velocity of a practiced hand, then read it over to her, taking
particular pains to get the name spelled right, and the address
correctly stated.
"How much is it, sir?"
"Twenty-five cents."
The money paid, the editor would instantly have resumed his writing.
Such visitors, however, were not numerous, for the early numbers of the
paper show very few advertisements, and the paper itself was little
larger than a sheet of foolscap. Small as it was, it was with difficulty
kept alive from week to week, and it was never too certain as the week
drew to a close whether the proprietor would be able to pay the
printer's bill on Saturday night, and thus secure its reappearance on
Monday morning.
There were times when, after paying all the unpostponable claims, he had
twenty-five cents left, or less, as the net result of his week's toil.
He worked sixteen, seventeen, eighteen hours a day, struggling unaided
to force his little paper upon an indifferent if not a hostile public.
James Gordon Bennett, you will observe, was forty years old at this
stage of his career. Generally a man who is going to found anything
extraordinary has laid a deep foundation, and got his structure a good
way above ground before he is forty years of age. But there was he, past
forty, and still wrestling with fate, happy if he could get three
dollars a week over for his board. Yet he was a strong man, gifted with
a keen intelligence, strictly temperate in his habits, and honest in his
dealings. The only point against him was, that he had no power and
apparently no desire to make personal friends. He was one of those who
cannot easily ally themselves with other men, but must fight their fight
alone, victors or vanquished.
A native of Scotland, he was born a Roman Catholic, and was partly
educated for the priesthood in a Catholic seminary there; but he was
diverted from the priestly office, as it appears, by reading Byron,
Scott, and other literature of the day. At twenty he was a romantic,
impulsive, and innocent young man, devouring the Waverley novels, and in
his vacations visiting with rapture the scenes described in them. The
book, however, which decided the destiny of this student was of a very
different description, being no other than the "Autobiography of
Benjamin Franklin," a book which was then read by almost every boy who
read at all. One day, at Aberdeen, a young acquaintance met him in the
street, and said to him:--
"I am going to America, Bennett."
"To America! When? Where?"
"I am going to Halifax on the 6th of April."
"My dear fellow," said Bennett, "I'll go with you. I want to see the
place where Franklin was born."
Three months after he stepped ashore at the beautiful town of Halifax in
Nova Scotia, with only money enough in his pocket to pay his board for
about two weeks. Gaunt poverty was upon him soon, and he was glad to
earn a meagre subsistence for a few weeks, by teaching. He used to speak
of his short residence in Halifax as a time of severe privation and
anxiety, for it was a place then of no great wealth, and had little to
offer to a penniless adventurer, such as he was.
He made his way to Portland, in Maine, before the first winter set in,
and thence found passage in a schooner bound to Boston. In one of the
early numbers of his paper he described his arrival at that far-famed
harbor, and his emotions on catching his first view of the city. The
paragraph is not one which we should expect from the editor of the
"Herald," but I have no doubt it expressed his real feelings in 1819.
"I was alone, young, enthusiastic, uninitiated. In my more youthful days
I had devoured the enchanting life of Benjamin Franklin written by
himself, and Boston appeared to me as the residence of a friend, an
associate, an acquaintance. I had also drunk in the history of the holy
struggle for independence, first made on Bunker Hill. Dorchester Heights
were to my youthful imagination almost as holy ground as Arthur's Seat
or Salisbury Craigs. Beyond was Boston, her glittering spires rising
into the blue vault of heaven like beacons to light a world to liberty."
In the glow of his first enthusiasm, and having nothing else to do, he
spent several days in visiting the scenes of historic events with which
his reading had made him familiar. But his slender purse grew daily more
attenuated, and he soon found himself in a truly desperate situation, a
friendless, unprepossessing young man, knowing no trade or profession,
and without an acquaintance in the city. His last penny was spent. A
whole day passed without his tasting food. A second day went by, and
still he fasted. He could find no employment, and was too proud to beg.
