USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Metropolitan Boston; a modern history; Volume II > Part 16
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An indirect result of the Franklin enterprise was the adoption of the method of the "Spectator" in the next paper to be started in Boston- "The New England Weekly Journal." It was established with the approbation and at the suggestion of two of the leading clergymen of the town, Mather Byles and Thomas Prince. The former, called "Harvard's honour and New England's hope" and expected to "rise and sing and rival Pope," was admired as a literary prodigy. He had a reputation to sustain as a wit, as a pulpit orator, and as a writer of prose and verse. He provided much copy for the "Journal." After the style of the "Spec- tator," an American essayist appeared in the person of Mr. Proteus Echo who introduced Mr. Timothy Blunt, Mr. Honeysuckle, and other mem- bers of his club, all of them imitative of their English originals. In the main, however, the "Journal" conformed to the style of the other papers of the day. It was published for a while by Samuel Kneeland and for a longer time by Kneeland and Timothy Green. The former gave more attention to his bookshop in King Street, leaving the labor of production largely to Green, who was a member of the family of printers already mentioned.
Ellis Huske, the first publisher of "The Boston Post-Boy," figured for many years in the political history of New England, as naval officer at Portsmouth, as Justice of the Superior Court and Chief Justice of the Province of New Hampshire, and finally for twenty years as the suc- cessor of John Boydell in the Boston postoffice. The details of his career are difficult to obtain, and the sole notice of his death is found, oddly enough, in the "London Magazine." Boydell's paper, as we have seen, did not descend to Huske along with the postmastership, so Huske
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started the sixth Boston newspaper and continued its publication through his term of office, when its suspension marked the end of the custom which had become traditional in Boston that the postmaster should dis- pense both the mails and the news. After nearly three years the paper was revived with some change of name by John Green and Joseph Rus- sell, who published it from August 22, 1757, to April, 1773, first as "The Boston Weekly Advertiser," then in 1759 as "Green & Russell's Boston Post-Boy & Advertiser," again in 1763 as "The Post-Boy & Advertiser," and finally in 1769 under the cumbersome name of "The Massachusetts Gazette and The Boston Post-Boy and Advertiser." This last name des- ignates the arrangement with the "News-Letter," already explained, for that dual publication which has been aptly called the Siamese Twins of journalism. A notice in an issue of 1773 is to the effect that Nathaniel Mills and John Hicks are in future to be the publishers with a printing office "in School Street, next to the new Sign of Oliver Cromwell." As might be inferred from its selection along with the "News-Letter" for the publication of official documents the paper was Loyalist in sentiment, and favors were bestowed upon it by the authorities when possible. Isaiah Thomas rates it as the leading organ of the Government during the troubled year which preceded its demise.
In the last issue of "The Weekly Rehearsal," Thomas Fleet notified the public that he thereafter would publish on Monday evenings, and on the following Monday, November 18, 1735, he put out the first issue of "The Boston Evening Post," essentially a duplicate, except in title, of his former paper. He showed enterprise and originality, occasionally spicing his paragraphs and advertisements with wit, and he soon gained a good measure of popular favor. All the Colonial editors were hard put to it to collect their bills. They printed at short intervals appeals for their delinquent subscribers to pay up. They were quite willing to accept payment "in kind"-fuel, food, clothing. Here is Fleet on a time putting this reminder before his patrons :
The Subscribers for this Paper (especially those at a Distance), who are shamefully in Arrear for it, would do well (methinks) to remember those Apostolical Injunctions, Rom. xiii., 7, 8. Render therefore to all their dues ;- and Owe no man anything .- It is wonderful to observe, that while we hear so much about a Great Revival of Religion in the Land; there is yet so little Regard had to Justice and Common Honesty! Surely they are Abominable Good Works!"
Fleet had the talent of a modern editor for compelling the public to notice his paper. George Whitefield creates a great stir in Boston. Fleet vigorously opposes the evangelist ; he is a bigot ; his followers are deluded. Large space in the "Post" for a long time is filled with the com- munications of those who defend and those who denounce the great preacher, always vigorously and sometimes abusively. In 1748, Spain
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and France being at war, a Spanish prize is sent into Boston Harbor. On board are found a quantity of Bulls or Indulgences, issued by the Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. Fleet buys a quantity of these and prints ballads on the blank side. In his paper he then offers his goods to the Puritan community in this wise :
Choice Pennsylvania Tobacco Paper to be sold by the Publisher of this Paper, at the Heart and Crown; where may also be had the BULLS or Indulgences of the pres- ent Pope Urban VIII, either by the single Bull, Quire, or Ream, at a much cheaper rate than they can be purchased of the French or Spanish Priests, and yet will be war- ranted to be of the same Advantage to the Possessors.
