The Founder of the Herald died on the 1st of June, 1872, in the seventy-seventh year of his age. No journalist surpassed him in his profession. No journalist was more abused or more praised, during his public career, than he. But on his death the Newspaper Press every where paid him unusual but deserved honors. The New York Associated Press, which embraces the leading journals of the metropolis, thus spoke of him :

Resolved, That his long and eventful connection with the Newspaper Press of the country in a career of unexampled success and prosperity was the result of his great foresight, energy, and industry; that in all these qualities the example of Mr. Bennett inspired the greatest enterprise in journalism in the United States and throughout the world, and must, therefore, for all time, leave their impressions for good in the diffusion of knowledge and the advancement of the Press.

The funeral of the late proprietor of the Herald was a large and impressive one. Courts were adjourned and flags displayed at half

mast.

In no other instance was journalism so fully recognized as an important public institution as on this occasion. Among the pall-bearers were Horace Greeley, David M. Stone, Erastus Brooks, George W. Childs, Charles A. Dana, Robert Bonner, Major Bundy, George Jones, and Hugh Hastings.

The Herald is now owned by James Gordon Bennett, Jr. It is still a "one-man" power. It is therefore probable that, like the London Times, it will outlive all other papers in its usefulness and enterprise. It is a remarkable fact that none of the famous journals have survived more than one generation as leading papers. Their enterprise, and ability, and fame would pass away with their originators. Look at the instances recorded on these pages; and even the London Times begins to show signs of decline. But it is in its third generation. The New York Herald seems more vigorous than ever. It has just started on its second generation, full of brains, full of tact, and full of money. Has not its new conductor a splendid opportunity? Let us compare the Herald of to-day with the Herald of 1835. What a difference! Will not the Herald of 1909, compared with the Herald of 1872, show as marked a change? Nous

verrons.

The Press of New Orleans.

491

CHAPTER XXIX.

NEWSPAPERS IN NEW ORLEANS AND MOBILE.

THE INITIAL PAPERS OF THE CRESCENT CITY. - JOURNALISM IN FRENCH AND ENGLISH.-NEW ORLEANS BEE.-THE PICAYUNE.-GEORGE WILKINS KENDALL.- WAR CORRESPONDENCE FROM MEXICO.-DECLINE OF JOURNALISM IN NEW ORLEANS.-ITS CAUSE.-NEWSPAPER ARCHITECTURE.THE FIRST PAPER IN MOBILE.-NEWSPAPERS IN THAT CITY.-JOHN FOR

SYTH.

NEW ORLEANS is a news centre. It has always been an important place for journalism. It is situated just above the Delta, at the mouth of the Mississippi, which, on the authority of Sir Charles Lyell, has taken one hundred thousand years to form. Nearly all the commerce of the Mississippi Valley, to the extent of millions, has made that city its principal entrepôt. Most of the news from Mexico came through that port. When Texas attracted the eyes of the world, our intelligence from the Lone Star Republic reached us by the way of New Orleans. It has ever been a converging southern centre of commerce, news, fashion, sport, and politics. There Jackson and Farragut immortalized themselves and their country.

The first paper published in that section appeared in 1803, and was called the Moniteur, when the great Southwest belonged to France. It was printed by Fontaine. The first paper issued there, after the purchase of the territory of Napoleon, was the Louisiana Courier, in 1806, when that quarter of the continent was almost as little known as California was in 1846, or as Alaska is at the present day, and the Courier, or a paper of that name, was printed in New Orleans in French and English as late as 1848. French was the language spoken there at that early period. English slowly crept in with the spread of the Anglo-Saxon race. Newspapers were at first printed entirely in French, but subsequently in French and English. Nothing is more slowly accomplished than changing the language of a people. All the laws were printed in French, and it was only after the cession of the territory to the United States that American ideas began to migrate there, take root, spread, and bear fruit in pure Anglo-Saxon. Newspapers appeared as the teachers.

