
it now as proprietor of the Washington _Times_, which he bought from
Frank A. Munsey, the present owner of the _Sun_, in June, 1917.
John R. Spears was one of the big _Sun_ men for fifteen years. He, like
Amos Cummings and Julian Ralph, was brought up in the atmosphere of a
printing-office as a small boy; but in 1866, when he was sixteen years
old, he entered the Naval Academy at Annapolis and spent a couple of
years as a naval cadet. His cruise around the world in a training-ship
filled him with a love of the sea that never left him. His marine
knowledge helped him and the _Sun_, for which he wrote fine stories of
the international yacht-races between the Mayflower and the Galatea
(1886) and the Volunteer and the Thistle (1887).
Spears liked wild life on land, too, and the _Sun_ sent him into the
mountains of West Virginia and Kentucky to tell of the feuds of the
Hatfields and the McCoys. He went into the Ozarks to write up the Bald
Knobbers, and he sent picturesque stories, in the eighties, from No
Man’s Land, that unappropriated strip between Kansas and Texas which
knew no law from 1850, when it was taken from Mexico, until 1890, when
it became a part of the new State of Oklahoma.
Spears was a hard worker. They said of him in the _Sun_ office that he
never went out on an assignment without bringing in the material for a
special article for the Sunday paper. He wrote several books, including
“The Gold Diggings of Cape Horn,” “The Port of Missing Ships,” “The
History of Our Navy,” “The Story of the American Merchant Marine,” “The
Story of the New England Whalers,” and “The History of the American
Slave Trade.” He now lives in retirement near Little Falls, New York.
His son, Raymond S. Spears, the fiction-writer, was a _Sun_ reporter
from 1896 to 1900.
Park Row knows Erasmus D. Beach chiefly through the book-reviews he
wrote for the _Sun_ during many years, but he was a first-class
reporter, too. The _Sun_ liked specialists, but no man could expect to
stick to his specialty. When Gustav Kobbé went on the _Sun_ in March,
1880, it was for the general purpose of assisting William M. Laffan in
dramatic criticism and Francis C. Bowman in musical criticism; but his
first assignment was to go to Bellevue Hospital and investigate the
reported mistreatment of smallpox patients--a job which he accepted
like the good soldier that every good _Sun_ man is.
Mr. Beach was a clever all-round writer and reporter, with a leaning
toward the purely literary side of the business, and he had no special
fondness for sports; but the _Sun_ sent him, with Christopher J.
Fitzgerald and David Graham Phillips, to report the Yale-Princeton
football-game at Eastern Park, Brooklyn, on Thanksgiving Day,
1890--that glorious day for Yale when the score in her favour was
thirty-two to nothing. It was the time of Heffelfinger and Poe, McClung
and King. Beach wrote an introduction which Mr. Dana classed as
Homeric. Here is a bit of it:
Great in the annals of Yale forever must be the name of
McClung. Twice within a few minutes this man has carried the
ball over the Princeton goal-line. He runs like a deer, has the
stability of footing of one of the pyramids, and is absolutely
cool in the most frightfully exciting circumstances.
A curious figure is McClung. He has just finished a run of
twenty yards, with all Princeton shoving against him. He
is steaming like a pot of porridge, and chewing gum. His
vigorously working profile is clearly outlined against the
descending sun. How dirty he is! His paddings seem to have
become loosed and to have accumulated over his knees. He has
a shield, a sort of splint, bound upon his right shin. His
long hair is held in a band, a linen fillet, the dirtiest ever
worn.
He pants as a man who has run fifty miles--who has overthrown a
house. He droops slightly for a moment’s rest, hands on knees,
eyes shining with the glare of battle, the gum catching between
his grinders. A tab on one of his ears signifies a severe
injury to that organ, an injury received in some previous match
from an opposition boot-heel, or from a slide over the rough
earth with half a dozen of the enemy seated upon him. He has a
little, sharp-featured face, squirrel-like, with a Roman nose
and eyes set near together. Brief dental gleams illuminate his
countenance in his moments of great joyfulness.
[Illustration:
EDWARD G. RIGGS
]
Dana liked Beach’s introduction because the reader need not be a
football fan to enjoy it. For the technique of the game he who wished
to follow the plays could find all that he wanted in the stories of
Fitzgerald and Phillips.
In connection with Beach’s literary accomplishments, there is a
tradition that another famous _Sun_ reporter of the eighties, Charles
M. Fairbanks, was assigned to report one of the great games at
Princeton, and, although entirely unacquainted with punts and tackles,
came back with a story complete in technical detail, having learned the
fine points of football in a few hours. Later, in the early nineties,
Fairbanks was night editor of the paper.
A _Sun_ man who has been a _Sun_ man from a time to which the memory
of man goeth back only with a long pull, is Samuel A. Wood, who has
been the _Sun’s_ ship-news man for more than thirty-five years. He is
a good example, too, of the _Sun_ man’s anonymity, for although he was
the originator of the rhymed news story and his little run-in lyrics
have been the admiration of American newspapermen for more than a
generation, few persons beyond Park Row have known Wood as the author
of them.
Although a first-class general reporter, Wood has stuck closely to
his favourite topics, the ships and the weather. He made weather news
bearable with such bits as this:
The sun has crossed the line, and now the weather may be
vernal; that is, if no more cyclones come, like yesterday’s, to
spurn all the efforts of the spring to come as per the classic
rhymers. (Perhaps there was a spring in those days of the
good old-timers!) But this spring sprang a fearful leak from
clouded dome supernal, and weather that should be divine might
be declared infernal; entirely too much chilliness, nocturnal
and diurnal, which prompted many citizens to take, for woes
external, the ancient spring reviver of the old Kentucky
colonel.
The mercury fell down the tube a point below the freezing, and
Spring herself might be excused for shivering and sneezing. The
wind, a brisk northeaster, howled, the sky was dark and solemn,
and chills chased one another up and down the spinal column.
Oh hail, diphtherial mildness, hail, and rain, and snow--and
blossom! Perhaps the spring has really come, and may be playing
possum!
Wood writes rhymeless sea-stories with the grace of a Clark Russell. He
turns to prose-verse only when the subject particularly suits it, as
for instance in the story upon which Mr. Clarke, the night city editor,
wrote the classic head--“Snygless the Seas Are--Wiig Rides the Waves No
More--Back Come Banana Men--Skaal to the Vikings!” This is the text:
While off the Honduranean coast, not far from Ruatan, the
famous little fruiter Snyg on dirty weather ran. Her skipper,
Wiig, was at the helm, the boatswain hove the lead; the air was
thick; you could not see a half-ship’s length ahead. The mate
said:
“Reefs of Ruatan, I think, are off our bow.”
The skipper answered:
“You are right; they’re inside of us now.”
The water filled the engine-room and put the fires out, and
quickly o’er the weather rail the seas began to spout.
When dawn appeared there also came three blacks from off the
isle. They deftly managed their canoe, each wearing but a
smile; but, clever as they were, their boat was smashed against
the Snyg, and they were promptly hauled aboard by gallant
Captain Wiig.
“We had thirteen aboard this ship,” the fearful cook remarked.
“I think we stand a chance for life, since three coons have
embarked. Now let our good retriever, Nig, a life-line take
ashore, and all hands of the steamship Snyg may see New York
once more.”
But Nig refused to leave the ship, and so the fearless crew the
life-boat launched, but breakers stove the stout craft through
and through. Said Captain Wiig:
“Though foiled by Nig, our jig’s not up, I vow; I’ve still my
gig, and I don’t care a fig--I’ll make the beach somehow!”
And Mate Charles Christian of the Snyg (who got here yesterday)
helped launch the stanch gig of the Snyg so the crew could
get away. The gig was anchored far inshore; with raft and
trolley-line all hands on the Snyg, including Nig, were hauled
safe o’er the brine.
Although the Snyg, of schooner rig, will ply the waves no more,
let us hope that Wiig gets another Snyg for the sake of the
bards ashore.
The _Sun’s_ handling of the news of the brief war with Spain, in 1898,
has an interest beyond the mere brilliance of its men’s work and the
fact that this was the last war in which the newspaper correspondents
had practically a free hand.
For years “Cuba Libre” had been one of the _Sun’s_ fights. From the
first days of his control of the paper Mr. Dana had urged the overthrow
of Spanish dominion in the island. His support of the revolutionists
went back, as E. P. Mitchell has written, “to the dark remoteness of
the struggles a quarter of a century before the war--the time of the
Cespedes uprising, the Virginius affair, and the variegated activities
of the New York Junta.” Mr. Mitchell adds:
The affection of the _Sun_ and its editor for everything Cuban
except Spanish domination lasted quite down to and after the
second advent of Maximo Gomez; it was never livelier than in
the middle seventies.
Mr. Dana was the warm friend of José Marti. He corresponded
personally (with the assistance of his Fenian stenographer,
Williams) with the leading revolutionists actually fighting
in the island. He was the constant and unwearied intellectual
resource of a swarm of patriots, adventurers, near-filibusters,
bondholding financiers, lawyer-diplomats, and grafters
operating exclusively in Manhattan. A Latin-American accent was
a sure card of admission to the woven-bottomed chair alongside
the little round table in the inner corner room of the series
of four inhabited by the _Sun’s_ entire force of editors and
reporters.
We were then the foremost if not the only American organ of
Cuban independence. The executive journalistic headquarters
of the cause was just outside Mr. Dana’s front door. The Cuba
Libre editor, as I suppose he would be styled nowadays, was a
gentleman of Latin-American origin, who bore the aggressive and
appropriate name of Rebello. The Cuba Libre “desk” was about as
depressing a seat of literary endeavor as the telegraph-blank
shelf in a country railroad station, which it resembled in its
narrowness, its dismal ink-wells, rusty pens, and other details
of disreputable equipment. From this shelf there issued, by
Mr. Dana’s direction, many encouraging editorial remarks to
Rebello’s compatriots in the jungle.
Nor was free Cuba ungrateful to the _Sun_. A few years after the
war, when Mr. Mitchell was walking about the interior Cuban town of
Camaguey, formerly Puerto Principe, he came upon a modest little
public square, the lamp-posts of which were labelled “Plaza Charles A.
Dana.” At the corner of the church of Las Mercedes was a tablet with
the following inscription:
TRIBUTO DEL PUEBLO A LA MEMORIA DE
CHARLES A. DANA
ILLUSTRE PUBLICISTA AMERICANO
DEFENSOR INFATIGABLE DE LAS
LIBERTADES CUBANAS
ABRIL 10 DE 1899
Dana was dead, without having seen the blooming of the flower he had
watered, but Cuba had not wholly forgotten.
* * * * *
When the Maine was blown up in February, 1898, the _Sun_ began
preparations to cover a war. The managing editor, Chester S. Lord,
assisted by W. J. Chamberlin, worked out the preliminary arrangements.
John R. Spears, then thirty-eight years old and a reporter of wide
experience, particularly in matters of the sea--he had already written
“The History of Our Navy”--was sent to Key West, the headquarters of
the fleet which was to blockade Havana. He was at Key West some weeks
before war was declared.
The _Sun_ chartered the steam yacht Kanapaha and sent her at once to
Key West, under the command of Captain Packard, to take on Spears and
his staff, which included Harold M. Anderson, Nelson Lloyd, Walstein
Root, Dana H. Carroll, and others. Besides the men named, who were to
go with the Kanapaha on her voyage with Sampson’s fleet, the _Sun_ sent
Oscar King Davis with Schley’s squadron, and Thomas M. Dieuaide on
board the Texas. Dieuaide got a splendid view of the great sea-fight of
July 3, when Cervera came out of the harbour of Santiago, and he wrote
the _Sun’s_ first detailed account of the destruction of the Spanish
fleet.
The _Sun_ men ashore in Cuba were captained by W. J. Chamberlin, who
succeeded Mr. Spears some time before the battle of Santiago. His force
included H. M. Anderson, Carroll and Root of the _Sun_, and Henry M.
Armstrong and Acton Davies of the _Evening Sun_. Armstrong, who was
with Shafter, covered much of the attack and investment of Santiago
and the surrender of that city. It was Chamberlin who sent to the
United States the first news of the formal surrender of Santiago, but
the message was not delivered to the _Sun_. The government censorship
gently commandeered it and gave it out as an official bulletin.
Chamberlin wrote the story of the battle of San Juan Hill on board a
tossing boat that carried him from Siboney to the cable station at Port
Antonio.
The first American flag hoisted over the Morro at Santiago was the
property of the _Sun_, but in this case there was no government
peculation. Anderson and Acton Davies gave the flag, which was a boat
ensign from the Kanapaha, to some sailors of the Texas, and the sailors
fastened it to the Morro staff.
When Schley’s squadron was united with Sampson’s fleet, some time
before the battle of Santiago, O. K. Davis was ordered to Manila.
He had the luck to sail on the cruiser Charleston, which, on June
21, 1898, made the conquest of the island of Guam. That famous but
bloodless victory was described by Davis in a two-page article which
was exclusively the _Sun’s_, and of which the _Sun_ said editorially on
August 9, 1898:
No such story ever has been written or ever will be written
of our conquest of the Ladrones as that of the Sun’s
correspondent, published yesterday morning. It is the picture
of a historic scene, in which not a single detail is wanting.
This far-away little isle of Guam, so much out of the world
that it had not heard of our war with Spain, and mistook the
Charleston’s shells for an honorary salute, is now a part of
the United States of America, and destined to share in the
greatness of a progressive country. The queer Spanish governor,
who declined to go upon Captain Glass’s ship because it would
be a breach of Spanish regulations, is now our prisoner at
Manila.
Dieuaide, who wrote the _Sun’s_ story of the Santiago sea-fight, is
also distinguished as the author of the first published description
of St. Pierre--or, rather, of the ashes that covered it--after that
city and all but two persons of its thirty thousand had been buried by
the eruption of Mont Pelée. The introductory paragraph of Dieuaide’s
article gives an idea of his graphic power:
FORT DE FRANCE, MARTINIQUE, May 21--To-day we saw St. Pierre,
the ghastliest ghost of the modern centuries. But yesterday
the fairest of the fair of the wondrous cities of the storied
Antilles, bright, beautiful, glorious, glistening and
shimmering in her prism of tropical radiance, an opalescent
city in a setting of towering forest and mountain, now a
waste of ashen-gray without life, form, color, shape, a drear
monotone, a dim blur on the landscape--it seems even more than
the contrast between life and death.
The dead may live. St. Pierre is not alive, and never will
be. Out of shape has come a void. It is the apotheosis of
annihilation. To one who sits amid the ruins and gazes the
long miles upward over the seamed sides of La Pelée, still
thundering her terrible wrath, may come some conception of the
future ruin of the worlds.
It has been a day of sharp impressions, one cutting into
another until the memory-pad of the mind is crossed and
crisscrossed like the fissured flanks of La Pelée herself;
but most deeply graven of all, paradoxically, is the memory
of a dimness, a nothingness, an emptiness, a lack of
everything--the gray barrenness unrelieved of what was the
rainbow St. Pierre. Mont Pelée, the most awful evidence of
natural force to be seen in the world to-day--La Pelée,
majestic, terrible, overpowering, has been in evidence from
starlight to starlight, but it is the ashen blank that was once
the city of the Saint of the Rock that stands out most clearly
in the kaleidoscopic maze slipping backward and forward before
our eyes.
And thus on, without losing interest, for seven solid columns.
Will Irwin’s great page story, printed beside the straight news of
the San Francisco earthquake, is another _Sun_ classic. Irwin had
the fortune to be familiar with San Francisco, and he was able,
without reference to book or map, to give to New York, through the
_Sun_, a most vivid picture of “The City That Was.” It is a literary
companion-piece of Thomas M. Dieuaide’s gray drawing of St. Pierre, but
only the introduction must do here:
The old San Francisco is dead. The gayest, lightest-hearted,
most pleasure-loving city of this continent, and in many ways
the most interesting and romantic, is a horde of huddled
refugees living among ruins. It may rebuild; it probably will;
but those who have known that peculiar city by the Golden Gate,
and have caught its flavor of the “Arabian Nights” feel that it
can never be the same.
It is as though a pretty, frivolous woman had passed through a
great tragedy. She survives, but she is sobered and different.
If it rises out of the ashes it must be a modern city, much
like other cities and without its old flavor.
There were less than five columns of the article, but it told the
whole story of San Francisco; not in dry figures of commerce and paved
streets, but of the people and places that every Eastern man had
longed to see, but now never could see.
Writers like Ralph and Chamberlin, Dieuaide and Irwin, are spoken of as
“star” reporters, yet the saying that the _Sun_ has no star men is not
entirely fictional. Its best reporters are, and will be, remembered as
stars, but no men were, or are, treated as stars. Big reporters cover
little stories and cubs write big ones--if they can. A city editor does
not send an inexperienced man on an assignment that requires all the
skill of the trained reporter, yet it is _Sun_ history that many new
men have turned in big stories from assignments that appeared, at first
blush, to be inconsequential. There are always two or three so-called
star men in the office, but the days when there are two or three star
assignments are comparatively few.
Let us take, arbitrarily, one day twenty-five years ago--February 1,
1893--and see what some of the _Sun_ reporters did:
Jefferson Market Court S. H. Adams
Essex Market Court and Meeting of Irish
Federalists Rudolph E. Block
With R. Croker at Lakewood George B. Mallon
Custom-House News E. G. Riggs
City Hall News W. H. Olmsted
Police Headquarters Robert S. Yard
Ship News S. A. Wood
Coroners and Post-Office W. A. Willis
Subway Project and Murder at East
Eighty-Eighth Street W. J. Chamberlin
Magic Shell Swindle E. W. Townsend
Condition of Police Lodging-Houses D. G. Phillips
Carlyle Harris Case F. F. Coleman
Fire at Koster & Bial’s John Kenny
Bishop McDonnell’s Trip to Rome Evans
To gain an impression of the variety of work which comes to a _Sun_
reporter, take the assignments given to David Graham Phillips in the
last days of his service with the _Sun_ in 1893:
March 1--Joseph Jefferson’s Lecture on the Drama
” 2--Bear Hunt at Glen Cove
” 3--Special Stories for the Sunday _Sun_
” 6--Obituary of W. P. Demarest
” 7--Meeting of Russian-Americans
” 8--Mystery at New Brunswick, New Jersey
” 9--Special Stories for Sunday
” 10--Accident in Seventy-First St. Tunnel
” 11--More Triplets in Cold Spring
” 12--Services in Old Scotch Church
” 13--Furniture Sale
” 14--Opening of Hotel Waldorf
” 15--Married Four Days, Then False
” 17--Dinner, Friendly Sons of St. Patrick
” 18--Parade and Show, Barnum & Bailey
” 19--Church Quarrel, Rutherford, N. J.
Phillips was then one of the _Sun’s_ best reporters; not as large
a figure in the office as Ralph, or Chamberlin, or Spears, but one
entitled to assignments of the first class. A list of his assignments
soon after he joined the staff in the summer of 1890 would be
monotonous--Jefferson Market police-court day after day; the kind of
work with which the _Sun_ broke in a new man. Once on space, with eight
dollars a column instead of fifteen dollars a week, Phillips got what
he wanted--a peep at every corner of city life. In a little more than
two years as a space man he picked up much of the material that is seen
in his novels.
A _Sun_ man takes what comes to his lot. When W. J. Chamberlin returned
from Cuba, his first assignment was a small police case. But a really
good reporter finds his opportunity and his “big” stories for himself.
It would take a small book to give a list of the “big” stories that the
_Sun_ has printed, and a five-foot shelf of tall volumes to reprint
them all. Some of them were written leisurely, like Spears’s stories
of the Bad Lands, some in comparative ease, like Ralph’s stories of
Presidential inaugurations and the Grant funeral, or W. J. Chamberlin’s
eleven-column report of the Dewey parade in 1899. In these latter the
ease is only comparative, for the writer’s fingers had no time to rest
in the achievement of such gigantic tasks. And the comparison is with
the work done by reporters on occasions when there was no time to
arrange ideas and choose words; when the facts came in what would be to
the layman hopeless disorder.
Such an occasion, for instance, was the burning of the excursion
steamer General Slocum, the description of which--in the end a
marvellous tale of horror--was taken page by page from Lindsay Denison
as his typewriter milled it out. Such an occasion was Edwin C. Hill’s
opportunity to write his notable leads to the stories of the Republic
wreck in 1909 and the Titanic disaster in 1912. But the _Sun_ and _Sun_
men never have hysterics. Tragedy seems to tighten them up more than
other newspapers and newspapermen.
Introductions to big stories tell the pulse of the paper. Read, for
example, the _Sun_ introduction to the great ocean tragedy of 1898:
HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA, July 6--The steamship La Bourgogne of
the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, which left New York
on Saturday last bound for Havre, was sunk at five o’clock
on Monday morning after a collision with the British ship
Cromartyshire in a dense fog about sixty miles south of Sable
Island. The ship had 750 persons aboard. The number of first
and second cabin passengers was 220 and of the steerage
passengers 297, a total of 517. The number of officers was 11,
of the crew 222. Eleven second-cabin and 51 steerage passengers
and 104 of the crew, a total of 166, were saved. All the
officers but four, all the first-cabin passengers, and all but
one of the more than one hundred women on board, were lost. The
number of lost is believed to be 584.
This was more detailed, but not more calm than the opening of Edwin C.
Hill’s story on the loss of the Titanic:
The greatest marine disaster in the history of ocean traffic
occurred last Sunday night, when the Titanic of the White
Star Line, the greatest steamship that ever sailed the sea,
shattered herself against an iceberg and sank with, it is
feared, fifteen hundred of her passengers and crew in less
than four hours. The monstrous modern ships may defy wind and
weather, but ice and fog remain unconquered.
Out of nearly twenty-four hundred people that the Titanic
carried, only eight hundred and sixty-six are known to have
been saved, and most of these were women and children.
Probably the most restrained lead on a _Sun_ account of a great
disaster was the introduction to the article on the Brooklyn Theatre
fire of 1876:
The Brooklyn Theatre was built in September, 1871, opened for
public entertainment October 2, 1871, and burned to the ground
with the sacrifice of three hundred lives on the night of
Tuesday, December 5, 1876.
Of a more literary character, yet void of excitement, was the way
Julian Ralph began his narrative of the blizzard of March, 1888:
It was as if New York had been a burning candle upon which
nature had clapped a snuffer, leaving nothing of the city’s
activities but a struggling ember.
