"Our portion is not large indeed,But then how little do we need!For nature's wants are few.In this the art of living lies,To want no more than may suffice,And make that little do."
"Our portion is not large indeed,But then how little do we need!For nature's wants are few.In this the art of living lies,To want no more than may suffice,And make that little do."
They were as happy as the day was long. Twenty times, reports this jolly shoemaker, he and his wife sang an ode by Samuel Wesley, beginning:—
"No glory I covet, no riches I want,Ambition is nothing to me;The one thing I beg of kind Heaven to grantIs a mind independent and free."
"No glory I covet, no riches I want,Ambition is nothing to me;The one thing I beg of kind Heaven to grantIs a mind independent and free."
They needed their cheerful philosophy, for all they had to spend on food and drink for a week was a sum about equal to one of our dollars. Even this small revenue grew smaller, owing to the hard times, and poor James Lackington saw his young wife pining away under insufficient food and sedentary employment. His courage again saved him. After enduring extreme poverty for three years, he got together all the money he could raise, gave most of it to his wife, and set out for London, where he arrived in August, 1774, with two and sixpence in his pocket.
It was a fortunate move for our brave shoemaker. He obtained work and good wages at once, soon sent for his wife, and their united earnings more than supplied their wants. A timely legacy of ten pounds from his grandfather gave them a little furniture, and he became again a frequenter of second-hand bookstores. He could scarcely resist the temptation of a book that he wanted. One Christmas Eve he went out with money to buy their Christmas dinner, but spent the whole sum for a copy of Young's "Night Thoughts." His wife did not relish this style of Christmas repast.
"I think," said he to his disappointed spouse, "that I have acted wisely; for had I bought a dinner we should have eaten it to-morrow, and the pleasure would have been soon over; but should welive fifty years longer we shall have the 'Night Thoughts' to feast upon."
It was his love of books that gave him abundant Christmas dinners for the rest of his life. Having hired a little shop in which to sell the shoes made by himself and his wife, it occurred to him that he could employ the spare room in selling old books, his chief motive being to have a chance to read the books before he sold them. Beginning with a stock of half a hundred volumes, chiefly of divinity, he invested all his earnings in this new branch, and in six months he found his stock of books had increased fivefold. He abandoned his shoemaking, moved into larger premises, and was soon a thriving bookseller. He was scrupulous not to sell any book which he thought calculated to injure its readers, although about this time he found the Methodist Society somewhat too strict for him. He makes a curious remark on this subject:—
"I well remember," he says, "that some years before, Mr. Wesley told his society at Bristol, in my hearing, that he could never keep a bookseller six months in his flock."
His trade increased with astonishing rapidity, and the reason was that he knew how to buy and sell. He abandoned many of the old usages and traditions of the book trade. He gave no credit, which was itself a startling innovation; but his master-stroke was selling every book at the lowest price he could afford, thus giving his customers afair portion of the benefit of his knowledge and activity. He appears to have begun the system by which books have now become a part of the furniture of every house. He bought with extraordinary boldness, spending sometimes as much as sixty thousand dollars in an afternoon's sale.
As soon as he began to live with some liberality kind friends foretold his speedy ruin. Or, as he says:—
"When by the advice of that eminent physician, Dr. Lettsom, I purchased a horse, and saved my life by the exercise it afforded me, the old adage, 'Set a beggar on horseback and he'll ride to the devil,' was deemed fully verified."
But his one horse became two horses, and his chaise a chariot with liveried servants, in which vehicle, one summer, he made the round of the places in which he had lived as a shoemaker, called upon his old employers, and distributed liberal sums of money among his poor relations. So far from being ashamed of his business, he caused to be engraved on all his carriage doors the motto which he considered the secret of his success:—
In his old age he rejoined his old friends the Methodists, and he declares in his last edition that, if he had never heard the Methodists preach, in all probability he should have remained through life "a poor, ragged, dirty cobbler."
I have seldom been more interested than in hearing Horace Greeley tell the story of his coming to New York in 1831, and gradually working his way into business there.
