THE FIELD OF THE LITTLE “SUN”
_A Very Small Metropolis Which Day and His Partner, Wisner, Awoke
by Printing Small Human Pieces About Small Human Beings and
Having Boys Cry the Paper._
How far could the little _Sun_ hope to cast its beam in a stodgy if not
naughty world? The circulation of all the dailies in New York at the
time was less than thirty thousand. The seven morning and four evening
papers, all sold at six cents a copy, shared the field thus:
MORNING PAPERS
_Morning Courier and New York Enquirer_ 4,500
_Democratic Chronicle_ 4,000
New York _Standard_ 2,400
New York _Journal of Commerce_ 2,300
New York _Gazette and General Advertiser_ 1,500
New York _Daily Advertiser_ 1,400
_Mercantile Advertiser and New York Advocate_ 1,200
EVENING PAPERS
_Evening Post_ 3,000
_Evening Star_ 2,500
New York _Commercial Advertiser_ 2,100
New York _American_ 1,600
-----
Total 26,500
New York was the American metropolis, but it was of about the present
size of Indianapolis or Seattle. Of its quarter of a million
population, only eight or ten thousand lived above Twenty-third Street.
Washington Square, now the residence district farthest down-town, had
just been adopted as a park; before that it had been the Potter’s
Field. In 1833 rich New Yorkers were putting up some fine residences
there--of which a good many still stand. Sixth Street had had its name
changed to Waverley Place in honor of Walter Scott, recently dead, the
literary king of the day.
Wall Street was already the financial centre, with its Merchants’
Exchange, banks, brokers, and insurance companies. Canal Street
was pretty well filled with retail stores. Third Avenue had been
macadamized from the Bowery to Harlem. The down-town streets were
paved, and some were lighted with gas at seven dollars a thousand cubic
feet.
Columbia College, in the square bounded by Murray, Barclay, Church, and
Chapel Streets, had a hundred students; now it has more than a hundred
hundred. James Kent was professor of law in the Columbia of that day,
and Charles Anthon was professor of Greek and Latin. A rival seat of
learning, the University of the City of New York, chartered two years
earlier, was temporarily housed at 12 Chambers Street, with a certain
Samuel F. B. Morse as professor of sculpture and painting. There
were twelve schools, harbouring six thousand pupils, whose welfare
was guarded by the Public School Society of New York, Lindley Murray
secretary. The National Academy of Design, incorporated five years
before, guided the budding artist in Clinton Hall, and Mr. Morse was
its president, while it had for its professor of mythology one William
Cullen Bryant.
Albert Gallatin was president of the National Bank, at 13 Wall Street.
Often at the end of his day’s work he would walk around to the
small shop in William Street where his young friend Delmonico, the
confectioner, was trying to interest the gourmets of the city in his
French cooking. Gideon Lee, besides being mayor, was president of
the Leather Manufacturers’ Bank at 334 Pearl Street. He was the last
mayor of New York to be appointed by the common council, for Dix’s
advertisement in the first _Sun_ called an election by which the people
of the city gained the right to elect a mayor by popular vote.
A list of the solid citizens of the New York of that year would
include Peter Schermerhorn, Nicholas Fish, Robert Lenox, Sheppard
Knapp, Samuel Swartwout, Henry Beekman, Henry Delafield, John Mason,
William Paulding, David S. Kennedy, Jacob Lorillard, David Lydig,
Seth Grosvenor, Elisha Riggs, John Delafield, Peter A. Jay, C. V. S.
Roosevelt, Robert Ray, Preserved Fish, Morris Ketchum, Rufus Prime,
Philip Hone, William Vail, Gilbert Coutant, and Mortimer Livingston.
These men and their fellows ran the banks and the big business of
that day. They read the six-cent papers, mostly those which warned
the public that Andrew Jackson was driving the country to the devil.
It would be years before the _Sun_ would bring the light of common,
everyday things into their dignified lives--if it ever did so. Day,
the printer, did not look to them to read his paper, although he hoped
for some small part of their advertising. It is likely that one of the
Gouverneurs--Samuel L.--read the early _Sun_, but he was postmaster,
and it was his duty to examine new and therefore suspicionable
publications.
Incidentally, Postmaster Gouverneur had one clerk to sort all the mail
that came into the city from the rest of the world. It was a small
New York upon which the timid _Sun_ cast its still smaller beams. The
mass of the people had not been interested in newspapers, because the
newspapers brought nothing into their lives but the drone of American
and foreign politics. A majority of them were in sympathy with Tammany
Hall, particularly since 1821, when the property qualification was
removed from the franchise through Democratic effort.
New York had literary publications other than the six-cent papers. The
_Knickerbocker Magazine_ was founded in January of 1833, with Charles
Hoffman, assistant editor of the _American Magazine_, as editor.
Among the contributors engaged were William Cullen Bryant and James
K. Paulding. The subscription-list, it was proudly announced, had
no fewer than eight hundred names on it. The _Mechanics’ Magazine_,
the _Sporting Magazine_, the _American Ploughboy_, the _Journal of
Public Morals_, and the _Youth’s Temperance Lecturer_ were among the
periodicals that contended for public favour.
Bryant was a busy man, for he was the chief editor of the _Evening
Post_ as well as a magazine contributor and a teacher. Fame had come to
him early, for “Thanatopsis” was published when he was twenty-three,
and “To a Water-fowl” appeared a year later, in 1818. Now, in his
thirties, he was no longer the delicate youth, the dreamy poet. One
April day in 1831 Bryant and William L. Stone, one of the editors of
the _Commercial Advertiser_, had a rare fight in front of the City
Hall, the poet beginning it with a cowskin whip swung at Stone’s head,
and the spectators ending it after Stone had seized the whip. These two
were editors of sixpenny “respectables.”
[Illustration:
THE FIRST HOME OF “THE SUN,” 222 WILLIAM STREET
(_Under the Arrow_)
]
[Illustration:
THE SECOND HOME OF “THE SUN”
Nassau Street, from Frankfort to Spruce, in the Early Forties.
“The Sun’s” Second Home Is Shown at the Right End of the Block.
The Tammany Hall Building Became “The Sun’s” Fourth Home in
1868.