Times have changed and manners as well, but Fleet's reaction to the celebrated trial of Peter Zenger was certainly in better taste by modern standards than was his fling at the Church of Rome. The story of the poor and struggling German printer, who used his "New York Weekly Journal" to advocate the liberty of the press, who for nine months edited his paper in jail, for whose defense there appeared-to the amazement of th public and perhaps at the behest of Benjamin Franklin-the famous Philadelphia lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, and whose acquittal from the charge of seditious libel did much to establish the freedom of the press in this country-that story is an epic in the history of journalism. Fleet perceived the significance of that trial, and on May 29, 1738, he printed an excellent account of it in his own paper.
As might be expected from the temper of the community, Fleet had his troubles with the administration. The clergy denounced him. The "Post" ought to be suppressed as "a dangerous engine, a sink of perdi- tion, error, and heresy." His reply lacked little in vigor of recrimination. In 1742 he narrowly escaped prosecution for the publication of an item gleaned from conversation with a naval officer to the effect that Sir Rob- ert Walpole "would be taken into custody within a very few days." On July 31, 1758, the "Post" came out with the imprint of the two sons of Thomas Fleet, the father having died a few days before. The sons con- tinued the paper until the great eruption of 1775. Their earnest efforts to maintain a position of neutrality in those troubled times subjected them to the usual fate of neutrals. Verbal battles abounded in their pages. Able men competed with each other in the arts of vituperation. Amateur verse makers labored hard to produce stinging parodies. The paper ran through 2,070 issues and all but one of them is extant. The senior Fleet was thrifty and acquired a valuable property, but to the story that he capitalized his mother-in-law as "Mother Goose" we are unable to subscribe.
"The Boston Chronicle" had a short and turbulent career. Its editors posed at first as neutrals in the struggle between the Colony and the
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Crown. They printed Dickinson's "Farmer's Letters." These editors were Scotchmen who saw that the Tories were beginning to appreciate the power of public opinion and the value of printer's ink. John Mein was a facile writer and a bookseller. In 1765 "at the repeated request of a number of gentlemen, the friends of literature" he established the first circulating library in New England, "at the London Book Store, second door above the British Coffee House, north side of King Street," He an- nounced a catalogue of 1,200 titles in all departments of literature, all available to the public "at £1 8sh. lawful money per half-year or Iosh. 8d. per quarter." Large space in every issue of his paper was devoted to advertising the books on sale at the London Book Store. John Fleeming -so the name is spelled in the files of the "Chronicle"-went abroad to obtain materials for the printing business. These two undertook the most ambitious newspaper enterprise in Boston up to that time, at first a weekly of eight pages quarto size, later a semi-weekly enlarged to folio size, excellent mechanically, and sold at the same price as the other papers of the town.
It is supposed to have been subsidized by the British Government. Ere long it became an outright partisan of Toryism and bitterly be- labored the leading Whigs of Boston. Mein refused to join the non-im- portation movement, and from time to time he enraged the popular party by printing the names of merchants who were alleged to have violated clandestinely their pledges with much personal profit, John Hancock among them. Mein's articles were printed later as a pamphlet. His style may be inferred from his picture of Hancock :
Johnny Dupe, Esq., alias the Milch-Cow of the "Well Disposed"-a good natured young man with long ears-a silly conceited grin on his countenance-a fool's cap on his head-a bandage tied over his eyes-richly dressed and surrounded with a crowd of people, some of whom are stroaking his ears, others tickling his nose with straws, while the rest are employed in riffling his pockets.
The people were not slow to express their wrath over the policy of the "Chronicle." Whig pens fully matched Mein's in banter and ridicule.' In a public procession of 1769 there was borne an effigy labeled with his name. On one side were cards denouncing the Tories. The labels on the other side bore an acrostic in reprobation of the publisher.
I-nsulting Wretch, we'll him expose, O-'er the Whole World his Deeds disclose ; H-ell now gaups wide to take him in, N-ow he is ripe, O Lump of Sin !
M-ean is the Man, M . . n is his Name; E-nough he's spread his hellish Fame; I-nfernal Furies hurl his Soul, N-ine Million Times, from Pole to Pole !
