USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Metropolitan Boston; a modern history; Volume II > Part 23
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In the days of "Ho! for California," when the lure of El Dorado drew men across the plains, over the Isthmus, and round the Horn, the
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Atlantic Coast furnished the Pacific Coast with newspapers. The "New York Herald" sent 10,000 copies of its California edition by every steamer. The "New Orleans Delta" sent 8,000. The "Boston Herald" and the "New York Tribune" had California editions. But the "Cali- fornia Journal," which was the Pacific edition of the "Boston Journal," claimed to have, and probably did have, the largest circulation of them all. These special editions were consigned to depots on the far coast. Thence express employees and other persons sent them inland in big baskets to the mining camps. A miner tossed a dollar into the basket and took out a paper. If he happened to be "broke" he took one anyhow and paid when he struck "luck." Nothing was more precious from "back home" excepting "pay dirt" itself. Frequently one man paid five dollars for a copy when papers were scarce and read the contents to "the boys" from atop a box or a tree stump. That was a picturesque exploit in jour- nalism-and it paid.
In the mid-summer of 1863 one day the "Journal" received a telegram from its correspondent in the field, Charles Carleton Coffin, to the effect that he was on the way home with the biggest story thus far of the war. He had been on the field at Gettysburg. He had seen the great charge on the third day. Over muddy roads and through heavy rain he had ridden the twenty-eight miles to Winchester in two and a half hours. He had spread his blanket over the boiler of a locomotive he found there and gone to sleep on the bare floor of the car. Thence he had sent a message to Washington, another to Boston, and had started North. The only sure way to get his story to his paper was to carry it there in person. His telegrams appeared as bulletins in Boston on July 3 and 4. The paper announced his coming. He arrived on the third day. He found News- paper Row jammed with an anxious throng. On the way he had been writing. He was smuggled into the Journal Building and locked in a room, and there he stayed until his report was done, seeing nobody but the boys who took away his copy sheet by sheet. Then he slumped down on a pile of papers to rest. He had scored one of the biggest reporting exploits of the four years of the Civil War. The full account did not appear until July 7, but that was rapid work in those days, and under the existing conditions. The article filled four columns with nonpareil type, set "solid" without sub-heads or cross lines. It was illustrated by a crude map and diagram, drawn by Coffin himself, who had a good knowledge of engineering and topography. That evening thousands flocked to his home in the South End, to hear from his lips what they had been reading in his paper. Charles Carleton Coffin, who signed always as "Carleton," just as Ben : Perley Poore adopted "Perley" for his signature, was probably the best known American correspondent of
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the war period. He was at Island No. 10. He went through the Wilderness with Grant, who, after the Gettysburg achievement, had supplied him with a pass good in all military departments and for transportation on military trains and steamboats. "Carleton" saw the raising of the Flag over Sumter in 1865, and sent his paper a despatch which began with words that must have stirred the hearts of their readers :
The old flag waves over Sumter and Moultrie, and the city of Charleston. I can see its crimson stripes and fadeless stars waving in the warm sunlight of this glorious day. Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory.
On Tuesday evening, February 5, 1833, this paper began in four- column size as the "Boston Mercantile Journal." Not until March 4 was the second number published. The first was merely a prospectus to pro- mote the canvass for subscribers. John Ford & Company, the publishers, gave way within a week to a new style, and probably to the new firm of Ford and Damrell. B. B. Thatcher, who yielded the next year to John Sleeper, was the first editor. The price was advanced from $4 to $8 a year in the second year of publication, and in 1844 was reduced to $6. Sleeper was a retired shipmaster who had been conducting the "News Letter" of Exeter, New Hampshire. His stories of the sea, printed under the name of "Hawser Martingale," increased public interest in the paper in that time when maritime commerce had not been overshadowed by other interests. In 1845 the name was altered to "Boston Daily Journal." At the outset the paper announced itself to be a fair-minded and non- partisan publication, but in 1840 it went over to the Whigs. For years after the close of the war the "Journal" claimed a larger patronage than the combined circulations of all other Republican dailies published in Boston. Almost at the start it professed "uplift" aspirations. "We believe," said the "Journal," "that the wants and the voice of the people call for a daily paper of a high moral, or perhaps we ought to say, a reli- gious character, and avowedly such." The paper opposed the lottery and the theatre. The first eight years the going was not easy. Money was not plentiful. Damrell left the business in 1837. In 1841 the paper passed into the possession of Sleeper, Colonel Charles O. Rogers, and James A. Dix, and the pluck and energy of the newcomers scored a deserved success. Colonel Rogers had learned the printer's trade from his father, the publisher of the "National Aegis." His military title was due to his command of the Boston Light Infantry. He was enthusiastic and popular. Dix had charge of the very important marine department. Among the staff were David Leavitt, an able general reporter, and Stephen N. Stockwell, who gained a reputation by his phonographic records of speeches and court proceedings. Both Choate and Webster praised him.
