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Cornell University Library 
 PN 4899.N56T582 
 
 History of the New Yorl< times 1851-1921 
 
 3 1924 027 500 069 
 
m 
 
 Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/cletails/cu31924027500069 
 
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 1B51-192X 
 
 By ELMER DAVIS 
 
 Of The New York Times Editorial Staff 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 ailyf Nwtt iork ®tmw 
 
 1921 
 
 o 
 

 PBESS OF J. J, UTTLE ft IVES 00. 
 NEW YORK 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 FACE 
 
 Introductioa vn 
 
 PART I 
 
 CSATTEK 
 
 I R pginning s of Tli^ Ttwus, 1851-1859 
 
 n GvH War and Reconstruction, 1860-1869 
 
 in 7%^ Times and the Tweed Ring . . . 
 
 IV National Polidcs, 1872-1884 .... 
 
 V The Times in Transition, 1884-1896 . . 
 
 PART n 
 
 3 
 48 
 81 
 
 "7 
 15s 
 
 I Restmatioa cS The Times, 1896-1900 . . . 175 
 n Conservatism, lodqtendence. Democracy: 
 
 1900-1914 243 
 
 TTT Modem News-gatheting, 1900-1914 .... 273 
 
 IV Slime Aspects of Business Policy 310 
 
 V 71^ Tiawj in the War, 1914-1918 331 
 
 VI The Times Today 370 
 
 Twenty-five Years' Record of Advertising 
 
 Growth 405' 
 
 Tweoty-five Years' Record of Circulation 
 
 Growth 403 
 
 For the German People, Peace with Freedom 405 
 
 Roster of TTie New York Tnnes Company . . 411 
 
 Imdex 429 
 
 m 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Adolph S. Ochs Frontispiece 
 
 Henry J. Raymond 26 
 
 George Jones 42 
 
 Louis J. Jennings, Editor-in-chief 1869-1876 ... 58 
 
 John C. Reid, Managing Editor 1872-1889 ... 58 
 
 John Foord, Editor-in-chief 1876-1883 58 
 
 Former Homes of The Times 74 
 
 Charles R. Miller, Editor-in-chief 90 
 
 The 4th Times Building, Park Row, 1888-1905 . . 106 
 
 Edward Gary, Associate Editor, 1871-1917 . . . 122 
 
 John Norris, Business Manager, 1900-191 1 . . . 122 
 
 Times Square, the Center for News 138 
 
 Adolph S. Ochs, August 18, 1896 187 
 
 The Times Editorial Council 203 
 
 Carr V. Van Anda, Managing Editor 218 
 
 Louis Wiley, Business Manager 218 
 
 The Present Home, The Times Annex 234 
 
 Honor Roll 258 
 
 Assistants to the Publisher 282 
 
 Laying the Cornerstone — Times Building, January 
 
 18, 1904 298 
 
 Times Square World Series Baseball Crowd ... 298 
 
 Rollo Ogden, Associate Editor 314 
 
 John H. Finley, Associate Editor 314 
 
 Times Building Illuminated for Victory .... 330 
 
 Main Entrance — Times Building 346 
 
 Times Business Office 347 
 
 Views of the Composing Room 362 
 
 A View of the News Room 363 
 
 The First Press of The Times, 1851 378 
 
 V 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A View of The Times Pressroom 379 
 
 A View of The Times Rotogravure Pressroom . . 394 
 Automobile Trucks 395 
 
 FACSIMILE PAGES OF "THE NEW YORK TIMES" 
 
 First Issue September 18, 185 1 . 18 
 
 First Ocean Cable is Laid . August 17, 1858 . . 34 
 The Outbreak of the Civil 
 
 War April 13, i86i . . 50 
 
 Battle of Gettysburg . . . July 6, 1863 ... 66 
 The Fall of Richmond . . April 4, 1865 ... 82 
 Lee's Surrender .... April 10, 1865 . . 98 
 The Assassination of Presi- 
 dent Lincoln April 15, 1865 . . 114 
 
 The Tweed Disclosures . . July 22, 1871 . . . 130 
 
 The Hayes-Tilden Election . November 9, 1876] . 146 
 
 Star Route Disclosure . . May 11, i88i . . 162 
 The First Issue of the New 
 
 Management August 19, 1896 . . 178 
 
 Peary's Discovery of the Pole September 9, 1909 . 242 
 The Titanic Disaster . . . April 16, 1912 . . 274 
 Beginning of the World War . August 2, 1914 . . 306 
 The Sinking of the Lusitania. May 8, 1915 . . . 338 
 President Calls for War Dec- 
 laration April 3, 1917 . . . 354 
 
 The Armistice Signed . . . November 11, igi8 . 370 
 
 Harding Nominated . . . June 13, 1920 . . 386 
 
 vi 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 'X^HIS historical sketch of The New York Times 
 "■■ was prepared in commemoration of the quar- 
 ter-centenary of the present management, which 
 occurs on August i8, 1921, and of the seventieth 
 anniversary of the first issue of the paper, which 
 falls on September 18, 1921. It was written by a 
 member of the editorial staff, Mr. Elmer Davis, 
 with such advice and assistance as other members 
 of the staff could give. Mr. Davis joined the staff of 
 The Times in 1914, after his graduation from the 
 University of Oxford, England, which he attended 
 as a Rhodes Scholar from his native State, Indiana. 
 He modestly disclaims any idea that his work is to be 
 regarded as an ideal or definitive treatment of the 
 subject. Most of the material of Part I has been 
 drawn from the articles in The Times Jubilee Supple- 
 ment of 1901, and from Augustus Maverick's "Henry 
 J. Raymond and the New York Press." The second 
 part has been compiled with the cooperation and as- 
 sistance of many members of the staff. Without 
 aspiring to a wholly detached point of view, which 
 could hardly be achieved by men who have faith 
 in and affection for the institution they serve, Mr. 
 Davis believes that he has at any rate tried to tell 
 the story impartially. However, it is but just 
 to say that the unflagging industry and the liter- 
 ary skill with which Mr. Davis has executed his 
 
 vii 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 task command the sincere admiration of his associates. 
 
 The New York Times's peculiar position in the 
 esteem of the public may make its history of inter- 
 est not only to working newspapermen and students 
 of journalism but to many readers who are unfamiliar 
 with the technique of newspaper-making and un- 
 acquainted with the personnel of The Times. Some 
 episodes, particularly controversial episodes, have 
 been treated with a certain reserve, as it was felt that 
 it would not be wholly fair to present only one side 
 of the case. But in no instance has accuracy been 
 sacrificed to brevity, and it is the belief that nothing 
 relevant to the history of The Times, or to its inter- 
 pretation, has been omitted. 
 
 With respect to my own sentiments on the occa- 
 sion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the present 
 management of The Times, I can do no better than 
 to repeat here the following article, which appears 
 in The Times of August i8, 1921: 
 
 Today — twenty-five years ago — August 18, 
 1896 — The New York Times passed to my manage- 
 ment and has ever since been under my unrestricted 
 control. So it may be fitting that I render an ac- 
 count of my stewardship to those who have made 
 The New York Times of today possible — its readers 
 — and take occasion to make clearer the forces that 
 are truly directing and influencing its conduct. I 
 am reluctant to strike the personal note that may 
 manifest itself in this recital of the history of The 
 New York Times, as it has been my endeavor to have 
 the public as well as those who are associated in 
 creating the paper regard it as an institution and, 
 
 viii 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 so far as possible and feasible, make impersonal the 
 treatment of news and its interpretation. The 
 human element, however, enters into all man's 
 activities and it fortunately exists in the conduct 
 of newspapers. A newspaper if possible freed from 
 the frailties of humanity, with no sense of responsi- 
 bility, no sympathies, no prejudices, no milk of 
 human kindness, would be a nuisance and a plague, 
 an excrescence on the bodies social and politic, and 
 would be despised and shunned and consequently 
 without influence and altogether an unnecessary 
 evil. We have made an effort to make The New 
 York Times a creditable human institution. To 
 what extent we have succeeded we are confident we 
 can leave to others to say; whether this effort has 
 contributed to the general welfare and to gaining 
 respect for the honesty, integrity and patriotism of 
 American newspapers. 
 
 I am pleased to be able to say that The New York 
 Times is firmly established as an independent con- 
 servative newspaper, free from any influence that 
 can direct or divert its management from a righteous 
 and public-spirited course. It is within itself finan- 
 cially independent and in the enjoyment of a large 
 and increasingly profitable legitimate income from 
 circulation receipts and advertising revenue — in 
 the aggregate probably the largest income of any 
 newspaper in the world. The net result of its opera- 
 tions is beyond the earlier dreams of those who are 
 its chief beneficiaries, and fortunately they know no 
 interest they can serve that can give them greater 
 joy, satisfaction and comfort. I wish that thought 
 could find lodgment in the minds of those who may 
 
 ix 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 be inclined to believe that some ulterior object may 
 at times influence the poUcy of The New York Times, 
 so that they may understand that, being free from 
 pecuniary necessity or personal greed, no sane man 
 would voluntarily forfeit the confidence and goodi- 
 will of intelligent people by degrading himself 
 through loss of his self-respect or the surrender of 
 his independence. Persons may disagree with The 
 New York Times — with its treatment of news and 
 its views thereon — but there is no ground on which 
 they can attribute to it base or improper motives 
 for such differences of opinion. The New York Times 
 is an open book and may be taken at its face value; 
 it is no worse than it may seem to appear; its faults 
 are those of human fallibility and we cherish the 
 knowledge that at least in purpose it is better than 
 we have been able to make it appear. 
 
 On this occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of 
 the present management I wish first to make our 
 grateful acknowledgments to the several hundred 
 thousand readers of The New York Times who have 
 expressed by their patronage their endorsement of 
 the kind of newspaper we are endeavoring to pro- 
 duce. We are fully sensible of the fact that our 
 editorial position on public questions has not always 
 had the unanimous approval of our readers; many 
 honestly differ from us; but whether we are right 
 or wrong our views are not directly or indirectly 
 presented with any thought that they may please or 
 displease a reader. We do not now nor have we ever 
 sought readers because of our favorable or unfavor- 
 able attitude toward men or measures. So we flatter 
 ourselves that the third of a million persons who 
 
INTRODUCTION j 
 
 daily purchase The New York Times and the more 
 than half a million who purchase it on Sunday do so 
 because they approve of our kind of newspaper, and 
 that is the inspiration to which we owe such success 
 as we enjoy. 
 
 To the advertisers who have paid many millions 
 of dollars for space in the advertising columns of 
 The New York Times we are grateful for generous 
 patronage and the many evidences of sympathy 
 and encouragement they have manifested, and 
 especially do we appreciate this proof of their under- 
 standing of the potency and value of newspaper 
 circulation among those who find such a newspaper 
 as The New York Times to their taste. The New 
 York Times has been forced to steadily increase 
 its advertising rates, and the difficulty was mini- 
 mized because its discriminating advertisers have 
 realized that the increases were not out of pro- 
 portion to the increased service tendered. We have 
 great pride in the high business standing of our 
 advertisers. It is of the rarest occurrence that a 
 high-class advertiser does not place The New York 
 Times first on his list. In this connection it can be 
 stated positively that no advertiser influences, or 
 ever has influenced, the conduct of The New York 
 Times or has been encouraged to seek any favors that 
 are not accorded any good citizen. If in the past 
 twenty-five years there has ever appeared an im- 
 proper line written for the purpose of holding or 
 securing advertising patronage, it was without the 
 knowledge or consent of the management. 
 
 Words fail me when I try to express the obliga- 
 tion and gratitude I feel to the capable, earnest, 
 
 xi 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 loyal men who have been associated with me in 
 making The New York Times. I am proud of the 
 fact that we have been able to obtain and retain 
 such men in the service of the paper. No newspaper 
 organization in the world has or has ever had, as a 
 group, so many experienced newspaper men with 
 love and pride of profession giving enthusiastically 
 and indefatigably their best thoughts and service to 
 informing honestly the public of the happenings and 
 occurrences of the day; who in their relations with 
 each other are gentlemanly and courteous and all 
 united in working harmoniously and with a common 
 purpose for giving unselfishly their very best ability 
 to making a newspaper that is enterprising, reliable 
 and trustworthy, and at the same time decent and 
 dignified; men who find joy in their work and have 
 profound sympathy with the general policies of The 
 New York Times, giving such zeal and devotion to 
 their respective duties as to create a character and 
 form a power that make The New York Times the 
 great newspaper it is; men of almost every shade of 
 political and religious opinion and belief, of every 
 variety of sympathy and conviction, all working 
 together in the belief that they are serving a news- 
 paper that tolerates no tampering with the news, no 
 coloring, no deception, and in the making of which 
 no writer is required, requested or even invited 
 to express any views that he does not honestly 
 entertain. With such men and under such condi- 
 tions the building up of The New York Times was a 
 pleasant task. No publisher ever had more faithful 
 and efficient assistants. I hesitate to make invidious 
 distinctions among the army of men who have aided 
 
 xii 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 me in creating a newspaper, not so complete as I 
 hope it may yet become as we are better enabled to 
 take advantage of its opportunities, but which I 
 believe, nevertheless, now to be the most complete 
 in the world. 
 
 I wish, however, to select the notably conspicuous 
 figures whose great contributions to the success of 
 The New York rtWx I desire publicly to acknowledge, 
 and to express my sense of obligation for their able 
 support of my efforts to make The New York Times 
 the best newspaper in the world : 
 
 To Charles R. Miller, who from the beginning 
 has been my editor-in-chief, whose whole-hearted 
 sympathy with my opinions and my aims and pur- 
 poses with The Times has been an inspiration. His 
 scholarly attainments, his facility and lucidity of 
 expression, broad vision, extraordinary knowledge 
 of public affairs, having a statesman's conception of 
 their proper conduct, and his lofty patriotism have 
 made the editorial page of The New York Times 
 consulted and respected throughout the world, and 
 distinguished it as the foremost exponent of en- 
 lightened American public opinion. 
 
 To Carr V. Van Anda, who has been managing 
 editor of The New York Times for the past eighteen 
 years; to whose exceptional newspaper experience, 
 genius for news-gathering and marvelous apprecia- 
 tion of news value and fidelity to fairness and 
 thoroughness, knowing no friend or foe when pre- 
 siding over the news pages of The Times, the greatest 
 measure of credit is due for the high reputation it 
 has attained for thfe fullness, trustworthiness and 
 impartiality of its news service. His vigilance and 
 
 xiii 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 faithfulness to the very highest and best traditions 
 of newspaper-making make him a tower of strength 
 to the organization. 
 
 To Louis Wiley, the business manager, who has 
 been associated with me almost from the beginning, 
 particularly devoting himself to the circulation and 
 advertising departments that have furnished the 
 bone and sinew to the business, and has, while main- 
 taining the very highest standards of business ethics, 
 extended the greatest courtesy and painstaking atten- 
 tion to all having occasion to have transactions with 
 The Times. Of unusual ability, alert, indefatigable 
 and agreeable, and in full accord and sympathy 
 with the policies of The Times, he has been one of 
 nly most useful and valuable assistants. No one 
 has been more earnest and faithful to the duties that 
 come under his management — and these have 
 been multifarious — and he has made himself, as 
 he is, an integral part of the institution. 
 
 Because of the loyal support and skillful aid of 
 these three men, each preeminent in his particular 
 and important field of responsibility, the publisher 
 of The New York Times is free from some of the many 
 problems and anxieties that are associated with 
 newspaper-making for the reason that the reputa- 
 tion of the newspaper is in safe and prudent hands. 
 There are others who have been of noteworthy aid 
 in creating this great newspaper and their exceptional 
 ability unstintingly given me was helpful and of 
 enduring value, and their contribution is indelibly 
 impressed in the results that have been achieved: 
 Edward Gary (deceased), in the editorial depart- 
 ment; John Norris (deceased), in the business and 
 
 xiv 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 mechanical departments; William C. Reick, Henry 
 Loewenthal, and Arthur R. Greaves (deceased), in 
 the news department. The work of these men was 
 constructive and an inspiration, and conspicuously 
 helpful in the building of the newspaper. I dare not 
 go further in the personnel of the splendid men and 
 women who have so ably, unselfishly and enthusi- 
 astically aided in the work of bringing The New 
 York Times to its high eminence in public favor, for 
 fear of not properly and adequately estimating their 
 individual contribution to that end. Suffice it that 
 to their ability, devotion to duty, kind sympathy 
 and confidence, credit is due in great measure for 
 what has been accomplished. With such men and 
 women to assist, almost any deserving enterprise 
 should be a pronounced success. They are all en- 
 titled to share in whatever praise may be accorded 
 The Times as a newspaper. 
 
 Now as to the ownership of The New York Times. 
 It is owned by a corporation with $1,000,000 com- 
 mon and $4,000,000 preferred 8 per cent stock (the 
 latter recently issued as a stock dividend). I and 
 the immediate members of my family own and 
 control 64 per cent of the shares of the company free 
 and unencumbered, and not one share of our holdings 
 is pledged or hypothecated; 25 per cent more of the 
 shares is held by those who are or have been em- 
 ployed by The Times, and the remaining 1 1 per cent 
 of the shares is distributed among twenty-eight in- 
 dividuals or estates (all Americans) who acquired 
 the stock by exchanging for it shares of the old 
 company, the largest individual holder of the latter 
 group holding only one-quarter of i per cent of the 
 
 XV 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 capital stock. The New York Times Company has 
 real estate and paper-mill properties costing more 
 than $5,000,000, and on these properties there are 
 unmatured bonds and mortgages amounting to 
 $1,500,000, constituting the sum total of the in- 
 debtedness of the company except its current monthly 
 accounts payable. The cash reserves of the com- 
 pany are more than sufficient to pay its total funded 
 indebtedness and leave free a large and sufficient 
 working capital. So it can be said that The New 
 York Times Company is virtually free of indebted- 
 ness. It has a gross annual income exceeding 
 $15,000,000, and only about 3 per cent of its gross 
 annual income is distributed to its shareholders; the 
 remainder of its income is employed in the develop- 
 ment and expansion of its business. This result 
 has been achieved in a business that twenty-five 
 years ago was running at a loss of $1000 a day, by 
 the investment of only $200,000 of new capital. 
 It is the result of the application of practical common 
 sense by experienced newspaper-makers who under- 
 took the management of a newspaper of long and 
 good reputation — temporarily crippled by mis- 
 management and untoward universal financial condi- 
 tions — in the firm belief that a clientele existed in 
 the greatest city in the world for a newspaper edited 
 for intelligent, thoughtful people. At the time 
 The Times passed to its present management — 
 1896 — the rapidly increasing circulation and ad- 
 vertising of the sensational newspaper indulging in 
 coarse, vulgar and inane features, muck-raking and 
 crusades of every character were creating a widely 
 extending impression that otherwise a newspaper 
 
 xvi 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 would be dull, stupid and unprofitable. It was this 
 situation that caused The New York Times to hoist 
 its legend of "All the News That's Fit to Print." 
 The wiseacres of journalism prophesied an early- 
 failure; the motto was made sport of and ridiculed. 
 It was this prevailing impression that proved a 
 valuable factor in the growth of The Times, for in 
 the field it was trying to cover it met no serious 
 competition and thus was for a considerable time 
 left to its full benefit. The neglected non-sensa- 
 tional departments of news of the other daily morn- 
 ing newspapers were quietly and unostentatiously 
 improved in The New York Times and made as far 
 as possible complete — such as financial news, 
 market reports, real estate transactions, court 
 records, commercial and educational news; the news 
 of books, the routine affairs of the National, State 
 and City Governments; and there were also attrac- 
 tively presented decent and trustworthy pictures of 
 men, women and events. Altogether the task under- 
 taken in this direction was to tell promptly and 
 accurately the happenings and occurrences that were 
 not sensational but of real importance in the affairs 
 of the people. This supplemented the general news 
 of the day intelligently and quietly presented and 
 with editorial interpretation that was fair and in- 
 formative. The columns of The Times were open 
 without money and without price for the presenta- 
 tion of views honestly differing with the opinions of 
 The Times, and this was practiced to an extent never 
 theretofore done by a newspaper. All of this soon 
 gave The Times the reputation that its readers could 
 expect full and trustworthy information regarding 
 
 xvii 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 any and all angles of the news. In the very first 
 political campaign during the regime of the present 
 management such was the fairness and impartiality 
 of The Times news reports that at its close both the 
 Democratic and Republican managers of the Na- 
 tional Committees voluntarily sent letters of thanks 
 and appreciation to The Times managemejit. 
 
 We began on August i8, 1896, with a daily issue of 
 18,900, over half of which were returned unsold, and, 
 as said before, with a deficit of $1000 a day. The 
 gross income for the first year was $561,423, and at 
 the end of the year the deficit was $68,121.67. The 
 second year the deficit was $78,559; but in the third 
 year the balance was $50,252 on the right side and 
 has been so increasingly every year since. The 
 gross income for the period~of twenty-five years has 
 been, in round figures, $100,000,000, every dollar of 
 which, less an average of $125,000 a year withdrawn 
 from the business and distributed as dividends,, has 
 been expended in making The Times what it is today. 
 Not one dollar of the $100,000,000 was a gift or a 
 gratuity, but every cent a legitimate newspaper 
 income. It is a fortunate outcome for those who 
 own the shares of The New York Times Company 
 and who have been hopeful and patient for so many 
 years, but it has also been a happy and encouraging 
 result for the country and particularly for American 
 journalism. 
 
 There was a time when it was no secret in financial 
 circles that The New York Times Company had 
 limited resources and that it was an active borrower, 
 and this gave rise to speculation as to where the 
 necessary funds were obtained. As a result wild 
 
 xviii 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 and stupid conjectures were given currency when- 
 ever it suited the purpose of malevolent persons to 
 attempt to discredit the newspaper. Among the 
 stories were these: That there was English or 
 foreign capital in The Times; that traction interests 
 were owners or controllers; that certain political 
 factions were "backing" it; that department stores 
 were financially interested; that well-known Wall 
 Street concerns directed its policy, and variations 
 ad libitum. The truth is that from the day I as- 
 sumed the management of The New York Times — 
 twenty-five years ago today — I have been in abso- 
 lute and free control, and no man or interest was 
 ever in a position to direct or demand of me to do 
 anything with The Times, and no one ever attempted 
 to do so. So far as the management of The New 
 York Times is concerned we can say, without fear 
 of any contradiction from the thousands who in the 
 past twenty-five years have been employed on The 
 Times, that never a line appeared in its columns to 
 pay a real or imaginary debt or to gain expected 
 favors. The New York Times owes no man or 
 interest any support or goodwill that it does not owe 
 to every good man and worthy cause. 
 
 The operation of so large an enterprise, including 
 real estate transactions and large building construc- 
 tion, of course required capital, and the general 
 impression that the newspaper business is extra- 
 hazardous, and the personal equation the all-im- 
 portant factor, made financing no easy task; so it 
 cannot be surprising to know that we had many 
 and continued financial problems made more than 
 ordinarily difficult as we scrupulously avoided the 
 
 xix 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 easiest way, knowing full well that in that direction 
 the enterprise would be imperiled and robbed of the 
 attraction that made the work a joy, an inspiration 
 and opportunity for public service. The financing, 
 however, was always done on a strictly business 
 basis. Not a dollar was borrowed at less than the 
 prevailing rate of interest, and principal and interest 
 were paid to the last cent. In no single instance 
 did we receive any financial accommodation for a 
 selfish motive, and never in a single instance was it 
 predicated on any personal benefits, direct or in- 
 direct, asked or expected. 
 
 I was reluctant to go at such length into the busi- 
 ness and financial history of The New York Times, 
 but think this occasion is the time once and for all 
 to make the indisputable facts clear. 
 
 I do not wish to overemphasize the material 
 progress of The New York Times, as like results may 
 be obtained in any well-conducted business in the 
 world's greatest metropolis, for on this twenty-fifth 
 anniversary of the present management we prefer 
 to be appraised by the product we are offering the 
 public for their information and guidance, and to 
 have it judged by the highest standards of honesty, 
 fairness and cleanliness, and public service applied 
 in making newspapers. We present the nine thou- 
 sand and thirty-one issues of The New York Times 
 that have appeared during the past twenty-five 
 years for review and criticism. They are not with- 
 out faults and shortcomings and not altogether what 
 we should have wished them to be, but they are our 
 best under the circumstances of their construction. 
 We have little to regret for what has appeared 
 
 XX 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 therein, but in no issue was principle ever surrendered 
 or subordinated to expediency. We have not yet 
 reached our ideal of a newspaper in contents or 
 make-up and may never be able to achieve it, but 
 we shall continue to improve, and to that end we 
 hope to merit a continuance of our pleasant and 
 profitable relations with intelligent men and women. 
 With respect to the principles and policies of The 
 New York Times that represent our platform and 
 our guide I can do no better than to repeat what was 
 announced would be the policies of The Times when 
 assuming its control and management, and shall 
 leave to others to say how well we have lived up to 
 that declaration. The following was the salutatory 
 appearing in the issue of The New York Times of 
 Wednesday, August 19, i8g6: 
 
 ANNOUNCEMENT 
 
 To undertake the management of The New York Times, with 
 its great history for right doing, and to attempt to keep bright 
 the lustre which Henry J. Raymond and George Jones have 
 given it, is an extraordinary task. But if a sincere desire to 
 conduct a high-standard newspaper, clean, dignified and trust- 
 worthy, requires for success honesty, watchfulness, earnestness, 
 industry, and practical knowledge applied with common sense, 
 I entertain the hope that I can succeed and maintain the high 
 estimate that thoughtful, pure-minded people have ever had of 
 The New York Times. 
 
 It will be my earnest aim that The New York Times give the 
 news, all the news, in concise and attractive form, in language 
 that is permissible in good society, and give it as early, if not 
 earlier than it can be learned through any other reliable medium; 
 to give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless 
 of party, sect, or interests involved; to make of the columns of 
 The New York Times a forum for the consideration of all ques- 
 
 xxi 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 tions of public importance, and to that end to invite intelligent 
 discussion from all shades of opinion. 
 
 There will be no radical changes in the personnel of the present 
 efficient staff. Mr. Charles R. Miller, who has so ably for many 
 years presided over the editorial page, will continue to be the 
 editor; nor will there be a departure from the general tone and 
 character and policies pursued with relation to public questions 
 that have distinguished The New York Times as a non-partisan 
 newspaper — unless it be, if possible, to intensify its devotion 
 to the cause of sound money and tariff reform, opposition to 
 wastefulness and peculation in administering public affairs, and 
 in its advocacy of the lowest tax consistent with good govern- 
 ment, and no more government than is absolutely necessary to 
 protect society, maintain individual and vested rights, and 
 assure the free exercise of a sound conscience. 
 
 Adolph S. Ochs. 
 New York City, August i8, i8g6. 
 
 The foregoing was our Invitation for public favor 
 twenty-five years ago, and I reaffirm it today in the 
 full conviction based on my experience that these are 
 the proper principles that should be maintained in 
 the conduct of a representative American daily news- 
 paper. 
 
 Adolph S. Ochs. 
 
 New York City, August i8, igaz. 
 
 xxn 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 PART I 
 
CHAPTER I 
 Beginnings of The Times, 18S1-18S9 
 
 TN a sense The New York Times is the result of an 
 accident, or of a sequence of accidents. Sooner 
 or later Henry J. Raymond and George Jones would 
 have become partners in the production of a news- 
 paper; and wherever or whatever that newspaper 
 might have been, its character would have been 
 fixed by the common ideals which these men held, 
 as its prosperity would have been insured by their 
 unusually fortunate combination of talents. But 
 it was only a chance that this Raymond-Jones 
 newspaper, whose early years established the stand- 
 ard and the character which The Times strives to 
 maintain today, was The New York Times and not 
 The Albany Evening Journal; and it took more 
 accidents to bring Raymond and Jones together 
 in 1851. 
 
 The acquaintance and friendship of the two men 
 who directed The Times for the first four decades 
 of its history began in the early forties, in the office 
 of The New York Tribune. Jones, a native of Ver- 
 mont, had come to New York and gone into business, 
 and had been invited by Horace Greeley to become 
 his partner in the establishment of The Tribune in 
 1 841. Whether from a failure to realize the wider 
 field for newspaper enterprise which was opening in 
 New York, or from a well-grounded distrust of 
 
 3 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 Greeley's business judgment, Jones refused; but he 
 did take a place in the Tribune business oflBce, and 
 there not only acquired a thorough familiarity with 
 what may be called the alimentary system of a 
 newspaper, but formed a friendship with Raymond, 
 who was Greeley's principal editorial assistant. 
 Presently Raymond went over to The Courier and 
 Enquirer, then edited by General James Watson 
 Webb, and Jones later moved to Albany, where he 
 engaged in the business of redeeming bank notes. 
 In those days, when almost anybody could start a 
 bank and issue paper money which might or might 
 not have a solid reserve behind it, this was a some- 
 what hazardous occupation, but Jones made it 
 profitable. His business ability commended itself 
 to Thurlow Weed, who had become acquainted 
 with Raymond both as a newspaperman and as a 
 rising young Whig politician. In 1848 Weed wanted 
 to get out of The Albany Evening Journal, and offered 
 to sell it to the two friends. Raymond and Jones 
 were willing, but one of Weed's partners would not 
 let go, so the enterprise came to nothing. But it 
 had shown Raymond and Jones that they were not 
 alone in thinking that they could get out a pretty 
 good newspaper. For the moment Raymond's chief 
 attention was diverted to politics; he was elected to 
 the Assembly in 1849 and became its Speaker two 
 years later. But the idea of a Raymond-Jones 
 newspaper never died there^ter. 
 
 In 1850 General Webb went to Europe and left 
 Raymond in temporary charge of The Courier and 
 Enquirer. Raymond not only failed to use his 
 political influence to promote Webb's brief Senatorial 
 
BEGINNINGS OF THE TIMES, 1851-1859 
 
 boom, but incurred his chiefs disfavor by speaking 
 out some plain truths on the slavery question in 
 connection with the compromise proposals of that 
 year. Raymond was not then, and never was till 
 well along in the Civil War, an abolitionist; but he 
 did not think that the more urgent question of the 
 slave power in politics could be cured by ignoring 
 it or by tame surrender. His independence got 
 him into Webb's bad graces, and when Raymond 
 went to Albany for the legislative session that winter 
 he was eager to get away from Webb and start out 
 for himself. 
 
 Jones was somewhat more reluctant to give up a 
 business which he had made profitable, but it hap- 
 pened that a bill was then before the legislature 
 which proposed to regulate the rate of bank-note 
 redemption so severely that it would make the 
 business entirely too hazardous for men of integrity. 
 One day early in 1851, Jones and Raymond were 
 walking across the Hudson on the ice when Jones 
 observed that he had heard that The Tribune had 
 made a profit of ^60,000 — in those days an enormous 
 sum — in the past year. This renewed Raymond's 
 enthusiasm, and before they reached the other shore 
 he had obtained Jones's promise to join him, if the re- 
 demption bill passed, in the establishment of a new 
 daily in New York, The bill did pass. Jones closed 
 up his business, and he and his business associate, 
 E. B. Wesley, prepared to put their money, with 
 Raymond's experience, into the new venture. 
 
 But if this series of accidents led directly to the 
 establishment of The Times, it is nevertheless true 
 that essentially the paper was brought into being to 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 fill a keenly felt want in the New York journalism of 
 the day. The conditions which made possible the 
 prosperity of The Times in the fifties were in general 
 the conditions which opened the way for the spec- 
 tacularly successful reconstruction of The Times in 
 the nineties. In each case New York newspapers, 
 numerous and varied as they were, had none the 
 less left vacant a large and profitable part of the 
 newspaper field; and in each case the demand for a 
 certain kind of paper — a paper characterized under 
 Raymond as under Ochs by the somewhat unpre- 
 tentious but still popular qualities of moderation and 
 decency — created the supply. In the fifties as in 
 the nineties there were many newspaper readers in 
 New York who wanted a paper which first of all 
 gave the news, but which was not distorted by 
 eccentricities of a personal editorial attitude or 
 tainted by excessive attention to folly, immorality 
 and crime. The character which Raymond gave 
 to The Times — excellence in news service, avoid- 
 ance of fantastic extremes in editorial opinion, and a 
 general sobriety in manner — is the character which 
 The Times has retained ever since, and which those 
 now engaged in producing the paper hope it still 
 retains. 
 
 There was a field for a sane and sensible newspaper 
 in New York in 1851. The city had not yet re- 
 covered from its surprise at finding itself a great 
 metropolis, with more than half a million people, 
 already far beyond its old rivals of the Atlantic sea- 
 board and obviously destined to still greater growth 
 in the future. It was spreading rapidly, sprawlingly, 
 with little attention to the manner of its extension; 
 
 6 
 
BEGINNINGS OF THE TIMES, 1851-1859 
 
 its government was execrable, Its civic beauties 
 few and well concealed, its spirit still aiFected by the 
 old small-town tradition. But it was growing; it 
 was attracting new men by the thousands, ambitious 
 young men like Raymond, from up-state; like Jones 
 and others, many others, from New England. Those 
 men were beginning the work of making New York, 
 to which their most active and able successors of 
 more recent times have done little more than add a 
 few embellishments. 
 
 Both the old spirit and the new were reflected in 
 the newspapers of New York. There still survived 
 some excellent examples of the type of newspaper 
 which had prevailed in the earlier decades of the 
 century — the so-called blanket sheets, literally big 
 enough to be slept under, especially by those who 
 had tried to read them. They were massive, expen- 
 sive, and dull; dignified if not respectable; content 
 with a small circulation among gentlemen who 
 had plenty of time, if not much inclination, 
 for reading, and were willing enough to get around 
 to this morning's news about the middle of next 
 week. The new era began with the establishment 
 of The Sun in 1833 — a paper which for the first 
 time in America discovered the rudimentary literacy 
 of the lower classes. The Sun of 1833, or even of 
 185 1, was nothing like The Sun as made famous by 
 Dana long afterward; it was filled for the most part 
 with trivialities, and according to Augustus Maver- 
 ick, Raymond's biographer, was read in 1851 chiefly 
 by "domestics in quest of employment, and cart- 
 men dozing at street corners in waiting for a job." 
 But it had opened up a new field, and this field was 
 
 7 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 entered two years later by a much more interesting 
 and much better newspaper, James Gordon Ben- 
 nett's Herald. 
 
 Bennett was the inventor of almost everything, 
 good and bad, in modern journalism. He was the 
 first editor who gave his chief attention to the collec- 
 tion of news, and before long his competition had 
 compelled all newspapers which made any preten- 
 sion to influence to undertake unheard-of expendi- 
 tures and to compete with him in the utilization 
 of the railroad, the steamship, the telegraph and 
 other new inventions just coming into use. In his 
 salutatory to the public he disclaimed, among other 
 things, "all principle, as it is called." His enemies 
 and professional rivals — in the early days of The 
 Herald the two terms were synonymous — would 
 have said that he had merely rejected all good princi- 
 ples. Tammany Hall and slavery usually found The 
 Herald on their side. Moreover, Bennett invented 
 yellow journalism; he discovered and encouraged 
 the popular taste for vicarious vice and crime, and 
 before long respectable citizens who would have liked 
 to read The Herald for the news felt constrained to 
 exclude it from their homes for fear of its effect on 
 the somewhat sensitive morals of the Victorian 
 family. 
 
