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._

The political scandals made good reading, but the _Sun_ was not content to feed its readers on investigations. It put a little bit of everything on their breakfast-plates--the Moody and Sankey revivals, Mr. Keely’s motor, which didn’t work, and young Edison’s multiple telegraph, which did; the baseball games of the days when Spalding pitched for Boston and Anson and Reach were at first and second base, respectively, for the Philadelphia Athletics; the presentation of a cup to John Cable Heenan, the prize-fighter, as the handsomest and best-dressed man at the ball of the Shandley Association; an interview with Joaquin Miller on Longfellow; the wiggles of the sea-serpent off Swampscott; a ghost-story from Long Island, with a beautiful spook lashed to the rigging of a spectral bark; the arrival of New York’s first Chinese laundryman; Father Tom Burke’s lectures on Ireland; the lectures of Tyndall on newly-discovered phenomena of light; the billiard-matches between Cyrille Dion and Maurice Daly; a tar-and-feathers party in Brooklyn--the _Sun_ skimmed the pan of life and served the cream for two cents.

The familiar three-story head-line, which was first used by the _Sun_ on the day of Grant’s inauguration, and which stayed the same until long after Mr. Dana’s death, attracted readers with the magic of the head-writers’ art. “The Skull in the Chimney,” “Shaved by a Lady Barber,” “A Man Hanged by Women,” “Burned Alive for $5,000,” “The Murder in the Well,” “Death Leap in a Theatre,” “An Aged Sinner Hanged,” “The Duel in the Bedroom,” “Horrors of a Madhouse,” “A Life for a Love-Letter”--none could glance at the compelling titles of the _Sun_ stories without remaining to read. They are still fascinating in an age when lady barbers would attract no attention.

A typical _Sun_ of 1874 might contain, in its four pages, six columns about the Beecher-Tilton case; four columns of editorial articles; a letter from Eli Perkins (Melville DeLancey Landon) at Saratoga, declaring that the spa was standing still commercially because of its lack of good drinking-water; a column, also from Saratoga, describing the defeat of Preakness by Springbok; the latest in the strange case of Charley Ross; a column headed “Life in the Metropolis--Dashes Here and There by the _Sun’s_ Reporters”; a column of “Sunbeams,” a column about trout-fishing, two columns of general news, and five columns of advertisements.

Instead of Eli Perkins’s letter, there might be a critique by Leopold Damrosch, from Baireuth, of Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung,” just presented; or a dissection, by “Monsieur X,” of E. A. Sothern’s _Dundreary_. “Monsieur X” was Napoleon Leon Thiéblin, who was for years one of the _Sun’s_ most distinguished critics and essayists. He was that kind of newspaperman who could--and did--write on Saturday of the political news of Bismarck and on Sunday of the crowd at Coney Island.

Thiéblin, who was of French blood, was born in St. Petersburg in 1834. He was graduated at the Russian Imperial Academy of Artillery, and commanded forty pieces of cannon at the siege of Sebastopol. At the close of the Crimean War he went to London and became a member of the staff of the _Pall Mall Gazette_, reporting for that journal the French side of the war with Germany in 1870–71, and the atrocities of the Commune, over the pen-name of “Azamet Batuk.” He reported the Carlist War in Spain for the New York _Herald_, and then came to America to lecture, but Dana persuaded him to join the _Sun_ staff. He contributed to the _Sun_ many articles on foreign affairs, including a series on European journalism; “The Stranger’s Note-Book,” which was made up of New York sketches; letters from the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia; and the Wall Street letters signed “Rigolo.”

In the “Sunbeams” column were crowded the vagrant wit and wisdom of the world. The items concerned everything from great men in European chancelleries to organ-grinders in Nassau Street:

The mules are all dying in Arkansas.

A printer in Texas has named his first-born Brevier Fullfaced
Jones.

Real estate is looking up at New Orleans.

Translations from Hawthorne are becoming popular in France.

Venison costs six cents a pound in St. Paul.

Queen Victoria says every third woman in Cork is a beauty.

Goldwin Smith is coming to the United States.

The Pope denounces short dresses.

The same terseness is seen in the “Footlight Flashes,” begun in 1876:

Clara Morris takes her lap-dog out for a daily drive.

Miss Claxton is meeting with indifferent success in
“Conscience.”

Not less than $30,000 was spent last evening in the theatres of
New York.

John T. Raymond drew excellent houses as _Colonel Sellers_ at
the Brooklyn Theatre.

For the term of their appearance in “King Lear,” Lawrence
Barrett will receive $1,200 a week; E. E. Sheridan, $1,000;
Frederick B. Warde, $500.