He was living at the age of twenty years with his parents in a small log-cabin in a new clearing of Western Pennsylvania, about twenty miles from Erie. His father, a Yankee by birth, had recently moved to that region and was trying to raise sheep there, as he had been accustomed to do in Vermont. The wolves were too numerous there.
It was part of the business of Horace and his brother to watch the flock of sheep, and sometimes they camped out all night, sleeping with their feet to the fire, Indian fashion. He told me that occasionally a pack of wolves would come so near that he could see their eyeballs glare in the darkness and hear them pant. Even as he lay in the loft of his father's cabin he could hear them howling in the fields. In spite of all their care, the wolves killed in one season a hundred of his father's sheep, and then he gave up the attempt.
The family were so poor that it was a matter of doubt sometimes whether they could get food enough to live through the long winter; and so Horace, who had learned the printer's trade in Vermont, started out on foot in search of work in a village printing-office. He walked from village to village, and from town to town, until at last he went to Erie, the largest place in the vicinity.
There he was taken for a runaway apprentice, and certainly his appearance justified suspicion. Tall and gawky as he was in person, with tow-colored hair, and a scanty suit of shabbiest homespun, his appearance excited astonishment or ridicule wherever he went. He had never worn a good suit of clothes in his life. He had a singularly fair, white complexion, a piping, whining voice, and these peculiarities gave the effect of his being wanting in intellect. It was not until people conversed with him that they discovered his worth and intelligence. He had been an ardent reader from his childhood up, and had taken of late years the most intense interest in politics and held very positive opinions, which he defended in conversation with great earnestness and ability.
A second application at Erie procured him employment for a few months in the office of the Erie "Gazette," and he won his way, not only to the respect, but to the affection, of his companions and his employer. That employer was Judge J. M. Sterrett, and from him I heard many curious particularsof Horace Greeley's residence in Erie. As he was only working in the office as a substitute, the return of the absentee deprived him of his place, and he was obliged to seek work elsewhere. His employer said to him one day:—
"Now, Horace, you have a good deal of money coming to you; don't go about the town any longer in that outlandish rig. Let me give you an order on the store. Dress up a little, Horace."
The young man looked down at his clothes as though he had never seen them before, and then said, by way of apology:—
"You see, Mr. Sterrett, my father is on a new place, and I want to help him all I can."
In fact, upon the settlement of his account at the end of his seven months' labor, he had drawn for his personal expenses six dollars only. Of the rest of his wages he retained fifteen dollars for himself, and gave all the rest, amounting to about a hundred and twenty dollars, to his father, who, I am afraid, did not make the very best use of all of it.
With the great sum of fifteen dollars in his pocket, Horace now resolved upon a bold movement. After spending a few days at home, he tied up his spare clothes in a bundle, not very large, and took the shortest road through the woods that led to the Erie Canal. He was going to New York, and he was going cheap!
A walk of sixty miles or so, much of it through the primeval forest, brought him to Buffalo, wherehe took passage on the Erie Canal, and after various detentions, he reached Albany on a Thursday morning just in time to see the regular steamboat of the day move out into the stream. At ten o'clock on the same morning he embarked on board of a tow-boat, which required nearly twenty-four hours to descend the river, and thus afforded him ample time to enjoy the beauty of its shores.
On the 18th of August, 1831, about sunrise, he set foot in the city of New York, then containing about two hundred thousand inhabitants, one sixth of its present population. He had managed his affairs with such strict economy that his journey of six hundred miles had cost him little more than five dollars, and he had ten left with which to begin life in the metropolis. This sum of money and the knowledge of the printer's trade made up his capital. There was not a person in all New York, so far as he knew, who had ever seen him before.
His appearance, too, was much against him, for although he had a really fine face, a noble forehead, and the most benign expression I ever saw upon a human countenance, yet his clothes and bearing quite spoiled him. His round jacket made him look like a tall boy who had grown too fast for his strength; he stooped a little and walked in a loose-jointed manner. He was very bashful, and totally destitute of the power of pushing his way, or arguing with a man who said "No" to him. He had brought no letters of recommendation, and hadno kind of evidence to show that he had even learned his trade.