 It must be admitted that this "obscene" Herald 
 which was regarded with such horror in the middle 
 of the nineteenth century was not so very terrible, 
 judged by the more elastic standards of our time. 
 Every page of every issue bears the mark of Bennett's 
 powerful and eccentric talent, and it undoubtedly 
 did give more space to news of crime and human 
 
 8 
 
BEGINNINGS OF THE TIMES, 1851-1859 
 
 error than its rivals; but it respected certain reti- 
 cences which had passed into history before many 
 of the night city editors of 1921 were born. How- 
 ever, moral standards were more exigent in those 
 days, and Bennett's frank and premature cynicism 
 probably contributed to the ill repute of his paper. 
 In the forties good principles were exemplified by 
 few, but professed by everybody but Bennett; and it 
 was the shrinking of virtuous citizens from the 
 loathsome newspaper whose editor dared to talk as 
 most people acted that opened the way for Greeley's 
 success with The Tribune. 
 
 When Greeley established The Tribune in 1841 
 Bennett had things pretty much his own way. Of 
 the heavier and more conservative sheets The Courier 
 and Enquirer was kept in the foreground by the 
 aggressive and pugnacious personality of James 
 Watson Webb, but none of these papers could vie 
 with Bennett in popularity or financial success. 
 The Sun had long since been beaten in its own field, 
 and no one then foresaw its ultimate revenge in that 
 recent and curious transaction wherein The Herald 
 swallowed The Sun, and emerged from the process 
 so exactly like The Sun as to furnish perhaps the 
 best exemplification in history of the proverb, 
 "Man ist was man isst." But Greeley soon gave 
 Bennett real competition. In the first place, The 
 Sun and The Herald leaned toward the Democrats, 
 and Greeley first came forward to offer a cheap 
 newspaper to the Whigs. Moreover, The Tribune 
 as a newspaper was about as good as The Herald, 
 and it carefully avoided all The Herald's offenses 
 against the taste of the time. Yet The Tribune itself 
 
 9 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 soon incurred moral disapproval because of Greeley's 
 advocacy of the principles of Fourieristic Socialism. 
 The chief characteristic of The Tribune under 
 Greeley was an aggressive and even ostentatious 
 purity. "Immoral and degrading police reports," 
 and any notices of the existence of the theater, 
 whether in news or advertising, were at first scrupu- 
 lously excluded. Greeley appealed to man as he 
 likes to pretend to be, Bennett to man as he is 
 occasionally compelled to admit he really is. Greeley 
 promoted temperance with a zeal equaled only by that 
 other eminent moralist of the time, P. T. Barnum, and 
 professed an intention to make The Tribune, though 
 a penny paper, "a welcome visitor at the family 
 fireside." Heads of families soon found it rather 
 startling that a paper with such an ambition was 
 becoming the vehicle of doctrines whose logical 
 application would make the family obsolete. Gree- 
 ley's Socialism was no doubt sincere — he seems to 
 have been the type of man who was so sincere in 
 everything he did as to make the impartial observer 
 somewhat more tolerant of judicious hypocrisy — 
 and certainly his observation of the panic of 1837, 
 and of the struggles between Tammany and the 
 local Whig machine for the control of the city govern- 
 ment, might have justified him in concluding that 
 no political and economic organization of society 
 could be much worse than that which actually 
 obtained. Fourierism was popular; Brook Farm, 
 the Oneida Community, New Harmony, and hun- 
 dreds of less known and less successful communistic 
 experiments were being attempted in various parts 
 of the country. Greeley's advocacy of the reorgani- 
 
 10 
 
BEGINNINGS OF THE TIMES, 1851-1859 
 
 zation of society on the basis of the "social phalanx" 
 was not hampered by any consideration of the 
 difficulty of fitting a metropolitan newspaper with a 
 large circulation into a state of phalangites, but 
 doubtless he was taking only one step at a time, and 
 saw no reason for crossing this bridge before he 
 came to it. In the meantime Albert Brisbane, 
 father of the better known Arthur Brisbane, and 
 an eminent apostle of what Mr. Wells would 
 doubtless call the Neanderthal type of Socialism, 
 was allowed the run of The Tribune, and enjoyed 
 the esteem of its editors. • 
 
 Greeley, to be sure, was no more than what would 
 now be called a parlor Bolshevik, but it was only 
 natural that his professional and commercial rivals, 
 in that acrimonious age, should suspect him of a 
 willingness to acquiesce in the logical extension of 
 his doctrines to other parts of the house. Despite 
 his protests and denials, it suited the other news- 
 papers of the city to regard him as the advocate of 
 free love; and the controversy found fullest 
 expression in the autumn of 1846, in an editorial 
 warfare between Greeley and his old employe Ray- 
 mond, then on The Courier and Enquirer. A dozen 
 or so long articles were written on each side, and 
 Raymond succeeded in proving, to the entire satis- 
 faction of everybody who agreed with him, that the 
 doctrines advocated by The Tribune not only would 
 be destructive of property right, family affection, 
 and political association, but were contrary to the 
 teachings of revealed religion — an assertion which 
 he evidently regarded as crushing, and which in 
 1846 undoubtedly was. 
 
 II 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 The Tribune prospered in spite of these handicaps; 
 but there were a great many people who wanted the 
 news as The Tribune printed it, without the sensa- 
 tional matter to be found in The Herald, and equally 
 without the questionable and subversive doctrines 
 which might be seen lurking beneath the chest- 
 thumping morality of The Tribune's editorial page. 
 To its enthusiasm for Socialism, moreover, The 
 Tribune added a vigorous propaganda for Irish 
 freedom, and the growing power of the Irish element 
 in Tammany Hall had already aroused a certain 
 reluctance, readily intelligible today, to allow New 
 York City to be used as an overseas base for this 
 hardy perennial conflict. To this public Raymond 
 and Jones decided to appeal — not only because it 
 was there and waiting for a paper suited to its taste, 
 but also because its taste happened to be the taste 
 of Raymond and Jones. 
 
 Raymond went to Europe for a vacation in the 
 summer of 1851, after drawing up with Jones and 
 Wesley the plans for the new paper. His own 
 expression in a letter to his brother, dated from 
 London in June, 1851, is modest enough — "Two 
 gentlemen in Albany propose to start a new paper in 
 New York early in September, and I shall probably 
 edit it." This was undoubtedly the way it seemed 
 to Raymond at the time, but it was Raymond's 
 personality that made the paper's character at the 
 outset, and in the Jubilee Supplement of The Times, 
 issued in 1901, it was set down as the measured 
 judgment of the editors of the paper that " The 
 Times has always been at its best when its conduct 
 approached most nearly to his ideal of a daily news- 
 
 12 
 
BEGINNINGS OF THE TIMES, 1851-1859 
 
 paper." After Raymond's death circumstances com- 
 pelled Jones to discover and display for a time his 
 own very great talent as supervisor of the editorial 
 policy of The Times; but for the eighteen years 
 from its establishment to Raymond's death it was 
 known to the country as Raymond's newspaper. 
 Its virtues were largely his; its weakness was chiefly 
 due to his one uncontrollable defect, an addiction 
 to politics. 
 
 Raymond was born on a farm near Lima, N. Y., in 
 1820, and graduated from the University of Vermont 
 in 1840. For a few months thereafter he supported 
 himself in New York as a free lance newspaperman, 
 but was about to give it up in despair and become a 
 school teacher in North Carolina when Greeley, for 
 whom he had done some writing on space, off^ered 
 him a salary of eight dollars a week. It was Greeley 
 who in later years, when Raymond was a rival 
 editor, bestowed on him the title of "the Little 
 Villain " — a mild enough epithet according to the 
 standards of journalistic courtesy in the fifties; 
 but Greeley in his more moderate moments liked 
 Raymond, and said that "a. more generally efficient 
 journalist I never saw," and that Raymond was 
 the only man who ever worked for him whom he 
 had had to reprove for working too hard. 
 
 After three years with Greeley, Raymond went 
 over to The Courier and Enquirer, and remained 
 with that paper till plans had been made for the 
 establishment of The Times. By that time, though 
 only thirty-one, he was one of the best known and 
 ablest newspapermen in New York. He was a small 
 man, but pugnacious, as editors had to be in those 
 
 13 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 days. Though it was Raymond's fortune to begin 
 his independent career after the close of the period 
 when editors went about in momentary expectation 
 (or meditation) of personal violence, he had occasion 
 more than once to display not only moral but physical 
 courage in defense of his principles. As a reporter 
 and editorial writer he was remarkably gifted; his 
 writing was rapid, his style clear; a rarer virtue in 
 those times, his copy was legible. A feat recorded 
 by his biographer, Maverick, who says he was an 
 eyewitness, is here cited without comment: on the 
 day of Daniel Webster's death Raymond wrote, in the 
 late afternoon and early evening, sixteen columns of 
 the obituary — in longhand, and without the aid of 
 such material as a newspaper"morgue"now furnishes. 
 In his views on public questions Raymond was if 
 anything too well balanced. He often lamented a 
 habit of mind which inclined him to see both sides 
 in any dispute. This may have hampered him as a 
 politician, but on the whole it probably did The Times 
 more good than harm. There were plenty of infuri- 
 ated and vituperant newspapers in those days, and 
 the'success of The Times in the fifties showed that a 
 considerable part of the public approved a measure 
 of temperance in opinions on public affairs. To a 
 certain extent, however, Raymond was really ahead 
 of the time. His attitude toward the problems which 
 led to and arose out of the Civil War, for example, is 
 in almost every detail that which is approved by the 
 judgment of history in so far as that judgment can 
 ever be set down with certainty. He was a Whig 
 in the early fifties, but not a bigoted Whig. He was 
 not an abolitionist, but he believed that the domi- 
 
 14 
 
BEGINNINGS OF THE TIMES, 1851-1859 
 
 nation of the federal government by the slave states 
 in the interest of slavery — the domination of a 
 majority by a minority — must be ended. In the 
 middle of the decade he became a free-soil man and 
 then one of the founders of the Republican party. 
 During the war he was a bitter-ender, even in the 
 dark days when better advertised patriots were 
 willing to accept a peace without victory; but when 
 the end was reached Raymond did his best to remove 
 the bitterness. It would have been infinitely better 
 for the whole country if Raymond and-not Thaddeus 
 Stevens had been allowed to lay down the recon- 
 struction policy, and though Raymond went astray 
 in thinking for a time that Andrew Johnson was all 
 that a man in his position, with his enemies, ought 
 to have been, the soundness of the principles which 
 Raymond held and which Johnson rather spasmodi- 
 cally tried to apply has been demonstrated by the 
 subsequent course of history. | 
 
 There can be no doubt, however, that Raymond's 
 preoccupation with politics distracted much of his 
 attention from The Times, and the paper suffered 
 heavily, though not for long, from his unpopularity 
 in the early days of reconstruction. In the fifties 
 it was not yet realized that the editor of a successful 
 New York paper was a bigger man than the Speaker 
 of the Assembly, or even the Lieutenant-Governor; 
 yet it was characteristic of Raymond that when 
 some of his friends wanted to put him up for Gov- 
 ernor, in 1856, he refused for fear his aggressive 
 record as a Whig might stand in the way of the rap- 
 prochement of free-soil Whigs and free-soil Demo- 
 crats in the new Republican party. 
 
 IS 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 Raymond has perhaps too hastily been called a 
 political follower of Thurlow Weed and William H. 
 Seward, and some writers have even regarded Weed 
 as a sort of man behind the throne on The Times. 
 It is a curious foible of a certain type of mind that 
 it is unable to imagine a newspaper editor as one 
 who may, on some public questions, honestly have 
 the same view as that held by other persons. Unless 
 he is absolutely unique and eccentric in his political 
 opinions, he is presumed by certain critics to be 
 bought or otherwise controlled by the people who 
 agree with him. Raymond did indeed have a great 
 respect for Weed's political judgment, a general 
 agreement with Weed's political views, and a friendly 
 relation with Weed himself. In his early political 
 career he was in a sense a follower of Weed, just as 
 he was a "follower" of Seward in i860 to the extent 
 of supporting him for the presidential nomination. 
 But on many matters he disagreed with these gentle- 
 men, and while their relative rank in political affairs 
 was considerably higher than his in the fifties, 
 Raymond's vigorous support of Lincoln gave him a 
 personal influence during the Civil War that was 
 due to Raymond alone. In 1864, as chairman of 
 the Republican National Committee, he could hardly 
 be described as a follower of anybody but Lincoln, 
 who fully recognized his immense value in that year 
 to the party and the nation. 
 
 Weed often and naturally came into the Times 
 ofl&ce to talk politics with Raymond, and no doubt 
 to offer occasional thoughts on political journalism; 
 but Raymond knew a good deal about politics and 
 a good deal more about journalism, and would have 
 
 16 
 
BEGINNINGS OF THE TIMES, 1851-1859 
 
 known it if he had never seen Weed in his Ufe. For 
 a short time just after the Civil War Weed was a 
 contributor of political articles to the paper; but 
 there seems to be no foundation for the theory that 
 he was ever its dominating influence, or ever tried 
 to be. Raymond was not so inhuman as to have no 
 friends, or so original as to have no political associ- 
 ates, but he and he alone was editor of The Times. 
 
 On August 5, 1851, the association which was to 
 publish the new paper was formed under the name 
 of Raymond, Jones & Company. In August, i860, 
 the name was changed to H. J. Raymond & Com- 
 pany; and in July, 1871, after Raymond's heirs had 
 sold out their holdings, to The New York Times. 
 The stock was divided into a hundred shares, the 
 nominal par value of which seems to have been set 
 by tacit agreement at $1000. Raymond received 
 twenty shares "as an equivalent for his editorial 
 ability." Jones and Wesley had forty shares each 
 "as an equivalent for their capital and business 
 ability," but the actual cash investment then made 
 was only ^40,000, each man putting up half. When 
 the paper was established in the following month the 
 cash investment seems to have totaled $69,000. 
 Jones and Wesley had already found it necessary 
 to increase their own investment, and to give up 
 some of the stock which was to have been an equiva- 
 lent for their business ability in return for cash. 
 At the outset Jones and Wesley held 25 shares each; 
 J. B. Plumb, Daniel B. St. John, and Francis B. 
 Ruggles five shares each, and E. B. Morgan and 
 Christopher Morgan two shares each. The Morgan 
 
 17 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 interest, small as it was, has a considerable place in 
 the Times history, for at a later crisis in the affairs 
 of the paper (during the fight against Tweed), E. B. 
 Morgan came in and bought the stock of the Ray- 
 mond estate, thereby giving Jones invaluable security 
 in his struggle with Tammany. 
 
 Raymond chose for the new paper the name of 
 The New-York Daily Times y which had been 
 borne in the thirties by a publication so short-lived 
 that for all practical purposes the name was as good 
 as new. A prospectus was already in circulation 
 and had been published (as an advertisement) in the 
 other dailies of the city. On the whole, and in- 
 evitably, the prospectus contained blameless generali- 
 ties; The Times was going to include all that was 
 good in both conservatism and radicaHsm, while 
 avoiding the defects of either; it announced in firm 
 tones its belief in the doctrines of Christianity and 
 repubhcanism, which nobody in the United States 
 except the Indians would in that day have denied; 
 and it declared the intention of the publishers "to 
 make The Times at once the best and the cheapest 
 daily family newspaper in the United States." 
 But along with these routine announcements there 
 were one or two which meant something. The 
 Times "is not estabHshed for the advancement of 
 any party, sect or person." "It will be under the 
 editorial management and control of Henry J. 
 Raymond, and while it will maintain firmly and 
 zealously those principles which he may deem 
 essential to the public good, and which are held by 
 the great Whig Party of the United States more 
 nearly than by any other political organization, its 
 
 18 
 

 l<ssM|s|' 
 
 
BEGINNINGS OF THE TIMES, 1851-1859 
 
 columns will be free from bigoted devotion to narrow 
 interests." For a party politician and office-holder 
 to admit that his party could conceivably fall short 
 of perfection was a novelty in the fifties. 
 
 Moreover, "while it will assert and exercise the 
 right freely to discuss every subject of public interest, 
 it will not countenance any improper interference, 
 on the part of the people of any locality, with the 
 institutions, or even the prejudices, of another." 
 
 There was a reason for this. During the summer 
 there had been many rumors about the new paper, 
 and the motive of its founders was set down as 
 almost everything but what it really was — to 
 establish a new paper that would publish, as a later 
 motto of The Times put it, "all the news that's fit 
 to print," a phrase which exactly expresses the 
 intentions of Raymond and Jones. It suited Ray- 
 mond's political and journalistic enemies to accuse 
 him of being an abolitionist, and the apprehensive 
 rivals of the new paper tried to discredit it by assert- 
 ing in advance that it was going to further the 
 doctrine of abolition, or the presidential candidacy 
 of General Scott, or the presidential candidacy of 
 some other dignitary, or anything else that might 
 seem likely to bring it into disrepute. The motive 
 of this was clear enough even at the time; for the 
 established newspapers made the same efforts to 
 hamper the circulation of The Times that had been 
 tried successively on The Sun, The Herald, and The 
 Tribune — and with no more effect. New York 
 was growing so fast that the extraordinary prosperity 
 which attended The Times almost from the outset 
 brought no real injury to any of its important rivals; 
 
 19 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 for years thereafter they all grew and prospered 
 together. 
 
 These attacks had given the paper a good deal 
 of free advertising, which was soon turned to good 
 account. Raymond had collected the nucleus of an 
 excellent staff — several reporters and editors, and 
 a dozen employes of the mechanical departments, 
 left the Tribune in a body to come over to the new 
 paper — and despite the unreadiness of the building 
 at 113 Nassau Street which had been rented as the 
 first home of the paper, it appeared eventually only 
 two days later than the date promised in the pros- 
 pectus. "On the night of the 17th of September 
 [1851]," says Maverick, "the first number of The 
 Times was made up, in open lofts, destitute of 
 windows, gas, speaking tubes, dumb waiters, and 
 general conveniences. All was raw and dismal. 
 The writer remembers sitting by the open window 
 at midnight, looking through the dim distance at 
 Raymond's first lieutenant, who was diligently 
 writing brevier" [editorial copy, so called from the 
 name of the type in which it was set] "at a rickety 
 table at the end of the barren garret; his only light 
 a flaring candle, held upright by three nails in a 
 block of wood; at the city editor, and the news-man, 
 and the reporters, all eagerly scratching pens over 
 paper, their countenances half lighted, half shaded, 
 by other candles; at Raymond, writing rapidly and 
 calmly, as he always wrote, but under similar dis- 
 advantages." 
 
 The first number of The Times on the streets the 
 following morning contained an editorial article 
 (by Raymond, of course) headed "A Word About 
 
 20 
 
BEGINNINGS OF THE TIMES, 1851-1859 
 
 Ourselves," and beginning with the declaration: 
 "We publish today the first number of The New York 
 Daily Times, and we intend to issue it every morning 
 (Sundays excepted) for an indefinite number of 
 years to come." This salutatory contained a 
 promise which was soon justified by performance: 
 "We do not mean to write as if we were in a passion, 
 unless that shall really be the case; and we shall 
 make it a point to get into a passion as rarely as 
 possible. There are very few things in this world 
 which it is worth while to get angry about; and they 
 are just the things that anger will not improve." 
 There was rather more anger than was needful in 
 most of the New York papers of that period, espe- 
 cially in their editorial controversies with each 
 other. Yet it is pleasant to record that editorial 
 ethics in this city have shown a steady improvement. 
 In the earlier decades of the nineteenth century 
 editors were compelled by public opinion to back 
 up their tirades against each other by appearances 
 on the field of honor. By the time of Greeley and 
 Bennett this practise, which made an already hazard- 
 ous occupation somewhat too troublesome for com- 
 fort, was dying out, and the ethics of the period 
 permitted rival editors to fight out their quarrels 
 with walking sticks or horsewhips when they met on 
 Broadway, instead of taking to pistols and the Wee- 
 hawken ferry. And in 1851 even horsewhipping 
 was beginning to go out of fashion. No doubt an 
 argument could be made out for this custom, in 
 theory, but as a practical measure it did not seem 
 to moderate editorial passions, though not every- 
 body was as unconcerned as Bennett, who published 
 
 21 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 the account of one of his own unfortunate personal 
 encounters in The Herald under the heading, "Horse- 
 whipped Again." 
 
 By 1851, however, the traffic on Broadway had 
 become so heavy that it was impossible to hold it up 
 while rival newspaper proprietors belabored each 
 other with malacca sticks, and emotion had to be 
 expressed on the editorial page. There, to be sure, 
 it flourished with intensity; "vile wretch," "profli- 
 gate scoundrel," and "infamous reprobate" were 
 terms commonly employed as designations of pro- 
 fessional colleagues, and for decades thereafter the 
 newspapers gave a good deal more editorial attention 
 to each other's misfortunes and shortcomings than 
 the relative importance of the topic deserved. To- 
 day, aside from one or two publications whose 
 ethical standards are palaeolithic in other respects 
 as well, the newspapers of New York usually have 
 sufficient self-restraint to conceal their opinions of 
 each other, and devote such editorial reference as 
 they make to criticisms of specific views of a con- 
 temporary rather than to animadversions on its 
 editor's personal appearance and moral character. 
 No doubt this mollification of manners is all for the 
 best, but veteran editorial writers complain that it 
 has taken a good deal of the fierce joy out of the 
 newspaper business. 
 
 The Times was by no means wholly free from 
 controversies with its rivals, but except in one or 
 two instances it did not carry this practise so far as 
 was the custom, and thereby gave a pleasing instance 
 to New York newspaper readers of the possibility 
 of filling up a newspaper without recourse to the 
 
 22 
 
BEGINNINGS OF THE TIMES, 1851-1859 
 
 material of personal quarrels. Raymond was only 
 once challenged to fight a duel (by an indignant 
 Irish patriot) and a little diplomacy got him honor- 
 ably out of that. 
 
 This paper which was produced under the difficult 
 conditions described by Maverick consisted of four 
 pages, of six columns each. The page was about a 
 third shorter and a third narrower than a page of 
 today's Times. There were morning and evening 
 editions — the latter published at one and three 
 o'clock in the afternoon; but there was only one 
 Times. Neither the office files nor the memory 
 of the oldest living members of the staff furnish 
 much information about these evening editions, but 
 apparently they contained merely the news arriving 
 after the paper went to press at midnight, with the 
 editorial, advertising and other features persisting 
 in all editions. The evening editions, in other 
 words, took the place of, and in time were supplanted 
 by, the second, third and later editions which the 
 improvement of newspaper mechanics presently 
 made it possible to issue before daylight. 
 
 There was also in the beginning, and for years 
 thereafter, a Weekly Family Times. Every daily 
 paper had to have a weekly in those days for circu- 
 lation on the farm, and in the case of The Tribune 
 at least the weekly was largely responsible for Gree- 
 ley's great influence. But with the extension of 
 railroads it eventually became possible to get the 
 daily paper circulated over a much larger part of 
 the country than was possible in 1851, and after a 
 long and respectable career the weekly edition of The 
 Times was finally discontinued in the late seventies. 
 
 23 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 A Semi-weekly Times, chiefly for rural readers, lasted 
 some years longer. 
 
 There was, besides, in the early days, a Times 
 for California, put together whenever a mail boat 
 happened to be sailing for San Francisco; and a 
 Campaign Times issued in presidential years. The 
 Times for California passed away with the rise of 
 the Cahfornia press, and the campaign edition, which 
 was a weekly, died out for the same reason as The 
 Weekly Family Times. 
 
 From the beginning The Times was a good news- 
 paper. The first page of the first number is a good 
 specimen of the art of newspapermaking as under- 
 stood in 1851. In the first column, under the "mast- 
 head" containing the terms of subscription, and so 
 on, is the heading, "The News from Europe." 
 Single-column headlines were the invariable rule 
 then, of course, as they were until a much later 
 period; and the descriptive headline had not yet been 
 invented. "The news from Europe" is preceded 
 by a short summary, the opening lines of which 
 illustrate the method of obtaining foreign news in 
 that day: 
 
 The Royal Mail steamer Europa arrived 
 at Boston yesterday, at about six o'clock. 
 Her mails were sent on by the New Haven 
 railroad train, which left at 9 o'clock, and 
 reached this city at an early hour last 
 evening. 
 
 By this arrival we have received our 
 
 regular English and French files, with 
 
 correspondence, circulars, etc., to Saturday, 
 
 September 6 — the Europa' s day of sailing. 
 
 24 
 
BEGINNINGS OF THE TIMES, 1851-1859 
 
 The news by this arrival has consider- 
 able interest, although it is not of startling 
 importance. 
 
 Then follows a brief summary of the news, and 
 after that the news itself, under the headings "Great 
 Britain," "France," etc. — most of it taken from 
 the London papers. There are some three and a 
 half columns of European news; then a column about 
 a fugitive slave riot at Lancaster, Pennsylvania; 
 the rest of the page is filled with brief local items, 
 ending with perhaps a quarter of a column from 
 Brooklyn. At the head of the local news is this 
 paragraph: 
 
 The weather was the theme upon which 
 we hinged an item for our morning edition, 
 but we have been forced to forego the 
 infliction of it upon the public, by the pro- 
 ceedings of the Boston Jubilee, which our 
 special correspondent has forwarded us. 
 Never mind, the President cannot always 
 be lionizing through the country, and as 
 soon as he returns home we shall endeavor 
 to do this important subject full justice. 
 
 Other local items include the announcement that 
 "the fountain in Washington Square gets on toward 
 completion with moderate speed," and reports of 
 the appearance of the bloomer costume in Greenwich 
 Village. Two or three fires are chronicled, and 
 under the heading of "False Alarm" The Times 
 announces : 
 
 The Hall bell rang an alarm at 9 o'clock 
 last evening for the Sixth District, but our 
 item-gatherer failed to discover the first 
 spark of a fire. 
 
 25 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 It must be recorded with regret that The Herald's 
 "item-gatherer" did find that fire; but this did not 
 establish a precedent. The Times's merits soon 
 forced its way to recognition, and the circulation 
 soon began to approach that of The Herald and The 
 Tribune. Reviewing the first year of the paper on 
 September i8, 1852, Raymond said that "it has 
 been immeasurably more successful, in all respects, 
 than any newspaper of a similar character ever 
 before published in the United States." So far as 
 public esteem was concerned that was unques- 
 tionably true, but if Raymond had stopped to 
 consult Jones and Wesley he might have said " in all 
 respects but one." The Times was not yet paying 
 its way. Fifty thousand dollars had been spent 
 at the outset for mechanical equipment. Newsprint 
 paper was then as now the heaviest drain on the 
 treasury (though, as paper, it was a good deal better 
 in those days); of The Times's first-year expense 
 more than half — ^40,000 — was spent for paper; 
 $25,000 for the wages of the mechanical and business 
 departments; $13,000 on correspondents, editors, 
 and reporters. The circulation at the end of the 
 year was more than 26,000 — a figure highly credit- 
 able, in the circumstances; but the small size of the 
 paper restricted the space available for advertising, 
 rates were accordingly high, and advertisers saw 
 no reason for paying extra to appear in The Times 
 when they could reach as many readers for less 
 money in the Tribune, Sun or Herald. 
 
 The stipulations of the articles of incorporation 
 as to the division of profits were so far a mere exer- 
 cise in fantasy. Raymond as editor of the paper 
 
 26 
 
HENRY J. RAYMOND. 
 
BEGINNINGS OF THE TIMES, 1851-1859 
 
 received a salary of $2500 a year; Jones and Wesley 
 had had only the privilege of putting in more money. 
 But with the second year The Times took the plunge 
 and doubled its size. It also doubled the price, 
 going up to two cents a copy, and the circulation at 
 once shrank from 26,000 to 18,000. But the extra 
 pages gave room not only for more advertising, but 
 for more news, and before long the loss in circulation 
 had been more than made up. In 1857 The Times 
 claimed a circulation of 40,000. 
 
 Jones had managed the business during the first 
 year, but then was constrained to take a trip to 
 Europe on account of his health. Wesley had 
 charge of the business office for some time thereafter, 
 but in 1853 Fletcher Harper, Jr., was installed as 
 publisher, having purchased some of Jones's and 
 some of Wesley's stock. Harper, it seems, did not 
 get along with the other partners, and in 1856 he 
 sold out to them. By that time the paper was 
 prospering; it appeared in some litigation in connec- 
 tion with this sale that the dividends were $20,000 a 
 year, and Jones and Wesley paid $1666 a share for 
 Harper's stock, the par value of a share being $1000. 
 
 Wesley sold out his interest in September, i860, 
 to Raymond and Leonard W. Jerome, the latter of 
 whom served as "consulting director" until 1870. 
 After Harper's departure, however, Jones had re- 
 sumed the management of the business office, and 
 the prosperity thus early established continued un- 
 broken, under his direction, for more than a quarter 
 of a century. 
 
 The Times's reputation for balance was almost 
 upset only three months after its establishment, 
 
 27 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 when Louis Kossuth came to New York to find in 
 America, if he could," material aid" for the renewal 
 of the Hungarian struggle against Austria. Magyar- 
 Americans of today may be surprised to learn that 
 in 1 85 1 the Times was the principal champion in 
 America of the Magyar cause, but the Hungary of 
 1849 was not the Hungary of 1914. Raymond's 
 enthusiasm over Kossuth — whose reception every- 
 where in America was remarkably favorable, and 
 whose progress excited almost as much public 
 interest as the movements of JofFre in 1917 — was 
 unquestionably genuine, and sprang from a love 
 for the principles of liberty and nationalism, for 
 which Hungary had lately fought so gallantly. 
 Also, it must be admitted, the arrival of Kossuth 
 was the first big local news story after the foundation 
 of The Times, and it was necessary to show New 
 York what the new paper could do. As a result 
 readers of The Times often found that of their twenty- 
 four columns of news and advertising three or four 
 would be devoted to a speech by Kossuth (sometimes 
 with the postscript, "Remainder tomorrow") and 
 another column or so to an account of his doings. 
 
 Nevertheless, the virtual adoption of Kossuth 
 and Hungary by The Times was probably a good 
 thing for the paper. Kossuth himself, after his 
 return to Europe, acted for a time as London cor- 
 respondent; and during his stay here Raymond was 
 enabled to defend him — a grateful labor it must have 
 been, too — against James Watson Webb, whose 
 newspaper had taken on itself the function of advo- 
 cate of the Hapsburgs and Romanoff's. The conflict 
 between the two came to a head at a dinner given 
 
 28 
 
BEGINNINGS OF THE TIMES, 1851-1859 
 
 by the city to Kossuth on December ii, 1851, where 
 Raymond had been appointed to respond to the 
 toast: "The Press — the organized Voice of Free- 
 dom — it whispers hope to the oppressed, and 
 thunders defiance at the tyrant." As Raymond rose 
 to respond to the toast and express the sentiment 
 of the company, Webb also rose, of his own accord. 
 From the editorial attitude of his paper it was clear 
 that he was going to whisper hope to the tyrant, 
 and thunder defiance at the oppressed. There was 
 a good deal of confusion, and Webb was finally 
 suppressed by the police. Raymond delivered his 
 speech, and then entreated the audience to hear 
 Webb on the other side; but Webb's remarks were 
 drowned by hisses and hoots, and he was compelled 
 to save them up and print them in his paper next day. 
 
 On another occasion in that first year Raymond's 
 aggressive personality brought himself and his 
 paper into prominence. The Whig National Con- 
 vention met at Baltimore in June, 1852. Like the 
 national conventions of both parties for years past, 
 it was dominated by a vigorous and truculent group 
 of southern leaders who were determined that 
 neither the platform nor the candidate should be 
 suspected of hostility to the extension of the "pecu- 
 liar institution." Fillmore was generally favored 
 by the southern delegates. General Winfield Scott 
 by the northern; with a little group of willful men 
 sticking to Daniel Webster. 
 
 The southerners had their way in every detail 
 of organization and in the writing of the platform, 
 but the northern leaders expected that their com- 
 plaisance in this respect would be met by southern 
 
 29 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 acceptance of Scott's candidacy. Raymond, who 
 was present as the chief correspondent of The Times, 
 mentioned this expectation in a dispatch to the 
 paper during the balloting, and added, "If Scott, 
 is not nominated, they will charge breach of faith 
 on the South." This was promptly telegraphed 
 back to James Watson Webb from his paper in New 
 York, and Webb at once gave the dispatch (which 
 had somewhat misrepresented Raymond's language) 
 to some of the southern leaders. The balloting 
 for a candidate was interrupted on the last day by a 
 demand for the expulsion of Raymond from the 
 convention as the author of an infamous and false 
 attack on the integrity of the delegates. 
 
 For Raymond was by this time a delegate, having 
 been chosen by the New York representatives to take 
 the place of a man who had gone home. At the 
 time this was represented as a mere accident; but it 
 appears to have been done with intent. Some of 
 the northern leaders were disgusted and ashamed 
 at their continual humiliations at the hands of the 
 southern fire-eaters; and knowing Raymond as a bril- 
 liant orator of unquestioned courage, they had told a 
 delegate from Oswego to go home and give his seat 
 to Raymond. The offending dispatch and the intru- 
 sive Webb were consequently more or less accidental 
 provocatives of a fight already arranged, to which 
 both sides were looking forward — the southerners 
 with confidence, the New Yorkers with trepidation. 
 
 Raymond's speeches on this occasion were a good 
 example of his manner. At the beginning they were 
 mild, conciliatory, almost evasive; he disclaimed 
 any intention to charge a bargain between North 
 
 30 
 
BEGINNINGS OF THE TIMES, 1851-1859 
 
 and South; he had merely expressed his own opiniqn. 
 But then he exploded into a declaration that he 
 would assert and continue to assert his opinion that 
 if the South did not meet the North halfway its 
 delegates would be justly open to charge of a breach 
 of faith, and he, Raymond, would charge them with 
 it "here and everywhere." Then he turned on one 
 Cabell, of Florida, a veteran bravo of the debating 
 platform, who had volunteered to "put the Aboli- 
 tionist in his place." In a moment Raymond had 
 Cabell indignantly declaring to the chairman, "Sir, 
 I cannot, I shall not, submit to language of that 
 kind." Raymond replied, "Permit me to tell the 
 gentleman from Florida that when he puts words 
 into my mouth which I have not used, for the purpose 
 of founding an accusation upon me, he will submit 
 to whatever language I may see fit to use in repelling 
 his aspersions." 
 
 It was the first time in many years that a north- 
 erner had dared to use such language toward a rep- 
 resentative of the southern oligarchy. According to 
 southerners present, this speech "not only annihi- 
 lated Cabell at the convention, but he never got 
 rid of its damaging effects when he got home." And 
 a writer, evidently an eyewitness, who gave an 
 account of the episode in The Albany Evening Journal 
 after Raymond's death, observed: 
 
 From that hour the Whig Party assumed 
 a new character, and its representatives 
 (with a few disgraceful exceptions) a bolder 
 attitude. . . . Mr. Raymond's clarion voice, 
 on that memorable occasion, sounded the 
 opening notes in the death knell of slavery. 
 
 31 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 This incident deserves some notice for the reason 
 that in those early years Raymond's career was so 
 largely identical with the history of The Times. But 
 it was not altogether so. In 1854 the Kansas- 
 Nebraska Act had begun to split both parties at the 
 North, and was preparing the way for the great 
 organization which carried Lincoln to the White 
 House only six years later. Raymond was nomi- 
 nated for Lieutenant-Governor by the Whig state 
 convention in 1854 (to the great disgust of Greeley, 
 who had wanted the office), but he had already been 
 present as a delegate at an Anti-Nebraska conven- 
 tion, which accepted the regular nominations that 
 had been forced largely by its threat of secession. 
 The Whigs carried the state by a few hundred votes, 
 and Raymond ran a few hundred more ahead of the 
 gubernatorial candidate; but the editorial attitude 
 of The Times was reserved during the campaign, 
 and it certainly was never used to promote its editor's 
 political fortunes. 
 