]
Irving and Cooper, Bryant and Halleck, Nathaniel P. Willis and George
P. Morris were the largest figures of intellectual New York. In 1833
Irving returned from Europe after a visit that had lasted seventeen
years. He was then fifty, and had written his best books. Cooper,
half a dozen years younger, had long since basked in the glory that
came to him with the publication of “The Spy,” “The Pilot,” and “The
Last of the Mohicans.” He and Irving were guests at every cultured
function.
Prescott was finishing his first work, “The History of Ferdinand and
Isabella.” Bancroft was beginning his “History of the United States.”
George Ticknor had written his “Life of Lafayette.” Hawthorne had
published only “Fanshawe” and some of the “Twice Told Tales.” Poe was
struggling along in Baltimore. Holmes, a medical student, had written a
few poems. Dr. John William Draper, later to write his great “History
of the Intellectual Development of Europe,” arrived from Liverpool that
year to make New York his home.
Longfellow was professor of modern languages at Bowdoin, and unknown to
fame as a poet. Whittier had written “Legends of New England” and “Moll
Pitcher.” Emerson was in England. Richard Henry Dana and Motley were at
Harvard. Thoreau was helping his father to make lead-pencils. Parkman,
Lowell, and Herman Melville were schoolboys.
Away off in Buffalo was a boy of fourteen who clerked in his uncle’s
general store by day, selling steel traps to Seneca braves, and by
night read Latin, Greek, poetry, history, and the speeches of Andrew
Jackson. His name was Charles Anderson Dana.
The leading newspaperman of the day in New York was James Watson Webb,
a son of the General Webb who held the Bible upon which Washington took
the oath of office as first President. J. Watson Webb had been in the
army and, as a journalist, was never for peace at any price. He united
the _Morning Courier_ and the _Enquirer_, and established a daily
horse express between New York and Washington, which is said to have
cost seventy-five hundred dollars a month, in order to get news from
Congress and the White House twenty-four hours before his rivals.
Webb was famed as a fighter. He had a row with Duff Green in Washington
in 1830. In January, 1836, he thrashed James Gordon Bennett in Wall
Street. He incited a mob to drive Wood, a singer, from the stage
of the Park Theater. In 1838 he sent a challenge to Representative
Cilley, of Maine, a classmate of Longfellow and Hawthorne at Bowdoin.
Cilley refused to fight, on the ground that he had made no personal
reflections on Webb’s character; whereupon Representative Graves, of
Kentucky, who carried the card for Webb, challenged Cilley for himself,
as was the custom. They fought with rifles on the Annapolis Road, and
Cilley was killed at the third shot.
In 1842 Webb fought a duel with Representative Marshall, of Kentucky,
and not only was wounded, but on his return to New York was sentenced
to two years in prison “for leaving the State with the intention of
giving or receiving a challenge.” At the end of two weeks, however, he
was pardoned.
Having deserted Jackson and become a Whig, Webb continued to own and
edit the _Courier and Enquirer_ until 1861, when it was merged with the
_World_. His quarrels, all of political origin, brought prestige to his
paper. Ben Day had no duelling-pistols. His only chance to advertise
the _Sun_ was by its own light and its popular price.
Beyond Webb, Day had no lively journalist with whom to contend at the
outset, and Webb probably did not dream that the _Sun_ would be worthy
of a joust. Perhaps fortunately for Day, Horace Greeley had just
failed in his attempt to run a one-cent paper. This was the _Morning
Post_, which Greeley started in January, 1833, with Francis V. Story, a
fellow printer, as his partner, and with a capital of one hundred and
fifty dollars. It ran for three weeks only.
Greeley and Story still had some type, bought on credit, and they
issued a tri-weekly, the _Constitutionalist_, which, in spite of its
dignified title, was the avowed organ of the lotteries. Its columns
contained the following card:
Greeley & Story, No. 54 Liberty Street, New York, respectfully
solicit the patronage of the public to their business of
letterpress printing, particularly lottery-printing, such as
schemes, periodicals, and so forth, which will be executed on
favorable terms.
It must be remembered that at that time lotteries were not under a
cloud. There were in New York forty-five lottery offices, licensed at
two hundred and fifty dollars apiece annually, and the proceeds were
divided between the public schools and a home for deaf-mutes. That was
the last year of legalized lotteries. After they disappeared Greeley
started the _New Yorker_, the best literary weekly of its time. It was
not until April, 1841, that he founded the _Tribune_.
Doubtless there were many young New Yorkers of that period who would
have made bang-up reporters, but apparently, until Day’s time, with few
exceptions they did not work on morning newspapers. One exception was
James Gordon Bennett, whose work for Webb on the _Courier and Enquirer_
helped to make it the leading American paper.
Nathaniel P. Willis and George P. Morris would probably have been good
reporters, for they knew New York and had excellent styles, but they
insisted on being poets. With Morris it was not a hollow vocation,
for the author of “Woodman, Spare That Tree,” could always get fifty
dollars for a song. He and Willis ran the _Mirror_ and later the _New
Mirror_, and wrote verse and other fanciful stuff by the bushel. Philip
Hone would have been the best reporter in New York, as his diary
reveals, but he was of the aristocracy, and he seems to have scorned
newspapermen, particularly Webb and Bennett.
But somehow, by that chance which seemed to smile on the _Sun_, Ben
Day got clever reporters. He wanted one to do the police-court work,
for he saw, from the first day of the paper, that that was the kind
of stuff that his readers devoured. To them the details of a beating
administered by James Hawkins to his wife were of more import than
Jackson’s assaults on the United States Bank.
When George W. Wisner, a young printer who was out of work, applied to
the _Sun_ for a job, Day told him that he would give him four dollars
a week if he would get up early every day and attend the police-court,
which held its sessions from 4 A.M. on. The people of the city were
quite as human then as they are to-day. Unregenerate mortals got drunk
and fought in the streets. Others stole shoes. The worst of all beat
their wives. Wisner was to be the Balzac of the daybreak court in a
year when Balzac himself was writing his “Droll Stories.”
The second issue of the _Sun_ continued the typographical error of the
day before. The year in the date-line of the second page was “1832.”
