History of Journalism in the United States/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
THE FIRST JOURNALS AND THEIR EDITORS
The news-letter, of ancient origin, filled the place of newspapers in England as well as in America, long before the first newspaper appeared. In the mother country the news-letter had become an important political engine.[1] One writer in particular, a high-churchman named Dyery whose letters were much circulated in manuscript, was twice sent to prison for his anti-government writings.
Eagerness for news, so persistently thwarted by the government, caused the people of London to flock to the coffee-houses, while censorship was being exercised, as the Athenians of ancient times flocked to the market-place. To some extent this satisfied the Londoners, but people in the provinces were obliged to depend on news-letters. These were prepared by writers who wandered from one coffee-house to another, gathering material for weekly epistles with which to enlighten the country folk. It was an evidence of the material well-being of a country gentleman that his news-letter arrived weekly to supply him with the gossip of the great city.[2]
The demand for news-letters brought about, in 1695, a half-printed and half-written news-letter called the Flying Post, which declared that any gentleman who had "mind to oblige his country friend or correspondent with this account of publick affairs" might purchase it for twopence and on the blank half of the sheet "write his own private business or the material news of the day." [3]
While the American mind, as developed in the colonies, was in advance of the contemporary culture of Europe in the science of politics,[4] the homogeneous character of the colonists, or rather their practical unanimity in matters of religion, led to an absence of the acrimonious political debate that marked England at that time, although the example of the mother country was to bear bitter fruit.
Little demand for political discussion existed in America, but there was a great demand for news, and since there were but few coffee-houses, such as London contained, it was natural that the postmaster should be the central figure for the trade in gossip.
The first postmaster of Boston was Richard Fairbanks, who in 1639 was officially declared to be the person at whose house all letters were to be delivered.[5] The smallness of the compensation, however, led the postmasters to devise various means by which their slight income might be augmented, so that in 1703 we find John Campbell—an active citizen of Boston, interested in the first charitable society of the country,—[6] adding to his meager income by supplying the colonists outside of Boston with the news and gossip that came to him as postmaster. Nine of these letters, addressed to Governor Winthrop of Connecticut, show Campbell as a faithful, if not an inspired, reporter of the events of the day.[7]
That the memory of Harris' attempt with the first newspaper still lingered is shown by Campbell's reference to his own letters as journals of Publick Occurances, although it is evident that the summary treatment accorded Harris' publication had chilled any printer or writer who might have thought of a second attempt along similar lines. But the newspaper was bound to come, especially when the newspapers in the mother country were attracting so much attention and exercising so great an influence on the public mind.
With the expiration of the censorship in England in 1695,—for which relief so much was owing to John Locke's argument before Parliament[8]—journals sprang up by the dozen, and, though America remained dependent on the news-letter and belated copies of London papers for its information, England was flooded with newspapers and newspaper discussion. The first daily newspaper in London made its appearance in 1702; and the same year that Campbell started what was really the first newspaper in America, Daniel Defoe started his Review in London.
So it might be said that the appearance of the Boston News-Letter on April 24, 1704, was not so much a sign of progressiveness as an evidence of the backwardness of the colonies. Samuel Sewall, the faithful diarist, records under this date, the fact that the News-Letter had come out and that he had taken the first copy ever carried "over the river" to President Willard of Harvard University. We do not hear now of the lamentations that accompanied the virile publication of Benjamin Harris, for Campbell was careful to publish his paper "by authority "and to print nothing that would offend the authorities or religious leaders such as Mather, who had waxed so indignant over the Harris publication.
Most of the paper is taken up with extracts from the London Flying Post and the London Gazette of the previous December. This was doubtless a very safe introduction. When it came to printing the local news, the harmless Campbell restricted himself to recording several particularly eminent deaths and the announcement of a sermon by the Reverend Mr. Pemberton, of extensive influence. There was a short, snappy account of a sea .fight between the English and the French and the story of a scare about French ships appearing off Rhode Island,—several "marine items," as they would be called to-day, and then his announcement that he would be ready to take advertisements and subscriptions, prices to be furnished by calling on Mr. Campbell himself at the post office.
There is none of the spirit of Harris here, no burning indignation against conditions, such as marked the great journalists and later made journalism the voice of the people, nor during his career as editor do we find Campbell showing any desire to bring about a better condition of affairs or any other evidence of the progressive spirit. It is, therefore, not to be wondered that Campbell's colorless publication had a hard struggle.
Truly a timid spirit was poor Campbell, whose paper persisted for fifteen years without character or progress, but with frequent pitiful requests for contributions and assistance. We find him pleading, the year after he had established the paper, that the post office was paying him very little money, and that, despite the fact that a number of merchants had promised to contribute to the support of his weekly News-Letter, he had not made anything by it. He begged the Governor to grant him some allowance "to encourage him in said duty for the future," a petition that resulted in his being allowed six shillings or six pounds, the exact amount not being decipherable.[9]
Fifteen years after he had started the paper he appealed to the public for assistance, stating that he had "supplied them conscientiously with publick occurances of Europe and with those of these, our neighboring provinces, and the West Indies,"[10] although he admitted that at one time he had been a little matter of thirteen months behindhand with the news. The time had come, he said, when he must have assistance, frankly admitting that his circulation was not over 300 copies, although some ignorant persons had spread about a report that he was selling upward of a thousand. He therefore pleaded, the good postmaster, that those who had not paid for the haii year's subscription would please come forward to his house in Cornhill and lay down the cash.
