USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Metropolitan Boston; a modern history; Volume II > Part 26
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Winslow, leaving chaos and fury behind him, was now on the high seas. The full revelation of his maneuvres is astonishing. That he did not flee on the impulse of the moment is clear. It came out that he had spent a day at the State Library looking up, with the aid of a lawyer, the United States extradition treaties. He explained that many forgers had been fleeing to Brazil and other South American countries, and that it would be a public service for the "Post" to print a full report of the facts, with the texts of treaties, and the names of, and the routes to, the cities of refuge. The lawyer would take no fee for such a task and Winslow graciously insisted that he must accept a subscription to the paper. The next Monday Winslow sent his family to New York. On Wednesday night he followed them. On February 1, 1876, he bought steamship tickets to Rotterdam for himself, wife, son, and wife's sister. A few more weeks and he was under arrest in London, to be arraigned in the Bow Street Court on March 2. The story is that he landed in Holland, passed through Belgium to England, and called at the John Murray book
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store for a letter on the assumption that the English bookshops would care for parcels as did the Boston stores. Celbion P. Dearborn, a Boston detective, made the identification. The historians of the "Boston Her- ald" have always "pointed with pride" to the achievement of a "Herald" correspondent who "tracked, followed, discovered, and 'interviewed'" the fugitive. The Suffolk County Grand Jury had indicted Winslow in four- teen counts involving $40,000. The technicalities which came into play when extradition was sought now made the case a subject of interest to a score of governments. The American Secretary of State, Hamilton Fish, and the British Home Secretary, were soon exchanging cables every day with reference to it. On May 19 the Cabinet at Washington had a session of two hours over a letter just received from Earl Derby dealing with the extradition of Winslow. It became a test case on the outcome of which other such actions must depend. In the end Winslow escaped extradition. Released, he spent some time in London, until he learned that a new and airtight treaty was under negotiation, when he again took ship. In a few years it was known in Boston that Winslow was living in Buenos Aires under the name of Daniel Warren Lowe, and there conducting a prosperous newspaper, the "Buenos Aires Herald." Rumor has it that he sneaked back in after years to the United States, which may or may not be true.
The "News" was able to continue publication only for a short time. On February II, 1876, before Winslow's apprehension in London, sus- pension was announced as necessary on account of the way the affairs of the paper were mixed with the Winslow rascalities. The founding of the "News" had been a mark of renewed interest in the East in religious journalism. The stigma which the Winslow story attached to the Boston paper discouraged other attempts then contemplated for the establish- ment of "moral dailies" elsewhere.
The "Post" was rocked a little upon her keel, but was not in danger of foundering. There had to be a reorganization. The ownership of the outstanding stock could only be determined by the Supreme Court. A new corporation took over the affairs of the paper. This Post Publish- ing Company operated the business until the name of E. A. Grozier took its place as editor and publisher. Frederick E. Goodrich of the editorial staff served as editor-in-chief for a time, then George F. Emery, who had become a principal owner, and again Robert G. Fitch. In 1881 stock was sold anew, Mr. Emery retired, and Alonzo P. Moore became treas- urer and manager. Again there was a reorganization in 1885 when W. H. H. Andrews succeeded Mr. Moore in the business office and Henry L. Nelson took over the editorial direction from Mr. Fitch. The price had been reduced from four cents to three in 1882; it now was reduced to two cents. After only a year the entire capital stock passed into the
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hands of parties not before associated with the paper, and on May 17 the new management, with Edwin M. Bacon as editor and Benjamin Kimball as president of the corporation, put out their first issue.
The paper now was conducted as independent in politics, designing to be fair to all and to construct its own judgments. Mr. Bacon retired in 1891. During a considerable stretch of years in this interval, the "Post," to the astonishment of the "Advertiser," held a high place in the esteem of the cultivated class in Cambridge and out Beacon Street. This was partly due to its discussion of the Mugwump heresies. Such wealthy men as Martin Brimmer and John M. Forbes helped the paper financially. It castigated Quay and Blaine. Edwin Lawrence Godkin said of it: "Like the old 'Advertiser' it was eminently respectable. No priest . . . . hesitated to mention it in his prayers, no woman to associate it in her mind with honor. No father feared to leave it on the parlor table, or to allow it to go down to the kitchen when the family had done with it." But-suddenly the wind of popular favor veered again. Perhaps the "respectable" constituency had dwindled. Anyhow, there was demand for a "newsier" sheet. And at length, to quote Godkin's opinion, the "Post" became the property of a "bright young journalist of the Pulitzer school" who promptly "made the unfortunate sheet a terror."