In this terrible strait he was walking upon Boston Common, wondering how
it could be that he, so willing to work, and with such a capacity for
work, should be obliged to pace the streets of a wealthy city, idle and
starving!
"How shall I get something to eat?" he said to himself.
At that moment he saw something glittering upon the ground before him,
which proved to be a silver coin of the value of twelve and a half
cents. Cheered by this strange coincidence, and refreshed by food, he
went with renewed spirit in search of work. He found it almost
immediately. A countryman of his own, of the firm of Wells & Lilly,
publishers and booksellers, gave him a situation as clerk and
proof-reader, and thus put him upon the track which led him to his
future success.
This firm lasted only long enough to give him the means of getting to
New York, where he arrived in 1822, almost as poor as when he left
Scotland. He tried many occupations,--a school, lectures upon political
economy, instruction in the Spanish language; but drifted at length into
the daily press as drudge-of-all-work, at wages varying from five to
eight dollars a week, with occasional chances to increase his revenue a
little by the odd jobbery of literature.
Journalism was then an unknown art in the United States, and no
newspaper had anything at all resembling an editorial corps. The most
important daily newspapers of New York were carried on by the editor,
aided by one or two ill-paid assistants, with a possible correspondent
in Washington during the session of Congress. And that proved to be
James Gordon Bennett's opportunity of getting his head a little above
water. He filled the place one winter of Washington corespondent to the
New York "Enquirer;" and while doing so he fell in by chance in the
Congressional library with a volume of Horace Walpole's gossiping
society letters. He was greatly taken with them, and he said to himself:
"Why not try a few letters on a similar plan from Washington, to be
published in New York?"
He tried the experiment. The letters, which were full of personal
anecdotes, and gave descriptions of noted individuals, proved very
attractive, and gave him a most valuable hint as to what readers take an
interest in. The letters being anonymous, he remained poor and unknown.
He made several attempts to get into business for himself. He courted
and served the politicians. He conducted party newspapers for them,
without political convictions of his own. But when he had done the work
of carrying elections and creating popularity, he did not find the idols
he had set up at all disposed to reward the obscure scribe to whom they
owed their elevation.
But all this while he was learning his trade, and though he lived under
demoralizing influences, he never lapsed into bad habits. What he said
of himself one day was strictly true, and it was one of the most
material causes of his final victory:--
"Social glasses of wine are my aversion; public dinners are my
abomination; all species of gormandizing, my utter scorn and contempt.
When I am hungry, I eat; when thirsty, drink. Wine and viands, taken for
society, or to stimulate conversation, tend only to dissipation,
indolence, poverty, contempt, and death."
At length, early in 1835, having accumulated two or three hundred
dollars, he conceived the notion of starting a penny paper. First he
looked about for a partner. He proposed the scheme to a struggling,
ambitious young printer and journalist, beginning to be known in Nassau
Street, named Horace Greeley. I have heard Mr. Greeley relate the
interview.
"Bennett came to me," he said, "as I was standing at the case setting
type, and putting his hand in his pocket pulled out a handful of money.
There was some gold among it, more silver, and I think one fifty-dollar
bill. He said he had between two and three hundred dollars, and wanted
me to go in with him and set up a daily paper, the printing to be done
in our office, and he to be the editor.
"I told him he hadn't money enough. He went away, and soon after got
other printers to do the work and the 'Herald' appeared."
This was about six years before the "Tribune" was started. Mr. Greeley
was right in saying that his future rival in journalism had not money
enough. The little "Herald" was lively, smart, audacious, and funny; it
pleased a great many people and made a considerable stir; but the price
was too low, and the range of journalism then was very narrow. It is
highly probable that the editor would have been baffled after all, but
for one of those lucky accidents which sometimes happen to men who are
bound to succeed.