Campbell's lack of success aroused little sympathy, for while some of the fault may have been with the authorities, we cannot help contrasting his puny and generally uninteresting gazette, which had held the field for sixteen years without a rival, with the great development of journalism, in the mother country. It was during these sixteen years that Addison, Swift and Steele were, as Henry Morley says, "teaching the English people to read" in journals which, if they did not come up to modern ideas and high standards of journalism, were bridging the chasm between journalism and literature and establishing for the former an authority, a political and social standing that was to count for much in the battle for a free press and political liberty.
New forces, affecting those interested both in literature and politics, were at work in England; chief among these forces was "the tendency to exalt the common good of society at the expense of special privileges."[11] Within a few years after the News-Letter was established, the circulation of the papers in London was about 44,000, the papers named being the Daily Courant, General Remark, Female Tatler, General Postscript, Supplement, British Apollo, London Gazette, Postman, Postboy, Flying Post, Review, Tatler, Rehearsal Revived, Evening Post, Whisperer, Postboy Junior, City Intelligence and Observator.
What was more surprising was that when the Whigs came into power in 1715, with George the First, there was no sympathetic reaction in a journalistic way in the colonies as might have been expected. Campbell's journalistic career suffered a severe blow when in 1719 he was removed as postmaster and a William Brooker was appointed in his place. Campbell, on being summarily dismissed, declined to send his newspaper through the mail, with the result that on December 21, 1720, Brooker brought out the first number of the second newspaper published in America, called the Boston Gazette, which was also a newspaper "published by authority" and was printed by James Franklin, who with his celebrated brother was to play an important part in shaping the early journalistic history of colonial America.
Brooker was a more able man than Campbell, as he showed in the controversy that followed between the two pioneer journalists, both of whom incidentally established that connection between journalism and political office which has persisted to our day and doubtless has had something to do with the journalist regarding himself, in this country more than in any other, as entitled to direct governmental support and reward. We shall see curious and sometimes rather tragic instances, as we progress, of the endeavor on the part of editors to unite the functions of journalist and politician.
Brooker's paper was the same size as Campbell's and was issued from the post office as the latter's had been. This fact was gall and wormwood to old Campbell, who showed the first spirit evidenced in his journalistic career, by attacking his rival in really modern fashion, declaring that he pitied the readers of the new newspaper—"its sheets smell stronger of beer than of midnight oil—it is not reading fit for people!" Certainly this was the thrust direct, and a fine evidence that after the long sleep that might be said to have characterized Campbell's editorship up to this period, he was at last awake and was appearing as the original sponsor of the personal note that was afterward to be so seldom missing from American journalism.
Right modern, too, was Brooker's rejoinder, intimating that editor Campbell was discussing many things in order to confuse the public mind as to the fact that he had been "removed, turned out, displaced or superseded" from the post office, although it seemed to his successor that "removed" was the "softest epithet."
Before leaving Campbell, it may be said for him in extenuation that some of the dullness of his journal was but a reflection of the life he depicted, and it can also be said that much of the dreariness of New England life was due to the reign of the Mathers. Brooks Adams has well observed that the one weak point in the otherwise strong position of the Massachusetts clergy was that they were not permitted to make their order hereditary.[12] But the Mathers came near establishing a dynasty. It was a Mather who cried out against the Benjamin Harris publication; it was a Mather who made it necessary to have printing done in New York when occasion arose for criticizing those stem New England divines, and it was unquestionably the spirit of the Mathers dominating in New England that led the community to stand, for sixteen long years, the dull and phlegmatic journalism of John Campbell.
James Franklin, who now appeared as printer of the new postmaster's newspaper, had studied his trade in London, whither he had been sent by his father, Josiah Franklin, whose paternity of thirteen children made it necessary for him to devote some thought to the occupations which they were to follow.
Benjamin Franklin, in his autobiography, is far from kindly toward his brother, and of his father he gives us not as much to indicate his importance as does the chronicler Sewall in several short lines. The Puritan Pepys, as Senator Lodge has called Sewall, shows what our modern yellow journalist would call a keen news sense when he records on February 6, 1703, that "Ebenezer Franklin of the South Church, a male infant of sixteen months old was drown'd in a tub of suds, February 5, 1703."[13] In 1708 Sewall preached at the house of Josiah Franklin "the eleventh sermon of the Barren Figtree."[14] He records going to a meeting at Franklin's house in 1713, when Benjamin was in his eighth year and probably had the privilege of sitting very still and listening to the wonderful elders. In 1718 Sewall, having "set the tune" for twenty-four years, found that he was wandering off the key and suggested that Josiah Franklin take his place in church.