The first business was, of course, to find an extremely cheap boarding-house, as he had made up his mind only to try New York as an experiment, and, if he did not succeed in finding work, to start homeward while he still had a portion of his money. After walking awhile he went into what looked to him like a low-priced tavern, at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets.
"How much do you charge for board?" he asked the bar-keeper, who was wiping his decanters and putting his bar in trim for the business of the day.
The bar-keeper gave the stranger a look-over and said to him:—
"I guess we're too high for you."
"Well how much do you charge?"
"Six dollars."
"Yes, that's more than I can afford."
He walked on until he descried on the North River, near Washington Market, a boarding-house so very mean and squalid that he was tempted to go in and inquire the price of board there. The price was two dollars and a half a week.
"Ah!" said Horace, "that sounds more like it."
In ten minutes more he was taking his breakfast at the landlord's table. Mr. Greeley gratefully remembered this landlord, who was a friendly Irishmanby the name of McGorlick. Breakfast done, the new-comer sallied forth in quest of work, and began by expending nearly half of his capital in improving his wardrobe. It was a wise action. He that goes courting should dress in his best, particularly if he courts so capricious a jade as Fortune.
Then he began the weary round of the printing-offices, seeking for work and finding none, all day long. He would enter an office and ask in his whining note:—
"Do you want a hand?"
"No," was the invariable reply; upon receiving which he left without a word. Mr. Greeley chuckled as he told the reception given him at the office of the "Journal of Commerce," a newspaper he was destined to contend with for many a year in the columns of the "Tribune."
"Do you want a hand?" he said to David Hale, one of the owners of the paper.
Mr. Hale looked at him from head to foot, and then said:—
"My opinion is, young man, that you're a runaway apprentice, and you'd better go home to your master."
The applicant tried to explain, but the busy proprietor merely replied:—
"Be off about your business, and don't bother us."
The young man laughed good-humoredly and resumed his walk. He went to bed Saturday nightthoroughly tired and a little discouraged. On Sunday he walked three miles to attend a church, and remembered to the end of his days the delight he had, for the first time in his life, in hearing a sermon that he entirely agreed with. In the mean time he had gained the good will of his landlord and the boarders, and to that circumstance he owed his first chance in the city. His landlord mentioned his fruitless search for work to an acquaintance who happened to call that Sunday afternoon. That acquaintance, who was a shoemaker, had accidentally heard that printers were wanted at No. 85 Chatham Street.
At half-past five on Monday morning Horace Greeley stood before the designated house, and discovered the sign, "West's Printing-Office," over the second story; the ground floor being occupied as a bookstore. Not a soul was stirring up stairs or down. The doors were locked, and Horace sat down on the steps to wait. Thousands of workmen passed by; but it was nearly seven before the first of Mr. West's printers arrived, and he, too, finding the door locked, sat down by the side of the stranger, and entered into conversation with him.
"I saw," said this printer to me many years after, "that he was an honest, good young man, and, being a Vermonter myself, I determined to help him if I could."
Thus, a second time in New York already,the native quality of the mangained him, at the criticalmoment the advantage that decided his destiny. His new friend did help him, and it was very much through his urgent recommendation that the foreman of the printing-office gave him a chance. The foreman did not in the least believe that the green-looking young fellow before him could set in type one page of the polyglot Testament for which help was needed.
"Fix up a case for him," said he, "and we'll see if hecando anything."
Horace worked all day with silent intensity, and when he showed to the foreman at night a printer's proof of his day's work, it was found to be the best day's work that had yet been done on that most difficult job. It was greater in quantity and much more correct. The battle was won. He worked on the Testament for several months, making long hours and earning only moderate wages, saving all his surplus money, and sending the greater part of it to his father, who was still in debt for his farm and not sure of being able to keep it.
Ten years passed. Horace Greeley from journeyman printer made his way slowly to partnership in a small printing-office. He founded the "New Yorker," a weekly paper, the best periodical of its class in the United States. It brought him great credit and no profit.
