USA > New York > New York City > History of New York City : embracing an outline sketch of events from 1609 to 1830, and a full account of its development from 1830 to 1884, Volume I > Part 29
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In 1826 Mordecai Manasseh Noah # (better known as Major Noah), who had edited the Advocate, of which Henry Eckford, the great ship- builder, was one of the proprietors, disagreeing with that gentleman, started a paper of his own, which he called the National Advocate. Enjoined at the instance of Eckford and his partners, the name was changed to Noah's New York National Advocate. Again enjoined, he named his journal the New York Enquirer. This paper was pur- chased by James Watson Webb in the spring of 1829, when it was merged into the Morning Courier and the famous Courier and En- quirer was established. It reigned right royally in the realm of jour- nalism for more than a generation.
Major Noah went into the editorial rooms of the Courier and Enquirer, and was associated in editorial duties with James Lawson, James Gordon Bennett, Prosper M. Wetmore, and JJames Gordon Brooks-a notable editorial staff -under the control of the masterly executive hand of Mr. Webb.
A new feature in journalism was soon introduced. At the opening of Congress in December, 1827, Mr. Bennett was sent to Washington to be a regular daily correspondent of the Courier and Enquirer during
* Mordecai Manasseh Noah was born in Philadelphia in July, 1785. His parents were Hebrews, and he adhered to their faith through a long life. He died in New York in March, 1851. He studied law, went to Charleston, S. C., and in that city edited the City Gazette in 1810. In 1811 he was American consul at Riga, and afterward at Tunis, and went on a mission to Algiers. On his way thither he was captured by the English. On his return to America in 1816 he published incidents of his sojourn abroad, and became editor of the National Advocate, a Democratie journal, until 1825, and the next year he established the New York Enquirer. In 1834 he established the Ner Em. Afterward he withdrew from the daily press, and for several years published the Sunday Times. About 1820 Mr. Noah conceived a scheme for founding a Jewish colony on Grand Island, in the Niagara River. There he set up a monument inscribed, " Ararat, a city of refuge for the Jews, founded by Mordecai M. Noah, in the month of Tishri, 5586 (September, 1825), and in the 50th year of American Independence." Mr. Noah held the offices of sheriff, judge of the Court of Sessions. and surveyor of the port of New York. He was the author of several dramas and other works.
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the session. Hitherto, with a slight exception, the Washington corre- spondent, now such an important adjunct to every reputable news- paper, had been a member of Congress writing an occasional letter to a newspaper in his own district.
Bennett was equal to the task assigned him, and he soon changed the tone, temper, and style of Washington correspondence. Receiv- ing a hint from Horace Walpole's racy letters written in the reign of George II., Mr. Bennett penned entertaining epistles descriptive of life at the capital in all its phases-the legislation of the day, politics, soci- ety in general, fashionable life, and personal sketches of all the gay, witty, and beautiful characters which appeared in Washington during that winter. These pen-pictures were sketched at random without being offensive to any one-indeed they were mostly complimentary and pleasing to the parties mentioned.
At this time the newspaper press of New York showed very little enterprise in the way of giving news. It was running in a rut worn nearly half a century. The then leading morning papers did not con- tain, in the aggregate, more editorial matter combined than now appears in a leading editorial of the Tribune or Times. A rowboat collected the ship news and the newspapers from the packet-ships as they arrived, and all were content with transferring to their columns such news as they mutually possessed. Conspicuous for activity in everything he undertook, Mr. Webb was not satisfied with this system, and he very soon set up a news-collecting establishment of his own. He employed a Baltimore clipper (the Eclipse) and a fleet of small boats in collecting news on the water. This compelled the other news- papers to combine in a similar enterprise, and both parties kept a news- schooner cruising off Sandy Hook, and small boats communicating with her from time to time.
Webb determined not to be equalled, even in enterprise. He had a clipper-schooner of one hundred tons built in New York, with the stip- ulation that she should equal in speed any New York pilot-boat or he could not be compelled to take her. It was accomplished. She was named the Courier and Enquirer. With this schooner cruising seventy to one hundred miles at sea, the Eclipse at Sandy Hook, and a fleet of small boats inside, all opposition was soon put down, and the other newspapers were compelled to purchase their news from Mr. Webb.