There was a young man then in the city named Brandreth, who had brought
a pill over with him from England, and was looking about in New York for
some cheap, effective way of advertising his pill. He visited Bennett in
his cellar and made an arrangement to pay him a certain sum every week
for a certain space in the columns of the "Herald." It was the very
thing he wanted, a little _certainty_ to help him over that awful day of
judgment which comes every week to struggling enterprises,--Saturday
night!
Still, the true cause of the final success of the paper was the
indomitable character of its founder, his audacity, his persistence, his
power of continuous labor, and the inexhaustible vivacity of his mind.
After a year of vicissitude and doubt, he doubled the price of his
paper, and from that time his prosperity was uninterrupted. He turned
everything to account. Six times he was assaulted by persons whom he had
satirized in his newspaper, and every time he made it tell upon his
circulation. On one occasion, for example, after relating how his head
had been cut open by one of his former employers, he added:--
"The fellow no doubt wanted to let out the never failing supply of
good-humor and wit which has created such a reputation for the 'Herald.'...
He has not injured the skull. My ideas in a few days will flow as
freshly as ever, and he will find it so to his cost."
In this humble, audacious manner was founded the newspaper which, in the
course of forty-eight years, has grown to be one of national and
international importance. Its founder died in 1872, aged seventy-seven
years, in the enjoyment of the largest revenue which had ever resulted
from journalism in the United States, and leaving to his only son the
most valuable newspaper property, perhaps, in the world.
That son, the present proprietor, has greatly improved the "Herald." He
possesses his father's remarkable journalistic tact, with less
objectionable views of the relation of the daily paper to the public.
His great enterprises have been bold, far-reaching, almost national in
their character. Mr. Frederick Hudson, who was for many years the
managing editor of the paper, has the following interesting paragraph
concerning father and son:--
"Somewhere about the year 1866, James Gordon Bennett, Sr., inducted
James Gordon Bennett, Jr., into the mysteries of journalism. One of his
first _coups_ was the Prusso-Austrian war. The cable transmitted the
whole of the King of Prussia's important speech after the battle of
Sadowa and peace with Austria, costing in tolls seven thousand dollars
in gold."
He has followed this bold _coup_ with many similar ones, and not a few
that surpassed it. Seven thousand dollars seems a good deal of money to
pay for a single feature of one number of a daily paper. It was not so
much for a paper, single issues of which have yielded half as much as
that in clear profit. And the paper was born in a cellar!
THREE JOHN WALTERS,
AND THEIR NEWSPAPER.
The reader, perhaps, does not know why the London "Times" is the first
journal of Europe. I will tell him.
The starting of this great newspaper ninety-nine years ago was a mere
incident in the development of another business. Almost every one who
has stood in a printing-office watching compositors set type must have
sometimes asked himself, why not have whole words cast together, instead
of obliging the printer to pick up each letter separately? Such words as
_and_, _the_, _but_, _if_, _is_, and even larger words, like _although_
and _notwithstanding_, occur very often in all compositions. How easy it
would be, inexperienced persons think, to take up a long word, such as
_extraordinary_, and place it in position at one stroke. I confess that
I had this idea myself, long before I knew that any one else had ever
had it.
In the year 1785 there was a printer in London named John Walter,
well-established in business, who was fully resolved on giving this
system a trial. At great expense and trouble he had all the commonest
words and phrases cast together. He would give his type-founder an order
like this:--
Send me a hundredweight, made up in separate pounds, of _heat_, _cold_,
_wet_, _dry_, _murder_, _fire_, _dreadful_ _robbery_, _atrocious
outrage_, _fearful calamity_, and _alarming explosion_.
This system he called logographic printing,--logographic being a
combination of two Greek words signifying word-writing. In order to give
publicity to the new system, on which he held a patent, as well as to
afford it a fuller trial, he started a newspaper, which he called the
"Daily Universal Register." The newspaper had some little success from
the beginning; but the logographic printing system would not work. Not
only did the compositors place obstacles in the way, but the system
itself presented difficulties which neither John Walter nor any
subsequent experimenter has been able to surmount.