The interview, invented by the elder Bennett, was becoming more and more popular. The _Sun_ used it, not only as the vehicle of acquired information, but sometimes as the envelope of humour. Take, for example, this bit, printed in 1875, but as fresh in style and spirit as if it were of the product of a reporter of 1918:

INTERVIEWING VANDERBILT

ANOTHER REPORTER COMES AWAY FREIGHTED WITH VALUABLE INFORMATION

Commodore Vanderbilt was eighty-one years old yesterday. He
spent the day in his Fourth Avenue offices, taking his usual
drive in the afternoon. A _Sun_ reporter visited him in the
evening to inquire about a favorable time for selling a few
thousands of New York Central.

“This,” said the commodore, slowly and solemnly, as he entered
the drawing-room, “is my birthday.”

“Indeed!” said the reporter. “Do you think the preferred
stock----”

“To-day,” the commodore interrupted, “I am eighty-one years
old. I am stronger----”

“Is there any prospect of an immediate rise?”

“I have never gone into the late-supper business,” the
commodore answered, apparently not catching the drift of the
question; “and I have always been a very temperate man. But how
did you find out that this was my birthday?”

“You hinted at the fact yourself,” the reporter replied. “Will
the Erie troubles----”

“The Erie troubles will not prevent me from beginning my
eighty-second year with a young heart and a clear conscience.”

“And with the prospect of seeing a good many more birthday
anniversaries?” the reporter asked.

“That, my dear boy,” said the commodore, “is one of those
things that no fellow can tell about.”

“Do you think that this is a good time to sell?”

“No, it’s never a good time to sell after banking-hours.”

“Good evening!”

“Good evening! Drop in again.”

JULIAN RALPH
]

How did the _Sun_ reporters of the seventies compare with those of later years? As no two reporters are alike in vision and style, no two occasions identical in incident, no two dramatic moments twin, it is better to make comparison by choosing arbitrarily scenes far apart in years, but set on similar stages, and to lay before the reader the work of the _Sun_ reporter in each case. Let us take, because of their resemblance in public interest and the similarity of physical surroundings, the close of the trials, twenty years apart, of Edward S. Stokes for the murder of James Fisk, Jr.; of Lizzie Borden for the killing of her father and step-mother, and of Charles Becker for the assassination of Herman Rosenthal.

The following is from the _Sun_ of January 6, 1873:

Stokes took his accustomed place, and his relatives sat down
facing the jurors. The judge entered and took his place. Then,
amid the most solemn silence, the twelve jurymen filed in and
seated themselves. The awful conclusion at which they had
arrived could be read in their faces. Each juror’s name was
called, and with the usual response.

The judge turned toward them, and in a low, clear voice asked:

“Gentlemen, have you agreed on a verdict?”

The foreman of the jury arose and said, “We have.”

Clerk of the Court: “Gentlemen of the jury, rise. Prisoner,
stand up. Gentlemen of the jury, look upon the prisoner.
Prisoner, look upon the jury. What say you, gentlemen of the
jury? Do you find the prisoner at the bar guilty or not guilty?”

Foreman of the Jury: “Guilty of murder in the first degree.”

A passionate wail that made men’s hearts leap rose from the
group that clustered round the prisoner, and the head of the
horror-stricken girl, from whose bosom the anguished cry was
rent, fell upon the shoulder of her doomed brother.

The jury was polled by request of the prisoner’s counsel. No
sooner had the last man answered “Yes” to the question whether
all agreed on the verdict than the prisoner, erect and firm,
turned his face full upon Mr. Beach (of the prosecution), who
at one time had been his counsel in a civil case.

“Mr. Beach,” the prisoner said, slowly and in a full-toned
voice, “you have done your work well. I hope you have been well
paid for it.”

Then the prisoner sank slowly into his seat. Mr. Beach made
no reply. Mr. Fellows, assistant district attorney, explained
that he had refused to try the case unless Mr. Beach and Mr.
Fullerton were associated with him. They had consented to join
him at the request of District Attorney Garvin, and without any
fee from any member of Colonel Fisk’s family.

The prisoner half-arose and, sweeping the air with his clenched
fist, said:

“Mr. Fellows, say that they were hired by Jay Gould. Please say
that!”

The sensation in court was such as is seldom known. You could
hear it as you hear the wind stirring the trees of the forest.
Then the court discharged the jury and the people began to move.

The following was printed in the _Sun_ of June 21, 1893, under date of New Bedford, Massachusetts:

“Lizzie Andrew Borden,” said the clerk of the court, “stand
up!”