 Two years later Raymond's friends wanted him 
 to become a candidate for Governor, but, as already 
 related, he refused. Whigs and Democrats were 
 uniting in the organization of a new party to prevent 
 the further extension of slavery, and Raymond did 
 not want his personality, or any recollection of old 
 animosities either between parties or among Whigs, 
 to stand in the way of that movement. The Re- 
 publican party, as a national organization, had been 
 established at an informal convention held at 
 Pitt^urgh in February, 1856, a convention which 
 gave the call for the Philadelphia convention in 
 June that nominated Fremont. Raymond was 
 
 32 
 
BEGINNINGS OF THE TIMES, 1851-1859 
 
 at Pittsburgh and wrote the long confession of faith 
 on which the Republican party was established — 
 an able and convincing document, which showed 
 no sympathy with the abolitionists, but did express 
 the determination of moderate northerners to end 
 the domination of public life by southern terrorism. 
 This declaration, some io,ocx3 words in length, was 
 telegraphed from Pittsburgh and published in The 
 Times, but there was little in the paper about the 
 doings of the Pittsburgh convention, and no editorial 
 comment till long after Raymond's return. In 
 the campaign of 1856 The Times and Raymond took 
 a prominent part, and from that time on for twenty- 
 eight years The Times stood in the front rank of the 
 Republican journalism of the country; but whatever 
 neglect the institution might have been able to 
 charge against its editor when he strayed aside into 
 politics, it could never have accused him of making 
 the paper an instrument of propaganda or a means 
 to personal advancement. 
 
 Newspaper mechanics was an infant art in the 
 fifties, and the papers of those days of course differed 
 greatly in contents and make-up from those of 
 today. Whether all the changes have been for the 
 better or not is to be doubted. Considering the 
 conditions. The Times in the fifties was an excellent 
 newspaper — so for that matter were The Herald 
 and The Tribune. The telegraph was coming into 
 more and more general use, but still was something 
 of a novelty, and an expensive novelty. "The 
 latest by telegraph" was a heading apt to stand over 
 a column or two of brief and heterogeneous items 
 
 33 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 from everjrwhere, with most of the details coming 
 along later by mail. 
 
 Local news was written much more in the editorial 
 manner than is common today. If a reporter was 
 writing about a spade he called it a spade, instead of 
 describing it generally as an agricultural implement, 
 or referring the responsibility for calling it a spade 
 to the District Attorney. Sometimes, naturally, 
 he was apt to apply the offensive designation of 
 spade to something which was a mere trowel, and 
 the local news probably lost in impartiality what it 
 gained in piquancy. The editorial page was more 
 opinionated, and more violent in the expression of 
 opinion, than civilized editorial pages today. But, 
 allowing for the different manners of the time, it 
 can hardly be doubted that, however primitive the 
 newspapermen of that time may have been, they 
 had a keen scent for news. 
 
 An example from the early history of The Times: 
 In September, 1854, the steamer Arctic was sunk 
 in a collision in the North Atlantic, with a loss of 
 several hundred lives. Rumors of the disaster had 
 been prevalent for several days, after the steamer's 
 failure to arrive had excited apprehension, but not 
 till the night of October loth did these rumors be- 
 come precise. Even then nobody could find respon- 
 sible authority for the report that the Arctic had 
 been sunk, and the night city editor of The Times, 
 having "put the paper to bed," cHmbed on a horse 
 car to go home in the early morning hours, thinking 
 that nothing more could be done. By one of those 
 pieces of good luck which do happen to newspaper- 
 men more often than a skeptical world believes, 
 
 34 
 
O 
 
 f 
 
 S. 
 
 < 
 
 
 
 
 X, 
 
 
 Si 
 
 ei 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 b 
 
 m 
 
 1^ 
 
 > 
 
 a 
 
 
 t- 
 
 a 
 
 g 
 
 
 
 "S5 
 
 
 
 '13 
 
 £ f 1 
 
 IS] 
 
BEGINNINGS OF THE TIMES, 1851-1859 
 
 though not so often as the harassed reporter could 
 desire, the editor's attention was attracted to a 
 befuddled passenger on the horse car who was 
 attempting to tell the conductor all about the terrible 
 disaster at sea. The conductor, no doubt, was 
 not so attentive as could be desired, nor was the 
 narrator entirely clear in thought and speech. The 
 editor did his best, but could overhear only a few 
 disjoined phrases, among which were "Herald" 
 and "bottle of wine." The first of these told him 
 where the news had gone, and the second warned 
 him that the prudent Herald staff had done what 
 they could do to make it impossible for anybody else 
 to get a coherent story from their informant. 
 
 But there was another way out. The editor 
 hurried back to the Times building and had the 
 presses stopped. The Herald was already on the 
 press, beyond doubt; and a man from the Times 
 press room, in whose ability to do difficult things 
 everybody seems to have had confidence, was told 
 to go to the Herald building and get the first copy 
 printed. He returned presently and reported that 
 the Herald press room was locked up and that the 
 carriers who ordinarily distributed the paper before 
 daylight had been shut out. The Herald, having 
 a big exclusive story, had sent out its mail circula- 
 tion, but had determined to hold up the papers for 
 the city until an hour after all its competitors were 
 in the hands of their readers — when the appearance 
 of The Herald with this huge beat would be the more 
 impressive. 
 
 The pressman was promised fifty dollars if he 
 could get a copy of The Herald in spite of these 
 
 35 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 obstacles; and by means not recorded by the ancient 
 chroniclers, he did it. And there was the full story 
 of the Arctic disaster by the first returning survivor, 
 George H. Burns. The Times composing room 
 staff was hastily reassembled — no doubt some of 
 them were found in near-by and easily accessible 
 gathering places such as the vigilance of Mr. Volstead 
 has now abolished — and The Herald's story was 
 reset and injected into the first page of The Times. 
 
 The Times city edition was circulated at the usual 
 time the next morning, and no doubt when The 
 Herald appeared an hour later many worthy citizens 
 thought with contempt that it had merely lifted 
 Burns's story from The Times. The next day a 
 number of survivors arrived, and Raymond himself 
 turned reporter and put himself under the city 
 editor's orders for a task which, considering the 
 limited facilities of the day, was about as hard as 
 that which the Times staff confronted after the 
 Titanic was sunk — and which was met as success- 
 fully. 
 
 Maverick, in recording this episode, appears to 
 think it necessary to forestall criticism by saying 
 that of course Burns had undoubtedly given his 
 story to The Herald in the supposition that it would 
 at once be communicated to all the other papers, 
 and that in lifting it The Times was merely carrying 
 out his wishes and thwarting an iniquitous competitor. 
 Maybe so. At any rate, the night city editor was 
 raised five dollars a week, which was quite a lot of 
 money in those days. 
 
 The front page of a New York newspaper in the 
 fifties was usually devoted for the most part either 
 
 36 
 
BEGINNINGS OF THE TIMES, 1851-1859 
 
 to telegraphic news of the doings of Congress and 
 the administration, or to European news, of which a 
 much larger amount was printed in proportion to 
 the size of the paper than was dreamed of in recent 
 years, until the war. In August, 1858, New York 
 was in a frenzy of excitement over the successful 
 laying of the first Atlantic cable, but that fragile 
 connection survived barely long enough to endure 
 some polite interchange of felicitations between Queen 
 Victoria and President Buchanan, and then became 
 unworkable. Not till almost a decade later was 
 permanent cable communication established, and 
 even in the Franco-Prussian War cable news con- 
 sisted of little but a collection of brief official dis- 
 patches and announcements, with most of the news 
 conveyed by mail. 
 
 In the fifties it all came by mail, and an ingenious 
 and elaborate technique had been evolved to get 
 it as quickly as possible. Correspondents of papers 
 and news associations in Europe sent their letters, 
 their digests of current happenings, and the latest 
 English or French papers by the last mail to the 
 transatlantic steamers, which were met off Cape 
 Race by pilot boats which took oflF the news dis- 
 patches. These were then taken ashore and tele- 
 graphed to New York, when this was possible; 
 usually only the briefest skeleton of the latest news 
 could be sent by wire, and the bulk of it had to 
 come by train. More than once The Times's dis- 
 patches during the war in Italy in 1859 were pub- 
 lished in a fragmentary condition, with the explana- 
 tion that a telegraph operator at some relay point 
 between New York and the Nova Scotian coast 
 
 37 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 had closed his office and gone home for the night, 
 leaving news dispatches to wait till tomorrow. 
 
 The news thus arriving would be headed some- 
 what as follows: 
 
 THREE DAYS LATER FROM EUROPE 
 
 Arrival of the "City of Paris" 
 The New English Cabinet 
 And so on. 
 
 Other overseas mail correspondence to which 
 much space was given was the news from California, 
 where men who had gone to dig wealth from the 
 ground were preparing the way for a race which 
 should develop new possibilities in the exercise of the 
 free imagination, and from Central America, where 
 William Walker and his associates were valiantly 
 trying to repeat the exploits of Pizarro and Cortez, 
 and create the Golden Circle which would com- 
 pensate the slave states for the prospective loss of 
 control of the Federal government. 
 
 On the second and third pages were book reviews, 
 and general articles something like those now appear- 
 ing in newspaper magazine sections. The fourth 
 page, editorial, began with a summary of the day's 
 news, and usually included dramatic and musical 
 news and critiques, besides leading articles. Very 
 late telegraphic news was often put on the editorial 
 page, or the page opposite. Local news and ad- 
 vertisements occupied much of the fifth, sixth, and 
 seventh pages, and the last page was devoted chiefly 
 to financial and commercial news and advertising. 
 This is of course a generalized description, and any 
 
 38 
 
BEGINNINGS OF THE TIMES, 1851-1859 
 
 given issue of any paper might depart considerably 
 from the type; but substantially this seems to have 
 been the idea of a good newspaper in the fifties. 
 And, allowing for the handicaps imposed by the 
 immature mechanical development of the time, it is a 
 pretty good newspaper even yet. 
 
 Raymond is credited with the invention of the 
 display headline in 1856, but ideas of display were 
 more modest in those days, and found sufficient 
 exercise within the limits of a single column. Even 
 in the Civil War single-column heads sufficed. The 
 Times on April 4, 1865, for example, told of the 
 capture of the Confederate capital under a single- 
 column head as follows: 
 
 GRANT 
 
 Richmond 
 
 and 
 Victory 
 
 This was in the first of the six columns; in the 
 last was the story of the effect of the news in New 
 York, of course with its own head; and the four 
 columns between were filled in with a cut of the 
 American eagle, somewhat precariously grasping 
 his thunderbolts, his olive branch, and Richmond 
 all at the same time. Lee's surrender was dis- 
 played with a single-column head, and so was Lin- 
 coln's death — which The Times, for the guidance of 
 its readers, described in the top line of the head as 
 an "Awful Event." On great occasions the telegraph 
 editor sometimes found it desirable to attract atten- 
 tion by beginning his head with the admonitory 
 
 39 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 line, "Highly Important News," but not till the 
 days of the Tweed ring, when The Times had the 
 biggest local exclusive story that had ever come to a 
 New York paper, did the headlines go beyond a 
 single column. However, display headlines, and 
 even descriptive headlines, are an acquired taste, as 
 is evident from the fact that most of the world out- 
 side the United States still gets along without them. 
 The newspapers of the fifties afforded little con- 
 solation to those who want to read the headlines 
 because they lack the time or the intelligence to 
 read the news; they were published for people who 
 had time to spend on finding out what was going on. 
 It may be that our generation prefers to read the 
 headline "Manning, Elevated to Bishop, Voices 
 Curb on Radicalism" (to select a recent example, 
 not from The Tmifj), rather than look into the article 
 in the hope of finding out exactly to what, and in 
 what sense, Dr. Manning was elevated, and just 
 how a curb may be voiced. Perhaps this preference 
 is natural and inevitable, an outgrowth of the spirit 
 of the time, whatever that is. If so, as Henry 
 Adams said about life, one may accept it without 
 feeling the necessity of pretending to admire it. 
 
 The Times was never (with the conspicuous 
 exception of its campaign against Tweed) a crusading 
 paper. It has on occasion done its share in exposing 
 conditions that needed correction, but it does not 
 select this one out of many activities of a good 
 newspaper as a life work. It crusaded occasionally 
 and mildly in the fifties, but after the time of Kossuth 
 it never lost its balance. In 1856, for example, 
 
 40 
 
BEGINNINGS OF THE TIMES, 1851-1859 
 
 it gave a good deal of attention to the condition of 
 the streets, and seemed much encouraged when 
 public indignation was aroused and an attempt was 
 made to compel the city government to give back a 
 little service in return for unlimited opportunity 
 of peculation. They had much to learn in the 
 fifties; not for forty years were New York streets 
 to be measurably improved, and the art of snow 
 removal is far from perfection even yet. 
 
 In 1857 James W. Simonton, then Washington 
 correspondent of The Times, exposed a magnificent 
 scheme of land-stealing and corruption in connection 
 with the extension of railroads into Minnesota. 
 The aflFair seems to have been conducted in the 
 grand manner, very much as the similar enterprise 
 described in "The Gilded Age." The House of 
 Representatives was outraged in its finest sensi- 
 bilities by Simonton's charges that four of its mem- 
 bers were corruptly involved, and he was sum- 
 moned before a Congressional committee for proper 
 rebuke. By the time the committee had finished 
 with Simonton it had been compelled to admit that 
 he was telling the truth, and to recommend that the 
 four guilty men be expelled. 
 
 Soon after Simonton was sent across the plains 
 with General Albert Sidney Johnston's expedi- 
 tionary force against the Mormons. To the regret, 
 perhaps, of certain persons, among them newspaper 
 editors eager to show how ably they could cover a 
 war, Brigham Young came down as promptly as 
 Davy Crockett's coon. Simonton went on to 
 California and was lost to The Times. But another 
 and greater war was on hand, and The Times added 
 
 41 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 greatly to its prestige by its efficiency in giving the 
 news of the war in Italy in 1859. 
 ' Raymond covered that war himself, ably assisted 
 by his Paris correspondent, Dr. W. E. Johnston, 
 who, following a custom prevalent then and till 
 much later, wrote over the pen name of "MalakofF." 
 The most brilliant incident of Raymond's career 
 as a war correspondent was his eyewitness account 
 of the battle of Solferino, perhaps the best of many 
 admirable pictures of the war which The Times 
 published. Solferino displayed not only Raymond's 
 ability as a writer but his talent as a news editor. 
 In those days the press of the world was divided 
 into two classes. In Class I, alone and unapproach- 
 able, stood The London Times; the other newspapers 
 of Europe and America differed only in their degree 
 of inferiority — at least, in the public estimation. 
 A London Times correspondent was of course at 
 Solferino, apparently as essential a part of the 
 battle as the three sovereigns who honored it with 
 their personal attention; and Raymond knew that 
 when The London Times with this man's account 
 reached New York every editor would feel that the 
 definitive and decisive story had arrived. Raymond 
 decided not only to have as good a story as The 
 London Times, but to beat it to New York — a feat 
 which of course would have to be accomplished by 
 mail. Through "Malakoff's" influence Raymond's 
 dispatch, written among the wounded in Castiglione 
 while the guns still sounded a few miles away, was 
 taken to Paris with Napoleon's own dispatches by a 
 French military messenger, and given to Mrs. 
 Raymond, then at a Paris hotel. With it were 
 
 42 
 
GEORGE JONES. 
 
BEGINNINGS OF THE TIMES, 1851-1859 
 
 directions from her husband to put it on the first 
 steamer leaving either England or France for New 
 York. Mrs. Raymond seems to have been a pretty 
 good reporter herself, in emergencies; thirty hours 
 later she put her husband's dispatch on the Liverpool 
 mail boat with her own hands. At that moment 
 The London Times, whose story had come up from 
 Italy by the same messenger, was just appearing 
 on the streets in London; but it missed the New York 
 mail and arrived ten days after Raymond's account 
 of the battle had been published. 
 
 Solferino may serve as an illustration of the slow- 
 ness with which European news reached New York 
 in those days before the cable. The battle was 
 fought on the 24th of June. On July 7, under the 
 heading "The War in Italy — ^Advices Three Days 
 Later," The Times published the batch of news 
 brought on a steamer leaving Ireland on June 26. 
 The beginning of the two columns of news announced 
 that the steamer had been " boarded off Cape Race 
 by the news yacht of the Associated Press, " which 
 took off "the synopsis of news prepared by our 
 Liverpool agent." This reached St. John's, New- 
 foundland, on July 4, and managed to get to New 
 York by telegraph on the 6th, "Our Liverpool 
 agent's" synopsis closed on June 23, and consisted 
 mainly of official announcements in Vienna and 
 Paris that a battle might be fought, would be 
 fought, but had not yet been fought. Down below 
 all this, an inch or two above the bottom of the 
 column, appeared a modest item dated in Paris, on 
 June 25, and headed "The Very Latest by Tele- 
 graph to Galway." It contained Napoleon's dis- 
 
 43 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 patch to Eugenie announcing the decisive victory at 
 Solferino. 
 
 This dispatch, of course, had been mentioned in 
 the headline — three or four banks below the top — 
 and it was handled editorially with a due sense of its 
 importance. The leading article was an admirable 
 analysis of the campaign and drew from very scanty 
 material inferences fully justified by the event. 
 But the custom of printing the news first received 
 at the top of the column and letting the later dis- 
 patches follow in chronological order had a strong 
 hold on newspaper tradition. Not till the seventies 
 did it occur to some enterprising journalist that it 
 might be a good idea to put the latest or most im- 
 portant news at the head of the column. The 
 next mail boat brought Raymond's and "MalakofF's" 
 dispatches, which The Times published on July 12 — 
 again with the first dispatch first, and the story of 
 Solferino trailing along toward the end. The Times 
 that day gave up two of its eight pages to news and 
 correspondence from the war. As early as 1852 
 it had devoted seven of its 24 columns to the news 
 of the final day in the famous Whig convention at 
 Baltimore (and this without any undue prominence 
 for Raymond); and in 1856 nine columns of the 48 
 (including the whole front page) were one morning 
 given up to the publication of the full text of cor- 
 respondence in a diplomatic dispute with England. 
 Whether these displays were disproportionate is a 
 matter of taste. 
 
 Raymond's feats, however, were not the only 
 source of distinction for The Times in the Italian 
 war. Quite as much attention was aroused by an 
 
 44 
 
BEGINNINGS OF THE TIMES, 1851-1859 
 
 exploit on the internal front which tradition ascribes 
 to William Henry Hurlburt, whom Raymond had 
 left in charge of the editorial page. On the morning 
 of July 15, 1859, this gentleman was one of a party 
 who saw a friend off on a steamer. The party spent 
 an enjoyable morning, and then Hurlburt went to 
 the office to write an editorial about the Quadrilat- 
 eral, the famous Austrian fortress group to which 
 the armies of Francis Joseph retired after the defeat 
 at Solferino. Apparently his mind wandered from 
 time to time — now to the cabinet crisis in England, 
 now to the new fortifications of Paris, and now to 
 the social morning just ended. The result appeared 
 on the Times editorial page the next morning under 
 the heading, "The Defensive Square of Austrian 
 Italy." Future sociologists of this well prohibited 
 republic are commended to a study of this article. 
 
 The Times proofroom was then regarded as the 
 best in New York, but a few days before that a 
 proofreader had ventured to change a word in one 
 of Hurlburt's editorials, and had been ordered, with 
 much indignation, never to do so again. He read 
 this article on the Quadrilateral, and found therein 
 such expressions as the following: "If we shall 
 follow the windings of the Mincio, we shall find 
 countless elbows formed in the elbows of the regular 
 army." ... "If we follow up the course of the 
 Mincio, we shall find innumerable elbows formed 
 by the sympathy of youth." . . . "Notwith- 
 standing the toil spent by Austria on the spot, we 
 should have learned that we are protected by a 
 foreign fleet suddenly coming up on our question of 
 citizenship. A canal cuts Mantua in two, but we 
 
 45 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 may rely on the most cordial cabinet minister of 
 the new power in England." . . . "The Adige 
 is deep and swift at Verona; Paris is strong in her 
 circle of fortifications." Along with much else 
 which was plausible and often accurate. 
 
 Whereupon the proofreader remembered that he 
 had been forbidden to touch a word of Hurlburt's 
 copy, and the article was printed as written. 
 
 Next day it was reprinted as it ought to have been 
 written, with an apologetic note that "by a confusion 
 of manuscripts sent up at a late hour" a regrettable 
 error had occurred; which, The Times admitted, had 
 furnished " a happy occasion for airing a little envy, 
 malice, and uncharitableness to the less respectable 
 among the daily journals." A friend of Raymond's 
 reports that when he read this article in Paris, weeks 
 later, he "denounced it," as was natural enough; 
 but did not disavow it. This generosity is praise- 
 worthy, but it would have been rather late for a 
 disavowal by that time. 
 
 So by the opening of the Civil War The New York 
 Times (the "Daily" had been dropped from the 
 title in 1857) had already won itself a place as one 
 of the great papers of America. Also, it had pros- 
 pered. As early as 1855 it claimed the honor of 
 being second only to The Herald in circulation, and 
 by the end of its first decade nobody in the Times 
 office would admit that it had any superior. 
 
 The original quarters were long since outgrown. 
 As early as 1854 The Times had begun to think of 
 moving, but when plans for a new home became more 
 definite the paper had reached such a degree of 
 
 46 
 
BEGINNINGS OF THE TIMES, 1851-1859 
 
 prosperity that it was possible to build on a more 
 magnificent scale than could have been hoped a few 
 years earlier. The first Times Building — first, that 
 is, of those which the paper built for itself — into which 
 the paper entered on May i, 1858, occupied the 
 triangle between Park Row and Nassau and Beek- 
 man Streets, on the spot where the second Times 
 Building, erected in 1888, still stands. The growth of 
 the paper in recent years led to the erection of the 
 Times Building in Times Square, and then of the 
 Times Annex in West 43 d Street, which already is 
 uncomfortably small; and each of the four homes of 
 The Times has in its turn been the finest newspaper 
 building in the country. 
 
 The structure which seemed so magnificent in the 
 fifties would of course be somewhat commonplace 
 today, but in its time it was far superior to anything 
 ever built for the accommodation of an American 
 newspaper. For its erection a sixty per cent 
 assessment was levied on the stock, and all profits 
 above twenty per cent a year were set aside for the 
 time being for a building fund. The Times was 
 making money — enough money to justify its 
 owners in what then seemed to some of their con- 
 temporaries a rather hazardous investment in un- 
 necessary luxury. The five stories of the Times 
 Building rose to the dizzy height of eighty feet above 
 City Hall Park, and from the windows of the top 
 floor, as Maverick wrote, "the upper part of New 
 York is spread out before the eye in one grand 
 panoramic view." 
 
 47 
 
CHAPTER II 
 Civil War and Reconstruction. 1860-1869 
 
 RAYMOND, as has been said, seems to have been 
 somewhat ashamed of his abihty, even rarer 
 in that day than at present, to see both sides of 
 a question, and felt that it sometimes gave him an 
 appearance of irresolution. Probably the fault was 
 more evident to him than to others. Certainly in 
 the great crisis that led up to the Civil War, and 
 throughout the war itself, there was nothing irres- 
 olute or Laodicean about either Raymond or his 
 paper; and the disfavor into which both fell for 
 a time in the early days of reconstruction was due 
 to the fact that Raymond happened to be right 
 when the majority was wrong. 
 
 The oldest living member of the present Times 
 staff dates his connection with the paper from some 
 years after the close of the Civil War. Probably 
 every member of the staff of i860 is dead; certainly 
 all the men who contributed to the formation of an 
 editorial policy which in all its essentials was di- 
 rected by Raymond himself. Present workers on 
 The Times may be pardoned, then, for expressing a 
 somewhat impersonal admiration for the manner in 
 which the paper met the crisis. It was firm in a 
 time when there was a great deal of irresolution; 
 but what was a rarer virtue, it saw the issues clearly 
 in a period when loose thinking was even more 
 
 48 
 
CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION, 1860-1869 
 
 general, and perhaps more destructive, than weak- 
 ness of will. 
 
 Raymond had no more sympathy with Phillips 
 and Garrison and the rest of the abolitionist radicals 
 of the North than with the sabre-toothed fire-eaters 
 of South Carolina. While some other New York 
 papers took the occasion of John Brown's raid on 
 Harper's Ferry to offer the South some words of 
 warning as to the constant danger of insurrection 
 that was an inevitable concomitant of slavery, The 
 Times dwelt rather on the fact that the slaves had 
 not joined Brown's party, and called the raid itself 
 the work of either "irresponsible anarchy or wild 
 and reckless crime." Raymond was entirely in sym- 
 pathy with the moderate attitude on slavery which 
 was held by most thinking men at the North. He 
 did not admire slavery; and eventually, in the letters 
 to Yancey, which will be noticed below, he did go 
 at some length into the difficulties and dangers 
 which the institution might be expected eventually 
 to bring upon any society by which it was tolerated. 
 But he felt that slavery in the South, though objec- 
 tionable on moral and political grounds, was a 
 southern question; the great issue of the day was 
 not slavery but the slave power in politics, and the 
 struggle with that power was indeed an irrepressible 
 conflict. 
 
 In the campaign of i860 The Times was one of the 
 leading Republican papers of the country, and 
 though it favored Seward for the presidential nomi- 
 nation, from first to last it displayed a degree of 
 confidence in Abraham Lincoln that was not uni- 
 versal among Republicans of the East. It may be 
 
 49 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 supposed that in a period of such violent political 
 emotions and such important issues the natural ten- 
 dency of a newspaper to find unsuspected merits in 
 the candidate of its party would be strengthened; 
 but The Times was not content with expressing its 
 own confidence in Lincoln, it quoted copiously from 
 his speeches of the past as well as reproducing those 
 of the current campaign, and did its best to give 
 the East a proper picture of this man whom an over- 
 ruling providence, or the accidents of political ma- 
 nipulation, had set up as the candidate of the Repub- 
 licans. At the same time, its treatment of Stephen 
 A. Douglas won from that gentleman an acknowl- 
 edgment of "the courtesy and kindness which it 
 alone of the New York journals has shown me." 
 
 After the election, when the secessionists at last 
 began to put their theories into practise, Raymond 
 set forth his idea of the national issues in a series 
 of four letters to William L. Yancey of Alabama, 
 whom he regarded as at that time the leading spirit 
 in the secession movement, and who had provoked 
 him by a letter to The Herald. Those letters, pub- 
 lished in The Times during November and December, 
 i860, are perhaps the ablest of Raymond's writings, 
 and after the lapse of sixty years still furnish per- 
 haps as satisfactory an analysis of the underlying 
 issues of the Civil War as has ever been compressed 
 into this space, "We shall stand," Raymond wrote 
 in his concluding letter, published after South Caro- 
 Hna had already seceded, "on the Constitution 
 which our fathers made. We shall not make a new 
 one, nor shall we permit any human power to de- 
 stroy the old one. ... We seek no war — we 
 
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 Imlm 
 
 
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 J 
 
 
 
 III 
 
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 fli{!|i 
 
 it 
 
 it 
 
 In 
 
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CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION, 1860-1869 
 
 shall wage no war except in defense of the consti- 
 tution and against its foes. But we have a country 
 and a constitutional government. We know its 
 worth to us and to mankind, and in case of neces- 
 sity we are ready to test its strength." 
 
 That sentiment guided the editorial course of The 
 Times through the turbulent winter between Lin- 
 coln's election and the attack on Fort Sumter. 
 Raymond deprecated, as all sensible men depre- 
 cated, any hasty aggression which might provoke 
 to violence men who could still, perhaps, be brought 
 back to reason; but he insisted that as a last resort 
 the union must be maintained by any means neces- 
 sary. To the proposals for compromise he was 
 favorable, on condition that they did not compro- 
 mise the essential issue — that . they did not nullify 
 the election of i860 and give back to the slave 
 power the control of the national government which 
 it had lost. Because no other compromise would 
 have been acceptable the issue inevitably had to 
 be fought out, and from Sumter to Appomattox The 
 Times was unwavering in its support of Lincoln and 
 its determination that the Federal union must and 
 should be preserved. Its editorial comment on 
 Lincoln's first inaugural address was an index of 
 its position in the weeks just before war broke 
 out. After reviewing Lincoln's program The Times 
 observed: "If the dangers of the hour can be 
 averted and the Union can be saved, this is the 
 basis on which alone it can be accomplished. If the 
 Union cannot be saved on this basis and consist- 
 ently with these principles it is better that it should 
 not be saved at all." 
 
 51 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 Raymond's letters to Yancey took up several 
 columns each, but they were worth it. The editor 
 of the paper certainly did not allow it to become in 
 any sense a personal organ; on March I, 1861, it 
 published an address which he had delivered some 
 days before on the policy of the Republican party, 
 but with an apologetic note that it was inserted 
 "perhaps to the exclusion of more interesting mat- 
 ter." It was as a matter of fact an illuminating 
 statement on the prospective course of the new ad- 
 ministration, from a man who spoke with some 
 authority — and with an authority which was to 
 increase from year to year. Besides directing The 
 Times in the war years, Raymond engaged in a good 
 deal of active work for the Republican party in 
 state and nation. He became one of Lincoln's 
 most valued political helpers, and in 1864 was the 
 chairman of the New York delegation at the national 
 convention. He had a good deal to do with the 
 composition of the platform, and was largely respon- 
 sible for the vice-presidential nomination of Andrew 
 Johnson, a gentleman in whom Raymond not only 
 had a personal confidence which he eventually ad- 
 mitted was misplaced, but whom he valued as a 
 representative of the Union minority in the South, 
 and a sort of living symbol that the Union had not 
 been and would not be disrupted. 
 
 Raymond was presently made chairman of the 
 Republican National Committee and directed the 
 campaign that reelected Lincoln. Unfortunately, 
 he also allowed himself to be a congressional candi- 
 date in New York City. In 1863 he had received 
 some votes for the Senatorship, but not enough. 
 
 52 
 
CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION, 1860-1869 
 
 He was elected to the lower House, however, and 
 took his seat in March, 1865. His course, as will 
 be related presently, was highly creditable to his 
 judgment and principles, but temporarily unfor- 
 tunate not only for his own political repute but 
 for the welfare of The Times. 
 
 During the war, however, The Times made an 
 excellent record not only as an organ of opinion but 
 as a medium of the news. And the Civil War, it 
 is hardly necessary to recall, effected a great trans- 
 formation in American journaHsm. For the first 
 time in American history since the invention of the 
 railroad and telegraph a situation had arisen in 
 which the public wanted to know what had hap- 
 pened yesterday rather than some man's opinion 
 on what had happened last week. Before hostilities 
 had begun papers which previously had printed 
 not more than two or three columns of telegraph 
 news a day were printing two or three pages. 
 Correspondence by mail still existed, but was ac- 
 cepted only with reluctance, when nothing better 
 could be obtained. Even in the fifties. New York 
 papers, maintaining regular correspondents in Wash- 
 ington, could depend for news from the rest of the 
 country for the most part on brief telegrams to the 
 Associated Press, supplemented by details from the 
 local papers when these arrived by mail, and occa- 
 sionally by letters from correspondents who as likely 
 as not were volunteers. But by i860 every New 
 York newspaper that wanted to deserve that name 
 had to maintain a large staff of its own correspond- 
 ents in the southern states. Thanks to their exer- 
 
 53 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 tions, the North knew pretty well what the South 
 was thinking in that critical year; and the South 
 might have been better off if its knowledge of the 
 North had been as extensive. 
 
 The work of these correspondents involved a good 
 deal both of difficulty and of danger. When seces- 
 sion came to be a fact and civil war was visibly just 
 around the corner, northerners in the South were 
 under suspicion. The hazards that attended jour- 
 nalism under these conditions may be illustrated by 
 the case of "Jasper," the Times correspondent in 
 Charleston. From the secession of the state until 
 the beginning of the war, Jasper sent every day full, 
 and apparently fair, dispatches giving the news from 
 Charleston and the sentiments of South Carolina. 
 The reactions of some indignant readers of The 
 Times were of the sort with which The Times be- 
 came familiar during the recent war. Honest citi- 
 zens felt that only news which they liked could be 
 true. It was assumed that because The Times 
 printed news which might be favorable to the rebels 
 it, or its correspondent, Jasper, was consequently 
 in sympathy with rebellion. There were demands 
 that this "secessionist" be no longer permitted to 
 spread his propaganda in the columns of The Times. 
 To one of these complaints The Times replied edi- 
 torially that "Jasper went to Charleston with in- 
 structions to write strictly what was true, and to 
 give the facts as they might fall under his obser- 
 vation, whether favorable to secession or otherwise." 
 It was added that perhaps the desirability of get- 
 ting his dispatches through the Charleston telegraph 
 office had led Jasper to take a view of some phases 
 
 54 
 
CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION, 1860-1869 
 
 of the situation which would be acceptable to the 
 Carolina censors — a consideration which ham- 
 pered correspondents in Germany from i9i4to 1917. 
 But that Jasper was doing his best to tell the truth 
 was evident from his later misfortunes. After he 
 had watched the bombardment of Fort Sumter for 
 several hours he was suddenly arrested as a Federal 
 spy and locked up in a jail which, he complained, 
 was fit only for negroes. A day or so later he 
 was released and ordered to take the first train north, 
 and his demand for the restoration of his watch 
 and pocketbook was met by the warning from the 
 Governor that he had better not linger in Charleston, 
 as the authorities would probably be unable to protect 
 him from the mob. Jasper finally escaped to Wash- 
 ington, in disguise. His experiences differ in degree 
 rather than in kind from those of any newspaper- 
 man who tries to tell the truth as he sees it about 
 a question on which there is violent difference of 
 opinion; but they were not unusual in 186 1. A 
 number of northern correspondents had narrow 
 escapes from lynching. 
 
 When the war actually began these men who 
 knew the South for the most part became corre- 
 spondents with the armies. Raymond, with some 
 assistance from the Times Washington bureau, cov- 
 ered the first battle of Bull Run himself. As at 
 Solferino, he saw most of it — or most of the ear- 
 Uer phase of it. At two o'clock, convinced that the 
 victory was complete and that McDowell's army 
 h^d nothing more to do but to march on to Rich- 
 mond, Raymond went back to Washington to file 
 his dispatch. Returning to the battlefield toward 
 
 55 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 sunset he suddenly encountered much of the army 
 and all of the spectators in precipitate retreat. The 
 correspondent who had written and filed the story 
 of a great victory now had to set to work to col- 
 lect the news of a great disaster. Raymond did it; 
 he covered the story all over and sent a substitute 
 dispatch to The Times. But there was a censor in 
 Washington that night, and of Raymond's two or 
 three columns only a few disconnected and innocu- 
 ous sentences ever got into the paper. 
 
 This seems to have been Raymond's last appear- 
 ance as a war correspondent, but the men who fol- 
 lowed the Union armies for The Times in the East 
 and in the West lived up to the standard which he 
 had set both as a writer and as a gatherer of news. 
 