Having achieved this triumph in the ocean-news department, he next turned his attention to procuring carly and exclusive intelligence from Washington during the sessions of Congress. Telegraphs and railroads then existed only in the dreams of philosophers. The mails then left
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Washington, say on Monday morning, and reached New York on Wednesday night in time for the news they brought to appear in the newspapers on Thursday morning. Webb determined they should appear in the Courier and Enquirer on Wednesday morning. Ile made a contract with certain parties to run a daily horse express be- tween Washington and New York during the entire session of Congress (1-35-36), for which he agreed to pay $7500 a month. It was done most satisfactorily. Horses were stationed at points only six miles apart. This "pony express" brought news twenty-four hours in advance of the mails, and enabled the Courier and Enquirer to give news that length of time in advance of all competitors.
" Under this system of collecting the news," wrote George H. Andrews a few years ago, " enlarging the paper, employing additional editors and reporters, opening correspondence in different quarters, and devoting whole columns to subjects never before touched upon by the press, the expenses of the daily press were more than quadrupled. and four of the old morning papers died out. But a new impetus was thus given to the newspaper press of the city, which has continued to increase to this day ; and for that impetus to an influence upon the public mind and the character of the press, the community are unques- tionably indebted to General Webb."
For some time the Courier and Enquirer remained the unrivalled distributor of the earliest news from Washington and from Europe ; but it was not long before powerful competitors appeared, and the enterprising newspaper which had achieved so much was compelled to succumb. In 1838 the first ocean steamship, the Sirius, arrived at New York from England, and from that day her successors brought all the news from abroad to the city in advance of the news-boats. Soon afterward the telegraph and railroad put an end to the pony express, and now the Associated Press performs for all alike the duty of collect- ing and distributing the current news of the day. There is now no field for the exercise of individual enterprise in this direction.
In the matter of collecting news the Journal of Commerce, a morning paper of the same age of the Courier and Enquirer, was a sharp and powerful competitor. It too had its news-schooner and small boats, and when the Courier and Enquirer started the pony express the Journal of Commerce speedily became its rival. They were both com- peting sharply for the patronage of the commercial community. For that purpose, and to accommodate mercantile advertisers with adver- tisements, these papers were enlarged from time to time until they acquired dimensions which caused them to be called " blanket sheets.
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These enormous and expensive newspapers caused a yearning in the public mind for something smaller and less expensive. It came to be felt as a public want. That want was soon supplied by the ad- vent of what is called the " penny press." The Journal of Commerce is yet a flourishing morning paper ; the Courier and Enquirer be- came united with the New York World on the first of July, 1861, when its form was changed from " folio" to the more popular one of " quarto." Then that great newspaper disappeared from the field of journalism. The Journal of Commerce remained the last of the " blanket sheets."
A taste for cheap literature had been fostered, if not created. by the publication of the Illustrated Penny Magazine in London, in 1830. Large quantities of this publication were sold in America, and induced the starting of the Family Magazine on a similar plan in New York in 1834. The publication of small cheap newspapers was undertaken here and there at about the same time. The Bostonian was one of these. The Cent was issued in Philadelphia in 1830, and in 1832 James Gordon Bennett, who had left the service of the Courier and Enquirer, attempted to establish a small newspaper.
Mr. Bennett withdrew from the Courier and Enquirer in August, 1832, and on the 29th of October following he issued an evening paper, twelve by seventeen inches in size, half the size of the other news- papers, called the New York Globe. He announced that it would be published daily at eight dollars a year, that its politics would be Demo- cratic, that it would adhere to Jefferson's doctrine of State Rights (State supremacy), would be opposed to nullification, and in favor of various reforms in the government. Bennett had then been acting in the capacity of an editor for about twelve years, and he might be con- sidered a sort of veteran. But the enterprise was a failure.
On New Year's day, 1833, Dr. H. D. Shepard, with Horace Greeley and Francis V. Story as partners, started a two-cent daily paper called the Morning Post. They had a capital of $200, and no credit. It lived twenty-one days, and expired. It was the seed of the cheap press, and took root, though it yielded no fruit to the planter.