Mr. Godkin alluded to Edwin Atkins Grozier, who had been a reporter on the "Globe" and the "Herald," private secretary to Governor Robin- son, private secretary to Joseph Pulitzer, and city editor of the "New York World," and who became publisher and chief owner of the "Boston Post" in 1891. Mr. Grozier used to say that his six years of experience with Mr. Pulitzer was a wonderful training for any young man "provided he could live through it." The announcement of the change of owner- ship in the Boston daily appeared on September 19 and the new owner took charge in October. The circulation at the time has been declared to have been variously 3,000, 20,000 and 30,000. The bold buyer assumed a huge load of debt ; those debts he paid in full. He went after circulation. Many days he worked right through the twenty-four hours. His friend, General Charles H. Taylor, of the "Globe," patronizingly told the young man he was welcome to any crumbs the "Globe" might overlook, and the young man replied that he intended to have also a big slice of the cake. He instituted many catchy prize devices to capture attention. For years at the head of his editorial page he carried the motto: "With a mission and without a muzzle." He possessed the instinct for news and the genius for dramatizing the commonplace. He applied his Pulitzer train- ing to his own needs. In time he bought the building in which the paper was produced and the land on which the building stands. He installed one of the largest pressrooms in the country more than sixty feet below the street level. In the time of the World War he carried the circulation
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of the "Post" to the highest level of any newspaper in America-a daz- zling feat. Let us contemplate the figures: In 1903, 178,308; in 1909, 245,674; in 1912, 340,320; in 1915, 422,350; in 1919, 496,882. The totals for the Sunday issue reached 432,949 in 1922. There have been some recessions since both in the daily and Sunday totals, but the figures still are very large. The gold medal of the Pulitzer Foundation for meri- torious public service by an American newspaper in 1920 was awarded to the "Post" for its expose of the get-rich-quick operations of Charles Ponzi.
Mr. Grozier died on May 9, 1924. The late Charles William Eliot, in a formal letter for publication, paid high tribute to him. The will bequeathed the controlling interest in the company to his son, Richard Grozier, who had been actively concerned with the production of the paper for fifteen years, and a codicil indicated the testator's wish that these holdings should always be kept in the Grozier family.
It will have been noticed that in the first half of this narrative our story had to do with weekly publications, and that with the coming of the dailies our allusions to papers of less frequent publication have been relatively incidental. This must need be so, because periodicals are not today regarded as newspapers, although the weeklies, bi-weeklies and tri-weeklies were the newspapers of yesterday. There should be, how- ever, some further mention of the publications which have been super- seded as heralds of the news by the dailies.
Between 1830 and 1850 there were as many as two hundred tri- weeklies, bi-weeklies and weeklies published in Boston, many of them connected with the dailies. Some, obviously political, were designed only to last through a campaign and were lucky if they did that. Exam- ples of these are the "Clay Banner" of 1848, the "Free Soiler" of 1850, the "Free State Rally and Texas Chain Breaker" of 1845, the "Massachusetts Whig" of 1849, and "Rough and Ready" of 1848. Some represented the pet reforms of their promoters, as "Anglo Sacsun" in the interest of phonetic spelling, and "The Hangman" which dealt with capital pun- ishment.
