Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 8.djvu/25

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The Boston Herald.
13

reliable reporters and correspondents." That these promises have been sacredly fulfilled up to the present moment cannot be denied even by readers and contemporary sheets whose opinions have been in direct opposition to those expressed in the Herald's editorial columns. No pains or expense have been spared to obtain the news from all quarters of the globe, and the paper's most violent opponent will find it impossible to substantiate a charge that the intelligence collected with such care and thoroughness has in a single instance been distorted or colored in the publication to suit the editorial policy pursued at the time. The expression of opinions has always, under the present management, been confined to the editorial columns, and here a course of absolute independence has been followed.

The Herald, immediately upon coming under the control of the new proprietors, showed a marked accession of enterprise, and that this change for the better was appreciated by the reading public was proved by the fact that during the year 1869 the circulation rose from a daily average of fifty-three thousand four hundred and sixty-five in January to sixty thousand five hundred and thirty-five in December, the increase having been regular and permanent, and not caused by any "spurts" arising from extraordinary events. On New Year's day, 1870, the Herald was enlarged for the third time, to its present size, by the addition of another column and lengthening the pages to correspond. On September 3, of that year, the circulation for the first time passed above one hundred thousand, the issue containing an account of the battle of Sedan reaching a sale of over one hundred and five thousand copies. The average daily circulation for the year was more than seventy-three thousand. Finding it impossible, from the growing circulation of the paper, to supply the demand with the two six-cylinder presses printing from type, it was determined, early in the year, to stereotype the forms, so that duplicate plates could be used simultaneously on both. The requisite machinery was introduced therefor, and on June 8, 1870, was put in use for the first time. For nearly ten years the Herald was the only paper in Boston printed from stereotype plates. In 1871 the average daily circulatian was eighty-three thousand nine hundred, a gain of nearly eleven thousand over the previous year. On a number of occasions the edition reached as high as one hundred and twelve thousand. On October 1 George G. Bailey disposed of his interest in the paper to the other proprietors, and retired from the firm. In 1872 there was a further increase in the circulation, the daily average having been ninety-three thousand five hundred. One issue (after the Great Fire) reached two hundred and twenty thousand, and several were not much below that figure. The first Bullock perfecting-press ever used east of New York was put in operation in the Herald office in June, 1872; this press feeds itself from a continuous roll of paper, and prints both sides, cutting and delivering the papers complete. On January 1, 1873, Justin Andrews, who had been connected with the Herald, as one of its editors since 1856, and as one of the proprietors who succeeded Mr. Bailey in 1869, sold his interest to his partners, and retired from newspaper life altogether. Since that date, the ownership in the Herald has been vested in R. M. Pulsifer, E. B. Haskell,