In 1840, when General Harrison was nominated for the presidency against Martin Van Buren, his feelings as a politician were deeply stirred, and hestarted a little campaign paper called "The Log-Cabin," which was incomparably the most spirited thing of the kind ever published in the United States. It had a circulation of unprecedented extent, beginning with forty-eight thousand, and rising week after week until it reached ninety thousand. The price, however, was so low that its great sale proved rather an embarrassment than a benefit to the proprietors, and when the campaign ended, the firm of Horace Greeley & Co. was rather more in debt than it was when the first number of "The Log-Cabin" was published.
The little paper had given the editor two things which go far towards making a success in business,—great reputation and some confidence in himself. The first penny paper had been started. The New York "Herald" was making a great stir. The "Sun" was already a profitable sheet. And now the idea occurred to Horace Greeley to start a daily paper which should have the merits of cheapness and abundant news, without some of the qualities possessed by the others. He wished to found a cheap daily paper that should be good and salutary, as well as interesting. The last number of "The Log-Cabin" announced the forthcoming "Tribune," price one cent.
The editor was probably not solvent when he conceived the scheme, and he borrowed a thousand dollars of his old friend, James Coggeshall, with which to buy the indispensable material. He beganwith six hundred subscribers, printed five thousand of the first number, and found it difficult to give them all away. The "Tribune" appeared on the day set apart in New York for the funeral procession in commemoration of President Harrison, who died a month after his inauguration.
It was a chilly, dismal day in April, and all the town was absorbed in the imposing pageant. The receipts during the first week were ninety-two dollars; the expenses five hundred and twenty-five. But the little paper soon caught public attention, and the circulation increased for three weeks at the rate of about three hundred a day. It began its fourth week with six thousand; its seventh week, with eleven thousand. The first number contained four columns of advertisements; the twelfth, nine columns; the hundredth, thirteen columns.
In a word, the success of the paper was immediate and very great. It grew a little faster than the machinery for producing it could be provided. Its success was due chiefly to the fact that the original idea of the editor was actually carried out. He aimed to produce a paper which should morally benefit the public. It was not always right, but it always meant to be.
A cellar in Nassau Street was the first office of the "Herald." It was a real cellar, not a basement, lighted only from the street, and consequently very dark except near its stone steps. The first furniture of this office,—as I was told by the late Mr. Gowans, who kept a bookstore near by,—consisted of the following articles:—
Item, one wooden chair. Item, two empty flour barrels with a wide, dirty pine board laid upon them, to serve as desk and table. End of the inventory.
The two barrels stood about four feet apart, and one end of the board was pretty close to the steps, so that passers-by could see the pile of "Heralds" which were placed upon it every morning for sale. Scissors, pens, inkstand, and pencil were at the other end, leaving space in the middle for an editorial desk.
This was in the summer of 1835, when General Jackson was President of the United States, and Martin Van Buren the favorite candidate for thesuccession. If the reader had been in New York then, and had wished to buy a copy of the saucy little paper, which every morning amused and offended the decorous people of that day, he would have gone down into this underground office, and there he would have found its single chair occupied by a tall and vigorous-looking man about forty years of age, with a slight defect in one of his eyes, dressed in a clean, but inexpensive suit of summer clothes.
This was James Gordon Bennett, proprietor, editor, reporter, book-keeper, clerk, office-boy, and everything else there was appertaining to the control and management of the New York "Herald," price one cent. The reader would perhaps have said to him, "I want to-day's 'Herald.'" Bennett would have looked up from his writing, and pointed, without speaking, to the pile of papers at the end of the board. The visitor would have taken one and added a cent to the pile of copper coin adjacent. If he had lingered a few minutes, the busy writer would not have regarded him, and he could have watched the subsequent proceedings without disturbing him. In a few moments a woman might have come down the steps into the subterranean office, who answered the editor's inquiring look by telling him that she wanted a place as cook, and wished him to write an advertisement for her. This Would have been entirely a matter of course, for in the prospectus of the paper it was expressly statedthat persons could have their advertisements written for them at the office.
The editor himself would have written the advertisement for her with the 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 hisstructure 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 withyou. 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 SalisburyCraigs. 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 asclerk 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, whichwere 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, beginningto 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 anarrangement 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 littlecertaintyto 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 largestrevenue 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 firstcoupswas 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 boldcoupwith 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!
