Chapter 27

He made his first considerable hit as a journalist in the spring of 1828, when he filled the place of Washington correspondent to the New York Enquirer. In the Congressional Library, one day, he found an edition of Horace Walpole's Letters, which amused him very much. "Why not," said he to himself, "try, a few letters on a similar plan from this city, to be published in New York?" The letters appeared. Written in a lively manner, full of personal allusions, and describing individuals respecting whom the public are always curious,--free also from offensive personalities,--the letters attracted much notice and were generally copied in the press. It is said that some of the ladies whose charms were described in those letters were indebted to them for husbands. Personalities of this kind were a novelty then, and mere novelty goes a great way in journalism. At this period he produced almost every kind of composition known to periodical literature,--paragraphs and leading articles, poetry and love-stories, reports of trials, debates, balls, and police cases; his earnings ranging from five dollars a week to ten or twelve. If there had been then in New York one newspaper publisher who understood his business, the immense possible value of this man as a journalist would have been perceived, and he would have been secured, rewarded, and kept under some restraint. But there was no such man. There were three or four forcible writers for the press, but not one journalist.

During the great days of "The Courier and Inquirer," from 1829 to 1832, when it was incomparably the best newspaper on the continent, James Gordon Bennett was its most efficient hand. It lost him in 1832, when the paper abandoned General Jackson and took up Nicholas Biddle; and in losing him lost its chance of retaining the supremacy among American newspapers to this day. We can truly say, that at that time journalism, as a thing by itself and for itself, had no existence in the United States. Newspapers were mere appendages of party; and the darling object of each journal was to be recognized as the organ of the party it supported. As to the public, the great public, hungry for interesting news, no one thought of it. Forty years ago, in the city of New York, a copy of a newspaper could not be bought for money. If any one wished to see a newspaper, he had either to go to the office and subscribe, or repair to a bar-room and buy a glass of something to drink, or bribe a carrier to rob one of his customers. The circulation of the Courier and Inquirer was considered something marvellous when it printed thirty-five hundred copies a day, and its business was thought immense when its daily advertising averaged fifty-five dollars. It is not very unusual for a newspaper now to receive for advertising, in one day, six hundred times that sum. Bennett, in the course of time, had a chance been given to him, would have made the Courier and Inquirer powerful enough to cast off all party ties; and this he would have done merely by improving it as a vehicle of news. But he was kept down upon one of those ridiculous, tantalizing, corrupting salaries, which are a little more than a single man needs, but not enough for him to marry upon. This salary was increased by the proprietors giving him a small share in the small profits of the printing-office; so that, after fourteen years of hard labor and Scotch economy, he found himself, on leaving the great paper, a capitalist to the extent of a few hundred dollars. The chief editor of the paper which he now abandoned sometimes lost as much in a single evening at the card-table. It probably never occurred to him that this poor, ill-favored Scotchman was destined to destroy his paper and all the class of papers to which it belonged. Any one who now examines a file of the Courier and Inquirer of that time, and knows its interior circumstances, will see plainly enough that the possession of this man was the vital element in its prosperity. He alone knew the rudiments of his trade. He alone had the physical stamina, the indefatigable industry, the sleepless vigilance, the dexterity, tact, and audacity, needful for keeping up a daily newspaper in the face of keen competition.

Unweaned yet from the politicians, he at once started a cheap party paper, "The Globe," devoted to Jackson and Van Buren. The party, however, did not rally to its support, and it had to contend with the opposition of party papers already existing, upon whose manor it was poaching. The Globe expired after an existence of thirty days. Its proprietor, still untaught by such long experience, invested the wreck of his capital in a Philadelphia Jackson paper, and struggled desperately to gain for it a footing in the party. He said to Mr. Van Buren and to other leaders, Help me to a loan of twenty-five hundred dollars for two years, and I can establish my Pennsylvanian on a self-supporting basis. The application was politely refused, and he was compelled to give up the struggle. The truth is, he was not implicitly trusted by the Jackson party. They admitted the services he had rendered; but, at the same time, they were a little afraid of the vein of mockery that broke out so frequently in his writings. He was restive in harness. He was devoted to the party, but he was under no party illusions. He was fighting in the ranks as an adventurer or soldier of fortune. He fought well; but would it do to promote a man to high rank who knew the game so well, and upon whom no man could get any _hold_? To him, in his secret soul, Martin Van Buren was nothing (as he often said) but a country lawyer, who, by a dexterous use of the party machinery, the well-timed death of De Witt Clinton, and General Jackson's frenzy in behalf of Mrs. Eaton, had come to be the chosen successor of the fiery chieftain. The canny Scotchman saw this with horrid clearness, and saw nothing more. Political chiefs do not like subalterns of this temper. Underneath the politician in Martin Van Buren there was the citizen, the patriot, the gentleman, and the man, whose fathers were buried in American soil, whose children were to live under American institutions, who had, necessarily, an interest in the welfare and honor of the country, and whose policy, upon the whole, was controlled by that natural interest in his country's welfare and honor. To our mocking Celt nothing of this was apparent, nor has ever been.