The big news in this paper was under date of Plymouth, England, August
1, and it told of the capture of Lisbon by Admiral Napier on the 25th
of July. Day--or perhaps it was Wisner--wrote an editorial article
about it:
To us as Americans there can be little of interest in the
triumph of one member of a royal family of Europe over another;
and although we can but rejoice at the downfall of the modern
Nero who so lately filled the Portuguese throne, yet if rumor
speak the truth the victorious Pedro is no better than he
should be.
The editor lamented the general lack of news:
With the exception of the interesting news from Portugal there
appears to be very little worthy of note. Nullification has
blown over; the President’s tour has terminated; Black Hawk has
gone home; the new race for President is not yet commenced, and
everything seems settled down into a calm. Dull times, these,
for us newspaper-makers. We wish the President or Major Downing
or some other distinguished individual would happen along again
and afford us material for a daily article. Or even if the
sea-serpent would be so kind as to pay us a visit, we should be
extremely obliged to him and would honor his snakeship with a
most tremendous puff.
Theatrical advertising appeared in this number, the Park Theater
announcing the comedy of “Rip Van Winkle,” as redramatized by Mr.
Hackett, who played _Rip_. Mr. Gale was playing “Mazeppa” at the
Bowery. Perhaps these advertisements were borrowed from a six-cent
paper, but there was one “help wanted” advertisement that was not
borrowed. It was the upshot of Day’s own idea, destined to bring
another revolution in newspaper methods:
TO THE UNEMPLOYED--A number of steady men can find employment
by vending this paper. A liberal discount is allowed to those
who buy to sell again.
Before that day there had been no newsboys; no papers were sold in
the streets. The big, blanket political organs that masqueraded as
newspapers were either sold over the counter or delivered by carriers
to the homes of the subscribers. Most of the publishers considered it
undignified even to angle for new subscribers, and one of them boasted
that his great circulation of perhaps two thousand had come unsolicited.
The first unemployed person to apply for a job selling _Suns_ in the
streets was a ten-year-old-boy, Bernard Flaherty, born in Cork. Years
afterward two continents knew him as Barney Williams, Irish comedian,
hero of “The Emerald Ring,” and “The Connie Soogah,” and at one time
manager of Wallack’s old Broadway Theatre.
When Day got some regular subscribers, he sent carriers on routes. He
charged them sixty-seven cents a hundred, cash, or seventy-five cents
on credit. The first of these carriers was Sam Messenger, who delivered
the _Sun_ in the Fulton Market district, and who later became a rich
livery-stable keeper. Live lads like these, carrying out Day’s idea,
wrought the greatest change in journalism that ever had been made,
for they brought the paper to the people, something that could not
be accomplished by the six-cent sheets with their lofty notions and
comparatively high prices.
On the third day of the _Sun’s_ life, with Wisner at the pen and
Barney Flaherty “hollering” in the startled streets, the editor again
expressed, this time more positively, his yearning that something would
happen:
We newspaper people thrive best on the calamities of others.
Give us one of your real Moscow fires, or your Waterloo
battle-fields; let a Napoleon be dashing with his legions
through the world, overturning the thrones of a thousand years
and deluging the world with blood and tears; and then we of the
types are in our glory.
The yearner had to wait thirty years for another Waterloo, but he got
his “real Moscow fire” in about two years, and so close that it singed
his eyebrows.
Lacking a Napoleon to exalt or denounce, Mr. Day used a bit of that
same page for the publication of homelier news for the people:
The following are the drawn numbers of the New York
consolidated lotteries of yesterday afternoon:
62 6 59 46 61 34 65 37 8 42
So Horace Greeley and his partner, with their tri-weekly paper, could
not have been keeping all of the lottery patronage away from the _Sun_.
Over in the police column Mr. Wisner was supplying gems like the
following:
A complaint was made by several persons who “thought it no sin
to step to the notes of a sweet violin” and gathered under a
window in Chatham Street, where a little girl was playing on a
violin, when they were showered from a window above with the
contents of a dye-pot or something of like nature. They were
directed to ascertain their showerer.
The big story on the first page of the fourth issue of the _Sun_ was a
conversation between _Envy_ and _Candor_ in regard to the beauties of
a Miss H., perhaps a fictitious person. But on the second page, at the
head of the editorial column, was a real editorial article approving
the course of the British government in freeing the slaves in the West
Indies:
We supposed that the eyes of men were but half open to this
case. We imagined that the slave would have to toil on for
years and _purchase_ what in justice was already _his own_.
We did not once dream that light had so far progressed as to
prepare the British nation for the colossal stride in justice
and humanity and benevolence which they are about to make.
The abolition of West Indian slavery will form a brilliant
era in the annals of the world. It will circle with a halo of
imperishable glory the brows of the transcendent spirits who
wield the present destinies of the British Empire.
Would to Heaven that the honor of leading the way in this
godlike enterprise had been reserved to our own country! But as
the opportunity for this is passed, we trust we shall at least
avoid the everlasting disgrace of long refusing to imitate so
bright and glorious an example.
Thus the _Sun_ came out for the freedom of the slave twenty-eight years
before that freedom was to be accomplished in the United States through
war. The _Sun_ was the _Sun_ of Day, but the hand was the hand of
Wisner. That young man was an Abolitionist before the word was coined.
“Wisner was a pretty smart young fellow,” said Mr. Day nearly fifty
years afterward, “but he and I never agreed. I was rather Democratic in
my notions. Wisner, whenever he got a chance, was always sticking in
his damned little Abolitionist articles.”
There is little doubt that Wisner wrote the article facing the _Sun_
against slavery while he was waiting for something to turn up in the
police-court. Then he went to the office, set up the article, as well
as his piece about the arrest of Eliza Barry, of Bayard Street, for
stealing a wash-tub, and put the type in the form. Considering that
Wisner got four dollars a week for his break-o’-day work, he made
a very good morning of that; and it is worthy of record that the
next day’s _Sun_ did not repudiate his assault on human servitude,
although on September 10 Mr. Day printed an editorial grieving over the
existence of slavery, but hitting at the methods of the Abolitionists.