 In the sixties it seems to have been regarded as 
 a natural manifestation of the news instinct to beat 
 the other correspondents on the general's intentions 
 for tomorrow's battle, no matter what the injury 
 to the public interests. 
 
 According to a rumor preserved in the army, 
 though not in the Times office, one correspondent of 
 the paper was carried away so far by his eagerness 
 for news, during the battle of the Wilderness, that 
 he was lucky to escape with being thrown out of the 
 camp. One night Grant and Meade, being desir- 
 ous of talking over in the utmost privacy what they 
 thought they could do to Lee the next day, strolled 
 out of the headquarters tent and down to a thicket 
 just beyond the light of the campfire. As they 
 were talking in low tones they heard a movement 
 in the bushes, and making investigation discovered 
 a Times correspondent lying on his belly and busily 
 
 S6 
 
CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION, 1860-1869 
 
 noting down the strategic plans of the Army of the 
 Potomac. Chased away from headquarters as a 
 result of this, the correspondent made his way to 
 Burnside's corps, and hunted news so diligently 
 there that he came near being shot by an unsym- 
 pathetic subordinate officer before Grant's leniency 
 permitted him to get off with a reprimand. 
 
 A more innocent and certainly more creditable 
 manifestation of newspaper enterprise, made possible 
 by the imperfect communications of those days, was 
 the beating of official reports by the dispatches of 
 correspondents. This happened with such frequency 
 that one suspects that a general pursuing a beaten 
 enemy, or trying to save the remnants of his army 
 from a victorious one, often thought that he might 
 as well wait till tomorrow to tell the War Depart- 
 ment what had happened to him, as they would 
 see it all in the papers anyhow. And The Times had 
 the felicity, or the prudence, to beat the official 
 reports only in the case of good news. Most expert 
 at this was Major Ben C. Truman, one of the chief 
 Times correspondents with the western armies. 
 His story of the repulse of the Confederates at Frank- 
 lin, Tennessee, reached The Times four days before 
 the War Department heard from Schofield, and five 
 days before any other paper had the news. He also 
 accomplished a notable " beat" with an advance notice 
 of Sherman's march from Atlanta to the sea, which 
 luckily had no disastrous effect on the campaign. 
 
 Truman, in the opinion of some of his contem- 
 poraries, was the most brilliantly successful of all 
 the correspondents of the Civil War. But other 
 Times men, including George F. Williams, William 
 
 57 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 Swinton, and Lorenzo L. Crounse, served the paper 
 almost as well. Swinton and Crounse were the 
 principal Times correspondents with the Army of 
 the Potomac. Crounse in particular had his share 
 of the risks of war which correspondents encountered 
 in those days much more often than in modern 
 times when they are allowed to see battles only 
 with infrequency and from a long distance in the 
 rear. He was wounded by a shell in 1862, and 
 later, with some other New York newspapermen, 
 was captured by Mosby's raiders, who let them go 
 after taking possession of their notebooks and car- 
 rying their news back for publication in the south- 
 ern papers — a fact which suggests that newspaper- 
 men in those days must have taken much more 
 legible notes than is the rule at present. 
 
 Called back from the front for a time, Crounse 
 served as night editor of the paper in the spring of 
 1864, and his vigilance prevented The Times from 
 being deceived by a forged document purporting to 
 be a Presidential proclamation appointing a day of 
 fasting and prayer, which was invented for its effect 
 on the stock market, and was actually published in 
 three New York papers. After this he got back to 
 the Army of the Potomac in time to cover the fall 
 of Richmond and the surrender of Lee. 
 
 But not all the hazards of the Civil War were 
 experienced by men in the field. The "internal 
 front" as painfully known in recent years was one 
 of the great facts of the Civil War also, though 
 men had not then given it a name; and the internal 
 front in New York became in July, 1863, one of 
 the liveliest portions of the fighting line when the 
 
 58 
 
JOHN C. REID, 
 Managing Editor, 1872-1889. 
 
 LOUIS J. JENNINGS, 
 
 Editor-in-Chief, 
 
 1869-1876. 
 
 JOHN FOORD, 
 Editor-in-Chief, 
 1876-1883. 
 
CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION, 1860-1869 
 
 troops had all gone to Pennsylvania to stop Lee 
 and the draft riots broke out. Raymond was no 
 more afraid of rebellion across the street than of 
 rebellion in the cotton states. Some of the New 
 York papers, congenitally sympathetic not only with 
 the Southern Confederacy but with Tammany Hall 
 and the elements from which that body and the 
 draft riots both derived their chief support, found 
 it convenient as well as congenial to pat the mob 
 on the head. So did some of the public men of the 
 time; the Governor of the State did not think it 
 beneath his dignity, such as it was, to try to con- 
 ciliate the rioters. But while the mob was burning 
 houses, plundering stores, and shooting policemen, 
 Raymond was writing such lines as these: 
 
 This mob is not our master. It is not to 
 be compounded with by paying blackmail. 
 It is not to be supplicated and sued to 
 stay its hand. It is to be defied, confronted, 
 grappled with, prostrated, crushed. 
 
 Warned by the misfortune of The Tribune, which 
 had actually been attacked by the rioters and saved 
 only by opportune arrival of a detachment of the 
 overworked police. The Times had fortified itself. 
 
 The Gatling gun had lately been invented and 
 offered to the War Department, though it was not 
 used either widely or successfully in the war. Two 
 specimens of this gun had been obtained by The 
 Times, according to tradition through the President's 
 friendship for Raymond, and were mounted just in- 
 side the business office under the command of 
 Leonard W. Jerome. If the mob had not been more 
 interested in attacking those who were unable to 
 
 59 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 defend themselves, it would have found some trouble 
 waiting for it at the Times office, for the entire 
 staflF had been armed with rifles; and there was a 
 third Gatling gun on the roof, mounted so that it 
 could sweep the streets in any direction. It is only 
 a malicious invention of jealous rivals that this gun 
 was kept trained on the window of Horace Greeley's 
 office in the near-by Tribune Building. 
 
 Raymond insisted that the draft was only the 
 excuse and not the cause of the riot. 
 
 Were the conscription law to be abrogated 
 tomorrow [he wrote] the controlling in- 
 spiration of the mob would remain the 
 same. It comes from sources independent 
 of that law, or of any other — from malignant 
 hate toward those in better circumstances, 
 from a craving for plunder, from a love of 
 commotion, from a barbarous spite against 
 a difi^erent race, from a disposition to bolster 
 up the failing fortunes of the southern 
 rebels. 
 
 Indeed, the only utterance of The Times in the 
 period of the riot which was in any degree ambiguous 
 was its editorial comment on Archbishop Hughes's 
 address, which managed, with evident difficulty, to 
 be as polite, as vague, and as noncommittal as the 
 utterances of the prelate himself. 
 
 Thirty-two members of the Times staff, it may be 
 added, served in the Union armies, and two went 
 south to join the Confederate forces. 
 
 Allowing for the curious taste of the time, which 
 dictated such practises as beginning a long series of 
 
 60 
 
CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION, 1860-1869 
 
 dispatches with the oldest of the lot, and burying 
 the latest news at the bottom of a five-column story, 
 the news judgment of war-time editors was pretty 
 good. Now and then, of course, there were excep- 
 tions to this rule. On November 20, 1863, for ex- 
 ample. The Times published an editorial article on 
 two remarkable orations which it printed in full 
 that morning in its news columns. One, which took 
 up two columns of the first page, was Henry Ward 
 Beecher's speech at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, 
 reporting his experiences as a propagandist in Eng- 
 land. The other, by Edward Everett, briefly men- 
 tioned in the front-page news story where it be- 
 longed, was published verbatim on page 2, and 
 took up all of it. 
 
 In its editorial comment The Times remarked: 
 
 We devote a broadside of this morning's 
 Times to the publication of two orations 
 which we are sure will command the attention 
 of the day, and not of this day only. The 
 elaborate and finished discourses of two 
 such men as Edward Everett and Henry 
 Ward Beecher, upon topics of such great 
 national interest as those they discuss, will 
 not be lightly passed over, much less 
 ignored altogether, by any intelligent citizen. 
 
 There was another speech in that day's news — 
 a speech which The Times printed on the front page 
 because it was part of a front-page story, and in 
 full — it was only two sticks long; printed in 
 full just after the much longer invocation by the 
 officiating clergyman, also given word for word, and 
 
 61 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 just ahead of the equally detailed list of prominent 
 persons present. That address was received with 
 applause, according to the Times report; but the 
 applause was certain, even if not perfunctory, on 
 account of the high position of the orator, and if 
 the news story is to be believed it provoked none 
 of the enthusiasm called forth by Everett's speech 
 on the same occasion. And as for editorial com- 
 ment, it was not merely lightly passed over, but 
 ignored altogether, not only in the Times office 
 but ever3rwhere else. It was the address delivered 
 by Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg. 
 
 The transformations which the war accomplished 
 in newspaper making were not confined to the de- 
 mand for more news, and an increase in the expense of 
 getting it. The public which reads the newspapers 
 is apt to forget that the mechanical task of getting 
 the news before the public is on the whole as diffi- 
 cult as the obtaining of the news in the first place, ' 
 and usually a good deal more expensive. The war 
 drove The Times to buy additional presses, and to 
 adopt (in July, 1861) the process of stereotyping, 
 which The Tribune had already tried out and without 
 which it would have been all but impossible to meet 
 the demands of a rapidly increasing circulation. 
 Typesetting machines were not known until much 
 later, and newspapermen of today may still experi- 
 ence a salutary awe as they contemplate the very 
 respectable results which their predecessors accom- 
 plished with such inferior tools. 
 
 On April 20, 1861, eight days after the attack on 
 Fort Sumter, The Times for the first time was issued 
 
 62 
 
CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION, 1860-1869 
 
 on Sunday. There had long been in existence in 
 New York papers issued on Sunday only, as there 
 are in England today; but New York dailies were 
 driven to the issuance of Sunday editions by the Civil 
 War, as were London dailies in the war lately ended. 
 A newspaper published seven days a week still seems 
 uncongenial to the English temperament; the Sunday 
 issues published occasionally between 1914 and 1919 
 did not establish a precedent. But the New York 
 morning papers, once committed to the Sunday 
 edition, never gave it up. 
 
 At first The Sunday Times was issued at the regu- 
 lar price of two cents. Before its first year was 
 ended, however, it had gone up to three cents, to 
 which price the daily paper followed it in 1862. 
 The enormously increased telegraph tolls, the mount- 
 ing prices of print paper, and the general increase in 
 the cost of everything made this increase inevitable. 
 In 1864 The Times, daily and Sunday, went up to 
 four cents a copy, at which price it remained for 
 nineteen years. During the war the Sunday paper 
 was virtually the same as the issue of any other 
 day; but it gradually came to include first of all a 
 considerable literary element, and then more and more 
 of what would today be known as magazine features; 
 so that long before The Sunday Times had departed 
 from the daily norm of eight pages it had a char- 
 acter which made it a sort of link between the 
 weekly edition, by that time passing out of favor, 
 and the modern Sunday newspaper with its many 
 departments. 
 
 The war brought increased expense, but also in- 
 creased circulation. On May 2, 1861, while the war 
 
 63 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 was still a novelty, The Times made the editorial 
 declaration that it had gained 40,000 in circulation 
 in the preceding two weeks. It may be noted that 
 one of the few lapses of Raymond's paper from the 
 standard of dignity which he set was a somewhat 
 unworthy controversy with Bennett at the end of 
 1 861 about the relative circulation of The Times and 
 The Herald. The Times offered to put up a forfeit 
 of ^2500 for the families of volunteer soldiers in 
 support of its assertion that The Herald's circulation 
 did not average more than 100,000, as Bennett as- 
 serted, but less than 75,000, and that The Times' s 
 daily average was more than 75,000. Bennett, 
 perhaps from considerations of prudence, responded 
 in a manner worthy of Greeley that "the practise of 
 betting is immoral; we cannot approve of it." And 
 the consequence was the publication on the first page 
 of The Times of two caricatures of Bennett — the first 
 pictorial illustrations ever carried in the paper. 
 Raymond, according to tradition, was afterwards 
 ashamed of this, and certainly the paper which he 
 published was able to stand on its merits without 
 entering into a species of controversy in which The 
 Herald was much more experienced. 
 
 At any rate. The Times gained steadily in pros- 
 perity throughout the war, and in December of 1865 
 took a step which the pressure both of news and 
 advertising had long since made advisable — the 
 enlargement of its page in both directions. It con- 
 tinued for some years thereafter to restrict itself 
 to eight pages, but the pages were now seven col- 
 umns wide and of the present length. At that time 
 it was the largest paper in the United States, and 
 
 64 
 
CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION, 1860-1869 
 
 equal in size to the ordinary edition of The London 
 Times. There were pessimistic newspapermen in 
 1865 who thought that Raymond and Jones over- 
 estimated the possibilities of their business, and 
 that a newspaper of such size could not be sup- 
 ported in New York. They soon learned otherwise. 
 
 Shortly after this, however. The Times did suffer a 
 serious — though temporary — setback in influence 
 and prosperity as a consequence of Raymond's posi- 
 tion in politics. Raymond took his seat in Con- 
 gress in the special session called in March, 1865. 
 The rebellion was visibly coming to an end, and the 
 conditions of peace and plans of reconstruction were 
 now the topics of greatest importance in public 
 life. Throughout the war The Times had been the 
 strongest of newspaper opponents of any sort of 
 defeatist propaganda or of the influences working 
 for a peace by negotiation. It had, to be sure, 
 looked with favor on Lincoln's conference with the 
 Confederate leaders early in the year, for it knew 
 and trusted Lincoln. It knew that Lincoln would, 
 as he did, refuse to consider a compromise peace. 
 With the volunteer experts in statecraft (of a type 
 with which our generation became familiar in the 
 winter of 1917-18) who would have made peace 
 by some sort of happy magic formula without set- 
 tling any of the questions that were being fought 
 out. The Times had no sympathy, but it did believe, 
 with Grant and Lincoln, that the southerners were 
 our own people, citizens of an indestructible union. 
 It favored the punishment — at least by exile — of 
 the few men whom it regarded as the fomenters of 
 
 65 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 the rebellion; but it regarded the mass of the 
 southern people as led astray by its leaders. 
 
 Raymond's views had been expressed in outhne 
 in the course of a speech at Wilmington, as early 
 as November, 1863. In the last months of the war 
 they found frequent expression in the columns of 
 The Times. On April 13, 1865, for example, The 
 Times declared that "if the people lately in revolt 
 choose to accept the result of the war like reasonable 
 men . • . every facility should be accorded them 
 for the speedy repossession of every franchise 
 and privilege existing under the constitution." It 
 insisted, to be sure, that we must wait and see if 
 they were going to accept the result of the war, 
 for at that time Jefferson Davis was still at large 
 and there were die-hards in the South who would 
 have taken to the woods for a guerrilla war. But 
 these extremists found no support; in a few weeks 
 the southern armies had surrendered, the soldiers who 
 might have formed guerrilla bands had gone wearily 
 back home, and the war was at an end. By that 
 time, however, Abraham Lincoln was dead. 
 
 The war against secession had been won, but sup- 
 port of the constitutional theory of secession had 
 reappeared in the most unlikely quarter, among the 
 extreme leaders of the Republican party. Thaddeus 
 Stevens, Ben Wade and their colleagues maintained 
 that the southern states had accomplished what no 
 northerner in 1861 would have admitted as possible 
 — that they had cut themselves off from the union. 
 Possibly Lincoln, if he had lived, would by his 
 great prestige have been able to beat down the oppo- 
 sition of these men who, before his death, had re- 
 
 66 
 
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CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION, 1860-1869 
 
 solved to fight him as bitterly as they afterward 
 fought Johnson. Whether or not Lincoln could 
 have done it, the fight was left in the hands of a 
 President whose defects of personal character and 
 ability brought his principles into discredit; and 
 Raymond, who for a long time stood behind John- 
 son as he would have stood behind Lincoln, suffered 
 for his defense of the ideas which, if carried out, 
 would have made reconstruction something more 
 than an ironic euphemism. 
 
 Raymond was still chairman of the Republican 
 National Committee, a position which gave him 
 prestige sufl&cient to overcome, to a certain degree, 
 his newness in Congress. Before the end of 1865 
 he was actively opposing Stevens and the other 
 leaders of the radical Republicans, notably by a 
 speech on December 24. But already it was ap- 
 parent that the radical control of Congress could 
 not be shaken. At a public meeting in New York 
 in the following February Raymond undertook to 
 defend Johnson for his veto of the Freedman's 
 Bureau bill, and laid the blame for the "increase 
 of ill-feehng" in the South during the past few 
 months to the action of Congress and to the radical 
 RepubHcan press in the North. Raymond favored 
 the immediate acceptance of the state governments 
 which had been set up in some of the border states, 
 and he wanted above all to prevent the reestablish- 
 ment of the old sectional antagonism. But the ten- 
 dency of the time was too strong for him. 
 
 Nevertheless, he persisted in spite of repeated 
 setbacks, and finally took a leading part in the 
 "National Union Convention" which met at Phila- 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 delphia in August, 1866, where for the first time 
 since the outbreak of the war men from all the 
 states, Republicans and Democrats, met to bury the 
 hatchet and try to lay down a program for national 
 reunion. Raymond had had his suspicions that this 
 body might not be of such a character as to com- 
 mand the confidence even of the moderate men in 
 his party; within four weeks before it met he had 
 in a private letter remarked that "it looks now as 
 though it would be mainly in the hands of Copper- 
 heads." But evidently he thought, when the con- 
 vention actually assembled, either that this fear was 
 unwarranted or that his influence might counteract 
 the presence of undesirable members from the North. 
 At any rate, he composed the "Philadelphia Ad- 
 dress " which the convention set before the country, 
 declaring that "the results of the war did not either 
 enlarge, abridge, or in any way change or affect the 
 powers the constitution confers on the Federal gov- 
 ernment, or release that government from the re- 
 strictions which it has imposed." 
 
 This address and the declaration of principles 
 appended was on the whole a piece of reasoning 
 on constitutional theory not unworthy of the 
 author of the letters to Yancey of i860. It closed 
 with an enthusiastic endorsement of Andrew Johnson 
 as "a chief magistrate worthy of the nation, 
 and equal to the great crisis upon which his lot 
 is cast." Even then Raymond was not altogether 
 in sympathy with Johnson's course; he supported 
 the constitutional amendments which were 
 eventually grouped into one (the Fourteenth) 
 and thought Johnson unwise in opposing them. 
 
 68 
 
CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION, 1860-1869 
 
 Raymond's only contention was that Congress had 
 no right to make acceptance of them a condition 
 of the "readmission" of any state lately in revolt. 
 He held that the rebellion had been, all along, what 
 Union men considered it in the spring of 1861 — 
 an insurrection and not a dissolution of partnership. 
 But those views were too advanced for the time. 
 Secession was accepted as a fact by the dominant 
 group in Congress, and under the stress of passion 
 constitutional amendments were put through by 
 unusual, if not absolutely irregular, methods, estab- 
 lishing precedents some of whose harmful effects 
 have been seen within recent years. Raymond was 
 at once furiously assailed by the majority of his 
 party, and was accused of having gone over to the 
 Democrats. He lost his place as chairman of the Na- 
 tional Committee for his part in the Philadelphia 
 convention, and the paper lost thousands of readers. 
 Naturally, his journalistic rivals seized the oppor- 
 tunity to try to turn the momentary deviation of 
 The Times from the majority opinion to their own 
 financial profit. During the war, and before it, The 
 Times and The Tribune had been the leading Repub- 
 lican papers of the nation. No doubt Raymond 
 and Greeley had on the whole the same ideals, as in 
 general they upheld the same political principles on 
 the great issues of the Civil War period; but their 
 reactions differed according to their temperaments. 
 Raymond, in the critical months before the war, 
 thought that the suspicions of the South might and 
 should be alleviated by certain prudent concessions 
 from the Republicans, and that Southerners unsym- 
 pathetic with secession should not be driven into 
 
 69 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 the arms of the fire-eaters by unconsidered violence; 
 but he insisted that the union must be preserved at 
 any cost, that there must be no tolerance of seces- 
 sion, and that the supremacy of the Federal gov- 
 ernment must be vindicated. After war had begun 
 he never weakened in the belief that there was no 
 choice between complete victory and ruinous dis- 
 aster; that peace without victory was peace with 
 defeat; that the war must be fought out to the 
 complete vindication of the Federal authority. But 
 when that result had been accomplished he felt that 
 the interests of the nation required the speediest 
 possible reestablishment of real national unity. 
 
 Greeley, in the period between Lincoln's elec- 
 tion and the attack on Sumter, had oscillated be- 
 tween plaintive declarations that "the republic 
 could not be pinned together with bayonets" and 
 insistence on immediate and violent coercive meas- 
 ures which might have put the government in the 
 wrong in the eyes of the border states. When war 
 had come Greeley was a pretty good barometer; 
 he was an enthusiast when things were going well, 
 but after Fredericksburg, and again after Chan- 
 cellorsville, he was willing to throw up the sponge; 
 and he had that curious conviction that peace might 
 be obtained by some backstairs negotiation on neu- 
 tral soil and suddenly presented on a platter to a 
 surprised nation, which while it endured furnished 
 valuable moral support to Lee as it later did to 
 Ludendorff. 
 
 But when the republic had been pinned together 
 with bayonets, nobody displayed more sanctimonious 
 horror than Greeley at Raymond's adventures in 
 
 70 
 
CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION, 1860-1869 
 
 conciliation. The man who was to go Jeff Davis's 
 bail in 1867, and accept a Democratic Presidential 
 nomination in 1872, in 1866 was accusing Raymond 
 of "acting as a Copperhead" and of betraying the 
 party, because he thought that southern Demo- 
 crats were still citizens of the United States. The 
 man who, in i860, thought the South might as well 
 go its way, who early in 1863 was talking of "bow- 
 ing our heads to the inevitable," and was looking 
 forward gloomily to "the best attainable peace," 
 could in 1866 compare the editor of a competing 
 and more prosperous paper to Judas Iscariot for 
 standing out against vindictive punishment of the 
 South. 
 
 I But Greeley cherished no unchristian rancor; 
 when Raymond was safely dead, Greeley was mag- 
 nanimous enough to write that "he was often mis- 
 judged as a trimmer and a time server, when in fact 
 he spoke and wrote exactly as he thought and felt." 
 It was true; Raymond was called a trimmer; whereas 
 Greeley acquired a great reputation as a courageous 
 moral leader. The difference seems to have been 
 that Greeley took a certain time off each day to 
 advertise his morality to the public, whereas Ray- 
 mond was too busy reaching conclusions a year or 
 so ahead of the times. 
 
 A moral might be drawn from this, but it could 
 hardly be commended to ambitious young journalists. 
 
 Raymond afterward confessed that it would have 
 been worth $100,000 to The Times if he had never 
 attended the Philadelphia convention, for great 
 numbers of its loyal supporters promptly turned 
 
 71 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 away from a paper which they regarded as haying 
 gone over to the Copperheads. As it turned out, 
 however, if Raymond had lived a few years longer 
 it might have been worth a hundred thousand to 
 the paper that he had attended the convention; for 
 it had the result of putting him out of politics and 
 turning him back to give his whole attention to The 
 Times. 
 
 The conservative Republicans among his con- 
 stituents (it is perhaps needless to observe that the 
 terms "conservative" and "radical" had in the 
 years just after the Civil War a technical significance 
 entirely apart from their ordinary meanings) wanted 
 him to try his chances for renomination to Congress, 
 but in a letter dated only a month after the Phila- 
 delphia convention he^ refused. He denied that he 
 had changed his politics. "With the Democratic 
 party as it has been organized and directed since 
 the rebellion broke out," he assured his friends, 
 "I have nothing in common." But the evils of re- 
 newed factional strife which he had attempted to 
 avert were already afflicting the country, and Ray- 
 mond realized that he could no longer do anything 
 to resist them. And he observed that "a seat in 
 Congress ceases to have for me any attraction, or to 
 offer any opportunity for useful public service." It 
 is easy enough to say that Raymond knew he could 
 not be renominated; the man's whole history is 
 proof that considerations of this sort had nothing 
 to do with his decision. 
 
 The last three years of Raymond's life were of 
 great importance to his paper. On the chief of the 
 new issues following the war he had taken the un- 
 
 72 
 
CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION, 1860-1869 
 
 popular side, and was presently forced to admit that 
 he was following an unworthy leader. Johnson's 
 personal shortcomings were largely responsible for 
 compromising the cause of the moderate reconstruc- 
 tionists, but it may be supposed that Raymond's 
 personal feeling had perhaps something to do with 
 the fact that when The Times finally repudiated him 
 it was on the question of paying off the national 
 debt with fiat money. The paper opposed the im- 
 peachment of Johnson, not so much from love of 
 Johnson as from an estimate of the motives, and a 
 dislike of the methods, of his enemies. In the cam- 
 paign of 1868 the paper was once more able to be 
 whole-heartedly Republican, for its editors had a 
 great deal of confidence in General Grant and in 
 the policies which the party in that year professed. 
 But other new questions were arising which were 
 to dominate the generation after the war, and on the 
 chief of these Raymond set a policy which in gen- 
 eral was long followed. As Edward Gary, for nearly 
 half a century one of the principal members of the 
 editorial staff of The Times, wrote in 191 1: 
 
 Apart from his policy regarding re- 
 construction, he had marked out three lines 
 of discussion for his paper which were of 
 great and lasting importance, and which 
 even now . . . that paper follows with 
 profound respect for the sound brain and 
 loyal heart that set it upon them. 
 
 The first of these was the struggle against various 
 forms of easy but unsound money — in the sixties 
 and seventies the Greenback movement, and later 
 free silver. Its insistence on sound money was at 
 
 73 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 least a minor reason in The Times's unwillingness 
 to see any merit in the Presidential candidacy of 
 Tilden, who had given it support in the most spec- 
 tacular fight of its history; it drove the paper to 
 stand for its principles behind the Gold Democratic 
 ticket in 1896; and it was the first ground for a 
 disbelief in the miraculous powers of William Jen- 
 nings Bryan for which other reasons in suificiency 
 were soon discovered. 
 
 In Raymond's last days, also, the paper began a 
 campaign for reform of the tarifF, a principle to 
 which it has been consistently loyal ever since. 
 David A. Wells and Benjamin F. Tracy were called 
 in to write special articles on this subject under 
 Raymond, and The Times, though beaten in its 
 first fight as it has been beaten in many more, began 
 in the later sixties a steady campaign for popular 
 education on this question which it may be hoped 
 has contributed in some degree to the more intelli- 
 gent views now prevalent. In spite of the genu- 
 flections of the present Republican Congress in the 
 house of Rimmon, it is possible to hope that before 
 long the protective tarifF as the past generation has 
 known it will be as dead as greenbackism and free 
 silver. 
 
 The third of the policies which Raymond laid 
 down for his paper was the fight for the introduc- 
 tion of the merit system into the civil service — a 
 question on which the paper had sometimes ex- 
 pressed itself even in its earliest years, but which 
 it took up in earnest after the Civil War. During 
 the next two decades The Times was one of the most 
 insistent and persistent advocates of a reform which 
 
 74 
 

 [3111 
 
 ! 
 
 
 v:MmM3Mmm 
 
 
 THE) FIRST 
 
 TJMES BUILDlNC. 
 
 113 Nassau St., 
 
 1851-1864. 
 
 I 
 
 i. 
 
 it::i 
 
 THE THIRD 
 
 TIMES 
 BUILDING, 
 PARK ROW. 
 
 18I57-188S. 
 
 SECOND TIMES 
 BUILDING, 
 
 1854-18.57. 
 
 
 
 BRICK PRESBYTERIAN 
 
 CHURCH IN 1840. 
 
 .Sile of tUe Old Park Row 
 
 Building of The Time.s. 
 
 FORMER HOMES OF THE NEW YORK TIMES. 
 
CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION, 1860-1869 
 
 finally triumphed, in principle, and which after two 
 decades more of obstruction by practical politicians 
 of the older sort is now at last beginning to be the 
 rule and not the exception in administration. 
 
 It was the enduring faith of The Times in all these 
 causes, no less than its conductors' lack of confi- 
 dence in a man who seemed to embody stifF-necked 
 •opposition to most of the needed reforms of his time, 
 which finally led the paper to break away from the 
 Republican party in 1884. Raymond was always 
 a good Republican — best, perhaps, when he was 
 most completely out of harmony with the dominant 
 group in the party — but there can be no doubt that 
 he would have approved of the decision which his 
 partner and successor, Jones, had to make in that 
 campaign. 
 
 Local issues, too, were becoming insistent in Ray- 
 mond's last years. The conduct of the New York 
 City government had always been a scandal, vary- 
 ing only in degree, but by the later sixties the city 
 had fallen into the hands of William M. Tweed and 
 the scandal was becoming unendurable. Tweed 
 had formed an entente, useful to both parties, with 
 the faction of Wall Street manipulators headed by 
 Jay Gould and James Fisk, Jr., which was unable 
 to see any need for going into the long, laborious 
 and expensive process of building railroads when it 
 was so much easier to acquire them already built. 
 In 1868 The Times carried on a vigorous fight against 
 the men who were making the Erie Railroad a name 
 notable even in the scandalous chronicle of that 
 period, and before Raymond's death there had al- 
 ready been threats that some of the political instru- 
 
 75 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 ments of the Wall Street-Tammany inner circle 
 might be used to attack the management of the 
 paper. That Raymond, if he had lived, would have 
 fought the ring as valiantly as did Jones and Jen- 
 nings cannot be doubted; and no greater tribute can 
 be given them than the statement that not even 
 Raymond could have been more successful. 
 
 The setback caused by Raymond's position in 
 1866 did not long affect the fortunes of The Times. 
 It was so good a newspaper that people did not 
 like to go without it, and its return to the outward 
 form at least of party regularity furnished an excuse 
 for a good many Republicans to come back to their 
 old favorite. Some idea of the position which The 
 Times held in the estimation of intelligent men at 
 this time can be obtained from "The Education of 
 Henry Adams." Adams had known Raymond in 
 Washington before the war, and some of his letters 
 to Raymond from London had been published in The 
 Times, which thus may perhaps claim to have dis- 
 covered him as" a writer. Coming back from London 
 with an experience which in any other country, as 
 he has remarked, would have qualified him admi- 
 rably for a post in the diplomatic service, he knew 
 that it was hopeless to look for anything of the sort 
 at a time when legations, secretaryships and con- 
 sulates were ranked with post offices as the reward 
 of political merit; so he thought that the best chance 
 to use, his talents and realize his ambitions was in 
 newspaper work. But when Raymond died Adams 
 gave up hope; for him it was The Times or nothing. 
 He objected to the political views of The Tribune; 
 on The Herald, aside from other objections, he thought 
 
 76 
 
CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION, 1860-1869 
 
 there was no room for any important personality 
 but Bennett; and he disliked the "strong dash of 
 blackguardism" which Dana had given The Sun. 
 Writing for The Times, Adams could have reached 
 a large and influential public; as for any of the 
 other papers which his tastes would have permitted 
 him to consider, he thought that he might as well 
 keep on contributing to The North American Review. 
 
 Whether Adams would have been permanently 
 satisfied as a newspaper man may be doubted; his 
 case is cited here only as an incidental testimonial 
 to The Times' s rapid recovery from the misfortune 
 of 1866. Early in 1869 an off'er of a million dollars 
 was made, and refused, for the property which had 
 been established eighteen years before on a cash 
 investment of sixty-nine thousand. So before Ray- 
 mond's death The Times had recovered all the 
 ground it had lost even in this department, which 
 Raymond himself would undoubtedly have regarded 
 as the last and least of a good newspaper's claims 
 to eminence. His own material fortunes had risen 
 with those of the paper; at his death he owned a 
 third of the stock. The salary which had been fixed 
 at ^2500 a year when The Times was founded had 
 been raised to ^4000 in i860. At the beginning of 
 1869 this was increased to ^10,000 — a huge salary 
 for that day — and at the same time an annual salary 
 of ^9000 was voted to Jones as business manager. 
 The Times could afford it; the dividend that year 
 was eighty per cent. 
 
 Had Raymond lived, and kept out of politics, the 
 paper which under Jones's direction became more 
 influential and powerful than ever before, and per- 
 
 77 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 formed at least one public service which must rank 
 as one of the greatest ever accomplished by an 
 American newspaper, would probably have been 
 still more distinguished. For Raymond was only 
 forty-nine when he died suddenly on June 19, 1869, 
 two months before completing his eighteenth year 
 as editor of the paper. Soon after E. L. Godkin, 
 who had served under him, wrote in The Nation that 
 
 The Times under his management probably 
 came nearer the newspaper of the good time 
 coming than any other in existence; in this, 
 that it encouraged truthfulness — the repro- 
 duction of the facts uncolored by the neces- 
 sities of a "cause" or the editor's personal 
 feelings — among reporters; that it carried 
 decency, temperance, and moderation into 
 discussion, and banished personality from 
 it; and thus not only supplied the only 
 means by which rational beings can get at 
 the truth, but helped to abate the greatest 
 nuisance of the age, the coarseness, violence, 
 calumny, which does so much to drive sen- 
 sible and high-minded men out of public 
 life or keep them from entering it. 
 
 Certainly Raymond was almost the inventor of the 
 notion that It was possible to believe in a party, to 
 belong to a party, and in general to support that 
 party without being slavishly bound to its policies, 
 right or wrong; and his course In the Civil War 
 showed that this Independence of sentiment did not 
 involve any weakening of energies in upholding the 
 truth as he saw It. In Cary's language, he estab- 
 lished the corporate conscience of The Times; his 
 successors have tried to live up to it. 
 
 78 
 
CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION, 1860-1869 
 
 Yet George Henry Payne, in his "History of Jour- 
 nalism in the United States," seems to think it nec- 
 essary to account for Raymond's "failure," and does 
 so by explaining that "a journalist can never succeed 
 unless he is fathering popular or moral causes." 
 This extraordinary statement deserves notice be- 
 cause it appears in the most recent book on a sub- 
 ject which has never yet been treated adequately, 
 and because Mr. Payne used to be a newspaperman 
 himself. Without going into metaphysical defini- 
 tions of success, it may suffice to say that from any 
 point of view Raymond was a brilliant success as a 
 journalist. He was certainly a failure as a politi- 
 cian, if failure means the inability to hold the most 
 powerful political position to which he rose, the 
 chairmanship of the Republican National Commit- 
 tee; but even in this sense he was a failure only 
 because he happened to die, in the prime of life, 
 a few years before the majority came around to his 
 view. 
 
 As to Mr. Payne's curious theories on the founda- 
 tion of newspaper success, it may be observed that 
 The Times, which its worst enemies will admit is suc- 
 cessful in the sense that it is widely read, influential 
 and prosperous, has never fathered any causes, 
 popular or unpopular, moral or immoral; nor have 
 some others of the most famous and richest news- 
 papers of the world. If "fathering" was a slip of 
 the pen for "furthering," one may wonder what 
 "moral causes" James Gordon Bennett the First 
 ever promoted. Neither abolition nor Fourieristic 
 Socialism could be described as a "popular cause" 
 in New York seventy-five years ago, yet Horace 
 
 79 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 Greeley made a paper which advocated one of these 
 doctrines, and leaned strongly toward the other, 
 successful in every sense of the word. Nor does this 
 simple definition meet the case of a newspaper which 
 may find prosperity in spite of the furtherance of 
 causes which are both moral and unpopular, or in 
 furthering those which are both popular and im- 
 moral. Whatever may be the secret of journalistic 
 success, it can hardly be given away to the world 
 as freely as Mr. Payne seems to think. The art of 
 making a good newspaper is somewhat more than a 
 mere gift for guessing what is going to be popular 
 and moral at the same time; and as can be proved 
 by the examples of Greeley, Raymond, and Ben- 
 nett (to come no nearer our own time) that art 
 may be exemplified by men who sometimes guess 
 wrong. 
 