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In 1833 the "Journal" carried both daily and weekly editions. A tri- weekly was begun in 1834, a semi-weekly in 1836. On New Year's Day, 1851, the morning edition was begun. There were five enlargements between 1833 and 1850, when it reached the eight-column width. Many years after it became a nine-column folio. The first publication office was at 20 Congress Street. In a few weeks there was a shift to "the new brick building in Wilson's Lane, near the United States branch bank." When Mr. Dix died, Stephen N. Stockwell, who had acquired a share in the ownership, became editor-in-chief. Colonel Rogers for years was the principal proprietor. On his death in 1869 the public learned how very valuable a property the paper had been. The work of "Carleton" in the field and of "Perley" as Washington correspondent, gave the "Journal" great prestige, and this influential position was retained for a long time after Appomattox.
Before his death Colonel Rogers had organized the Journal News- paper Company ; he sold ten shares each to Stockwell and William War- dell Clapp, and retained a four-fifths interest. Colonel Clapp succeeded to the management and carried the paper forward with success until his retirement in 1891. Stockwell died in 1881. Clapp was a leading citizen, who had entered the office of his father, the publisher of the "Saturday Evening Gazette," in 1844, and had served as its publisher from 1847 to 1865, when he came to the "Journal." He was a councilman and an alderman, a State Senator, and a member of the official families of two Governors. Always interested in the theatre, he wrote a well-known work on the history of the Boston stage. Mr. E. H. Clement once said in a formal article that "Colonel Clapp was the 'Journal' when that paper was the 'Journal'," the old reliable, true-blue Republican sheet." The Rogers estate kept a controlling interest in the paper until 1896, when a group of prominent men, including Eben S. Draper, George A. Griffith, W. D. Sohier, and Stephen O'Meara, acquired the property. For a short period before this sale was made, Francis M. Stanwood, son-in-law to Rogers, had been in charge. Mr. O'Meara had begun on the paper as a reporter in 1874. He now took active charge of its publication, and in 1899 himself obtained control, which he retained until Mr. Frank Mun- sey, the New York publisher, bought the "Journal" in 1902. Mr. Munsey gave the paper an unfamiliar form. He discontinued the Sunday edition, which had been started in 1894. The last issue of the "Evening Journal" came off the press on April 17, 1903, to be succeeded almost at once by an "Evening News" under Journal management, which continued only a year. For a brief time also a new "Sunday Journal" was published in 1904. Another experiment of that same year was a "Saturday News" edition of fifty pages, offered as a substitute for the Sunday edition. The price per copy fluctuated also. In 1912 the leaders of the Massachu-
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setts Progressive wanted a Boston organ and Mr. Munsey provided them with one. The story is that for the paper on which in ten years he had expended a million he received $625,000. A group of buyers, headed by Mr. Matthew Hale, bought the once powerful paper and utilized it in that campaign year in the interest of the Roosevelt candidacy. Early in 1914 Mr. Hale severed his connection with the paper and control passed to Walton A. Green, Frederick W. Enright, and Dr. Hugh Cabot, the last named stating that he had consented to act as a trustee for the time being. After a short interval Mr. Green relinquished the management to Charles Eliot Ware, Jr. There were news items in the papers during the World War about the alleged efforts of German interests to capture the "Journal." That difficult period in the existence of what once had been the political Bible of the New England Republicans came to full stop when the "Boston Herald" announced on Saturday morning, Octo- ber 6, 1917, that it has purchased the "Journal," and that on the following Monday the "Herald" would be issued as a combined "Herald" and "Journal."