She arose unsteadily, with a face as white as marble.

“Gentlemen, have you agreed upon a verdict?” said the clerk to
the jury.

It was so still in court that the flutter of two fans made a
great noise.

“We have,” said Foreman Richards boldly.

The prisoner was gripping the rail in front of the dock as if
her standing up depended upon its keeping its place.

“Lizzie Andrew Borden,” said the clerk, “hold up your right
hand. Jurors, look upon the prisoner. Prisoner, look upon the
foreman.”

Every juryman stood at right-about-face, staring at the woman.
There was such a gentle, kindly light beaming in every eye that
no one questioned the verdict that was to be uttered. But God
save every woman from the feelings that Lizzie Borden showed
in the return look she cast upon that jury! It was what is
pictured as the rolling gaze of a dying person. She seemed not
to have the power to move her eyes directly where she was told
to, and they swung all around in her head. They looked at the
ceiling; they looked at everything, but they saw nothing. It
was a horrible, a pitiful sight, to see her then.

“What say you, Mr. Foreman?” said the gentle old clerk.

“Not guilty!” shouted Mr. Richards.

At the words the wretched woman fell quicker than ever an ox
fell in the stockyards of Chicago. Her forehead crashed against
the heavy walnut rail so as to shake the reporter of the _Sun_
who sat next to her, twelve feet away, leaning on the rail.
It seemed that she must be stunned, but she was not. Quickly,
with an unconscious movement, she flung up both arms, threw
them over the rail, and pressed them under her face so that it
rested on them. What followed was mere mockery, but it was the
well-governed order of the court and had to be gone through
with.

And finally, this is from the _Sun_ of May 23, 1914:

“Charles Becker to the bar!”

Once more the door that gives entrance toward the Tombs as well
as to the jury-room was opened. A deputy sheriff appeared, then
Becker, then a second deputy. One glance was all you needed to
see that Becker had himself under magnificent control. His iron
nerve was not bending. He swung with long strides around the
walls and came to a stand at the railing. Those who watched him
did not see a sign of agitation. He was breathing slowly--you
could see that from the rise and fall of his powerful
chest--and smiling slightly as he glanced toward his counsel.

He looked for the first time toward the jurors. There was
confidence and hope shining in his eyes. Coolly, without haste,
he studied the face of every man in the box. Not one of them
met his eye. Foreman Blagden gazed at the floor. Frederick G.
Barrett, Sr., juror No. 12, studied the ceiling. The others
gazed into space or turned their glance toward the justice.

There was the most perfect silence in the court-room. The
movements of trolley-cars in Centre Street made a noise like
rolling thunder. A pneumatic riveter at work on a building
close by set up a tremendous din.

And yet such sounds and annoyances were forgotten, ceased to be
of consequence, when Clerk Penny bent toward the foreman and
slowly put the customary question:

“Gentlemen of the jury, have you agreed upon your verdict?”

Mr. Blagden’s reply was barely audible; many in the room sensed
its import, but failed to grasp the actual words. It was
obvious that the foreman, having to express the will of his
associates, was stirred by such feeling as seldom comes to any
man.

“Guilty as charged in the indictment,” he breathed more than
spoke.

Becker’s right hand was then gripped to the railing. He held
his straw hat in his left hand, which, as his arm was bent
backward and upward, rested against the small of his back. It
is the plain truth that he took the blow without a quiver.
After a second, it may be, he coughed just a little; a mere
clearing of the throat. But his mouth was firm. His dark face
lost no vestige of color. His black eyes turned toward the
jurymen, who still avoided his glance, who looked everywhere
but at the man they had condemned.

If comment were needed, it would be that the _Sun_ reporter in the court-room at New Bedford had the advantage of describing a protagonist who, by her sex and by the very mystery that was left unsolved at her acquittal, was a far more dramatic figure than Stokes or the police lieutenant. The climaxes quoted are useful as an illustration of the advance of reporting from 1873, when the _Sun_ style was still forming, to 1893 and 1914, when it was fully formed; not as a comparison between what may not have been the best work of the reporter of the Stokes trial, Henry Mann, and the stories by Julian Ralph, who saw Lizzie Borden fall, and Edwin C. Hill, who wrote the Becker article.