 80 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 The Times and the Tweed Ring 
 
 nnHE Times had been so emphatically Raymond's 
 -* paper that a good many people; naturally 
 wondered, after his death, what was going to become 
 of it. Raymond's partner, George Jones, had long 
 been in charge of the business office, and was the 
 ranking officer, so to speak, of those who were left. 
 But he had had no experience in the supervision of 
 editorial policy; his life had been spent in the business 
 office, and few outsiders realized how thoroughly 
 the long friendship and partnership between Ray- 
 mond and Jones had indoctrinated each with the 
 principles of the other. Nor did Jones have any- 
 thing like a controlling interest in the paper. The 
 Raymond estate, with thirty-four of the hundred 
 shares, was the heaviest stockholder; Jones had or 
 controlled, in 1869, about thirty. And since Ray- 
 mond's son, then finishing his course at Yale, was 
 preparing to learn the newspaper business from the 
 ground up, it was the general expectation that in 
 time he would succeed his father. 
 
 But The Times could not wait for him. On July 
 22, 1869, some five weeks after Raymond's death, 
 the three directors of the company — Jones, Leonard 
 W. Jerome, and James B. Taylor — elected John 
 Bigelow editor. It might have been supposed that 
 this was an excellent selection. Bigelow had for 
 
 81 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 years been associated with William Cullen Bryant 
 in the editorial direction of The Evening Post, and his 
 service as Minister to France had increased his 
 reputation and given him an experience in inter- 
 national politics which at that particular time was 
 extremely valuable. Yet his career as editor of The 
 Times lasted only a few weeks, and is interesting 
 chiefly as illustrating the fact that in the equipment 
 of a newspaper editor the wisdom of the serpent is a 
 somewhat more useful quality than the harmlessness 
 of the dove. 
 
 The summer of 1869 saw Jay Gould and Jim Fisk 
 and their associates going on from the plunder of a 
 railroad to the more ambitious scheme of cornering 
 the gold supply of a nation in which the resumption 
 of specie payments was still something of a milleimial 
 dream. As is well known, they counted on the 
 neutrality of President Grant, who was neither a 
 financial expert nor a connoisseur in human wile, 
 and whose brother-in-law, Corbin, a friend of the 
 Fisk-Gould group, was generally supposed to supply 
 most of the financial information for the White 
 House. 
 
 Bigelow, who knew the President well, saw him 
 early in August, and as a result of the interview 
 wrote for The Times two editorial articles on Grant's 
 economic policy which were generally understood 
 as representing the views of the White House. 
 At Gould's suggestion, Corbin prepared another 
 editorial article, which a gentleman who was a friend 
 of both Corbin and Bigelow succeeded in persuading 
 the editor was also a reflection of Grant's opinion. 
 This article, headed "Financial Policy of the Ad- 
 
 82 
 

 
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THE TIMES AND THE TWEED RING 
 
 ministration, " was published in The Times on August 
 25. Luckily Caleb C. Norvell, the financial editor, 
 had seen it in proof and had suggested to the sur- 
 prised Bigelow that it showed evidence of a purpose 
 to "bull gold," presumably in furtherance of the 
 enterprise whose beginnings were already visible to 
 men in Wall Street. The last paragraph was struck 
 out and the article thereby rendered innocuous; but 
 the rest of it was published. Less than a month 
 later came Black Friday, when Grant shattered 
 the final assault of the gold conspirators by opening 
 up the Treasury's reserves; and shortly after that 
 Bigelow left The Times. 
 
 Jones was justifiably alarmed by this experience, 
 and was consequently forced to set himself, at the 
 age of fifty-eight, to learn something about the 
 editorial management as well as the business affairs 
 of the paper. There seems to have been some 
 surprise among newspapermen of the time when it 
 was discovered that Jones wanted to go on alone. 
 Greeley, for example, attempted to buy The Times 
 in the summer after Raymond's death. When The 
 Tribune was established Greeley had owned it all, 
 but he was no financier, and at the time of his death 
 retained only one sixteenth of the stock. This 
 coincidence of an editor without a newspaper and a 
 newspaper without an editor suggested to Greeley 
 the idea of buying The Times, which he seems to 
 have supposed would be a burden on Jones's hands. 
 But Jones replied that he would never sell out "so 
 long as he was on top of the sod," so Greeley had 
 to stick to The Tribune. 
 
 After Bigelow's retirement the post of editor of The 
 
 83 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 Times, under Jones's supervision, was given to 
 George Shepard, who for some time had been one of 
 the political editorial writers. In the 1901 Jubilee 
 Supplement of The Times Shepard's editorship was 
 thus characterized: "The decorum and solid ability 
 which had long characterized The Times were per- 
 fectly safe in his hands, but sprightliness was un- 
 doubtedly lacking." There were those on the 
 paper, however, who had perhaps an excess of 
 sprightliness, and chief of these was Louis J. Jen- 
 nings, a man with a great deal of talent, a great 
 deal of temperament, and a character so commingled 
 of opposite qualities that one wonders alternately 
 why he did not achieve brilliant success, and how 
 he managed to get as far as he did. Jennings was 
 an Englishman, who had edited The Times of India, 
 served as American correspondent of The London 
 Times just after the Civil War, and then written 
 London correspondence for The New York Tim,es. 
 He seems to have had an affection for the name, and 
 during Bigelow's brief editorship he had been added 
 to the editorial staff of the paper. 
 
 Shortly after Shepard took over the direction of 
 the editorial page, on November 25, 1869, there 
 was a murder in the Tribune office. Albert D. 
 Richardson, one of the stockholders in and contribu- 
 tors to that paper, was shot and mortally wounded 
 by a gentleman whose wife had left him for a com- 
 plex of reasons of which Richardson was one. Mrs. 
 McFarland had obtained a divorce in Indiana, her 
 husband having been served by publication in local 
 papers, and she was married to Richardson on his 
 deathbed. Two or three eminent clergymen signal- 
 
 84 
 
THE TIMES AND THE TWEED RING 
 
 ized their breadth of opinion, if not their Hteral 
 fidehty to the doctrines of their churches, by defend- 
 ing the relation as an innocent one and turning 
 pubHc sympathy against the injurious husband, if 
 indeed it was not running in that direction already. 
 
 This was too much for Jennings's moral principles, 
 especially as it had happened in the office of a rival 
 newspaper. Despite Shepard's hesitation, Jennings 
 succeeded in getting into The Times a number of 
 editorials on this case — which indeed was cele- 
 brated enough, at the time, to deserve some com- 
 ment. Beginning with the innocuous and generally 
 acceptable doctrine that newspapermen had no 
 special privilege of seduction, he went on to ask 
 what else could be expected from those who had 
 preached the malignant doctrines of Fourier, de- 
 structive of family ties. This must have surprised 
 Greeley, who by that time had almost forgotten 
 his youthful adventures in Socialism, along with 
 other ebullient eccentricities of his earlier years. 
 But nothing was clearer to Jennings than that the 
 infection imported by Brisbane still befouled the 
 Tribune office, and that free love, with its conse- 
 quences of murder or suicide, was the natural result 
 of taking The Tribune editorial page seriously. 
 
 Jennings had an exceptional talent for stirring 
 up the animals. The Tribune presently began to 
 retaliate against these editorial attacks by a counter- 
 offensive; but Jennings being a recent arrival and 
 little known, its editors naturally took for their 
 target the respectable Shepard. After a few weeks 
 of this Shepard told Jones that Jennings could fight 
 his own battles. Shepard retired to his old position 
 
 85 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 as a writer of political articles and Jennings became 
 editor of The Times. In the great battle against 
 Tweed which soon followed Jennings was the leader 
 of the offensive. Jones had the responsibility, and 
 a heavy responsibility it was; John Foord, who had 
 lately joined the editorial staff, handled most of the 
 work of analyzing political and financial evidence 
 that came into the hands of the paper; and equipped 
 with the facts exhumed by Foord, and fortified by 
 the knowledge that Jones was standing behind him, 
 Jennings put his talent for invective to a somewhat 
 more useful employment than annoyance of The 
 Tribune. 
 
 It is customary, in discussing the Tweed ring, to 
 call attention to the gradual and in the long view quite 
 considerable improvement in the standard of New 
 York municipal politics. Even in the worst scandals 
 of more recent periods the offenders showed a certain 
 regard for outward order and decency. City officials 
 no longer thrust their arms into the city treasury 
 and steal money outright, as Tweed and his associ- 
 ates used to do; modern peculations are measured 
 by thousands where they stole millions, and the 
 unearned increment in the fortunes of certain political 
 leaders of today and yesterday can be traced back 
 to such diverse and subsidiary transactions as taking 
 a percentage from gamblers and prostitutes, or a 
 fortunate and extremely silent partnership in con- 
 tracting firms dealing with the city or with corpora- 
 tions dependent for franchises on municipal favor. 
 
 The percentage of honest men in Tammany Hall 
 is probably higher now than in the days of Croker, 
 
 86 
 
THE TIMES AND THE TWEED RING 
 
 certainly higher than in the days of Tweed or Fer- 
 nando Wood; and the improvement in public morals 
 ■ has affected even the reform movements. They 
 are no longer, as they were apt to be in the forties 
 and fifties, about as bad as Tammany. They no 
 longer can be bought ofF by judicious distribution 
 of ofl&ces to their leaders, as sometimes happened 
 in the sixties and seventies; nor, in spite of the 
 recent declamations of enthusiastic Republican 
 leaders, are they as likely to make themselves im- 
 potent by divisions and quarreling as they were in 
 the eighties and nineties. It is perhaps a matter 
 for dispute whether stupidity and incompetence is an 
 improvement on venality, but there is no doubt 
 that there is a great deal of mere stupidity today 
 where in similar conditions even twenty years ago 
 there would have been corruption. 
 
 Still, when all allowance is made for these laudable 
 tendencies, the dispassionate observer can hardly 
 admit that New York would be justified in giving 
 three cheers for itself. Nor does the study of 
 a century of municipal history tend to make 
 converts for the philosophy of Pippa and Polly- 
 anna. It is a painful chronicle of alternating 
 indignation, apathy, and despair; if it teaches 
 anything, it is only the old lesson that the solution 
 of political problems is not to be found in changes 
 of political machinery. In the last hundred years 
 New York has tried about everything. Greater 
 measures of home rule have been introduced as a 
 desperate remedy, in the hope that centralization of 
 responsibility would enable the public to keep 
 ofiicials up to the mark; but it was exactly such 
 
 87 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 centralization that made possible the enormous 
 stealings of Tweed and his confederates. In reaction 
 from this the city, or that part of it interested in • 
 honest government, has from time to time thrown 
 itself on the mercy of the legislature, only to find 
 presently, not exactly that it has exchanged King 
 Log for King Stork, but that between storks the 
 one who spends stolen money at home has at least 
 some advantage over the one who plunders the 
 city for the enrichment of up-state. 
 
 In the period of Tweed's supremacy New York 
 had the misfortune of enduring practically all these 
 varieties of political experience, and for some years 
 each new arrangement proved to be worse than 
 what had gone before. The chief accomplishment 
 of The Times' s exposure of Tweed was the breaking 
 of this ascending spiral. Thievery soon began 
 again, but on a much humbler scale and with con- 
 siderably more caution. And never since has muni- 
 cipal corruption been anything like so enormous, 
 or so flagrant, as in the period between 1868 and 
 1871. There have been no more Tweeds; but in 
 view of the lessons of New York City's history, it 
 would be rather venturesome to assert that there 
 will never be another Tweed in the future. 
 
 In the fifties and early sixties the dominant figure 
 in Tammany Hall was Fernando Wood, but even 
 then Tweed was doing pretty well for himself. The 
 charter of 1857 had given control of the city's finances 
 to an elective bipartisan Board of Supervisors, 
 twelve in number, on which Tweed managed to 
 obtain a dominant position. Corruption, which had 
 always existed in the city government, rapidly 
 
 88 
 
THE TIMES AND THE TWEED RING 
 
 increased under the benign sway of this virtually, 
 irremovable body, but the golden days of'gf aft 
 began only with the election of 1868, when by whole- 
 sale naturalizations at the last minute, the voting of 
 cartloads of repeaters, stuffing of the ballot boxes, 
 and other devices now happily gone out of fashion, 
 Tammany elected John T. Hoffman governor of 
 the state and A. Oakey Hall mayor of the city. 
 The legislature was also Democratic by a very slight 
 majority; but the precarious margin could be, and 
 on occasion was, enlarged by the purchase of any 
 necessary number of upstate Republicans. Tweed 
 came into control of both state and city governments 
 on January i, 1869; his domination was ended in 
 the fall of 1 871. It is a tribute both to his ingenuity 
 and to the largeness of his view that estimates of 
 the amount which he and his associates stole in that 
 brief period range from fifty million to a hundred 
 million dollars. 
 
 To remove the possibi lity of inconvenient inquiry 
 into his doings Tweed put through the legislature 
 in 1 870"-^ with the aid of purchased Republican 
 votes — a new city charter. In its preliminary 
 advertising it was proclaimed as a home rule measure; 
 on that understanding it got a good deal of respect- 
 able support; even The Times, disgusted with the 
 conditions that had arisen under the prevalent 
 system, in the beginning favored the measure. But 
 it presently turned out that the document was full 
 of jokers, and that its real effect, as John Foord 
 has put it, was to turn the city over to the control 
 of four men — the Mayor, Hall; the president of 
 the Board of Supervisors, Tweed; the Controller, 
 -' ■' '""'89 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 Richard-JB*_CcwMially ; and the president of the Park 
 Board, Peter B. Sweeney. Heads .o£. jd^actments 
 were appointed by the Mayor, "ftjT' terms of four or 
 eight years, and during their terrrfs were practically 
 irremovable. This alone would have been enough 
 for moderate men; but for good measure a provision 
 was thrown in that all claims against the County 
 of New York incurred previous to the passage of the 
 act should be audited by Hall, Tweed, and Connolly, 
 and met by revenue bonds payable during 1871. 
 
 This board met only once, and then voted that all 
 claims certified by the Board of Supervisors to the 
 County Auditor and presented by him to the Board 
 of Audit should be authorized. In other words, 
 Tweed sent his bills to the Auditor — James Watson, 
 one of his own creatures — and this functionary 
 passed them on to the Board of Audit to receive a 
 blanket endorsement — from Tweed. In this man- 
 ner some six million dollars was "audited," mainly 
 in connection with work done, or alleged to have 
 been done, on the construction, equipment and 
 repair of the County Court House. Some of the 
 claims were purely fictitious; the others were all set 
 down at far more than the real value of the work; 
 and of it all Tweed and certain of his associates 
 received 65 per cent at first, and eventually 85 
 per cent. 
 
 This was the most scandalous and the most easily 
 visible of the multitudinous thefts promoted by 
 Tweed. Others were of the familiar sort — fraudu- 
 lent contracts, payrolls padded with the names of 
 dead men, of babes in arms, or of Tammany ward 
 heelers who had to be supported but did not want 
 
 90 
 
CHARLES R. MILLER, 
 Editor-in-Chief. 
 
THE TIMES AND THE TWEED RING 
 
 to soil their hands with work except on election 
 day; appropriations for the support of non-existent 
 institutions, huge payments to companies in which 
 Tweed or his friends had an interest. But the 
 suspicions which were inevitably aroused by such 
 enormous and ubiquitous peculations were slow 
 in taking definite form. Ostensibly, Tweed was 
 saving money for the city. He reduced the tax 
 rate in 1871, and thereby won the gratitude of tax- 
 payers who had become alarmed at the rapid and 
 unaccountable increase in municipal expenses. Just 
 how much the city was spending or how much it 
 owed nobody knew, but it was evidently a great 
 deal. Tweed's sudden show of economy had its 
 effect in winning support for him among the property- 
 owning classes, and though their suspicions were not 
 killed by any means, a good many .respectable and 
 prosperous citizens had become so discouraged with 
 municipal politics, so willing to grasp at any straw 
 of hope, that they were pleased to adopt the policy 
 of the ostrich, and try to pretend that they believed 
 public affairs were being honestly conducted, instead 
 of undertaking the difficult and dangerous process 
 of attempting to find out. 
 
 As a matter of fact, Tweed had reduced the tax 
 rate by the very simple process of abandoning the 
 pay-as-you-go plan of municipal finance, and meet- 
 ing most of the claims which he and his friends 
 presented to the city — together with the com- 
 paratively infrequent bills from honest creditors — 
 by the issue of thirty-year bonds; while so far as 
 possible the demands were met by short-term' ob- 
 ligations not funded at all. In a city containing 
 
 91 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 as many competent financiers as New York there 
 were a good many men who saw through this, but 
 none who dared to speak out. The man who did 
 dare to speak was George Jones, and under his 
 direction The Times began in September, 1870, a 
 campaign which resulted, after fourteen months, 
 in the complete overthrow of Tweed. 
 
 That The Times did not begin its attack sooner 
 may perhaps be ascribed to the influence of James 
 B. Taylor, who was one of the three directors of the 
 paper, and one of Tweed's four partners in the 
 New York Printing Company. The history of this 
 organization would alone furnish valuable matter 
 for reflection to political reformers, and some useful 
 hints to thieving politicians; but for the purposes of 
 this narrative it is enough to say that before the 
 exposure of the ring it had received some millions 
 of public money for very slight services, and that 
 Tweed's far-ranging plans looked to making it the 
 sole agency for the printing not only of the city, 
 but of the state and eventually of the nation. 
 
 Taylor had been a stockholder in The Times since 
 April, 1861, and his associates evidently had a good 
 opinion of him, since though he held only one tenth 
 of the stock he was elected to Raymond's place on 
 the directorate. But that he would have been able 
 to hold back the paper forever from its assault on the 
 ring is a quite untenable supposition, in view of the 
 character of George Jones. Taylor died early in 
 September, 1870, and The Times' s campaign began 
 soon after; but for the first few months the paper 
 had nothing to go on but its suspicions, and Taylor's 
 objections could well have been, and presumably 
 
 92 
 
THE TIMES AND THE TWEED RING 
 
 were, based on the risk of commencing an attack 
 on the most formidable and best intrenched group 
 of political conspirators the country had ever known 
 without conclusive evidence. 
 
 It would be agreeable to suppose that similar 
 considerations of prudence were alone responsible 
 for the fact that the other dailies of the city were at 
 best neutral in the fight, while most of them actually 
 supported Tweed until his guilt was proved beyond 
 any question; but the record shows otherwise. 
 There was a reason why The Times had to fight 
 single-handed, except for the support of Harper's 
 Weekly, which in Nast's cartoons had a weapon even 
 more powerful than Jennings's vituperation. Enor- 
 mous sums were being spent for municipal advertis- 
 ing, most of which was quite unnecessary. A good 
 deal of it went to obscure publications either existing 
 solely for the purpose of printing public advertise- 
 ments, or chiefly maintained by that source of 
 revenue, and owned by various members of the ring; 
 but much of it went to the regular newspapers of the 
 city, and cannot be called anything but a hush fund. 
 
 For a while The Times- received its share-©f this 
 advertising, which was , rejected ,JShe|l..„i3LJje£ame 
 apparent that it was a hush fund. But Tweed and 
 his subordinates had been wise enough to see that 
 the city was always pretty well in arrears of pay- 
 ment; when The Times refused to accept further city 
 advertising, the city refused to pay its bill. The 
 Times went to court and got a judgment, but the 
 litigation furnished an excuse by which Mayor Hall 
 tried — though unsuccessfully — to explain the " ani- 
 mus" which the paper eventually displayed by 
 
 93 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 telling the truth about the city government. In the 
 meantime the account refused by The Times was 
 turned over to The Tribune, which for some time 
 showed a reluctance to believe, or to publish, any- 
 thing reflecting on Tweed. In view of the fact that 
 Tweed was at that time the boss of the Democratic 
 party not only in the city but in the state, and was 
 becoming dangerously powerful in his influence on the 
 national leaders of the party, this is an instance of 
 magnanimity toward a political enemy quite without 
 parallel in the history of the period. 
 
 The hush fund did its work. When the other 
 papers said anything about Tweed, it was in his 
 defense. The Sun, to be sure, did make the ironic 
 proposal of a monument to the "benefactor of the 
 people," the fund to be started by a contribution 
 of ten cents which The Sun professed to have received 
 from one of Tweed's admirers. Tweed indeed sus- 
 pected that Dana was not altogether in earnest, and 
 for this and other reasons refused to accept any such 
 testimonial; but a good many of The Sun's readers, 
 as well as some historians of later days, took the 
 suggestion seriously. 
 
 The attack was begun by the most obvious method, 
 and the one most readily available in view of the 
 lack of any definite evidence. The Times called 
 the attention of its readers to Tweed's sudden and 
 enormous wealth, and asked where he had got it. 
 Again and again the paper called on the respectable 
 leaders of the Democratic party to disown their 
 associate; but just then that would have been some- 
 what difllicult. Tweed could have disowned them 
 and remained a Democrat, but they could hardly 
 
 94 
 
THE TIMES AND THE TWEED RING 
 
 disown the man who had carried the state for the 
 presidential ticket in 1868, and who was still in 
 absolute control of the state organization, without 
 finding themselves out in the cold. 
 
 ThsiLTheJTdMeiJiegzntozskioT a little informa- 
 tion about the city's finances. For a year and a 
 haff no statement of them had been published. It 
 was presumed tKat the Controller, Connolly, was 
 still keeping books, but they were locked away as 
 carefully as the golden plates of the Book of Mormon, 
 despite a law which prescribed that they should be 
 open to the public. For two months the campaign 
 was carried on with all the vigor of which Jennings 
 was capable, but apparently it had little effect. In 
 the fall of 1 870 the reform ticket — supported by 
 Republicans, independents, and those Democrats 
 who had turned against Tweed either on principle, 
 or because they had been excluded from the profits 
 that were reserved for the favorites of the inner 
 circle — was beaten by a handsome majority. There 
 was a good deal of reason to suppose that Governor 
 Hoffman and Mayor Hall owed their reelection 
 largely to Tweed's foresight in buying up a good 
 many of the Republican election inspectors; but 
 whatever the reason, they were reelected. 
 
 But The Times and Harper's Weekly kept on 
 fighting. They kept on despite the discouragement 
 of the election, the evidence that only a minority 
 of New Yorkers took any interest in the continuous 
 and enormous thefts of their own money; despite 
 the opposition of all the other papers, which imputed 
 motives to The Times running all the way down 
 from partisan malice against the Democratic leader, 
 
 95 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 and vindictive efforts to force the payment of the 
 overdue advertising bill, to accusations that the 
 editors of the paper had been bought. In view 
 of the fact that Tweed and his friends could, and 
 eventually did, offer a good deal more for The Times' s 
 silence than could conceivably be bid by anybody 
 for its continuance of the attacks, this was not a very 
 plausible accusation; but it was often repeated and 
 doubtless believed by a good many who had their 
 own reasons for clinging to their faith in Tweed. 
 
 A great many worthy citizens thought that The 
 Times was unreasonable and vindictive. There 
 was heard the complaint, since become painfully 
 familiar, that criticisms of the administration were 
 injuring the good name and the credit of the city, 
 and that it was the duty of all good citizens to boost 
 New York — and its officials. Even the reformers 
 of the period were silent. The Citizens' Association 
 had lately been formed for the promotion of higher 
 standards of municipal government. It was or- 
 ganized and intended for reform; it began as a 
 representative of public-spirited taxpayers, and its 
 president was Peter Cooper. But its secretary 
 was soon won over by the gift of a municipal office ; 
 and Peter Cooper presently allowed himself to be 
 convinced that Tweed and his friends had stolen 
 as much as they could use, and that hereafter it would 
 be to their interest to turn conservative and save 
 money for the taxpayer. 
 
 If this happened to the chief reform organization 
 of the period, it may be surmised how easily Tweed 
 flattered, bribed or terrorized other respectable 
 citizens into giving him at least tacit support. It was 
 
 96 
 
THE TIMES AND THE TWEED RING 
 
 dangerous to oppose him — particularly dangerous 
 for rich men, since Tweed controlled the assessments 
 for taxation and could raise them to any figure that 
 suited him if property owners gave him cause for 
 hostility. And undoubtedly a good many men kept 
 still out of sheer apathy — the apathy begotten of 
 long experience with city governments each of 
 which was more corrupt than its predecessor, and the 
 conviction that even if good citizens got together 
 they would probably be beaten up at the polls by 
 Tammany thugs, or counted out by Tammany 
 election inspectors. 
 
 The most amazing instance of Tweed's ability 
 to mobilize the respectability of the city in his sup- 
 port is the famous audit of the Controller's books 
 in the fall of 1870. The Times had been calling 
 on Connolly to let the citizens know how much the 
 city was spending, and what it owed. In October 
 Connolly suddenly announced that he would do 
 so, and would submit his books to the inspection of 
 six of the most distinguished and reputable business 
 men of New York — Moses Taylor, E. D. Brown, 
 John Jacob Astor, George K. Sistare, Edward Schell, 
 and Marshall O. Roberts. Their report was pub- 
 lished on November I — just before the election — 
 and undoubtedly gave to many good citizens a 
 plausible pacifier for the disturbed conscience. For 
 the committee reported that "the account books 
 of the department are faithfully kept. . . , We 
 have come to the conclusion and certify that the 
 financial affairs of the city, under the charge of the 
 Controller, are administered in a correct and faithful 
 manner." 
 
 97 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 As Foord observes in his "Life of Andrew H. 
 Green": 
 
 These names represent the foremost finan- 
 cial interests of their time, and no group 
 of men could have been selected more likely 
 to command the confidence of the people of 
 New York. Yet, at the very time they 
 certified to the correctness of the Con- 
 troller's books, those records contained the 
 evidence of direct thefts amounting to about 
 twelve million dollars, while the testimony 
 they bore to indirect stealing was equivalent 
 to many millions more. 
 
 Connolly's books, indeed, were "correct." They 
 showed that thus much money had been paid to 
 such and such persons for this and that. When 
 The Times later published these records it was at 
 once observed that payments of several hundred 
 thousand dollars to individual carpenters or painters 
 for a month's work seemed somewhat unusual, 
 and that it was curious that three or four men had 
 endorsed all the receipts, no matter in whose names 
 the claims stood; but nothing of the sort seems to 
 have occurred to the six respectable citizens. 
 
 Their report, however, was convincing enough 
 to those who wanted to be convinced; but Tweed 
 discovered that there was one man in New York 
 who could not be bought off or scared off. The 
 Times continued the fight. Tweed did everything 
 he could to fight back. Two years before, when the 
 paper was fighting the Erie Railroad conspirators, 
 a Tweed-Fisk judge had suggested to the grand jury 
 that it had better indict Raymond and Jones; but 
 the grand jury did not take the advice. Now a new 
 
 98 
 

 
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THE TIMES AND THE TWEED RING 
 
 course was adopted; Tweed tried to amend the 
 criminal code so as to give to judges — of whom he 
 had several in his pocket — greatly increased latitude 
 in deciding what was contempt of court. When 
 this attempt failed Tweed's agents started the story 
 that the land on which the Times Building was 
 situated, and which had been occupied before by the 
 Brick Presbyterian Church, had been sold under a 
 restriction binding it for all time to church uses. 
 The eflFort to eject the paper from its home also 
 came to nothing, but it gave Jones a good deal of 
 worry for some time. 
 
 Worse still, he had not only enemies without but 
 some lukewarm supporters in his own camp. Ray- 
 mond had been dead less than a year and a half, 
 but already his family wanted to get rid of their stock 
 in The Times. The interest of the Taylor estate 
 could hardly be counted as hostile to Tweed, and 
 merchants afraid of the ring had begun to withdraw 
 their advertising from the paper, which was con- 
 tinuing its fight in spite of the testimony of New 
 York's most reputable business men that the city 
 finances were "administered in a correct and faithful 
 manner." As a matter of fact the decline in the 
 paper's income was not large, but it was exaggerated 
 by rumor, and Tweed might hope that some of the 
 stockholders would begin to put pressure on Jones. 
 
 It was evidently in the conviction that Jones 
 either would be willing or would be compelled to 
 withdraw from a losing fight that Tweed formed, 
 early in 1871, a company to buy the control of The 
 Times — one of the most curiously assorted com- 
 panies that was ever brought together for publishing 
 
 99 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 a newspaper, or for anything else. The science and 
 art of politics were represented by Tweed, Oakey 
 Hall, and Sweeney; finance high and low by Fisk, 
 Gould, and Cyrus W. Field; and the necessary 
 flavoring of probity and rectitude was provided by 
 Peter Cooper and Moses Taylor. Just what these 
 gentlemen would have done with a newspaper if 
 they had had it would be hard to say, but one thing 
 they would certainly have done — they would have 
 silenced the only journalistic critic of the ring. It 
 may be that sooner or later thievery on such a grand 
 scale would have been exposed and defeated, but 
 there is no certainty that anything but death would 
 have interrupted Tweed's activities. And, as it 
 happened, the final exposure by The Times came 
 just as the ring was preparing a new scheme, the 
 Viaduct Railroad, which was to begin with a theft 
 of five million dollars and might have gone ten 
 times farther before it was finished. Perhaps if The 
 Times had been put out of the way a champion 
 would have been raised up in the course of time, but 
 no candidates for the position were visible in 1871. 
 And even two or three years more might have enabled 
 Tweed to do as much damage to New York as could 
 be accomplished by anything but an earthquake and 
 tidal wave. 
 
 All this was plain enough to George Jones, and he 
 refused to sell. And since rumors that The Times 
 was to be bought and put out of the way had been 
 widely circulated, he published in the paper, on 
 March 29, 1871, a statement over his signature 
 which disposed of Tweed's hopes in that direction 
 for all time. 
 
 100 
 
THE TIMES AND THE TWEED RING 
 
 No money that could be offered me [he 
 wrote] should induce me to dispose of a 
 single share of my property to the Tammany 
 faction, or to any man associated with it, 
 or indeed to any person or party whatever 
 until this struggle is fought out. I have 
 the same confidence in the integrity and 
 firmness of my fellow proprietors. 
 
 Rather than prove false to the public in the 
 present crisis, I would if the necessity by 
 any possibility arose immediately start an- 
 other journal to denounce those frauds upon 
 the people which are so great a scandal to 
 the city, and I should carry with me in 
 this renewal of our present labors the 
 colleagues who have already stood by me 
 through a long and arduous contest. 
 
 After that The Times continued with redoubled 
 vigor, but without much more success until well 
 in the summer. A new reform organization was 
 established. It held a mass meeting in Cooper Union, 
 it commented upon the fact that the city debt had 
 gone up something like a hundred million dollars 
 in two years ;Jbut_tlie- masses .te.m3inedLttnafimied, 
 proof of what everybody believed was not forth- 
 coming, and Tweed and his friends looked forward 
 with confidence to the time when, having stolen 
 everything in New York that was not tied down, 
 they could go on to Albany and Washington. 
 
 For the benefit of those who believe that the right 
 is sure to triumph in the end it may be observed 
 that the actual exposure of Tweed was due to an 
 accident — the overturn of a sleigh in which the 
 County Auditor, one of Tweed's most useful sub- 
 
 lOI 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 ordinates, was riding. This was in December, 1870; 
 the Auditor died of his injuries some weeks later 
 and was replaced by the County Bookkeeper, and 
 into the Bookkeeper's office went Matthew J. 
 O'Rourke, a political follower of James O'Brien 
 in a Democratic faction on bad terms with Tweed. 
 Whether the actual discovery of the thefts should be 
 credited to O'Rourke himself, or to one Copeland, an 
 accountant in his office, is somewhat doubtful; 
 but at any rate there was an investigation of some 
 of the claims which proved at once what ought to 
 have been evident even from the most superficial 
 inspection, that millions were being stolen. The 
 evidence gathered in O'Rourke's office and later 
 published in The Times showed that six million 
 dollars had been spent for repairs on the county 
 courthouse (payment being authorized by Mayor 
 Hall and Controller Connolly), of which ninety 
 per cent was pure graft, and that there had been 
 frauds of almost equal magnitude in the renting and 
 furnishing of armories. This was a dangerously 
 large matter — too large for minor officials to 
 handle; but the discoveries were promptly reported 
 to O'Brien. In the somewhat discouraging history 
 of that period, when high officers of city, state and 
 federal governments regarded their positions as 
 nothing more than opportunities for grand larceny, 
 it is pleasant to come upon this instance of obscure 
 public servants, receiving modest salaries, who 
 apparently out of no other motive than a sense of 
 fidelity to their trust gave away information which 
 Tweed would undoubtedly have paid them a million 
 dollars to conceal. 
 
 102 
 
THE TIMES AND THE TWEED RING 
 
 O'Brien now had the facts, but it was something 
 of a question what he could do with them. Eventu- 
 ally he gave them to The Times, but The Times was 
 not his first choice. The transcript of Connolly's 
 books was the biggest exclusive local story ever 
 offered to a New York newspaper; but it was offered 
 to one newspaper which refused it. Then, realizing 
 that nobody else would take it, he gave it to The 
 Times, but at first would not give his consent to its 
 publication. Knowledge of the facts fortified The 
 Times in its denunciation of the report of the six 
 respectable citizens, and eventually O'Brien's reluc- 
 tance disappeared. 
 
 By the time he gave his consent for the publi- 
 cation of the evidence Tweed had found out what 
 was going on. He had failed to scare Jones out 
 or to freeze him out; now there remained but 
 one recourse, to try to buy him. One afternoon 
 in the early summer of 1871 a lawyer with whom 
 Jones was on friendly terms asked the publisher to 
 come to his office for a business consultation. 
 When Jones entered he found to his surprise that 
 only one man- was in : the room — Controller Con- 
 nolly; and Connolly promptly came to the point 
 and offered Jones five million dollars to suppress 
 the news. 
 
 "I don't think," Jones remarked, "that the devil 
 will ever bid higher for me than that." Connolly 
 seems to have taken this as encouragement, for he at 
 once added: "Think of what you could do with 
 five million dollars! Why, you could go to Europe 
 and live like a prince." 
 
 Thereupon Jones made his refusal unmistakable, 
 103 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 and Connolly went away sorrowing, for he had great 
 possessions. 
 