His education as a journalist was completed by the failure of his Philadelphia scheme. Returning to New York, he resolved to attempt no more to rise by party aid, but henceforth have no master but the public. On the 6th of May, 1835, appeared the first number of the Morning Herald, price one cent. It was born in a cellar in Wall Street,--not a basement, but a veritable cellar. Some persons are still doing business in that region who remember going down into its subterranean office, and buying copies of the new paper from its editor, who used to sit at a desk composed of two flour-barrels and a piece of board, and who occupied the only chair in the establishment. For a considerable time his office contained absolutely nothing but his flour-barrel desk, one wooden chair, and a pile of Heralds. "I remember," writes Mr. William Gowans, the well-known bookseller of Nassau Street,

"to have entered the subterranean office of its editor early in its career, and purchased a single copy of the paper, for which I paid the sum of one cent United States currency. On this occasion the proprietor, editor, and vendor was seated at his desk, busily engaged writing, and appeared to pay little or no attention to me as I entered. On making known my object in coming in, he requested me to put my money down on the counter, and help myself to a paper; all this time he continuing his writing operations. The office was a single oblong underground room; its furniture consisted of a counter, which also served as a desk, constructed from two flour-barrels, perhaps empty, standing apart from each other about four feet, with a single plank covering both; a chair, placed in the centre, upon which sat the editor busy at his vocation, with an inkstand by his right hand; on the end nearest the door were placed the papers for sale."

Everything appeared to be against his success. It was one poor man in a cellar against the world. Already he had failed three times; first, in 1825, when he attempted to establish a Sunday paper; next, in 1832, when he tried a party journal; recently, in Philadelphia. With great difficulty, and after many rebuffs, he had prevailed upon two young printers to print his paper and share its profits or losses, and he possessed about enough money to start the enterprise and sustain it ten days. The cheapness of his paper was no longer a novelty, for there was already a penny paper with a paying circulation. He had cut loose from all party ties, and he had no influential friends except those who had an interest in his failure. The great public, to which he made this last desperate appeal, knew him not even by name. The newsboy system scarcely existed; and all that curious machinery by which, in these days, a "new candidate for public favor" is placed, at no expense, on a thousand news-stands, had not been thought of. There he was alone in his cellar, without clerk, errand-boy, or assistant of any kind. For many weeks he did with his own hands everything,--editorials, news, reporting, receiving advertisements, and even writing advertisements for persons "unaccustomed to composition." He expressly announced that advertisers could have their advertisements written for them at the office, and this at a time when there was no one to do it but himself. The extreme cheapness of the paper rendered him absolutely dependent upon his advertisers, and yet he dared not charge more than fifty cents for sixteen lines, and he offered to insert sixteen lines for a whole year for thirty dollars.

He at once produced an eminently salable article. If just such a paper were to appear to-day, or any day, in any large city of the world, it would instantly find a multitude of readers. It was a very small sheet,--four little pages of four columns each,--much better printed than the Herald now is, and not a waste line in it. Everything _drew_, as the sailors say. There was not much scissoring in it,--the scissors have never been much esteemed in the Herald office,--but the little that there was all told upon the general effect of the sheet. There is a story current in newspaper offices that the first few numbers of the Herald were strictly decorous and "respectable," but that the editor, finding the public indifferent and his money running low, changed his tactics, and filled his paper with scurrility and indecency, which immediately made it a paying enterprise. No such thing. The first numbers were essentially of the same character as the number published this morning. They had the same excellences and the same defects: in the news department, immense industry, vigilance, and tact; in the editorial columns, the vein of Mephistophelean mockery which has puzzled and shocked so many good people at home and abroad. A leading topic then was a certain Matthias, one of those long-bearded religious impostors who used to appear from time to time. The first article in the first number of the Herald was a minute account of the origin and earlier life of the fellow,--just the thing for the paper, and the sure method of exploding _him_. The first editorial article, too, was perfectly in character:--

"In _débuts_ of this kind," said the editor,

"many talk of principle--political principle, party principle--as a sort of steel-trap to catch the public. We mean to be perfectly understood on this point, and therefore openly disclaim all steel-traps,--all principle, as it is called,--all party,--all politics. Our only guide shall be good, sound, practical common-sense, applicable to the business and bosoms of men engaged in every-day life. We shall support no party, be the organ of no faction or coterie, and care nothing for any election or any candidate, from President down to constable. We shall endeavor to record facts on every public and proper subject, stripped of verbiage and coloring, with comments, when suitable, just, independent, fearless, and good-tempered. If the Herald wants the mere expansion which many journals possess, we shall try to make it up in industry, good taste, brevity, variety, point, piquancy, and cheapness."