The New Orleans Bee, established in 1826, and still living, has been printed in both languages till 1872. One half of the sheet bore the title as above, in English; the other half was printed under the

head of L'Abeille de la Nouvelle Orleans. It is now printed exclusively in the French language. It is a large paper, and is conducted with spirit. In October, 1871, the Bee, then in its forty-fifth year, gave some interesting facts connected with the progress of journalism in the Crescent City, which are curious and full of philosophy. Notwithstanding the large aggregate increase of newspapers in the United States since 1847, the facts presented in New Orleans are to be seen in the statistics of the Press in other cities, even in the North, but only in the numbers of newspapers, and not in their circulation :

The marked decline of two great industrial interests in the United Statesthose of ship-building and gold-mining-afford the clearest evidence of the economic disorders that afflict the country, and in New Orleans we have another undeniable proof of the existence of those disorders in the decline of journalism.

In 1847 the following papers were published here daily: The Tropic, the Jeffersonian, the Courier, the Bee, the Bulletin, the Picayune, the Delta, the Crescent, and the Evening Mercury. Now there are published daily the Bulletin, the Bee, the Picayune, the Republican, and the Times. Thus, in 1847, there were nine daily papers printed in the city against five in 1871.

It might be supposed that the circulation of the five papers now published is greater than, or at least as great as, that of the nine published in 1847. Having been connected with the newspapers of 1847, with opportunities of knowing the issues of the journals then published, and with like opportunities at present, we feel warranted in saying that the circulation is certainly not greater than that of 1847, and it is very doubtful if it is so large.

With the growth of the city the demand for newspapers should have largely increased, instead of declining or remaining stationary. According to the United States census, the population of New Orleans in 1850 was 116,375. This only included the First, Second, and Third Districts. In 1852, the city of Lafayette, now Fourth District, was added, and Algiers and Jefferson City have been annexed since. The population of the two last-named suburbs in 1850 we have not the means of ascertaining, but that of Lafayette was 14,190. We think 135,000 is a full estimate of the inhabitants of the present area of the city at that time. And, referring to Lafayette, we are reminded that a daily paper, the name of which has escaped our memory, was also in existence there in 1847, which made the tenth daily printed at that time in the territory which is contained within the present limits of the city. The enumeration of inhabitants for 1870 is 191,000. No intelligent person, who has observed the growth of the city, regards that enumeration as correct. By such persons the number is believed to be nearer to 250,000 than it is to 200,000. But take it as the United States Marshal has returned it, at 191,000, and the increase of newspaper circulation should have been in the proportion of 135 to 191. But there are other reasons besides an increase of population for an increased newspaper circulation. By emancipation thousands of colored people, formerly living with their owners, have become independent householders, providing for their own wants and indulging their own tastes. Numbers of these colored people have acquired a knowledge of letters since the war began, and among the whites themselves the reading class has been greatly enlarged since 1847 by the establishment of public schools and free denominational schools. For these reasons, it is not too much to suppose that the reading capacity of the people between 1847 and 1870 doubled; yet, we repeat, there is no increase in the demand for journalism.

Why? In 1847, and for many years after, it was in the power of every sober and industrious head of a family-mechanic, clerk, drayman, and laborer, as well as the merchant, the capitalist, and the professional man, to pay for a daily paper. Now a whole neighborhood borrow a paper from the corner grocery. Pubňshers are compelled to charge twice as much as they did in 1847, and the people have scarcely half the ability to pay that they had then. Why? again, and the answer opens a wide survey for the reformer. It is because the masses, however industrious, economical, and sober they may be, can barely earn a subsistence. They

Franco-American Newspapers.

493

can indulge in no luxuries, and the newspaper, once deemed a necessity to an American citizen, has become a luxury, which can only be enjoyed by the sufferance of the man from whom he buys his tea and sugar. After he pays interest upon public debts, and after paying the enormous tax of a universal credit system, which is the inevitable result of public debts and paper currency, and which swells the cost of government as well as the cost of goods, he has nothing left except a pittance to feed and clothe himself and his family. And journalism is not an exceptional sufferer. Every branch of legitimate business suffers by laws or systems that impoverish the masses.

