Chapter I: Front Matter

The Sun]

THE STORY OF

The Sun.

NEW YORK, 1833–1918

BY

FRANK M. O’BRIEN

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY EDWARD
PAGE MITCHELL, EDITOR OF “THE
SUN”--ILLUSTRATIONS AND FACSIMILES

NEW YORK: GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

_Copyright, 1918,
By George H. Doran Company_

_Copyright, 1917, 1918, The Frank A. Munsey Company_

_Copyright, 1918, The Sun Printing and Publishing Association_

_Printed in the United States of America_

TO

FRANK A. MUNSEY

AN INTRODUCTION

BY THE EDITOR OF THE SUN

It is truer, perhaps, of a newspaper than of most other complex things in the world that the whole may be greater than the sum of all its parts. In any daily paper worth a moment’s consideration the least fancifully inclined observer will discern an individuality apart from and in a degree independent of the dozens or hundreds or thousands of personal values entering at a given time into the composite of its grey pages.

This entity of the institution, as distinguished from the human beings actually engaged in carrying it on, this fact of the newspaper’s possession of a separate countenance, a spirit or soul differentiating it from all others of its kind, is recognised either consciously or unconsciously by both the more or less unimportant workers who help to make it and by their silent partners who support it by buying and reading it. Its loyal friends and intelligent critics outside the establishment, the Old Subscriber and the Constant Reader, form the habit of attributing to the newspaper, as to an individual, qualities and powers beneficent or maleficent or merely foolish, according to their mood or digestion. They credit it with traits of character quite as distinct as belong to any man or woman of their acquaintance. They personify it, moreover, without much knowledge, if any, of the people directing and producing it; and, often and naturally, without any particular concern about who and what these people may be.

On their own side, the makers of the paper are accustomed to individualise it as vividly as a crew does the ship. They know better than anybody else not only how far each personal factor, each element of the composite, is modified and influenced in its workings by the other personal factors associated in the production, but also the extent to which all the personal units are influenced and modified by something not listed in the office directory or visible upon the payroll; something that was there before they came and will be there after they go.

Of course, that which has given persistent idiosyncrasy to a newspaper like the _Sun_, for example, is accumulated tradition. That which has made the whole count for more than the sum total of its parts, in the _Sun’s_ case as in the case of its esteemed contemporaries, is the heritage of method and expedient, the increment of standardised skill and localised imagination contributed through many years to the fund of the paper by the forgotten worker as well as by the remembered.

The manner of growth of the great newspaper’s well-defined and continuous character, distinguishing it from all the rest of the offspring of the printing press, a development sometimes not radically affected by changes of personnel, of ownership, of exterior conditions and fashions set by the popular taste, is a subject over which journalistic metaphysics might easily exert itself to the verge of boredom. Fortunately there has been found a much better way to deal with the attractive theme.

The _Sun_ is eighty-five years old as this book goes to press. In telling its intimate story, from the September Tuesday which saw the beginning of Mr. Day’s intrepid and epochal experiment, throughout the days of the Beaches, of Dana, of Laffan, and of Reick to the time of Mr. Munsey’s purchase of the property in the summer of 1916, Mr. O’Brien has done what has never been undertaken before, so far as is known to the writer of this introduction, for any newspaper with a career of considerable span.

There have been general histories of Journalism, presenting casually the main facts of evolution and progress in the special instance. There have been satisfactory narratives of journalistic episodes, reasonably accurate accounts of certain aspects or dynastic periods of newspaper experience, excellent portrait biographies or autobiographies of journalists of genius and high achievement, with the eminent man usually in strong light in the foreground and his newspaper seldom nearer than the middle distance. But here, probably for the first time in literature of this sort, we have a real biography of a newspaper itself, covering the whole range of its existence, exhibiting every function of its organism, illustrating every quality that has been conspicuous in the successive stages of its growth. The _Sun_ is the hero of Mr. O’Brien’s “Story of the _Sun_.” The human participants figure in their incidental relation to the main thread of its life and activities. They do their parts, big or little, as they pass in interesting procession. When they have done their parts they disappear, as in real life, and the story goes on, just as the _Sun_ has gone on, without them except as they may have left their personal impress on the newspaper’s structure or its superficial decoration.

During no small part of its four score and five years of intelligent interest in the world’s thoughts and doings it has been the _Sun’s_ fortune to be regarded as in a somewhat exceptional sense the newspaper man’s newspaper. If in truth it has merited in any degree this peculiar distinction in the eyes of its professional brethren it must have been by reason of originality of initiative and soundness of method; perhaps by a chronic indifference to those ancient conventions of news importance or of editorial phraseology which, when systematically observed, are apt to result in a pale, dull, or even stupid uniformity of product. Mr. Dana wrote more than half a century ago to one of his associates, “Your articles have stirred up the animals, which you as well as I recognise as one of the great ends of life.” Sometimes he borrowed Titania’s wand; sometimes he used a red hot poker. Not only in that great editor’s time but also in the time of his predecessors and successors the _Sun_ has held it to be a duty and a joy to assist to the best of its ability in the discouragement of anything like lethargy in the menagerie. Perhaps, again, that was one of the things that helped to make it the newspaper man’s newspaper.