"The whole English language," said Walter, in one of his numerous
addresses to the public, "lay before me in a confused arrangement. It
consisted of about ninety thousand words. This multitudinous mass I
reduced to about five thousand, by separating the parcels, and removing
the obsolete words, technical terms, and common terminations."
After years of labor this most resolute and tenacious of men was obliged
to give it up. It was too expensive, too cumbersome, too difficult; it
required a vast amount of space; and, in short, it was a system which
could not, and cannot, be worked to profit. But though the logographic
printing was a failure, the "Daily Universal Register" proved more and
more successful. It was a dingy little sheet, about twice as large as a
sheet of foolscap, without a word of editorial, and containing a small
number of well-selected paragraphs of news. It had also occasionally a
short notice of the plays of the night before, and a few items of what
we now call society gossip. The advertisements, after the paper had been
in existence three years, averaged about fifty a day, most of them very
short. Its price was threepence, English, equal to about twelve cents of
our present currency. The paper upon which it was printed was coarse and
cheap. In the third year of its existence, on the first of January,
1788, the name was changed to "The Times." The editor humorously
explained the reasons for changing the name:--
"'Boy, bring me the "Register."' The waiter answers, 'Sir, we have no
library, but you may see it in the New Exchange Coffee House.' 'Then I
will see it there,' answers the disappointed politician, and he goes to
the New Exchange Coffee House, and calls for the 'Register'; upon which
the waiter tells him he cannot have it, as he is not a subscriber; or
presents him with the 'Court and City Register,' the 'Old Annual
Register,' or the 'New Annual Register.'"
John Walter was not what is commonly called an educated man. He was a
brave and honest Englishman, instinctively opposed to jobbery, and to
all the other modes by which a corrupt government plunders a laborious
people. The consequence was that during the first years of his editorial
life he was frequently in very hot water. When "The Times" had been in
existence little more than a year, he took the liberty of making a
remark upon the Duke of York, one of the king's dissolute sons, saying
that the conduct of his Royal Highness had been such as to incur His
Majesty's just disapprobation.
For this offense he was arrested and put on trial for libel. Being
convicted, he was sentenced to pay a fine of fifty pounds, to undergo a
year's imprisonment in Newgate, to stand in the pillory for one hour,
and give bonds for his good behavior for the next seven years. While he
was still in prison, he was convicted of two libels: first for saying
that both the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York had incurred the just
disapprobation of the king; and secondly, for saying that the Duke of
Clarence, another son of George III., an officer in the navy, had left
his station without the permission of his commanding officer. For these
offenses he was condemned to pay fines amounting to two hundred pounds,
and to suffer a second year's imprisonment. His first year he served out
fully, and four months of the second, when by the intercession of the
Prince of Wales he was released.
From this period the newspaper appears to have gone forward, without any
interruption, to the present day. In due time John Walter withdrew from
the management, and gave it up to his eldest son, John Walter the
second, who seems to have possessed his father's resolution and energy,
with more knowledge of the world and a better education. It was he who
took the first decisive step toward placing "The Times" at the head of
journalism. For many years the Walters had been printers to the custom
house, a post of considerable profit. In 1810 the newspaper discovered
and exposed corrupt practices in the Navy Department,--practices which
were subsequently condemned by an investigating commission. The
administration deprived the fearless editor of the custom house
business. As this was not in accordance with the usages of English
politics, it made a great outcry, and the editor was given to understand
that, if he would wink at similar abuses in future, the public printing
should be restored to him. This offer he declined, saying that he would
enter into no engagements and accept no favors which would diminish, in
any degree whatever, the independence of the paper.