While on this subject, it is as well to say that the _Sun_, in ordinary
stories, does without introductions. “Begin at the beginning” has been
one of its unwritten rules; or, as a veteran copy-reader remarked to a
new reporter who told it all in the first paragraph:
“For the love of Mike, can’t you leave something for the head-writer to
say?”
Every young newspaper man hears a good deal about “human-interest
stories.” Some of the professors of journalism tell their pupils what
human-interest stories are; others advise the best way to know one, or
to get one. It is not evident, however, that any one has devised an
infallible formula for taking a trivial or commonplace event and, by
reason of the humour, pathos, or liveliness thereof, lifting it to a
higher plane.
Amos Cummings is believed to have been the first newspaperman to see
the news value of the lost child or the steer loose in the street.
Amos himself wrote a story about the steer. Ralph wrote another one,
and got his first job in New York on the strength of it. Frank W.
O’Malley wrote one recently, and made New York laugh over it. But
your newspaperman needs something besides a frightened steer and some
streets; he must have “something in his noddle,” as Mr. Dana used to
say.
Every reporter gets a chance to write a story about a lost child, but
there are perhaps only two lost-child stories of the last thirty years
that are remembered, and both were _Sun_ stories. David Graham Phillips
found his lost child in the Catskills and wrote an article over which
women wept. The next time a child was lost, Phillips’s city editor sent
him on the assignment, and he fell down. The child was there, and the
woods, and the bloodhounds, but the reporter’s brain would not turn
backward and go again through the processes that made a great story.
Hill’s story, which is remembered by its head--“A Little Child in the
Dark”--will never be repeated--by Hill.
The tear-impelling article is the most difficult thing for a good
reporter to write or a bad reporter to avoid trying to write. It might
be added that good reporters write a “sob story” only when it fastens
itself on them and demands to be written; and then they write the facts
and let the reader do the weeping. O’Malley’s story of the killing of
Policeman Gene Sheehan, which has been reprinted from the _Sun_ by
several text-books for students of journalism, is good proof of this.
Practically all of it--and it was a column long--was a straightforward
report of the story told by the policeman’s mother. This is a part:
Mrs. Catherine Sheehan stood in the darkened parlor of her
home at 361 West Fifteenth Street late yesterday afternoon and
told her version of the murder of her son Gene, the youthful
policeman whom a thug named Billy Morley shot in the forehead
down under the Chatham Square elevated station early yesterday
morning. Gene’s mother was thankful that her boy hadn’t killed
Billy Morley before he died, “because,” she said, “I can say
honestly, even now, that I’d rather have Gene’s dead body
brought home to me, as it will be to-night, than to have him
come to me and say, ‘Mother, I had to kill a man this morning.’
“God comfort the poor wretch that killed the boy,” the mother
went on, “because he is more unhappy to-night than we are here.
Maybe he was weak-minded through drink. He couldn’t have known
Gene, or he wouldn’t have killed him. Did they tell you at the
Oak Street Station that the other policemen called Gene ‘Happy
Sheehan’? Anything they told you about him is true, because
no one would lie about him. He was always happy, and he was a
fine-looking young man. He always had to duck his helmet when
he walked under the gas-fixture in the hall as he went out the
door.
“After he went down the street yesterday I found a little book
on a chair--a little list of the streets or something that Gene
had forgot. I knew how particular they are about such things,
and I didn’t want the boy to get in trouble, so I threw on a
shawl and walked over through Chambers Street toward the river
to find him. He was standing on a corner some place down there
near the bridge, clapping time with his hands for a little
newsy that was dancing; but he stopped clapping--struck, Gene
did, when he saw me. He laughed when I handed him a little book
and told him that was why I’d searched for him, patting me on
the shoulder when he laughed--patting me on the shoulder.
“‘It’s a bad place for you here, Gene,’ I said. ‘Then it must
be bad for you, too, mammy,’ said he; and as he walked to the
end of his beat with me--it was dark then--he said, ‘There are
lots of crooks here, mother, and they know and hate me, and
they’re afraid of me’--proud, he said it--‘but maybe they’ll
get me some night.’
“He patted me on the back and turned and walked east toward his
death. Wasn’t it strange that Gene said that?
“You know how he was killed, of course, and how--now let me
talk about it, children, if I want to. I promised you, didn’t
I, that I wouldn’t cry any more or carry on? Well, it was five
o’clock this morning when a boy rang the bell here at the
house, and I looked out the window and said:
“‘Is Gene dead?’
“‘No, ma’am,’ answered the lad; ‘but they told me to tell you
he was hurt in a fire and is in the hospital.’
“Jerry, my other boy, had opened the door for the lad, and
was talking to him while I dressed a bit. And then I walked
down-stairs and saw Jerry standing silent under the gaslight;
and I said again, ‘Jerry, is Gene dead?’ And he said ‘Yes,’ and
he went out.
“After a while I went down to the Oak Street Station myself,
because I couldn’t wait for Jerry to come back. The policemen
all stopped talking when I came in, and then one of them told
me it was against the rules to show me Gene at that time; but I
knew the policeman only thought I’d break down. I promised him
I wouldn’t carry on, and he took me into a room to let me see
Gene. It was Gene.”
The _Sun_ has been richly fortunate in the humour that has tinged its
news columns since its very beginning. Even Ben Day, with all the
worries of a pioneer journalist, made the types exact a smile from his
readers. With Dana, amusing the people was second only to instructing
them. Julian Ralph and Wilbur Chamberlin both had the trick of putting
together the bricks of fact with the mortar of humour. Chamberlin
had several characters, like his _Insec’ O’Connor_, whose strings he
pulled and made to dance. Hardly a sea-story of Sam Wood’s--except
where there is tragedy--does not contain something to be laughed over.
Samuel Hopkins Adams was an adept at the comic twist. Lindsay Denison
once wrote a story of a semipublic celebration of an engagement so
delightfully that the bride’s father, perhaps the only person in New
York who did not see the humour of the affair, threatened to break the
pledge of troth, although the groom was a public character who had
courted publicity all his life.
Charles Selden, as grave a reporter as ever glowered at a poor
space-bill, had a vein of structural humour perhaps unsurpassed by
any reporter. His account of a press reception at the home of Miss
Lillian Russell has been approached in delicacy only by O’Malley’s
interview with Miss Laura Jean Libbey. Selden’s story of the occasion
when creditors took away all the furniture of John L. Sullivan’s
café--except the one chair upon which the champion snoozed--was a model
of dry, unlaboured humour.
As an example of the drollness with which O’Malley has delighted _Sun_
readers for ten years, take this extract from his report of the East
Side Passover parade of 1917, referring to Counselor Levy, the Duke of
Essex Street, whose title was conferred by the _Sun_ twenty years ago:
It was difficult for a time to get the details of the duke’s
Passover garb, owing to the fact that the interior of his
Nile-green limousine has recently been fitted up with
book-shelves, so that the duke can be surrounded with his law
library even when motoring to and from his office on the East
Side. Furthermore, every space not occupied by the duke and
duchess and the law library yesterday was decorated with floral
set pieces in honor of Easter, a large pillow of tuberoses
inscribed with the words “Our Duke” in purple immortelles,
and presented by the Essex Market Bar Association to their
dean, being the outstanding piece among the interior floral
decorations of the duke’s Rolls-Royce. Beside Ittchee, the
duke’s Jap valet and chauffeur, was a large rubber-plant, which
shut off the view, the rubber-plant being the Easter gift of
Solomon, Solomon, Solomon, Solomon, Solomon and Solomon, who
learned all their law as students in the offices of the duke.
Little or nothing remains to be told about the duke’s Easter
scenery. He was dressed in the mode, that’s all--high hat,
morning coat, trousers like Martin Littleton’s, mauve spats,
corn-colored gloves, patent-leather shoes, Russian-red cravat,
set off with a cameo showing the face of Lord Chief Justice
Russell in high relief. His only distinctive mark was the
absence of a gardenia on his lapel.
He was off then, waving his snakewood cane jauntily, while the
East Side scrambled after the car to try to feel the Nile-green
varnish. And with a final direction to Ittchee, “Go around by
Chauncey Depew’s house on the way home, my good man,” the car
exploded northward, and the Passover parade on Delancey Street
officially ended for the day.
There is hardly a man who has lived five years as a _Sun_ reporter but
could write his own story of the _Sun_ just as he has written stories
of life. Here but a few of these men and their work have been touched.
It has been a long parade from Wisner of 1833 to Hill of 1918. Many of
the great reporters are dead, and of some of these it may be said that
their lives were shortened by the very fever in which they won their
glory. Some passed on to other fields of endeavour. Others are waiting
to write “the best story ever printed in the _Sun_.”
What was the best story ever printed in the _Sun_? It may be that that
story has been quoted from in these articles; and yet, if a thousand
years hence some super-scientist should invent a literary measure that
would answer the question, the crown of that high and now unbestowable
honour of authorship might fall to some man here unmentioned and
elsewhere unsung. Perhaps it was an article only two hundred words
long.
CHAPTER XVII
SOME GENIUS IN AN OLD ROOM
_Lord, Managing Editor for Thirty-Turn Years.--Clarke, Magician of
the Copy Desk.--Ethics, Fair Play and Democracy.--“The Evening
Sun” and Those Who Make It._
For forty-seven years the city or news room of the _Sun_ was on the
third floor of the brick building at the south corner of Nassau and
Frankfort Streets, a five-story house built for Tammany Hall in 1811,
when that organization found its quarters in Martling’s Tavern--a few
doors south, on part of the site of the present Tribune Building--too
small for its robust membership.
In the days of Grand Sachems William Mooney, Matthew L. Davis, Lorenzo
B. Shepard, Elijah F. Purdy, Isaac V. Fowler, Nelson J. Waterbury, and
William D. Kennedy, and the big and little bosses, including Tweed,
this third-floor room had been used as a general meeting-hall. It
was here, in 1835, that the Locofoco--later the Equal Rights--party
was born after a conflict in which the regular Tammany men, finding
themselves in the minority, turned off the gas and left the reformers
to meet by the light of locofoco matches. It was a room from which many
a Democrat was hurled because he preferred De Witt Clinton to Tammany’s
favourite, Martin Van Buren. Two flights of long, straight stairs led
to the ground floor. They were hard to go up; they must have been
extremely painful to go down bouncing.
It was a long, wide, barnlike room, lighted by five windows that looked
upon Park Row and the City Hall. The stout old timbers were bare in
the ceiling and in them were embedded various hooks and ring-bolts to
which, once upon a time, was attached gymnasium apparatus used by a
_turn verein_, which hired the room when the Tammanyites did not need
it.
It was not a beautiful room. Mr. Dana never did anything to improve
it except in a utilitarian way, and from the time when he bought the
building from the Tammany Society, in 1867, until it was torn down
in 1915, the old place looked very much the same. Of course, new
gas-jets were added, these to be followed by electric-light wires,
until the upper air had a jungle-like appearance, and there were rude,
inexpensive desks and telephone-booths.
The floor was efficient, for it was covered with rubber matting that
deadened alike the quick footstep of Dana and the thundering stride
of pugilistic champions who came in to see the sporting editor. But
the city room’s only ornaments were men and their genius. Here wrote
Ralph and Chamberlin, Spears and Irwin, and all the rest of the fine
reporters of the old building’s years.
Near the windows of this shabby room were the desks of the men who
planned news-hunts, chose the hunters, and mounted their trophies. Six
desks handled all the news-matter in the old city room of the _Sun_.
The managing editor sat at a roll-top in the northwest corner, near a
door that led to Mr. Dana’s room. A little distance to the east was
the night editor’s desk. At the large flat-top desk near the managing
editor three men sat--the cable editor, who handled all foreign news;
the “Albany man,” who edited articles from the State and national
capitals and all of New York State; and the telegraph editor, who
took care of all other wire matter.
[Illustration:
CHESTER SANDERS LORD
]
In the southwest corner of the room was a double desk at which the city
editor sat from 10 A.M. until 5 P.M., when the night city editor came
in. Next to the city editor’s desk was the roll-top of the assistant
city editor, also used by the assistant night city editor. Beyond that
was the desk of the suburban or “Jersey” editor. Nearest the door, so
that the noise of ten-thousand-dollar challenges to twenty-round combat
would not disturb the whole room, was the desk of the sporting editor.
In the fifty years that have passed since Dana bought the _Sun_, the
changes in the heads of the news departments have been comparatively
few. True, the news office has not been as fortunate as the editorial
rooms, where only three men, Charles A. Dana, Paul Dana, and Edward P.
Mitchell, have been actual editors-in-chief; but the list of managing
editors and night city editors is not long. Before the day of Chester
S. Lord, the managing editors were, in order: Isaac W. England, Amos J.
Cummings, William Young, and Ballard Smith. Since Lord’s retirement the
managing editors have been James Luby, William Harris, and Keats Speed.
The city editors have been John Williams, Larry Kane, W. M. Rosebault,
William Young, John B. Bogart (1873–1890), Daniel F. Kellogg
(1890–1902), George B. Mallon (1902–1914), and Kenneth Lord, the
present city editor, a son of Chester S. Lord.
The night city editors before the long reign of Selah Merrill
Clarke--of whom more will be said presently--were Henry W. Odion,
Elijah M. Rewey, and Ambrose W. Lyman, all of whom had previously been
_Sun_ reporters, and all of whom remained with the _Sun_, in various
capacities, for many years. Rewey was the exchange editor from 1887 to
1903, and was variously employed at other important desk posts until
his death in 1916. Since Mr. Clarke’s retirement, in 1912, the night
city editors have been Joseph W. Bishop, J. W. Phoebus, Eugene Doane,
Marion G. Scheitlin, and M. A. Rose.
The night editors of the _Sun_, whose function it is to make up the
paper and to “sit in” when the managing editors are absent, have been
Dr. John B. Wood, the “great American condenser”; Garret P. Serviss,
now with the _Evening Journal_; Charles M. Fairbanks, Carr V. Van Anda
(1893–1904), now managing editor of the New York _Times_; George M.
Smith (1904–1912), the present managing editor of the _Evening Sun_;
and Joseph W. Bishop.
In the eighties, the nineties, and the first decade of the present
century the front corners of the city room were occupied, six nights
a week, by two men closely identified with the _Sun’s_ progress in
getting and preparing news. These, Chester S. Lord and S. M. Clarke,
were looked up to by _Sun_ men, and by Park Row generally, as essential
parts of the _Sun_.
Lord, through his city editors, reporters, and correspondents, got the
news. If it was metropolitan news--and until the latter days of July,
1914, New York was the news-centre of the world, so far as American
papers were concerned--Clarke helped to get it and then to present it
after the unapproachably artistic manner of the _Sun_. In the years
of Lord and Clarke more than a billion copies of the _Sun_ went out
containing news stories written by men whom Lord had hired and whose
work had passed beneath the hand of Clarke.
Chester Sanders Lord, who was managing editor of the _Sun_ from 1880
to 1913, was born in Romulus, New York, in 1850, the son of the Rev.
Edward Lord, a Presbyterian clergyman who was chaplain of the One
Hundred and Tenth Regiment of New York Volunteer Infantry in the Civil
War. Chester Lord studied at Hamilton College in 1869 and 1870, and
went from college to be associate editor of the Oswego _Advertiser_.
In 1872 he came to the _Sun_ as a reporter, and covered part of Horace
Greeley’s campaign for the Presidency in that year. After nine months
as a reporter he was assigned by the managing editor, Cummings, to the
suburban desk, where he remained for four years.
In the fall of 1877 he bought the Syracuse _Standard_, but in six weeks
he returned to the _Sun_ and became assistant night city editor under
Ambrose W. Lyman, the predecessor of S. M. Clarke. Ballard Smith, who
succeeded William Young as managing editor in 1878, named Lord as his
assistant, and Lord succeeded Ballard Smith as managing editor on
December 3, 1880.
For thirty-three years Lord inspected applicants for places in the news
departments of the _Sun_, and decided whether they would fit into the
human structure that Dana had built. Edward G. Riggs, who knew him as
well as any one, has written thus of him:
Like Dana, he has been a great judge of men. His discernment
has been little short of miraculous. Calm, dispassionate,
without the slightest atom of impulse, as wise as a serpent and
as gentle as a dove, Lord got about him a staff that has been
regarded by newspapermen as the most brilliant in the country.
Independent of thought, with a placid idea of the dignity of
his place, ever ready to concede the other fellow’s point of
view even though maintaining his own, Lord was never known in
all the years of his managing editorship of the _Sun_ to utter
an unkind word to any man on the paper, no matter how humble
his station.
One of Lord’s notable performances as managing editor was the
perfecting of the _Sun’s_ system of collecting election returns.
Before 1880 the correspondents had sent in the election figures in
a conscientious but rather inefficient manner--by towns, or cities.
Lord picked out a reliable correspondent in each county of New York
State and gave to the chosen man the responsibility of sending to the
_Sun_, at nine o’clock on election night, an estimate of the result in
his particular county. This was to be followed at eleven o’clock, if
necessary, with the corrected figures.
“Don’t tell us how your city, or township, or village went,” he said
to the correspondents. “Let us have your best estimate on the county.
Don’t spare the telephone or the telegraph, either to collect the
returns or to get them into the _Sun_ office.”
The telephone was just coming into general use for the transmission of
news, and Lord saw its possibilities on an election night.
As a result of the new system, improved from year to year, the
_Sun_ became what it is--the election-night authority on what has
happened. So confident was the _Sun_ of its figures on the night of
the Presidential election of 1884 that it, alone of all the New York
papers, declared the next morning that Mr. Cleveland had defeated Mr.
Blaine, although the _Sun_ had been one of the most strenuous opponents
of the Democratic candidate. Blaine, who had wired to the _Sun_ for
its estimates, got the first news of his defeat from Lord. Eight years
later, when Mr. Cleveland defeated President Harrison, the winner’s
political chief of staff, Daniel S. Lamont, received the first tidings
of the great and unexpected victory from Mr. Lord.
In the late eighties the _Sun_ was supplementing its Associated Press
news service with a valuable corps of special correspondents scattered
all over America and Europe. The news received from these _Sun_ men
led to the establishment, by William M. Laffan, then publisher of the
_Sun_, of a _Sun_ news agency which was called the Laffan Bureau. This
service, originated for the purpose of covering special events in the
live way of the _Sun_, was suddenly called upon to cover the whole news
field of the world in a more comprehensive way.
Lord’s part in this work, when Dana decided to break with the
Associated Press, has been graphically described by Mr. Riggs:
“Chester,” said Mr. Dana one afternoon early in the nineties,
leaning over Lord’s desk, “I have just torn up my Associated
Press franchise. We’ve got to have the news of the world
to-morrow morning, and we’ve got to get it ourselves.”
“Don’t let that fret you, Mr. Dana,” replied Lord. “You’ve got
a Dante class on hand to-night. You just go home and enjoy
yourself. I’ll have the news for you all right.”
Dana always said that he didn’t enjoy his Dante class a single
bit that night; but he didn’t go near the _Sun_ office, neither
did he communicate with the office. He banked on Lord, and
the next morning and ever afterward Lord made good on the
independent service. He built up the Laffan Bureau, which more
recently has become the Sun News Service, and the special
correspondents of the paper in all parts of the world see to it
that the _Sun_ gets the news.
A task like that which Dana thrust on Lord might have paralyzed
the average managing editor of a great metropolitan newspaper
confronted by keen and powerful competitors. It was unheard of
in journalism. It had never been attempted before. Lord, with
calm courage and confidence, sent off thousands of telegrams
and cable despatches that night. Many were shots in the air,
but the majority were bull’s-eyes, as the next morning’s issue
of the _Sun_ proved.
Was Dana delighted? If you had seen him hop, skip, and jump
into the office that morning, you’d have received your answer.
When Lord turned up at his desk in the afternoon, Dana rushed
out from his chief editor’s office, grasped him about the
shoulders, and chuckled:
“Chester, you’re a brick, you’re a trump. You’re the John L.
Sullivan of newspaperdom!”
The Laffan Bureau, which assimilated the old United Press, became a
news syndicate the service of which was sought by dozens of American
papers whose editors admired the _Sun’s_ manner of handling news. The
Laffan Bureau lasted until 1916, when the _Sun_, through its purchase
by Frank A. Munsey, absorbed Mr. Munsey’s New York _Press_, which had
the Associated Press service.
Among Mr. Lord’s fortunate traits as managing editor were his ability
to choose good correspondents all over the world and his entire
confidence in them after they were selected. No matter what other
correspondents wrote, the _Sun_ stood by its own men. They were on the
spot; they should know the truth as well as any one else could.
Months before Aguinaldo’s insurrection the _Sun_ man at Manila, P. G.
McDonnell, kept insisting that the Filipino chieftain would revolt. The
other New York newspapers laughed at the _Sun_ for seeing ghosts, but
McDonnell was right.
Newspaper readers will remember that in 1904 the fall of Port Arthur
was announced three or four times in about as many months, and each
time the _Sun_ appeared to be beaten on the news until the next day,
when it was discovered that the Russians were still holding out. All
the _Sun_ did about the matter was to notify its Tokyo correspondent,
John T. Swift, that when Port Arthur really fell it would expect to
hear from him by cable at “double urgent” rates. At midnight of
January 1, 1905, four months after these instructions were given to
Swift, the _Sun_ got a “double urgent” message:
Port Arthur fallen--SWIFT.
No other paper in New York had the news. The _Sun_ rubbed it in
editorially on January 3:
Deeply conscious as we are of the deplorable lack of modern
enterprise which has hitherto deprived the _Sun_ of the
distinction of repeatedly announcing the fall of Port Arthur,
we have to content ourselves with the reflection that when
finally the _Sun_ did print the fall of Port Arthur, it was so.
Soon after the election of Woodrow Wilson, in 1912, the head of the
_Sun_ bureau in Washington, the late Elting A. Fowler, made the
prediction that William Jennings Bryan would be named as Secretary of
State. Nearly every other metropolitan newspaper either ignored the
story, or ridiculed it as absurd and impossible. The _Sun_ never made
inquiry of Fowler as to the source of his information. He had been
a _Sun_ man for ten years, and that was enough. Fowler repeated and
reiterated that Bryan would be the head of the new Cabinet, and sure
enough, he was.