These early issues were full of lively little “sunny” pieces, for
instance:
Passing by the Beekman Street church early this morning, we
discovered a milkman replenishing his lacteous cargo with
Adam’s ale. We took the liberty to ask him, “Friend, why do ye
do thus?” He replied, “None of your business”; and we passed
on, determined to report him to the Grahamites.
A poem on Burns, by Halleck--perhaps reprinted from one of the author’s
published volumes of verse--added literary tone to that morning’s _Sun_.
In the next issue was some verse by Willis, beginning:
Look not upon the wine when it
Is red within the cup!
Then, and for some years afterward, the _Sun_ exhibited a special
aversion to alcohol in text and head-lines. “Cursed Effects of Rum!”
was one of its favourite head-lines.
The _Sun_ was a week old before it contained dramatic criticism, its
first subject in that field being the appearance of Mr. and Mrs. Wood
at the Park Theatre in “Cinderella,” a comic opera. The paper’s first
animal story was printed on September 12, recording the fact that on
the previous Sunday about sixty wild pigeons stayed in a tree at the
Battery nearly half an hour.
On September 14 the _Sun_ printed its first illustration--a two-column
cut of “Herschel’s Forty-Feet Telescope.” This was Sir W. Herschel,
then dead some ten years, and the telescope was on his grounds at
Slough, near Windsor, England. Another knighted Herschel with another
telescope in a far land was to play a big part in the fortunes of the
_Sun_, but that comes later. In the issue with the cut of the telescope
was a paragraph about a rumour that Fanny Kemble, who had just
captivated American theatregoers, had been married to Pierce Butler, of
Philadelphia--as, indeed, she had.
Broadway seems to have had its lure as early as 1833, for in the _Sun_
of September 17, on the first page, is a plaint by “Citizen”:
They talk of the pleasures of the country, but would to God I
had never been persuaded to leave the labor of the city for
such woful pleasures. Oh, Broadway, Broadway! In an evil hour
did I forsake thee for verdant walks and flowery landscapes
and that there tiresome piece of made water. What walk is so
agreeable as a walk through the streets of New York? What
landscape more flowery than those of the print-shops? And what
water was made by man equal to the Hudson?
This was followed by uplifting little essays on “Suicide” and
“Robespierre.” The chief news of the day--that John Quincy Adams had
accepted a nomination from the Anti-Masons--was on an inside page.
What was possibly of more interest to the readers, it was announced
that thereafter a ton of coal would be two thousand pounds instead
of twenty-two hundred and forty--Lackawanna, broken and sifted, six
dollars and fifty cents a ton.
On Saturday, September 21, when it was only eighteen days old, the
_Sun_ adopted a new head-line. The letters remained the same, but
the eagle device of the first issue was supplanted by the solar orb
rising over hills and sea. This design was used only until December 2,
when its place was taken by a third emblem--a printing-press shedding
symbolical effulgence upon the earth.
The _Sun’s_ first book-notice appeared on September 23, when it
acknowledged the sixtieth volume of the “Family Library” (Harpers),
this being a biography of Charlemagne by G. P. R. James. “It treats of
a most important period in the history of France.” The _Sun_ had little
space then for book-reviews or politics. Of its attitude toward the
great financial fight then being waged, this lone paragraph gives a
good view:
The _Globe_ of Monday contains in six columns the reasons which
prompted the President to remove the public deposits from the
United States Bank, which were read to his assembled cabinet on
the 18th instant.
Nicholas Biddle and his friends could fill other papers with arguments,
but the _Sun_ kept its space for police items, stories of authenticated
ghosts, and yarns about the late Emperor Napoleon. The removal of
William J. Duane as Secretary of the Treasury got two lines on a page
where a big shark caught off Barnstable got three lines, and the
feeding of the anaconda at the American Museum a quarter of a column.
Miss Susan Allen, who bought a cigar on Broadway and was arrested
when she smoked it while she danced in the street, was featured more
prominently than the expected visit to New York of Mr. Henry Clay,
after whom millions of cigars were to be named. For the satisfaction of
universal curiosity it must be reported that Miss Allen was discharged.
On October 1 of that same year--1833--the _Sun_ came out for better
fire-fighting apparatus, urging that the engines should be drawn by
horses, as in London. In the same issue it assailed the gambling-house
in Park Row, and scorned the allegation of Colonel Hamilton, a British
traveller, that the tooth-brush was unknown in America. Slowly the
paper was getting better, printing more local news; and it could afford
to, for the penny _Sun_ idea had taken hold of New York, and the sales
were larger every week.
Wisner was stretching the police-court pieces out to nearly two
columns. Now and then, perhaps when Mr. Day was away fishing, the
reporter would slip in an Abolition paragraph or a gloomy poem on the
horrors of slavery. But he was so valuable that, while his chief did
not raise his salary of four dollars a week, he offered him half the
paper, the same to be paid for out of the profits. And so, in January
of 1834, Wisner became a half-owner of the _Sun_. Benton, another _Sun_
printer, also wanted an interest, and left when he could not get it.
Before it was two months old the _Sun_ had begun to take an interest
in aeronautics. It printed a full column, October 16, 1833, on the
subject of Durant’s balloon ascensions, and quoted Napoleon as saying
that the only insurmountable difficulty of the balloon in war was the
impossibility of guiding its course. “This difficulty Dr. Durant is now
endeavoring to obviate.” And the _Sun_ added:
May we not therefore look to the time, in perspective, when
our atmosphere will be traversed with as much facility as our
waters?
In the issue of October 17 a skit, possibly by Mr. Day himself, gave a
picture of the trials of an editor of the period:
SCENE--An editor’s closet--editor solus.
“Well, a pretty day’s work of it I shall make. News, I have
nothing--politics, stale, flat, and unprofitable--miscellany,
enough of it--miscellany bills payable, and a miscellaneous
list of subscribers with tastes as miscellaneous as the tongues
of Babel. Ha! Footsteps! Drop the first person singular and
don the plural. WE must now play the editor.”
(Enter Devil)--“Copy, sir!”