On Tuesday, the 3d of September following, a small morning paper called the Sun was issued by Benjamin II. Day, a printer, at No. 222 William Street. The enterprise was suggested by George W. Wisner, a compositor then working for J. S. Redfield, stereotyper, in William Street. Wisner talked almost incessantly about the feasibility of pub- lishing a one-cent newspaper. The other compositors laughed at him, and for a while he found no one willing to risk anything in such a wild
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enterprise. At length Day had the sagacity and the courage to try the experiment with him. Wisner soon left Mr. Day and went West, and the latter bore the burden alone.
The first number of the Sun bore a picture of a spread-eagle bearing the motto E Pluribus Unum, and contained the following brief and business-like prospectus :
" 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 means of advertising. The sheet will be enlarged as soon as the increase of advertisements requires it, the price remaining the same.
" Yearly advertisers (without the paper), thirty dollars per annum. Casual advertising at the usual prices charged by the city papers.
> Subscriptions will be received, if paid in advance, at $3 per annum."
In a speech at a dinner given to Colonel Richard M. Hoe, the in- ventor of printing-presses, in 1851, Mr. Day gave the following history of the origin of the Sun newspaper :
"It is true I originated the Sun, the first penny newspaper in America, and, as far as I know, the first in the world. But I have always considered the circumstance as more the result of an accident than any superior sagacity of mine. It was in 1832 when I projected the enterprise, during the first cholera, when my business as a job printer scarcely afforded a living. I must say I had very little faith in its success at that time, and from various causes it was put off. In August, 1833, I finally made up my mind to venture the experiment, and I issued the first number of the Sun September 3d.
" It is not necessary to speak of the wonderful success of the paper. At the end of three years the difficulty of striking off the large edition on a double-cylinder press in the time usually allowed to daily news- papers was very great.
"In 1835 I introduced steam power, now so necessary an appendage to almost every newspaper office. It was the first application of that power to move a printing machine in a newspaper office. At that time all the Napier presses in the city were turned by crankmen, and as the Sun was the only daily newspaper of large circulation, so it seemed to be the only establishment where steam was really indispensable. But even this great aid to the speed of the Napier machines did not keep up with the increasing circulation of the Sun."
One cent continued to be the price per copy of the Sun for about thirty years. After the Civil War broke out the price of everything
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was so increased that the Sun was doubled in price, and so it remains. In 1838 Mr. Day sold the Sun to Moses Y. Beach, his brother-in-law. It had been much enlarged, but owing to dull times Mr. Beach cut down the paper to a smaller size, but enlarged it soon afterward when business was better.
The Sun was made up of twelve columns, each ten inches long. It was a simple newspaper. It gave no opinions, no commercial reviews, no financial reports, and no account of stock sales. It made no special promises of future career. It had four columns of advertisements ; one column embraced a " New York Bank Note Table ;" two columns were devoted to anecdotes and a short story, a quarter of a column to the arrivals and clearances of vessels on the previous day, one column to poetry, and the remainder to police and miscellaneous items. The circulation of the Sun ran up to 8000 copies daily by the end of two years from its birth.
So soon as the success of the Sun was assured a plentiful crop of rivals speedily appeared. Within a few months the Man, the Tran- script, and the Day- Book, and subsequently a Democratic paper called the Jeffersonian, appeared. Later the New Era, the True Sun, and the Herald-all cheap newspapers. The Transcript was a success for several years. The Herald, published by Anderson & Smith and edited by James Gordon Bennett, went down in the great fire in Ann Street early in 1835.
In a recent letter to the author of this work Mr. Day wrote respect- ing the beginning of the career of the Sun, the first one-cent news- paper ever published :
" You will appreciate some of the difficulties under which I labored when I tell you there was not up to that time a newsboy or newsman in existence on this side of the Atlantic. I was compelled to hire boys to sell the paper and pay them weekly wages. As for newsmen, the newspaper carriers scouted the idea. They delivered the daily papers to subscribers only, and were paid weekly wages. My plan altered that in a few years."