This was an immense point gained. It was, as I have said, the first step
toward greatness. Nor do I believe that any newspaper has ever attained
a genuine and permanent standing in a community until it has first
conquered a substantial independence. The administration then tried to
accomplish its purpose in another way. During the gigantic wars of
Napoleon Bonaparte, extending over most of the first fifteen years of
the present century, "The Times" surpassed all newspapers in procuring
early intelligence from the seat of war. The government stooped to the
pettiness of stopping at the outposts all packages addressed to "The
Times," while allowing dispatches for the ministerial journals to pass.
Foreign ships bound to London were boarded at Gravesend, and papers
addressed to "The Times" were taken from the captain. The editor
remonstrated to the Home Secretary. He was informed that he might
receive his foreign papers _as a favor_ from government. Knowing that
this would be granted in the expectation of its modifying the spirit and
tone of the newspaper, he declined to accept as a favor that which he
claimed as a right. The consequence was that the paper suffered much
inconvenience from the loss or delay of imported packages. But this
inconvenience was of small account compared with the prestige which such
complimentary persecution conferred.
Another remarkable feature of the system upon which "The Times" has been
conducted is the liberality with which it has compensated those who
served it. Writing is a peculiar kind of industry, and demands so
strenuous and intense an exertion of the vital forces, that no one will
ever get good writing done who compensates it on ordinary commercial
principles. The rule of supply and demand can never apply to this case.
There are two things which the purchaser of literary labor can do
towards getting a high quality of writing. One is, to give the writer
the amplest motive to do his best; and the other is, to prevent his
writing too much. Both these things the conductors of "The Times" have
systematically done. It is their rule to pay more for literary labor
than any one else pays for the same labor, more than the writer himself
would think of demanding, and also to afford intervals of repose after
periods of severe exertion.
Until the year 1814, all the printing in the world was done by hand, and
"The Times" could only be struck off at the rate of four hundred and
fifty copies an hour. Hence the circulation of the paper, when it had
reached three or four thousand copies a day, had attained the utmost
development then supposed to be possible; and when such news came as
that of the battle of Austerlitz, Trafalgar, or Waterloo, the edition
was exhausted long before the demand was supplied. There was a
compositor in the office of "The Times," named Thomas Martyn, who, as
early as 1804, conceived the idea of applying Watt's improved
steam-engine to a printing press. He showed his model to John Walter,
who furnished him with money and room in which to continue his
experiments, and perfect his machine. But the pressmen pursued the
inventor with such blind, infuriate hate, that the man was in terror of
his life from day to day, and the scheme was given up.
Ten years later another ingenious inventor, named König, procured a
patent for a steam-press, and Mr. Walter determined to give his
invention a trial at all hazards. The press was secretly set up in
another building, and a few men, pledged to secrecy, were hired and put
in training to work it. On the night of the trial the pressmen in "The
Times" building were told that the paper would not go to press until
very late, as important news was expected from the Continent. At six in
the morning John Walter went into the press-room, and announced to the
men that the whole edition of "The Times" had been printed by steam
during the night, and that thenceforward the steam-press would be
regularly used. He told the men that if they attempted violence there
was a force at hand to suppress it, but if they behaved well no man
should be a loser by the invention. They should either remain in their
situations, or receive full wages until they could procure others. This
conduct in a rich and powerful man was no more than decent. The men
accepted his terms with alacrity.
A great secret of "The Times'" popularity has been its occasional
advocacy of the public interest to its own temporary loss. Early in its
history it ridiculed the advertisers of quack medicines, and has never
hesitated to expose unsound projects though ever so profusely
advertised. During the railroad mania of 1845, when the railroad
advertisements in "The Times" averaged sixty thousand dollars a week, it
earnestly, eloquently, and every day, week after week, exposed the empty
and ruinous nature of the railway schemes. It continued this course
until the mighty collapse came which fulfilled its own prophecies, and
paralyzed for a time the business of the country.
Was this pure philanthropy? It was something much rarer than that--it
was good sense. It was sound judgment. It was _not_ killing the goose
that laid the golden egg.