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 asand,the,but,if,is, and even larger words, likealthoughandnotwithstanding, occur very often in all compositions. How easy it would be, inexperienced persons think, to take up a long word, such asextraordinary, 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, ofheat,cold,wet,dry,murder,fire,dreadfulrobbery,atrocious outrage,fearful calamity, andalarming 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 requireda 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 papersas a favorfrom 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 goodwriting 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 hismachine. 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, andhas 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 wasnotkilling the goose that laid the golden egg.
Old readers of the London "Times" were a little surprised, perhaps, to see the honors paid by that journal to its late editor-in-chief. An obituary notice of several columns was surrounded by black lines; a mark of respect which the paper would pay only to members of the royal family, or to some public man of universal renown. Never before, I believe, did this newspaper avow to the world that its editor had a name; and the editor himself usually affected to conceal his professional character. Former editors, in fact, would flatly deny their connection with the paper, and made a great secret of a fact which was no secret at all.
Mr. Carlyle, in his "Life of Sterling," gives a curious illustration of this. Sir Robert Peel, in 1835, upon resigning his ministry, wrote a letter to theeditor of "The Times," thanking him for the powerful support which his administration had received from that journal. Sir Robert Peel did not presume to address this letter to any individual by name, and he declared in this letter that the editor was unknown to him even by sight. Edward Sterling replied in a lofty tone, very much as one king might reply to another, and signed the letter simply "The Editor of 'The Times.'"
But all this is changed. The affectation of secrecy, long felt to be ridiculous, has been abandoned, and the editor now circulates freely among his countrymen in his true character, as the conductor of the first journal in Europe. At his death he receives the honors due to the office he holds and the power he exerts, and his funeral is publicly attended by his associates. This is as it should be. Journalism has now taken its place as one of the most important of the liberal professions. Next to statesmanship, next to the actual conduct of public affairs, the editor of a leading newspaper fills, perhaps, the most important place in the practical daily life of the community in which he lives; and the influence of the office is likely to increase, rather than diminish.
Mr. Delane was probably the first individual who was ever educated with a distinct view to his becoming an editor. While he was still a boy, his father, a solicitor by profession, received an appointment in the office of "The Times," which led to youngDelane's acquaintance with the proprietors of the journal. It seems they took a fancy to the lad. They perceived that he had the editorial cast of character, since, in addition to uncommon industry and intelligence, he had a certain eagerness for information, an aptitude for acquiring it, and a discrimination in weighing it, which marks the journalistic mind. The proprietors, noting these traits, encouraged, and, I believe, assisted him to a university education, in the expectation that he would fit himself for the life editorial.
Having begun this course of preparation early, he entered the office of "The Times" as editorial assistant soon after he came of age, and acquitted himself so well that, in 1841, when he was not yet twenty-five, he became editor-in-chief. He was probably the youngest man who ever filled such a post in a daily paper of anything like equal importance. This rapid promotion will be thought the more remarkable when it is mentioned that he never wrote an editorial in his life. "The Times" itself says of him:—
"He never was a writer. He never even attempted to write anything, except reports and letters. These he had to do, and he did them well. He had a large staff of writers, and it was not necessary he should write, except to communicate with them."
His not being a writer was one of his strongest points. Writing is a career by itself. The compositionof one editorial of the first class is a very hard day's work, and one that leaves to the writer but a small residue of vital force. Writing for the public is the most arduous and exhausting of all industries, and cannot properly be combined with any other. Nor can a man average more than two or three editorial articles a week such as "The Times" prints every day. It was an immense advantage to the paper to have an editor who was never tempted to waste any of his strength upon the toil of composition. "The Times" prints daily three editorial articles, which cost the paper on an average fifty dollars each. Mr. Delane himself mentioned this during his visit to this country.
There was one quality of his editorship which we ought not to overlook. It was totally free from personalities. I have been in the habit for a long time of reading "The Times"—not regularly but very frequently, and sometimes every day for a considerable period; but I have never seen an individual disrespectfully mentioned in the paper. An opinion may be denounced; but the individual holding that opinion is invariably spoken of with decency. "The Times" has frequently objected to the course pursued by Mr. Gladstone; but the man himself is treated with precisely the same respect as he would be if he were an invited guest at the editor's table.
