USA > Pennsylvania > Pennsylvania, colonial and federal : a history, 1608-1903, Volume Three > Part 14
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42
192
Pennsylvania Journalism
county towns where the weekly newspaper was a most important political power half century ago, it is entirely superseded by the local daily, and in some instances the weekly is entirely abandoned for semi-weekly editions.
Walter Forward
Lawyer and editor; congressman 1823-1825; member State Constitutional Convention 1837; comptroller of the treasury 1841; secretary of the treasury 1841-1843- Photographed espe- cially for this work from an engraving in pos- session of Mrs. William M. Darlington
This growth of the daily newspaper in the leading inland towns of the State received a great impetus by the Civil war, and the inland daily has steadily grown until to-day there are in many of the inland cities daily newspapers quite as creditable in form and substance as were the leading city dailies fifty years ago. Most of the important inland dailies in Pennsylvania publish only even- ing editions, as in eastern Pennsylvania the Philadelphia dailies
3-13
193
Pennsylvania Colonial and Federal
are delivered in all the inland towns to be read at the breakfast table with the local newspaper, and in the western counties the Pittsburg papers perform the same office; but the late editions of the leading evening journals of Philadelphia and Pittsburg cannot reach the inland towns until long after the same news can be pub- lished in the local evening papers. As a rule the inland dailies are not only prosperous, but they exert quite as much influence in political affairs as do the leading journals of the great cities, and I am not certain that they are not even more potential than their city rivals in shaping the political convictions of the State. There is hardly a neighborhood in Pennsylvania so remote that the daily mail does not reach it, and wherever there is a daily mail it is safe to assume that the daily newspaper has followed it. I think it fair to assume, taking the entire State, that a much greater per- centage of people read daily newspapers to-day than read the weekly newspapers fifty years ago.
Half a century ago the leading cities had very successful weekly literary newspapers. The political dailies all had week- lies, but they did not command a great circulation in Pennsyl- vania for the reason that the local weekly newspaper was gen- erally preferred. The literary newspaper of that day attained a very high measure of success. The Saturday Evening Post was one of the earliest of them, and was one of the most successful weeklies of the country for more than half a century. Nearly or quite all of its associates in Philadelphia perished long since, but the Post continued a lingering existence until it was finally re- habilitated by the Curtis Publishing Co., and made one of the suc- cessful literary weeklies of the country. There has been a steady drift away from weekly journalism during the last fifty years, and excepting those sustained by religious and sectarian interests, the weekly literary journal has largely given up its field to the cheap magazines. A very few have maintained successful careers, but the great diversity of literary publications now issued narrows the field for the literary weekly that flourished a generation ago.
194
Pennsylvania Journalism
The most successful political weekly in the history of Amer- ican journalism was the New York Tribune in the zenith of Gree- ley's power as a political leader. It not only reached over a quar- ter of a million circulation, but it was the most potential publica- tion this country has ever produced. The time was when an utterance from Horace Greeley in the weekly Tribune was vastly more important with the country than an utterance from the presi- dent of the United States, but the success of the weekly Tribune was suddenly ended by Greeley's changed political position in 1872, and to-day there is not a weekly issued by any of the great dailies of the country that could be quoted as an important fac- tor in politics or a great success in journalism. The literary weekly has been supplanted by the magazine that now covers every phase of literature, science and art, and very much better magazines are published at ten cents per copy than the average magazines of fifty years ago at treble that cost.