(Enter A.)--“I missed my paper this morning, sir, I don’t want
to take it--”
(Enter B.)--“There is a letter ‘o’ turned upside down in my
advertisement this morning, sir! I--I--”
(Enter C.)--“You didn’t notice my new work, my treatise on a
flea, this morning, sir! You have no literary taste! Sir--”
(Enter D.)--“Sir, your boy don’t leave my paper, sir--I live in
a blind alley; you turn out of ---- Street to the right--then
take a left-hand turn--then to the right again--then go under
an arch--then over a kennel--then jump a ten-foot fence--then
enter a door--then climb five pair of stairs--turn fourteen
corners--and you can’t miss my door. I want your boy to leave
my paper first--it’s only a mile out of his way--if he don’t,
I’ll stop--”
(Enter E.)--“Sir, you have abused my friend; the article
against Mr. ---- as a candidate is intolerable--it is
scandalous--I’ll stop my paper--I’ll cane you--I’ll--”
(Enter F.)--“Mr. Editor, you are mealy-mouthed, you lack
independence, your remarks upon Mr. ----, the candidate for
Congress, are too tame. If you don’t put it on harder I’ll stop
my--”
(Enter G.)--“Your remarks upon profane swearing are personal,
d----n you, sir, you mean me--before I’ll patronize you longer
I’ll see you in ----”
(Enter H.)--“Mr. ----, we are very sorry you do not say more
against the growing sin of profanity. Unless you put your veto
on it more decidedly, no man of correct moral principles will
give you his patronage--I, for one--”
(Enter I.)--“Bad luck to the dirty sowl of him, where does he
keep himself? By the powers, I’ll strike him if I can get at
his carcass, and I’ll kick him anyhow! Why do you fill your
paper with dirty lies about Irishmen at all?”
(Enter J.)--“Why don’t you give us more anecdotes and
sich, Irish stories and them things--I don’t like the long
speeches--I--”
(Devil)--“Copy, sir!”
The day after this evidence of unrest appeared the _Sun_ printed,
perhaps with a view to making all manner of citizens gnash their teeth,
a few extracts from the narrative of Colonel Hamilton, “the British
traveler in America”:
In America there are no bells and no chambermaids.
I have heard, since my arrival in America, the toast of “a
bloody war in Europe” drank with enthusiasm.
The whole population of the Southern and Western States are
uniformly armed with daggers.
At present an American might study every book within the limits
of the Union and still be regarded in many parts of Europe,
especially in Germany, as a man comparatively ignorant.
The editorial suggested that the colonel “had better look wild for the
lake that burns with fire and brimstone.”
The union printers were lively even in the first days of the _Sun_,
which announced, on October 21, 1833, that the _Journal of Commerce_
paid its journeymen only ten dollars a week, and added:
The proprietors of other morning papers cheerfully pay twelve
dollars. Therefore, the office of the _Journal of Commerce_
is what printers term a rat office--and the term “rat,” with
the followers of the same profession with Faust, Franklin, and
Stanhope, is a most odious term.
The “pork-barrel” was foreshadowed in an item printed when the _Sun_
was just a month old:
At the close of the present year the Treasury of the nation
will contain twelve million dollars. This rich and increasing
revenue will probably be a bone of contention at the next
session of Congress.
At the end of its first month the _Sun_ was getting more and more
advertising. Its news was lively enough, considering the times. Rum,
the cholera in Mexico, assassinations in the South, the police-court,
the tour of Henry Clay, and poems by Walter Scott were its long suit.
The circulation of the little paper was now about twelve hundred
copies, and the future seemed promising, even if Mr. Day did print,
at suspiciously frequent intervals, articles inveighing against the
debtor’s-prison law.
The Astor House--now half a ruin--was at first to be called the Park
Hotel, for the _Sun_ of October 29, 1833, announced editorially:
THE PARK HOTEL--Mr. W. B. Astor gives notice that he will
receive proposals for building the long-contemplated hotel in
Broadway, between Barclay and Vesey Streets.
An advertisement which the _Sun_ saw fit to notice editorially
was inserted by a young man in search of a wife--“a young woman
who understands the use of the needle, and who is willing to be
industrious.” The editorial comment was:
The advertisement was handed to us by a respectable-looking
young man, and of course we could not refuse to publish
it--though if we were in want of a wife we think we should take
a different course to obtain one.
Sometimes the police items, flecked with poetry, and presumably written
by Wisner, were tantalizingly reticent, as:
Maria Jones was accused of stealing clothing, and committed.
Certain affairs were developed of rather a singular and comical
nature in relation to her.
Nothing more than that. Perhaps Wisner rather enjoyed being questioned
by admiring friends when he went to dinner at the American House that
day.
Bright as the police reporter was, the ship-news man of that day lacked
snap. The arrival from Europe of James Fenimore Cooper, who could have
told the _Sun_ more foreign news than it had ever printed, was disposed
of in twelve words. But it must be remembered that the interview was
then unknown. The only way to get anything out of a citizen was to
enrage him, whereupon he would write a letter. But the _Sun_ did say, a
couple of days later, that Cooper’s newest novel, “The Headsman,” was
being sold in London at seven dollars and fifty cents a copy--no doubt
in the old-fashioned English form, three volumes at half a guinea each.
The _Sun_ blew its own horn for the first time on November 9, 1833:
Its success is now beyond question, and it has exceeded
the most sanguine anticipations of its publishers in its
circulation and advertising patronage. Scarcely two months
has it existed in the typographical firmament, and it has a
daily circulation of upward of two thousand copies, besides
a steadily increasing advertising patronage. Although of a
character (we hope) deserving the encouragement of all classes
of society, it is more especially valuable to those who cannot
well afford to incur the expense of subscribing to a “blanket
sheet” and paying ten dollars per annum.
In conclusion we may be permitted to remark that the penny
press, by diffusing useful knowledge among the operative
classes of society, is effecting the march of intelligence
to a greater degree than any other mode of instruction.
The same article called attention to the fact that the “penny” papers
of England were really two-cent papers. The _Sun’s_ price had been
announced as “one penny” on the earliest numbers, but on October 8,
when it was a little more than a month old, the legend was changed to
read “Price one cent.”
[Illustration:
_From the Collection of Charles Burnham_
BARNEY WILLIAMS, THE COMEDIAN, WHO WAS THE FIRST NEWSBOY OF
“THE SUN”
]
The _Sun_ ran its first serial in the third month of its existence.