He proceeded immediately to give a specimen of the "comments" thus described, in the form of a review of an Annual Register just published. The Register informed him that there were 1,492 "rogues in the State Prison." His comment was: "But God only knows how many out of prison, preying upon the community, in the shape of gamblers, blacklegs, speculators, and politicians." He learned from the Register that the poor-house contained 6,547 paupers; to which he added, "and double the number going there as fast as indolence and intemperance can carry them." The first numbers were filled with nonsense and gossip about the city of New York, to which his poverty confined him. He had no boat with which to board arriving ships, no share in the pony express from Washington, and no correspondents in other cities. All he could do was to catch the floating gossip, scandal, and folly of the town, and present as much of them every day as one man could get upon paper by sixteen hours' labor. He laughed at everything and everybody,--not excepting himself and his squint eye,--and, though his jokes were not always good, they were generally good enough. People laughed, and were willing to expend a cent the next day to see what new folly the man would commit or relate. We all like to read about our own neighborhood: this paper gratified the propensity.

The man, we repeat, really had a vein of poetry in him, and the first numbers of the Herald show it. He had occasion to mention, one day, that Broadway was about to be paved with wooden blocks. This was not a very promising subject for a poetical comment; but he added: "When this is done, every vehicle will have to wear sleigh-bells as in sleighing times, and Broadway will be so quiet that you can pay a compliment to a lady, in passing, and she will hear you." This was nothing in itself; but here was a man wrestling with fate in a cellar, who could turn you out two hundred such paragraphs a week, the year round. Many men can growl in a cellar; this man could laugh, and keep laughing, and make the floating population of a city laugh with him. It must be owned, too, that he had a little real insight into the nature of things around him,--a little Scotch sense, as well as an inexhaustible fund of French vivacity. Alluding, once, to the "hard money" cry, by which the lying politicians of the day carried elections, he exploded that nonsense in two lines: "If a man gets the wearable or the eatable he wants, what cares he whether he has gold or paper-money?" He devoted two sentences to the Old School and New School Presbyterian controversy: "Great trouble among the Presbyterians just now. The question in dispute is, whether or not a man can do anything towards saving his own soul." He had, also, an article upon the Methodists, in which he said that the two religions nearest akin were the Methodist and the Roman Catholic. We should add to these trifling specimens the fact, that he uniformly maintained, from 1835 to the crash of 1837, that the prosperity of the country was unreal, and would end in disaster. Perhaps we can afford space for a single specimen of his way of treating this subject; although it can be fully appreciated only by those who are old enough to remember the rage for land speculation which prevailed in 1836:--

"THE RICH POOR--THE POOR RICH.--'I have made $50,000 since last January,' said one of these real-estate speculators to a friend.

"'The dense you have,' said the other, looking up in astonishment 'Why, last January you were not worth a twenty-dollar bill.'

"'I know that; but I now calculate I'm worth full $50,000, if not $60,000.'

"How have you made it?'

"'By speculating in real estate. I bought three hundred lots at Goose Island at $150 apiece; they are now worth $400. I would not sell them for $350 apiece, I assure you.'

"' Do you think so?'

"'Sartain. I have two hundred and fifty lots at Blockhead's Point, worth $150 a piece; some on them are worth $200. I have one hundred lots at Jackass Inlet, worth at least $100, at the very lowest calculation. In short, I'm worth a hull $60,000.'

"'Well, I'm glad to hear it. You can pay me now the $500 you have owed me for these last four years. There's your note, I believe,' said he, handing the speculator a worn piece of paper that had a piece of writing upon it.

"The speculator looked blank at this. 'Oh! yes--my--now I'd like--suppose,' but the words could not form themselves into a perfect sentence.

"'I want the money very much,' said the other; 'I have some payments to make to-morrow.'

"'Why, you don't want cash for it surely.'

"'Yes, but I do. You say you are worth $60,000,--surely $500 is but a trifle to pay; do let me have the cash on the nail, if you please.'

"'Oh!--by--well--now--do tell--really, I have not got the money at present.'

"'So you can't pay it, eh? A man worth $60,000, and can't pay an old debt of $500?'