However this may be, it seems certain that to the students of the theory and practice of journalism, now happily so numerous in the land, the chronicler of one highly individual newspaper’s deeds and ways is affording an object lesson of practical value, a textbook of technical usefulness, as well as a store of authoritative history, entertaining anecdote, and suggestive professional information. And a much wider audience than is made up of newspaper workers present or to come will find that the story of a newspaper which Mr. O’Brien has told with wit and knowledge in the pages that follow becomes naturally and inevitably a swift and charming picture of the town in which that newspaper is published throughout the period of its service to that town--the most interesting period in the existence of the most interesting city of the world.

It is a fine thing for the _Sun_, by all who have worked for it in its own spirit beloved, I believe, like a creature of flesh and blood and living intelligence and human virtues and failings, that through Mr. Munsey’s wish it should have found in a son of its own schooling a biographer and interpreter so sympathetically responsive to its best traditions.

EDWARD P. MITCHELL.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

SUNRISE AT 222 WILLIAM STREET
PAGE
_Benjamin H. Day, with No Capital Except Youth and Courage,
Establishes the First Permanent Penny Newspaper.--The
Curious First Number Entirely His Own Work_ 21

CHAPTER II

THE FIELD OF THE LITTLE “SUN”

_A Very Small Metropolis Which Day and His Partner, Wisner,
Awoke by Printing Small Human Pieces About Small Human
Beings and Having Boys Cry the Paper_ 31

CHAPTER III

RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE’S MOON HOAX

_A Magnificent Fake Which Deceived Two Continents, Brought to
“The Sun” the Largest Circulation in the World and, in
Poe’s Opinion, Established Penny Papers_ 64

CHAPTER IV

DAY FINDS A RIVAL IN BENNETT

_The Success of “The Sun” Leads to the Founding of The
“Herald.”--Enterprises and Quarrels of a Furious Young
Journalism.--The Picturesque Webb.--Maria Monk_ 103

CHAPTER V

NEW YORK LIFE IN THE THIRTIES

_A Sprightly City Which Daily Bought Thirty Thousand copies of
“The Sun.”--The Rush to Start Penny Papers.--Day Sells “The
Sun” for Forty Thousand Dollars_ 121

CHAPTER VI

MOSES Y. BEACH’S ERA OF HUSTLE

_“The Sun” Uses Albany Steamboats, Horse Expresses, Trotting
Teams, Pigeons, and the Telegraph to Get News.--Poe’s
Famous Balloon Hoax and the Case of Mary Rodgers_ 139

CHAPTER VII

“THE SUN” IN THE MEXICAN WAR

_Moses Y. Beach as an Emissary of President Polk.--The
Associated Press Founded in the Office of “The Sun.”--Ben
Day’s Brother-in-Law Retires with a Small Fortune_ 164

CHAPTER VIII

“THE SUN” DURING THE CIVIL WAR

_One of the Few Entirely Loyal Newspapers of New York.--Its
Brief Ownership by a Religious Coterie.--It Returns to the
Possession of M. S. Beach, Who Sells It to Dana_ 172

CHAPTER IX

THE EARLIER CAREER OF DANA

_His Life at Brook Farm and His Tribune Experience.--His Break
with Greeley, His Civil War Services and His Chicago
Disappointment.--His Purchase of “The Sun”_ 202

CHAPTER X

DANA: HIS “SUN” AND ITS CITY

_The Period of the Great Personal Journalists.--Dana’s
Avoidance of Rules and Musty Newspaper Conventions.--His
Choice of Men and His Broad Definition of News_ 233

CHAPTER XI

DANA, AS MITCHELL SAW HIM

_A Picture of the Room Where One Man Ruled for Thirty
Years.--The Democratic Ways of a Newspaper Autocrat.--W. O.
Bartlett, Pike, and His Other Early Associates_ 247

CHAPTER XII

DANA’S FIRST BIG NEWS MEN

_Amos J. Cummings, Dr. Wood, and John B. Bogart.--The Lively
Days of Tweedism.--Elihu Root as a Dramatic Critic.--The
Birth and Popularity of “The Sun’s” Cat_ 262

CHAPTER XIII

DANA’S FAMOUS RIVALS PASS

_The Deaths of Raymond, Bennett, and Greeley Leave Him the
Dominant Figure of the American Newspaper Field.--Dana’s
Dream of a Paper Without Advertisements_ 293

CHAPTER XIV

“THE SUN” AND THE GRANT SCANDALS

_Dana’s Relentless Fight Against the Whisky Ring, the Crédit
Mobilier, “Addition, Division, and Silence,” the Safe
Burglary Conspiracy and the Boss Shepherd Scandal_ 304

CHAPTER XV

“THE SUN” AND “HUMAN INTEREST”

_Something About Everything, for Everybody.--A Wonderful
Four-Page Paper.--A Comparison of the Styles of “Sun”
Reporters in Three Periods Twenty Years Apart_ 313

CHAPTER XVI

“SUN” REPORTERS AND THEIR WORK

_Cummings, Ralph, W. J. Chamberlin, Brisbane, Riggs, Dieuaide,
Spears, O. K. Davis, Irwin, Adams, Denison, Wood, O’Malley,
Hill, Cronyn.--Spanish War Work_ 328

CHAPTER XVII

SOME GENIUS IN AN OLD ROOM

_Lord, Managing Editor for Thirty-Two Years.--Clarke, Magician
of the Copy Desk.--Ethics, Fair Play and Democracy.--“The
Evening Sun” and Those Who Make It_ 369

CHAPTER XVIII

THE FINEST SIDE OF “THE SUN”

_Literary Associations of an Editorial Department That
Has Encouraged and Attracted Men of Imagination and
Talent.--Mitchell, Hazeltine, Church, and Their Colleagues_ 402