This was “The Life of Davy Crockett,” dictated or authorized by the
frontiersman himself. It must have been a relief to the readers to get
away from the usual dull reprint from foreign papers that had been
filling the _Sun’s_ first page. In those days the first pages were
always the dullest, but Crockett’s lively stories about bear-hunts
enlivened the _Sun_.
Other celebrities were often mentioned. Aaron Burr, now old and feeble,
was writing his memoirs. Martin Van Buren had taken lodgings at the
City Hotel. The Siamese Twins were arrested in the South for beating
a man. “Mr. Clay arrived in town last evening and attended the new
opera.” This was “Fra Diavolo,” in which Mr. and Mrs. Wood sang at the
Park Theatre. “It is said that Dom Pedro has dared his brother Miguel
to single combat, which has been refused.” A week later the _Sun_
gloated over the fact that Pedro--Pedro I of Brazil, who was invading
Portugal on behalf of his daughter, Maria da Gloria--had routed the
usurper Miguel’s army.
On December 5, 1833, the _Sun_ printed the longest news piece it had
ever put in type--the message of President Jackson to the Congress.
This took up three of the four pages, and crowded out nearly all the
advertising.
On December 17, in the fourth month of its life, the _Sun_ announced
that it had procured “a machine press, on which one thousand
impressions can be taken in an hour. The daily circulation is now
nearly FOUR THOUSAND.” It was a happy Christmas for Day and Wisner. The
_Sun_ surely was shining!
The paper retained its original size and shape during the whole of
1834, and rarely printed more than four pages. As it grew older, it
printed more and more local items and developed greater interest
in local affairs. The first page was taken up with advertising and
reprint. A State election might have taken place the day before, but on
page 1 the _Sun_ worshippers looked for a bit of fiction or history.
What were the fortunes of William L. Marcy as compared to a two-column
thriller, “The Idiot’s Revenge,” or “Captain Chicken and Gentle Sophia”?
The head-lines were all small, and most of them italics. Here are
samples:
_INGRATITUDE OF A CAT._
_PERSONALITY OF NAPOLEON._
_WONDERFUL ANTICS OF FLEAS._
_BROUGHT TO IT BY RUM._
The news paragraphs were sometimes models of condensation:
PICKPOCKETS--On Friday night a Gentleman lost $100 at the Opera
and then $25 at Tammany Hall.
The Hon. Daniel Webster will leave town this morning for
Washington.
John Baker, the person whom we reported a short time since
as being brought before the police for stealing a ham, died
suddenly in his cell in Bellevue in the greatest agony--an
awful warning to drunkards.
James G. Bennett has become sole proprietor and editor of the
Philadelphia _Courier_.
Colonel Crockett, it is expected, will visit the Bowery Theater
this evening.
RUMOR--It was rumored in Washington on the 6th that a duel
would take place the next day between two members of the House.
SUDDEN DEATH--Ann McDonough, of Washington Street, attempted to
drink a pint of rum on a wager, on Wednesday afternoon last.
Before it was half swallowed Ann was a corpse. Served her right!
Bayington, the murderer, we learn by a contemporary, was
formerly employed in this city on the _Journal of Commerce_. No
wonder he came to an untimely fate.
DUEL--We understand that a duel was fought at Hoboken on
Friday morning last between a gentleman of Canada and a French
gentleman of this city, in which the latter was wounded. The
parties should be arrested.
LAMENTABLE DEATH--The camelopard shipped at Calcutta for New
York died the day after it was embarked. “We could have better
spared a better” _crittur_, as Shakespeare doesn’t say.
The _Sun_, although read largely by Jacksonians, did not take the side
of any political party. It favoured national and State economy and city
cleanliness. It dismissed the New York Legislature of 1834 thus:
The Legislature of this State closed its arduous duties
yesterday. It has increased the number of our banks and fixed a
heavy load of debt upon posterity.
Nothing more. If the readers wanted more they could fly to the ample
bosoms of the sixpennies; but apparently they were satisfied, for
in April of 1834 the _Sun’s_ circulation reached eight thousand, and
Colonel Webb, of the _Courier and Enquirer_, was bemoaning the success
of “penny trash.” The _Sun_ replied to him by saying that the public
had been “imposed upon by ten-dollar trash long enough.” The _Journal
of Commerce_ also slanged the _Sun_, which promptly announced that the
_Journal_ was conducted by “a company of rich, aristocratical men,” and
that it would take sides with any party to gain a subscriber.
The influence of Partner Wisner, the Abolitionist, was evident in many
pages of the _Sun_. On June 23, 1834, it printed a piece about Martin
Palmer, who was “pelted down with stones in Wall Street on suspicion of
being a runaway slave,” and paid its respects to Boudinot, a Southerner
in New York who was reputed to be a tracker of runaways. It was he who
had set the crowd after the black:
The man who will do this will do anything; he would dance on
his mother’s grave; he would invade the sacred precincts of the
tomb and rob a corpse of its winding-sheet; he has no SOUL. It
is said that this useless fellow is about to commence a suit
against us for a libel. Try it, Mr. Boudinot!
During the anti-abolition riots of that year the _Sun_ took a firm
stand against the disturbers, although there is little doubt that many
of them were its own readers.
The paper made a vigorous little crusade against the evils of the
Bridewell in City Hall Park, where dozens of wretches suffered in
the filth of the debtors’ prison. The _Sun_ was a live wire when the
cholera re-appeared, and it put to rout the sixpenny papers which tried
to make out that the disease was not cholera, but “summer complaint.”
Incidentally, the advertising columns of that day, in nearly all the
papers were filled with patent “cholera cures.”
The _Sun_ had an eye for urban refinement, too, and begged the
aldermen to see to it that pigs were prevented from roaming in City
Hall Park. In the matter of silver forks, then a novelty, it was more
conservative, as the following paragraph, printed in November, 1834,
would indicate:
EXTREME NICETY--The author of the “Book of Etiquette,” recently
printed in London, says: “Silver forks are now common at every
respectable table, and for my part I cannot see how it is
possible to eat a dinner comfortably without them.” The booby
ought to be compelled to cut his beefsteak with a piece of old
barrel-hoop on a wooden trencher.
