idly followed each other, were episodes of no small proportions in the history of modern journalism. But time, with energy and perseverance, creating a revolution with the reading public, swept away all this rubbish and all these obstacles. In 1833 and '34 the "Penny Press" was an accomplished fact, and in 1835 the "Independent Press" was organized, and has since become a permanent and overshadowing institution in America.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE PENNY PRESS.

-

WHERE DID IT ORIGINATE?-THE CENT OF PHILADELPHIA.-THE MORNING POST OF NEW YORK.-DR. HORATIO D. SHEPARD AND HORACE GREELEY. -THE NEW YORK SUN. - SPEECH OF THE ORIGINATOR. THE MOON HOAX.-RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE.-ENTERPRISE OF THE SUN.-OPINION OF A "BLANKET SHEET" ON THE CHEAP PRESS. THE CITIZEN AND MILES O'REILLY.

THE Penny Press of America dates from 1833. There were small and cheap papers published in Boston and Philadelphia before and about that time. The Bostonian was one. The Cent, in Philadelphia, was another. The latter was issued by Christopher C. Cornwell in 1830. These and all similar adventures were not permanent. Most of them were issued by printers when they had nothing else to do. Still they belonged to the class of cheap papers. The idea came from the Illustrated Penny Magazine, issued in London in 1830, which was imported and sold in large quantities in New York and other cities, thus creating a taste for cheap literature in this country.

There were low-priced papers in England as early as 1706. The Orange Postman was established then, and sold for one cent. It was the Father of the Penny Press. Newspapers in this country run into subscription papers at a fixed price per year, and delivered to subscribers by mail or by regularly paid carriers employed by the newspaper publishers. Before the time of L'Estrange, in London, in 1665, there were newsboys and newswomen, as in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago now. They were condemned by L'Estrange in the Intelligencer. He, indeed, refused to employ them to sell his paper. In New York, newspapers were sold in places where the people mostly congregated in 1765; but the Press became, in the course of time, "blanket sheets" and "respectable sixpennies," mammoth folios of ridiculous dignity and limited circulation. Stone, and Webb, and Bryant, and Hale, and Hallock, and others, all over the country, following in the footsteps of L'Estrange, would only sell their "wares" over the counter, or deliver them by their regular carriers; and as late as 1850, as sensible and as practical a journalist as he was considered to be, Gerard Hallock boasted of an "increase of daily circulation of five hundred" in one year,

The First Penny Newspaper.

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which were ordered, he said with much unction, "without solicitation in a single instance." This, too, when the entire circulation of the Journal of Commerce was only 4500, in a city with a population of over half a million of active people. While the Sun, Herald, Tribune, and Times, established five to fifteen years later than the Journal of Commerce, run their circulation up to twenty, thirty, forty, and sixty thousand each in the same year, and to a much higher figure since then, the Journal of Commerce, on its old system of credit and carriers, is probably very little higher now than in 1850. But it is the last of the blanket sheets-the only paper of its class in existence in the metropolis.

The Morning Post was the first penny paper of any pretensions in the United States. It was started on New-Year's Day, 1833, as a two-cent paper, by Dr. Horatio David Shepard, with Horace Greeley and Francis V. Story as partners, printers, and publishers. With two hundred dollars capital, and a credit so doubtful that it would pass only at one place for $40 for type, the Post was issued, but the price was too high, in the unprepared state of the public mind, for the article offered for sale. According to Greeley's recollections of the enterprise, its capital and credit in brains was no larger than in money. Its circulation reached two or three hundred. After one week's trial, with the exhaustion of the capital, the original idea of Dr. Shepard, his dream of the previous year 1832 was attempted, and the price reduced to one cent; but it was too late. The concern was in debt; it had no mental resources to fall back upon, and, after the expiration of twenty-one days from the issue of the first number, the Morning Post ceased to exist.

This experiment, however, was the seed of the Cheap Press. It had taken root. On Tuesday, the 3d of September, in the same. year 1833, the first number of the Sun was issued by Benjamin H. Day, a printer, who had previously been connected with the Free Enquirer, the organ of Frances Wright and Robert Dale Owen. It became a permanent institution. Its motto with its first number was "E Pluribus Unum," which was displayed on a modest-looking spread eagle. "It shines for all" afterwards became its brilliant emblem. Its prospectus was brief and business-like :

AT 222 WILLIAM STREET

PUBLISHED DAILY,

BENJ. H. DAY, PRINTER.

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 medium for 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. vertising at the usual prices charged by the city papers.

Casual ad

Subscriptions will be received, if paid in advance, at the rate of three dollars per annum.