"'Oh! yes I can--I'll--I'll--just give you my note for it at ninety days.'

"'The D--l you will! A man worth $60,000, and can't pay $500 for ninety days! what do you mean?'

"'Well now, my dear sir, I'm worth what I say. I can pay you. There's my property,' spreading out half a dozen very beautiful lithographs; 'but really I can't raise that amount at present. Yesterday, I had to give three per cent a month for $4,000 to save my whole fortune. I had to look out for the mortgages. Take my note; you can get it discounted for three per cent.'

"'No, I can't. If you will give me $250 for the debt, I shall give the other half to pay the interest on your mortgages.'....

"Whether the proposition has been accepted we shall know to-morrow; but we have many such rich people."--_Herald_, Oct. 28, 1836.

But it was not such things as these that established the Herald. Confined as he was to the limits of a single town, and being compelled to do everything with his own hands, he could not have much in his columns that we should now call "news." But what is news? The answer to that question involves the whole art, mystery, and history of journalism. The time was when news signified the doings of the king and his court. This was the staple of the first news-letter writers, who were employed by great lords, absent from court, to send them court intelligence. To this was soon added news of the doings of other kings and courts; and from that day to this the word _news_ has been continually gaining increase of meaning, until now it includes all that the public are curious to know, which may be told without injury to the public or injustice to individuals. While this man was playing fantastic tricks before high Heaven, his serious thoughts were absorbed in schemes to make his paper the great vehicle of news. Early in the second month, while he was still losing money every day, he hit upon a new kind of news, which perhaps had more to do with the final success of the Herald than any other single thing. His working day, at that time, was sixteen or seventeen hours. In the morning, from five to eight, he was busy, in the quiet of his room, with those light, nonsensical paragraphs and editorials which made his readers smile in spite of themselves. During the usual business hours of the morning, he was in his cellar, over his flour-barrel desk, engaged in the ordinary routine of editorial work; not disdaining to sell the morning paper, write advertisements, and take the money for them.

About one o'clock, having provided abundant copy for the compositors, he sallied forth into Wall Street, picking up material for his stock-tables and subjects for paragraphs. From four to six he was at his office again, winding up the business, of the day. In the evening he was abroad,--at theatre, concert, ball, or public meeting,--absorbing fresh material for his paper. He converted himself, as it were, into a medium through which the gossip, scandal, fun, and nonsense of this great town were daily conveyed back to it for its amusement; just as a certain popular preacher is reported to do, who spends six days in circulating among his parishioners, and on the seventh tells them all that they have taught him.

Now Wall Street, during the years that General Jackson was disturbing the financial system by his insensate fury against the United States Bank, was to journalism what the Army of the Potomac was in the year 1864. The crash of 1837 was full two years in coming on, during which the money market was always deranged, and moneyed men were anxious and puzzled. The public mind, too, was gradually drawn to the subject, until Wall Street was the point upon which all eyes were fixed. The editor of the Herald was the first American journalist to avail himself of this state of things. It occurred to him, when his paper had been five weeks in existence, to give a little account every day of the state of affairs in Wall Street,--the fluctuations of the money market and their causes,--the feeling and gossip of the street. He introduced this feature at the moment when General Jackson's embroilment with the French Chambers was at its height, and when the return of the American Minister was hourly expected. Some of our readers may be curious to see the first "money article" ever published in the United States. It was as follows:--

"COMMERCIAL.

"Stocks yesterday maintained their prices during the session of the Board, several going up. Utica went up 2 per cent; the others stationary. Large quantities were sold. After the Board adjourned and the news from France was talked over, the fancy stocks generally went down 1 to 1-1/2 per cent; other stocks quite firm. A rally was made by the bulls in the evening, under the trees, but it did not succeed. There will be a great fight in the Board to-day. The good people up town are anxious to know what the brokers think of Mr. Livingston. We shall find out, and let them know.

"The cotton and flour market rallied a little. The rise of cotton in Liverpool drove it up here a cent or so. The last shippers will make 2-1/2 per cent. Many are endeavoring to produce a belief that there will be a war. If the impression prevails, naval stores will go up a good deal. Every eye is outstretched for the Constitution. Hudson, of the Merchants' News Room, says he will hoist out the first flag. Gilpin, of the Exchange News Room, says he will have her name down in his Room one hour before his competitor. The latter claims having beat Hudson yesterday by an hour and ten minutes in chronicling the England."--_Herald_, June 13, 1835.

This was his first attempt. The money article constantly lengthened and increased in importance. It won for the little paper a kind of footing in brokers' offices and bank parlors, and provided many respectable persons with an excuse for buying it.