 But before entering on a fight which with the 
 publication of the evidence would become a death 
 struggle Jones felt it desirable to make his own 
 position somewhat safer. The Raymond family 
 still wanted to sell its stock. Undoubtedly that 
 stock could have been sold to Tweed, and the fact 
 that it was not, directly or indirectly, is .proof enough 
 that though the Raymonds were getting out of The 
 Times they were still loyal to its interests. But 
 Jones was afraid that somehow Tweed would get 
 control of this stock; and while it would not give 
 him a dominating influence on the paper, it would 
 enable him, by alleging that the interests of the 
 stockholders were being injured by the campaign, 
 to start litigation which could have given one of 
 Tweed's pocket judges an excuse for appointing a 
 receiver. Jones had to make sure that the Raymond 
 share could be counted on the right side; and he 
 found invaluable support in E. B. Morgan of Aurora, 
 N. Y., who had owned two shares of stock when The 
 Times was founded, had aided in the financing of 
 the building project, and had recently taken a more 
 vigorous interest not only in his property but in the 
 fight which Jones was making against Tweed. On 
 July 8 The Times published a long digest of some of 
 its evidence relating to frauds in the rental of armo- 
 ries, and in the succeeding days there were repeated 
 editorial attacks on the ring and promises of greater 
 exposures to come. But Jones was not ready to go 
 on till he had fortified his position, and that was 
 soon done. On July 19 the editorial page of The 
 
 104 
 
THE TIMES AND THE TWEED RING 
 
 Times began with a short statement to the effect 
 that the thirty-four shares of Times stock held by 
 the Raymond estate had been purchased by Morgan, 
 who would thereafter be associated with Jones in 
 the management of the paper. The statement 
 continued : 
 
 It has been repeatedly asserted that the 
 Raymond shares were likely to fall into the 
 possession of the New York ring, and it is in 
 order to assure our friends of the groundless- 
 ness of all such statements that we make 
 known the actual facts. The price paid in 
 ready money for the shares in question was 
 $375,000. Down to the time of Mr. Ray- 
 mond's death the shares had never sold for 
 more than $6000 each. Mr. Morgan has now 
 paid upward of $1 1,000 each for 34 of them, 
 and this transaction is the most conclusive 
 answer which could be furnished to the 
 absurd rumors sometimes circulated to the 
 effect that the course taken by The New York 
 Times toward the Tammany leaders had 
 depreciated the value of the property. 
 
 Immediately following this was a double-leaded 
 editorial headed "Two Thieves, " in which Jennings 
 threw his hat into the air with a loud and joyous 
 whoop and declared that evidence which The Times 
 was about to publish would prove that at least two 
 of the four leaders of the ring were criminals. Of 
 these gentlemen, one eventually escaped conviction 
 by flight to Europe and the other by grace of a hung 
 jury; that both were what Jennings called them 
 nobody has ever seriously doubted. 
 
 The next day The Times published another long 
 
 IDS 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 analysis of some of its evidence, this time relating 
 to the furnishing of armories. This article, like its 
 predecessor, was written by John Foord, and was 
 accompanied by a fiery editorial by Jennings. And 
 on the 22d The Times opened up with all its bat- 
 teries. When it came to the evidence afforded by 
 the Controller's books as to the money spent (os- 
 tensibly) on the new court house, the figures them- 
 selves spoke more forcibly than any summary or 
 any comment — those very figures which had 
 been audited and approved by the six respect- 
 able citizens. The previous articles had been pub- 
 lished on the editorial page, running over into the 
 page opposite; and even on the 2ist the front page of 
 The Times had begun, in the usual style, with a 
 single-column head, "General News." 
 
 But on the 22d The Times published a chapter 
 of figures from the Controller's books on the front 
 page, in broad measure, and under a three-column 
 head. So far as can be ascertained this was the 
 first time a real display heading had ever appeared 
 in The Times, but the editors felt apparently that 
 the facts they had to set before the public deserved 
 the aid of all the resources of the typography of the 
 period. Jennings's editorial accompanying the first 
 chapter of the accounts also employed full-face type 
 for emphasizing some of the figures, and the small 
 capitals in which then as now the names of individuals 
 appeared in editorials were also used for some of 
 Jennings's epithets, such as scoundrels, swin- 
 dlers, THIEVES and other terms which he 
 evidently felt were synonymous with some of the 
 personal names mentioned. 
 
 io6 
 
THE FOURTH TIMES BUILDING, 
 
 PARK ROW. 
 
 1888-1905. 
 
THE TIMES AND THE TWEED RING 
 
 That editorial demanded immediate criminal 
 prosecution of some of the city officials, and it con- 
 tained the observation, fully justified by the condi- 
 tions of the time, that "if the pubHc does not come 
 to the same conclusion before we have finished our 
 extracts from the Controller's books, then facts 
 have lost their power to convince, and public spirit 
 must be regarded as dead." 
 
 The facts were convincing enough. It appeared, 
 for example, that for carpets in the courthouse 
 enough money had been paid out to cover City 
 Hall Park three times over with the finest carpet 
 that could be bought in New York. A single car- 
 penter, according to the books, had received more 
 than ^360,000 within a month for his work in repair- 
 ing a courthouse which was not yet finished. Of course, 
 the carpenter never got it. Whatever the name in 
 which the bill was made out — and the assurance 
 of the ring may be gauged by the fact that one of 
 the city's creditors was put down as "Philip F. 
 Dummey" — the checks given in payment were 
 indorsed by members of a few firms in which Tweed 
 and some of his accomplices were partners. Al- 
 together, the Controller's books fully supported The 
 Times's editorial assertion that a man who had a 
 bill of $5000 against the city for work honestly 
 done could not get it paid until he raised it to $55,000, 
 with the balance going by one means or another to 
 Tweed and his friends. 
 
 Readers of The Times were allowed one day to 
 think over the first chapter from Connolly's books, 
 and on the 24th another followed. There was 
 still another before the end of the week, and on 
 
 107 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 Saturday the 29th all the evidence, with some 
 editorial comment, was put into a special four-page 
 supplement. This document was printed in both 
 English and German; for the German-Americans 
 at that time were a much more distinct racial group 
 than at present, and one which furnished valuable 
 aid to municipal reform. But, for various motives 
 of which partisanship was the most worthy, the 
 German-American press had hitherto given its 
 support to Tweed; so The Times let the Germans 
 read the evidence in their own language. 
 
 It had been announced beforehand that two hun- 
 dred thousand copies of that supplement would be 
 issued — a wholly unprecedented edition for a New 
 York paper in those days. As a matter of fact the 
 edition ran to 220,000, and a few hours after the 
 presses had stopped it became apparent that this 
 had not begun to meet the demand. The presses 
 started again, and for a whole week were run con- 
 tinuously, except when getting out the regular 
 issues of The Times, in printing the famous supple- 
 ment. Altogether more than half a million copies 
 were issued. The people of New York now had the 
 proof; it remained to be seen if they were capable of 
 defending themselves. 
 
 At first the ring was confident enough. Tweed's 
 famous comment, "Well, what are you going to 
 do about it?" epitomized their reaction to the ex- 
 posure. Mayor Hall seemed to think that he could 
 meet the accusations by declaring that the papers 
 were "surreptitiously obtained from a dishonest 
 se rvan t,^^~anaTrsavs~a good deal ibr-the-»tandards 
 of the time that the charge of dishonesty against 
 
 108 
 
THE TIMES AND THE TWEED RING 
 
 the man who had exposed the theft of millions by 
 city officials was seriously received by a large part 
 of the public. Hall further remarked that the 
 animus of The Times could be found in the delayed 
 payment for the advertising contract already men- 
 tioned. Neither he nor anybody else made other 
 reference to the story told by the figures than an 
 occasional remark about "alleged records" or "garbled 
 accounts." 
 
 All over the country the revelations made by The 
 Times were the chief topic of news, and of editorial 
 comment. Only in New York City did the news- 
 papers appear to know nothing about it. Greeley, 
 to be sure, who belatedly remembered that he was not 
 only a moral man but a Republican, ventured to 
 suggest that Tweed and his associates might sue 
 The Times for libel, a procedure which The Times 
 earnestly invited; but the other papers did not even 
 by this much dignify the disclosures with any com- 
 ment that might be twisted into an admission that 
 they amounted to anything. The papers of London 
 and Paris published long editorial comments on 
 New York politics, but the New York papers seemed 
 to see in them only what Mayor Hall called them, 
 "the gross attacks of a partisan journal upon the 
 credit of the city." 
 
 Nevertheless, the public, or a part of it, was 
 awakened. The claims, it will be remembered, 
 which were authorized by the Board of Audit — 
 and which, it was now apparent, contained anywhere 
 from sixty to a hundred per cent of pure graft — 
 were to be met by the issuance of revenue bonds 
 payable during the year. For two years there had 
 
 109 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 been no statement of city finances. As Foord 
 writes, "Nobody save the men in power and those 
 in their immediate confidence knew at what figure 
 city bonds were being negotiated, or at what rate 
 the debt was increasing." The first consequence 
 of the revelations was the sudden and very natural 
 refusal of bankers to lend any more money to an 
 administration which was getting no one knew how 
 much, but pretty certainly was stealing most of 
 what it got. And there, for some weeks, matters 
 rested. Public indignation was steadily rising as The 
 Times brought out more evidence; most of the tax 
 money had been spent, and the city could no longer 
 borrow money; municipal employes were not 
 getting their pay. Already the summer of 1871 
 had seen one serious riot, when several hundred 
 members of an Irish mob which had attacked the 
 Orangemen's parade had been shot down by militia, 
 and it seemed that this might be only a beginning. 
 Now mobs of unpaid laborers gathered every day 
 in City Hall Park; and Tweed and his friends, with 
 the aid of his newspaper supporters, were trying with 
 some success to transfer the blame for the shortage 
 of city money from the thieves to the reformers 
 who had exposed the thefts. And while there was 
 not much money left in the city treasury, there was 
 no guarantee that Tweed and his friends would not 
 steal what little had escaped them. For they 
 calmly refused to resign, and under the Tweed 
 charter they could not be removed. 
 
 On September 4 there was a mass meeting of 
 citizens in Cooper Union, with former Mayor William 
 F. Havemeyer presiding, and a committee of seventy 
 
 no 
 
THE TIMES AND THE TWEED RING 
 
 was appointed to investigate the frauds and prosecute 
 the criminals. But Tweed and his friends were not 
 asleep; immediately after this meeting there was a 
 "robbery" in the Controller's office. The vouchers 
 which would have furnished evidence that no jury 
 could have disregarded were taken out of the glass 
 case which had been thought sufficient to protect 
 them, and it was later found that they had been 
 removed, and burned, by a Tweed official. Some- 
 thing desperate had to be done, and John Foley, 
 a prominent figure in reform movements of the time, 
 did it. Bringing suit as a taxpayer, he got an injunc- 
 tion on September 14 restraining the Controller 
 from paying out any more money on claims against 
 the city. 
 
 This meant that not only the fraudulent claims 
 coiild not be paid, but the honest claims of contractors, 
 the wages of laborers, even the wages of the police. 
 If the four chief conspirators had had the courage 
 to hang on and wait for the inevitable riots, it is 
 possible that they could have escaped with no other 
 punishment than the compulsion to be a little more 
 moderate thereafter; for the rioters would un- 
 doubtedly have turned their attention to The Times 
 and the reformers before going on to the more 
 profitable investigation of the stores of Broadway 
 and the residences of Fifth Avenue, leaving the 
 homes of Tweed and his friends untouched under 
 their guards of "shoulder hitters." But luckily 
 the conspirators lost their nerve, and then came one 
 more proof of the famiHar fact that the principal 
 advantage of the forces of law over the criminal 
 classes lies in the absence of honor among thieves. 
 
 Ill 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 The Mayor suggested to Controller Connolly that 
 inasmuch as his administration had been somewhat 
 discredited by the voucher theft, he had better 
 resign. Connolly rightly thought that resignation 
 just then would be taken as confession, and he also 
 concluded that Tweed, Hall and Sweeney had de- 
 cided that somebody would have to be thrown to 
 the wolves. Being in some perplexity, he asked 
 the advice of Samuel J. Tilden and William F. 
 Havemeyer, with whom he had been associated 
 in the more respectable activities of the Democratic 
 party; and they promptly told him that he had 
 better appoint Andrew H. Green as Deputy Con- 
 troller and turn over the office to him. There were 
 few men in the city who knew more than Green 
 about the city government, and none who was more 
 certainly above suspicion. Connolly took the ad- 
 vice, and Green's appointment on September 16 
 marked the beginning of the end of the Tweed ring. 
 
 In the second phase of the fight The Times had 
 more assistance, for reform was beginning to become 
 not only fairly safe, but somewhat popular. But 
 it was also less spectacular, and Green's tenure of 
 office took the form of a long trench war against all 
 forms of corruption, intimidation, and chicanery. 
 The Mayor at first refused to recognize the appoint- 
 ment, and then tried to turn him out; the office had 
 to be guarded by armed men. Under the injunction 
 the Deputy Controller could pay out no city money, 
 and the funds left in the treasury were not sufficient 
 to meet the interest on city bonds which would be 
 due in six weeks. While valid claims were being 
 
 112 
 
THE TIMES AND THE TWEED RING 
 
 sorted out from the mass of fraudulent charges no 
 pay rolls could be met, and the danger of riot dis- 
 appeared only very slowly and gradually. Before 
 it disappeared The Star, a paper w hich had receivfld 
 a good_deal of m oney fro m the_ ring,^jj[hlishsd the 
 ^lome addresses'orjenmngTaSid Jones, with a hardly 
 veiIe3™suggestioii""t6 city' empktyfe'whose" families 
 were starving that these men were responsible for 
 the stoppage of wages. When The Times made 
 some comments on this The Star had the hardihood 
 to declare that not The Star but The Times was 
 inciting to riot — by trying to prevent Tweed and 
 his friends from collecting what little was left. 
 
 Not all the newspapers of the city attempted to 
 stir up riots, but virtually all of them were hostile 
 to Green's administration of the city finances. The 
 •reason was simple enough; among the bills which he 
 refused to pay until their validity had been certified 
 were those for newspaper advertising. In conse- 
 quence of this the man who actually put a stop to 
 the thefts and brought the city finances into as near 
 order as was possible after two years of wholesale 
 brigandage — who had borrowed money on the 
 strength of his own reputation for integrity to meet 
 immediate and unavoidable obligations, at a time 
 when he had no legal authority to make commit- 
 ments in the name of the city — who eventually 
 saw that all honest creditors got their money, and 
 that as little as possible was paid out for suspicious 
 claims, had to fight through the greater part of his 
 term of oflSce with practically no newspaper support 
 except from The Times. 
 
 I Green had the hardest and most thankless part 
 
 "3 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 of the work; even of the papers which still opposed 
 him some had begun before election day to denounce 
 Tweed and all his doings except those by_ which 
 the papers stood to profit. The inv estigations of 
 t>e.atizemiXimimi£teeandJMr/rilden's study of the 
 accourits_ in jJie^BroadseLy. bank, showing _how_the 
 stolen money was. diviifid, had driven some of the 
 more timorous members of the Tweed combination 
 to seek foreign parts; and it was clear that if the 
 election went against Tweed the ring was broken. 
 And it did go against him. Tweed's own district 
 sent him back to the State Senate, but almost all 
 of his candidates elsewhere were beaten; and The 
 Times jubilantly asserted that the result "justifies 
 our confidence in the capacity of the people, even in 
 large cities, for self-government." 
 
 That was a long time ago; men had not learned 
 then that though St. Michael may slay the dragon 
 on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in 
 November, that old serpent will probably be crawling 
 about as vigorous as ever by the middle of June. 
 The Tweed ring, to be sure, was broken, and the 
 consequences of the prosecution were fairly typical 
 of what has happened in a hundred similar cases in 
 American municipal history. Because Tweed was 
 the chief offender, because the evils of his time had 
 become embodied, in the popular imagination, in his 
 person, he was pursued with vigor through a long 
 and tortuous career of indictments, hung juries, 
 convictions, prison terms unduly shortened by 
 technicaUties, flights to California, Spain, and Cuba, 
 rearrests, civil suits, and finally commitment in 
 
 114 
 
5l|1l:3 II S" lil ill a -5 
 
 
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 - , - - . ^ i i = s « I f = J I ^ I * ! I 
 
 ■2 tj 5 - s s 
 
 
THE TIMES AND THE TWEED RING 
 
 default of payment of a judgment to Ludlow Street 
 jail, where he died. Of the other principals in the 
 ring all in one way or another escaped jail; a few 
 minor personages were convicted and locked up, 
 and of the numerous millions stolen from the city a 
 few hundred thousand dollars was recovered. And 
 that was all. 
 
 Three years later the Tammany ticket once more 
 swept the city. To be sure, it was a somewhat 
 deodorized Tammany. It was ruled by Honest John 
 Kelly, and its ticket contained so considerable an 
 infusion of respectable men that it might be a matter 
 of some doubt whether the tiger was a black beast 
 with yellow stripes or a yellow beast with black 
 stripes. But it was the same old tiger, and before 
 long it was up to the same old tricks. . In view of all 
 this, municipal reformers may be excused if they 
 occasionally become faint with weariness and the 
 heat of the day; if they wonder whether their efforts 
 really serve any useful end but their own personal 
 pleasure, and incline to suspect that while they 
 may be hedonists, they are certainly not utilitarians. 
 
 Nevertheless, experience has shown that this same 
 prematurely triumphant Times editorial was accu- 
 rate when it said that "the theory that government 
 is only organized robbery has received its death 
 blow." No other administration has ever been so 
 bad as that over which Oakey Hall presided and 
 which was ruled by Tweed. Even the worst govern- 
 ments of later decades did give the city some value 
 for at least a good part-of the money spent, and there 
 has never been any parallel to the astounding rob- 
 beries committed under the guise of repairs and 
 
 "S 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 furnishings for the Tweed courthouse. Reform 
 movements are bolder now; they have behind them 
 something of a tradition of occasional victory. 
 They are no longer beaten before they start; they 
 need no longer fear that there is serious danger of 
 voters being terrorized by mobs of gangsters, or 
 of regularly elected candidates being counted out. 
 That a majority of the residents of New York City 
 still prefer a bad government to a good one might 
 be assumed from election results now as ever, but 
 some of them change their minds occasionally, and 
 the minority which wants a decent administration 
 no longer stays away from the polls from sheer 
 hopeless conviction that it could accomplish nothing. 
 No city administration of these times could dream 
 of attempting to conceal its accounts from the 
 public; and certainly no future Tweed, if there shall 
 ever be any, would find that respectable newspapers 
 are willing, as they were in 1871, to eat the bread of 
 infamy and earn the wage of shame. 
 
 For these ameliorations, such as they are, no 
 single man can claim the credit. They are the work 
 of many public-spirited men working through many 
 years. But no one man has contributed so much to 
 this improvement as George Jones. 
 
 n^ 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 National Politics, 1872-1884 
 
 ' I ^HE victory over Tweed was such a success as 
 -'- no American newspaper had ever scored before. 
 It raised the prestige of The Times to a height that 
 had been unheard of even in the most prosperous 
 periods of Raymond's editorship, and gave it a 
 world-wide renown eclipsing that which The Herald 
 had won by its lavishness and eccentricities, while 
 establishing It solidly in the favor of friends of good 
 government in the United States. In the year after 
 Tweed's fall The Times received still further acces- 
 sions of influence and prosperity through the defec- 
 tion of The Tribune from the Republican party. At 
 that time, only seven years after Appomattox, par- 
 tisan animosities burned with a fierceness such as 
 Americans of a later generation can hardly realize, 
 and even in the case of newspapers which as pur- 
 veyors of the news were as good as The Times and 
 The Tribune, a large if not a predominant part of 
 the constituency valued the paper as a political 
 organ rather than as a vehicle of information. When 
 Greeley split off from his party and accepted a 
 presidential nomination not only from the Liberal 
 Republicans but from the Democrats, The Tribune 
 suffered as The Times had suffered in 1866, and 
 considerably more. In 1872 The Times could and 
 did advertise itself as "the only Republican morn- 
 
 117 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 ing paper in New York," and the support of the 
 faithful flowed to it accordingly. Its influence in 
 the early seventies was greater than it had ever 
 been before, and its prosperity may be judged by 
 the fact that some of its stock sold In 1876 at fifteen 
 times the face value. 
 
 Yet the prosperous and powerful Times of the 
 seventies had a circulation only about a tenth of 
 that enjoyed by The Times today. Evidence for the 
 entire period is not available, but in the fall of 1871 
 — at the height of the campaign against Tweed, 
 just before the election in which The Times led the 
 reform forces to victory — the circulation never ex- 
 ceeded 36,000. The circulation of the supplement 
 with the extracts from the Controller's books is, 
 of course, an exception, and now and then on the 
 morning after election the paper might have shown 
 a higher figure; but on the whole it may be said that 
 the leading Republican paper of the East at least, 
 if not of the entire United States, in, those years of 
 prosperity sold an3rwhere from 31,000 to 35,000 
 copies a day. 
 
 It would be Interesting to learn just what was the 
 true circulation of The Times's contemporaries. 
 Whatever it may have been, it was certainly not 
 what they asserted. But statements of circulation 
 fifty years ago belonged to the field of relativity 
 rather than of conventional mathematics, and the 
 circulation managers of that day have long since 
 gone to face the final audit of the Recording Angel. 
 
 And even on this small circulation The Times paid 
 regularly a dividend of eighty, ninety, or a hundred 
 per cent on Its capitalization of $100,000. There 
 
 118 
 
NATIONAL POLITICS, 1872-1884 
 
 was no reason why it shouldn't have paid dividends. 
 Salaries were lower, as were Uving costs. The ex- 
 pense of news getting was still very moderate. 
 During the later months of 1918 The Times often 
 had a bill for cable tolls of ^15,000 a week, but in 
 the seventies $15,000 would have paid the cable tolls 
 of all the New York newspapers for a whole year. 
 And while the circulation of daily papers was not 
 large, most of them had weekly editions; and the 
 ethical standards of the time permitted papers to 
 allow the national committees of the great parties, 
 in presidential years, to buy and distribute the 
 weekly edition by the hundred thousands. That 
 source of revenue has disappeared with the disap- 
 pearance of weekly editions, and with the spread 
 of a newer conception of newspaper ethics for which 
 the present management of The Times may per- 
 haps claim some degree of credit. A similar im- 
 provement has led to the exclusion of certain kinds 
 of advertising which in the seventies were regarded 
 as unobjectionable. 
 
 It may be observed that the business conscience 
 of The Times in the seventies was notably higher 
 than that of some of its contemporaries. By all 
 the standards of the time, its prosperity was well 
 deserved, as was its political influence. Neverthe- 
 less, there was from the first a certain insecurity in 
 this lofty position — an insecurity due to the char- 
 acter which Raymond had given The Times from its 
 very first number; injdeed, even from that pros- 
 pectus which had promised that it would be free 
 from "bigoted devotion to narrow interests." For 
 there had been a painful degree of truth in Oakey 
 
 119 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 Hall's observation when The Times first published 
 the figures from Connolly's books, that such an 
 eminent Republican newspaper might be able to 
 keep itself busy investigating the corruption in its 
 own party. To the scandals which flourished in 
 Washington, invisible to the somewhat too long- 
 sighted eye of President Grant, the editors of The 
 Times could not be blind; and seeing them they 
 could not fail to condemn them, even though their 
 Republican principles made them sometimes delay 
 such condemnation rather too long in the hope that 
 the party would do its own housecleaning. Unfor- 
 tunately, the party was not so minded; and The 
 Times, which had always maintained a measure of 
 independence unusual in its day, was compelled on 
 occasion to express itself with a frankness which 
 met with disfavor from more extreme partisans. 
 
 So the chief interest in the history of The Times 
 in the thirteen years between the overthrow of 
 Tweed and the campaign of 1884 lies in the struggle 
 of its editors, continually more diificult and finally 
 hopeless, to reconcile their principles with their 
 party allegiance. To one who studies the evidence 
 of that struggle in the columns of the paper for 
 those years there is apt to be suggested the simile 
 of a loyal wife doing her best to get along with a 
 scandalously dissipated husband. The Times had 
 not exactly married the Republican party to reform 
 it, but it did what it could to bring the party back 
 to the strait and narrow path, and without success. 
 Its reproaches were dignified; they never sank to 
 the level of nagging; perhaps, indeed, they were too 
 dignified to be effective, as The Times' s readiness to 
 
 120 
 
NATIONAL POLITICS, 1872-1884 
 
 believe in the reformatory intentions of its errant 
 partner was certainly too complaisant. But at last 
 the connection became unendurable, and under the 
 final affront of the nomination of Blaine The Times 
 walked out of the party and slammed the door. 
 After that it would have taken a miracle of miracles 
 to bring it back. 
 
 When the Liberal Republicans met in 1872, The 
 Times saw in their convention a strange assort- 
 ment of well-intentioned but impractical doctrinaires, 
 and of practical politicians who were disappointed 
 because their rivals had crowded them away 
 from the trough. That reform was needed The 
 Times did not deny, but it could not see that it 
 was likely to be accomplished by these gentlemen. 
 And when the Cincinnati convention nominated 
 Horace Greeley, the paper which had known Greeley 
 and enjoyed his hostility for twenty years had no 
 further occasion to seek for any concealed merits in 
 the Liberal Republican organization. Greeley's at- 
 titude toward Tweed had weakened his standing 
 as a reformer; and when he permitted the Demo- 
 crats to accept him as their candidate the paper 
 which Greeley had so fiercely denounced, only six 
 years earlier, for favoring a policy of reconciliation 
 with the South could hardly place as much faith 
 in his sincere desire for better things as perhaps it 
 merited. Persons so violently and assiduously sin- 
 cere as Greeley in a variety of contradictory causes 
 can hardly expect to be understood by their fellows 
 who are less gifted in moral fervor and metaphysical 
 tergiversation. In view of the standards of news- 
 paper controversy prevalent at the time, it says a 
 
 121 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 good deal for the editors of The Times that they 
 confined their attacks on Greeley to his political 
 views and affiliations, and did not drag out the old 
 scandal of Fourierism and free love. 
 
 Yet The Times did not deny during that cam- 
 paign that something had to be done. On October 
 29, 1872, in the course of an editorial devoted chiefly 
 to the prediction that the reelection of Grant in the 
 following week would mean the disappearance of the 
 Democratic party, there appeared this observation: 
 
 With the exception of one or two un- 
 founded flings or insinuations at the present 
 administration, there is nothing in the Cin- 
 cinnati platform [Liberal Republican] to 
 which any Republican will not heartily 
 assent, nor on the other hand is there any- 
 thinginthe platform adopted at Philadelphia 
 [by the regulars] to which any supporter 
 of Horace Greeley can take exception. 
 
 However, it could well have seemed to honest and 
 patriotic men in 1872 — and indeed it did seem to 
 several millions of them — that it was safer to 
 give the Republican organization another chance. 
 Though The Times was at that time probably 
 the strongest and most influential Republican 
 paper in the country, though its editors could have 
 solidified their position and made still more certain 
 their prosperity by becoming an out-and-out party 
 organ, they did not fail in the succeeding years to 
 denounce the misdeeds of men in Washington, even 
 when close to the administration. 
 
 As a collector and distributor of news, too. The 
 Times maintained in the early seventies the high 
 
 122 
 
EUWARD GARY. 
 
 Associate Editor, 
 
 1871-1917. 
 
 •i,» 
 
 JOHN NOERIS, 
 
 Buf^iness Manager, 
 
 1900-1911. 
 
NATIONAL POLITICS, 1872-1884 
 
 standard of past years, and often surpassed it. The 
 cable was now working at last, though its capacity 
 was small. The Franco-German war had seen the 
 first use of its facilities for the transmission of im- 
 portant news, and even then only two or three col- 
 umns a day of condensed bulletins and official 
 statements had come in this way, with the mails 
 bringing the detailed accounts of the defeats of 
 the French army, the heroism of the Defense Na- 
 tionale, the fall of one empire and the rise of 
 another. 
 
 The Times covered that war thoroughly and well. 
 If it was somewhat outshone by The Tribune, it had 
 an honorable excuse; for The Times in 1870-71 was 
 giving up a good deal of its space, and of its energy, 
 to attacks on Tweed, while The Tribune had no in- 
 terest in this particular field of the news. Great 
 domestic news stories of the period were also han- 
 dled exceptionally well. In the case of the fires at 
 Chicago in 1871 and Boston in 1872 The Times gave 
 more than a page on each of the first two days to 
 stories of the disaster, and at the time of the Boston 
 fire issued special editions through the afternoon 
 of Sunday while the fire was at its height. 
 
 Much of the credit for the excellence of The Times 
 news service at this period must go to John C. Reid, 
 who came to the paper in 1872 and served for seven- 
 teen years thereafter as managing editor. He was 
 one of the greatest news editors of the time, a 
 pioneer of the new age which has seen the news 
 department take over a good deal of the predomi- 
 nance which formerly belonged to the editorial page. 
 Under Reid, The Times performed in 1874 and 1875 
 
 123 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 a feat without parallel in New York journalism up 
 to that time, the reporting in full of the court pro- 
 ceedings in the suit of Theodore Tilton against the 
 Rev. Henry Ward Beecher for alienation of Mrs. 
 Tilton's affections and misconduct with her. Edi- 
 torial comment, at the time and later, suggests 
 that the editors of The Times did not have that 
 complete faith in the reverend gentleman's inno- 
 cence which was entertained by his congregation, 
 and the prevalence of doubt in the community was 
 suggested by the eventual disagreement of the jury. 
 But they handled the news with full appreciation of 
 its value. Each day's story began with a "lead" 
 of two columns or so, followed by a complete steno- 
 graphic transcript of evidence and argument, the 
 whole sometimes taking up as much as three pages 
 in what was by that time a twelve-page newspaper. 
 It was an expensive proceeding, but it was a great 
 achievement in giving the public the news. 
 
 No doubt a good many readers of The Times 
 thought that the paper was giving an undue amount 
 of space to this chronicle of sin and suffering. Those 
 complaints come in often enough even in these days 
 from readers who appreciate the paper's general 
 reluctance to display news of this sort, and wonder 
 why a good general rule should occasionally be vio- 
 lated. But there was a reason in the Beecher case, 
 as there has usually been a reason in similar affairs 
 since. Dr. Beecher was one of the most prominent 
 clergymen in the country; there was a natural curi- 
 osity as to whether he was practicing what he 
 preached. One of the counsel at the trial declared 
 that "all Christendom was hanging on its outcome." 
 
 124 
 
NATIONAL POLITICS, 1872-1884 
 
 Full reporting of its course was not a mere pandering 
 to vulgar curiosity, but a recognition of the value 
 of the case as news. 
 
 But always in the background was the horren- 
 dous ghost of Republican corruption and misgov- 
 ernment, a ghost which refused to be laid and 
 which was every now and then uttering hollow 
 groans such as could not fail to be heard by the 
 editors even of a good Republican paper. General 
 Grant's second administration failed to be that 
 Saturnian reign which The Times had hoped in 1872. 
 The great panic of 1873, though no doubt a natural 
 reaction from the violent expansion just after the 
 Civil War, provided a background of economic dis- 
 satisfaction for political discontent. A bad busi- 
 ness kept getting worse, and it was becoming 
 apparent that the country might not be willing 
 to wait much longer for the often-deferred reforms 
 within the party. And a warning, strong and 
 unmistakable, was given by the election of 1874 
 when the Democrats recaptured the House of Rep- 
 resentatives, and elected governors in a number of 
 states, including New York. 
 
 Looking back from the vantage point of half a cen- 
 tury later, one is compelled to admit that The Times 
 seems to have been somewhat unjust to Samuel J. 
 Tilden, whose great accompHshments in exposing and 
 prosecuting members of the Tweed group had won 
 him the Democratic nomination for the governorship 
 in 1874. The Times felt that Tilden had only 
 climbed on the band wagon of reform when it had 
 become safe to do so. During the early and critical 
 
 125 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 days of the struggle against Tweed, before the pub- 
 lication of the Controller's accounts, Tilden had 
 given The Times no help; but neither had anybody- 
 else except Thomas Nast. And it could not be de- 
 nied that the beginning of the end had come when 
 Connolly turned over his office to Andrew H. Green, 
 on Tilden's advice and insistence. This alone would 
 have given Tilden an honorable place in the gallery 
 of reformers, and his later services in analyzing the 
 accounts of the Broadway Bahk which showed the 
 disposition of the plunder, and in forcing the im- 
 peachment of the worst of the Tweed-Fisk judges, 
 had been of great and enduring value. Against this 
 The Times could set off his tolerance of Tweed be- 
 fore the exposures, and of the undoubted fraud 
 which had procured the Democratic victory in the 
 state and city elections of 1868. Tilden had kept 
 his eyes shut when they should have been open; 
 but he was not the only man who did that in the 
 gilded age. He had opened them at last, and opened 
 them quite as widely as the eyes of The Times were 
 open toward similar misconduct in the Republican 
 party. He was in pretty bad company before 1871, 
 and when he accepted the support of Kelly in 1874. 
 But a politician who wanted to keep out of bad 
 company in those days would have had to climb 
 to the top of an ivory tower and pull his ladder up 
 after him. 
 
 When Tilden was nominated for the governorship 
 The Times had given cordial enough recognition of 
 his ability and character, and its opposition to him 
 during the campaign was directed only against his 
 associates. Indeed, Tilden suffered like many re- 
 
 126 
 
NATIONAL POLITICS, 1872-1884 
 
 spectable candidates from the distrust of some of 
 his supporters; and he set an excellent precedent 
 by showing very promptly that he was his own 
 master. Unlike many of the western leaders of his 
 party, he was a sound-money man. He was as firm 
 against Tammany as ever. And presently he un- 
 covered, prosecuted, and broke up the bipartisan 
 ring of canal grafters which had for years past main- 
 tained pleasant and profitable relations with admin- 
 istrations of both parties. The Times gave Tilden 
 hearty support against the canal conspirators, and 
 at the same time it was compelled to condemn the 
 scandalous abuses which had been disclosed in Wash- 
 ington, abuses not only ignored by the national 
 administration, but oftentimes actually shared in by 
 men more or less close to the throne. In 1875 the 
 prospect of the coming elections was enough to dis- 
 courage any honest Republican. A Democratic 
 governor of New York was sending political crooks 
 to jail without caring what party they belonged to, 
 while a Republican president of undoubted personal 
 integrity was blindly standing by his friends, and 
 every week or so brought some new evidence that 
 his friends were profiting by his confidence. 
 
 The men who managed the Federal government 
 behind the respectable figure of Grant could neither 
 learn nor forget. The Times was compelled to repeat 
 that the third-term movement was folly; that there 
 was no reason for breaking an old and sound prece- 
 dent for the sake of a man whose executive abilities 
 were obviously not of a class with his military talents. 
 The third-term movement eventually subsided, to 
 rise again in later years; but with its subsidence came 
 
 127 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 the growth of the probability that James G. Blaine 
 would become the Presidential candidate. And most 
 of the editors of The Times vf eve convinced that Blaine 
 would not do. Reform was needed, was demanded; 
 and it would be an insult to the country to pretend 
 that Blaine was the man to bring it about. 
 
 By giving expression, even with due caution, to 
 these opinions, The Times had by the beginning of 
 1876 fallen pretty well into the bad graces of an 
 administration which on the whole it had supported 
 much more steadfastly than that administration 
 deserved, and dissatisfaction with The Times's in- 
 dependence led to another scheme to take the paper 
 away from George Jones, whom the friends of the 
 administration regarded as chiefly responsible for The 
 Times's unwillingness to exculpate a thief merely 
 because he was a Republican. Jones was the larg- 
 est stockholder, but he was not a majority stock- 
 holder. He had been saved from a similar attempt 
 during the light against Tweed by the opportune 
 assistance of E. B. Morgan, but in 1876 he had to 
 save himself. And, unfortunately, he had enemies 
 within the office. Louis J. Jennings, the editor-in- 
 chief, whose Republicanism was of a more blazing 
 and reckless type than Jones's, entered into a plan 
 with certain Republican politicians affiliated with the 
 Grant administration to get control of the paper and 
 make it a real organ of the party. Apparently they 
 had some support among the stockholders; and the 
 ten shares belonging to the estate of James B. 
 Taylor were now on the market and might be used 
 to solidify the control of The Times in the hands of 
 Jennings and his friends. 
 