James Franklin's trip to London had done much for him and much for journalism, for he came back from a London that was full of politics and journalistic combat. The influence of these early journalistic masters was broad and deep, as we learn from Benjamin Franklin's biography, wherein he states that he taught himself to write excellent English prose by modeling his style upon that of Addison and Steele; an evidence indeed that the colonies were ripe for better journalism, when the son of a soap-maker, at the age of thirteen or fourteen, was imitating the pioneer newspaper stylists.
The Boston Gazette made little impression on the life of the colony, except as it stirred up a controversy with the old postmaster, Campbell, who continued to abuse Brooker—possibly to the merriment of the community but with no advantage to either gentleman, for in a few months Brooker lost both the postmastership and the Gazette, the latter passing from postmaster to postmaster, apparently as the property of the office, or rather as a perquisite of the position.
Between 1719 and 1739, the Boston Gazette was owned and conducted by no less than five postmasters. Each of these, of course, was entitled to give the printing of the paper to whomsoever he would. When the paper passed into the hands of Brooker's successor, the printing was taken away from James Franklin. The young printer, with his London ideas and London training, and with the intelligence that was evidently a family possession, determined to start a paper of his own and, on August 7, 1721, there appeared the first number of the New England Courant.
The new editor had no intention of abiding by the policies that had characterized his predecessors, for in the first number he attacked the News-Letter as a "dull vehicle of intelligence," which brought down upon him the wrath of old Campbell. What was of more importance was that Franklin, his paper appearing when the town was being ravaged by smallpox, attacked the practice of inoculation, which caused Cotton Mather to condemn his paper as "a vile production," and to regret that it could not be suppressed as a libelous sheet.
Franklin, we learn from his brother Benjamin, had some ingenious and intelligent men among his friends, who backed him in his venture and anonymously contributed articles to it. This group was described by the clergy as a "Hell-Fire Club."
The attack of Cotton Mather on the Courant helped as much to make it popular as did its own courage and freedom of expression. The town was divided over the novelty of this kind of journalism and some even stopped James Franklin on the street to remonstrate with him, while others attacked him in the News-Letter and in the Gazette. The audacity of the publishers turned out to be a good business venture, for they picked up forty new subscribers, which was then a great increase, no newspaper having more than three hundred circulation at that time.
It was at this time that Benjamin Franklin began, under the name of "Silence Dogood," his contributions to the paper, which are so closely modeled on the essays of Addison in the Spectator that it has been suggested that he had the original book open before him when he wrote them.
The paper continued in its course, criticizing and occasionally referring with sarcasm to the government, until the General Court took the matter in hand. A committe was appointed to consider the charges, and it finally decided, on the issue of January 14, 1722, that the tendency of the paper was to mock religion and government and that, therefore, James Franklin should be forbidden to print and publish his paper or any other paper or pamphlet like it unless what was to be printed was first submitted to the secretary of the province.
Franklin, however, refused to submit his manuscript a ordered, with the result that the General Court ordered "that James Franklin no longer print the newspaper." The publisher's friends held a meeting, and as young Benjamin Franklin, then only sixteen years of age, had developed talent, first as a printer's devil and then as contributor to the paper, it was decided to print the paper in his name and on February 11, 1722, Benjamin Franklin made his début as editor.
The policy of the paper, however, continued to be dictated by James Franklin, and the following summer trouble again arose between the paper and the government when the Courant criticized the Massachusetts authorities for their failure to give chase to a pirate that had appeared off Block Island. The authorities decided "that the said paragraphs are a high affront to this government" and ordered Franklin to be imprisoned in Boston. After a week's confinement, the records of the General Court show a petition from him "that he may have the liberty of the yard, he being indisposed and suffering in health by the said confinement," and upon his promising not to endeavor to escape, this privilege was granted to him.
Several weeks afterward the council again called attention to the free-thinking character of the writings in the Courant and its habit of reflecting on his majesty's government, and the publisher had to put up one hundred pounds as security for his good behavior.
Meanwhile Benjamin Franklin and his brother had quarreled, as he relates in his biography, and in the fall of 1723 the enterprising young man, who was to take such a part in the development of this country, sailed for New York without a formal farewell.
For several years after his departure the paper was printed in his name, but it weakened in spirit and, in the beginning of the year 1727, it ceased publication, and James Franklin accepted the invitation of his brother John in Newport and moved his printing press to that colony.[15]
- ↑ Macaulay, History of England, v, 2459.
- ↑ Macaulay, History of England, i, 381.
- ↑ Andrews, History of British Journalism, 87.
- ↑ North, The Newspaper and the Periodical Press, 10.
- ↑ Drake, History of Boston, 247.
- ↑ Drake, History of Boston, 455.
- ↑ Massachusetts Historical Society, ix, 485.
- ↑ H. R. Fox Bourne, Life of John Locke, ii, 312–315.
- ↑ Historical Magazine, viii, 31.
- ↑ 1August 10, 1719.
- ↑ Stevens, Notes on English Politics, 1702-1750.
- ↑ M. C. Crawford, Old Boston in Colonial Days, 165.
- ↑ Sewall's Diary, ii, 73.
- ↑ Ibid. ii. 236.
- ↑ McMaster, Benjamin Franklin, 23.