Not a few of these papers undertook to compete with the dailies in the telling of the news and several of the weekly editions of the dailies maintained themselves fairly well for many years. Besides these supple- mentary editions a few of the dailies published weeklies of a literary character, as "The Notion," which was put out by "The Times," and the "Universal Yankee Nation" printed by "The Mail." The rivalry between these two weeklies finally took the form of a competition in size which reached a climax in the "Leviathan of Papers," a "Double Double Notion," measuring sixty-seven inches by ninety, and "containing 6,000 square inches of printing, all for 25 cents." These papers printed the
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novels of Dickens, the poems of Mrs. Norton, the plays of J. Sheridan Knowles. Their sales occasionally reached 20,000 copies. "The Adopted Citizen" was published in the interest of the Irish, the "New England Artisan" in behalf of working men, to list the names of the agricultural journals would require a long roster, and the scope of such journals as the "Boston Shipping List" and "The Pathfinder" is easily inferred from their titles. Just as today special interests of every kind have their organs, so years ago Boston supported papers, more or less important, representing the churches and the secret orders, the geographical sub- divisions of the city and the suburban cities and towns, commerce and finance, "causes" and reforms, fads and "isms" almost without number. The Boston foreign press dates clear back to the "Courier de Boston," a small weekly quarto, published by Samuel Hall in 1789.
Several of these weeklies must have more than simply cursory men- tion. What a chapter might be written about Garrison's "Liberator." When, in 1831, a South Carolina paper copied a small article about the "Liberator" and its "intention to inflame the negroes," the attention of Mayor Harrison Gray Otis was called by letter to Garrison's venture. The mayor declared that he never had heard of the obscure publication ! The whole Nation heard of it in due time, and of its ardent editor who had the manners of a Quaker while wielding the pen of a Boanerges, and who triumphantly put forth the final issue of his paper in 1865.
The history of religious journalism in Boston would supply abundant material for an important monograph. It probably is not strictly true that the "Boston Recorder," first issued on January 3, 1816, by Nathaniel Willis, and since incorporated with the "Congregationalist," was the earliest religious newspaper published in the United States. At Chilli- cothe, Ohio, on July 5, 1814, there was begun a "Weekly Recorder" by John Andrews, which, after several changes of title and place, found per- manent lodgment at Pittsburgh as the "Presbyterian Banner." More- over, in Essex, Massachusetts, Elias Smith, a minister of the "Christian Society," established a religious paper of a highly censorious character, which persisted until 1817, after its removal to Philadelphia. This "Her- ald of Gospel Liberty" attacked the support of Congregationalism by taxation and criticized the clergy and upheld the Republican party with equal zest. And far back as 1743 Kneeland and Greene, of Boston, pub- lished the "Christian History," edited by Thomas Prince, Jr., which has been pronounced "the first religious newspaper in the world." However, Boston possesses several religious journals of the first value and of respectable antiquity. The Methodist "Zion's Herald" was begun in 1818, the Baptist "Watchman and Reflector" in 1819 by Benjamin True and Equality Weston, and the "Christian Register" of the Unitarians in 1821. The last named is believed to have been the first religious paper
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in the world to use the telegraph for the transmission of news and the reporting of church assemblies. The records of these and other Boston journals of similar character are starred with famous names. Such men as Henry M. Dexter of the "Congregationalist," William Ellery Chan- ning of the "Register," Gilbert Haven of "Zion's Herald," John W. Olm- stead of the "Watchman," are remembered far outside their respective denominations.
And what an entertaining chapter might be written about "The Pilot," the most celebrated of the Roman Catholic papers of Boston probably, and about the men who made it famous, Patrick Donahoe, who with H. L. Devereux founded the paper in 1836; James Jeffrey Roche, the wit and essayist; and John Boyle O'Reilly, whose poems and editorials earned for the paper a wide circulation among Protestants. For years O'Reilly was one of the most romantic figures in Boston. Back of his arrival in New England was the sentence to death in Ireland and the escape from Australia. Of his early years in Boston, Edwin P. Mitchell wrote: "No man ever impressed me more strongly with the vividness of an amiable personality," and he added that O'Reilly "could make even steam heat seam like a hearthstone glow." One interesting incident may here be recorded. The news of the Phoenix Park murders in Dublin reached Boston late on a Saturday night in 1882. General Charles H. Taylor, then laboring like a slave to carry the "Globe" to success, had as yet no Associated Press franchise. He learned that the "Herald" planned for a page on the tragic event. The "Globe" was not in position to obtain a full report. Mr. Taylor recalled that two of the most conspicuous Irish- men in the country resided in Boston, O'Reilly and Patrick A. Collins, and he hurried a reporter-who happened to be Edwin A. Grozier, later of the "Post"-out of the office to see those men. In Monument Square, Charlestown, the reporter obtained a column from O'Reilly. As he was leaving young Grozier remarked that he did not see how his herdic- there were no automobiles then, of course-could get him over to South Boston to see General Collins and bring him back to Newspaper Row in time to catch the edition. Whereupon O'Reilly said: "You can't do it. Come back in the house and I'll supply an interview with Collins." Which he did. So intimate were the two men that each knew just what the other would say. Grozier reached his office with the interviews in shorthand. There were no typewriters, so Grozier dictated his copy to two reporters. The "Globe" was "saved." The paper looked very well next morning.