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In the end his business was ruined, his house was attacked by a mob, and he was compelled to leave the Colony. He had no trouble in obtain- ing patronage in London. In the final issue of the "Chronicle" he ran this valedictory :
. The Printers of the Boston Chronicle return thanks to the gentlemen, who so long have favored them with their subscriptions, and now inform them that, as the Chronicle, in the present state of affairs, cannot be carried on, either for their enter- tainment or the emolument of the Printers, it will be discontinued for some time.
A peculiar feature of this paper is that the issues were numbered con- secutively throughout, and that the first volume contained an index of six pages, five columns to a page. The place of publication was "almost opposite the White Horse Tavern in Newbury Street." The "Chronicle" appeared on Mondays only from December 21, 1767, to January 2, 1769, and on Mondays and Thursdays-first among Boston newspapers to be- come a semi-weekly-from January 9, 1769, until it ceased on June 25, I770.
We must note also that John Trumbull, the satirist, contributed to the "Chronicle" from September, 1769, to January, 1770. These news- paper essays, their form and tone suggested by the Queen Anne writers and especially Addison and Steele, written while their author was still a student at Yale, bore the name of "The Meddler." He criticized the errors of the day in religion and education. Amidst his more serious observations he introduced such characters as "the youthful gay Jack Dapperwit." He adorned each essay with a Latin quotation and filled many of them with playful allusions to his own supposed foibles and to the habits of his literary friends. Three years after the suspension of the "Chronicle," having passed his law examinations, Trumbull came to Boston, in November, 1773, to take a place in the law office of John Adams. Here he came into intimate contact with such patriot leaders as Otis, Hancock, and Cushing. Probably the influence of these zealous Whigs inspired the young scholar to write the burlesque verses which he later expanded into his masterpiece of satire, "M' Fingal." The "Honor- ius," who opposes the Loyalist whose name is given to the poem, is gen- erally identified with John Adams. A few of Trumbull's lines are perti- nent to a discussion of the Boston Press and may be quoted here :
Did not our grave Judge Sewall sit, The summit of newspaper wit? Filled every leaf of every paper Of Mills and Hicks and Mother Draper ? Drew proclamations, works of toil, In true sublime of scare-crow style ; With forces, too, 'gainst Sons of Freedom, All for your good, and none would read 'em?
In the "Boston Gazette" of February 9, 1768, there appeared a letter which was the occasion for the establishment of the "Massachusetts
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Gazette" to the complications of whose dual publication allusion has been made. The letter contained inuendoes which Governor Bernard chose to consider as directed against himself, and he laid this "most insolent attack" before the General Court. While the House gratified the Governor by an expression of regret over any newspaper publication that might cause him uneasiness and then proceeded to remind him that the offending letter had contained no names and therefore did not deserve special notice, it also did something of far more importance. The House affirmed more definitely than ever before had been done in Massachu- setts that "the Liberty of the Press is the great Bulwark of the Liberty of the People," and that in consequence "it is the incumbent Duty of those who are constituted the Guardians of the People's Rights to defend and maintain" the liberty of the press.
At a meeting of the council a few days thereafter it was "Advised" that "Messrs Draper and Green and Russell be appointed Printers of the Massachusetts Gazette, they engaging to publish the same two days in every week." On April II the parties named were "appointed printers of the Massachusetts Gazette accordingly." The first issue then came from the press of Green and Russell on Monday, May 23, and the second from the press of Richard Draper on Thursday, May 26. "The News-Letter" five years before had included the words "Massachusetts Gazette" in its title, for the reason that the Council then had ordered that all official notices be printed therein, and when the dual scheme was started, a sys- tem of numbering was adopted which dated back to the beginning of that arrangement with the older paper. At the end of the period of dual pub- lication the "News-Letter" took the name of "Massachusetts Gazette : and the Boston Weekly News-Letter," and the "Post-Boy" assumed the name of the "Massachusetts Gazette, and the Boston Post-Boy and Ad- vertiser," and those similar and unwieldy titles were continued until the end of the chapter in 1775, to the vexation of all investigators of the newspaper history of Boston.