The _Sun_ omitted the weary introductions that had been the fashion in newspapers--leading paragraphs which told over again what was in the head-lines and were merely a prelude to a third and detailed telling. The _Sun_ reporter began at the beginning, thus:

The Hon. John Kelly, wearing a small bouquet in the lapel
of his coat, stepped out of his coach in front of Cardinal
McCloskey’s residence in Madison Avenue just before eight
o’clock yesterday morning. A few minutes later three other
coaches arrived, and their occupants entered the house. Many
of the neighbors knew that a niece of the cardinal was to be
married to Mr. Kelly, and they strained their eyes through
plate-glass windows in the hope that they might see the bride
and the groom. Cardinal McCloskey, having been apprized of the
arrival of the wedding-party, went to the chapel in the other
part of the house, and at about a quarter past eight, the time
fixed for the mass _pro sponsis_, the marriage ceremony was
begun.

In the longer and more important stories, the rule was adhered to as closely as possible. Prolixity, fine writing, and hysteria were taboo. Mark the calmness with which the _Sun_ reporter began his story of the most sensational crime of the late seventies:

Two little mounds of red-colored earth around a small hole in
the ground, and a few feet of downtrodden grass, were all that
marked the last resting-place of Alexander T. Stewart yesterday
morning. In the dead of the night robbers had dug into the
earth above the vault, removed one of the stones that covered
it, and stolen the body of the dead millionaire.

The human lights of life were caught by the _Sun_ men and transferred to every page of every issue. In 1878 a _Sun_ reporter was sent to Menlo Park, New Jersey, to see how a young inventor there, who had just announced the possibility of an incandescent electric light, worked:

Here Mr. Edison dropped his cigar-stump from his mouth, and,
turning to Griffin, asked for some chewing-tobacco. The private
secretary drew open his drawer and passed out a yellow cake as
large as a dinner-plate. The professor tore away a chew, saying:

“I am partly indebted to the _Sun_ for this tobacco. It printed
an article saying that I chewed poor tobacco. That was so. The
Lorillards saw the article and sent me down a box of the best
plug that ever went into a man’s mouth. All the workmen have
used it, and Grif says there is a marked moral improvement in
the men. It seems, however, to have the opposite effect on
Grif. You see that he has salted away the last cake for his own
use.”

Nearly forty years later _Sun_ reporters still went to see Mr. Edison borrow white magic from nature and chewing-tobacco from his employees, and to describe both interesting processes.

With Dana’s knowledge of what people wanted to read was mixed a curiosity, sometimes frankly expressed in the _Sun_, as to just why they wanted to read some things a great deal more than other things. It must be remembered that even in the seventies and eighties not everybody read a newspaper every day; some reserved their pennies and their eyes for great climaxes. The _Sun_, a paper which paid much attention to political matters, naturally found its circulation sharply affected by important political happenings. It sold ninety-four thousand extra copies on the morning after the Tilden-Hayes election--two hundred and twenty-two thousand copies, in all, being disposed of before eight o’clock in the morning. In 1875, when the pugilist, John Morrissey, who was supported by the _Sun_ for the State Senate because he was anti-Tammany, defeated Fox, the _Sun_ sold forty-nine thousand extra copies on the day after the election.

The assassination of the Czar Alexander II of Russia did not sell an extra paper, but the hanging of Foster, the “car-hook murderer,” sent the sales up seventeen thousand. The deaths of Cornelius Vanderbilt and Alexander T. Stewart had no effect on the _Sun’s_ circulation, the passing of Napoleon III raised it only one thousand for the day, and the death of Pius IX caused only four thousand irregular readers to buy the paper; but the execution of Dolan, a murderer now practically forgotten, sent the sales up ten thousand. The beginning of coercive measures in Ireland by the arrest of Michael Davitt sold no extra papers in a city full of Irishmen, but the Fenian invasion of Canada meant the sale of ten thousand copies more than usual.

Tweed’s death caused an increase of five thousand; the death of President Garfield, of seventy-four thousand. Only thirteen thousand extras were sold after the Brooklyn Theatre fire, while the Westfield steamboat explosion sold thirty-one thousand. Twenty-one thousand irregular readers bought the _Sun_ to read about the first blasting of Hell Gate in 1876, while only eight thousand were interested in the fact that Tilden had been counted out by the Electoral Commission. The flare-up of the Beecher scandal, in August, 1874, sold as many extras--ten thousand--as the shooting of Fisk.

The beginning of the Crédit Mobilier exposé added only a thousand to the normal circulation, but on the morning after a big walking-match the presses had to run off forty thousand more than their usual daily grist. The resignation of Roscoe Conkling and Thomas C. Platt from the United States Senate hoisted the circulation only two thousand, but the fight between John L. Sullivan and Paddy Ryan meant a difference of eleven thousand. The opening of the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia caused extra sales of three thousand; an international rifle-match at Creedmoor, ten thousand.

