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CHAPTER XXXI.

THE CHEAP PRESS IN PHILADELPHIA AND BALTIMORE. THE PUBLIC LEDGER OF PHILADELPHIA.-THE SUN OF BALTIMORE.-SWAIN, ABELL, AND SIMMONS.-THEIR WONDERFUL SUCCESS.-THE WAY George W. CHILDS PURCHASED THE LEDGER. HIS MANAGEMENT OF THE PAPER. -"THE PEN IS MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD."-THE LEDGER ALMANAC.

ALL great enterprises are originally problems. It is a curious study to ascertain how they commence; how large concerns are initiated; how vast schemes and establishments grow from the acorn planted and watered by energetic men. It is not always that the wonderful success of an enterprise is apparent in the infancy of the scheme. It is so largely controlled and governed by circumstances that its final success is as often a marvel to its originators as to the public. When Commodore Vanderbilt, then a smart young Staten Islander and Whitehall boatman, rowed the celebrated William Gibbons from Staten Island to New York in a gale of wind, he had not then dreamed of owning entire railroads, of presenting steam frigates to his country, and having a bronze statue, costing half a million of dollars, and illustrating the material progress of the nation, erected in the most conspicuous part of the metropolis to his honor. When Alexander T. Stewart first opened a small store on Broadway, with a stock of lace insertings and scallop trimmings worth about $5000, he did not imagine that he was to be the Dry Goods King of America, a Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, or a giver of millions in charity to his fellow-men and women. When Alvin Adams accidentally and unavoidably met an old friend in Brattle Street, Boston, and arranged with him to start a small parcel express on the Worcester Railroad in 1838 or '39, he had not the slightest idea of the magnitude, the value, and the importance that the express business of the United States would reach in a quarter of a century from that time. When Samuel F. B. Morse, in 1844, offered to sell his whole right and title in the Magnetic Telegraph to the United States for the sum of $100,000, no one then conceived that the wires stretched over the United States alone in thirty years thereafter would represent a capital of $50,000,000, and that the whole world would be connected by submarine cables. So with William M. Swain in starting the Public Ledger of Philadelphia. When he received $12 per week as foreman of the printing depart

ment of the New York Sun, he never dreamed of owning a penny newspaper of his own that would enable him to leave, in less than the span of a generation, over $3,000,000 on the pages of his ledger to his family when he departed from this world. But such instances, it appears, are common in this country. Within a quarter of a century, one could easily count the millionaires on their fingers, and now we find them too numerous to notice. Nearly all the large concerns of the last thirty or forty years were originally based on bread and butter, with occasionally the extra luxury of a cigar. Almost all of our vast enterprises have grown up, not on any original expectation of such enormous results as they now exhibit, but in the marvelous and coincident development of the country in gold, cotton, grain, manufactures, oils, coal, printing, brains, silver, railroads, photography, emigration, science, steam, electricity, wool, iron, and copper, combining to bring out the astonishing capacity of our people in emergencies and in their remarkable adaptation to circumstances, no matter how complicated, in the management of extensive business schemes and projects; and in these national strides the progress and expansion of the newspaper keeps pari passu with the most advanced industry and enterprise.

When the Penny Press was established in New York in 1833 and '34, there were three printers, named W. M. Swain, A. S. Abell, and Azariah H. Simmons, who did not believe much in cheap papers, but who worked as compositors in the offices where they were published, and were satisfied with their board and clothes for the work they performed at the case. When the Sun was started in New York in 1832, Swain could not be persuaded to join in the enterprise. Solemn and solid in the utterances of his views, as he was considered to be by his associates, he nearly discouraged Mr. Day from issuing the first number of that paper. But when the concern passed into the hands of Moses Y. Beach, he became the foreman of the composition room at $12 per week. Overtasking himself, he was confined to his house with sickness for several weeks. On returning to his duty, a difficulty occurred in regard to his pay while absent, and he resigned his situation in disgust. It was then that he began to have faith in the Cheap Press, and to think of starting a penny paper of his own. He considered New York fully supplied with the article in the Sun, Transcript, and Herald. There was no chance in the metropolis for him. Having won Abell and Simmons over to his convictions, this trio of typos proceeded to Philadelphia, and afterwards to Baltimore, and established the Public Ledger in the former, and the Sun in the latter city. But we have now to speak of the Ledger. Its first number was issued on the 25th of March, 1836. Each page was nine by thirteen and a half inches in size. Its type

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were set up by these three compositors; its editorials were written by Russell Jarvis, who had received his journalistic education under Duff Green, of the United States Telegraph.

The Ledger was not the first penny paper issued in Philadelphia. The Daily Transcript had made its appearance a few days earlier, in March, 1836. The Cent, too, had been issued, for a brief time, in 1830. The Transcript was edited by Frederick West, an amiable young English poet, who afterwards became a reporter and writer on the New York Herald, and then an editor of the Sunday Atlas. Shortly after the establishment of the Ledger it united with the Transcript, and the name was changed to that of Public Ledger and Daily Transcript. All of the cheap papers were made up and arranged on the plan of the originals in New York. Journalism in the metropolis, then as now, was the pattern for the country. In the first editorial article in the Ledger in 1836, this was manifested in this way:

In the cities of New York and Brooklyn, containing a population of 300,000, the daily circulation of the penny papers is not less than seventy thousand. This is nearly sufficient to place a newspaper in the hands of every man in the two cities, and even of every boy old enough to read. These papers are to be found in every street, lane, and alley; in every hotel, tavern, counting-house, shop, etc. Almost every porter and drayman, while not engaged in his occupation, may be seen with a penny paper in his hands.