The _Sun_ correspondent in a city five hundred miles from New York was
covering a great murder mystery. Every other New York newspaper of
importance had sent from two to five men to handle the story; the _Sun_
sent none. The correspondent saw that the New York men were getting
sheaves of telegrams from their newspapers, directing them in detail
how to tell the story, and to what length; so he sent a message to the
_Sun_ advising it of the large numbers of New York reporters engaged on
the mystery, and of the amount of matter they were preparing to send.
Had the _Sun_ any instructions for him? Yes, it had. The reply came
swiftly:
Use your own judgment--CHESTER S. LORD.
That was the _Sun_ way, and the _Sun_ printed the correspondent’s
stories, whether they were one column long, or six. The _Sun_ could not
see how an editor in New York could know more about a distant murder
than a correspondent on the spot.
It was the _Sun’s_ way, once a man was taken on, to keep him as long
as it could. One day Mr. Lord sent for Samuel Hopkins Adams, then a
reporter, and asked him whether he would like to go away fishing.
“A Sunday story?” inquired Adams.
“No, not exactly,” said Mr. Lord. “A vacation, rather. You’ve been
fired. Go away, but come back, say, next Tuesday, and go to work, and
it’ll be all right. Don’t worry!”
Adams learned that a suit for libel had been brought against the paper
by an individual who had been made an unpleasant figure in a police
story which Adams had written.
A few days after Adams returned to his duties Mr. Dana came out of his
room and asked the city editor, Mr. Kellogg, the name of the reporter
who had written an article to which he pointed. Kellogg told Dana that
Adams was the author, and Dana strode across the room and bestowed upon
the reporter one of his brief and much prized commentaries of approval.
Then he looked at Adams more closely, and, with raised eyebrows, walked
to the managing editor’s desk.
“Who is that young man?” he asked Mr. Lord, indicating Adams with a
movement of the head.
Mr. Lord murmured something.
“Didn’t I order him discharged a few days ago?” said Mr. Dana.
Another but more prolonged murmur from Mr. Lord. Adams got up from his
desk to efface himself, but as he left the room he caught the voice of
Mr. Dana, a trifle higher and a bit plaintive:
“Why is it, Mr. Lord, that I never succeed in discharging any of your
bright young men?”
Adams did not wait for the answer.
This story, while typical of Lord, is not typical of Dana. For
every word of censure he had a hundred words of praise. He read the
paper--every line of it--for virtues to be commended rather than for
faults to be condemned.
“Who wrote the two sticks about the lame girl? A good touch; that’s the
_Sun_ idea!”
If a new man had written something he liked--even a ten-line
paragraph--the editor of the _Sun_ would cross the room to shake the
man’s hand and say:
“Good work!”
The spirit he radiated was contagious. The men, encouraged by Dana,
spread faith to one another. The “_Sun_” spirit--the envious of other
newspapers were wont to refer to those who had it as “the _Sun’s_
Mutual Admiration Society”--did and does much to make the _Sun_. The
men lived the socialism of art. If a new reporter received a difficult
assignment, ten older men were ready to tell him, in a kindly and not
at all didactic way, how to find the short cut.
Perhaps some part of the democracy of the _Sun_ office has come from
the fact that men have rarely been taken in at the top. It was Dana’s
plan to catch young men with unformed ideas of journalism and make
_Sun_ men of them. They went on the paper as cubs at fifteen dollars a
week--or even as office-boys--and worked their way to be “space men,”
if they had it in their noddles.
All space men were free and equal in the Jeffersonian sense. Their pay
was eight dollars a column. That one man made one hundred and fifty
dollars in a week when his neighbour made only fifty was usually the
result, not of the system, but of the difference between the men. Some
were harder workers than others, or better fitted by experience for
more important stories; and some were born money-makers. If a diligent
reporter, through no fault of his own, was making small “bills,”
the city editor would see to it that something profitable fell to
him--perhaps a long and easily written Sunday article.
Through changed conditions in newspaper make-up and policies, the space
system in the payment of reporters is now practically extinct. It had
good points and bad ones. Undoubtedly it developed a large number of
men to whom a salary would not have been attractive. Some, to whose
style and activities the space system lent itself, remained in the
profession longer than they would otherwise have stayed. On the other
hand, it was not always fair to reporters with whom a condensed style
was natural. The dynamics of a two-inch article, the very value of
which lies in its brevity, cannot be measured with a space-rule.
The _Sun’s_ ideas of fairness do not end with itself and its men.
It has always had a proper consideration for the feelings of the
innocent bystander. It never harms the weak, or stoops to get news in
a dishonourable or unbecoming way. It would be hard to devise a set of
rules of newspaper ethics, but a few examples of things that the _Sun_
doesn’t do may illuminate.
[Illustration:
SELAH MERRILL CLARKE
]
Soon after one of the _Sun’s_ most brilliant reporters had come on the
paper, he was sent to report the wedding of a noted sporting man and
a famous stage beauty, the marriage ceremony being performed by a
picturesque Tammany alderman. The reporter returned to the office with
a lot of amusing detail, which he recited in brief to the night city
editor.
“Just the facts of the marriage, please,” said Mr. Clarke. “The two
most important events in the life of a woman are her marriage and her
death. Neither should be treated flippantly.”
Another reporter wrote an amusing story about a fat policeman posted
at the Battery, who chased a tramp through a pool of rain-water. The
policeman fell into the water, and the tramp got away. No report of the
occurrence was made at police headquarters, but a _Sun_ man saw the
incident and wrote it.
“It’s an amusing story,” said Clarke to the reporter, “but they read
the papers at police headquarters, and this policeman may be put on
trial for not reporting the escape of the hobo. Suppose we drop this
classic on the floor?”
A telegraph messenger-boy once wrote a letter to the police
commissioner, telling him how to break up the cadets (panders) of the
East Side. A _Sun_ man found the lad and got an interesting interview
with him.
“Leave my name out, won’t you?” the messenger said to the reporter. “If
you print it, I may lose my job.”
He was told that his name was known in the _Sun_ office, but that the
reporter would present his appeal.
“Did you find the messenger?” Clarke asked the reporter on his arrival.
The _Sun_ man replied that he had found him, and that the interview was
interesting and exclusive. Before he had an opportunity to repeat the
boy’s plea for anonymity, Clarke said:
“Is it going to hurt the boy if we print his name? If it is, leave it
out, and refer to him by a fictitious number.”
Two reporters, one from the _Sun_ and one from another big daily, went
one night to interview a famous man on an important subject. The _Sun_
man returned and wrote a brief story containing none of the big news
which it had been hoped he might get. The other newspaper came out with
some startling revelations, gleaned from the same interview. Mr. Lord
showed the rival paper’s article to the _Sun_ reporter, with a mild
inquiry as to the reason for the _Sun’s_ failure to get the news.
“We both gave our word,” said the reporter, “that we would keep back
that piece of news for three days, even from our offices.”
“Son,” said Mr. Lord, “you are a great man!”
That was the Lord phrase of acquittal.
One of the big occurrences in the investigation of the life-insurance
companies in 1905 was a report which was read to the investigating
committee in executive session. Every newspaper yearned for the
contents of the document. After the committee adjourned, a member of it
whispered to a _Sun_ reporter:
“There is a bundle of those reports just inside the door of the
committee room. I should think that five dollars given to a scrub-woman
would probably get a copy for you.”
The _Sun_ man, knowing the value of the report, and not content to act
on his own estimate of _Sun_ ethics, telephoned the temptation to the
city editor, Mr. Mallon.
“A _Sun_ man who would do that would lose his job,” was the instant
decision.
A couple of days after Stephen Tyng Mather, recently First Assistant
Secretary of the Interior, went on the _Sun_ as a reporter, the city
editor, Mr. Bogart, called him to his desk.
“Mr. Mather,” said Bogart, “an admirer of the _Sun_ has sent me a
turkey. Of course, I cannot accept it. Please take it to his house in
Harlem and explain why; but don’t hurt his feelings.”
Mather had just come from college, where he had never learned that the
ethics of journalism might require a reporter to become a deliverer of
poultry, but he took the turkey. It does not detract from the moral of
the story to say that Mather and another young reporter, neither quite
understanding the _Sun’s_ stern code, took the bird to the Fellowcraft
Club and had it roasted--a fact of which Mr. Bogart may have been
unaware until now.
The best news-handler that journalism has seen, Selah Merrill Clarke,
was night city editor of the _Sun_ for thirty-one years. He came to the
paper in 1881 from the New York _World_, where he had been employed
as a reporter, and later as a desk man. In the early seventies he
wrote for the _World_ a story of a suicide, and one of the newspapers
of that day said of it that neither Dickens nor Wilkie Collins, with
all the time they could ask, could have surpassed it. His story of
the milkman’s ride down the valley of the Mill River, warning the
inhabitants that the dam had broken at the Ashfield reservoir, near
Northampton, Massachusetts (May 16, 1874), was another classic that
attracted the attention of editors, including Dana.
Clarke never thought well of himself as a reporter, and often said that
in that capacity he was a failure. As a judge of news values, or news
presentation, or as a giver of the fine literary touch which lent to
the _Sun’s_ articles that indescribable tone not found in other papers,
Clarke stood almost alone.
The city editor of a New York newspaper sows seeds; the night city
editor re-seeds barren spots, waters wilting items, and cuts and
bags the harvest. The city editor sends men out all day for news; the
night city editor judges what they bring in, and decides what space it
shall have. In the handling of a big story, on which five or fifteen
reporters may be engaged, the night city editor has to put together as
many different writings in such a way that the reader may go smoothly
from beginning to end. Chance may decree that the poorest writer has
brought in the biggest news, and the man on the desk must supply
quality as well as judgment.
At such work Clarke was a master. It has been said of him that by the
eliding stroke of his pencil and the insertion of perhaps a single word
he could change the commonplace to literature. No reporter ever worked
on the _Sun_ but wished, at one time or another, to thank Clarke for
saving him from himself. Clarke had the faculty of seeing instantly the
opportunity for improvement that the reporter might have seen an hour
or a day later.
Clarke got about New York very little, but he knew the city from Arthur
Kill to Pelham Bay; knew it just as a general at headquarters knows
the terrain on which his troops are fighting, but which he himself has
never seen. He had the map of New York in his brain. When an alarm
of fire came in from an obscure corner, he knew what lumber-yards or
oil-refineries were near the blaze, and whether that was a point where
the water pressure was likely to fail.
Clarke’s memory was uncanny; it seemed to have photographed every issue
of the _Sun_ for years. It was a saying that while Clarke stayed the
_Sun_ needed neither an index nor a “morgue”--that biographical cabinet
in which newspapers keep records of men and affairs.
Twenty-five years after the Beecher-Tilton trial a three-line
death-notice came to Clarke’s desk. He read the dead man’s name and
summoned a reporter.
“This man was a juror in the Beecher case,” said Clarke. “Look in the
file of February 6 or 7, 1875, and I think you’ll find that this man
stood up and made an interruption. Write a little piece about it.”
A _Sun_ man who reported the funeral of Russell Sage at Lawrence, Long
Island, in July, 1906, returned to the office and told Mr. Clarke that
an acquaintance of the Sage family had told him, on the train coming
back, the contents of the old man’s will--a document for which the
reading public eagerly waited. The reporter laid his informant’s card
before the night city editor. Clarke studied the name on it for a
minute, and then said:
“We won’t print the story. Dig out the file for June, 1899, and
somewhere on the front page--I think it will be in the third or fourth
column--on the 1st or 2nd of June you’ll find a story telling that this
man was sent to Sing Sing for forgery.”
Clarke’s memory was right. Although it is anti-climactic to relate
it, the ex-convict’s description of what the will contained was also
correct.
Will Irwin, while reporting a small war between two Chinese societies,
wrote an article one night about the arrest of two Hip Sing tong
men who were wearing chain armour under their blouses. Clarke, much
interested, asked Irwin all about the armour.
“It reminds me of ‘King Solomon’s Mines,’” remarked Irwin, “and the
chain armour that the heroes had made in Sheffield to wear in Africa.”
“Yes,” replied Clarke, who had not read the Haggard novel in fifteen
years; “but it wasn’t Sheffield--it was Birmingham.”
Clarke had a sense of responsibility that showed itself in nervousness.
On a night when news was breaking, that nervousness was exhibited in
his trips, every ten minutes, to the ice-water tank; in the constant
lighting and relighting of his pipe; in the quick turn of his head at
the approach of a reporter. Yet his nervousness was not contagious. So
long as Clarke was nervous, the men under him felt that they need not
be. He did all the worrying, and, unlike most worriers, got results
from it.
Let him know that something had happened in the city, and his drag-net
system was started. No matter how remote the happening, how apparently
hopeless the clue, he let neither man nor telephone rest until every
possible corner had been searched for the guilty news item. Once the
situation was in hand he would return to the adornment of a head-line
or the working out of some abstruse problem in mathematics--perhaps the
angles of a sun-dial, for Clarke’s hobby was gnomonics, and he knew
dials from Ptolemy’s time down. As a rest from mathematics he might
write a limerick in Greek, and then carefully tear it up.
Almost every newspaper in New York tried, at one time or another, to
take Clarke from the _Sun_. One night an emissary from one of the
apostles of the then new journalism entered the _Sun_ office and
sent his card to Mr. Clarke. When the night city editor appeared, he
whispered:
“Mr. ---- says that if you’ll ascertain the highest salary the _Sun_
will pay you to stay, he’ll double it.”
Clarke uttered the strange sound that was his indulgence when
disagreeably disturbed--a cross between a growl and a grunt--and turned
back toward his desk.
“He’ll triple it!” cried the tempter.
Although Clarke heard the words, he kept on to his desk, and not only
never mentioned the matter, but probably never thought of it again.
On another occasion he made a notable trip to the gate at the entrance
to the big room. A drunken visitor was making the place ring with
yells, and the office-boys could not stop him. Clarke bore the noise
for ten minutes, and then, remarking, “This is unendurable!” went and
threw the man down the stairs.
Clarke was the hero of a dozen newspaper stories, which he scorned to
read.
“Do you know, Mr. Clarke,” said a reporter who did not know how shy
“the boss” was, “that Blank has put you into a short story in _Space’s
Magazine_?”
“Who is Blank?” said Clarke shortly.
“Why,” said his informant, “he worked here for several weeks.”
“Oh, Lord!” said Clarke. “I can’t be expected, can I, to remember all
the geniuses that come and go?”
There was a mild ferocity about him that caused more than one cub to
think that the night boss was unfriendly, but this attitude had a good
effect. No young reporter ever made the same mistake twice.
“If you mean ‘child,’ write it so,” he would say. “Don’t write it
‘tot.’ And please have more variety in your motor cars. I have seen
several that were not large and red and high-powered.”
The head-lines of the _Sun_ have been well written since the first days
of Dana, and Clarke, for thirty years, was the best of the head-line
writers. He wrote rhyming heads for Sam Wood’s prose verse, satirical
heads for satires, humorous heads for the funny men’s articles. A
_Sun_ reader could gauge almost exactly the worth of an article by the
quality of the heading. A _Sun_ reporter could tell just what Clarke
thought of his story by the cleverness of the lines that the night
city editor wrote above it.
Clarke would put the obvious heading on a long, matter-of-fact yarn
in two minutes, but he might spend half an hour--if he had it to
spare--polishing a head for a short and sparkling piece of work. Two
architects who did city work pleaded poverty, but admitted having
turned over property to their wives. Clarke headed the story:
“We’re Broke,” Says Horgan.--“Sure,” Says Slattery, “But Our
Wives Are Doing Fine.”
A brief item about the arrest of some boys for stealing five copies of
“The Simple Life” he headed “Tempted Beyond Their Strength.” Over a
paragraph telling of the killing of a Park Row newsboy by a truck he
wrote: “A Sparrow Falls.”
Clarke had a besetting fear that Russell Sage would die suddenly late
at night, and that the _Sun_ would not learn of it in time. Again and
again false “hunches” caused him to send men to the Sage home on Fifth
Avenue to discover the state of the old millionaire’s health. When Mr.
Sage became seriously ill, reporters were sent in relays to watch the
house. One man who had such an assignment turned up at the _Sun_ office
at one o’clock in the morning.
“I left Mr. Sage’s house,” he explained to Clarke, “because Dr. Blank
just came out and I had a little talk with him. He asked me if S. M.
Clarke was still night city editor of the _Sun_; and when I told him
that you were, he said:
“‘Tell Selah for me that I will call him personally on the ’phone if
there is the least change in Mr. Sage’s condition. Selah and I are old
friends; we used to be room-mates in college.’”
“Blank always was a darn liar!” said Mr. Clarke. “Go back to the house
and sit on the door-step.”
On February 28, 1917, five years after Clarke retired, the Sun Alumni
Association gave a dinner in his honour, with Mr. Lord presiding. Men
came five hundred miles for the event, and the speeches were entirely
about Clarke and his work. Mr. Clarke himself, who was only five miles
away, sent a kindly letter to say that he was pleased, but that he
could not imagine anything more absurd than a man’s attending a dinner
given in his own honour.
Clarke was a factor in that nebulous institution so frequently referred
to as the “_Sun_ school of journalism,” a college in which the teaching
was by example rather than precept. Clarke occasionally told the young
reporters how not to do it, but his real lessons were given in the
columns of the _Sun_. There, in cold type, the man could see that
Clarke had thrown his beautiful introduction on the floor, had lifted a
word or a phrase from the middle of the article and put it to the fore,
or had, by one of the touches which marked the great copy-reader’s
genius, breathed life into the narrative. Clarke had no rules for
improving a story, but he had a faculty, not uncommon among the finest
copy-readers, of seeing an event more clearly than it had appeared to
the reporter who described it, even when the desk man’s information
came entirely from the reporter’s screed.
If a reporter found his story in the paper almost untouched by Clarke’s
pencil and adorned with a typical Clarkean head, it was a signal to
him that he had done well. He was sure not to get verbal approbation
from Clarke. There is a legend that Clarke once cried “Fine!” after
skimming over a sheet of well-written copy, but it is only a legend.
With a reporter who never wrote introductions and never padded his
articles Clarke would sometimes crack a joke. _Sun_ traditions have it
that once, after a reporter had turned New York inside out to dig out
a particularly difficult piece of news, the night city editor remarked
to his assistant that that reporter “was a handy man to have around the
office.” Although Clarke has been referred to by an excellent judge,
Will Irwin, as “the greatest living schoolmaster of newspapermen,” his
methods could never be adapted to the academies of journalism.
As a schoolmaster of a more positive type, _Sun_ men remember the late
Francis T. Patton, who edited suburban news for twenty years. Staff
men on assignments in New Jersey, Westchester, Long Island, and other
places just beyond the city turned in their copy to “Boss” Patton,
a cultured man who spent his spare hours reading old Latin works in
the original or working out chess problems. It was to him that the
bewildered cub turned in his hour of torment, and Patton would tell him
how long his story ought to run, how he might begin it, how end it.
“I know it isn’t right to fake, Mr. Patton,” said a new reporter; “but
is exaggeration never permissible?”
“It is,” said Patton. “You may use exaggeration whenever it is needed
to convey to the reader an adequate but not exaggerated picture of the
event you are describing. For instance, if you are reporting a storm at
Seabright, and the waves are eight and one-half feet high by the tape
which you surely carry in your hip-pocket for such emergencies, it will
hardly do to inform the reader that the waves are eight and one-half
feet high; his visualization of the scene would not be perfect. Yet, if
you write that the waves ran mountain-high, I shall change your copy
if it comes to me. The expression would be too stale. Hyperbole is one
of the gifts.”
[Illustration:
SAMUEL A. WOOD
]
[Illustration:
OSCAR KING DAVIS
]
[Illustration:
THOMAS M. DIEUAIDE
]
[Illustration:
SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS
]
Patton’s droll humour was one of the delights of the _Sun_ office. One
night Charles M. Fairbanks was writing, for the _Herald_, a story about
“The Men Who Make the _Sun_ Shine.” He asked Patton for something about
himself.
“You may say,” replied the boss of the suburban desk, “that my
characteristics are brilliancy, trustworthiness, accuracy, and poetic
fervour.”
“Boss,” said a young reporter to Mr. Patton, “I often think you and I
could run this paper better than the men who are running it.”
“How strange!” said Mr. Patton, looking surprised. “I know that I
could, but it has never occurred to me that you would not do worse than
they do.”
The sports department has been one of the _Sun’s_ strongholds since
Mr. Dana’s first years. Dana would let Amos Cummings give half a page
to a race at Saratoga or Monmouth Park, and would encourage Amos to
neglect his executive duties so that the paper might have a good report
of a boxing-match. When William I lay dead in Berlin, the _Sun’s_
principal European correspondent, Arthur Brisbane, was concerned,
not with the future of the continent, but with the aftermath of the
Sullivan-Mitchell fight at Chantilly.
The stories of the international yacht-races have always been told best
in the _Sun_, whether the reporter was John R. Spears or William J.
Henderson. Mr. Henderson, who is the ablest musical critic in America,
is probably the best yachting reporter, too. While the world of music
knows him through his distinguished critiques, particularly of opera,
the _Sun_ knows him as a great reporter--one who would rank high among
the best it has ever had. Another _Sun_ man who wrote yachting well is
Duncan Curry, later of the _American_.
In turf matters the _Sun_ has long been looked upon as an authority.
In the heyday of racing the paper enjoyed the services of Christopher
J. Fitzgerald, since then familiar as a starter on many race-tracks,
and of Joseph Vila, now sporting editor of the _Evening Sun_.
Fitzgerald, although a specialist in sports, was also a first-class
general reporter. He is the hero of a story of the proverbial “_Sun_
luck,” which in this case might better be called _Sun_ persistence and
activity.
In the latter part of December, 1892, the steamship Umbria, the
fastest transatlantic boat of her day, was two weeks overdue at New
York. Every newspaper had tugs out to watch for her first appearance.
On the night of December 28 Fitzgerald was assigned to tug duty. The
first tug he took down the moonlit bay broke her propeller in the ice;
with the second tug he ran twenty miles beyond Sandy Hook. Presently
an inward-bound liner appeared in the dark, and the other newspaper
boats followed her; but this was not the Umbria, but the Britannic. An
hour later a tank steamer came along, and Fitzgerald hailed her on the
chance that she knew something about the missing ship.
“The Umbria,” came back the answer, “is about five miles astern, coming
in slowly.”