Pennsylvania had its fair share of the great newspapers of half a century ago which shaped political conviction and action. The United States Gazette, edited and published by Joseph R. Chandler, the North American edited by McMichael and Bird, the Pennsylvanian edited by John W. Forney, and the Inquirer published by the Hardings and edited by Robert Morris, with the Pittsburg Journal edited by Mr. Riddle and the Pittsburg Gazette under the editorial direction of Deacon White, gave Pennsylvania public journals which ranked with Webb's Courier and Enquirer, Brooks's Express, Greeley's Tribune and Bennett's Herald of New York, the Post and the Atlas of Boston, Richie's Inquirer and Pleasant's Whig of Richmond, Prentice's Louisville Journal, Kendall's Picayune of New Orleans, Gales's Intelligencer and Blair's Globe of Washington. The great newspapers which di- rected public conviction and action fifty years ago had very limit- ed circulation. They were almost invariably high in price, and necessarily accepted as a luxury only by the few who could afford it. Editorials in these leading journals were not regarded as
195
Pennsylvania Colonial and Federal
necessary excepting when some special occasion called for edi- torial utterance, and they often appeared with only a limited num- ber of editorial paragraphs, but their political leaders were written with the greatest care, and were always read by the leading men of the country with great respect and often with great deference. These journals did not reach the masses of the people, but they were read by the leaders of all parties, and thus by influencing the action of political leaders, largely controlled the convictions of the country. I remember when one of Gales's elaborate editorial lead- ers, polished and forceful as a Macaulay essay, arrested the atten- tion of the whole country, and was as carefully studied by the president of the United States as he studied the convictions of his constitutional advisers.
In Pennsylvania the greatest of these journals of that class was the United States Gazette because of the singularly elegant and forceful editorials which came from the pen of Joseph R. Chan- dler. The wonderful progress of journalism can be well judged when I state the fact that Mr. Chandler told me some years before his death, that in the early days of his management of the Gazette he did all the editorial work on the paper himself without an as- sistant in any department, and at one time taught private classes to help his newspaper along. He ranked with Joseph Gales as one of the most polished and impressive editorial writers of the age. Like all the journalists of that class, he was very conserv- ative, slow to advance, and the North American under the ener- getic direction of Morton McMichael became a very active com- petitor. It was the first daily journal in Philadelphia with an editorial staff that compared favorably with the staff of the best New York journals. With McMichael and Bird directly inter- ested in the enterprise, with Judge Conrad and John M. Clayton as regular editorial contributors, it is not surprising that the North American speedily distanced the conservative United States Gazette, and the result was the speedy union of the two papers by McMichael purchasing Chandler's paper, Chandler retiring.
196
David Rittenhouse Porter
Iron manufacturer; stock raiser; member State Legislature, 1819; State senator, 1836; gov- ernor, 1839-1845
Pennsylvania Journalism
With the new opportunities and duties brought by the Civil war, the Inquirer was reduced to two cents and published in at- tractive quarto form, and during the war it led all the Philadel- phia dailies in enterprise and circulation. Col. Forney retired from the Pennsylvanian before the election of Buchanan to the presidency in 1856, and his alienation from his old friend whom he had elected to the presidency by the most heroic political efforts in Pennsylvania, steadily widened after Buchanan's inauguration until 1857, when Forney finally and fully separated from Bu- chanan by establishing The Press to lead the opposition to the Kansas policy of the administration. The Press was established as a two-cent paper, and that had then become the standard price of the Philadelphia journals with the exception of the North American, which was continued as a large blanket sheet with its important commercial support at the old price of five cents per copy. Later it was lessened in form and the price reduced to three cents, and finally under the direction of Clayton Mc- Michael it was reduced to a penny. The Bulletin, established originally by Alexander Cummings, was the first of the important evening papers to be reduced to two cents, and it finally joined the procession of penny journalism. The Evening Telegraph, established by Warburton and Harding, had a most successful career as a three-cent evening family newspaper, but young War- burton, who succeeded his father, has enlarged its pages and re- duced it to a penny. The Inquirer was reorganized by the Elver- sons as a two-cent paper, but was speedily reduced to a penny. The Times was a very successful two-cent paper for ten years, and for fifteen years more as a penny paper, but it was finally merged with the Ledger, and the Ledger and the Press, the last of the two-cent papers, lately gave up the struggle and made the entire morning and evening newspapers of Philadelphia penny journals.