"The Times," being a human institution, has plenty of faults, and has made its ample share ofmistakes; but it owes its eminent position chiefly to its good qualities, its business ability, its patriotism, its liberal enterprise, and wise treatment of those who serve it. The paper is still chiefly owned and conducted by John Walter, the grandson of the founder.
The story of this stalwart and skillful Scotch farmer, George Hope, enables us to understand what agitators mean by the term "landlordism." It is a very striking case, as the reader will admit.
George Hope, born in 1811, was the son of a tenant farmer of the county of East Lothian, now represented in Parliament by Mr. Gladstone. The farm on which he was born, on which his ancestors had lived, and upon which he spent the greater part of his own life, was called Fenton Barns. With other lands adjacent, it made a farm of about eight hundred acres. Two thirds of it were of a stiff, retentive clay, extremely hard to work, and the rest was little better than sand, of a yellow color and incapable of producing grain.
Two or three generations of Hopes had spent life and toil unspeakable upon this unproductive tract, without making the least profit by it; being just able to pay their rent, and keep their heads above water. They subsisted, reared families, and died, worn out with hard work, leaving to their sons, besides an honest name, only the same inheritance ofstruggle and despair. George Hope's mother tried for years to squeeze out of her butter and eggs the price of a table large enough for all her family to sit round at once, but died without obtaining it.
At the age of eighteen years, George Hope took hold of this unpromising farm, his parents being in declining health, nearly exhausted by their long struggle with it. He brought to his task an intelligent and cultivated mind. He had been for four years in a lawyer's office. He had read with great admiration the writings of the American Channing; and he now used his intelligence in putting new life into this old land.
The first thing was to acquire more capital; and the only way of accomplishing this was to do much of the work himself. Mere manual labor, however, would not have sufficed; for he found himself baffled by the soil. Part of the land being wet, cold clay, and part yellow sand, he improved both by mixing them together. He spread sand upon his clay, and clay upon his sand, as well as abundant manure, and he established a kiln for converting some of the clay into tiles, with which he drained his own farm, besides selling large quantities of tiles to the neighboring farmers. For a time, he was in the habit of burning a kiln of eleven thousand tiles every week, and he was thus enabled to expend in draining his own farms about thirteen thousand dollars, without going in debt for it.
He believed in what is called "high farming,"and spent enormous sums in fertilizing the soil. For a mere top-dressing of guano, bones, nitrate of soda, or sulphate of ammonia, he spent one spring eight thousand dollars. These large expenditures, directed as they were by a man who thoroughly understood his business, produced wonderful results. He gained a large fortune, and his farm became so celebrated, that travelers arrived from all parts of Europe, and even from the United States, to see it. An American called one day to inspect the farm, when Mr. Hope began, as usual, to express his warm admiration for Dr. Channing. The visitor was a nephew of the distinguished preacher, and he was exceedingly surprised to find his uncle so keenly appreciated in that remote spot.
It is difficult to say which of his two kinds of land improved the most under his vigorous treatment. His sandy soil, the crop of which in former years was sometimes blown out of the ground, was so strengthened by its dressing of clay as to produce excellent crops of wheat; and his clay fields were made among the most productive in Scotland by his system of combined sanding, draining and fertilizing.
One of his secrets was that he treated his laborers with justice and consideration. His harvest-homes were famous in their day. When he found that certain old-fashioned games caused some of his weak teetotalers to fall from grace, he changed them for others; and, instead of beer and toddy,provided abundance of tea, coffee, strawberries, and other dainties. When the time came for dancing, he took the lead, and could sometimes boast that he had not missed one dance the whole evening. In addressing a public meeting of farmers and landlords in 1861, he spoke on the subject of improving the cottages of farm laborers. These were some of the sentences which fell from his lips:—
"Treat your laborers with respect, as men; encourage their self-respect. Never enter a poor man's house any more than a rich man's unless invited, and then go not to find fault, but as a friend. If you can render him or his family a service, by advice or otherwise, let it be more delicately done than to your most intimate associate. Remember how hard it is for a poor man to respect himself. He hears the wealthy styled the respectable, and the poor, the lower classes; but never call a man low. His being amandwarfs, and renders as nothing, all the distinctions of an earthly estate."