* Benjamin H. Day was born in West Springfield, Mass., April 10, 1810. The Days, most of them well-to-do farmers, were then numerous in that vicinity. His father, a manufacturing hatter, died when Benjamin was an infant, and was the only son of a widowed mother. He received an academic education at three different places, the last one in a high school in Utica, where he remembers Horatio Seymour and Judge Ward Hunt were among the pupils. Young Day was apprenticed to Samuel Bowles, of the Springfield Republican (the father of the late editor of the same name), where he learned the printer's trade in all its branches. In 1830 he established himself as a job printer at
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The first newsboy who sold copies of the Sun in the streets of New York was Silas Davenport, who was living in Sharon, Massachusetts, in 1852.
We have observed that the Herald, published by Anderson & Smith, went down in the great fire in Ann Street in 1835. It was revived shortly afterward by Mr. Bennett, who started it with a nominal cash capital of $500, but with a hundredfold more capital in the brains of the founder.
The first number of this famous newspaper was issued on Wednesday morning, May 6, 1835, from a basement room at No. 20 Wall Street, under the title of the Morning Herald. The second number was issued on Monday, the 11th, and from that time until now its regular issues have not been interrupted for a day. In this second issue the editor promised to " give a correct picture of the world-in Wall Street, in the Exchange, in the Police office, at the Theatre, in the Opera-in short, wherever human nature and real life best display their freaks and vagaries."
This promise the Herald fulfilled from the beginning. It exhibited the true elements of journalism-intelligence, industry, tact, and inde- pendence. All the brain work was done by the editor. " The leading articles," says Mr. Hudson, " the police reports, the literary intelli- gence, the pungent paragraphs, the news from abroad and home, the account-books, the bills, the clerk's duties in the office, were all written, prepared, arranged, made out, and performed by Mr. Bennett. The columns of the little sheet were filled with the peculiar points and hits and predictions which have ever since characterized the Herald. In one of the first numbers, for instance, he said :
". The New York and Erie Railroad is to break ground in a few days. We hope they will break nothing else.'"
In the second number of the Herald Mr. Bennett introduced an entirely new feature in journalism - the Money Article. For many years these articles were written by Mr. Bennett himself, and attracted universal attention. From the 15th of June. 1835, these articles-then
No. 222 William Street, New York. From his office he issued the Sun newspaper, the first one-cent newspaper ever published, and has the honor of being the pioneer in the business of publishing, not only cheap newspapers, but cheap literature. Two years after he sold the Sun, Mr. Day became half-owner of the Brother Jonathan, a literary weekly edited by N. P. Willis and H. Hastings Weld. It was a successful undertaking. Soon afterward he was engaged in the publication of cheap books. About the year 1862 or 1863 Mr. Day left business with an ample fortune, and has since lived a retired life in the city of New York.
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reports of transactions in stocks, etc., in Wall Street-formed a feature in every issue of the paper .*
The New York Erpress was established as a " blanket sheet" in 1836. The first number was issued on the first of June. Its founder was James Brooks, t who soon associated his brother Erastus with him-
* The following is a copy of the first Wall Street report, May 11, 1835 :
" MONEY MARKET.
" Stocks are somewhat shaken since the late arrivals. The winding up of three or four United States branch banks makes dealers pause as to the future operations of the money market. On Saturday railroads started two or three per cent.
" New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston are all on the qui rire about stocks. Speculation in this article was never so flourishing. The rise is greater in fancy stocks or uew banks, such as the Morris Canal, Baltimore Canton Company, Kentucky Northern Bank, and especially certain railroads.
" What is the cause of these movements? How long will they last? Who will be losers ? Who will be winners ?