The "Commercial Bulletin," founded in 1859 by Curtis Guild, and issued on Saturday mornings, achieved and long sustained a deserved reputation as an authority on business, financial and manufacturing sub-
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NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, BY BELA PRATT, MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS
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jects. In 1883 Curtis Guild, Jr., later to become Governor of the Com- monwealth, was admitted to the business as a partner.
It might have been expected that Puritan Boston would resist the coming of the Sunday newspaper, but similar antipathy was encountered throughout the country. The War between the States justified the pub- lication of Sunday extras during the first half of the 60's, and the practice was maintained while the war went on, but after Lee's surrender most of the dailies suspended their Sunday issues. But ere long these papers in self-defense had to go back to Sunday publication. Whitelaw Reid in an address at Yale stated the case :
For a long time I resisted the general tendency to extend the daily publication over into Sunday. Nearly every man I knew approved this refusal to print a Sunday paper. Old friends went out of their way to congratulate me on thus setting my face against this pernicious habit of Sunday publication. Finally I took to explaining that my noble stand seemed to result in sending all my regular readers, when Sunday came, over to one or another of my competitors . ,and I would ask, "By the way, what paper do you read on Sunday?" Then came stammering and hesitation, to be sure; but not once, during the years this went on, did I fail to find that, with the single excep- tion of some of the clergy, the men who were exhorting me to set a noble example of Sabbath observance by not publishing on Sunday, were themselves quietly gratifying their own craving to know what was going on by reading some Sunday paper !
Sunday Papers-Several attempts to publish Sunday papers were made in Boston before the firing on Sumter. Just at the end of 1848 Ben : Perley Poore started "Perley's Sunday Pic Nic" as a Sunday edition of the weekly conducted by the owners of the "Bee." In 1846 a "Sunday Telegraph" appeared ; in 1849 the "Spirit of the Age and Sunday News." There was a "Sunday Morning Chronicle" in 1841, a "Pearl and Galaxy" in 1837, and so early as 1831 Frederick S. Hill defied convention with the "Commentator and Sunday Times." In 1850 Elizur Wright tried the plan of publishing a "Sunday Chronotype" with one edition for the late trains on Saturday night and another for city circulation as an early Sunday edition. But there was a sudden change in 1861. On the Sunday after the surrender of Sumter an employee put out an unauthorized extra of the "Advertiser." It was in the following month that the "Herald" established the first regular Sunday edition in Boston and it held the field alone for fifteen years. In 1866 there was founded a Sunday "Times," in 1867 a Sunday "Courier," in 1877 a Sunday "Globe."
For years Boston maintained several papers which managed to elude the prejudices of Sabbatarians by appearing nominally as Saturday edi- tions, although designed for Sunday circulation. A good example is the "Saturday Evening Gazette," founded in 1813 by William W. Clapp. It became popular and profitable largely because of the "features" it exploited dealing with society, music, art, books, drama. It printed the
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sermons of James Freeman Clark. It employed able correspondents in New York and other cities. Among the men associated with it at various times were the Clapps, father and son, B. P. Shillaber or "Mrs. Parting- ton," John W. Ryan, and George H. Monroe or "Templeton." Another similar paper was the "Yankee Blade," with which Sam Walter Foss was connected for some years.