The reader sees what kind of person this George Hope was. He was as nearly a perfect character as our very imperfect race can ordinarily exhibit. He was a great farmer, a true captain of industry, an honest, intelligent, just, and benevolent man. He was, moreover, a good citizen, and this led him to take an interest in public matters, and to do his utmost in aid of several reasonable reforms. He was what is called a Liberal in politics. He did what he could to promote the reform bill of LordJohn Russell, and he was a conspicuous ally of Cobden and Bright in their efforts to break down the old corn laws. He remembered that there were about five thousand convictions in Great Britain every year under the game laws, and he strove in all moderate and proper ways to have those laws repealed.
And now we come to the point. A certain person named R. A. Dundas Christopher Nisbet Hamilton married the heiress of the estate to which the farm of George Hope belonged. He thus acquired the power, when a tenant's lease expired, to refuse a renewal. This person was a Tory, who delighted in the slaughter of birds and beasts, and who thought it highly impertinent in the tenant of a farm to express political opinions contrary to those of his landlord. George Hope, toward the end of his long lease, offered to take the farm again, at a higher rent than he had ever before paid, though it was himself who had made the farm more valuable. His offer was coldly declined, and he was obliged, after expending the labor and skill of fifty-three years upon that land, to leave it, and find another home for his old age.
He had fortunately made money enough to buy a very good farm for himself, and he had often said that he would rather farm fifty acres of his own than to be the tenant of the best farm in Europe. This "eviction," as it was called, of a farmer so celebrated attracted universal comment, and excitedgeneral indignation. He left his farm like a conqueror. Public dinners and services of plate were presented to him, and his landlord of many names acquired a notoriety throughout Europe which no doubt he enjoyed. He certainly did a very bold action, and one which casts a perfect glare of light upon the nature of landlordism.
George Hope died in 1876, universally honored in Scotland. He lies buried in the parish of his old farm, not far from the home of his fathers. On his tombstone is inscribed:—
"To the memory of George Hope, for many years tenant of Fenton Barns. He was the devoted supporter of every movement which tended to the advancement of civil and religious liberty, and to the moral and social elevation of mankind."
He was an "Old Public Functionary" in the service of the British people.
When President Buchanan spoke of himself as an Old Public Functionary he was a good deal laughed at by some of the newspapers, and the phrase has since been frequently used in an opprobrious or satirical sense. This is to be regretted, for there is no character more respectable, and there are few so useful, as an intelligent and patriotic man of long standing in the public service. Whatonesuch man can do is shown by the example of Sir Henry Cole, who died a few months ago in London after half a century of public life.
The son of an officer in the British army, he was educated at that famous Blue-Coat School which is interesting to Americans because Lamb and Coleridge attended it. At the age of fifteen he received an appointment as clerk in the office of Public Records. In due time, having proved his capacity and peculiar fitness, he was promoted to the post of Assistant Keeper, which gave him a respectable position and some leisure.
He proved to be in an eminent sense the right man in the right place. Besides publishing, from time to time, curious and interesting documents which he discovered in his office, he called attention, by a series of vigorous pamphlets, to the chaotic condition in which the public records of Great Britain were kept. Gradually these pamphlets made an impression, and they led at length to a reform in the office. The records were rearranged, catalogued, rendered safe, and made accessible to students. This has already led to important corrections in history, and to a great increase in the sum of historical knowledge.
When the subject of cheap postage came up in 1840, the government offered four prizes of a hundred pounds each for suggestions in aid of Sir Rowland Hill's plan. One of these prizes was assigned to Henry Cole. He was one of the persons who first became converts to the idea of penny postage, and he lent the aid of his pen and influence to its adoption.
At length, about the year 1845, he entered upon the course of proceedings which rendered him one of the most influential and useful persons of his time. He had long lamented the backward condition of arts of design in England, and the consequent ugliness of the various objects in the sight and use of which human beings pass their lives. English furniture, wall-papers, carpets, curtains, cutlery, garments, upholstery, ranged from the tolerableto the hideous, and were inferior to the manufactures of France and Germany. He organized a series of exhibitions on a small scale, somewhat similar to those of the American Institute in New York, which has held a competitive exhibition of natural and manufactured objects every autumn for the last fifty years.