While the fact exists of the Franco-American papers in Louisiana, it is worthy of note that at another extreme border of the United States newspapers have to be printed in these two languages to meet the wants of our citizens there. L'Union Canadienne is published in Vergennes, Vermont, because of the irruption of the French Canadians in that locality. Another paper is printed in Burlington, Vermont, called L'Idée Nouvelle, with its matter in French and English in alternate columns. It is an annexation paper. There are three journals of this sort now printed in the Green Mountain State. There is a paper, the North Star, the most northern newspaper printed in the United States, published at Caribou, Maine. Its of fice is near the French and Swedish settlements, and departments in both languages are introduced.

Newspapers in German, French, Spanish, Welsh, Italian, Cherokee, Danish, Croatian, Chinese, Dutch, and Swedish are published in the United States. There are not less than four hundred foreign newspapers issued in this country. Those in German are numerous, with large circulation. It is estimated that over sixty thousand copies of these German newspapers find their way to Germany and circulate there, gradually sowing the seed of more liberal ideas among the Germans at home. Some of the German authors have, in consequence of this cheap circulation, at their own firesides, of their productions republished by these American-German papers, protested against their introduction in the German states. If Bismarck was less of a Republican, he would take this protest as an excuse for stopping this circulation of republican ideas inside of the North German Confederation.

The Picayune, printed entirely in English, has long been a representative paper in the Crescent City. It was originally a cheap, independent paper there, like the Penny Press at the North, and began a new era in journalism at the Southwest. It sold for a picayune a copy. Hence its name.

In the midst of the first cholera year in New York in 1832, Mr. Joseph Elliott, for many years the superintendent of the mechanical and publishing department of the Herald, was passing up Broadway, and met Mr. George Wilkins Kendall hurrying down that thoroughfare.

"What's your hurry, George?" asked Elliott.

"Oh, Joe, is that you? I'm off for New Orleans. You will die of cholera if you remain here. Come with me."

The two compositors parted-Elliott to go into the Sun office, and afterwards, in 1837, into the Herald office, where he has since remained, and Kendall, with his note-book full of jokes, to arrive in New Orleans, where, also in 1837, in company with Lumsden, he started the Picayune. With Kendall's short, humorous paragraphs, and genial tone and pleasant manners, the paper at once became attractive and popular, and has continued to be so ever since that period.

The Picayune first appeared on the 25th of January, 1837. It needed a good manager, as the Tribune and many other papers did in their early struggles, and the Picayune found one in Colonel A. M. Holbrook, who took charge of the establishment in June, 1839, and has had control of the concern from that month and year to the present time. The names of Lumsden & Kendall, and Lumsden, Kendall & Co., have since passed out of sight, and that of A. M. Holbrook alone now stands at the head of the paper.

The Picayune has had a great many contributors. Among others, and in addition to Kendall, there were Colonel S. F. Wilson, previously of the True Delta of that city and of the Mobile Register, Matthew C. Field, brother of J. M. Field, of the St. Louis Reveille, and Judge Alexander C. Bullitt, who was once connected with the New Orleans Bee, and afterwards with the Washington Republic. It was Bullitt, while editor of the Bee, who found it necessary to fight a duel before breakfast one August morning in 1839 with editor Wagner, of the Louisianian, in which neither was hurt. These were all accomplished writers and journalists. They are now no more. Colonel Wilson, just before his death in 1869, took the hand of Colonel Holbrook in his, and said, "You are the last of us!"

Of all the editorial corps of the Picayune, Kendall was probably the most widely known in connection with that paper. He never lost a joke, or a bit of wit, or scrap of humor, or a ray of sunshine. He had a keen appreciation of these pleasant, healthy elements of life and happiness. If a bright thought was uttered in his presence, he would "take a note of it" and "turn down a leaf." If a spark of wit flitted across his vision, Kendall would rescue it from oblivion. If any humor was in circulation in any social circle where he happened to be, he would treasure it up for future use. He became a Treasury of Wit. If the god of Wit and Humor had been in New Orleans when Kendall lived there, he would have crowned him with the brightest and gayest of flowers.

Kendall gave great character to the Picayune with his accounts of