While the daily newspaper has advanced with marvellous strides in Pennsylvania during the last half century, and extended its circulation not only into every country town but into every
199
Pennsylvania Colonial and Federal
community, and thus apparently lessened the necessity for the in- crease of local journals, the growth of local journals has been startling. There is hardly a village in the State approaching a thousand in population, that has not one or more local newspapers, and in the towns of the State outside of the county towns, there are now published fully five hundred weekly newspapers of various kinds, with here and there a daily added. The patronage and in- fluence of these journals are almost exclusively limited to their re-
Ebensburg
From an old print issued about 1840
spective local communities, but when it is remembered that they each circulate from five hundred up to two thousand copies, and probably have an average circulation of nearly or quite one thou- sand, we find these purely local weekly newspapers a very impor- tant factor in the education of our people. A very few take pause to consider that the little local weekly away from the county towns issues not less than five hundred thousand newspapers each week, all of which are carefully read in their respective neighborhoods. They are generally built up by some enterprising printer who starts his weekly paper in a thriving town, does most of the work himself, and gradually establishes a business upon which he can live comfortably and educate his family.
This feature of Pennsylvania journalism is entirely the crea- tion of the last half a century, and most of it within the last twenty-five years. Most of these local weeklies are partisan
200
Pennsylvania Journalism
newspapers, and the attitude they assume in an important cam- paign in the State is an unerring index of the political trend among the people. When the ruling party of the State has an acceptable ticket, and is in good position to make a successful bat- tle, it has the hearty support of probably two-thirds or more of these local newspapers, but when factional war is developed in the county or district contests, the village weekly newspaper becomes a very important factor and fights the local battle with great earn- estness and power. The existence of a large majority of these newspapers is hardly known even in general newspaper circles, but they constitute a very important feature in the extraordinary progress that journalism has made in our great Commonwealth and they are certain to grow, as new towns are rapidly developed by our matchless industrial advancement.
The Sunday newspaper is a comparatively modern feature of American journalism, but it has forged to the front so rapidly that it is to-day the most widely read and influential of our newspaper publications. I well remember a half century ago when there was but one Sunday newspaper published from a regular daily newspaper office, and that was the New York Herald, by the elder James Gordon Bennett. He started the Herald as a penny free lance journal, but he was a very accomplished journalist, singu- larly fertile in his perception of newspaper progress, and when he advanced the Herald to the present size of its pages and published it daily and Sunday as a six-column folio, precisely the size of the present pages of that newspaper, he decided to issue it every day of the year. His Sunday paper was generally regarded by the journalism of the country as a degradation of the great profes- sion. There were Sunday weeklies in all of the great cities, and some of them attained considerable prominence, such as Noah's Weekly Messenger, and the Sunday Dispatch of New York, and the Sunday Dispatch of Philadelphia, but the general rule of the Sunday weekly journalism of that day was to indulge in offensive personalities and yellow sensationalism. The Herald, however,
201
Pennsylvania Colonial and Federal
had a very large independent class of readers, and its Sunday edi- tion was well maintained, but it differed in no respect from any other issue of the week. The Sunday Herald in its early days was simply a six column four page folio, and no attempt was made to add any literary or exceptional features to the Sunday paper.
During the Civil war a number of our newspapers were com- pelled at times to issue Sunday editions, but it was always done with an apology. The demand for detailed news of any impor- tant battle required them when exciting war news came Saturday evening or night, to issue an edition on Sunday morning. The first attempt to publish a Sunday journal in connection with a daily newspaper in Philadelphia was made by Col. Forney, who announced a regular Sunday edition of the Press. It was met with a storm of opposition from the churches and very many of our business men. Col. Forney met the assaults with a defiant vindication of the correctness of his position. While he made his Sunday edition of the Press reasonably profitable, he soon discov- ered that the Sunday issue was seriously affecting the business of his daily, and he finally gave up the contest and sold his Sunday issue to an outside party, by whom it was published for several years when the new ownership of the Press purchased it back again, and has since then published a regular Sunday edition.