Upon Isaiah Thomas the French traveler Brissot de Warville be- stowed the title of the Didot of America. Born in Boston, and appren- ticed to a printer when only six years old, he worked at his trade in Hali- fax, Portsmouth, and Charleston, South Carolina, and returned to his native town to form a partnership with his old master, Zechariah Fowle. On July 17, 1770, they brought out the first number of "The Massachu- setts Spy," and with a second issue on August 7 regular publication began. On October 27 the partners separated and Thomas alone con- tinued the paper as a semi-weekly until the following February. After a suspension of four weeks he resumed publication on March 7 with a weekly which he maintained until April 6, 1775, when having received frequent threats of violence, he loaded his press and type aboard a boat
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one night shortly before the affray at Lexington and moved across to Charlestown, and thence on to Worcester. He became a conspicuous and valuable citizen, the founder of the American Antiquarian Society, and the author of a celebrated work on the "History of Printing in America," published in 1810, and in Worcester he died at the age of 82 in 1831.
In his "History" the veteran printer interpreted his own purpose in establishing the "Spy." He said: "Common sense in common language is necessary to influence one class of citizens as much as learning and elegance of composition are to produce an effect upon another. The cause of America was just; and it was only necessary to state this cause in a clear and impressive manner to unite the American people in its sup- port." In his first number, forty years before, the ardent young publisher of twenty-seven defined his design to be "to obtain subscriptions from mechanics and other classes of people who had not much time to spare from business." He would publish three times a week and the first issue he would scatter gratuitously "to the inhabitants in all parts of the town." This was too ambitious a project, but he claimed that in two years he acquired the largest circulation in Boston.
At the outset he seems to have essayed neutrality. But he could not long conceal his Whig preferences, and as these became increasingly evident his Tory patronage fell away while the "plain people" gladly welcomed his vehement presentation of their views. The Royalists called his office a "sedition foundry." Joseph Greenleaf lost his office as justice of the peace because of his contributions to the "Spy." His nephew says that overtures were made to him by the Loyalists, "with promises of honor, office, patronage, and reward"-anything to get rid of his paper. The authorities denied him access to the Custom House lists of arrivals and departures of vessels-anything to hamper him in getting the news. Twice at least the council passed futile votes against him. The Grand Jury refused to indict him for libel. Almost three years before the out- break of actual hostilities, he closed an article with these bold words :
Should the liberty of the press be once destroyed, farewell the remainder of our invaluable rights and privileges! We may next expect padlocks on our lips, fetters on our legs, and only our hands left at liberty to slave for our worse than Egyptian task- masters, or-or-FIGHT OUR WAY TO CONSTITUTIONAL FREEDOM !
The "Spy," as well as the "Gazette," had a corps of anonymous con- tributors, "Leonidas," "Centinel," "Mucius Scaevola," and others. The hangman burned the paper, and the North Carolina Loyalists burned the editor-in effigy. A British regiment demonstrated before his house. John Hancock addressed him as "Isaiah Thomas, Supporter of the Rights and Liberties of Mankind." When tar and feathers seemed no remote
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possibility he quietly stole out of town to resume his crusade forty miles away.
To carry the story of the Boston press through the Revolution, men- tion must be made of four additional papers. Samuel Hall established "The Essex Gazette" in Salem in 1768; he removed to Cambridge in 1775 and there continued his paper as "The New England Chronicle : or, The Essex Gazette" until the following year when shortly after the Evacua- tion he transferred his apparatus to Boston and issued his paper without the subtitle, beginning with the issue of April 25. With the issue of June 13 Hall sold the "Chronicle" to Powars and Willis under whom the paper began a long and influential career, as presently we shall see. The most interesting item in the Cambridge issues of the "Chronicle" embodies the official record of the conferring of the degree of "Doctor of Laws, the Law of Nature and Nations, and the Civil Law" upon "that very illustri- ous Gentleman, George Washington, Esq., the accomplished General of the confederated Colonies in America."
We have noted the dissolution of the partnership of Edes and Gill when the "Gazette" was expelled from Boston, and how Edes alone per- sisted in what had been a joint enterprise. John Gill, a native of Charles- town and son-in-law to Samuel Kneeland, a zealous Whig and an indus- trious printer, established on May 30, 1776, "The Continental Journal, and Weekly Advertiser," a well-conducted paper in which many import- ant documents were published. In 1784 and 1785 the "Journal" ran the whole of Robertson's "History of America," a fact to be interpreted, per- haps, as a public service, rather than as a token of difficulty in filling space. Thomas in Worcester printed the work also in the "Spy." James D. Griffin acquired the "Journal" in 1785, and with the issue of June 21, 1787, he discontinued it on account of the State tax on advertisements.