His exhibitions attracted attention, and they led at length to the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851. The merit of that scheme must be shared between Henry Cole and Prince Albert. Cole suggested that his small exhibitions should, once in five years, assume a national character, and invite contributions from all parts of the empire. Yes, said Prince Albert, and let us also invite competition from foreign countries on equal terms with native products.
The Exhibition of 1851 was admirably managed, and had every kind of success. It benefited England more than all other nations put together, because it revealed to her people their inferiority in many branches both of workmanship and design. We all know how conceited people are apt to become who have no opportunity to compare themselves with superiors. John Bull, never over-modest, surveyed the Exhibition of 1851, and discovered, to his great surprise, that he was not the unapproachable Bull of the universe which he had fondly supposed. He saw himself beaten in some things by the French, in some by the Germans, inothers by the Italians, and in a few (O wonder!) by the Yankees.
Happily he had the candor to admit this humiliating fact to himself, and he put forth earnest and steadfast exertions to bring himself up to the level of modern times.
Henry Cole was the life and soul of the movement. It was he who called attention to the obstacles placed in the way of improvement by the patent laws, and some of those obstacles, through him, were speedily removed.
During this series of services to his country, he remained in the office of Public Records. The government now invited him to another sphere of labor. They asked him to undertake the reconstruction of the schools of design, and they gave him an office which placed him practically at the head of the various institutions designed to promote the application of art to manufacture. The chief of these now is the Museum of South Kensington, which is to many Americans the most interesting object in London. The creation of this wonderful museum was due more to him than to any other individual.
It came to pass in this way: After the close of the Crystal Palace in 1851, Parliament gave five thousand pounds for the purchase of the objects exhibited which were thought best calculated to raise the standard of taste in the nation. These objects, chiefly selected by Cole, were arranged by him forexhibition in temporary buildings of such extreme and repulsive inconvenience as to bring opprobrium and ridicule upon the undertaking. It was one of the most difficult things in the world to excite public interest in the exhibition. But by that energy which comes of strong conviction and patriotic feeling, and of the opportunity given him by his public employment, Henry Cole wrung from a reluctant Parliament the annual grants necessary to make South Kensington Museum what it now is.
Magnificent buildings, filled with a vast collection of precious and interesting objects, greet the visitor. There are collections of armor, relics, porcelain, enamel, fabrics, paintings, statues, carvings in wood and ivory, machines, models, and every conceivable object of use or beauty. Some of the most celebrated pictures in the world are there, and there is an art library of thirty thousand volumes. There are schools for instruction in every branch of art and science which can be supposed to enter into the products of industry. The prizes which are offered for excellence in design and invention have attracted, in some years, as many as two hundred thousand objects. During three days of every week admission to this superb assemblage of exhibitions is free, and on the other three days sixpence is charged.
The influence of this institution upon British manufactures has been in many branches revolutionary. As the London "Times" said some time ago:—
"There is hardly a household in the country that is not the better for the change; there is certainly no manufacture in which design has any place which has not felt its influence."
The formation of this Museum, the chief work of Sir Henry Cole's useful life, was far from exhausting his energies. He has borne a leading part in all the industrial exhibitions held in London during the last quarter of a century, and served as English commissioner at the Paris exhibitions of 1855 and 1867.
This man was enabled to render all this service to his country, to Europe, and to us, because he was not obliged to waste any of his energies in efforts to keep his place. Administrations might change, and Parliaments might dissolve; but he was a fixture as long as he did his duty. When his duty was fairly done, and he had completed the fortieth year of his public service, he retired on his full salary, and he was granted an honorable title; for a titleishonorable when it is won by good service. Henceforth he was called Sir Henry Cole, K. C. B.
To the end of his life he continued to labor in all sorts of good works—a Training School for Music, a Training School for Cookery, guilds for the promotion of health, and many others. He died in April, 1882, aged seventy-four years.