After Col. Forney's unfortunate experiment no attempt was made to publish a Sunday newspaper as a regular edition of a morn- ing daily in Philadelphia until some twenty-five years ago, when the Times renewed the experiment. As I was then chief editor of that journal. I remember how carefully the management of The Times considered the question of issuing a regular Sunday edi- tion, and during more than a year preceding the issue the pub- lisher and myself had repeated conferences with ministers and business men. I remember meeting a number of committees of ministers who generally were very vehement in their opposition to a Sunday paper, protesting that it would degrade the attitude of The Times and do infinite harm to the public. I reminded
202
1
Pennsylvania Journalism
them that the work of the Sunday newspaper was almost wholly clone on a secular day of the week, while the work of the paper is- sued on Monday was done wholly on Sunday, and when I inquired whether any of them would be content to miss a paper on Monday morning, I found, as a rule, that while they objected to the Sunday paper the labor of which was done on Saturday, they would not dispense with the Monday paper, the entire labor of which was done on the Sabbath. We took great pains to disarm the pre- judice of the ministers and people generally who were opposed to Sunday newspapers by calling their attention to the fact that there were fully one hundred thousand copies of Sunday newspapers printed in Philadelphia, and that those journals, with a single ex- ception, that did not have one-fourth of the entire circulation, were of a most disreputable character, and were pouring out a steady stream of moral poison to the community. We argued that the people would read newspapers on Sunday, and that it was certainly important to give them a paper that they could read with profit on any day of the week, including the Sabbath. The result was that when The Times announced the publication of a Sunday issue it was not met with the same opposition that confronted Col. Forney, and it at once attained a very large circulation.
The opposition to Sunday journalism was not overcome, but it was greatly tempered by the efforts we had made to have it under- stand the true mission of a reputable Sunday newspaper, and the character of the Sunday issue of The Times was such that it could not be criticised as a visitor to any home in the land. Not- withstanding the success of the Sunday edition of The Times it was some years before more daily publishers ventured to issue a Sunday newspaper. The Press, under the editorial direction of Charles Emory Smith, was next to issue a Sunday paper, and it also attained a very large measure of success, as its five-cent Sun- day paper, far surpassing even the largest of the magazines in reading matter, more than doubled the circulation of the regular edition. The Record followed with a single sheet Sunday issue
203
Pennsylvania Colonial and Federal
at two cents a copy, which has now grown to a twenty-page illus- trated Sunday newspaper without increase of price, and has for many years enjoyed a circulation largely in excess of one hundred thousand. The Inquirer was next in line, and also achieved great success by a large illustrated Sunday edition, leaving the venerable
Neville B. Craig
Historian; editor; born 1787; died 1863. En- graved especially for this work from a photo- graph in possession of the Western University of Pennsylvania
North American and the next most venerable Public Ledger as the only two morning journals of the city, which were expected never to depart from the old rule of publishing a paper only on the secular days of the week, but young blood and energy suc- ceeded the old control of the paper, and the Sunday edition of the North American is now one of the most attractive and successful of our Sunday journals. The Ledger was the last to yield, but
204
Pennsylvania Journalism
new masters finally came to it, and the Sunday Ledger is sung out on the streets by the newsboys along with the Sunday editions of every morning newspaper published in Philadelphia. Pittsburg was behind Philadelphia in developing the great Sunday news- paper, but it is now issued from the office of every morning daily in that city, while a number of the inland dailies which are pub- lished in the morning instead of evening, also issue Sunday edi- tions.
The advent of the Sunday newspaper has wrought a revolu- tion in American journalism. Large as was the circulation of the leading dailies, the circulation of their Sunday editions is, as a rule, very much larger, and the Sunday newspaper reaches almost every home of ordinary intelligence in our cities, and reaches every inland town of the State. They are not only great newspapers, but they are complete magazines of the best literature of the country, besides exhibiting the very highest standard of art in their illustrations. The illustrations of the Sunday news- papers to-day surpass the illustrations of our best magazines, and they are given in bewildering abundance. Our great Sunday newspapers are not only high art publications, but they are com- plete newspapers with an infinite variety of the best literature, and to these are added special society, sporting, dramatic and other de- partments each of which is almost a newspaper within itself.