DD

The origin of the Sun has been told several times, and differently each time. It is probable that Mr. Day can give the truest version of its start in the world. In a speech at a dinner in 1851 to Colonel R. M. Hoe, the inventor of the famous "lightning press," the originator of this pioneer penny paper said:

It is true I originated the Sun, the first penny newspaper in America, and, as far as I have known, the first in the world. But I have always considered the circumstance as more the result of accident than any superior sagacity of mine. It was in 1832 that 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 3. 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 newspapers was very great. In 1835 I introduced steam power, now so necessary an appendage to almost every newspaper office. At that time all the Napier presses in the city were turned by crank-men, 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. Constant and vexatious complaints of the late delivery of the paper could not be avoided up to the time that I left the establishment, and I suppose these complaints continued until my friend here, the worthy guest in honor of whom we have assembled this evening, came forward with his great invention of setting types upon a cylinder, the success of which, I doubt not, has brought gladness to the hearts of a multitude of newspaper men. Mr. President, it is really not in my power to express sufficient admiration of the energy and genius which has brought about so stupendous an improvement, and I trust some more able voice than mine will do more justice to the merits of Colonel Hoe's wonderful invention, from which, I doubt not, will date an important era in the art of printing.

One cent continued to be its price per copy for thirty years, or till the recent rebellion, when, every thing advancing to so high a point, the Sun was doubled in price, and it will probably never again be a penny paper. Its first editor was named Benton. Not fully coming up to the mark, George W. Wisner was engaged. He was an improvement. He was limited to local matters, and, in accordance with the spirit of the Penny Press in its infancy, he relied largely on police reports and the coarse humor of the police courts for interesting matter for his columns. Wisner, according to the traditions of the printing-offices, was an intelligent, reliable man. After a year or two he removed to the West, where he became a prominent citizen of one of the new cities of America.

The Sun, its first number, with a circulation of three hundred, was made up of twelve columns, each ten inches long. Of these, four columns were of advertisements; one column embraced a "New York Bank-note Table," with "Barker's Ex." quoted "uncer.," which was, we believe, the late venerable Jacob Barker's Bank; there was one column of poetry, "A Noon Scene," which scene was laid in the country, on the meadows and in the woods, and not in Wall Street, among the excited bulls and bears of that day and that

The First Number of the Sun.

419

hour; two columns were given to anecdotes and a short story; a quarter of a column to the arrivals and clearances of vessels on the previous day, and the remainder was devoted to police and miscellaneous items.

Two lines indicated that Mexico was in as disturbed a condition as she is now, and that the troops of Montezuma had to leave San Luis Potosi in consequence of the cholera. One item stated that New York City was "nearly full of strangers from all parts of this country and Europe." There were four advertisements of "situations" and "servants" wanted. Now the Herald has a page or two of such advertisements. Mail-stages then run between Boston and Lynn, and one was robbed of $13,000. One thousand dollars reward was offered in the Sun for the thieves and money. Another paragraph described the indignation of the passengers on one of the Hartford steamers, compelling the captain to land the obnoxious Rev. Ephraim K. Avery, of Sarah Maria Cornell notoriety, at Middletown. J. Bleecker & Sons then sold real estate at auction. Another generation of the same family, A. J. Bleecker & Sons, now do the same thing, and largely too. The steam-boat Benjamin Franklin, Captain E. S. Bunker, then carried passengers "round the Point" between Providence and New York; the Commerce, Captain R. H. Fitch, run between Albany and New York; and the "splendid low-pressure steam-boat Water Witch, Captain Vanderbilt," did the same, and "through by daylight," between Hartford and New York: passage one dollar. Where are Bunker and Fitch now? Where is Vanderbilt? On "low pressure" or "high pressure?" What recollections these old papers bring up to one's mind! What a picture of the past! Then E. K. Collins advertised "the very fast-sailing coppered ship Nashville." Were the "lines" of the swift ocean steamers Pacific and Baltic, with their nine days' run across the Atlantic, then on his mind? The sixth annual fair of the American Institute was announced for the 15th of October, to be held at Masonic Hall, then opposite the old City Hospital, just above the City Hall Park, on Broadway. Of the ten managers mentioned not one is probably left, but the Institute still lives, with Horace Greeley as one of its bright lights. John A. Dix was then Secretary of State of New York, as appears by an advertisement giving notice of the annual state election.

Such was the first number of the first permanently established penny paper in New York or in the United States. It was evident that the publisher was not a journalist in the present acceptation of that comprehensive term. But he made no promises, and made no improvements except in fuller reports of local events and in the size of his paper, which was increased to make room for the busi