The _Sun’s_ tug raced to sea and soon came alongside the overdue
steamer. On board was Frank Marshall White, the _Sun’s_ London
correspondent, and he had, all ready written, a story telling how the
Umbria broke her machinery, and how the chief engineer lay on his back
for five days trying to mend the break. Fitzgerald took White’s story
and raced to Quarantine, where there was a telegraph-station, but, at
that hour, no operator. Fitzgerald, himself an expert telegrapher,
pounded the _Sun’s_ call, “SX,” for ten minutes, but the _Sun_ operator
had gone home.
Fitzgerald returned to the tug and went under full speed to the
Battery, landing at 3.35 A.M. Running to Park Row, he found an
assistant foreman of the _Sun_ composing-room enjoying his lemonade in
Andy Horn’s restaurant. This man rounded up four or five printers, and
they began setting up the story at 4 A.M. The _Sun_ had a complete and
exclusive story, and twenty thousand copies were sold of Fitzgerald’s
extra.
Vila, like Fitzgerald a man of large physique and a former athlete,
wrote the descriptions of a dozen Suburban Handicaps and Futurities,
of a score of great college rowing-matches, of a thousand baseball
and football games. Damon Runyon, the poet and sporting editor, once
remarked that “Vila is the only sporting writer I have ever seen who
knows exactly, at the end of a sporting event, just what he is going to
write, when he is going to write it, and how much he is going to write.”
When John W. Gates and John A. Drake came to the New York race-tracks
and made bets of sensational magnitude, Vila was the only turf reporter
able to give the exact figures of the amounts bet by the Western
plungers. The printing of these in the _Sun_ so aroused the Jockey Club
that a curb was put on big betting.
The present sports staff includes some of the writers, like Nat
Fleischer, “Daniel,” Frederick G. Lieb, and George B. Underwood, who
were on the big sports staff of the New York _Press_ when that paper
was amalgamated with the _Sun_.
Returning to the big, bare room in the old Sun Building, cast the eye
of memory through the thin forest of chandeliers entwined with lianas
of electric wiring, and across the dull desks. Boss Lord has come in
from dinner and is reading telegraphic bulletins from out-of-town
correspondents or glancing at a growing pile of proofs. At the Albany
desk Deacon Stillman is editing a batch of Congress news from Walter
Clarke or Richard V. Oulahan in Washington, or of legislative news from
Joseph L. McEntee in Albany, or is trying to think out an apt head for
a double murder in Herkimer County. At the cable desk Cyrus C. Adams,
long secretary of the American Geographical Society, is looking in
a guide-book to discover whether the name of a street in Naples has
not been distorted by the operators while in transit between the Rome
correspondent and New York. The telegraph editor is telling the night
editor, Van Anda or Smith, that he has “nothing much but yellow fever,”
and the night editor is replying that “three-quarters of a column of
yellow fever will be plenty.”
At the city desk Clarke, who has half finished the heading on a bit
about a green heron seen in Bronx Park, picks up the telephone to
tell an East Side police-station reporter to investigate the report
of an excursion boat gone aground on Hart’s Island, and then turns
away to tell Ralph, or Chamberlin, or Joseph Fox, or Irwin, or Hill,
or O’Malley, that a column and a half lead will do for the police
investigation, or the great public dinner, or whatever his task may
have been. As he finishes, a reporter lays on his desk a long story,
and Clarke, reading the substance of the first page of it in an
instant, hands it over to his assistant to edit.
At the Jersey desk Boss Patton has polished the disquisitions of a
suburban correspondent on the antics of a shark in Barnegat Bay, and is
explaining to a space man, almost with tears, why it was necessary to
cut down his article about the picnic of the Smith family at Peapack.
The sporting editor, John Mandigo, has just bade good night to some
distinguished visitor--say Mr. Fitzsimmons--and is bending over some
copy from Fitzgerald or Vila. Perhaps Henry of Navarre and Domino are
nose-and-nose in the stretch at Gravesend, or Amos Rusie has struck out
seventeen opposing batters, or Kid Lavigne has lambasted Joe Walcott
quite properly at Maspeth.
At a side desk a copy-reader on local news is struggling with a mass
of writing from various youthful reporters. “At seven ten o’clock last
evening, as Policeman McGuffin was patrolling his beat, his attention
was attracted by a cry of fire,” etc. The copy-reader knows that smoke
will presently issue from the upper windows; knows, too, that he
presently will boil the seven pages down to three lines and gently tell
the reporter why he did it.
The chess expert is turning a cabalistic cablegram from St. Petersburg
into a detailed story of the contest between a couple of the masters of
the game. The bowling man is writing a description, which may never see
the light, of a desperate struggle between the Harlem Pin Kings and the
Bensonhurst Alley Scorchers. H. L. Fitzpatrick is writing a golf story
with such magnificent technique that Mandigo will not dare to cut a
line out of it.
A dozen reporters, great and small, are at the desks in the middle
of the room, busy with pencils. In a side room three or four others,
converts to the typewriter, are pounding out copy. In another room
Riggs is dictating to a stenographer the day’s doings in political
life.
Four or five “rewrite men,” the “long wait” and his helpers, the
“short waits,” are slipping in and out of the telephone-booths, taking
and writing news articles from twenty points in the city where the
Mulberry Street reporter, the police-station reporters, the Tenderloin
man--who covers the West Thirtieth Street police-station, the Broadway
hotels, and the theatrical district--and the Harlem man are still busy
gathering news.
From a room wisely distant comes the rattle of the telegraph. Half a
dozen wires are bringing in the continent’s news. Half a dozen boys,
spurred by their chief, Dan O’Leary, carry the typed sheets to the
proper desks.
The dramatic critic comes in and sits down at his desk to write
two-thirds of a column about a first performance. The music critic has
sent down a brief notice of the night’s opera.
Most of the reporters finish their work and go out. One or two remain
to write special articles for the Sunday papers. A sporting reporter is
spinning a semi-fictional yarn of life in Chinatown. A police reporter
is composing little classics of life in Dolan’s Park Row restaurant.
At one o’clock there is a rumbling of the presses in the basement, and
soon copies of the first edition come to the desks of the news-masters.
Lord suggests to the night editor a shift of front-page articles.
Clarke, his pencil flashing, marks in additions to the story of a late
accident. A cub waits patiently for a discarded paper, to see whether
his piece has got in. An older reporter, who wrote the story in the
first column of the first page, does not look at his own work, but
turns to the sporting page to read the racing entries for the next
day--his day off.
At 1.27 A.M. Clarke rises and goes home. At two o’clock Lord closes
his desk. Most of the desk men disappear; the work is done. The night
editor--Van Anda or the imperturbable Smith--remains at his desk, with
the “long wait” reporter to bear him company. At half past three they
also go, and the watchman begins to turn out the lights. Down below,
the presses are tossing forth the product of a night’s work in the big,
bare, old room.
A story of the _Sun_ would be incomplete without a sketch of its little
sister. The _Evening Sun_ was established by Mr. Dana nearly twenty
years after he bought the _Sun_. He saw a place for a one-cent evening
newspaper, for the only journal of that description then published in
New York was the _Daily News_, which was largely a class publication.
The leading evening newspapers were the _Evening Post_, the _Commercial
Advertiser_, and the _Mail and Express_, selling for three cents and
catering to a highbrow or a partisan clientele.
The first _Evening Sun_ was issued on March 17, 1887, at an hour when
the St. Patrick’s Day parade was being reviewed by Mayor Hewitt. With
its four pages of six columns each, its brief, lively presentation
of general news, and its low price, the paper was an immediate
success--though not the success that it is to-day, with its sixteen
pages, its wealth of special articles, and the many features that make
it one of America’s best evening newspapers.
The new paper had no titular editor-in-chief. Mr. Dana was the editor
of the _Sun_ and had the general guidance of the evening paper. Dana’s
associate, the publisher of the _Sun_, William M. Laffan, took a deep
interest in the welfare of the new venture, and the _Evening Sun_ was
often referred to as his “baby.”
The first managing editor of the paper was Amos J. Cummings, with
Allan Kelly as city editor and John McCormick as sporting editor. When
Cummings went to Congress, E. J. Edwards took his place and remained
as managing editor until August, 1889, when Arthur Brisbane returned
from the post of London correspondent of the _Sun_ to manage the
evening paper.
It was Brisbane who induced Richard Harding Davis, then a young
reporter in Philadelphia, to come to New York. As Davis was walking
up from the ferry one morning in October, 1889, on his way to take
up his new duties, he was taken in hand, in City Hall Park, by a
bunco-steerer. Davis listened to the man’s wiles, turned him over to
the police of the City Hall station, and then hurried to the _Evening
Sun_ office to write a story about it for the paper. Davis’s _Van
Bibber_ stories, the first of his fiction to attract wide attention,
were originally printed in the _Evening Sun_, in 1890. As a reporter
under Brisbane, Davis picked up much of the information and experiences
that coloured his fiction.
When Brisbane went to the Pulitzer forces, he was succeeded as managing
editor by W. C. McCloy, who had been city editor, and who remained at
the head of the news department for more than twenty years.
Jacob A. Riis, who had been the police-headquarters reporter of the
_Tribune_ since 1877, went to the _Evening Sun_ in 1890, coincident
with the publication of his first popular work, “How the Other Half
Lives.” Other of his works, including “The Children of the Poor” and
“Out of Mulberry Street,” were written while he was the chief police
reporter of the _Evening Sun_. Riis’s work was valuable, not only to
the paper, but to the city itself. His writings attracted the attention
of Theodore Roosevelt when the future President was head of the police
board of New York (1895–1897), and the men became close friends.
Together they worked to improve conditions in the tenement districts,
and Roosevelt called Riis “New York’s most useful citizen.”
[Illustration:
WILL IRWIN
]
[Illustration:
FRANK WARD O’MALLEY
]
[Illustration:
EDWIN C. HILL
]
Thomas M. Dieuaide, whose work for the _Sun_ in the Spanish War has
been referred to in this volume, and who became city editor of the
_Evening Sun_, was one of Riis’s colleagues. Dieuaide was the author of
the _Evening Sun’s_ broadside against the black vice of the East Side.
Printed in 1901, shortly before the beginning of a mayoralty campaign,
it was a prime factor in the election of a reforming administration.
Richard Harding Davis was not the only fiction-writer to graduate
from the _Evening Sun’s_ school. Irvin S. Cobb got his start in the
North as an _Evening Sun_ reporter. He came to New York from Paducah,
Kentucky, rented a hall room, and sat down and wrote to the managing
editor of the _Evening Sun_ a letter of application so humorous that
he was employed immediately. His report of the peace conference at
Portsmouth, New Hampshire, following the Russo-Japanese War, attracted
wide attention. Stephen French Whitman and Algernon Blackwood, the
novelists, were also _Evening Sun_ men.
The _Evening Sun’s_ list of former dramatic critics includes Acton
Davies and Edward Fales Coward, both playwrights, and Charles
B. Dillingham, the theatrical manager. Arthur Woods, recently
police commissioner of New York, and Robert Adamson, recently fire
commissioner, were old _Evening Sun_ men. Frederick Palmer, Associated
Press correspondent with the British forces in the great war, and
Arthur Ruhl, a special correspondent at the front, are _Evening Sun_
alumni.
In the early years of the _Evening Sun_ the chief editorial writer was
James T. Watkins, whom Mr. Laffan had known in California as a man of
wide scholarship and an economic expert. He was so prolific that it
was a common saying in the office that, with Watkins at his desk, the
_Evening Sun_ needed no other writers of editorial articles. Frank H.
Simonds, who had been an editorial writer for the _Sun_ since 1908,
became chief editorial writer for the _Evening Sun_ in 1913. In 1914
his war articles attracted wide attention. He was afterward editor of
the _Tribune_.
Other writers for the editorial page were Edward H. Mullin, an Irishman
from Dublin, and Frederic J. Gregg. The chief editorial writer is now
James Luby, who is assisted by an _Evening Sun_ veteran, Winfield S.
Moody.
The managing editors since W. C. McCloy have been Charles P. Cooper,
James Luby, and the present incumbent, George M. Smith, for many years
night editor of the _Sun_, and its managing editor in the absence of
Mr. Lord.
After Allan Kelly, the city editors were W. C. McCloy, Charles P.
Cooper, Ervin Hawkins, Nelson Lloyd, and T. M. Dieuaide. Mr. Lloyd, who
left the paper to write fiction, had served as city editor from 1897 to
1904.
The _Evening Sun_ has always had a particular appeal to the woman
reader. Its first woman reporter, Miss Helen Watterson, of Cleveland,
Ohio, was induced to come East in Brisbane’s régime to write a column
called “The Woman About Town,” and ever since 1890 the staff of women
writers on the paper has been increasing. The _Evening Sun_ has a page
or two a day of feature articles written for women, by women, about
women.
The financial and sports departments of the _Evening Sun_ make it a
man’s paper, too. No home-going broker would dare to board the subway
without a copy of the Wall Street edition of the _Evening Sun_. A large
staff of sporting writers, captained by Joseph Vila, provides each day
a page or two of authoritative athletic news.
The _Sun_ and the _Evening Sun_ are run as separate publications, each
with a complete staff, but their presses and purposes are one.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE FINEST SIDE OF “THE SUN”
_Literary Associations of an Editorial Department That
Has Encouraged and Attracted Men of Imagination and
Talent.--Mitchell, Hazeltine, Church, and Their Colleagues._
The _Sun’s_ association with literature, particularly with fiction, has
been more intimate than that of any other daily American newspaper. Ben
Day had a taste for fiction, else the moon hoax, a bit of good writing
as well as the greatest of fakes, would not have appeared. In the time
of Moses Y. Beach the balloon hoax and other writings of Poe were in
the _Sun_. Moses S. Beach, who owned or controlled the paper for twenty
years, brought popularity and profit to it through stories written
exclusively for the _Sun_ by Mary J. Holmes, Horatio Alger, Jr., and a
dozen other authors whose tales compelled readers to burn the midnight
gas.
Under Dana the _Sun’s_ interest in literature became broader, more
intense. Dana’s knowledge that the most avid appetite of the public
was for the short story and the novel, led him to encourage his men
to adopt, when feasible, the fiction form in news writing. In his
four-page daily there was not much room for romance proper, but when
the Sunday _Sun_ was under way, its eight pages afforded space for
tales of fancy.
In the first few years of Dana’s ownership the walks of American
literature were not crowded. As late as 1875 the _Sun_ lamented:
For younger rising men we look almost in vain. Bret Harte gives
no promise of lasting fecundity. Howells does charming work,
and will probably long remain in position as a dainty but not
suggestive or formative writer. Aldrich is very slight. John
Hay easily won whatever name he has, and it will easily pass
away. Henry James the younger is one of the rising men, the
youth of literature.
But of all these there is not one who has yet discovered the
stuff out of which the kings and princes, or even the barons,
of literature are made.
Harte, having written his most famous short stories, had come East.
Howells, then thirty-eight, had published three or four novels, but
“The Rise of Silas Lapham” was ten years ahead. John Hay, then on the
_Tribune_ editorial staff, had written his “Pike County Ballads” and
“Castilian Days.” Henry James had put forth only “Watch and Ward.” To
these budding geniuses the general public was rather inclined to prefer
Augusta Evans’s “St. Elmo,” E. P. Roe’s “Barriers Burned Away,” and
Edward Eggleston’s “Hoosier Schoolmaster.”
Notwithstanding the expressed doubt as to Harte’s fecundity, Dana
admired his work and printed his stories in the _Sun_ for years
afterward. Late in the seventies he bought Harte’s output and
syndicated it--probably the first successful application of the
newspaper syndicate system to fiction. About the same period Robert
Louis Stevenson’s earlier successes, such as “The Treasure of
Franchard” and “The Sire de Maletroit’s Door,” were having their first
American printing in the _Sun_, their original appearance having been
in _Temple Bar_ and other English magazines.
The files of the _Sun_ for 1891 contain writings of Stevenson that are
omitted from most, if not from all of the collections of his works.
These are parts of his articles on the South Seas, an ambitious series
which he was unable to finish. Some of them were printed in the
London _Black and White_. All of them appeared in the _Sun_. Through
the _Sun’s_ literary syndicate the American public gained some of its
earliest acquaintance with Harte and Henry James. Kipling’s “Light That
Failed” had its first American appearance in the _Sun_ in the autumn
of 1890. It may interest Mr. James’s admirers to know that one of the
Middle Western newspapers, having bought a James novel from the _Sun_,
played it up with a gingery head-line:
GEORGINA’S REASONS!
HENRY JAMES’S LATEST STORY!
A Woman Who Commits Bigamy and Enforces Silence on
Her Husband!
Two Other Lives Made Miserable by Her Heartless Action!
Among the literary men given less to fiction and more to history,
sociology, and philosophy who have yielded to the _Sun’s_ columns
from their treasure, sometimes anonymously, were Jeremiah Curtin, the
translator of Sienkiewicz and Tolstoy and an authority on folk-lore;
George Ticknor Curtis, jurist and writer on the Constitution; Goldwin
Smith, whose views on the subject of the destiny of Canada coincided
with Dana’s, and who contributed to the _Sun_ hundreds of articles
from his store of philosophical and political wisdom; Charles Francis
Adams, Jr., who wrote on railway management; General Adam Badeau, one
of Grant’s biographers; William Elliot Griffis, probably the most
authoritative of all American writers upon Japanese affairs; and
Francis Lynde Stetson, the distinguished authority on corporation and
railway law.
[Illustration:
PAUL DANA
]
Of the more strictly journalistic writers who, although not attached
permanently to the _Sun’s_ staff, contributed to its news and editorial
columns, the names rise of James S. Pike, of Joseph Pulitzer and
his predecessor as editor of the _World_, William Henry Hurlbut; of
James F. Shunk and his brother-in-law, Chauncey F. Black, both of
Pennsylvania and both humorists; of Edward Spencer, a writer of fiction
who displayed splendid imaginative qualities, and of Oliver Dyer, whose
range of ability was so great that while one day he wrote for Bonner’s
_Ledger_ advice to distressed lovers, the next day would find him
penning for the _Sun_ an exhaustive article on the methods employed in
building a railroad across the Andes!
Dana encouraged the men who wrote exclusively, or almost entirely,
for the _Sun_, to write fiction. Edward P. Mitchell, whom Mr. Dana
attracted to the _Sun_ from the Lewiston (Maine) _Journal_ in 1875,
when Mr. Mitchell was twenty-three years old, wrote for the _Sun_
at least a score of short stories of between two thousand and six
thousand words. Two of his tales--“The Ablest Man in the World” and
“The Tachypomp,” both scientific fantasies of remarkably ingenious
construction, were included in the Scribner collection of “Short
Stories by American Authors,” Mr. Mitchell being the only writer doubly
represented in those volumes. “The Ablest Man in the World” also
has its place in Stedman and Hutchinson’s distinguished “Library of
American Literature.”
Other short stories of Mr. Mitchell’s, like “The Man Without a Body”
and “The Balloon Tree,” are remembered by older _Sun_ readers for
their ingenious form and delightful narrative. Mr. Mitchell’s smaller
sketches, numbering perhaps three hundred, included not only fancy but
humour, and particularly little burlesques delicately picturing the
weaknesses of the great or quasi-great men of the day. As a change
from his strictly editorial work he might write a description of Mark
Twain in his observatory, armed with a boat-hook and preparing to
fend off a comet; or, becoming Mr. Dana’s reporter, he would expose a
spiritualistic séance of the Eddy Brothers somewhere up in Vermont, or
go to Madison Square to record the progress of George Francis Train
toward world dictatorship by self-evolution on a diet of peanuts; or he
would write a dramatic criticism of the appearance of the _Sun’s_ droll
friend, George, the Count Joannes, as _Hamlet_.
These few instances, a dozen out of twenty thousand articles that Mr.
Mitchell wrote for the _Sun_, are not mentioned as a key to the general
tenor of his work--which has covered everything from the definition
of a mugwump to the interpretation of a President’s Constitutional
powers--but rather as an indication of the _Sun’s_ catholicity in
subjects. If incidentally they serve to counteract the impression that
the editorship of a great newspaper is gained through mere erudition,
as opposed to a fine understanding of the very human reader, so much
the better.
From his first day with the _Sun_ Mr. Mitchell absorbed his chief’s
lifelong belief that the range of public interest was infinite. As he
said in 1916, in an address to the students of the Pulitzer School of
Journalism on “The Newspaper Value of Non-Essentials”:
Sometimes people are as much interested in queer names, like
Poke Stogis, for example, or in the discussion of a question
such as “What Is the Best Ghost in Fiction?” or “How Should
Engaged Couples Act at the Circus?” or “What Is a Dodunk?”
or “Do the Angels Play Football?” as some other people are
interested in the conference of the great powers.
It is well to remember always this psychological factor.
Both the range of the newspaper and the attractive power of
the writer for the newspaper in any department depend upon
the breadth of sympathy with human affairs and the diversity
of things in which he, the writer, takes a genuine personal
interest.
In that speech the _Sun’s_ judgment of what the people want, whether
it be in news, editorial, or fiction, is restated exactly as it might
have been stated at any time within the last fifty years. And Dana
and Mitchell are found in agreement not only upon the subject of
what the reader wishes, but upon the necessity for the preservation
in newspapers, as well as in books, of the ideals of the language.
Speaking at a conference held at Princeton University in 1917, Mr.
Mitchell said:
The most serious practical evil that will result from the
elimination of the classics will fall upon the English
language itself. The racial memory begins to decay, the racial
imagination, the begetter of memory, begins to weaken, the
sense of precise meanings begins to lose its edge, and the
English language ceases to be a vital thing and becomes a mere
code of arbitrary signals wigwagged from mouth to ear. Were
I the emergency autocrat of this language, I should proclaim
in drastic regulations and enforce by severe penalties the
American duty of adherence to the old habits of speech, the old
scrupulous respect for the finer shades of meaning, the old
rigid observance of the morality of word relations; and this, I
believe, can be done only by maintaining the classical culture
at high potency.
Mr. Mitchell was born in Maine in 1852, and was graduated from Bowdoin
in 1871. It is curious to note, scanning the names of the editors and
proprietors, how the _Sun_ has drawn upon New England.
Benjamin H. Day was born in West Springfield, Massachusetts, April 10,
1810.
Moses Yale Beach was born in Wallingford, Connecticut, January 7, 1800.
Moses Sperry Beach was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, October 5,
1822.