As an exponent of the movement known as Native Americanism, a few journeymen printers, under the firm name of Baker, French, Harmon & Company, began the publication in 1844 of a morning paper to which they applied the soaring name of "The American Eagle." The American Republican party had been founded in Louisiana in 1841. Its leading demands were that only Americans by birth should hold public office and that the naturalization period should be extended to twenty-one years. The movement spread to the North. The party elected a mayor of New York City in 1844 and a few members of Congress in 1845. Then the Mexican War and the slavery question absorbed the attention of the public and the tide of Americanism receded. The party elected no Con- gressman in 1848. The great influx of immigrants that followed the upheavals in Europe in 1848 produced a new outbreak of anti-foreign feeling which found expression in another organization representing essentially the same ideas as those of the Native American party, and to be known in history as Know Nothingism. The movement developed rapidly, upset the calculations of many astute politicians, and became a powerful factor in the politics of the time.
It was when Native Americanism was first manifesting some vitality as a force in public affairs that the "Eagle" in December, 1844, put out its first issue from "No. 5 Devonshire Street, third door from State Street." It early attained a fair degree of success. Several writers of ability con- tributed to its pages, as W. S. Damrell and Moses Kimball; the latter subsequently found in the Boston Museum, a popular theatre, an avenue to fortune. Naturally, when Native Americanism declined, the "Eagle" lost the avowed warrant for its existence. The publishers decided to abandon an enterprise that seemed doomed to failure and to supersede it with an evening paper which should be neutral in politics and somewhat Bohemian in character. The first issue of the new publication came out on the afternoon of the last day of August, 1846, with four pages of five columns each and measuring nine by fourteen inches.
Thus was "The Boston Herald" begun as one of the "pennies." It is the only one of them all to survive to the present day. For some time the energetic founders published both papers. They tried the experiment of printing Democratic editorials in the morning and Whig editorials in the evening. They boldly printed many articles in both papers. They manifested a distinct tendency toward sensationalism. One careful inves-
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tigator has said : "The most sensational, the yellowest, of all the journals in Boston then was the paper which today deservedly holds an high place among the great newspapers of the United States." The editorial and press rooms were at the corner of Devonshire Street and Dock Square; the counting room was at 15 State Street. The two papers managed to keep six compositors busy and for the first four months of the life of the "Herald" its editorial and reportorial staffs consisted each of one man. Two of the stockholders manipulated the presses, John A. French and James D. Stowers. Somehow the new paper managed to "get by." The publishers wriggled through many difficult passages and at length emerged into the open field of competition with sufficient repu- tation for ability and initiative to compel some recognition, a kind of reluctant tolerance, from their older rivals. In 1847 the "Herald" said : "The competition of the penny press has caused a mental activity among all classes, rash and impulsive it may be, but nevertheless far preferable to the dignified stagnation which in times of yore was seldom broken by the larger and more expensive journals." Again, in an editorial on "The Dignity of the Penny Press," the paper said: "The time has come when a respectable portion of the community no longer looks to the big six- penny, lying oracles of politics for just notions on government, exalted piety, or pure and chaste morality."
Thus in hammer-and-tongs style did the "Herald" men of those days carry themselves in the scramble for popular favor. Like many other papers of the day, the "Herald" accepted pay "in kind" from the buyers of advertising space. The owners could use groceries and clothing with- out much trouble. But the "remittances" from dealers in several other classes of goods proved embarrassing. The publishers could not refuse to druggists a privilege accorded to dry goods dealers. Patent medicine advertisements abounded in the columns of all the newspapers of that period, and the "Herald" counting room sometimes contained a large stock of much-exploited remedies. Amusing tales are told of the uses to which this stock was put. Occasionally on pay days, according to the veracious chroniclers of "Herald" history, the cash would fail to hold out, and the cashier would say: "Wait, boys, while I run out and sell a gross of sarsaparilla." He would scurry out to some pharmacy, market a quantity of the "infallible" at reduced rates, and return with enough money to satisfy the demands of the employees. On New Year's Day, 1847, the owners were able to provide a complete outfit of new type for both their papers, to print them on a new Adams press, and to increase the size of the "Herald" to a page of twenty-one inches by seventeen, with seven columns. They announced also a weekly edition. In their leader for that day the owners said: "It is our purpose to establish a journal which shall be truly independent-pledged to no religious sect or
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political party-always ready to rebuke both spiritual and political wick- edness in high places, and call the servants of the public to account when- ever they abuse the trusts committed to their care."
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