 128 
 
NATIONAL POLITICS, 1872-1884 
 
 But on February 4, 1876, it was announced that 
 Jones had bought the Taylor stock, thus becoming 
 for the first time owner of a majority of the shares. 
 The price paid for Taylor's ten shares was $i50,ocx), 
 and this fact had become known in financial and 
 newspaper circles. Rivals of The Times, unwilling 
 to admit that this represented the real value of the 
 stock, had circulated the report that part of the 
 price represented "back dividends," or that it had 
 been unduly inflated by bidding up against the 
 friends of Jennings. It was also said that The 
 Times had spent $40,000 in reporting the Beecher 
 trial; if so, it got it all back in increased circulation. 
 At any rate, Jones took the occasion of the announce- 
 ment of this purchase to deny all these rumors, and 
 to inform' the public that in 1875 The Times had 
 paid a dividend of $100,000, or 100 per cent of the 
 par value of its stock. At that rate $15,000 a share 
 was a reasonable enough price. 
 
 Further the announcement informed The Times 
 readers that 
 
 at no time during the last fifteen years [that 
 is, since the beginning of the Civil War] 
 has the paper paid a less dividend than 80 
 per cent on the original capital, and in 
 some cases the dividend has been 100 per 
 cent. During the same period the entire 
 indebtedness on The Times Building and 
 property has been paid off, and the paper 
 is now in the satisfactory position of owing 
 no one anything. 
 
 It was added that the circulation was larger than 
 ever before in The Times' s history. 
 
 129 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 The conspiracy being thus defeated, and Jones 
 left in unhampered control of the paper, Jennings 
 resigned in the following month and went back to 
 England, where he became a member of Parliament, 
 and passed his later years in the writing of books 
 about the joys of the rural pedestrian. One of the 
 illustrated papers at the time celebrated Jennings's 
 departure by a cartoon which represented Jones 
 standing on the roof of the Times Building and 
 administering to his late editor-in-chief a kick which 
 had sent him clear across the Atlantic, so that he 
 might be seen in the distance dropping on the sod 
 of Great Britain. Jennings had made many ene- 
 mies in New York, who were glad to see him go; 
 but it must be said that this scurrilous caricature 
 somewhat unduly simplified and dramatized the 
 transaction. 
 
 John Foord, who had made his reputation by his 
 work on the Connolly books, succeeded Jennings as 
 editor and held that position until 1883. 
 
 So The Times came into the campaign of 1876 still a 
 Republican paper, but a paper with a shade of inde- 
 pendence unpleasing to true zealots of the party. It 
 was a campaign in which the paper played a very im- 
 portant part, and in whose outcome one of its execu- 
 tives, acting on his own responsibility and outside of 
 office hours, had a part which was probably decisive. 
 The Times* s attitude toward both the threatened nomi- 
 nation of Blaine, and what many have always be- 
 lieved to have been the election of Tilden, has been 
 the subject of some misconception and of a certain 
 amount of interested misrepresentation. The ac- 
 
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NATIONAL POLITICS, 1872-1884 
 
 count which follows is based upon office tradition 
 and the recollection of surviving members of the staff, 
 together with a study of the files of the period. 
 
 If Blaine, whom The Times had shown to be 
 clearly unfit for the Presidential chair, had ac- 
 tually been nominated in 1876, there would un- 
 doubtedly have been some beating of the breast in 
 The Times office, but the balance of probability seems 
 to indicate that the paper would have supported him. 
 But the Mulligan letters disabled Blaine for the time 
 being, and the convention set a precedent by select- 
 ing a respectable gentleman from Ohio, who was not 
 handicapped by a record, bad or good. The Times 
 supported Hayes with an enthusiasm undoubtedly 
 enhanced by the memory of what had so narrowly 
 been escaped, and attacked Tilden with a bitter- 
 ness which can be explained only by the combination 
 of an honest conviction that he was the less desirable 
 candidate with a deadly fear that he was going to 
 be elected. The sentiments of the editors concern- 
 ing the great issues of the time, when those issues 
 could be separated from questions of partisan pref- 
 erence and personal hostility, may be read in an 
 editorial on November 10, headed "Republican 
 Responsibilities." This was two days after the 
 election. The first awful sinking of heart that had 
 come with the early returns on election night had 
 passed away; latest returns — at least Republican 
 returns — from the doubtful states indicated victory; 
 and it was not yet apparent that the Democrats 
 would be unsportsmanlike enough to object to any 
 measures by which the Grand Old Party that had 
 saved the Union might find it necessary to perpetu- 
 
 131 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 ate its beneficent sway. Two days after the elec- 
 tion Republicans could speak their honest feelings 
 with a freedom that would have been unsafe before 
 and afterward, and in the editorial of that day The 
 Times denounced the carpet-bag governments, and 
 declared that the party would not have had such a 
 narrow squeak if its leaders had paid attention to 
 the popular demand for reforms in the civil service 
 and the national finance. That editorial of No- 
 vember lo, in fact, is a sound and well reasoned 
 Democratic campaign document. 
 
 The Times' s news service during the campaign was 
 full and able. It was, unfortunately, dominated by 
 political prejudice; but to a large degree that was 
 the rule in those days, and though political corre- 
 spondence was full of vituperation of the enemy. 
 The Times was generally first with the news, good or 
 bad. Something must also be allowed for the tem- 
 perament of John Reid, the managing editor. Reid 
 had served in the war and had spent some time 
 in Libby Prison. According to an office tradition, 
 a Virginian who had known him before the war ob- 
 served as he was entering: "There goes John Reid. 
 He'll never come out alive." Unfortunately, Reid 
 overheard him, and upon coming out alive he trans- 
 ferred his resentment from this lone rebel to the 
 entire Democratic party. Whatever weight may be 
 given to this legend, Reid's partisanship was cer- 
 tainly rather exceptionally bitter even for those days, 
 and was reflected to some degree in the news columns 
 of The Times. 
 
 The paper had had a number of political corre- 
 spondents in the South, and its readers were pretty 
 
 132 
 
NATIONAL POLITICS, 1872-1884 
 
 well informed of the conditions likely to surround 
 the election. It was a time of bitter feeling, a trial 
 of strength between the reviving forces of southern 
 self-government and the carpet-bag administrations 
 which saw themselves facing a long postponed and 
 heavy accounting. The result of the polling at any 
 given point would pretty obviously turn on the 
 question whether the Ku Klux would keep the 
 negroes away from the polls or the regular army 
 would keep the Ku Klux away from the polls. On 
 both sides were very earnest men, so firmly con- 
 vinced of the eternal justice of their purpose that 
 they felt that the end legitimized any means that 
 might be necessary. So the election of 1876, all 
 through the South, could be accurately described, 
 in Clausewitz's famous phrase, as "the continua- 
 tion of politics by other means." 
 
 Early reports from all sources on election night 
 indicated that Tilden was winning. But early reports 
 on election night do not always, though they do gen- 
 erally, furnish an accurate forecast of the result, as 
 is evident from the recent example of 1916. The 
 other papers conceded the election of Tilden — even 
 The Tribune, which was trying to atone by excess of 
 zeal for its heresy of 1872. But the first edition of 
 The Times — which went to press at a considerably 
 later hour in those days than is now customary — 
 began with the headline: "A Doubtful Election." 
 
 And it was a doubtful election, some of the 
 states being still claimed by both sides, with that 
 pertinacity which campaign managers exhibit when 
 they have any excuse at all. The first-edition 
 editorial contained the statements that the re- 
 
 133 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 suit was still in doubt and that both parties had 
 "exhausted their full legitimate strength," to- 
 gether with some observations on Democratic elec- 
 tion methods in New York City and in the South, 
 "where there is only too much reason to fear that 
 they have been successful." Then some analysis of 
 the electoral vote, conceding most of the South to 
 the Democrats and ending in the conclusion that to 
 elect Tilden the Democrats would have to carry, of 
 the states where the contest had been hardest, New 
 York, New Jersey, and either Oregon or Florida. 
 New York they had beyond dispute; at the time of 
 sending the edition to press the result in New Jersey 
 was uncertain; Oregon had not been heard from; 
 and Florida was claimed by the Democrats. 
 
 The final election extra, which went to press at 
 six o'clock in the morning, contained the same state- 
 ments as to the doubtful result. New Jersey was 
 conceded to the Democrats; Oregon was claimed for 
 the Republicans. The tabulation assigned 184 votes 
 to Tilden and 181 to Hayes, including Oregon, Louis- 
 iana and South Carolina, with the four of Florida 
 still in doubt; and the editorial ended with the state- 
 ment that, "if the Republicans have carried that 
 state, as they claim," Hayes would win by one vote. 
 John Bigelow, in his life of Tilden, saw a deep and 
 dark significance in the fact that ungenerous refer- 
 ences to the Democratic shotgun tactics in the South, 
 and the fear that they had been successful, had been 
 removed from the editorial in the last edition. 
 Having been a newspaperman once himself, Mr. 
 Bigelow might have appreciated the fact that some- 
 thing had to be taken out in order to insert the tab- 
 
 134 
 
NATIONAL POLITICS, 1872-1884 
 
 ulation of the vote by states, which appeared in the 
 last edition and not in the first, while still leaving 
 the article of approximately the same length. 
 
 It will be seen that the essential differences be- 
 tween the first and last editions consist in the ascrip- 
 tion of Oregon, previously not heard from, to the 
 Republicans, the substitution of a Republican as- 
 sertion of victory in Florida for the Democratic 
 claim made in the earlier edition, with the final re- 
 sult set down as doubtful, and the transfer of Louisi- 
 ana and South Carolina from Tilden to Hayes. 
 
 Any number of profound and elaborate explana- 
 tions have been offered for these changes, as well as 
 for TheTimes's assertion that the result was doubtful. 
 One story, first published in The Sun in 1887, was 
 that Zachariah Chandler, chairman of the Republican 
 National Committee, and William E. Chandler, who 
 seems to have been a sort of deckhand and general 
 roustabout for that body, sent a message to The 
 Times in the early morning hours instructing the 
 paper to "claim Louisiana, Florida, and South Caro- 
 lina at all hazards, through thick and thin." Aside 
 from the fact that The Times was not under the 
 orders of these gentlemen, this story is disposed of 
 by the circumstance that at that time Zack Chandler 
 was asleep in his room at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, 
 and probably troubled by nightmares, while Wil- 
 liam E. Chandler was just arriving by train from 
 New Hampshire, and reading in The Tribune of the 
 great Tilden victory. 
 
 More widely circulated, and more generally be- 
 lieved, has been the tale that The Times would never 
 have thought of casting any doubt on the election 
 
 ^3S 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 of Tilden if Abram S. Hewitt, chairman of the 
 Democratic National Committee, had not incau- 
 tiously sent a message to the office, toward morning, 
 asking what figures The Times had from Louisiana, 
 Florida, and South Carolina. According to this ver- 
 sion, Reid decided that if the Democratic National 
 Committee didn't know what had happened, it might 
 still be possible to save the sinking ship; a point 
 of view which certainly Reid did impress on Zack 
 Chandler after the last edition had been put to bed. 
 
 But in supposing that this message had a decisive 
 influence on The Times, some chroniclers of the epi- 
 sode have forgotten that a newspaper office on elec- 
 tion night receives news from other sources than 
 national committees. It is true that about mid- 
 night Hewitt sent to The Times office to ask what 
 majority the paper was conceding to Tilden, and 
 Reid defiantly answered, "None!" As the first edi- 
 tion shows, the other editors were not quite so posi- 
 tive in their confidence; but at least this fact pretty 
 well refutes the allegation that when the first edi- 
 tion went to press The Times had no doubt of the 
 election of Tilden. 
 
 The other message, asking for The Times's figures 
 from the doubtful states, did indeed come in from 
 the Democratic headquarters — not from Hewitt, 
 but from Arthur Pue Gorman — between editions; 
 and it did undoubtedly gladden the heart of John 
 Reid. But its influence on the men who declared in 
 the final edition that the election was in doubt was 
 only subsidiary. That the Democrats had no news 
 of glorious victories in the doubtful states was a 
 fact to be taken into consideration, but along with, 
 
 136 
 
NATIONAL POLITICS, 1872-1884 
 
 and subordinate to, the other facts which had come 
 into the office in the telegraphic dispatches of early 
 morning. 
 
 The truth is, in the words of an article printed in 
 The Times on June ii, 1887, that 
 
 on the morning after the election of 1876 
 The Times had the news — which no other 
 paper in the United States had, and which 
 the Republican National Committee did 
 not have. It obtained it through its own 
 enterprise and sagacity, and it paid for it. 
 
 And the news was that the result was still in doubt. 
 
 When the last edition went to press that morning, 
 there were present in The Times office John Foord, 
 the editor-in-chief, George Shepard and Edward 
 Gary, political editorial writers, and John Reid, man- 
 aging editor; besides Charles R. Miller, the present 
 editor of the paper, who was then at the telegraph 
 desk, and labored under the added handicap of 
 being the lone supporter of Tilden in a company 
 whose other members were all Republicans. The 
 editorial council passed upon the news. 
 
 What was the news.? Oregon had been heard 
 from. An Associated Press dispatch from Portland, 
 by way of San Francisco, reported that the Republi- 
 cans claimed the state by a majority of five hundred. 
 That was the only news from Oregon, and it is the 
 sort of news which has been accepted provisionally, 
 in default of better, in every newspaper office in 
 the country on every election night. Florida was 
 still in doubt. An early morning dispatch from 
 Augusta, Georgia, said that the Democrats claimed 
 Florida by a small majority; a dispatch from the 
 
 137 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 same place just before midnight had said that "both 
 sides claim the state." If Reid's enthusiasm carried 
 the council out of line, it was in the weighing of 
 those two dispatches. 
 
 South Carolina had been put by The Times in 
 the Republican column. An Associated Press dis- 
 patch from Charleston at 2:15 a.m. said that the 
 election was very close, and that it seemed probable 
 that the Republican Presidential ticket and the 
 Democratic state ticket would win. An earlier mes- 
 sage from the same source said that the Democrats 
 claimed the state by four thousand, but that the 
 result depended on some of the coast counties which 
 could not be reached by telegraph. A special dis- 
 patch to The Times from Columbia reported that 
 the Republicans had probably carried the state by 
 10,000, and that the Republican state committee 
 claimed it by from 1 5,000 to 20,000. 
 
 Louisiana The Times also assigned to Hayes. A 
 message from the chairman of the Republican state 
 committee declared that the state had gone Repub- 
 lican by six or eight thousand; an Associated Press 
 dispatch from New Orleans said that the Democrats 
 claimed the state by 20,000, "the best informed 
 moderate Republicans" by 4000; but that the re- 
 turns were "meager and insufficient for an accurate 
 estimate." 
 
 This was the evidence. It certainly seems that it 
 offered reasonable ground for thinking that the elec- 
 tion was still in doubt; and if the Democratic Na- 
 tional Committee itself was not informed as to the 
 result in some of the doubtful states, that fact hardly 
 justified news editors in giving them off-hand to the 
 
 138 
 
TIMES SQUARE, 
 WORLD SERIES BASEBALL CROWD. 
 
 •'C) Brown Bro.H 
 
NATIONAL POLITICS, 1872-1884 
 
 Democrats. In The Times Jubilee Supplement the 
 chief influence in making this decision was assigned 
 to Edward Gary, who was certainly not a bigoted 
 RepubUcan, and who could hardly be suspected of 
 much sympathy with the sort of methods that might, 
 and presently did, commend themselves to Zack 
 Chandler. 
 
 To working newspapermen who know upon what 
 slender grounds election night estimates are some- 
 times made up, and how generally these hazardous 
 estimates are justified by the event, the decision of 
 The Times editors will arouse little of the suspicion 
 that was drawn upon this transaction by the pro- 
 ceedings of the Republican leaders in the following 
 weeks. 
 
 Undoubtedly, The Times incurred unwarranted 
 suspicion on this occasion from the enterprises sub- 
 sequently undertaken, motu propria, by its manag- 
 ing editor. But when John Reid left The Times 
 office at daybreak on Wednesday, woke Zack Chan- 
 dler out of his troubled sleep, and presented that sur- 
 prised but delighted statesman with his own analysis 
 of the election returns, he was acting as an unter- 
 rified Republican and not as managing editor of The 
 Times. The paper can hardly be held responsible 
 for the telegrams which he presently dispatched to 
 Republican leaders in the doubtful states, over 
 Chandler's signature, containing such pointed sug- 
 gestions as "Don't be defrauded" and "Can you 
 hold your state?" Those telegrams were charged 
 to The Times because at the telegraph office where 
 Reid filed them the Republican National Committee 
 had no charge account. In the circumstances, Mr. 
 
 139 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 John Bigelow's indignant comments on the conspir- 
 acy in The Times office are somewhat beside the 
 point. But then Mr. Bigelow, besides having a very 
 real ground for indignation in the proceedings which 
 eventually put Hayes in the White House, had per- 
 haps, through the unhappy though innocent experi- 
 ence with the gold corner which ended his career as 
 editor of The Times, acquired a somewhat exaggerated 
 impression of the susceptibility of the paper to the 
 schemes of conspirators. 
 
 Thursday's paper began with the joyful heading, 
 "The Battle Won," and contained the declaration that 
 Florida was Republican by 1 500 or 2000. But it must 
 be confessed that the dispatches on which this was 
 based all came from Republican campaign managers, 
 and it requires no very fantastic imagination to see 
 in them the prompt response to the messages which 
 Reid had dispatched in the name of Zack Chandler 
 on Wednesday morning. Thereafter the paper stuck 
 to its guns; it believed honestly that Hayes had been 
 elected and it said so. Newspaper custom of the 
 period did not require that the election night's news 
 should contain any statements from the authorities 
 of the opposition party, or any account of the man- 
 ner in which the opposition candidate received the 
 returns. On Wednesday The Times had published 
 a dispatch from Columbus on Hayes's reception of 
 the news, but not till Friday did it notice the Demo- 
 crats at all, and then only to denounce as fabrica- 
 tions some assertions of the "outrage mill, other- 
 wise the press bureau of the Democratic National 
 Committee, which continued to maintain the he- 
 
 140 
 
NATIONAL POLITICS, 1872-1884 
 
 retical opinion that Tilden had been elected. On 
 Saturday an editorial headed, "Let the Count Be 
 Honest" expressed approval of Grant's ordering 
 regulars to the disputed states, and echoed his 
 statement that it would be infinitely better for the 
 party to lose the election than to win a victory 
 "tainted by the suspicion of fraud." There can be 
 no doubt that the man who wrote these lines was 
 quite as sincere as when he went on in the next 
 paragraph to declare that an honest count would 
 show that Hayes was elected. 
 
 The editors of The Times could see no merit in the 
 proposal of an electoral commission. To The Times 
 it was indubitable that the President of the Senate 
 alone had the right to count the votes as received 
 from the states, and that the two Houses had no 
 more privilege in the matter than any other spec- 
 tators. There was a good deal of force in The Times' s 
 criticisms of the electoral commission. Proposed as 
 a method for reconciling the conflicting claims of the 
 two Houses of Congress, it was easily reducible in 
 fact to the shifting of the whole burden of decision 
 to a single Justice of the Supreme Court. Not 
 without reason The Times observed that it would be 
 simpler, and equally fair, to let Tilden and Hayes 
 cut for the high card; and the paper's disapproval 
 of the measure as bringing the Supreme Court into 
 politics was entirely justified by the event. 
 
 It appears, however, that objections to the elec- 
 toral commission were based in some degree on the 
 fear that some of its Republican members would 
 double-cross Hayes. The Times was obviously re- 
 lieved when David Davis, who was expected to be- 
 
 141 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 come the nonpartisan fifteenth member of the com- 
 mission, resigned his seat on the supreme bench to 
 go into the Senate, but it did not breathe easily till 
 the first of the cases from Florida had been decided. 
 The Times editorial the next day expressed regret 
 that the decision had been reached by the partisan 
 vote of eight to seven, but the explanation was easy : 
 "Not one Democratic Senator, not even one Demo- 
 cratic Justice, could be found impartial enough to 
 sustain the decision which was finally reached" — 
 by the eight Republicans. 
 
 Though for some of President Hayes's policies The 
 Times's praise could be only damningly faint, it 
 supported him vigorously when it could in his ef- 
 forts to improve the standard of public service, and 
 it found reason for jubilation in at least one event 
 which happened during his administration — the 
 resumption of specie payments. The Times had 
 fought so steadily and vigorously for the maintenance 
 of sound principles of national finance and currency 
 that it could see in this one more sign that hope for 
 better things in public life was not wholly illusory. 
 
 One effect of Hayes's conduct of the Presidential 
 office was to give The Times a higher opinion of his 
 predecessor, and when the campaign of 1880 came 
 in sight the paper gave some encouragement to the 
 movement to bring General Grant in for a third 
 term. But this support seems to have been due 
 largely to the returning fear of Blaine, and lack of 
 confidence in some of the other competitors for the 
 nomination. At any rate, when the Republican con- 
 vention nominated Garfield The Times gave him 
 
 142 
 
NATIONAL POLITICS, 1872-1884 
 
 hearty support. If the statement that he was 
 'strong in his freedom from intrigue to gain the 
 nomination" hardly seems as indisputable after forty 
 years as it did when it was written. The Times' s ap- 
 proval of his soundness on financial issues was as 
 creditable to him as to the paper. And if the edi- 
 torial on the civil service plank in the Republican 
 platform was compelled to admit that the party 
 leaders were against any reform in this direction, the 
 editors could soothe their suspicions of the Grand 
 Old Party by turning their eyes to the familiar spec- 
 tacle of the iniquitous opposition. News dispatches 
 from the Democratic convention were full of such 
 violent denunciations and such bitter sneers as 
 would not now be likely to appear even in editorial 
 criticism of the opposition party. When Hancock 
 was nominated The Times called him "a pretentious 
 blockhead," "an inflated Franklin Pierce," and 
 remarked that the convention had "nominated a 
 Northern General to resurrect a Confederate gov- 
 ernment." Hayes, to the great dissatisfaction of 
 The Times, as well as of a good many northern Re- 
 publicans who were not yet certain that the South 
 was back in the Union, had withdrawn the Federal 
 troops from the southern states, and it was evident 
 that this election could not be won either before or 
 after the counting of the vote by the methods that 
 had succeeded in 1876. Perhaps fear of the out- 
 come may account for the vigor with which The Times 
 derided Tilden's refusal to let his name go before 
 the convention, and continued its attacks on "the 
 great claimant" until Hancock was actually the 
 candidate. 
 
 143 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 However, there was no uncertainty as to the 
 result of the election of 1 880. The story of the elec- 
 tion of Garfield and Arthur in The Times of Wednes- 
 day morning, November 3, was headed "The Great 
 Trust Renewed," and the editorial comment as usual 
 referred to the "great responsibilities" which lay on 
 the leaders of the Republican party. "The momen- 
 tous issues of the past are decided," said The Times, 
 in remarking that sectional questions were disap- 
 pearing and that an election was once more turning 
 on problems which did not depend on the climate 
 for their impression on the voters. How true that 
 was The Times itself was to show four years later. 
 
 In the quarrel over patronage in New York State 
 which led to the fight between Garfield and Conkling 
 The Times sided with the President, and made some 
 severe criticisms of the part played in support of 
 the New York Senators by Vice-President Arthur — 
 whom, when he was nominated, it had described as 
 "a man eminently worthy of a wider sphere for his 
 abilities." That description is not usually applied 
 to the Vice Presidency, but when Arthur exerted 
 his abilities in the extra-official sphere of manipula- 
 tions at Albany a great many people felt that this 
 was rather beneath the dignity of the second officer 
 of the Federal government. And then Garfield was 
 shot. 
 
 The Times's editorial comment on the morning 
 after very naturally pointed the moral of the evil 
 results occasioned by the demoralization of the civil 
 service, which had led a disappointed office seeker 
 to shoot the President of the United States. Also 
 
 144 
 
NATIONAL POLITICS, 1872-1884 
 
 there was some rather stern castigation for political 
 leaders whose bitter attacks on the President might 
 have had their effect on the mind of Guiteau, which 
 in The Times' s opinion was "not remotely akin" to 
 those of Conkling and Piatt, The next editorial, 
 headed "To Whom It May Concern," contained 
 these somewhat pointed observations : 
 
 When James A. Garfield was reported 
 yesterday as lying at the point of death, 
 new bitterness was added to the poignancy 
 of public feeling by the thought that 
 Chester A. Arthur would be his successor. 
 . . . No holder of the vice-presidential office 
 has ever made it so plainly subordinate 
 to his self-interest as a politician and his 
 narrowness as a partisan. 
 
 When Garfield died, however, The Times expressed 
 approval of the correctness of Arthur's attitude dur- 
 ing the interim in which there had been much dis- 
 cussion of the President's "disability." But it 
 added : 
 
 The moment he selects an administrative 
 officer because the nominee is his friend, 
 and not at all because he possesses quali- 
 ties which render him obviously fit to 
 perform certain public duties, that moment 
 his administration will be discredited. 
 
 Arthur's record made this admonition somewhat 
 desirable, but if it should be taken literally, one 
 must fear that a good many administrations would 
 have been discredited. 
 
 Arthur as President turned out a good deal better 
 than there had been reason to fear, but by no means 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 as well as could have been desired; and throughout 
 his term The Times was slowly drawing farther away 
 from what politicians would call reliability. The 
 great causes in which the paper had long been in- 
 terested now absorbed still more of its attention; 
 civil service reform, though progressing slowly, was 
 having a hard fight against the sturdy opposition 
 of political leaders; tariiF reform was still for most 
 of the country a matter of religious sentiment and 
 not of common sense, as Hancock discovered to his 
 misfortune; and prevalent through much of the 
 country, especially those parts of the West in which 
 a whole generation was working itself to death to 
 bring in civilization, there was a conviction that most 
 of the problems of poverty would be solved if by 
 some formula men could borrow hundred-cent dol- 
 lars and pay their debts in fifty-cent dollars, or in 
 pieces of paper which the United States government 
 might see fit to regard as dollars. 
 
 To educate the public on these Issues took up 
 much of the energy of the editors of The Times, and 
 the perception that their efforts were regarded as a 
 rule with positive hostility by the leaders of the 
 party gradually cooled that fierce RepubHcan enthu- 
 siasm which had burned highest in the office in 1876. 
 Moreover, corruption at Washington was not yet a 
 matter of ancient history; and The Times in 1881, 
 by exposing the Star Route frauds, accomplished a 
 public service which deserves to be ranked next to 
 the overthrow of Tweed in the paper's res gestae. 
 
 The contracting for the delivery of mails on cer- 
 tain routes (marked with a star on post-office records) 
 lying for the most part in remote and thinly settled 
 
 146 
 
■ ■ '1-1 im »■» 
 
 115 Ml 
 
 5|fiiiiilii^ilil 
 
 
 ■I ... 
 
 a I4J 
 
 
 I- 
 
 
 aa««ss< 
 
 Igi' 
 
 * Mill 
 
 
NATIONAL POLITICS, 1872-1884 
 
 parts of the country, had provided an opening for 
 some enterprising grafters. The stealing had been 
 going on for years, and the money abstracted from 
 the public treasury seems to have amounted to 
 something like eight or ten million dollars. The 
 guilty ofi&cials were to be found in almost every 
 branch of the service, and their confederates outside 
 the department included several politicians of na- 
 tional eminence. 
 
 The frauds were discovered by some of those 
 eccentric persons who, holding public office in that 
 period, regarded it as their duty to live on their 
 salaries and treat their offices as a public trust. 
 Like the men who exposed Tweed, they knew there 
 was not much use in reporting their discoveries to 
 high officials; and like those men they offered the 
 facts to a newspaper. The parallel goes one step 
 farther; in each case The Times was the second choice. 
 Information as to the Star Route peculations was 
 offered to the Washington correspondent of another 
 New York newspaper, who sent to his office a syn- 
 opsis of the evidence. It was plain to the editors 
 that the trail led pretty high up in the post-office 
 department and in political life outside, and it seems 
 to have been feared that in the rarefied atmosphere 
 of those lofty altitudes investigating journalists 
 might find the climbing uncomfortable. So the paper 
 first selected by the discoverers declined their offer- 
 ings with thanks, and they came to The Times. 
 
 The work of following up their leads and analyz- 
 ing the methods of the conspirators was given to 
 Frank D. Root of The Times Washington office, who 
 is still with the paper. He did his work very thor- 
 
 147 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 oughly, and by way of a greeting to the new admin- 
 istration The Times in the spring of 1881 pubUshed 
 the whole history of the frauds with appropriate 
 comment. In the early days of the exposure, Root's 
 stories sometimes occupied the entire front page of 
 the paper and most of the second; and they had their 
 effect in indictments, resignations, and a clean-up, 
 of the department. The eventual result, of course, 
 was not wholly satisfactory. Four years later, in 
 editorial comment on the end of the last of the 
 numerous prosecutions arising from the disclosures. 
 The Times was compelled to record that the case had 
 closed with "not one cent recovered and not one 
 guilty man punished." But the stealing had been 
 stopped, and one more piece of evidence had been 
 offered that with the development of investigative 
 journalism the way of the transgressor was at least 
 a little harder than in the past. 
 
 In another instance in that same year 7*^1? Times 
 showed that it could crusade when it found occa- 
 sion. Justice Theodoric R. Westbrook of the state 
 Supreme Court had been lending his valuable sup- 
 port to Jay Gould in the financier's effort to get con- 
 trol of the Manhattan Elevated Railway Company. 
 The jurist had even gone to the length of holding 
 court in Gould's office, and had written to Gould 
 that he would "go to the very verge of judicial dis- 
 cretion " in the aid of Gould's schemes. The Times 
 investigated and exposed these transactions, which 
 were promptly taken up in the Assembly in the hope 
 of impeaching the judge. One of the leaders in the 
 effort to get the Assembly to impeach Westbrook 
 was a young man of good family just beginning his 
 
 148 
 
NATIONAL POLITICS, 1872-1884 
 
 official career, to whom the city editor of The Times 
 furnished the evidence on which he based his first 
 attack on a misbehaving public servant and a male- 
 factor of great wealth. As usual, justice flashed in 
 the pan; the Assembly, for certain devious but not 
 very dark reasons, finally refused to bring charges 
 against Westbrook; but the judge thereafter walked 
 as delicately as Agag when he was dealing with Jay 
 Gould, and Assemblyman Theodore Roosevelt found 
 himself well started on a career as a reformer, which 
 The Times always thereafter regarded with interest 
 even when it could not give it support. 
 
 Another enterprise of the paper at about that time 
 was of a less bellicose nature, but equally praise- 
 worthy — the raising of a $250,000 fund for General 
 Grant. First suggested in 1880 by John M. Forbes 
 of Boston, it was taken up by The Times immedi- 
 ately after the election. George Jones took a deep 
 personal interest in the campaign, and succeeded in 
 pushing it through to complete success by the fol- 
 lowing March. Thereafter he served as one of the 
 trustees of the fund until his death. 
 
 Accomplishments such as these, together with the 
 general high standard of the paper's news service 
 and editorial expression, kept The Times prosperous 
 and powerful in the early eighties. New influences 
 were coming into journalism; changes which were 
 perhaps deplorable, but probably inevitable, were 
 bringing papers of a different type into prominence; 
 but The Times maintained its distinction as a con- 
 servative paper — a Republican paper, to be sure, 
 but never subservient to the party managers, inter- 
 
 149 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 ested in a number of causes essentially nonpartisan 
 and so drifting steadily away from partisan alle- 
 giance. That it would actually break away from the 
 party nobody expected until it actually happened, 
 but the ground was prepared by the whole history 
 of the paper and of the party in the previous 
 years. 
 
 By 1884 a good many men were getting ready to 
 break away from the Republican party. Those 
 promises of reform had been too often made and too 
 regularly forgotten to carry much conviction. The 
 party's reputation was no longer sufficient to carry 
 a weak candidate; by the beginning of 1884 sensible 
 men were beginning to realize that it would need a 
 very strong candidate and a lot of luck. And when it 
 became apparent that James G. Blaine, carrying all 
 the handicap of the Mulligan letters and the rest of 
 his past, was likely to get the nomination, and that 
 the most hopeful of his competitors was President 
 Arthur, it was evident that the party might have to 
 carry a heavier load than it had borne for a number 
 of years. The first efforts of The Times were devoted 
 to a fight against either of these nominations, and all 
 through the spring of 1884 the paper conducted an 
 editorial campaign designed to remind Republicans 
 who wanted to win that this year the head of the 
 ticket might have to carry the party instead of riding 
 free on its record. 
 
 By that time the editor of The Times was Charles 
 R. Miller, who had succeeded John Foord as editor- 
 in-chief in April, 1883, and who has held that posi- 
 tion ever since. Mr. Miller was born in Hanover, 
 N. H., in 1849, graduated from Dartmouth, in 1872, 
 
 ISO 
 
NATIONAL POLITICS, 1872-1884 
 
 and after several years on The Springfield Republican 
 came to The Times in 1 876. Though of Democratic 
 origin, he was at that time an independent in 
 politics. His influence must be counted as con- 
 siderable in determining the course of the paper in 
 the campaign, but most of the other editors and Mr. 
 Jones were in agreement that this year at any rate 
 it would be impossible to support an obviously unfit 
 nominee. An exception should be made of the ever- 
 faithful Reid, who continued to believe that the Re- 
 publican party was the sole repository of eternal 
 truth, and thought that even a hint of departure 
 from its ranks was the unpardonable sin. But nearly 
 everybody else on The Times felt that though the 
 paper ought to support the Republican ticket if it 
 could, there were circumstances in which its duty to 
 the public demanded a different course. 
 
 The deciding voice, however, had to be that of 
 Mr. Jones. The editors who had grown tired of 
 apologizing for the party's record, who had felt the 
 gradual turning away of many of the most honorable 
 and intelligent Republicans from the leaders of the 
 party, and who had seen with misgiving the failure 
 of efforts to head off the drift to Blaine — these men 
 did not own the paper. In fact, none of them had 
 any stock in it at all, and the certain financial penal- 
 ties of secession from the party must be borne by 
 Jones. These considerations were laid frankly before 
 the owner of the paper by its editor, and with equal 
 frankness he declared that he could not and would 
 not support a candidate whom he regarded as de- 
 plorably unfit for the Presidential ofiice. 
 
 The Times published on May 23 an editorial 
 
 151 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 headed "Neither Blaine nor Arthur." The text of 
 that sermon lay in this sentence: 
 
 The list of men to choose from is not a 
 long one. We do not believe that this is a 
 year when "any good Republican will do. " 
 
 But there was still hope in the office that the Repub- 
 lican convention would select a satisfactory can- 
 didate, and on the same page appeared an editorial 
 caUing attention to the blunders which the Democrats 
 had committed, as usual, in the House of Repre- 
 sentatives. 
 
 The next day the campaign was continued in an 
 article headed "Neither Arthur nor Blaine." In 
 this, Mr. Miller spoke aloud an opinion which a good 
 many Republicans had been almost afraid to whis- 
 per in private, but which they knew to be true: 
 "The party is not strong enough to elect a President 
 by the votes of what may be called its regular 
 members." The notorious defects of Blaine were 
 briefly mentioned, and President Arthur was dis- 
 missed with the remark that he 
 
 has done better than was expected, and 
 is reported to have been a modest, quiet, 
 inoffensive occupant of the executive office. 
 