This is as true in 1872 as in 1836, but in a more enlarged sense and in a greater degree. Indeed, this class of papers, now grown to be a mighty power in the land, have created readers, educated the masses in the politics and resources of the country, and made almost every man a reader, a thinker, a politician, and a statesman. The Declaration of Independence had previously made them sovereigns. The Ledger, like all newspapers, and especially those of that time, was compelled to struggle for its existence in its early days. It resorted to sensations. It abused the old United States Bank in the warm days of the "Bank War." It came out for abolition, and its office was twice mobbed. It had that chronic distemper of journalism-libel suits. Indeed, it went through all the vicissitudes of a finally successful newspaper. Its circulation run up and down with the exciting events of the day. In 1844, during the frightful riots in Philadelphia growing out of the Native American excitement, the Ledger, in condemning the violence and excesses of the mob, run against popular sentiment, and came near being annihilated. The Sun, edited by Lewis C. Levin, one of the leaders of the Native American movement, and afterwards elected to Congress by that party, was a vigorous supporter of the principles of the new political organization, and the Spirit of the Times, edited by John S. Du Solle, now a journalist in New York, was as vigorous

in opposition. The result was, that between the fulminations of these two sheets the Ledger was near coming to the ground. But these papers lacked the judgment necessary in the management of a journal when such a tremendous excitement has subsided. Without the excitement, the Sun and Spirit of the Times were nothing. Swain succeeded in carefully carrying the Ledger over the precipice, while his contemporaries, for want of their natural food, lost the thousands of readers that they had taken from the Ledger. This was the crisis in the fate of that paper. It now became an established institution.

There was one curious feature in the management of the Ledger. Its chief editor lived in New York. He was often met in the streets of that city. He was a short, dark-complexioned man, with quick movements and a pugnacious mind. He would write editorials as they built ships in Maine, by the yard or mile, and cut them off at any length to suit the latest order. How could this editor manage his editorial articles for a daily paper in Philadelphia when he resided in New York? It was a problem, but he seemed to have worked it out, for he accomplished this wonderful task for upwards of fifteen years, to the satisfaction, we are sure, of the proprietors of the Ledger. But it appears that the paper was a purely business concern for some time. Swain, who was the master-spirit of the establishment, made the paper a people's paper, yet he never had a very comprehensive idea of what a journal par excellence should be. There was no deficiency of enterprise in Swain so far as the needs of his paper, in his opinion, required. He had enough for his purpose, as our records may show, and he finally increased the circulation of the Ledger to 60,000, subject to the usual fluctuations, caused by the appearance of other cheap papers and local events. This was the desired point gained. It gave him the lists of post-office letters to advertise. This officially indorsed his circulation and filled his columns with other advertisements; and then his opponents, which had started up all along from 1836 to 1869, the Sun, as a Temperance as well as a Native American organ, the Daily Focus, edited for a time by Charles J. Peterson, afterwards of the Evening Bulletin, the Chronicle, the Spirit of the Times, the Daily News, the World, edited by Russell Jarvis, the old editor of the Ledger, and others, left the field to him. Sometimes his attention, too strongly fixed on immediate cash returns, interfered with his enterprise, and the Ledger occasionally made its appearance without any other intelligence or reading matter than advertisements, which filled the entire paper.

On one occasion a gentleman called upon Swain with an advertisement for the benefit of a poor widow. Telling the sad story of

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the widow's troubles, he asked, "How much will you insert this advertisement for, under such circumstances?" "At our regular rates, sir; business is business, and charity is charity," replied Mr. Swain. "But," said the gentleman, "the widow is poor, and every dollar saved-" "Business is business, I repeat, sir," interrupted Mr. Swain; "I regulate my own charities as well as my own business." "Then you will make no reduction ?" "Not a cent, sir." Very reluctantly, the gentleman paid two dollars for the insertion of the advertisement, and when on the point of leaving, Mr. Swain said, in taking a ten-dollar note out of his pocket, "Have the kindness to give this to the poor widow."

An incident similar in character to this occurred in 1869, in the office of the Boston Journal. One of the Committee on the Humboldt Centennial Celebration, a clergyman, carried an advertisement to that office and asked to have it inserted for half price. "That is not the way we do business," said the gentlemanly proprietor of the Journal. "But all the others do so," replied the descendant of John Knox. "That may be, sir, but we do not mix our business with our charities." "Then, sir," asked the clergyman, "will you give us the half in money?" "No, sir," said the journalist, "not in that way." When copies of the eulogy of Professor Agassiz on Humboldt, delivered on that occasion, were given to the Press, the order was that none should be given to the Journal !

Alas! for the rarity
Of Christian charity
Under the sun!

The Ledger prospered. Its enterprise was often well considered, and often successful. Whenever there was an excitement in the

city or in the country it would exhibit its energy. It paid attention to European news, and would run expresses to obtain the latest papers. It co-operated with the New York Herald in the famous pony expresses which were run between Montgomery and Mobile during the Mexican War, by which the news and details of all the battles and victories, from Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma to the triumphant entry of General Scott into the halls of the Montezumas, were received by these journals in advance of the authorities in Washington.

When the magnetic telegraph became a realization, Mr. Swain became largely interested in it, and was at one time president of the Washington line. Instead of carrying his journalistic experience, with its enlarged views, into the management of the telegraph, he introduced the mere business details of his office-the advertising experience as acquired at his counter, at so much per line-into the organization of the business of the telegraph. It did not work well.