The "Journal" had removed in 1860 to its conspicuous location in Newspaper Row at the corner of Washington and Water Streets. It occupied what was known as the Joy Building, on almost the same site as the present towering office building. Colonel Rogers bought the old building with the intention of replacing it with a modern structure; he did not live to accomplish his purpose, but his own name was applied to the old plant. The paper made no change in location in more than fifty years, except the removal to Oliver Street, while the modern building was under construction.
What made the fortune of the "Journal" in its days of glory was its enterprise in getting the news, its fidelity as a party organ, and the repu- tation of several of its writers. "Perley" was a character. His letters from Washington were read eagerly for thirty years by many thousands of persons. Bearded and portly, always cheerful, yet becomingly digni- fied, it must have been a "sight" to see him pay an election bet by trun- dling the winner up Washington Street in a wheelbarrow. He ran away in boyhood because of his preference for typesetting instead of the mili- tary career his father had planned for him. He spent much time abroad, he edited the "Sentinel" as well as the "Bee" in Boston, but he is now remembered for his long service at the National captial.
The "Pennies"-Journalism for the millions began with the advent of the "Pennies," dailies published in the main by practical printers who knew all about setting type and comparatively little about editorial work. They confined themselves therefore to local gossip, the reprinting of items from other papers, and advertising. The sudden appearance of
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numbers of these cheap dailies looked like a remarkable phenomenon ; really they arose as a token of and a response to the growth of class consciousness among working men. The standard dailies were high priced, and their clientele considered a paper of low cost to be necessarily of low character. The "Pennies" had no easy time justifying their exist- ence. Many of them were unworthy of serious consideration by either the working man or the aristocrat. Others survived and became influ- ential because they deserved to survive. In England in the 30's news- papers sold at fourteen cents a copy, due to their subjection to various forms of taxation. In 1832 the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, of which Lord Brougham, Chancellor of the Exchequer, was president, founded the weekly "Penny Magazine," which achieved a remarkable circulation in a twelvemonth, and sold largely in America. It was not at all a newspaper, but it was a portent or a presage, depend- ing on the observer's viewpoint. That same year a feeble and short-lived publication named the "Cent" was put out in Philadelphia, and another exponent of the same idea known as the "Bostonian" endured but a little while in the city for which it was named. The first paper of any impor- tance published at a low price, first at two cents and then at one cent, was the New York "Morning Post." It was started on a capital of $200, and it lasted only a few weeks, but its failure promoted the success of its underlying idea. The cheap press really began in America when Ben- jamin H. Day put forth the first number of "The Sun" in New York in 1833. Soon thereafter "Pennies" were springing up all over the country. They rapidly acquired circulation and they liked to proclaim their popu- larity. Presently advertisers noticed that these papers offered excellent facilities for reaching the great body of the people. The most unpleasant feature of the "Pennies" to modern eyes is the enormous amount of patent medicine advertising which they carried. Not a quack remedy was offered that could not find a place in their columns, provided the advertiser had the price. From the start the "Pennies" tended toward specialization in the news of the police courts. Not until about 1850 did they manifest any disposition to support a political party. In Boston the "Chronotype" stayed independent, but the "Bee" and the "Herald" became Whig papers, the "Mail" tended in the same direction, and only the "Times" was staunchly Democratic. The cheap press never went to such extremes of vulgarity in Boston as did certain papers of the same class in other cities. Many of the "Pennies" kept closely in touch with the laboring classes and strove diligently for their welfare.
