The Enterprise of the World.

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sought to put money in their pockets by stimulating the public confidence; the American forger aimed at a similar result by making it appear that the country was on the verge of ruin. The former played upon the hopes, the latter upon the despair of the people. The one endeavored to compass no public mischief beyond the narrow circle of stock-jobbers; the other committed an act that might have for its effect, if it did not have for its design, the destruction of the national credit and the overthrow of the government. If Cochrane and his confreres were put in the pillory, what punishment should be meted out to Howard?

It has become chronic with the World to be the property of millionaires. After it ceased to be the organ of the wealthy religious coterie that brought it into existence, numerous reports were in circulation that it belonged to August Belmont, the well-known banker, Mayor Fernando Wood, John Anderson, the wealthy tobacconist, Collector Augustus Schell, Thurlow Weed, Benjamin Wood, and half of the bankers in Wall Street. Then that Thurlow Weed was its editor. Anon it became the property of Samuel L. M. Barlow and the Albany Regency, with a large slice disposed of to Manton Marble, who became its responsible editor. Finally, that the whole concern passed into the hands of Marble. It has been through fire. Starting full of religious sentiments, it became a half-and-half Democratic sheet; then it swallowed two or three Old Whig and Republican organs, and became more Democratic than before, even to the status of what is called a Copperhead organ in silks and satins. The World has tact and energy. Sometimes it is too sensational, which, in a modern point of view, is exaggerated high-pressure enterprise. Such enterprise has to be managed with great skill and boldness to be successful in the end. It needs a safety-valve in its news arrangements. But the World has enterprise. It threw away one chance in 1859. It threw away another in 1866. There was an unpleasant feeling in the Associated Press in that year. Its old agent was dismissed. Not being of that mild type of the human race that succumb to any trifling event, this agent organized an opposition news association. Circumstances, inclinations, a glimmer of some bright object in the future, placed the World at the head of this new enterprise. It left the old association. It was alone in its glory in the métropolis. Owing to the want of money, or want of courage, or want of confidence, or want of something, it abandoned the newly-arranged association and lost its chance. Opportunity made Napoleon, and Grant, and Bismarck. Opportunity makes a newspaper. It should never be thrown away.

The World is a party paper, but at the same time it is an independent organ of public opinion. All party papers are now semiindependent papers. We are happy to record this fact. There is very little of real party dictation in our modern journalism. The World is an instance of this. During the presidential campaign of 1868 it became manifest to a portion of the democracy that their

nominations for the offices of President and Vice-president were not strong enough to be elected in the face of the enthusiasm for Grant. The World boldly and recklessly came out almost on the eve of election day, and demanded the withdrawal of the candidates and the substitution of others in their place. It produced an impression and created a sensation; it showed the independence of the journal favoring such an enterprise in the midst of an exciting political campaign, if it did not exhibit power and influence enough to accomplish its object.

On the 29th of December, 1869, Manton Marble, who commenced his journalistic career on the Boston Traveller, continuing it on the New York Evening Post, culminated by becoming sole proprietor of the World, paying $100,000 for one fourth of the stock. It is probable, therefore, of all the leading daily papers in New York, the World and Herald are the only two owned by single individuals, and not bound to the depressing influence of a batch of shareholders whose eyes are constantly fixed on dividends.

The World has assumed an excellent position as a literary newspaper. Its reviews of books are considered superior to those of many other daily newspapers, and we believe a number of the essays of that journal have been published in a book and met with a large sale; and its conductor is called by some of his contemporaries "the Student Editor."

Newspapers of a political character have for years deemed it necessary to define their position annually in a showy announcement of the future policy of the journal. It has become a custom with the Times, Tribune, and World to do this. It assumes the shape of an appeal for subscriptions and advertisements. In the platform of the World for 1872 there are seven planks, with the following introduction:

In the year 1872 General Grant's successor is to be chosen; the Forty-third Congress to be elected.

The people's votes, white and black, North and South, will thus decide the future destiny of the republic, select its rulers, prescribe their course.

How to influence the people's votes ?

By the newspaper-for it includes every other agency. It makes known events and facts-among all influences the chief. It assembles the vaster outside audiences which can not gather to the state-house, the pulpit, or the stump. It is the constant interpreter of men's affairs, and of error or truth is the daily seed-sower. Next November is our political harvest-time. As we sow we shall reap. The World's seed-sowing will be fruitful to the extent that its circulation is widely pushed by those who approve its aim.

It closes with a claim to be the organ of the Democratic Party, and that "the ballot-box is the true battle-field of republics."

The New York Sun.

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CHAPTER XLIII.

THE NEW YORK SUN.

ITS MODERN CHARACTER.-Its Sale to CHARLES A. DANA AND ASSOCIATES. -IT IS NO LONGER A PENNY PAPER.-WHO IS EDITOR DANA?-HIS CONNECTION WITH THE TRIBUNE.-ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF WAR.-EDITOR OF THE CHICAGO REPUBLICAN.-EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK SUN.

THE New York Sun, no longer the penny paper, now conducted by Charles A. Dana, dates its new existence, under its new management, from January, 1868. It is an entirely new luminary, more ardent in its policy and more brilliant in its sunshine. It is owned in shares by the Sun Company.

Mr. Dana is a journalist. The first we know of him was as a member of the famous Brook-Farm Community, composed of such men as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William E. Channing, A. Bronson Alcott, George Ripley, and Charles A. Dana. Some of these were merely ornamental appendages. Some, like Dana, were the real operatives of the concern. It failed. Emerson, we believe, considered it a success, on the idea, we suppose, of Thoreau, that there is more war in peace than in war itself.