Not even abolition or etiquette, however, could sidetrack the _Sun’s_
interest in animals. In one issue it dismissed the adjournment of
Congress in three words and, just below, ran this item:
THE ANACONDA--Most of those who have seen the beautiful serpent
at Peale’s Museum will recollect that in the snug quarters
allotted to him there are two blankets, on one of which he
lies, and the other is covered over him in cold weather.
Strange to say that on Monday night, after Mr. Peale had fed
the serpent with a chicken, according to custom, the serpent
took it into his head to swallow one of the blankets, which
is a seven-quarter one, and this blanket he has now in his
stomach. The proprietor feels much anxiety.
Almost every newspaper editor in that era had a theatre feud at one day
or another. The _Sun’s_ quarrel was with Farren, the manager of the
Bowery, where Forrest was playing. So the _Sun_ said:
DAMN THE YANKEES--We are informed by a correspondent (though we
have not seen the announcement ourselves) that Farren, the chap
who damned the Yankees so lustily the other day, and who is now
under bonds for a gross outrage on a respectable butcher near
the Bowery Theater, is intending to make his appearance on the
Bowery stage THIS EVENING!
Five hundred citizens gathered at the theatre that night, waited until
nine o’clock, and then charged through the doors, breaking up the
performance of “Metamora.” The _Sun_ described it:
The supernumeraries scud from behind the scenes like quails--the
stock actors’ teeth chattered--_Oceana_ looked imploringly at the
good-for-nothing Yankees--_Nahmeeoke_ trembled--_Guy of Godalwin_
turned on his heel, and _Metamora_ coolly shouldered his tomahawk and
walked off the stage.
The management announced that Farren was discharged. The mayor of New
York and Edwin Forrest made conciliatory speeches, and the crowd went
away.
The attacks of Colonel Stone, editor of the six-cent _Commercial_,
aroused the _Sun_ to retaliate in kind. A column about the colonel
ended thus:
He was then again cowskinned by Mr. Bryant of the _Post_, and
was most unpoetically flogged near the American Hotel. He has
always been the slave of avarice, cowardice, and meanness....
The next time he sees fit to attack the penny press we hope he
will confine himself to facts.
A month later the _Sun_ went after Colonel Stone again:
The colonel ... for the sake of an additional glass of wine
and a couple of real Spanish cigars, did actually perpetrate
a most excellent and true article, the first we have seen of
his for a long time past. Now we have serious thoughts that
the colonel will yet become quite a decent fellow, and may
ultimately ascend, after a long course of training, to a level
with the penny dailies which have soared so far above him in
the heavens of veracity.
It must be said of Colonel Stone that he was a man of literary and
political attainments. He was editor of the _Commercial Advertiser_ for
more than twenty years.
The colonel did not reform to the _Sun’s_ liking at once, but the feud
lessened, and presently it was the _Transcript_--a penny paper which
sprang up when the _Sun’s_ success was assured--to which the _Sun_ took
its biggest cudgels. One of the _Transcript’s_ editors, it said, had
passed a bogus three-dollar bill on the Bank of Troy. Another walked
“on both sides of the street, like a twopenny postman,” while a third
“spent his money at a theatre with females,” while his family was in
want. But, added the _Sun_, “we never let personalities creep in.”
The New York _Times_--not the present _Times_--had also started up, and
it dared to boast of a circulation “greater than any in the city except
the _Courier_.” Said the _Sun_:
If the daily circulation of the _Sun_ be not larger than that
of the _Times_ and _Courier_ both, then may we be hung up by
the ears and flogged to death with a rattle-snake’s skin.
The _Sun_ took no risk in this. By November of 1834 its circulation was
above ten thousand. On December 3 it published the President’s message
in full and circulated fifteen thousand copies. At the beginning of
1835 it announced a new press--a Napier, built by R. Hoe & Co.--new
type, and a bigger paper, circulating twenty thousand. The print paper
was to cost four-fifths of a cent a copy, but the _Sun_ was getting
lots of advertising. With the increase in size, that New Year’s Day,
the _Sun_ adopted the motto, “It Shines for All.” which it is still
using to-day. This motto doubtless was suggested by the sign of the
famous Rising Sun Tavern, or Howard’s Inn, which then stood at the
junction of Bedford and Jamaica turnpikes, in East New York. The sign,
which was in front of the tavern as early as 1776, was supported on
posts near the road and bore a rude picture of a rising sun and the
motto which Day adopted.
In the same month--January, 1835--the bigger and better _Sun_ printed
its first real sports story. The sporting editor, who very likely was
also the police reporter and perhaps Partner Wisner as well, heard that
there was to be a fight in the fields near Hoboken between Williamson,
of Philadelphia, and Phelan, of New York. He crossed the ferry, hired
a saddle-horse in Hoboken, and galloped to the ringside. It was bare
knuckles, London rules, and only thirty seconds’ interval between
rounds:
At the end of three minutes Williamson fell. (Cheers and cries
of “Fair Play!”) After breathing half a minute, they went at it
again, and Phelan was knocked down. (Cheers and cries of “Give
it to him!”) In three minutes more Williamson fell, and the
adjoining woods echoed back the shouts of the spectators.
The match lasted seventy-two minutes and ended in the defeat of
Williamson. The _Sun’s_ report contained no sporting slang, and the
reporter did not seem to like pugilism:
And this is what is called “sports of the ring!” We can
cheerfully encourage foot-races or any other humane and
reasonable amusement, but the Lord deliver us from the “ring.”
The following day the _Sun_ denounced prize-fighting as “a European
practice, better fitted for the morally and physically oppressed
classes of London than the enlightened republican citizens of New York.”
As prosperity came, the news columns improved. The sensational was not
the only pabulum fed to the reader. Beside the story of a duel between
two midshipmen he would find a review of the Burr autobiography, just
out. Gossip about Fanny Kemble’s quarrel with her father--the _Sun_
was vexed with the actress because she said that New York audiences
were made up of butchers--would appear next to a staid report of the
doings of Congress. The attacks on Rum continued, and the _Sun_ was
quick to oppose the proposed “licensing of houses of prostitution and
billiard-rooms.”