Let us notice briefly the least important of these little dailies, and then turn to consider those of more significance. First in order is the "World in a Nut-shell, or Spirit of the Daily Press," a diminutive two- column sheet, first put on the market on August 19, 1833. The ponderous
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title filled almost half of the first page. The interesting thing about this venture is that it stood for the cash system of payment and not for the subscription system. The announcement stated that the price was "pay- able on the delivery of each number." The publisher was Benjamin F. Bond, a printer at the corner of Milk and Congress streets. The paper suspended after 45 issues. It was small, but it lacked not in dignity and it was not "cheap" in tone. Just a week after the first number of the "Nut-shell" came the "Daily Penny Post," on August 26, to be "pub- lished every day at one cent each," with its motto, "Multum in parvo," and its place of publication at 28 Franklin Street, "the first door from Washington." How long it lasted is unknown. Both these "Pennies" antedated Ben Day's "Sun," but the salient fact is that the "Sun" sur- vived. There was the "Boston News Letter," begun on June 2, 1835, of which hardly anything is known save the fact of its existence. Also the "Daily Evening News" was on the streets in October, 1837, followed in December by William Hogan's "Boston Daily Express." On the first day of 1840 French and Flinn tried their luck with the "Evening Chron- icle"; on May 2, 1841, James Burns launched the "Morning Star and Temperance Advocate," and William S. Damrell, an able newspaper man, started the "Boston Daily News," probably in May, 1841. Next in order are the "Boston Daily Ledger," begun in April, 1842, by Albert Morgan & Company; the "Boston Despatch," established on October 17, 1842, by George H. Williams, and the "American Eagle" of Baker, French, Harmon & Company, which ran from December 3, 1844, to May 19, 1847, indicating a far greater tenacity of life than any other of these ephemerals thus far named "The Daily Native American and Spirit of '76," the "Boston Daily Sun" and the "Boston Daily Star," the "Ameri- can Signal" and the "National Whig and Star," all belong in the roster between 1844 and 1847. Of the first named no copy survives, of the last only a single copy.
The first definitely successful and enduring penny paper in Boston was the "Daily Times," which enjoyed a career of more than twenty years from its advent on February 16, 1836, to its sale to the "Herald" on April 23, 1857. It was an evening paper planned on the New York model as to size and content. It was larger than its Boston predecessors. It throbbed with the "hustling" spirit of its management. The publisher was George Roberts. It never hesitated to advertise its success and the speed with which it got the news. It eschewed politics. It affirmed its moral purpose in the first issue in an editorial, thus :
The newspapers of this country, at the present juncture, hold the balance of power between virtue and vice. On them rests the responsibility, if the morals of the commu- nity grow worse instead of better. The country is now ripe for reform, or for degra- dation, just as the current is turned. Let editors now come up to the work. Let them
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forget their political predilections, and strive for a time to give such a tone to public sentiment as shall make men wiser, better, happier. It is an object worthy of their highest ambition.
The "Times" specialized, nevertheless, in police court news. In that same opening issue the editor said that "as soon as circumstances will permit, we shall employ a Police Reporter." Critcized for its publica- tion of Police Court items, the "Times" said in reply :
For our part we are confident that the publication of Police Reports is one great means of prevention of crime. There are very many, even of the more degraded of the recipients of the bounty of the Commonwealth, who dread more the appearance of their names in print, than the worst severities of their punishment. We have had many oppor- tunities for observing this fact at Police Court, and we think we cannot be mistaken.
Boldly the "Times" went ahead with the printing of the news of crime. On a day in 1836 the editor complained that never had there been "a more plentiful [ sic ] scarcity of the article by which editors live . there are not 'horrid murders,' 'awful catastrophes,' or 'melancholy acci- dents' enough to make up a common string of newspaper pearls." Seek- ing for the sensational, as would be said today, the "Times" printed the "awful disclosures" of Maria Monk and Rosamund Culbertson as to their alleged experiences in Catholic convents. The "Times" criticized the New York papers for devoting large amounts of space to the Rob- inson-Jewett murder, and then calmly proceeded to adopt their practice, even devoting almost one entire issue to a day's testimony to the exclu- sion of a good deal of advertising. But how the paper leaped ahead in circulation. It was the "World" and the "Journal" of its day. In the eleventh number it boasted of the biggest circulation of any paper in Boston. In one month it claimed to be selling 8,000 copies a day, in four months 12,000. It installed a Napier press. It talked about its carriers in Salem, Lynn, Lowell, Worcester, Charlestown, Roxbury. Next it announced a greater circulation than any other three Boston papers. Affirming its political neutrality, it offered, what was a novel proposal in that day, to sell space at advertising rates to either party that might "wish to obtain the use of our columns in order to disseminate their political doctrines or dogmas." In March, 1839, when news was abun- dant and the public interest keen in a defalcation case and in the Maine boundary dispute, the circulation figures for one week were computed thus: Regular daily editions, 56,400; regularly weekly edition (known as "The Notion"), 1,800; extras, 16,300; maps of disputed territory, 5,800 ; in all, 80,300. A regular noon edition was started in October, 1840, and put forward to nine in the morning the following year. In 1849 there were three editions a day. At short intervals announcements appeared of the installation of new and better presses. The first home
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of the "Times" was a basement room. After four years it moved into a good five-story building in State Street. Ten years more and the paper occupied its own six-story building, erected on the old site at 3 and 5 State Street, at a cost of $20,000, which was not so small a sum in that period. With their lively appreciation of advertising values the publish- ers made the most of this opportunity to tell the public about their prog- ress. The circulation now was 22,000 a day. The paper "possesses a moral power unequalled by any of its contemporaries." "From having its editorials written on a pine table it now encourages the genius and exalts the ambition of its editors and reporters by giving them splendid mahog- any tables and desks and sanctums." For telegraph matter alone it "pays the enormous sum of $10,000 a year." The paper occupied five floors of the new building and rented the second floor for banking and insurance offices. The top floors were used by the job offices, the fourth was the composing room, the third contained "the editorial and reporting rooms," the first, of course was the counting room, and "the press, the mailing rooms, and the coal bin" were in the basement. The roof was "an observatory commanding a grand view of the city."