" The uncommon rise in the stock market is not produced by accident. A secret con- federacy of our large capitalists in the commercial cities, availing themselves of the political and commercial events of the times, could easily produce the speculation that has astonished the world during the last three months. It is a universal law of trade that if an article is made scarce it will rise ; if plenty, it will fall. A dozen large capital- ists, controlling twenty or thirty principal banks in the chief cities, can make money plenty or scarce just as they choose. When money is scarce stocks of all kinds fall. The confederates buy in at low prices ; loan money to the merchants at two and three per cent per month. This is one operation. The next movement is to set on foot the machinery to raise stocks, which can be effected by permitting the banks to loan money liberally to the merchants at large. Stocks then will begin to rise slowly at first, but faster and faster as speculators lead the way. When the confederates have got rid of all their fancy stocks at high prices to merchants and small dealers, or anybody not in the secret, then they begin secretly to prepare for a fall. This is done by a general and simultaneous curtailment of discounts by the banks, which soon knocks down stocks, ruins thousands, and raises the value of money two and three per cent per month, thus furnishing always, either falling or rising, the knowing ones an opportunity to make at least thirty per cent on their capital the year round.
" This is truth, and we seriously advise young merchants and dealers to be careful. Who can tell but at this very moment two dozen large moneyed men in our commercial cities have not already appointed the very week, day, even the hour, when a new move- ment will commence which will knock down stocks twenty to forty per cent a month ? When the April weather is particularly sweet and soft, look out for a storm the next day."
+ James Brooks was born in Portland, Maine, in November, 1810, and graduated at Waterville College. He was for a time at the head of the Latin School in Portland. Finally he became a regular correspondent at Washington for several newspapers during the.sessions of Congress. In 1835 he was a member of the Maine Legislature, and intro- duced into that body the first proposition for a railway between Portland, Montreal, and Quebec. The same year he made a pedestrian tour on the continent of Europe and the British Islands, and published a series of descriptive letters in the Portland Advertiser. He established the New York Express in 1836. In 1817 he was a member of the New York Assembly, and 1819 to 1853, and from 1865 until his death, in April, 1873, he was a
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N.If in the publication of the paper. In the autumn of that year the Express united with the old Daily Advertiser, and was issued both as a morning and evening paper. It paid special attention to shipping news, and finally a marked feature of the paper was a list of the daily arrivals at the principal hotels. Because of this feature the Herald called it the Drummer's Gazette.
In its first issue the Erpress announced that in its politics it would be " decidedly Whig." While the American or Know-Nothing party was conspicuous it was an adherent and champion of that party. Finally its numerous editions issued during the day destroyed its char- acter as a strictly morning newspaper, and it was issued in 1864 as the Evening Express. By junction with the Evening Mail, in 1882, it assumed the title of Mail-Express. Soon after the breaking out of the Civil War the Express became a Democratic paper, and so it remains. The Brookses withdrew from it several years ago. Before they retired from it, it had assumed the popular form of the " cheap press." Of all the daily " blanket sheets" published when the Erpress was started, only it (merged with the Evening Mail, under the title of The Evening Mail-Express) and the Journal of Commerce now (1883) survive.
We have observed that the New York Morning Herald was started upon a nominal cash capital of 8500, and that for a while nearly all editorial service was performed by one man-the founder." The
member of Congress. In 1871 Mr. Brooks made a rapid tour around the world, and an account of it was published in a volume entitled " A Seven Months' Run Up and Down and Around the World."
James Brooks's brother Erastus, four years his junior, is also a native of Portland, and a graduate of Brown University. He was a school-teacher and editor for a while, and became associated with his brother in the Erpress as joint editor and proprietor. He travelled extensively in Europe in 1843. Ten years later he was a member of the New York State Senate, and became involved in a controversy with Archbishop Hughes in consequence of his advocacy of a bill divesting Roman Catholic bishops of the title to church property in real estate.
* James Gordon Bennett was born in Banffshire, Scotland, in September, 1795, and died in New York City in June, 1872. His parents were Roman Catholics, and intended the son for the priesthood. In 1819 he came to America, taught school in Halifax, N. S., a while, and reached Boston in the autumn of that year, where he engaged in proof- reading. There he wrote and published some poems. In 1822 he was engaged on the Charleston Courier as Spanish translator, but soon came to New York, where he unsne- cessfully tried the experiment of opening a commercial school. He became a casnal reporter and writer for the newspapers, and finally, as mentioned in the text, established the New York Herald. It was the first daily paper that issued a Sunday edition. Mr. Bennett left two children-a son and daughter. To the latter he bequeathed the Herald and it is still (1883) conducted by James Gordon Bennett, Jr.
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