While the cheap daily newspaper has extended its circulation into every community of the State, the more costly Sunday news- paper has done more to educate the entire family of every home in which it enters in the matter of general reading than any other agent. It is yet assailed by most ministers and rigid churchmen, but on the other hand there are very many ministers who openly take and read the Sunday newspaper and defend it even in the pulpit as one of the best educators of the present age, and I hazard nothing in saying that the State and country are vastly better to- day because of the almost universal reading of the Sunday news- paper. In the densely populated sections of the country there are
205
Pennsylvania Colonial and Federal
none so blindly bigoted as to assume that the Sunday newspaper can ever be destroyed or even circumscribed. It has become one of the established features of our free government, and as a rule the Sunday newspaper is very much better reading for the family than that which most family readers would have on Sunday if the Sunday newspaper did not exist. While the hesitation in Eng- land to depart from old traditions opposes the publication of Sun-
Public Square, Carlisle
From Day's Historical Collections
day newspapers in Britain, the Sunday journal has become the universal favorite of American journalism, and the very best is- sues of each daily newspaper that issues a Sunday edition are pre- pared for the Sunday reader. The Sunday newspaper in Penn- sylvania and in the entire country, may be accepted not only as an established feature of our institutions, but as one of the most useful and beneficent of our secular educators.
We have reached the period in the wonderful progress of the great American Republic where the newspaper is the chief edu- cator of the people, and when it is remembered that the people are the sovereign power of our free government, their sources of edu- cation become of vital importance. It is complained that many of our newspapers are ribald and licentious, but taking Pennsyl- vania journalism as a whole, it maintains as high a standard of ex-
206
Pennsylvania Journalism
cellence in teaching as any other of the many agents which enter into the education of our people. The pulpit with all our many churches, teaches comparatively few, and the pulpit itself is not entirely free from the licentious sensationalism so often charged to the press, but none the less the pulpit is the first of our teachers in the better aims and efforts of human life. Next come our col- leges and schools, and although our common schools are open to the humblest, and found at almost every cross-roads, and educa- tion has been made compulsory by the laws of the State, the col- leges and schools do not reach one-half the people who are taught by the vast army of daily and weekly newspapers issued in Penn- sylvania. Thus with great dailies and Sunday editions in our cities reaching not less than half a million daily issues in Philadel- phia, and with like daily issues in Pittsburg, the large daily issues in all the inland cities and many of the towns, and with fully half a million of weekly newspapers issued in the villages each week, it is impossible to measure the influence of Pennsylvania journal- ism in moulding the convictions, purposes and actions of our peo- ple, and discounted by all its many imperfections, the free news- paper is one of the first attributes of our unexampled advancement in all that ennobles man and woman in the great free government that is now worshiped by eighty millions of people.
+
A. K. MCCLURE.
207
CHAPTER V.
MILITARY AFFAIRS
T HE military establishment of Pennsylvania dates its history from the year 1747, although the charter gave the governor authority to levy, muster and train men, and to make war upon and pursue an enemy, even beyond the limits of the province. Twenty years after the charter, in 1702, Lieutenant-Governor Hamilton asked the assembly to pass a bill for "providing what may come against us by land or by sea," but nothing was accom- plished under it in the way of organizing a militia force for the
public defense. Later on Lieutenant-Governor Evans repre- sented to the assembly the urgent need of enacting defensive laws in the form of militia regulations, and sent to that body the frame of an act for "establishing and regulating a militia," but his meas- ure was not received with favor and no action on it was taken. Like defeat also overtook subsequent bills proposed by the gov- ernor, although the assembly did occasionally vote appropriations for "the king's use," for the purchase of bread, beef, pork, flour, wheat and "other grain" for the maintenance of those who volun- tarily offered to bear arms in the defense of the province. The
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.