Charles A. Dana was born in Hinsdale, New Hampshire, August 8, 1819.
Edward P. Mitchell was born in Bath, Maine, March 24, 1852.
Frank A. Munsey was born in Mercer, Maine, August 21, 1854.
Any grouping of _Sun_ men on the purely literary side brings the name
of Hazeltine to stand with those of Dana and Mitchell. Mayo Williamson
Hazeltine was a fine example of the scholar in newspaper work; an
example of the way in which Dana, with his intellectual magnificence,
found the best for his papers.
Educated at Harvard and Oxford and in continental Europe, Hazeltine
came to the _Sun_ in 1878, and was its literary critic until his
death in 1909. During the same period he was also one of its
principal writers of articles on foreign politics and sociology.
His book-reviews, published in the _Sun_ on Sundays, which made the
initials “M. W. H.” familiar to the whole English-reading world, were
marvels of comprehension. Many a publisher of a three-volume historical
work lamented when it attracted Hazeltine’s attention, for his review,
whether two columns or seven, usually compressed into that space all
that the average student cared to know about the book, reducing the
high cost of reading from six or eight dollars to a nickel.
Hazeltine enjoyed, under both Dana and Mitchell, practically his own
choice of subjects, a free hand with them, and a generous income; and
in return, for more than thirty years, he poured into the columns
of the _Sun_ a wealth of the erudition which was his by right of
education, travel, an intense interest in all things intellectual, and
a wonderful memory.
In the list of writers of editorial articles which includes Dana,
Mitchell, William O. Bartlett, and Hazeltine, are found also the names
of Frank P. Church, E. M. Kingsbury, Napoleon L. Thiéblin, James Henry
Wilson, John Swinton, Henry B. Stanton, Fitz-Henry Warren, William T.
Washburn, Harold M. Anderson, Frank H. Simonds, and Henry M. Armstrong.
Of these Church stands alone as the writer in whose case the _Sun_
broke its rule that the anonymity of editorial writers is absolute.
After Mr. Church’s death on April 11, 1906, it was announced in the
_Sun_ that he was the author of what for more than twenty years has
been regarded as the most popular editorial article ever written. It
appeared on September 21, 1897:
IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS?
We take pleasure in answering at once and thus prominently the
communication below, expressing at the same time our great
gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the
friends of the _Sun_:
DEAR EDITOR:
I am eight years old. Some of my little friends say there is no
Santa Claus. Papa says “If you see it in the _Sun_ it’s so.”
Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?
VIRGINIA O’HANLON.
115 West Ninety-Fifth Street.
Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the
skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see.
They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their
little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s,
are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an
ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him,
as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth
and knowledge.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love
and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and
give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas, how dreary would
be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if
there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no
poetry, no romance, to make tolerable this existence. We should have
no enjoyment except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which
childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies!
You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on
Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa
Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but
that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in
the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever
see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof
that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders
there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside,
but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest
man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever
lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can
push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and
glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is
nothing else real and abiding.
No Santa Claus! Thank God, he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand
years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now,
he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
Church, as one intimate wrote upon his death, after more than thirty
years with the _Sun_, had all the literary gifts, “the tender fancy,
the sympathetic understanding of human nature, the humour, now wistful,
now joyous, the unsurpassed delicacy of touch.”
[Illustration:
WILLIAM M. LAFFAN
]
In dramatic criticism, where the _Sun_ has required from its writers
somewhat more than the mere ability to praise or blame, its roster
bears such names as Frank Bowman, Willard Bartlett, Elihu Root, William
Stewart (“Walsingham”), who was the first of the dramatic critics to
adopt an intimate style; Andrew Carpenter Wheeler, better known to
the public under his pen-name of “Nym Crinkle,” whose reviews were a
feature of the Sunday issue of the _Sun_; William M. Laffan, the always
brilliant and sometimes caustic; Franklin Fyles, who wrote plays as
well as reviews of plays; John Corbin, the scholarly analyst; Walter
Prichard Eaton, author of “The American Stage of To-day,” and Lawrence
Reamer, who has been with the _Sun_, as reporter or critic, for a
quarter of a century.
In criticism of opera and other musical events the _Sun_, through the
writings of William J. Henderson, has pleased the general public as
well as the musicians, and has added many sound and scholarly chapters
to newspaper literature.
In book-reviewing a hundred pens have served the _Sun_. Hazeltine, E.
P. Mitchell, Willard Bartlett, Erasmus D. Beach, George Bendelari, Miss
Dana Gatlin, H. M. Anderson, and Grant M. Overton are but a few of the
men and women who have told _Sun_ readers what’s worth while.
For _Sun_ reporters the Sunday paper has been a favourable field for
an excursion into fiction-writing. In its columns a man with a tale
to tell has every chance. There William Norr gave, in his “Pearl of
Chinatown,” the real atmosphere of a little part of New York that once
held romance. It was for the Sunday _Sun_ that Edward W. Townsend
created his celebrated characters, _Chimmie Fadden_, _Miss Fanny_,
_Mr. Paul_, and the rest of that happy, if slangy, family. Clarence
L. Cullen laid bare the soul of alcoholic adventurers in his “Tales
of the Ex-Tanks.” Ed Mott made famous the bears of Pike County,
Pennsylvania. David A. Curtis related the gambling ways of _Old Man
Greenlaw_ and his associates. Charles Lynch conferred the title of the
Duke of Essex Street upon an obscure lawyer, and made him the talk of
the East Side. Joseph Goodwin brought to the notice of an ignorant
world the ways of _Sarsaparilla Reilly_ and other Park Row restaurant
heroes. David Graham Phillips, Samuel Hopkins Adams, and other men
destined to be known through their books, ground out, for glory and
eight dollars a column, the yarns--sometimes fact turned into fiction,
sometimes fiction masked as fact--that kept the readers of the Sunday
_Sun_ from getting out into the open air.
CHAPTER XIX
“THE SUN” AND YELLOW JOURNALISM
_The Coming and Going of a Newspaper Disease.--Dana’s Attitude
Toward President Cleveland.--Dana’s Death.--Ownerships of Paul
Dana, Laffan, Reich, and Munsey._
Of such things as we have mentioned here, putting into the necessary
news, attractively written, a proper seasoning of regional colour and
atmosphere, humour and pathos, the _Sun_ has been made since Dana came
to it. He created a new journalism, but it was a decent and distinct
kind, appealing to the intellect rather than to the passions. It gave
room for the honest expression of everybody’s opinion, from Herbert
Spencer to _Chimmie Fadden_. Because of this, because he had lifted
American newspaper work out of the dust of tradition, Dana had a holy
anger when a newer journalism tried to throw it into the mud.
When Henry Watterson was called as an expert witness in proceedings to
appraise the estate of Joseph Pulitzer, in 1914, the veteran editor of
the Louisville _Courier-Journal_ made an interesting statement on this
subject:
There is much confusion in the public mind about what is known
as “yellow journalism.” There have been several periods of
it in New York. James Gordon Bennett was the first yellow
journalist, and Charles A. Dana was the second. Mr. Pulitzer
was the third. Finally, when Mr. Hearst came along, he was
the fourth, and I think he quite filled the field of yellow
journalism.
As Mr. Bennett became more respectable and Mr. Dana more fixed
in his efforts, they were raised in the public estimation. So
was Mr. Pulitzer. I think the field of yellow journalism is so
filled by the Hearst newspapers that they no more compete with
the _World_ than with the _Herald_ or the _Sun_.
Mr. Watterson did not define yellow journalism. Perhaps he considered
it broadly as sensational journalism. The elder Bennett was sensational
to the extent that he printed things which the sixpenny papers of his
time did not print. He made the interview popular, and he was the first
editor to see the value of paying attention to financial news.
So far as printing human news is concerned, Benjamin H. Day worked that
field before Bennett started the _Herald_. If Mr. Watterson considered
Dana a yellow journalist, what else was Day, with his stories about the
sodden things of the police-courts, or his description of Miss Susan
Allen smoking a cigar and dancing in Broadway?
Printing a diagram of the scene of a murder, with a big black X to mark
the spot where the victim was found, did not make the _World_ a yellow
newspaper, for Amos Cummings began to print murder charts as soon as
he became managing editor of the _Sun_. Putting black-faced type over
a story on the front page did not make the _World_ or the _Journal_
yellow, for Cummings, when he was on the _Tribune_, was the first to
use big type in head-lines, and the _Tribune_ was never accused of
yellowness.
If pictures made a paper yellow, Dana was not yellow, for he used few
illustrations in the news pages of the paper. Again, if head-lines
indicate yellowness, Dana must be acquitted of being a yellow
journalist; for the head-lines of the _Sun_, from the first year of
Dana’s control until after his death, remained practically unchanged,
and were conservative to the last degree.
Head-lines and pictures, so far as their sensational attraction was
concerned, meant nothing to Dana. He was not yellow, but white and
alive. The distinction was clearly explained by Mr. Mitchell:
Remember the difference between white and yellow. The essential
difference is not of method or quality of product, but of
purpose and of moral responsibility or moral debasement.
Yellow will tell you that it means force, originality, and
independence in the presentation of ideas. This is consolatory
to yellow, but not accurate. Yellow will print an interesting
exaggeration or misstatement, knowing it to be such. If in
doubt about the truth of alleged news, but in no doubt whatever
as to its immediate value as a sensation, yellow will give the
benefit of the doubt to the sensation every time, and print it
with head-lines tall enough to reach to Saturn. White won’t;
that is the only real color test. I hope you are all going to
be white, and not only white, but red, white, and blue.
No yellow journalist he, Dana! To paraphrase Webster, he smote the
rock of humanity, and abundant streams of literature rushed forth.
If he startled, he startled the intellect, not the eye. His appeals
were to the intelligence, the soul, the risibilities of man, and not
to his primitive passions. He believed that all the information, the
philosophy, and the humour of the world could be conveyed through the
type of a daily newspaper as surely as and much more broadly than they
had been conveyed through the various mediums of the old newspapers,
the encyclopedias, the novels, the pulpit, and the lecture platform.
When Dana attacked yellow journalism--the expressive phrase was
fastened in the language by Ervin Wardman, in the _Press_--it was in
the firm belief that this new journalism, the “journalism that did
things,” was doing the wrong thing; that it was breaking down the
magnificent structure that had been reared by himself and Greeley and
Raymond and Bennett and Hurlbut. This group had been possessed of
all the newspaper faculties and facilities. If yellow journalism had
been right, they would have raised it to its highest peak. Dana, who
knew better than any editor of his time what the public wanted, could
have produced a perfect yellow _Sun_; but he chose to print a golden
one. He wrought more genuine journalistic advance than any other man
in history. As Mr. Mitchell wrote of him in _McClure’s Magazine_ in
October, 1894, three years before Mr. Dana’s death:
The revolution which his genius and invention have wrought in
the methods of practical journalism in America during the past
twenty-five years can be estimated only by newspaper-makers.
His mind, always original, and unblunted and unwearied at
seventy-five, has been a prolific source of new ideas in the
art of gathering, presenting, and discussing attractively the
news of the world.
He is a radical and unterrified innovator, caring not a copper
for tradition or precedent when a change of method promises a
real improvement. Restlessness like his, without his genius,
discrimination, and honesty of purpose, scatters and loses
itself in mere whimsicalities or pettinesses; or else it
deliberately degrades the newspaper upon which it is exercised.
To Mr. Dana’s personal invention are due many, if not most,
of the broad changes which within a quarter of a century have
transformed journalism in this country. From his individual
perception of the true philosophy of human interest, more
than from any other single source, have come the now general
repudiation of the old conventional standards of news
importance; the modern newspaper’s appreciation of the news
value of the sentiment and humor of the daily life around
us; the recognition of the principle that a small incident,
interesting in itself and well told, may be worth a column’s
space, when a large, dull fact is hardly worth a stickful’s;
the surprising extension of the daily newspaper’s province so
as to cover every department of general literature, and to take
in the world’s fancies and imaginings as well as its actual
events.
The word “news” has an entirely different significance from
what it possessed twenty-five or thirty years ago under the
ancient common law of journalism as derived from England;
and in the production of this immense change, greatly in
the interest of mankind and of the cheerfulness of daily
life, it would be difficult to exaggerate the direct and
indirect influence of Mr. Dana’s alert, scholarly, and widely
sympathetic perceptions.
[Illustration:
WILLIAM C. REICK
]
The assaults which Dana made upon yellow journalism were not actuated
by the jealous envy of one who has himself overlooked an opportunity.
Everything that the _Sun_ attacked in yellow newspapers was something
to which the _Sun_ itself never would have stooped--the faked or
distorted interview, the product of the thief or the eavesdropper,
the collection of back-stairs gossip, the pilfered photograph, the
revelation of personal affairs beyond the public’s business, the
arrogation of official authority, the maudlin plea for sympathy in a
factitious cause, the gross exaggeration for sensation’s sake of a
trifling occurrence, the appeal to sensualism, and the demagogic attack
upon the rich.
Right endures, and where is yellow journalism? Gone where the woodbine
twineth. Its prototype, the wild ass, stamps o’er its head and cannot
break its sleep. The “journalism that does things” doesn’t do anything
any more except to try and teach its men to write articles the way the
_Sun_ has been printing them since 1868. In a chart of new journalism
the largest, blackest X-mark would show where the body of new
journalism, slain by public taste, lies buried forever.
The New York _World_, once the most ingenious exponent of yellow
journalism, has become as conservative as the _Sun_ was in the days
when Joseph Pulitzer worked for Dana. Mr. Hearst’s papers, once the
deepest of all yellows, now hold up their hands in horror when they
see, beside them on the news-stands, the bold, black head-lines of the
_Evening Post_!
Yellow journalism said to its readers:
“This way to the big show! We have a mutilated corpse, a scandal
in high life, divorce details that weren’t brought out in court, a
personal attack on the mayor, lifelike pictures of dead rats, the
memoirs of a demented dressmaker, some neatly invented prison horrors,
and a general denunciation of everybody who owns more than five hundred
dollars. Don’t miss it!”
Dana said to his readers:
“Come, let me show you the clean stream of life; the newsboy with the
trained dog, the new painting at the Metropolitan Museum, an Arabian
restaurant on the East Side, the new Governor at Albany, the latest
theory of planetary control, one book by Old Sleuth and another by
Henry James, a ghost in a Berkshire tavern and an authentic recipe
for strawberry shortcake, a clown who reads Molière and a king who
plays pinochle, a digest of ten volumes of history and the shortest
complete poem (“This bliz knocks biz”) ever written, a dark tragedy in
the Jersey pines and a plan for a new subway, a talk with the Grand
Lama and a home-run by Roger Connor, a panic in Wall Street and a poor
little girl who finds a quarter.”
In the long run--and it did not have to be very long--the more
attractive offering was permanently chosen by newspaper-readers.
The curious effect on American journalism of the conflict between _Sun_
methods and the so-called new journalism was referred to, in an address
delivered at Yale University on January 12, 1903, by Frank A. Munsey,
then owner of the New York _Daily News_ and now proprietor of the _Sun_:
The newspaperman of to-day is a composite type, the product
of the _Sun_ and the New York _World_ of fifteen or eighteen
years ago. These two newspapers represented two distinct and
widely different styles of journalism. The _World_ was alert,
daring, aggressive, and sensational. It was about the liveliest
thing that ever swung into New York from the West.... No man
has ever stamped himself more thoroughly upon his generation
than has Joseph Pulitzer on the journalism of America. He was
the originator and the founder of our present type of overgrown
newspaper, with its illustrations and its merits and its
defects.
The part the _Sun_ played in this recreating and rejuvenating
of the American press was purely literary. It was the first
newspaper to make fiction out of facts--that is, to handle
facts with the skill and manner of the novelist, so that they
read like fiction and possessed all its charm and fascination.
The _Sun_ at that time consisted of but four pages, and I am
convinced that it was the best example of newspaper-making ever
produced anywhere. With the exception of one or two of these
fiction-fact stories so charmingly told, it was the perfection
of condensation, accuracy, brilliancy.
Mr. Munsey did not say, because it was not germane to his subject,
that for fourteen years before the advent of Pulitzer, Dana had been
demonstrating the news value of the human-interest story, and that
it was almost entirely upon the human-interest story, twisted and
exaggerated, that yellow journalism was founded. Mr. Munsey did not
say, for he could not know, that fifteen years after his address at
Yale the new journalism would be extinct and the _Sun_ would be still
the _Sun_. The editors of to-day do not ask a reporter whether he can
climb a porch or photograph an unwilling person, but whether he can see
news and write it.
An adequate history of the _Sun’s_ political activities during Dana’s
time would fill volumes. Rather than the editor of an organ of the
opposition, Dana was usually an opposition party in himself; not merely
for the sake of opposition, but because the parties in power from 1869
to 1897 usually happened to have practices or principles with which
he, as the editor of the _Sun_, was in disagreement. His attacks on
the Grant administration for the thievery that spotted it, and on the
Hayes administration because of the circumstances under which Mr. Hayes
came to the Presidential chair, were bitter and without relent. His
opposition to Grover Cleveland, an intellectual rather than a personal
war, began before Mr. Cleveland was a national figure. In September,
1882, when the hitherto obscure Buffalonian was nominated for Governor
of New York, the _Sun_ said:
It is usually not a wise thing in politics, any more than in
war, to take a private from the ranks and at one bound to
promote him to be commander-in-chief; yet that is what has been
done in the case of Grover Cleveland.
In the Presidential campaign of 1884 the _Sun_ would not support
Cleveland and could not support Blaine, whose conduct in Congress
the _Sun_ had frequently condemned; so it advocated the hopeless
cause of General Benjamin F. Butler, who had been elected Governor of
Massachusetts in 1882, the year when Cleveland was chosen Governor of
New York. Dana was not an admirer of Butler’s spectacular army career,
or of his general political leanings, but he admired him for his
attitude in the Hayes-Tilden scandal, and he believed that Butler,
if elected President, would shake things up in Washington. The _Sun_
supported him “as a man to be immensely preferred to either of the
others and as a protest against such nominations.” Dana personally
announced that sooner than support Blaine he would quit work and burn
his pen.
In 1885, opposing Cleveland’s free-trade policy, the _Sun_ vigorously
supported Samuel J. Randall, of Pennsylvania, a protectionist Democrat,
for speaker of the House, as against John G. Carlisle, of Kentucky, a
free-trader; but Randall was beaten.
The _Sun_ ridiculed Cleveland’s theories of civil-service reform,
although it believed that real reforms were needed. On this point Dana
wrote, in a letter:
I do not believe in the establishment in this country of
the German bureaucratic system, with its permanent staff of
office-holders who are not responsible to the people, and whose
tenure of place knows no variation and no end except the end of
life. In my judgment a genuine reform of the evils complained
of is reached by the vigorous simplification of the machinery
of government, by the repeal of all superfluous laws, the
abolition of every needless office, and the dismissal of every
needless officer. The true American doctrine on this subject
consists in the diminution of government, not in its increase.
For all of its opposition to Cleveland, whom it dubbed the “stuffed
prophet,” the _Sun_ preferred him to General Harrison in the campaign
of 1888. It feared a return to power of the influences which it had
combated during the administrations of Grant and Hayes. Four years
afterward, however, the _Sun_ was strongly against the third nomination
of Cleveland.
In Mr. Cleveland’s second term the _Sun_ supported his course when Dana
believed it to be American. While at first it considered the President
too mild and conciliatory in matters of foreign policy, it praised him
and his Secretary of State, Richard Olney, for their stand against
Great Britain in the Venezuela boundary dispute; praised them just as
heartily as it had condemned Mr. Cleveland’s earlier action in the
Hawaiian matter, when the President withdrew the treaty of annexation
which his predecessor had sent to the Senate.
The _Sun’s_ most deadly weapon, ridicule, was constantly in play in
the years of the Hawaiian complications. It found vulnerable spots in
Mr. Cleveland’s re-establishment of the deposed Queen Liliuokalani and
in the President’s sending of a commissioner--“Paramount” Blount, as
the _Sun_ called him--without the advice and consent of the Senate.
As jealous then as it is to-day of any raid by the Executive upon the
Constitution or the powers of Congress, the _Sun_ had the satisfaction
of a complete victory in the Hawaiian matter.
On the other hand, the _Sun_ applauded Mr. Cleveland’s attitude on
the money question and his brave stand against the mob in the Chicago
railway strikes of 1894, when the President used troops to prevent the
obstruction of the mails by Eugene V. Debs and his followers.
Dana was seventy-seven years old when William J. Bryan--whom the _Sun_
had already immortalized as the Boy Orator of the Platte--was nominated
for the Presidency in 1896, but the veteran editor went at the task of
exposing the free-silver fallacy with the same blithe vigour that he
had shown twenty years before. His opinion, printed in the _Sun_ of
August 6, 1896, is a good example of Dana’s clear style:
The Chicago platform invites us to establish a currency which
will enable a man to pay his debts with half as much
property as he would have to use in order to pay them now. This
proposition is dishonest. I do not say that all the advocates
of the free coinage of silver are dishonest. Thousands of
them--millions, if there be so many--are doubtless honest in
intention. But I am unable to reconcile with any ideal of
integrity a change in the law which will permit a man who has
borrowed a hundred dollars to pay his debt with a hundred
dollars each one of which is worth only half as much as each
dollar he received from the lender.
[Illustration:
FRANK A. MUNSEY
]
Dana’s opinions on political questions were more eagerly sought than
those of any other editor after Greeley’s death, and the _Sun’s_
political news was complete; yet with Dana, and with the _Sun_,
politics was, after all, only one small part of life. The whole
world, with its facts and fancies, not the political problems of one
continent, was the real field to be covered.
Dana’s curiosity was all-embracing. After the _Sun’s_ financial success
was assured he went abroad frequently, and saw not only western Europe,
but Russia and the Levant. Of these he wrote in his “Eastern Journeys.”
He knew a dozen languages. He conversed with the Pope about Dante and
with Russian peasants about Tolstoy. His knowledge of Spanish, acquired
early in life, made easy his travels in Mexico and Cuba. Everywhere he
went he talked of freedom with its friends, and encouraged them. He
knew Kossuth, Mazzini, Garibaldi, Clémenceau, Marti, and Parnell.
At home, Dana’s amusements were chiefly literary and artistic--the
study of languages, history, and _belles-lettres_, the collection of
pottery and pictures. His Chinese porcelains were perhaps the best, in
point of quality, in the Occident.