One instance of the zest of the management to be first with the news : The Cunard liners ran to Boston in 1846, whence European news was forwarded to New York. Beach of the "Sun" and Greeley of the "Tri- bune" arranged for a special express to meet the "Cambria" at Halifax and rush the news brought by the ship to New York. The "Times" joined in this enterprise. Ira Yale and George Ormiston met the boat. Ormiston hurried over the snows by sleigh to Granville Point, 12 miles south of Annapolis, a distance of 144 miles, in eleven hours. A boat waiting there brought him to Portland and the Eastern Railroad made the run thence to Boston in three and a half hours. Total elapsed time, thirty-four hours; actual running time, thirty-one hours. Yet the mes- senger beat the "Cambria" into Boston by only three hours, chiefly on account of the delays due to ice and snow.
Roberts was the responsible publisher of the "Times," but as a rule he had an associate. In spite of the growth of his business he had his money troubles, and once in 1840 he informed the public that he might be compelled to sell the paper. The "Times" did not stay neutral in poli- tics. By 1840 there could be detected a tendency towards the Democratic viewpoint. In 1844 the paper absorbed the "Bay State Democrat" and thenceforth was positive and effective in advocating the principles of the Democracy. Lewis Josselyn, who had been an aide to Bancroft on the "Democrat," for a year or so occupied a "Times" editorial chair.
"The Bay State Democrat" had an independent life of almost five years. Its editor, Josselyn, had some reputation, and as the only eve- ning Democratic daily, it obtained a fair share of public attention. It
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began as "The Bay State," a weekly, and attained sufficient prosperity to become a daily on January 1, 1840. Albert Morgan was the publisher. But the power behind the sanctum was George Bancroft, who succeeded Henshaw as leader of the Massachusetts Democracy, and who desired some other spokesman than the "Post." He installed as first editor J. G. Harris, a former newspaper man of New Bedford, who had been serving in the Boston Custom House as a subordinate to Bancroft. The merging of the paper with the "Times" took place on November 18, 1844.
The ease with which newspapers multiplied in the years preceding the Civil War is not easy to comprehend in these days of big business in journalism. We must now allude to a few of the more notable of these experiments in newspaper making, several of which attained a position of considerable influence. Merrill, Cobb & Company published and Rich- ard Atwill edited the "Boston Daily Whig," a political journal which began in 1845 and changed its title on August 9, 1848, to the "Boston Daily Republican." The distinguished fact about the "Whig" is that for three years Charles Francis Adams, later to become famous as our Civil War Minister to England, served as its editor, performing an immense amount of drudgery with unflagging zeal. The disintegration of the Whig party was under way. As the principal owner of the "Daily Whig," Adams made it an organ of the "Conscience Whigs" as against the "Cotton Whigs," and his wing of the party refused to accept Zachary Taylor as its standard bearer in 1848. Over the Buffalo convention which formed the Free Soil party Adams presided. Among the con- tributors to this now forgotten paper were such men as Charles Sumner, John G. Palfrey, R. H. Dana, Jr., Samuel Gridley Howe, and others of like views of the slavery issue.
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