The success of Mr. Day’s paper was so great that every printer and
newspaperman in New York longed to run a penny journal. On June 22,
1835, the paper’s name appeared at the head of the editorial column on
Page 2 as _The True Sun_, although on the first page the bold head-line
_THE SUN_, remained as usual. An editorial note said:
We have changed our inside head to _True Sun_ for reasons which
will hereafter be made known.
On the following day the _True Sun_ title was entirely missing, and its
absence was explained in an editorial article as follows:
Having understood on Wednesday (June 21) that a daily paper
was about being issued in this city as nearly like our own as
it could be got up, under the title of _The True Sun_, for the
avowed purpose of benefitting the proprietors at our expense,
we yesterday changed our inside title, being determined to
place an injunction upon any such piratical proceedings.
Yesterday morning the anticipated _Sun_ made its appearance,
and at first sight we immediately abandoned our intention of
defending ourselves legally, being convinced that it is a
mere catchpenny second-hand concern which (had it our whole
list and patronage) would in one month be among the “Things
that were.” It is published by William F. Short and edited
by Stephen B. Butler, who announces that his “politics are
Whig.”... Mr. Short, with the ingenuity of a London pickpocket,
though without the honesty, has made up his paper as nearly
like ours as was possible and given it the name of _The (true)
Sun_ for the purpose of imposing on the public.... We hereby
publish William F. Short and Stephen B. Butler to our editorial
brethren and to the printing profession in general as _Literary
Scoundrels_.
A day later (June 24, 1835) the _Sun_ declared that in establishing
the _True Sun_ “Short, who is one of the printers of the _Messenger_,
actually purloined the composition of his reading matter”; and it
printed a letter from William Burnett, publisher of the _Weekly
Messenger_, to support its charge of larceny.
On June 28, six days after the _True Sun’s_ first appearance, the _Sun_
announced the failure of the pretender. The _True Sun’s_ proprietors,
it said, “have concluded to abandon their piratical course.”
Another _True Sun_ was issued by Benjamin H. Day in 1840, two years
after he sold the _Sun_ to Moses Y. Beach. A third _True Sun_,
established by former employees of the _Sun_ on March 20, 1843, ran for
more than a year. A daily called the _Citizen and True Sun_, started in
1845, had a short life.
When a contemporary did not fail the _Sun_ poked fun at it:
MAJOR NOAH’S SINGULARITY--The _Evening Star_ of yesterday comes
out in favor of the French, lottery, gambling, and phrenology
for ladies. Is the man crazy?
The editor whose sanity was questioned was the famous Mordecai Manuel
Noah, one of the most versatile men of his time. He was a newspaper
correspondent at fifteen. When he was twenty-eight, President Madison
appointed him to be consul-general at Tunis, where he distinguished
himself by his rescue of several Americans who were held as slaves
in the Barbary States. On his return to New York, in 1816, he again
entered journalism, and was successively connected with the _National
Advocate_, the _Enquirer_, the _Commercial Advertiser_, the _Times and
Messenger_, and the _Evening Star_. In 1825 he attempted to establish a
great Jewish colony on Grand Island, in the Niagara River, but he found
neither sympathy nor aid among his coreligionists, and the scheme was a
failure.
Noah wrote a dozen dramas, all of which have been forgotten, although
he was the most popular playwright in America at that day. His _Evening
Star_ was a good paper, and the _Sun’s_ quarrels with it were not
serious.
For their attacks on Attree, the editor of the _Transcript_, Messrs.
Day and Wisner got themselves indicted for criminal libel. They took it
calmly:
Bigger men than we have passed through that ordeal. There is
Major Noah, the Grand Mogul of the editorial tribe, who has not
only been indicted, but, we believe, placed at the bar. Then
there’s Colonel Webb; no longer ago than last autumn he was
indicted by the grand jury of Delaware County. The colonel, it
is said, didn’t consider this a fair business transaction,
and, brushing up the mahogany pistol, he took his coach and
hounds, drove up to good old Delaware, and bid defiance to
the whole posse comitatus of the county. The greatest men in
the country have some time in the course of their lives been
indicted.
A few weeks later, when Attree, who had left the _Transcript_ to write
“horribles” for the _Courier_, was terribly beaten in the street, the
_Sun_ denounced the assault and tried to expose the assailants.
In February, 1835, a few days after the indictment of the partners,
Mr. Wisner was challenged to a duel by a quack dentist whose medicines
the _Sun_ had exposed. The _Sun_ announced editorially that Wisner
accepted the challenge, and that, having the choice of weapons, he
chose syringes charged with the dentist’s own medicine, the distance
five paces. No duel!
It would seem that the _Sun_ owners sought a challenge from the fiery
James Watson Webb of the mahogany pistol, for they made many a dig at
his sixpenny paper. Here is a sample:
OUTRAGEOUS--The _Courier and Enquirer_ of Saturday morning is
just twice as large as its usual size. The sheet is now large
enough for a blanket and two pairs of pillow-cases, and it
contains, in printers’ language, 698,300 ems--equal to eight
volumes of the ordinary-sized novels of the present day. If
the reading matter were printed in pica type and put in one
unbroken line, it would reach from Nova Zembla to Terra del
Fuego. Such a paper is an insult to a civilized community.
A little later, when Colonel Webb’s paper boasted of “the largest
circulation,” the _Sun_ offered to bet the colonel a thousand
dollars--the money to go to the Washington Monument Association--that
the _Sun_ had a circulation twice as great as that of the big sixpenny
daily.
It must not be thought, however, that the _Sun_ did not attempt to
treat the serious matters of the day. It handled them very well,
considering the lack of facilities. The war crisis with France, happily
dispelled; the amazing project of the Erie Railroad to build a line as
far west as Chautauqua County, New York; the anti-abolitionist riots
and the little religious rows; the ambitions of Daniel Webster and the
approach of Halley’s comet--all these had their half-column or so.
When Matthias the Prophet, the Dowie of that day, was brought to trial
in White Plains, Westchester County, on a charge of having poisoned
a Mr. Elijah Pierson, the _Sun_ sent a reporter to that then distant
court. It is possible that this reporter was Benjamin H. Day himself.
At any rate, Day attended the trial, and there made the acquaintance
of a man who that very summer made the _Sun_ the talk of the world and
brought to the young paper the largest circulation of any daily.