“I am persuaded,” one critic said of them, “that Mr. Dana must have had
a most profound instinct in relation to the whole subject.”
After Mr. Dana’s death these porcelains, about four hundred in number,
were sold at auction for nearly two hundred thousand dollars.
In winter Dana lived in a large house which he built in 1880 at the
corner of Madison Avenue and Sixtieth Street, and which held the art
treasures that he began to gather in the first days of his prosperity.
Here he kept his pictures, notably some fine specimens of the Barbizon
school, and his books, which included some rare volumes, but which in
the main were chosen for their usefulness.
Dana’s happiest days were spent at his country place, Dosoris, an
island near Glen Cove, on the north shore of Long Island. There,
around a large, old-fashioned, square frame house, he made roads and
flower-beds and planted trees from many parts of the world. He grew an
oak from an acorn that was brought from the tomb of Confucius. He knew
Gray’s “Botany” almost by heart, and could give an intimate description
of every flower in the Dosoris gardens. His interest in plants was so
deep that once, while travelling in Cuba with an eminent painter, he
led his companion for hours through the hot hills of Vuelta Abajo in
order to satisfy himself that a certain variety of pine did _not_ grow
in that region.
Dana’s was a normal, healthy life. He was a good horseman and swimmer
and a great walker. When he was seventy-five years old he climbed to
the top of Croyden Mountain, in New Hampshire, with a party of younger
men puffing behind him. He found pleasure in all of life, whether it
was at the office, where he worked steadily but not feverishly, or
with his family among the rural delights of Dosoris, or surrounded by
congenial literary spirits at the dinner-table.
He knew no illness until his last summer. Up to June, 1897, the sturdy
figure and the kindly face framed in a white beard were as familiar to
the _Sun_ office as they were in the seventies. With Dana there was no
slow decay of body or mind. He died at Dosoris on October 17, 1897, in
the thirtieth year of his reign over the _Sun_.
A few years before, on observing an obituary paragraph which Mr. Dana
had written about some noted man, John Swinton asked his chief how much
space he (Swinton) would get when his time came.
“For you, John, two sticks,” said Mr. Dana. Turning to Mr. Mitchell,
then his chief editorial writer, he added: “For me, two lines.”
On the morning after Mr. Dana’s death every newspaper but one in
New York printed columns about the career of the dean of American
journalism. The _Sun_ printed only ten words, and these were carried at
the head of the first editorial column, without a heading:
CHARLES ANDERSON DANA, editor of the _Sun_, died yesterday
afternoon.
Mr. Swinton perhaps believed that Mr. Dana was joking when he said “two
lines,” but Mr. Mitchell knew that his chief was in earnest. The order
was characteristic of Dana. It was not false modesty. Perhaps it was a
certain fine vanity that told him what was true--that he and his work
were known throughout the land; that the _Sun_, in its perfection the
product of his genius and vigour, would continue to rise as regularly
as its celestial namesake; that all he had done would live on. He had
made the paper so great that the withdrawal from it of one man’s hand
was negligible.
Dana was gone, but his son remained as principal owner, and his chief
writer and most intimate intellectual associate for twenty years was
left to form the _Sun’s_ policies as he had moulded them in Dana’s
absences and as he shapes them to-day. His publisher, the astute
Laffan, was still in charge of the _Sun’s_ financial affairs. Other men
whom he had found and trained, like Frank P. Church, Mayo W. Hazeltine,
and Edward M. Kingsbury in the editorial department, and Chester S.
Lord and Daniel F. Kellogg in the news department, continued their work
as if Dana still lived.
With their grief doubt was not mingled. The _Sun’s_ success resulted
from no secret formula that died with the discoverer. Half of Dana’s
victory came by his attraction to himself of men who saw life and
literature as he saw them; and so, in a magnificent way, he had made
his work dispensable.
And Dana’s was always the magnificent way. To him journalism was not a
means of making money, but of interesting, elevating, and making happy
every one who read the _Sun_ or wrote for it. He raised his profession
to new heights. As Hazeltine wrote in the _North American Review_:
One of Mr. Dana’s special titles to the remembrance of his
fellow workers in the newspaper calling is the fact that,
more than any other man on either side of the Atlantic, he
raised their vocation to a level with the legal and medical
professions as regards the scale of remuneration. He honored
his fellow craftsmen of the pen, and he compelled the world to
honor them.
Shortly after the death of his father, Paul Dana, who was then
forty-five years old, and who had been on the _Sun_ editorial staff for
seventeen years, was made editor by vote of the trustees of the Sun
Printing and Publishing Association. In the following year (1898) the
younger Dana bought from Thomas Hitchcock, who was one of Charles A.
Dana’s associates both in a financial and in a literary way, enough
shares to give him the control of the paper.
Paul Dana continued in control of the property for several years and
held with credit his father’s title of editor until 1903. William
Mackay Laffan, who had been associated with the elder Dana since 1877,
next obtained the business control. His proprietorship was announced on
February 22, 1902, and it continued until his death in 1909.[A]
[A] The following editorial article appeared in the _Sun_ on
July 26, 1918:
“Mr. Paul Dana calls the _Sun’s_ attention to what he
claims was an error in ‘The Story of the _Sun_’ as it
originally appeared in the _Munsey Magazine_: the statement
that ‘he [Mr. Dana] continued in control of the property
until 1900.’ Mr. Dana states that he did not dispose of
his controlling interest until 1902. The statement in the
_Munsey Magazine_ publication of ‘The Story of the _Sun_’
was founded upon the International Encyclopædia’s biography
of William M. Laffan and also upon a statement published in
the _Sun_ at the time of Mr. Laffan’s death in 1909, that
Mr. Laffan obtained the control of the _Sun_ in 1900. When
the _Munsey Magazine_ articles were reprinted in the Sunday
_Sun_ the paragraph referred to by Mr. Dana was changed to
read as follows:
“‘Paul Dana continued in control of the property for
several years and held with credit his father’s title of
editor until 1903. William Mackay Laffan, who had been
associated with the elder Dana since 1877, obtained the
business control. His proprietorship was announced on
February 22, 1902, and it continued until his death in
1909.’
“We will let Mr. Dana’s version of this matter stand in
‘The Story of the _Sun_’ unless some further evidence
appears on the disputed point.”
Among the makers of the _Sun_ who best knew the paper and the
intellectual demands of its readers, Laffan must be included with Dana
and Mitchell. At the time when he came to be master of the paper, his
career had covered the entire journalistic field, and he was, moreover,
a thorough _Sun_ man, sympathetic with all the ideals of his old friend
Dana.
Laffan, who was born in Dublin, Ireland, and had a light and delightful
brogue, was educated at Trinity College and at St. Cecilia’s School
of Medicine. When he was twenty he went to San Francisco, where,
beginning as a reporter, he became city editor of the _Chronicle_ and
managing editor of the _Bulletin_. In 1870 he went to Baltimore, to
be a reporter on the _Daily Bulletin_, and of this newspaper he became
editor and part owner. Eventually he became the full owner of both
the _Daily Bulletin_ and the _Sunday Bulletin_, and in this capacity
he endeared himself to the citizens of Baltimore by his fight against
political rings.
He left newspaper work for a short time to become general
passenger-agent of the Long Island Railroad; but in 1877, on Mr. Dana’s
invitation, he went on the _Sun_ as a general writer. Himself an artist
who modelled in clay, painted in oils and water-colours, and etched,
his judgment made him valuable to the paper as an art critic.
Like Mr. Dana, he was interested in Chinese porcelains, and he made a
deeper study of them than did his employer. When a catalogue was needed
for the Chinese porcelains in the Morgan collection in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, Mr. Laffan, who was an active trustee of the museum,
was called upon to edit the work. He also edited a book on “Oriental
Porcelain.” He was the author of “American Wood Engravers,” published
in 1883. For these things he is remembered in the world of art. The men
of the stage remember him as one of the most distinguished dramatic
critics that New York has seen. Even to-day, in the comparison of the
styles of critics old and new, Laffan’s incisive reviews are recalled
as standards.
In the business world of journalism Laffan is thought of chiefly as
the publisher of the _Sun_ from 1884 on, and as the live spirit of the
_Evening Sun_ for many of its years. As the actual director of the
_Sun_--although his editorial powers were almost entirely delegated to
Mr. Mitchell--Mr. Laffan was a picturesque and powerful figure. Beneath
an inscrutable exterior he was distinctly a likable person.
One day Laffan wrote a ten-line item, a bit about an exhibition of a
friend’s painting, and asked the city editor to print it. He never
commanded, even when he controlled the paper; he asked. The item was
lost in the shuffle that night. The next day he rewrote it and again
asked a place for it. It was printed in the first edition and left out
of the city edition. For the third time he carried the article to the
city editor, and without a sign of anger.
“It seems to me,” he said, “that anybody can get anything printed in
this paper--except the owner.”
A millionaire advertiser asked Laffan to print an article about his pet
charity.
“Take it to Clarke,” said Laffan. “If he’ll print it for you, he’ll do
more for you than he’ll do for me.”
A New York newspaper once remarked of Laffan that “he never drove any
man to drink, but he drove many a man to the dictionary.” That was a
commentary on the unusual words which Laffan, whose vocabulary was
wide, would occasionally use in an editorial article. His articles were
never involved, however. They were not frequent, they were generally
short, never without important purpose, and they drove home.
Patient as Laffan was with lost items of his own, he was a man of fine
human temper. One morning, on arriving at the office, he found that a
Wall Street group of rich scoundrels had sued the _Sun_ for several
hundred thousand dollars for its exposure of their methods. He called
the city editor.
“Mr. Mallon,” he said, “tell your young man who wrote the articles to
go ahead and give these men better cause for libel suits!”
The _Sun_ was making a vigorous war on a great railroad magnate. One
day an attaché of the office informed Laffan that a man was waiting
to see him who bore a contract which would bring to the _Sun_ four
hundred thousand dollars’ worth of advertising from the magnate’s
railroads.
“Tell him to see the advertising manager,” said Laffan.
“He insists on seeing you,” said the clerk.
“Tell him to go to hell,” said Laffan.
There was a keen humour in the big Irish head. Laffan was opposed to
the amendment to the New York State constitution which provided for
an expenditure of more than a hundred millions in improving the Erie
Canal. Under his direction a _Sun_ reporter, John H. O’Brien, wrote
a series of articles intended to shatter public faith in the huge
investment. The amendment, however, was approved by a great majority.
“Mr. O’Brien,” said Mr. Laffan to the reporter, a few days after the
election, “I think it would be a very graceful thing on your part to
give a little dinner to all those gentlemen who voted against the canal
project.”
Upon Mr. Laffan’s death, in November, 1909, the trustees of the
Sun Printing and Publishing Association asked Mr. Mitchell, who
had been made editor of the _Sun_ on July 20, 1903, to take up the
administrative burden as well as the editorial. This Mr. Mitchell did
for a little more than two years, although his personal inclinations
were toward the literary construction and supervision of the paper
rather than toward the business detail incident to the presidency of so
large a corporation. The double load was lightened in December, 1911,
when control of the _Sun_ was gained through stock purchase by William
C. Reick, who became the president of the company, Mr. Mitchell being
permitted to return to the editorial functions which have now engrossed
him, either as Mr. Dana’s aid or as editor-in-chief, for more than
forty years.
[Illustration:
EDWARD PAGE MITCHELL
Editor of “The Sun”
]
Mr. Reick, who was born in Philadelphia in 1864, entered newspaper
work in that city when he was nineteen years old. A few years later he
removed to Newark, New Jersey, where he became the correspondent of
the New York _Herald_. He attracted the attention of Mr. Bennett, the
owner of the _Herald_, and in 1888 he was made editor of the _Herald’s_
London and Paris editions. A year later he returned to America to
become city editor of the _Herald_, the highest title then given on a
newspaper which refuses to have a titular managing editor. In 1903 he
was elected president of the New York Herald Company, and he remained
in that position until 1906, when he left the _Herald_ to become
associated with Adolph Ochs in the publication of the New York _Times_
and with George W. Ochs in the publication of the Philadelphia _Public
Ledger_.
When Mr. Reick assumed the control of the _Sun_ properties, he devoted
much care to the improvement of the _Evening Sun_, putting it under the
managing editorship of George M. Smith, who had served for many years
as news editor of the _Sun_ under Chester S. Lord. As Mr. Munsey said
when he acquired the _Sun_ and the _Evening Sun_ from Mr. Reick:
Very great credit is due Mr. Reick for the fine development of
the _Evening Sun_ since it came under his control. I know of no
man who has done a better and sounder piece of newspaper work
at any time, in New York or elsewhere, than Mr. Reick has done
on the _Evening Sun_.
Among the events of the Reick régime were the retirement of Chester
S. Lord from the managing editorship and of George B. Mallon from the
city editorship, and the removal of the newspaper from its old home at
Nassau and Frankfort Streets to the American Tract Society Building,
one block farther south, at Nassau and Spruce Streets.
It was during Mr. Reick’s control of the _Sun_ that Mr. Munsey, in the
autumn of 1912, bought the New York _Press_, a one-cent Republican
morning daily holding an Associated Press membership. The _Sun_ had
lacked the Associated Press service since the fateful night when Mr.
Dana bolted from that organization and started the Laffan News Bureau.
Mr. Munsey bought the _Sun_ from Mr. Reick on June 30, 1916, and four
days later, on July 3, the _Press_, with its Associated Press service,
its best men, and some of its popular features, was absorbed by the
_Sun_. As the _Press_ had been a penny paper, the price of the _Sun_
was reduced to one cent, after having stood at two cents since the
Civil War. It remained a penny paper until January 26, 1918, when the
pressure of production-costs forced the price of all the big New York
dailies to two cents.
The amalgamation of the _Sun_ and the _Press_ wrought no change in the
editorial department of the _Sun_, Mr. Mitchell remaining as its chief.
Ervin Wardman, long the editor of the _Press_, became the publisher
of the Sun and vice-president of the Sun Printing and Publishing
Association. Mr. Reick remained with the organization in an advisory
capacity. Keats Speed, the managing editor of the _Press_, became
managing editor of the _Sun_, Kenneth Lord remaining as city editor.
The _Sun_ has had five homes--at 222 William Street, where Benjamin H.
Day struck off the first tiny number; at 156 Nassau Street, rented by
Day in August, 1835, when the paper began to pay well; at the southwest
corner of Nassau and Fulton Streets, to which Moses Y. Beach moved
the _Sun_ in 1842; at Nassau and Frankfort Streets, the old Tammany
Hall, which Dana and his associates bought; and at 150 Nassau Street,
whither the _Sun_ moved in July, 1915. It is expected that the _Sun_
will presently move to another and a fine home, for in September,
1917, Mr. Munsey bought the Stewart Building, at the northeast corner
of Broadway and Chambers Street, just north of City Hall Park. The
site is generally admitted to be the most desirable building site
downtown, so large is the ground space, so fine is the outlook over
the spacious park, and so close is it to three subways, three or four
elevated-railroad lines, and the Brooklyn Bridge.
Should the criticism be made that this book is not all-inclusive,
let it be remembered that there can be no really complete history of
the _Sun_ except itself--the tons of files in which for eighty-five
years _Sun_ men have drawn their pictures of life’s procession. In a
narrative like this only the outlines of the _Sun’s_ course, margined
with incidents of the men who made it great by making it as human as
themselves, can find room.
It is easy to begin a story of the _Sun_, because Ben Day and that
uncertain morning in 1833, the very dawn of popular journalism, make a
very real picture. Try to end it, and the roar of the presses in the
basement is remindful of the fact that there is no end, except the
arbitrary closing. This _Sun_, like _Richmond’s_--
By the bright track of his fiery car
Gives token of a goodly day to-morrow.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The files of the _Sun_, 1833–1918.
“The Life of Charles A. Dana,” by James Harrison Wilson, LL.D., late
Major General, U. S. V. Harper & Bros., 1907.
“Journalism in the United States from 1690 to 1872,” by Frederic
Hudson. Harper & Bros., 1873.
“The Art of Newspaper Making,” by Charles A. Dana. D. Appleton & Co.,
1895.
“Henry J. Raymond and the New York Press for Thirty Years,” by Augustus
Maverick. A. S. Hale & Co., Hartford, Conn., 1870.
“First Blows of the Civil War,” by James S. Pike. American News Co.,
1879.
“Ordered to China; Letters of Wilbur J. Chamberlin.” Frederick A.
Stokes Co., 1903.
“The Making of a Journalist,” by Julian Ralph. Harper & Bros., 1903.
“Mr. Dana of the _Sun_,” by Edward P. Mitchell. _McClure’s Magazine_,
October, 1894.
“The New York _Sun_,” by Will Irwin. _American Magazine_, January, 1909.
“The Men Who Make the New York _Sun_,” by E. J. Edwards. _Munsey’s
Magazine_, October, 1893.
CHRONOLOGY
1833.--The _Sun_ is founded by Benjamin H. Day, September 3.
1835.--Its home is changed from 222 William street to 156 Nassau
street, August 3.
1835.--The Moon Hoax appears, August 25.
1838.--Moses Yale Beach becomes proprietor, June 28.
1842.--The _Sun_ moves to the southwest corner of Fulton and Nassau
streets, July.
1844.--Poe’s Balloon Hoax appears, April 3.
1845.--M. Y. Beach takes his sons, Moses S. and Alfred E., as
partners, October 22.
1848.--Moses Yale Beach retires, December 4.
1852.--Alfred Ely Beach retires, April 6.
1860.--Moses S. Beach lets the _Sun_ to a religious group, August 6.
1861.--The _Sun_ returns to the management of M. S. Beach, January 1.
1864.--The price is raised to two cents, August 1.
1868.--Charles A. Dana becomes the editor and manager of the _Sun_,
January 25.
1868.--The _Sun_ moves to 170 Nassau street, January 25.
1875.--Edward P. Mitchell joins the editorial staff, October 1.
1897.--Death of Charles A. Dana, October 17.
1902.--William M. Laffan’s proprietorship is announced, February 22.
1903.--Edward P. Mitchell becomes the editor of the _Sun_, July 20.
1909.--Death of William M. Laffan, November 19.
1911.--William C. Reick becomes proprietor, December 17.
1915.--The _Sun_ moves to 150 Nassau street, July 11.
1916.--Frank A. Munsey becomes proprietor, June 30.
1916.--With the _Sun_ is amalgamated the New York _Press_, July 3.
1916.--The price is reduced to one cent, July 3.
1918.--The price again becomes two cents, January 26.
INDEX
Abell, Arunah S., associate of Day, 23
establishes Baltimore _Sun_, 136
buys Guilford estate, 136
helps S. F. B. Morse, 136
death of, in 1888, 136
Abolition of slavery, article on, 54
Wisner’s editorial on, 42
Actors of the early 30’s, 121
Adams, Cyrus C., cable editor, 394
Adamson, Robert, _Evening Sun_ reporter, 399
Adams, Samuel Hopkins, Dana finds it hard to discharge, 378, 379
writes Sunday _Sun_ fiction, 412
Adams, Samuel, murdered by John C. Colt, 154
“Addition, Division, and Silence,” 305, 306
Advertising, fashions of, in 1833, 26
specimens of early “liners,” 125
the _Sun_ takes off the first page in 1862, 189
the _Sun_, under Morrison, refuses advertisements on Sunday, 190
Alamo massacre, 113
Alexander, Columbus, escape of, in the Safe Burglary Conspiracy, 308,
309
Alger, Horatio, Jr., writes fiction for the _Sun_, 195
Allen, Miss Susan, smokes a cigar on Broadway, 45
Alumni, of the _Sun_, 328
Anderson, Harold M., Spanish war correspondent, 355, 356
Arago, D. F., alleged deception of, by the Moon Hoax, 97–99
Armstrong, Henry M., Spanish war correspondent, 356
Associated Press, Dana’s break with, 374
formed in _Sun_ office, 167
Astor House, 49
Astor, William B., New York’s richest man, 234
Attree, William H., 61–62
reporter on the _Transcript_, 133, 134
Aviation, prophetic editorial comment on, 46
“Azamet Batuk.” See Thiéblin, N. L.