In 1882 the _Sun_ made the calculation that the average effect of certain sorts of news in increase of circulation was about as follows:

Presidential elections 82,000
State and city elections 42,000
Last days of walking-matches 25,000
October State elections in Presidential years 21,000
Great fires 10,000
Notable disasters 9,000
Hangings in or near New York 8,000

The _Sun_ expressed a curiosity to know--

Who are the eighty or ninety thousand people, not regular
readers of the _Sun_, that buy the paper after a Presidential
election? Where do they live? Do they read the papers only
after exciting events?

On its fiftieth birthday--September 3, 1883--the _Sun_ printed a table showing the high-tide marks of its circulation:

November 8, 1876--Presidential election 222,390
Sept. 20, 1881--Garfield’s death 212,525
Nov. 3, 1880--Presidential election 206,974
July 13, 1871--Orange riots 192,224
Sept. 21, 1881--Second day after Garfield’s death 180,215
Nov. 3, 1875--State and city election 177,588
July 3, 1881--Garfield shot 176,093

In the same article, a page review written by Mr. Mitchell, the reasons for the _Sun’s_ success were succinctly given:

No waste of words, no nonsense, plain, outspoken expressions of
honest opinion, the abolishment of the conventional measures of
news importance, the substitution of the absolute standard of
real interest to human beings, bright and enjoyable writing,
wit, philosophical good humor, intolerance of humbug, hard
hitting from the shoulder on proper occasions--do we not see
all these qualities now in our esteemed contemporaries on every
side of us, and in every part of the land?

By this time Dana had framed a newspaper organisation more nearly perfect than any other in America. Grouping about him men suited to the _Sun_, to himself, and to one another, he had created a literary world of his own--a seeing, thinking, writing world of keen objective vision. Men of a hundred various minds, each with his own style, his own ambition, his own manner of life, the _Sun_ staff focused their abilities into the one flood of light that came out every morning. It was a bohemia of brightness, not of beer; unconventional in its manner of seeing and writing, but not in its collars or its way of living. The _Sun_ spirit, unquenchable then as now, burned in every corner of the shabby old rooms. It was the spirit of unselfish devotion, not so much to Dana or his likable lieutenants as to the invisible god of a machine in which each man was a pinion, meshing smoothly with his neighbour.

That these pinions did mesh without friction was due, in largest part, to Dana’s intuitive faculty of choosing men who would “fit in” rather than men who could merely write. It was by his choosing that the _Sun_ came to have for its editorial page writers like W. O. Bartlett and E. P. Mitchell, M. W. Hazeltine and N. L. Thiéblin, Henry B. Stanton and John Swinton, James S. Pike and Fitz-Henry Warren, Paul Dana and Thomas Hitchcock, Francis P. Church and E. M. Kingsbury. It was by his choosing that the Sun had managing editors like Amos J. Cummings and Chester S. Lord, city editors like John B. Bogart and Daniel F. Kellogg, and night city editors like Henry W. Odion, Ambrose W. Lyman, and S. M. Clarke.

Managing editors and city editors hired men, hundreds of them, but always according to the Dana plan--first find the man, then find the work for him. Chester S. Lord, who took more men on the _Sun_ than any other of its executives, was fully familiar with the Dana method when he began, in 1880, a career as managing editor that lasted for thirty-two years of brilliant achievement; and he followed it until he retired. He had been on the _Sun_ since 1872, shortly after he came out of Hamilton College, and he had served as a reporter, as editor of suburban news, as assistant night city editor under Lyman, and as assistant managing editor in the brief period when Ballard Smith succeeded Cummings and Young as chief of the _Sun’s_ news department.

At the beginning of his service as managing editor Lord found himself with a staff which included Bogart, Dr. Wood, Stillman, Odion, E. M. Rewey, Garrett P. Serviss, and Cyrus C. Adams, all trained desk men and most of them good reporters as well; and such first-class reporters and correspondents as Julian Ralph, S. S. Carvalho, Willis Holly, and E. J. Edwards. To these, by the time the _Sun_ reached its half-century mark, had been added the great night city editor Clarke and reporters like John R. Spears and Arthur Brisbane. Other great newspapermen were soon to join the army of Mr. Lord in that long campaign of which the editor of the _Sun_ said, on the occasion of Mr. Lord’s retirement:

Every night of his ten thousand nights of service has been a
Trafalgar or a Waterloo. He has fought ten thousand battles
against the world, the flesh, and the devil; the woman
applicant, the refractory citizen, the liar at the other end of
the wire, and the ten thousand demons which make up the great
army of nervous prostration.