After Brook Farm, Dana wrote for the Chronotype in Boston, and then naturally drifted into the Tribune office. This happened in 1846 or thereabouts. Ripley, being on the same raft, also floated into that haven at the same time. Dana, being an accomplished linguist, and full of European ideas, facts, and the rights of man, took charge of the foreign department of that paper at $12 per week, and Ripley, who had been a Unitarian clergyman, became its hard-working and scrupulously neat literary editor at $5 per week. So neat was Ripley that he could never allow the smallest scrap of waste paper to remain on the floor between his desk and his nobility. While these two Brook-Farm philosophers were thus engaged, they managed to edit the New American Cyclopædia, a work of ability and value, and now a standard work in American literature. In the course of events, and as brains will tell, Dana became the managing editor of the Tribune, and, as such, Greeley held him in high estimation, and felt, at one time, that he was an indispensable adjunct to that establishment.

But it became manifest, in the development of brains in the Tribune editorial rooms, that Greeley and Dana, valuable as the latter

was, could not entirely agree on the affairs of the day or the logic of events. There was a little difficulty, and then a separation. It became necessary for one to leave the establishment. Dana left. This happened early in 1862, and had something to do with the "On to Richmond" movement which resulted so disastrously at Bull Run. What then? Secretary Stanton, who wrote the famous Joshua and Lord of Hosts letter to the Tribune, took to Dana, and Dana took to the field. He was appointed Assistant Secretary of War, and sent to the West to co-operate personally with General Grant in his operations against the rebels. He filled this position with ability from August, 1863, to August, 1865. Activity marked his course during the war. On the suppression of the rebellion it was thought that a new paper was necessary in Chicago. The Chicago Tribune, the representative journal there, bright and enterprising as it was, did not fill the measure of the hopes of those who did not control the columns of that organ of the Republican Party in that wealthy and growing metropolis of the West, leading to a split in the Republican Party respecting the election of Senator Yates. The Chicago Republican, organized on an extensive scale with a large capital, was therefore started, but not by Mr. Dana. He was editor-inchief at $7000 a year, and one fifth of the profits of the concern. It was not a first-class success. Many who believed that Dana was a journalist were disappointed. Others, who had lived in France, shrugged their shoulders. None knew the facts in the case. On making an investigation as to the causes that led to this apparent failure, it was ascertained that the Republican had more than one head, and no paper can succeed brilliantly with more than one. That was the real secret of the difficulty. The result was the return of Dana to New York, which was the true field for him, after receiving $10,000 for surrendering his interest.

Newspapers, meanwhile, were increasing in wealth and influence. Editors were becoming more independent in their pockets and in the utterance of their own views. The Tribune in New York was daily becoming less an organ of political leaders. Seward and Weed had ceased to be a power with Greeley. The Times could not be so fully controlled by mere politicians as they desired. The Herald always uttered the sentiments of its editor. The World was largely democratic. The Republican Party had one set of leaders in Albany and another set in New York. One of these sets, not too friendly with the Tribune, needed an organ. They had abundance of money, but no journalist. Dana, like Blucher, arrived at this juncture. It was then arranged that he should establish a new paper, to be called the Evening Telegraph. This fact became the talk of editors and reporters all over the country. There was a long de

The Sun under its new Régime.

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lay. Numerous reports as to the cause were in circulation. It was then ascertained that, owing to the opposition of two or three members of the Associated Press, the new paper could not have the telegraphic news of that institution, and without that news the contemplated paper could not succeed; indeed, it would be folly to bring out the first number. So these newspapers believed, and the Associated Press became an autocrat. But it seems that every great event must have its crisis, and in the crisis of this journalistic event the genius of Dana exhibited itself.

The New York Sun was a member in full and good standing in the Association. Its proprietor had paid the dues, and had done his share of the work for its benefit. He would sell his establishment, with all its brains, news arrangements, patrons, and good will, for $175,000. One morning the opposition members of the Associated Press were informed that that concern had changed hands, and that the Sun of Moses S. Beach had set, and the Sun of Charles A. Dana had risen to "shine for all" who wished for and would pay two cents per ray for its genial and fructifying warmth. In this way the first penny paper of the country, after a prosperous existence of over thirty years with its democratic tendencies, became an independent organ of the Republican Party in the metropolis, and a thorn in the side of the Tribune. In a short time the old establishment was removed to Tammany Hall, which Dana had also purchased for $175,000, and where, with its new motto "Excelsior" added to the old one, the Sun has continued to make its daily appearance. Of the first number under Mr. Dana's management 43,000 were printed. Since, over 100,000 copies have been sold in one day.

If the policy of the late Emperor of France had been fully foreshadowed in the Idées Napoléonnes which he published before the Revolution of 1848, the journalistic policy of the new editor of the Sun had been clearly foreshadowed in the Tribune before he became an independent newspaper manager. In an article on "The Newspaper Press," written by Dana and published in that paper in 1850, he said:

American journalism, like the American national character, is less conventional, more versatile, various, and flexible than European. A German, French, or English journalist can not put his paper to press without one or more regular long editorials, wrought out with due attention to all the rules of rhetoric, in a style smacking often quite as much of the scholar's study as of the crowded and rapid world in which a real editor has his being. The American is more a journalist, that is, a writer who seizes upon the events of the day and holds them up, now in this aspect, now in that, flinging on them the most condensed and lively light. He does not seek to make elaborate essays; his ambition lies not in fine writing; he spends no long hours in polishing the turn of his periods. All that presup poses a certain degree of leisure, and perhaps a kind of taste to which he is a stranger. At any rate, he has too many things to look after, too many subjects to discuss, too large a round of affairs to understand and write about, to cultivate