Badeau, General Adam, a _Sun_ contributor, 404
Ballard, Anna, reporter, 286
Balloon Hoax, Poe’s, referred to by De Morgan, 98
Bartlett, Willard, dramatic critic, counsel for Dana, editorial
contributor, 286
invents the _Sun_ Cat, 287
Bartlett, William O., writes “No king, no clown, to rule this town!”,
255
style of, compared with Dana’s and Mitchell’s, 256
reference of, to General Hancock’s weight, 256
counsel for Tweed, 275
Battey, Emily Verdery, first real woman reporter, 285, 286
appears in the _Sun_ on April 13, 1844, 149–153
Beach, Alfred Ely, becomes partner in the _Sun_, 161, 162
invents first typewriter for the blind, 162
builds first New York subway, 162, 163
withdraws from the _Sun_ April 6, 1852, 171
dies in 1896, 163
Beach Brothers, name of ownership, 170, 171
issue _Evening Sun_, 171
Beach, Erasmus D., book reviewer, 349
writes classic football story, 350
Beach, Frederick Converse, 163
Beach, Joseph, son of Moses Y. Beach, 173
Beach, Moses Sperry, becomes a partner in the _Sun_, 161, 162
part owner Boston _Daily Times_, 162
invents printing devices, 162
becomes sole owner of the _Sun_, 171
brings wood from the Mount of Olives for Beecher’s pulpit, 177
absence of, from the _Sun_ in the early months of the Civil War, 189
takes the _Sun_ back, 191
sells the _Sun_ to Dana, 198, 199
bids readers farewell, 200
Beach, Moses Yale, enters _Sun_ office as bookkeeper, 111
buys the _Sun_, 127
youth and marriage of, 139
inventions of, 140
joins Benjamin H. Day, 140
owns two buildings where the _Sun_ had its home, 157
takes sons as partners, 161
enterprise of, in Mexican War, 164, 165
starts for Mexico as President Polk’s special agent, 166
retires from the _Sun_, 167
dinner in his honour, 167
issues various editions of the _Sun_, 169
publishes “The Wealth of New York,” 169
father of the newspaper syndicate, 169
Dana’s estimate of, 169, 170
amasses a fortune and retires, 170
writes European articles for the _Sun_, 173
Beach, Stanley Yale, 163
Becker, Charles, conviction of, reported by E. C. Hill, 320, 321
Beckwith, Arthur, telegraph editor, 280
Beecher, Henry Ward, John Brown speech of, in the _Sun_, 177
tribute to H. B. Stanton, 259
trial of, 278
“I don’t read the _Sun_,” 310
denounced by the _Sun_, 311
Belknap, William W., accused by the _Sun_ in Post-trader scandal and
impeached, 306, 307
Bell, Jared D., part owner, _New Era_, 134
Bendelari, George, book-reviewer, 411
Bennett, James Gordon, thrashed by Col. Webb, 36
work of, for the _Courier and Enquirer_, 37
editor Philadelphia _Courier_, 53
the _Sun_ replies to charge of, that Day is an infidel, 108
early career of, 109
treats Helen Jewett’s murder sensationally, 114
second assault on, by Webb described, 114
early failures of, 131
debt of, to Day’s example, 132
announcement of coming marriage of, 132
establishes the no-credit system, 133
works harder than other proprietors, 174
dies in 1872, 293
“the first yellow journalist,” 413
Bennett, J. G., Jr., takes his father’s place, 298
death of, 132
Bigelow, John, associate of Bryant, 174
Bishop, Joseph W., night city editor, 372
night editor, 372
Black, Chauncey F., a _Sun_ contributor, 405
Blackwood, Algernon, _Evening Sun_ reporter, 399
Blatchford, Judge Samuel, historic decision of, in the Shepherd case,
307, 308
Blizzard of March, 1888, 362, 363
Blythe, Samuel G., describes E. G. Riggs, 346
Bogart, John B., “If a man bites a dog, that is news,” 241
“a whole school of journalism,” 281
possesses “sixth sense,” 335, 336
persistence of, 336
Bonner, Robert, pays $30,000 for “Norwood,” 235
sagacity of, commented on by Dana, 300
Book-reviewers, _Sun’s_, list of, 411
Borden, Lizzie, acquittal of, reported by Julian Ralph, 318, 319
Bowery Theatre Fire, ruins Hamblin, 118
first American playhouse lighted with gas, 121
Bowles, Samuel, employs B. H. Day, 22–23
Bowman, Frank, dramatic critic, 411
Bread riots, the _Sun’s_ part in, 118, 119
Brewster, Sir David, appears in Moon Hoax, 71
Brisbane, Albert, association of, with Greeley, 161
Brisbane, Arthur, son of Albert Brisbane, 161
style of, like W. O. Bartlett’s, 256
becomes reporter at 18, 346, 347
becomes London correspondent, 347
reports Sullivan-Mitchell fight, 347
is managing editor _Evening Sun_, 348
becomes editor Sunday _World_ magazine, 348
becomes editor _Evening Journal_, 348
becomes proprietor Washington _Times_, 348
takes Richard Harding Davis on _Evening Sun_, 398
Brook Farm, Dana enters, 206
Brooklyn Theatre fire, 362
Brooks brothers, James and Erastus, establish New York _Express_,
134, 135
Brown, John, the _Sun’s_ attitude toward, 177
Bryant, William Cullen, editor and poet in 1833, 34
conflict of, with W. L. Stone, 34
Buchanan, James, supported by the _Sun_, 176
Burdell, Dr. Harvey, murder of, 196
Burnett, Wm., 60
Burr, Aaron, 51
Butler, Stephen B., 60
Cady, Elizabeth, marries Henry B. Stanton, 259
Caroline case, the _Sun’s_ enterprise in reporting, 144, 145
Carroll, Dana H., Spanish war correspondent, 355
Cat, the _Sun’s_, his invention and reputation, 287–289
Chadwick, George W., in business with Dana, 216
Chamberlains and Chamberlins, 341–343
Chamberlain, Henry Richardson, covers Europe for the _Sun_, 342
visions by, of a great war, 342
Chamberlin, Wilbur J., takes charge of the _Sun_ staff in Cuba, 356
eleven-column report by, 361
known as “Jersey,” 338;
cable hoodoo of, 339, 340
describes German soldiers’ brutality in China, 340
describes the Deacon’s broken suspenders, 341
Chamberlin, E. O., reporter, 342
Chamberlin, Henry B., reporter, 343
Childs, George W., tells of W. M. Swain’s industry, 135
buys _Public Ledger_, 135
Cholera, in New York, 1832, 22
Church, Francis P., a _Sun_ editorial writer for forty years, 191
“Is There a Santa Claus?,” 409
Church, William C., publisher of the _Sun_, 190
war correspondent, 190, 191
owns _Army and Navy Journal_, 191
Circulation in November, 1833, 2,000, 50
in December, 1833, 52
April, 1834, 54
in November, 1834, 57
Day offers to bet on it, 62–63
in August, 1835, it becomes the largest in the world, 78
in August, 1836, 27,000, 116
in September, 1843, 38,000, 157
in December, 1848, 50,000, 168
in September, 1860, 59,000, 194
Dana’s estimate of 50,000 to 60,000 in 1868, 228
in 1871, 100,000, 269
in March, 1875, 120,000, 300
day after Tilden-Hayes election, 220, 390, 323, 325
after other interesting events, 323–325
high-tide marks, 325
Civil War, the _Sun_ in the, 172 _et seq._
the _Sun_ declares “the Union cannot be dissolved,” 179
the _Sun_ charges the _Herald_, the _Daily News_, and the
_Staats-Zeitung_ with disloyalty, 180, 181
the _Sun_, the _Tribune_, and the _Times_ entirely loyal, 185
the _Sun’s_ news from Bull Run, 187;
from Gettysburg, 188
the _Sun_ protests against Sunday battles, 190
attitude of Greeley and Dana, 211
Clarke, Selah Merrill, night city editor, 1881–1912, 383
story of the Northampton disaster by, 383
remarkable memory of, 384, 385
head-lines written by, 387, 388
gifts of, as copy reader, 389
Cleveland, Grover, Dana’s opposition to, 421, 422
Clubs: Bread and Cheese, Hone, Union, 122, 123
Cobb, Irvin S., reports Portsmouth peace conference for _Evening
Sun_, 399
Coffey, Titian J., recipient of the “addition, division, and silence”
letter, 305
Collins, E. K., an advertiser in the first _Sun_, 27
Colt, John C., murders Samuel Adams, 154
Conkling, Roscoe, in business with Dana, 216
Connolly, James, reporter, 284
Conventions, national, _Sun_ men reporting, 344
history of, written by E. G. Riggs, 346
Cook, Tom, reporter, 284
Cooper, Charles P., city editor, _Evening Sun_, 400
Cooper, James Fenimore, 50
Corbin, John, dramatic critic, 411
Coward, Edward Fales, _Evening Sun_ dramatic critic, 399
Crédit Mobilier scandal, 304
Crockett, David, memoirs of, in the _Sun_, 51
Cronyn, Thoreau, Dewey’s funeral, report by, 333
Cuba, Dana’s interest in struggle of, 353–355
Cullen, Clarence L., writes “Tales of the Ex-Tanks,” 411
Cummings, Alexander, writes for the _World_, 182
Cummings, Amos Jay, secretly learns typesetting, 264
goes with Filibuster Walker, 265
wins Medal of Honor at Fredericksburg, 265
holds _Tribune_ office against rioters, 266
conflicts with John Russell Young, 266
“They say I swear too much,” 267
“To hell with my own copy,” 267
best news man of his day, 268
is first human interest reporter, 268
reports prize fights, 285
Nicara-goo Song of, 289, 290
“Ziska” letters of, 290
is managing editor of the _Express_, 290
returns to the _Sun_, 290
is elected to House of Representatives, 290
becomes editor _Evening Sun_, 290
returns to Congress, 290, 291
death and funeral of, 291
prints murder charts, 414
Curtin, Jeremiah, a _Sun_ contributor, 404
Curtis, David A., Sunday _Sun_ writer, 412
Curtis, George Ticknor, a _Sun_ contributor, 404
Curtis, George William, writes for the _Tribune_, 161
Daly, Augustin, tries to have Dana dismiss Laffan, 252
Damrosch, Leopold, music critic, 314
Dana, Charles A., a boy in Buffalo when Day founded the _Sun_, 35
reading “Oliver Twist” weakens eyes of, 123
draws $50 a week on _Tribune_, 174
named by the _Sun_ as a possible postmaster, 179
buys the _Sun_ and announces its policy, 198, 199
absolute master of the _Sun_, 202
birth and ancestry, 202
brothers and sisters of, 203
boyhood and life of, in Buffalo, 203, 204
goes to Harvard, 204
teaches school at Scituate, 205
religious indecision of, 205
sight of, impaired, 206
joins Brook Farm, 206
milks cows and waits on table, 207
meets Horace Greeley, 207
writes for the _Harbinger_ and the _Dial_, 207
writes poetry, 208
marries, 208
goes to Boston _Daily Chronotype_, 208
comes out “strong against hell,” 209
becomes city editor of the New York _Tribune_, 209
goes to Europe, 209
returns to be managing editor of the _Tribune_, 210
his pay and income, 210
literary works of, before Civil War, 213
leaves the _Tribune_, 214, 215
induces Grant to stop the cotton speculation, 216
convinces Lincoln of needed reforms, 216
is chosen to report on complaints against Grant, 216, 217
writes of his “new insight into slavery,” 218
is with Grant at Vicksburg, 218
brings Grant full authority, 218
sees much of war, 219
estimate of Grant by, 219
estimate of Rawlins by, 219, 220
reports on Rosecrans, 220
poetry contest of, with General Lawler, 221
describes the storming of Missionary Ridge, 221, 222
reports Grant’s Virginia campaign, 222, 223
goes to Richmond to gather Confederate archives, 224
talks with Lincoln about Jacob Thompson, 224
authorizes Miles to manacle Jefferson Davis, 224
quoted on Davis’s imprisonment, 225
becomes editor of Chicago _Republican_, 225
assails President Johnson, 226
quits Chicago _Republican_, 226
determines to have a New York newspaper, 226
his backers, 226
decides to buy the _Sun_, 228, 229
changes its appearance, 230
moves “It Shines for All,” 230, 231
“Dana was the _Sun_ and the _Sun_ Dana,” 231
makes no rules for the _Sun_, 238
editorial principles of, 238, 239
lectures at Cornell, 239
defines news, 241
on college education, 242
on reporting, 242
“The invariable law is to be interesting,” 243
“Do not take any model,” 243, 244
not impressed by names of writers, 246
“This is too damned wicked,” 246
refuses to expose a silly literary thief, 246
methods and surroundings of, 246–251
interest of, in everything and everybody, 251
“Take the partition down,” 251
love of, for variety of topics, 253
delight of, in other men’s work, 254
tact of, in handling men, 263
death of great rivals of, 293
quoted on “personal journalism,” 296
quoted on Greeley, Raymond, and Bennett, 297
“We pass the _Tribune_ by”, 298
advises _World_ reporters to read the Bible, 299
kindly feeling of, toward the younger Bennett, 299
belief of, in a newspaper without advertising, 299–301
objects to “heavy chunks of news,” 302
“our contemporaries exhaust their young men,” 302
is a witness against Secretary Robeson, 305
defeats Shepherd’s attempt to railroad him, 307
denies wishing to be collector of the port, 309, 310
loses friends because of attacks on Grantism, 310
refuses to be turned, 310
retains opinion of Grant’s military ability, 310
“First find the man,” plans of, 326
frames gold plank for New York convention of 1896, 345
asks Platt not to oppose Roosevelt, 345
affection of, for Cuba, 353–354
memorial to, in Camaguey, 354, 355
breaks with Associated Press, 374
encouraged _Sun_ men to write fiction, 405
“The second yellow journalist,” 413
not a yellow journalist, 415
attacks yellow journalism, 413, 415, 416, 417
revolutionizes journalism, 416
“An opposition party in himself,” 420
attacks Hayes, 420
opposition of, to Cleveland, 420
supports B. F. Butler, 420
would burn his pen rather than support Blaine, 421
opinion of, on civil service reform, 421
opposes Bryan, 422
continental travels, 423
knowledge of languages, 423
porcelain collection of, 423
country home of, 424
death of, 425
the _Sun’s_ announcement of death of, 425
elevation of journalism by, 426
Dana, Paul, succeeds his father as editor, 426
chief owner, 427
Davids, David, reporter, 283
Davies, Acton, Spanish war correspondent, 356
_Evening Sun_ dramatic critic, 399
Davis, Oscar King, goes with Schley’s squadron, 355
describes capture of Guam, 356, 357
Davis, Richard Harding, experiences and work of, on _Evening Sun_, 398
writes _Van Bibber_ stories for _Evening Sun_, 398
Day, Benjamin H., decides to publish the _Sun_, 22
birth and ancestry of, 22
issues the first _Sun_, 25
issues a _True Sun_, 60
is indicted for attacking Attree, 61
welcomes an attack by Col. Webb, 111
quarrels with Bennett, 110
attacks the service at the Astor House, 117
name of, taken from the _Sun’s_ masthead, 125
sells the _Sun_ to Moses Y. Beach, 127
period of ownership by, of the _Sun_, 127
profits from the _Sun_, 127, 128
influence of, upon journalism, 129
influence of, on Bennett’s success, 131, 132
success of, responsible for the founding of many one-cent papers,
133
says the _Sun’s_ success was “more by accident than design,” 137
establishes _True Sun_, 137
starts the _Tatler_, 137, 138
founds _Brother Jonathan_, 138
retirement and death of, 138
remarks on Dana’s purchase of the _Sun_, 138
son of Benjamin H. Day, 138
contrasted with Dana, 202
was he a yellow journalist?, 414
Delane, John T., pictured by Kinglake, 247
De Morgan, Augustus, notes of, on the Moon Hoax, 96–99
Denison, Lindsay, covers Slocum disaster, 361
Dick, Dr. Thomas, 66
Dickens, Charles, “Nicholas Nickleby” criticized, 123
The _Sun’s_ comments on American visit of, 155, 156, 157
Dieuaide, Thomas M., writes story of the Santiago sea fight, 355, 356
describes the destruction of St. Pierre, 357, 358
Dillingham, Charles B., _Evening Sun_ dramatic critic, 399
Dix, John A., an advertiser in the first _Sun_, 28
Dix, John A., Governor, seizes three New York newspapers in 1864, 183
Douglas, Stephen A., the _Sun’s_ attitude toward, 175, 177, 178
Draper, Dr. John W., 35
Dyer, Oliver, versatility of, 405
Eaton, Walter P., dramatic critic, 411
Edison, Thomas A., thanks the _Sun_ for chewing tobacco, 322
Editorial writers, list of, 326
England, Isaac W., first managing editor of the _Sun_, 263, 264
Dana’s tribute to, 264
Evans, George O., “He understands addition, division, and silence,”
305
_Evening Sun_, first issued by Beach Brothers, 171
issued by Dana, March 17, 1887, 397
“Laffan’s baby,” 397
Cummings first managing editor of, 397
later managing editors of, 398, 400
list of editorial writers, managing editors, and city editors of,
399, 400
Express service, usefulness to the _Sun_, 140, 141
Fairbanks, Charles M., reporter and night editor, 351
Fernandez, the murderer, 103–104
Field, Eugene, obtains Dana’s shears, 249
Fire, New York conflagration of 1835, 105–106
Fisk, James, Jr., pays $800,000 for a theatre, 236
tells of _Sun_ enterprise, 269, 270
Fitzgerald, Christopher J., finds the lost Umbria, 392, 393
Flaherty, Bernard. See Williams, Barney.
Flint, Dr. Austin, youthful friend of Dana, 204
Florence, William J., subscriber to the Tweed statue fund, 273
Foord, John, editor of the _Times_, 298
Football, Ralph’s story without a score, 334, 335
Beach’s Homeric introduction, 350, 351
Forks, the _Sun’s_ conservative attitude toward, 55
Forrest, Edwin, 55–56
Fowler, Elting A., predicts Bryan’s appointment as Secretary of
State, 377
Fuller, Andrew S., agricultural editor, 199, 200
Fyles, Franklin, reports Beecher trial, 278
reporter, dramatic critic, and playwright, 283
Garr, Andrew S., sues Day for libel, 126
Gibson, A. M., Washington correspondent, 312
Godwin, Parke, edits _Daily News_, 181
Goodwin, Joseph, creates _Sarsaparilla Reilly_, 412
Gould, Jay, is blackballed in the Blossom Club, 270
Grant, Ulysses S., the _Sun’s_ support of, in 1868, announced, 199
imposed upon, 304
opposed by the _Sun_, 304
Grant scandals, 304–310
Greeley, Horace, founds _Morning Post_, 23
fails with _Morning Post_, 37
Albany correspondent _Daily Whig_, 134
starts the _Tribune_, 159
is scorned by the _Sun_, 159
hires Henry J. Raymond, 160
attacks the _Sun_, 161
tells British legislators the _Sun_ was cheap at $250,000, 171
mentioned for the collectorship, 179
hires Dana, 209
timidity of, toward slavery, 211
writes pleas to Dana, 212
denies writing “Forward to Richmond!”, 213
hires Cummings on the state of his breeches, 266
Gregg, Frederic J., editorial writer, _Evening Sun_, 400
Griffis, William Elliot, a _Sun_ contributor, 404
Gurowski, Count, writes for the _Tribune_, 161
Hackett, James H., 39
Hallock, Gerard, sympathy of, with slavery forces him to retire from
the _Journal of Commerce_, 181, 182
Hamblin, Thomas S., ruined by fire of 1836, 118
beats Bennett, 118
Hamilton, Captain, aspersions of, relative to tooth brushes, 45
Harbour Association, formed by six newspapers, 167
Harnden, William F., starts express service, New York to Boston, 141
Harte, Bret, stories by, syndicated by the _Sun_, 403
Hawkins, Ervin, city editor, _Evening Sun_, 400
Hayward, Billings, part owner of the _Transcript_, 133, 134
Hazeltine, Mayo W., writes on Dana’s elevation of journalism, 426
“M. W. H.,” 408
literary critic for thirty-one years, 408
Head-lines, the _Sun’s_ second, 44
examples of (1833), 52
example of, in Dana’s time, 314
Hearst, William R., “the fourth yellow journalist,” 413
Henderson, William J., musical critic and yachting writer, 391
Hendrix, Joseph C., “Cut out the damn,” 279
“Hermit,” writes Washington letters for the _Sun_, 176
Herschel, Sir John F. W., 66
Hill, Edwin C., reports Becker trial, 321
style of, in disaster stories, 361, 362
Hitchcock, Thomas, author of “Matthew Marshall” financial articles,
228
Hoaxes. See Moon Hoax, Balloon Hoax, Mungo Park.
Hoe, Robert, Day’s remark at dinner to, 137
Holmes, Mary J., writes novels for the _Sun_, 195
Hone, Philip, as a writer, 37
Horse expresses: the six-cent papers combine to use, 110
Hotels, huge noon dinners in the thirties, 122
Howard, Joseph, Jr., issues a false Presidential proclamation, 183
Hudson, Frederic, opposes managing editorships, 262
“Human interest,” 244, 245, 313, 363
Humour, 366, 367
Hurlbut, William Henry, a _Sun_ contributor, 405
Illustrations, the _Sun’s_ first, 43
Interviews, invented by Bennett, 316
Introductions, the _Sun’s_ objection to, 363
Irving, Washington, 34–35
Irwin, Will, “The City That Was,” 358
“It Shines for All,” 58
Jackson, Andrew, message of, printed in full, 51
James, Henry, flashy head-lines on a novel by, 404
Jennings, Louis J., chief editorial writer of the _Times_, 274
becomes editor of the _Times_, 298
returns to England, 298
Jewett, Helen, murder of, 113, 114
trial of Robinson for murder of, 115, 116
Jones, Alexander, becomes first agent of Associated Press, 167
invents telegraph cipher, 167
Jones, George, partner of H. J. Raymond, 274
Journalism, the earliest dailies, 29
advance of, between 1830 and 1840, 136, 137
great editors of 1868, 233
managing editors, 262, 263
first women reporters, 285, 286
Watterson’s review in 1873, 293–295
“Personal journalism,” 295, 296
Dana’s dream of a paper without advertisements, 299–301
interviewing, 316
What do people read?, 323
“Sixth sense,” 335, 336
_Journal of Commerce_, the _Sun’s_ only surviving morning
contemporary of 1833, 25
Josephs, Joseph, reporter, 283
Kane, Lawrence S., city editor, 279
reporter, 280
Kellogg, Daniel F., city editor 1890–1902, 371
Kelly, John, marriage of, reported, 321, 322
Kemble, Fanny, 44, 59
Kemble, W. H., author of the “addition, division, and silence”
letter, 305
causes Dana’s arrest, 306
is sent to prison, 306
Kendall, George W., despatches of, to the New Orleans _Picayune_ used
by the _Sun_, 165
King, Charles, editor of the _American_, 130, 131
Know-Nothing Party, uses Maria Monk’s “Disclosures” as political
capital, 112
Kobbé, Gustav, dramatic and musical critic, 350
Laffan Bureau, established, 375
growth, 376
Laffan, William M., becomes proprietor of the _Sun_, 427
thorough newspaper training of, 427
art expert, 427, 428
dramatic critic, 428
“Anybody can get anything printed, except the owner,” 428
death of, in 1909, 430
Landon, M. D. See Eli Perkins.