Edward Draper and John West Folsom established "The Independ- ent Ledger, and American Advertiser" in the middle of the year 1778, and dissolved their partnership on November 3, 1783, when Folsom assumed the sole responsibility and carried on until October 16, 1786.
In the last number of "The Evening Post; and the General Adver- tiser," James White and Thomas Adams, the publishers, explained that they had ventured into the newspaper business with a press and type which had been hired for an indefinite time, that a sudden and peremp- tory demand for their return had been served upon them, and that in con- sequence they must cease publication; indeed, it had not been easy to arrange for the printing of this final issue. In the seventeen months of the life of the paper there had been one change of title, to "The Morning Chronicle, and the General Advertiser." Papers multiplied easily in those days, they altered their titles on the slightest provocation, and
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certain names were so popular that identification at this distance is not always simple.
In Boston and throughout the Colonies the newspapers through the Revolutionary period were weeklies or semi-weeklies. One Boston pub- lisher tried to issue three papers a week, only in succession to lapse to two and finally one. A characteristic feature of the time were the devices which nearly always formed part of the newspaper captions. These at the outset were intended for embellishment and as distinguishing marks, but later they were accepted as of political significance and expressive of the aims of the owners. "The Boston Gazette" came out in 1719 with a cut of a ship on one side of the title and a cut of a postman on the other side. Isaiah Thomas equipped the "Spy" with one of the most elaborate of all these devices. In 1774 he began the use of the Snake and Dragon device and kept it in the title so long as the "Spy" remained in Boston. The snake was broken into nine parts, of which the head represented New England and the tail Georgia, and the other sections the intervening Colonies. The Dragon seemed about to attack the snake, whose head and tail were supplied with stings. The snake, of course, represented the Colonies in a divided state, the dragon was Great Britain. Above the severed parts of the snake were the words "Join or Die." That device was derived from the cartoon which Benjamin Franklin had published in "The Pennsylvania Gazette" on May 9, 1754. This first American car- toon was designed to reinforce his appeal for "our common defense and security" in view of probable war with France. Considered as an effec- tive means for influencing opinion that small and rough cartoon will hold its own with any elaborate drawing that has been published in the news- papers of this country at any time. Its force had instant recognition. It was copied by papers in New York and Boston. The "Virginia Ga- zette" spoke of a "late ingenious emblem" which was stirring the people everywhere. It was of service in several other critical episodes in our history, but it was a bold thing for Thomas to modify it as he did.
Equipment-These early publishers had to import their presses and type from England. Poverty frequently compelled the buying of second- hand outfits. The construction of the smaller presses made four "pulls" necessary for the production of a single copy of the paper while two "pulls" sufficed on the larger presses. A boy inked the type by pounding with a deer-skin ball attached to a hickory stick. Outworn type accounts for a good deal of poor printing. To obtain fresh type a printer often traveled to London for that one purpose. Benjamin Franklin did not establish his type foundry until 1775. Styles of topography varied widely. All nouns were capitalized, and one surmises that editors liked to use as many more capitals as possible. Advertisements, as a rule,
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were not set off from other matter. The investigator today frequently finds much information about the life of the period in those small-sized "ads." Fluctuations in the value of the currency of the time prevents exact deductions as to the selling prices of the Colonial papers. "The Boston Advertiser" was offered at "5s. 4d. lawful money." "The Boston Chronicle" in 1767 announced a rate of 6s. 8d. The costs of production of course were infinitesimal compared with costs today, although abso- lute comparisons may not be made without full allowance for differences in purchasing power. Thomas Fleet once drew a contrast between cer- tain costs in the production of the "News-Letter" at the time Campbell began its publication and of his own paper forty years subsequently. Campbell bought paper for "eight or nine shillings a Ream and now 'tis Five Pounds." The publisher sought to increase his income in many ways. He resold the goods his subscribers turned in for their subscrip- tions. Frequently he sold books and stationery. Not seldom he sold quack medicines. With the opening of the war the difficulties of pub- lication got worse. There was no such multiplication of papers to satisfy a demand for news as might have occurred in modern times. Paper especially was hard to obtain and editors printed piteous appeals for people to save their rags for the paper mills. Battered type could not readily be replaced, and skilled printers grew scarce, on account of the stoppage of intercourse with England. But with the termination of hos- tilities American newspaperdom began a new era under more favorable conditions.
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