Leggett, William, fights duel with Blake, 130
Levermore, Charles H., describes victory of the _Sun_ and the
_Herald_ over old-fashioned journalism, 137
Lincoln, Abraham, “No match for the Little Giant,” 177
“A man of the people,” 178
is elected, “and yet the country is safe,” 179
_Sun_ comments on re-election of, 182;
on death of, 182
New York newspapers’ comment on emancipation proclamation, 184
assigns Dana to Virginia campaign, 222
Literature, in the fifties, 173
serial novels contracted for by M. S. Beach, 196
“The finest side of the _Sun_,” 402, _et seq._
Literary men, list of, in 1833, 34–35
Lloyd, Nelson, Spanish war correspondent, 355
city editor, _Evening Sun_, 400
Locke, Richard Adams, goes on _Sun_ as a reporter, 64
Poe’s sketch of, 65, 66
early life of, 66
confesses the Moon Hoax, 86–87
life of the murderer, Fernandez, by, 103–104
starts the _New Era_, 116–117
writes “The Lost Manuscript of Mungo Park,” 117
becomes editor of the Brooklyn _Eagle_, 117, 118
death of, 118
attends dinner to Moses Y. Beach, 167
Lord, Chester S., Whisky Ring story by, 284, 285
long service of, 326, 327
first staff of, 327
“Ten thousand battles of,” 327
managing editor, 1880–1913, 372
studies at Hamilton College, 373
goes on the _Sun_ as a reporter, 373
buys Syracuse _Standard_, 373
returns to the _Sun_, 373
assistant managing editor, 373
managing editor, 373
described by E. G. Riggs, 373
perfects collection of election returns, 374
sends Blaine first news of his defeat, 374
establishes a news service in a night, 375
selection of correspondents by, 376
“Use your own judgment,” 377, 378
“You’ve been fired, but come back,” 378
Lord, Kenneth, city editor, 371, 432
Lotteries, list of numbers drawn, in the _Sun_, 40
Lottery advertising, 37
Luby, James, chief editorial writer, _Evening Sun_, 400
Lyman, Ambrose W., night city editor, 371
Lynch, Charles, Sunday _Sun_ writer, 412
Lynde, Willoughby, part owner of the _Transcript_, 133, 134
Magazines, New York periodicals in 1833, 34
Maguire, Mark, newsboy and sports writer, 285
invents boxing chart, 285
Mallon, George Barry, city editor, 1902–1914, 371
Mandigo, John, sporting editor, 395
Mann, Henry, reporter, exchange editor and author, 284
reports Stokes trial, 321
Mansfield, Josephine, 236, 270
Marble, Manton, joins the _World_, 182
controls it, 182
protests to Lincoln when the _World_ is suppressed, 183
Maria Monk, the _Sun_ prints “Disclosures” of, 111, 112
exposed by W. L. Stone in the _Commercial Advertiser_, 112, 113
Martineau, Harriet, comments of, on the Moon Hoax, 86
“Matthew Marshall.” See Hitchcock, Thomas.
Matthias the Prophet, trial of, for murder, 63
McAlpin, Robert, reporter, 284
McAlpin, Tod, reporter, 284
McClellan, George B., supported by the _Sun_ in 1864, 185
McCloy, W. C., city editor and managing editor, _Evening Sun_, 398,
400
McDonnell, P. G., predicts Aguinaldo’s revolt, 376
McEntee, Joseph, Albany correspondent, 394
Mexican War, _Sun’s_ news of, 164, 165
costly to newspapers, 166
Mitchell, Edward P., owns a copy of the first _Sun_, 26
is quoted on Dana’s freedom from ancient journalistic rules, 240
describes Dana’s methods and surroundings, 247–251
describes Dana’s encouragement of Cuba Libre, 354
finds “Plaza Charles A. Dana” in Camaguey, 355
writes short stories of distinction, 405
breadth of his fancy and humour, 405, 406
address on “The Newspaper Value of Non-essentials,” 406
champions the classics, 407
defines yellow journalism and white, 415
describes Dana’s revolution of journalism, 416
receives Dana’s instructions as to length of death notice, 425
becomes editor-in-chief, 430
president of the Sun Printing and Publishing Association,
1909–1911, 430
remains as editor, 432
“Monsieur X.” See Thiéblin, Napoleon L.
Moon Hoax, 64–101
reacts on the _Sun’s_ big fire story, 106
Morris, George P., 37
Morrissey, John, pugilist, is supported for the Senate by the _Sun_,
323
Morrison, Archibald M., gains control of the _Sun_ to use it for
evangelical purposes, 189
Morse, Samuel F. B., assisted by W. M. Swain and A. S. Abell to
finance the telegraph, 136
Motto, “It Shines for All” appears, origin of, 58
Mullin, Edward H., editorial writer, _Evening Sun_, 400
Munn, Orson D., buys _Scientific American_ with Alfred E. Beach, 162
Munsey, Frank A., sells Washington _Times_ to Brisbane, 348
remarks of, at Yale on the influence of the _Sun_ and the _World_,
419
buys New York _Press_, 431
buys the _Sun_, 431
consolidates the _Sun_ and the _Press_, 431
buys Stewart Building, 432
“M. W. H.” See Hazeltine, M. W.
“Mystery of Marie Roget.” See Rogers, Mary.
Navy Department scandals, 304, 305
“Nemo,” a _Sun_ correspondent in the Civil War, 188
News boats, 166
Newsboys, Day originates street sales by, 39–40
Sam Messenger, 40
Newspapers, _Courrant_, the first English daily, 29
London _Times_ the first English paper to use a steam press, 29
_Pennsylvania Packet_, the first American daily, 29
the _Globe_, oldest New York paper, 29
the _Evening Post_, second oldest New York paper, 29
the _Courier_ and the _Enquirer_ amalgamated, 35
New York _Tribune_, founding of, 37
New York _Times_ is started, 57
the _Transcript_ is started, 57
the _True Sun_, 59–60
_Courier and Enquirer_, its huge size, 62
attitude of the _Sun’s_ contemporaries toward the Moon Hoax, 75,
76, 82, 87
the _Sun’s_ penny imitators, editorial reference to, 107
New York _Herald_ prints the first report of Stock Exchange sales,
109
_Herald’s_ circulation in 1836, 116
the _Journal of Commerce_ denounces the _Sun_ as an inciter of
riots, 119
paper rolls, a new invention, described, 123, 124
_Courier and Enquirer’s_ writers under Webb, 130
_Journal of Commerce_, enterprise under Gerard Hallock’s
editorship, 130
the _Transcript’s_ early success, 133, 134
list of penny papers started in New York, 1833–1838, 134
New York _Express_ established, 134, 135
New York _Daily News_ established, 134, 135
the _Daily Transcript_, the first Philadelphia penny paper, 135
Philadelphia _Public Ledger_, office mobbed, 135
list of great dailies founded, 1833–1843, 136
the _Herald_ called “a very bad paper,” by Greeley, 174
New York _World_, appearance of, as a highly moral sheet, 182
the New York _Times_ and the Tweed exposure, 274, 275
Orange _Postman_, the first penny paper, 29
Newspaper feuds, Day and Webb, 54
_Sun_ and _Journal of Commerce_, 54
New York, size and life of, in 1833, 32–34
life in the thirties, 121–123
rich and powerful figures of Dana’s first _Sun_ year, 234, 235
clubs, hotels, and theatres of the sixties, 236, 237
New York _Press_, sports staff of, transferred to the _Sun_, 393
Nicollet, Jean Nicolas, supposed connection of, with the Moon Hoax,
94–101
Noah, Mordecai M., 61
establishes _Morning Star_, 134
“No king, no clown, to rule this town,” 255
Norr, William, writes “The Pearl of Chinatown,” 411
North, S. N. D., describes the influence of the penny press, 137
North, Walter Savage, writes fiction for the _Sun_, 196
circulation of New York dailies in 1833, 31
“Nym Crinkle.” See Andrew C. Wheeler.
O’Brien, John H., Laffan’s jest with, 429, 430
Odion, Henry W., night city editor, 371
O’Hanlon, Virginia, asks the _Sun_ if there is a Santa Claus, 409
O’Malley, Frank W., story by, on Policeman Sheehan’s death, 364
describes Passover parade, 367
Overton, Grant M., book-reviewer, 411
Palmer, Frederick, _Evening Sun_ reporter, 399
Paragraphs, quotations from, in 1834, 52–53
Park, Mungo, Locke writes the “Lost Manuscript” of, 117
Patton, Francis T., rules for exaggeration by, 390, 391
Penny newspapers, failure of, before the _Sun_ was established, 23
Perkins, Eli (Melville De Lancey Landon), _Sun_ correspondent, 314
Philip Hone, the _Sun_ suggests that he incited a riot, 119
Phillips, David Graham, last assignments of, 360
finds material for novels, 360
Pigs in City Hall Park, the _Sun_ objects to, 55
Pigeons, the _Sun_ uses, to carry ship news, 146, 147
editorial explaining presence of, on the _Sun’s_ roof, 147, 148
Pike, James S., Dana advises, to get “Black Dan drunk,” 211
career of, as journalist and diplomat, 256, 257
Poe, Edgar Allan, describes R. A. Locke, 65, 66
his “Hans Pfaall” spoiled by the Moon Hoax, 90–93
belief of, that the Moon Hoax firmly established penny newspapers,
102
returns to New York, 148
writes the Balloon Hoax for the _Sun_, 149
inspiration of, for “The Mystery of Marie Roget,” 153, 155
Post-Trader scandal, 306
Prall, William M., 104
Press, the _Sun’s_ first, 24
the _Sun’s_ second, 52
the _Sun’s_ third, 58
Presses, Day buys two Napiers, 118
Price, Joseph, partner of R. A. Locke in _New Era_, 116
part owner _New Era_, 134
Price of the _Sun_ changed from “one penny” to “one cent,” 51
Printers, union, in 1833, 48
Prize-fighting denounced, 59
Pulitzer, Joseph, is assigned by Dana to report the electoral
controversy, 240
correspondent of the _Sun_, 312
“The third yellow journalist,” 413
influence of, on journalism, 419
Railroads, extent of, in 1833, 30
Ralph, Julian, reports Borden trial, 321
long service of, on _Sun_, 331
Grant’s funeral, report by, 332
books written by, 334
a football classic by, with the score left out, 334, 335
Molly Maguires, reported by, 335
is gifted with “sixth sense,” 335
describes reporting an inauguration, 337
Ramsey, Dave, originates the idea of a penny _Sun_, 21
Rawlins, General John A., part of, in Dana’s assignment to report on
Grant, 218
Raymond, Henry J., goes to the _Tribune_, 160
performs a great reporting feat, 160
leaves Greeley, 160
becomes the first editor of the New York _Times_, 161
calls Webb’s paper “the Austrian organ in Wall Street,” 174
Reamer, Lawrence, dramatic critic, 411
Reick, William C., becomes proprietor, 430
early career of, 430, 431
improves _Evening Sun_, 431
sells the _Sun_ to Frank A. Munsey, 431
Reid, Whitelaw, succeeds Greeley, 298
Reporters, comparison of styles, 315–322
_Sun_ staff in 1893, 330
_Sun_, anonymity of, almost complete, 330
“The _Sun_ has no ‘stars,’” 359
a typical assignment list in 1893, 359
Rewey, Elijah M., night city editor, 371
exchange editor, 372
Riggs, Edward G., reports seven national conventions, 343, 344
wide acquaintance of, 344
Dana’s reliance on, 344
“Riggs is my Phil Sheridan,” 345
defines political correspondents, 345, 346
described by Samuel G. Blythe, 346
writes history of national conventions, 346
describes Lord’s discernment, 373
tells how Lord built up the Laffan bureau, 375, 376
“One story you [Chamberlin] can’t write,” 341
“Rigolo.” See Thiéblin, N. L.
Riis, Jacob A., chief police reporter, _Evening Sun_, 398
writings of, attract Roosevelt, 398, 399
Riots, the Bowery Theatre, 55–56
Ripley, George, lectures, 205
helps Dana to enter Brook Farm, 206
is chief of the cow-milking group, 207
editor of the _Harbinger_, 207
prepares, with Dana, the “New American Encyclopedia,” 213
Robeson, George M., accused by the _Sun_ in the Navy scandal, 304, 305
Robinson, Lucius, _Sun_ reporter and governor, 104–105
Rogers, Mary, disappearance of, announced in the _Sun_, 153
editorial comment on murder of, 154
Poe’s uses case of, in fiction, 153, 155
Root, Walstein, Spanish war correspondent, 355
Rosebault, Walter M., city editor and reporter, 280
Rosenfeld, Sidney, _Sun_ reporter in 1870, 280
Ruhl, Arthur, _Evening Sun_ reporter, 399
Rum, the _Sun’s_ aversion to, 43
Safe Burglary Conspiracy, 308
Salary Grab, 307
Sam Patch, the _Sun’s_ pigeon, 147, 149
Santa Claus editorial article, 409, 410
_Scientific American_, interest in, bought by Alfred E. Beach, 162
Secession, the _Sun’s_ plan to emasculate, 179, 180
Serviss, Garret P., night editor, 372
Shaw, Henry Grenville, telegraph editor, 280
Shepherd, Alexander, accused by the _Sun_ in the Washington paving
scandal, 307
tries to hale Dana to Washington, 307
Short, Wm. F., 60
Shunk, James F., a _Sun_ contributor, 405
Siamese Twins, arrest of, 51
Simonds, Frank H., editorial writer, the _Sun_ and the _Evening Sun_,
400
Simonton, James W., associate of Raymond, 174
“Six-penny respectables,” 110
“Sixth sense,” examples of, 335, 336
Slavery, Missouri Compromise and Dred Scott decision rejected by the
_Sun_, 175, 176
Smith, George M., night editor, 1904–1912, 372
managing editor _Evening Sun_, 400
Smith, Goldwin, a _Sun_ contributor, 404
Space rates, 380
Spalding, James R., a _World_ writer, 182
Spanish War, _Sun’s_ news service in, 353–356
Sports, the _Sun’s_ first prize-fight story, 58
Sports department, 391–393
Spears, John R., cruises around the world, 349
reports America’s Cup races, 349
covers Hatfield-McCoy feuds, 349
books written by, 349
Spears, Raymond S., reporter, 349
Speed, Keats, becomes managing editor, 432
Spencer, Edward, a writer of fiction for the _Sun_, 405
Stanley, William J., part owner of the _Transcript_, 133
Stanton, Henry Brewster, a _Sun_ writer from 1868 to 1887, 258, 259
Beecher’s tribute to, 259
Stanton, Edwin M., asks Dana to enter War Department, 215
withdraws appointment, 216
Steamships, Great Western arrives at New York, 119
Sirius arrives at New York, 119
the _Sun’s_ extras on arrival of, 142
loss of the President, 143
Stephens, Ann S., writes fiction for the _Sun_, 196
Stereotyping, adopted by the _Sun_, 193
Stetson, Francis Lynde, a _Sun_ contributor, 404
Stevenson, Robert Louis, early successes of, first appear in the
_Sun_, 403, 404
South Seas articles of, complete only in the _Sun_, 403, 404
Stewart, Alexander T., grave robbery of, 322
Stewart, William (“Walsingham”), first dramatic critic to adopt
intimate style, 411
Stillman, Amos B., telegraph editor for forty-five years, 280
“Quite a fire in Chicago,” 281
Stokes, Edward S., conviction of, reported by Henry Mann, 317, 318
Stone, William L., conflict of, with Bryant, 34
the _Sun’s_ quarrel with, 56
sketch of, 112
exposes Maria Monk, 113
Sullivan-Mitchell fight, Arthur Brisbane’s report of, 347, 348
_Sun_, the, reprints of the first issue, 25
size of the first issue, 25
extant copies of first issue, 26
second issue, contents of, 38
attacks shinplasters and phrenology, 123
sold by Day to Beach, 127
plant, expenses, and circulation of, June, 1838, 128
Day’s period of ownership of, 127
editorial comment in 1837 on popularity of, 129
issues extras on the arrival of the Great Western, the British
Queen, and other steamships, 142
uses horse expresses to bring Governor Seward’s message from
Albany, 143
uses train, trotting horses, and boat to get the news of the
steamer Caroline case, 144, 145
uses carrier pigeons to get ship news, 146, 147
moves to Nassau and Fulton streets, 1842, 146, 147
second home of, burned after it had moved, 157
buys a new dress of type every three months, 158
is seven columns wide in 1840, 158
title of, reads “_The New York Sun_” for a few months, 158
is eight columns wide in 1843, 158
_Weekly Sun_, 169
_American Sun_, for Europeans, 169
_Illustrated Sun_, 169
syndicates President Tyler’s Message in 1841, 169
value of, $250,000 in 1852, 171
becomes a two-cent paper August 1, 1864;
a one-cent paper, July 1, 1916;
a two-cent paper January 26, 1918, 194
size of, reduced to five columns in 1863, 193
_Weekly Sun_, continued by Dana, 199
_Semi-Weekly Sun_ announced, 199
Dana and his associates pay $175,000 for, 228, 229
apologizes for issuing more than four pages, 278
city editors under Cummings, 279
telegraph editors, 280
Office Cat of, 287–289
only four pages for twenty years, 301
extraordinary sales, 323–325
success of, explained by E. P. Mitchell, 325
the _Sun_ spirit, 326, 379
home of, for forty-seven years, 369
editors-in-chief, only three in fifty years, 371
managing editors, list of, 371
city editors, list of, 371
night city editors, list of, 371
night editors, list of, 372
news system, 372
ethics, 380–383
list of editorial writers, 409
price of, 431, 432
homes of, 432
“Sunbeams” column, 315
Sun cholera cure, 173
Swain, Wm. M., predicts Day’s ruin, 24
founds Philadelphia _Public Ledger_, 135
industry of, 135
makes $3,000,000, 135
Swift, John T., sends the _Sun_ a beat on Port Arthur’s fall, 376, 377
Swinton, John, double intellectual life of, 259
makes speeches attacking Dana, 260
is managing editor of the _Times_, 261
starts _John Swinton’s Paper_, 261
Tammany Hall, old home of, bought by Dana for the _Sun_, 229
Taylor, Bayard, European correspondent of the _Tribune_, 161
Telegraph, comments on Morse’s new invention, 145
a report that the _Sun_ tried to control, 146
extended to New York in 1846, 146
is opened from New York to Philadelphia, Boston, and Albany, 164
lines completed in 1846, 165
drives reprint from first page, 171
first cable messages, 197, 198
Theatres, the Bowery riot, 55–56
attractions of the thirties, 121, 122
“Footlight Flashes,” 315, 316
list of _Sun_ critics, 411
Thiéblin, Napoleon L., critic and essayist, 314, 315
uses pen names of “Monsieur X,” “Azamet Batuk,” and “Rigolo,” 314,
315
Tilden, Samuel J., editor of _Daily News_, 181
Townsend, Edward W., writes _Chimmie Fadden_ stories, 330
fiction characters created by, 411
Trains, special news, used by _Sun_ and _Herald_, 166
Trowbridge, H. Warren, writes fiction for the _Sun_, 195
Tweed, William M., is boss of the city, 234
as a source of news, 269
statue of, a _Sun_ joke, 271–274
declination by, 273
retains W. O. Bartlett as counsel, 275
denounced by the _Sun_, 275, 276
absolute power of, 276
stable of, described by the _Sun_, 277
escapes from keepers, 277
Van Anda, Carr V., night editor, 1893–1904, 372
Van Buren, Martha, 51
Vance, John, writes editorials, 174
leaves the _Sun_, 192
Vanderbilt, Cornelius, an advertiser in the first _Sun_, 27
opposes Jay Gould, 235
a _Sun_ interview with, in 1875, 316
Van Dyke, Dr. Henry, deception of, by Tweed statue joke, 274
Vila, Joseph, sports editor, _Evening Sun_, 400
Damon Runyon’s tribute to, 393
exposes huge betting, 393
Wall Street news, Bennett appreciates value of, 109
“Walsingham.” See William Stewart.
Wardman, Ervin, first used phrase “Yellow Journalism,” 415
becomes publisher of the _Sun_, 432
Warren, General Fitz-Henry, writes the phrase, “Forward to
Richmond!”, 213, 214
career of, 214
_Sun_ writer, soldier, and politician, 257, 258
article of, on Sumner’s death, 258
Watkins, James T., editorial writer, _Evening Sun_, 399
Watterson, Henry, “You [Dana] don’t make the _Sun_,” 291
“Mr. Dana is left alone,” 293–295
predicts no end to the “personality of journalism,” 295
first woman reporter of _Evening Sun_, 400
Webb, James Watson, journalist and a duellist, 35–36
editorial articles on, 61, 62
the _Sun’s_ story of attack by, on Bennett, 108
charges the _Sun_ with stealing a President’s message, 110, 111
second assault on Bennett described, 114
refuses Joseph Wood’s challenge, 115
retires from newspaper work, 183
Webster, Daniel, Bunker Hill speech of, reported by the _Sun_, 158
Weeks, Caleb, carries the Moon Hoax to Herschel in Africa, 86
Weston, Edward Payson, the best “leg man” in journalism, 283
feats of, in pedestrianism, 283, 284
Weyman, Charles S., editor of the “Sunbeams” column, 228
Wheeler, Andrew Carpenter, (“Nym Crinkle”), dramatic critic, 411
Whisky Ring scandal, 305
White, Frank Marshall, brings the _Sun_ a beat on the missing steamer
Umbria, 392, 393
Whitman, Stephen French, _Evening Sun_ reporter, 399
Wild pigeons, 43
Williams, Barney (Bernard Flaherty), the _Sun’s_ first newsboy, 40
makes first stage appearance, 121
Williams, John, city editor, 279
Willis, Nathaniel P., 37
Wilson, Alexander C., associate of Raymond, 174
Wilson, General James Harrison, quoted on Dana’s assignment to report
on Grant, 217
says Grant declared Dana would be appointed collector, 309
Wisner, George W., the _Sun’s_ first reporter, 38
becomes half owner of the _Sun_, 46
indicted for attack on Attree, 61
challenged to a duel, 62
retires from the _Sun_, 64
Wood, Benjamin, buys _Daily News_, 135
owns _Daily News_, 181
Wood, Fernando, proposes New York’s secession, 180
Wood, Dr. John B., “The Great American Condenser,” 278
condenses through a reader, 279
Wood, Joseph, feud over, and wife, challenge of, to Col. Webb, 115
Wood, Samuel A., originates rhymed news stories, 351
spring poem by, 352
“Snygless the Seas Are,” 352
Yale University, students of, investigate the Moon story, 84–85
Yellow Journalism, Col. Watterson’s statement on, 413
defined by E. P. Mitchell, 415
phrase, first used by Ervin Wardman, 415
Young, John Russell, orders of, enrage Cummings, 266
Young, Mr., charged by the _Transcript_ with biting two of its
carriers, 119
Young, William, city editor, 279
managing editor, 282
[Illustration: THE THIRD HEAD-LINE OF THE NEW YORK SUN]
[Illustration: THE FOURTH HEAD-LINE OF THE NEW YORK SUN]
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unbalanced.
Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs
and outside quotations. In versions of this eBook that support
hyperlinks, the page references in the List of Illustrations lead to
the corresponding illustrations.
The index was not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page
references.
Page 139: Words appear to be missing from the paragraph beginning “When
Beach was twenty.”
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Story of the Sun. New York, 1833-1918" ***
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