 But this was no time for modesty and inofFensive- 
 ness; the country needed something more than that. 
 
 Neither Blaine nor Arthur [the editorial 
 continued] is a possible President. The 
 choice of a candidate must start from that 
 fact. That once clearly recognized, it ought 
 not be difficult to find a man who can poll 
 the full Republican vote, and with it enough 
 
 IS2 
 
NATIONAL POLITICS, 1872-1884 
 
 of the independent vote to keep the govern- 
 ment in the hands of the party which, we 
 are convinced, is the safest and best. 
 
 When the suspicion gradually arose that The Times 
 might not swallow Blaine, people began to ask ques- 
 tions. One of these — a query from an indignant 
 subscriber who asked outright "if The Times will 
 support the nominee of the Chicago Republican 
 Convention " — was answered on the editorial page 
 May 29. 
 
 If the nominee of the Chicago Republican 
 Convention [said the editorial reply] is a 
 man worthy to be President of the United 
 States, The New York Times will give 
 him a hearty and vigorous support. If he 
 shall be a man unworthy to hold that high 
 office, a man who personally and politically, 
 in office or out, represents principles and 
 practices which The Times abhors and has 
 counseled the party to shun, we shall watch 
 with great interest the efforts of those re- 
 sponsible for such a nomination to elect the 
 candidate, but we shall give them no help. 
 
 There it was in plain language: Raymond's paper, 
 Jones's paper, the paper that had led the Repub- 
 lican journalism of the nation for a decade, would 
 not support Blaine. That it would support the 
 Democratic nominee was as yet by no means cer- 
 tain, even to its editors, and in the spring of 1884 
 nobody looked on the possible departure from the 
 Republican party as anything but a temporary ab- 
 sence without leave; but absence of any kind, for 
 any reason, was certain to displease a great many 
 readers, and it was yet to be seen whether the 
 
 153 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 paper's defection would do more harm to the Repub- 
 lican party or to The Times. 
 
 At any rate, the decision was soon made. Blaine 
 was nominated June 6, on the fourth ballot, and on 
 the following morning a Times editorial headed 
 "Facing the Fires of Defeat" announced that the 
 paper would not support him, but would watch the 
 party's adventures in the ensuing canvass with 
 the interest of a friend and physician. Blaine, in the 
 opinion of The Times, represented "the average of 
 Republican principles and purposes, of Republican 
 honor and conscience, as they now are"; and it was 
 suggested that "defeat will be the salvation of the 
 Republican party." The editors of a Republican 
 paper which had just made such a difficult and 
 costly decision might be expected to hope and be- 
 lieve that one sad experience would purge the party, 
 and that thereafter inteUigent and patriotic men 
 could return to it without qualms. That The Times 
 never has returned to the party, and that for the 
 next twelve years it leaned toward the Democrats, 
 was due partly to the unexpectedly large amount of 
 original sin remaining in the Republican party even 
 after the purgatorial experience of 1884, and partly 
 to the new spirit that was coming into American 
 politics, and was embodied by Grover Cleveland. 
 
 IS4 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 The Times in Transition, 1884-1896 
 
 npHE campaign of 1884 definitely closed an epoch 
 -'■ in the history of The Times. It is hardly 
 likely that anybody foresaw how complete would 
 be the break with the party which for twenty-eight 
 years had commanded the loyal support of the 
 paper. The Republicans had no monopoly of 
 corruption and incompetence, and it was quite 
 possible that the Democrats might make a nomi- 
 nation as bad as that of the party in power. But 
 they did not. Cleveland was not very well known 
 in 1884, but his good record as Governor had given 
 the editors of The Times confidence in his principles 
 and his capacity. At that time they were not 
 personally acquainted with him; the long personal 
 friendship between Mr. Miller and the President 
 was a later growth. But what they knew of his 
 public record was satisfactory, and they soon came 
 to the conclusion that he deserved the paper's sup- 
 port. And they had a good deal of company; in 
 the latter part of July a considerable number of the 
 best men in the Republican party decided to support 
 Cleveland, and the Mugwump campaign was on. 
 
 So, if The Times had left the party with which 
 it had so long been associated, it found itself almost 
 at once recognized as the principal spokesman for a 
 group which represented much of the best of the old 
 
 15s 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 Republican party and practically none of its un- 
 desirable elements. And for years thereafter the 
 paper retained this position, and found its inde- 
 pendence not only more comfortable and satis- 
 factory than its former party allegiance, but for a 
 time almost as lucrative. The rejection of Blaine 
 did indeed bring losses, which were considerable 
 but not disastrous. And as an offset to the defec- 
 tions the paper won many new readers who had 
 previously found its intense Republicanism some- 
 what unpalatable. 
 
 The income did indeed drop a long way in that 
 year. The net profits of the paper were $188,000 
 in 1883 and only $56,000 in 1884. But much of this 
 decrease was due to the reduction in price from 
 four cents to two, in the hope of meeting the com- 
 petition of the two-cent World and Sun, which took 
 effect in September, 1883. And within a few years 
 The Times, despite the loss of circulation income 
 which followed the change to two cents, had recov- 
 ered most of the lost ground and was very nearly as 
 prosperous as it had been in its best years of the 
 past. The decline of its fortunes in the early nineties 
 was due to a complex of reasons, which will be 
 analyzed presently; but it does not seem that in the 
 long run it lost very much by abandoning the 
 Republican party. 
 
 What those readers missed who left it in 1884 was, 
 it may be presumed, not so much RepubHcan editorials 
 as Republican news. Though deeply aggrieved by 
 the alteration in the paper's political allegiance, 
 John Reid stuck to the ship, and before the 
 campaign was over the political correspondents were 
 
 156 
 
THE TIMES IN TRANSITION, 1884-1896 
 
 speaking of the Grand Old Party in pretty much the 
 same uncomplimentary language that had been 
 poured out in previous years on the Democrats. 
 Apparently political writers of the period were moved 
 more by loyalty to the paper than by their predilec- 
 tions for any party. 
 
 The result of the election was a little doubtful in 
 1884 — not so doubtful as some of the RepubHcan 
 leaders pretended, to be sure, but Cleveland carried 
 New York by only 1 100 votes, and without New York 
 he could not have won. On election night his sup- 
 porters thought his majority was considerably 
 larger, but some of the Republicans believed that 
 Blaine had carried the state, and certain eminent 
 stock speculators kept the wires busy with alleged 
 news to that effect. 
 
 The judgment of The Times rested on the re- 
 ports of its own unequaled election news service. 
 Those reports in 1876 had indicated that the election 
 was in doubt; and while at this distance one may 
 believe that the Republican claims were unjustified, 
 the evidence gathered by The Times correspondents 
 did point to a conclusion borne out by the results. 
 This was what happened in 1884. If three days 
 after the election The Times insisted that there could 
 no longer be any doubt of Cleveland's victory, it 
 was because the reports of correspondents in whom 
 the office had learned to have faith, and of the County 
 Chairmen who wired their figures every night, gave 
 New York to Cleveland by a majority of 1276. 
 This was less than two hundred off the final and 
 official figure; and to have come so close as that in a 
 vote of over a million, in those more primitive days 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 and in such a hotly contested election, was a really 
 remarkable feat of news-gathering. 
 
 President Cleveland turned out even better than 
 The Times had hoped. He fought persistently, and 
 in great measure successfully, for the causes in 
 which the paper was most deeply interested — 
 reform of the tariff and the civil service, and mainte- 
 nance of sound ideas of public finance. With him, 
 indeed, a new era began; the war was over, and the 
 folly of partisan divisions based on memories~of the 
 war was becoming more apparent. The old names, 
 the old forms, survived; but there were new issues 
 and new ideas, and for the next decade The Times 
 had an important part in forming the public opinion 
 of the new day. In 1888 The Times, still an in- 
 dependent paper, gave Cleveland its support for 
 reelection without any hesitation; he had earned it. 
 But David B. Hill, the Democratic candidate for 
 governor, had not earned, in The Times's opinion, 
 the support of the paper. Accordingly the paper's 
 influence in the state campaign was thrown to the 
 support of the gubernatorial candidacy of Warner 
 Miller. It was The Times' s luck to back the loser 
 in each case; Cleveland was beaten, and Miller went 
 down in history as "the intrepid leader who fell out- 
 side the breastworks." The Republican party was 
 coming back hungry after a long fast, and outside the 
 breastworks was a poor place to fall. Nothing 
 occurred in Benjamin Harrison's administration to 
 change The Times' s opinion that Grover Cleveland 
 was the most competent and trustworthy man in 
 American public life, and in 1892 it supported his 
 
 158 
 
THE TIMES IN TRANSITION, 1884-1896 
 
 presidential candidacy once more with the convic- 
 tion born of long acquaintance and complete con- 
 fidence. 
 
 In Cleveland's second term the paper had fallen 
 on evil days, financially, and its support was perhaps 
 no longer so powerful as it had been; but it was 
 whole-hearted and unhesitating through a period of 
 years when the President most needed friends. The 
 Republicans had luckily been turned out in time 
 to escape the blame for the panic of 1893, and were 
 prospering by the misfortunes and division of their 
 opponents. A good deal of the Democratic party 
 had gone out to eat grass like Nebuchadnezzar, and 
 the rest of it was mainly occupied in doing the work 
 of the Republicans in the tariff struggle. The 
 President's support was distinguished by quality 
 rather than by quantity. But The Times saw a man 
 fighting against desperate odds to preserve the 
 credit of the nation, to win more and more of the 
 public service away from the spoilsmen, and to keep 
 faith with the people on the tariff issue; and it did 
 what it could to hold up his hands. 
 
 What is perhaps even more to its credit, the paper 
 stood by Cleveland in the Venezuelan question, 
 when many who had supported him on domestic 
 issues thought that his rashness was likely to provoke 
 a needless war. The Times maintained throughout 
 that crisis that Cleveland's Venezuelan message to 
 Congress was not a war message but a peace mes- 
 sage; that the resources of routine diplomacy had 
 already been exhausted without result, and that 
 decisive and arresting action was needed to prevent 
 the dispute from drifting to a point where there 
 
 159 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 would have been nothing to do but give up the 
 Monroe Doctrine or fight. The event showed that 
 this view was correct. When the British govern- 
 ment reaHzed that America took the Monroe Doctrine 
 seriously neither the Ministry nor the people was 
 willing to make an issue in support of a petty in- 
 trigue of colonial policy, and Cleveland not only 
 won his point but succeeded in making both America 
 and England realize that they were worth a good 
 deal more to each other than they had suspected. 
 This happy consequence could not be foreseen at 
 the time by most Americans, and some of the most 
 bitter opponents of the President were men who had 
 hitherto given him their support. The position of 
 The Times was due not only to well-grounded con- 
 fidence in Cleveland's insight, but to a correct inter- 
 pretation of the issues; it is easy to praise it now, 
 but it took both wisdom and courage to adopt it then. 
 In 1896 the paper was in something of a quandary 
 as to the Presidential campaign. For the ideas and 
 the principles of William Jennings Bryan it had no 
 use; it had seen in past decades a good many Mes- 
 siahs from the tall grass who promised to make two 
 dollars grow where one had grown before. But 
 it saw no particular reason for confidence in the 
 party of Mark Hanna. On the tariflF question the 
 leaders of the Republican party stood for everything 
 The Times abhorred, and while eventually the party 
 and its candidate took the right position on the 
 overshadowing issue of the currency, they were a 
 N long time in making up their minds. So" The Times 
 I gave its support to the Gold Democratic ticket of 
 (^ Palmer and Buckner. In a sense, of course, its 
 
 160 
 
THE TIMES IN TRANSITION, 1884^1896 
 
 efforts were wasted; everybody knew that Palmer 
 and Buckner could do nothing but make a gesture 
 of protest. But a protest was badly needed in that 
 year. 
 
 At the end of Cleveland's second administration, on 
 March 2, 1897, The Times published a six-column 
 editorial signed with the initials of Charles R. Miller 
 — so far as can be discovered, the only signed 
 editorial that has ever appeared in the paper except 
 in discussion of the paper's own affairs — reviewing 
 the President's record. Today, when hardly any- 
 body denies Cleveland's claim to greatness, this 
 contemporary estimate can be studied with some 
 profit. In the history of The Times there is nothing 
 more creditable than the steadfast and loyal support 
 which the paper gave to Abraham Lincoln and 
 Grover Cleveland in dark days when it could not be 
 foreseen that the faith of its editors would be ap- 
 proved by the judgment of posterity. 
 
 American journalism was changing fast in the 
 eighties. The first influence in bringing in new 
 ideas, that were destined to work more powerfully 
 than their originators realized, was that of Charles 
 A. Dana; the most powerful influence was that of 
 Joseph Pulitzer. Between them, they eventually 
 succeeded in inflicting mortal injuries on the old 
 type of political newspaper that had flourished in 
 the age of the slavery issue, the Civil War and re- 
 construction. Of the old-timers The Times survived 
 longest — with the possible exception of The Tribune, 
 which passed a good many years in a state of coma 
 with only occasional signs of persisting vitality. 
 
 161 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 The modern type of newspaper in which the news 
 side is predominant, though not to the exclusion of a 
 vigorous editorial page, has taken form during the 
 control of The Times by the present management, 
 and it may not unfairly be said that that management 
 has had a considerable influence in establishing the 
 character of such papers; but in the late eighties and 
 early nineties American journalism was headed in a 
 different direction, and The Times stood out as 
 almost the last representative of the old school. 
 That it retained its influence in a changing world 
 so long as it did, and indeed that it survived its 
 extraneous misfortunes and lived to rise again, is 
 sufficient evidence of the vitality of its old organiza- 
 tion even when compelled to meet conditions for 
 which it was not wholly prepared. 
 
 Though "personal journalism" in the old sense 
 had passed, the editorial page was still for perhaps 
 the majority of Times readers the most important 
 part of the paper; but the news service was still good. 
 As an instance may be cited an episode which 
 was remembered In The Times office because of 
 the fact that it produced the most expensive cable 
 message which the paper has ever received. In 1884 
 there was under negotiation a commercial treaty 
 with Spain, which would have an important eflFect 
 on American trade with Cuba and Porto Rico. 
 John W. Foster, the American Minister in Madrid, 
 was conducting negotiations with the Spanish 
 Foreign Ministry; but the provisions of the expected 
 treaty were carefully kept a secret. Since they 
 were of great importance to all exporters and mer- 
 chants doing business with the Spanish West Indies, 
 
 162 
 
THE TIMES IN TRANSITION, 1884^1896 
 
 all the papers had been trying hard to find out the 
 contents of the treaty in Washington and Madrid; 
 but both governments were extremely reticent. At 
 last it became known that the treaty had been 
 completed, and that Minister Foster was bringing 
 it home for presentation to the Senate. 
 
 Early in December, 1884, The Times received 
 mformation that certain persons in Madrid were 
 able, and would be willing, to communicate the text 
 of the treaty, which they seem to have obtained 
 through financial connections, to an American 
 newspaper. At once The Times cabled a credit of 
 ^8000 to these men to cover cable tolls, necessary 
 expenses, and whatever personal remuneration might 
 be found suitable. The full text of the treaty was 
 cabled back to The Times, at a cable rate of 66 cents 
 a word, translated in the office, and published on 
 December 8. It occupied five columns of the front 
 page; and the rest of the page was taken up with 
 as many expressions of opinion from business men as 
 could be obtained on Sunday. 
 
 John W. Foster, on that morning, woke up in the 
 downtown hotel to which he had been driven from 
 the pier the night before, and upon opening his copy 
 of The Times dived hastily under the bed and looked 
 in his bag. To his certain knowledge the only copy 
 of that treaty in the United States had been brought 
 in by him the night before, and he could explain the 
 publication in The Times only on the theory that 
 somebody had gone through his baggage in the night. 
 But his copy of the treaty was still there; and it was 
 duly taken to Washington and laid before the Senate. 
 By that time, however, men who had studied the 
 
 163 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 treaty had come to the conclusion that it did not 
 give sufficient protection to American commercial 
 interests; and its rejection by the Senate may be 
 taken as the result principally of the prompt and 
 full publication in The Times. 
 
 Another foreign news story on which The Times 
 beat the town was the revolution in Brazil which 
 overthrew the Emperor, Dom Pedro II. A feature 
 of The Times which its readers could count on 
 every Sunday was Harold Frederic's cable letter 
 from London. In those simpler days only excep- 
 tional events in Europe were reported at any length 
 as soon as they happened; the daily cables carried 
 only a sort of skeleton of the news, and every New 
 York paper depended on the weekly cable letters 
 from London and Paris for general interpretative 
 discussion of foreign affairs. In this field, of great 
 importance in those days, Harold Frederic was in 
 the eighties and nineties without superior, and his 
 correspondence from London was one of the great 
 features of The Times. 
 
 Toward the very end of Mr. Jones's life — in the 
 early summer of 1891 — The Times undertook an- 
 other crusade, this time against certain abuses in 
 the New York Life Insurance Company. W. C. 
 Van Antwerp, then a member of The Times's Wall 
 Street staff and later president of the Stock Exchange, 
 followed up a tip which had come to the paper with 
 such amazing exposures that before long the officers 
 of the company had filed personal libel suits against 
 Jones and Miller for millions of dollars. These suits, 
 naturally, had no consequence except to make The 
 Times more diligent in proving its case; and the 
 
 164 
 
THE TIMES IN TRANSITION, 1884-1896 
 
 aflfair ended in the board of directors of the com- 
 pany coming in a body to the office of the editor 
 of The Times, and asking him to tell them how to 
 clean house. As a result of this visit John A. Mc- 
 Call was elected president of the company and the 
 necessary reforms were carried out. 
 
 The building which in 1857 had seemed prepos- 
 terously expensive and unnecessarily large for a news- 
 paper office was by this time too small. Construc- 
 tion of the second building erected by The Times, and 
 the fourth home of the paper — which, like the 
 first, was in its day the finest newspaper structure 
 in the country — was begun in 1888 from designs 
 by George B. Post, and involved an engineering feat 
 which aroused much astonishment at the time. It 
 was found impossible to move out temporarily while 
 the old building was razed and a new one erected on 
 the same spot, and it became necessary to tear down 
 the old building and put up the new one at the same 
 time, while the work of getting out the paper con- 
 tinued in the midst of the wreckers and rebuilders. 
 Thus as the old building disappeared the new one 
 gradually took shape in its place, and by April,i889, 
 the work of reconstruction was completed. 
 
 Mr. Jones was fond of saying in his later years 
 that this building would be his monument. He was 
 mistaken in that; it was soon surpassed in size and 
 splendor by new skyscrapers, and before long it 
 passed out of the control of 7"^!? Times, though it 
 continued to house the paper for a decade after it 
 had ceased to be in fact the Times Building. He 
 may have thought that the paper itself would be 
 
 16s 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 another monument, but in that, too, he was mis- 
 taken; The Times fell into misfortune and had to 
 be rebuilt by other men. His true monument is a 
 house not made with hands; it is to be found in a 
 better informed public opinion, a higher standard of 
 public morality; in a city and a nation where workers 
 for good government are no longer hopeless or afraid. 
 He died on August 12, 1891, at the age of eighty, 
 having spent the last half of his life in The Times 
 office. In the editorial appraisal of his work which 
 appeared in the paper after his death it was said 
 that 
 
 his wish was that the newspaper should 
 pay more attention to the worthy than to 
 the unworthy side of human nature, that 
 it should commend itself to right-thinking 
 persons of some seriousness of mind and 
 judgment rather than strive to satisfy the 
 desire to know what the sinful and frivolous 
 are about. 
 
 Further in that editorial it was stated that "no 
 writer of The Times was ever required or asked to 
 urge upon the public views which he did not accept 
 himself." This ought to be true on every news- 
 paper, and it is true on a good many — on more 
 today than thirty years ago. 
 
 To the best of the knowledge and belief of the 
 oldest members of the staff, it has always been true 
 on The Times. 
 
 It is often supposed that the decline in the finan- 
 cial prosperity of The Times which set in in the early 
 nineties had its origin years earlier, in the loss of 
 Republican readers in 1884 and the reluctance of 
 
 166 
 
THE TIMES IN TRANSITION, 1884-1896 
 
 Jones to adopt the new methods of a new age. As 
 already suggested, there does not seem much ground 
 for this belief. The ground lost in 1884 had been 
 pretty nearly recovered within three or four years. 
 What really started The Times downhill was the 
 heavy expense of the new building. The annual 
 profit dropped from well over ^100,000 in the middle 
 eighties to only ^15,000 in 1890. 
 
 It was true that the business system of The Times 
 was out of date. It had done well enough in the 
 sixties and seventies, when making a newspaper was 
 a much simpler and less expensive matter; but times 
 had changed. Expenses — necessary expenses — 
 were rising every year. Competition was keener, 
 abler, and more vigorous than ever before; and The 
 Times was at a disadvantage with some of its com- 
 petitors whose methods of advertising themselves, 
 and of gathering and presenting the news, were not 
 handicapped by any ethical scruples. A business 
 organization of the modern type the paper had never 
 had — and had never needed so long as George 
 Jones was alive. There was no sound system of 
 cost accounting; nobody knew just what the paper 
 was getting out of the money it spent. But if the 
 machine was antiquated and rusty, Jones knew 
 every pecuHarity of its workings, and so long as he 
 lived to run it he could get results. When he died 
 and a new man took the wheel, the defects of the 
 mechanism became painfully apparent. 
 
 The great majority of The Times stock was owned 
 by Mr. Jones at his death, and left by him to his 
 children, with the injunction, embodied in his will, 
 that the paper should never be sold. Its active 
 
 167 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 direction was assumed by his son Gilbert, and his 
 son-in-law, Henry L. Dyer. Gilbert E. Jones had 
 been trained in The Times office for twenty years, 
 but there are some things about newspaper manage- 
 ment that cannot be learned, but must come by the 
 gift of God. In one respect, indeed, Gilbert Jones 
 was an expert. He knew a great deal about news- 
 paper mechanics; but neither he nor Dyer could 
 operate an outworn business mechanism and recover 
 the money that had been sunk in the new building. 
 
 Also, The Times under George Jones had paid so 
 well that his children were left with a good deal of 
 property outside their stock in the paper. Natu- 
 rally, when The Times began to lose they were some- 
 what reluctant to throw into it the money which 
 would enable them to live on in independence and 
 comfort aside from any consideration of its fortunes. 
 It is hardly surprising that when it became appar- 
 ent that the new management could not make the 
 paper pay, the heirs began to think of disregarding 
 the stipulation that they should hold on to the 
 paper whether it proved to be a source of profit or 
 a drain upon the fortunes of the family. 
 
 The reduction of the price to two cents, in 1883, 
 had not brought the expected increase in circulation 
 and had materially reduced the income. The two- 
 cent Times was soon forced to compete with one- 
 cent papers; and the stroke of genius which saved 
 The Times in 1898 by reducing the price to one cent, 
 and discovering a new army of readers in a field 
 where it had been supposed there was no appetite for 
 anything but the variegated and somewhat too highly 
 flavored menu offered by some of the other papers, 
 
 168 
 
THE TIMES IN TRANSITION, 1884^1896 
 
 was beyond the vision of the heirs of George Jones. 
 The best they could do was to raise the price, and 
 it was set at three cents in December, 1891. The 
 result was a further loss in circulation, and before 
 Jones had been dead a year his children were pre- 
 paring to get rid of a property which had been a 
 gold mine in his hands, but which they found only 
 a burden. 
 
 It came to the knowledge of the editors of The 
 Times late in 1892 that the paper was likely to be 
 sold, and sold to a gentleman who, whatever his 
 good qualities, could hardly be regarded as an en- 
 tirely desirable chief by the men who had served 
 Raymond and Jones. There were men on The Times 
 who understood and valued its great traditions, who 
 had given the best part of their lives as a contribu- 
 tion to its work, and who were unwilling to let that 
 work come to nothing; and it was as a desperate 
 resort that they undertook to buy the paper them- 
 selves, with the aid of their friends. 
 
 On April 13, 1893, The Times was sold to the New 
 York Times Publishing Company, of which the 
 president was Charles R. Miller, the editor of the 
 paper. Mr. Miller and his associates, Edward Cary 
 and George F. Spinney, had been the organizers of 
 the new company. Some of the men associated with 
 them in the ownership had come in because of per- 
 sonal friendship, others because they appreciated 
 the continuing need for such a paper as The Times. 
 
 The price paid to the Jones estate was $1,000,000, 
 and it bought virtually nothing but the name and 
 good will of the paper. The real estate was trans- 
 ferred to another company controlled by Mr. Jones's 
 
 169 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 heirs, and his newspaper continued as a tenant in 
 the building erected with its profits and its credit. 
 In order to recoup themselves for the losses su» 
 tained in the past two years, Jones and Dyer had 
 also retained the outstanding accounts receivable. 
 The presses were old and dilapidated;" the linotype 
 machines were only leased. A million dollars was a 
 good deal of money to pay for the privilege of con- 
 tinuing the business at the old stand, but the men 
 who paid it were those who knew, loved, and ap- 
 preciated the merits of the paper. The heirs of 
 Mr. Jones were naturally more interested in getting 
 a price which would set them back in the position 
 they had occupied before they had essayed to pub- 
 lish The Times themselves, while its editors were 
 chiefly concerned to prevent it from being "sold 
 down the river." This difference in purpose also 
 accounts for the fact that the new owners were will- 
 ing, when they found it necessary, to pay cash. 
 As a matter of fact, one man who had promised 
 and expected to invest ^50,000 in the enterprise 
 found at the last moment that he could not get the 
 money, so Jones and Dyer, appreciating the loy- 
 alty of the men who wanted to continue George 
 Jones's paper and who could not possibly scrape 
 together more than ^950,000, decided to accept that 
 sum. 
 
 Though the editors of The Times held only a small 
 minority of the stock in the new company, it was 
 understood that they were to undertake the editorial 
 and business management of the paper. Unfortu- 
 nately, it could not be managed without money. All 
 
 170 
 
THE TIMES IN TRANSITION, 1884^1896 
 
 the money still due The Times was to be paid to the 
 Jones estate; and the editors had put into the pur- 
 chase price every cent they had or could raise among 
 their friends. They had no outside properties such 
 as would have enabled Jones and Dyer to carry the 
 paper, for a time, at a loss. And then came the 
 panic of 1893. 
 
 Not only did that panic make it all but impossible 
 to find money to carry on the paper, but it led to 
 a great and ruinous decrease in advertising — espe- 
 cially financial advertising, in which The Times had 
 always been preeminent. The new company never 
 had a chance to get started; the only surprising 
 feature of its history is that it managed to hold on 
 for three years. Eventually it managed to sell 
 $250,000 of debenture notes, and the money thus 
 received carried the paper along; but it was losing 
 more heavily every day. As it lost money it be- 
 came less able to incur expenditures for the gather- 
 ing and presentation of news; and becoming thus a 
 less valuable newspaper it lost still more money. 
 The editorial page was as good as ever, and its 
 valiant support of President Cleveland is one of the 
 brightest spots in the history of The Times; but it 
 is the only bright spot between 1893 and 1896. 
 
 For the restoration of the paper to its former 
 state various schemes were devised by the men who 
 had invested in the new company, but none of them 
 gave much ground for confidence, and it began to 
 seem that the great institution built up by Raymond 
 and Jones might fall into unworthy hands, or lose 
 its individuality by consolidation with another 
 paper. Hope that The Times could be restored 
 
 171 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 while retaining its character had almost vanished, 
 when there appeared in New York a small-town 
 newspaperman from Tennessee, who became in- 
 terested in the problem and presently set himself 
 to find a solution. This was Adolph S. Ochs, of 
 Chattanooga. 
 
 172 
 
PART II 
 
CHAPTER 1 
 
 Restoration of The Times, 1896-1900 
 
 'T^HE history of The New York Times since 1896 
 -■- should properly be written with a somewhat 
 different emphasis and from another viewpoint 
 than the story of the paper under Raymond and 
 Jones. In their day, a newspaper was first of all 
 a vehicle of political opinion; and, as has been 
 noted, The Times retained that character longer 
 than most of its contemporaries. The art of gath- 
 ering and presenting news was primitive in Ray- 
 mond's day, and indeed in Jones's day; and the 
 ideal of impartial and disinterested news was less 
 generally respected. So the history of The Times 
 before 1896 must in large part be the history of a 
 political newspaper, and its interaction with the 
 changing feelings of the period. 
 
 Tn the story of The Times as it is today, a 
 paper which was born again in 1896, discussion of 
 political views takes a secondary position. For 
 most newspaper readers of the present the news de- 
 partment is of more importance than anything else, 
 and in the modern history of the art of getting and 
 presenting news The Times has a prominent part. 
 Another department of the paper, subordinate but 
 essential, also claims a share of interest. In the time 
 of Raymond and Jones the volume of business even 
 of the most successful paper was small, by modern 
 
 17s 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 standards, and its organization had none of the in- 
 tricacy of development essential for the paper of 
 today. Nor were the ethical standards of the mid- 
 nineteenth century as exacting as those of today. 
 The modern newspaper has to find revenue, free 
 from subvention of any kind and particularly in 
 the shape of political patronage, to provide for the 
 enormous expenditures for news. The history of the 
 development of the business affairs of The Times in 
 the past twenty-five years offers a good deal of in- 
 struction and interest; it is the story of the rise of 
 a paper exemplifying certain principles from desti- 
 tution to a degree of prosperity almost without par- 
 allel, and one which seemed to a good many news- 
 papermen beyond the reach of a paper conducted 
 on those principles. 
 
 Moreover, the editorial character of The Times 
 has always been pretty much the same, in prosper- 
 ity and in adversity. In 1851, in 1871, in 1884 and 
 in 1921 it was a sober, conservative, dignified paper, 
 always American, with its special position in the 
 esteem of readers who valued sobriety of discussion 
 and intelligent and balanced judgment. The prin- 
 cipal interest in the history of the modern Times 
 lies in the process by which this paper, which in its 
 best days of old had seldom had more than 35,cxdo 
 subscribers, came to appeal to more than ten times 
 that number. Its rise surprised even its conductors; 
 the best they hoped, twenty-five years ago, was 
 that a paper conducted on the principles which they 
 held might attain as large a circulation as 50,000. 
 
 The story of this astounding rise to prosperity and 
 influence has been told by other writers, but only in 
 
 176 
 
RESTORATION OF THE TIMES, 1896-1900 
 
 fragments. This history will attempt for the first 
 time to tell it as a whole, and with fuller and more 
 authentic details than have previously been pre- 
 sented to the reader, in the belief that it will be 
 found instructive by men engaged in making news- 
 papers and of some interest even to the general 
 public, which believes more and knows less about 
 newspaper making than about almost any other 
 business on earth. The story is unfinished; its ac- 
 tion is still going on; its chief actors, or most of 
 them, are still on the stage. This fact perhaps im- 
 poses some restraint on the historian, but it is his 
 belief and the belief of the conductors of The Times 
 that no relevant detail of the story has been omitted. 
 Because it is an unfinished story, however, the nar- 
 rative must be treated as a record rather than as 
 a critical history. It is too early for detached judg- 
 ment on most of the work of the past twenty-five 
 years in The Times office, and in any case the men 
 who have done that work, and whose views are rep- 
 resented in this part of the narrative, are not the 
 men to pass judgment on what they themselves 
 have done. The rise of The Times possesses, to a 
 rather unusual degree, that romance which attaches 
 to the growth of most great business enterprises; 
 but that side of the story must be left for treat- 
 ment by persons outside the institution. It could, 
 moreover, easily lead to a distorted view of some of 
 the phases of that growth. The fact that The Times 
 was often, in past years, desperately hard up, has 
 some romantic and dramatic value; but for the pur- 
 poses of this narrative the fact, which may be as- 
 sumed. Is less Important than the policies pursued 
 
 177 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 by the management of the paper in that situation. 
 Essentially, then, this story must be something in 
 the nature of a report of a laboratory experiment, 
 presented by those who have done the work for the 
 critical judgment of the public outside. 
 
 Adolph S. Ochs, publisher of The Chattanooga 
 Times, who came into the history of The New York 
 Times in the spring of 1896, had been first actively 
 interested in New York City papers by a hasty 
 summons from a friend in New York, who had tele- 
 graphed, "The opportunity of your life lies before 
 you." This opportunity, it was presently discovered, 
 was the business management of The New York Mer- 
 cury, a. publication which maintained a rather pre- 
 carious existence in somewhat the same field as that 
 now occupied by The Morning Telegraph. The great 
 free silver campaign of 1896 was about to begin, 
 and a group of "silver Senators" had planned to 
 buy The Mercury and establish it as a free silver 
 daily in New York. 
 
 Mr. Ochs's informant was a personal friend, Leo- 
 pold Wallach, a prominent member of the New 
 York bar, who later was for many years, until his 
 death, legal adviser of The Times. He, though hos- 
 tile to the free silver cause, had become acquainted 
 in a professional way with some of these gentlemen, 
 and when he learned that they were seeking an ex- 
 perienced newspaperman as business manager of the 
 enterprise he at once thought of his friend in Chat- 
 tanooga. 
 
 To the execution of this plan, however, there was 
 an insuperable obstacle. Mr. Ochs believed in the 
 
 178 
 
i I M 1 1 1 
 
 5i!H ii. I! 
 
mma 
 
 = " S t s- 1 . 1 ? M ? • s i I S 5 I - 2 i = ■' ? = s s = s * " 5 I ; 5-; I 5 : I s i I 
 
 ^lilili^lW'-.i 
 
RESTORATION OF 'rilE TIMES, 1896-1900 
 
 gold standard, and his newspaper, The Chattanooga 
 Times, was its most consistent advocate in the 
 southern states at a time when most of the south- 
 ern Democrats were making a fetish of i6 to i. 
 When he learned the nature of the enterprise, after 
 arriving in New York, he declined to consider the 
 offer; and for various reasons the plan was pres- 
 ently abandoned. The owner of The Mercury, how- 
 ever, was still eager to get rid of his property; and 
 after some conversations with Mr. Ochs he offered 
 to sell it to him. Mr. Ochs saw what he thought 
 was an opening in New York City for a small strictly 
 news paper at one cent. Although he was not par- 
 ticularly interested in The Mercury as it then was, 
 it seemed to him that The Mercury might be trans- 
 formed into a newspaper of this sort, for it was a 
 client of the associated newspapers of New York and 
 received their full service. This service was at that 
 time quite complete, as The New York Sun, Times, 
 Herald and Tribune were directing the United Press 
 organization in a bitter contest with the Associated 
 Press, which at that time was composed chiefly of 
 western papers. But the negotiation for the purchase 
 of The Mercury came to nothing when the owner 
 found he could not give an assurance for a contin- 
 uance of the press association news service of the 
 other New York dailies. The Mercury shortly there- 
 after ceased publication, but the negotiations had 
 caused Mr. Ochs to make several trips to New 
 York, and in the meantime a rather academic interest 
 which he had previously expressed in the affairs of 
 The Times had been awakened. 
 It happened that in 1890 Harry Alloway, a mem- 
 179 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 ber of The Times Wall Street staff, had been enter- 
 tained by Mr. Ochs while on a trip through the 
 South and had heard him remark that The Nezv 
 York Times offered the greatest opportunity in 
 American journalism. Long after this — on March 
 12, 1896, Mr. Ochs's thirty-eighth birthday — he re- 
 ceived a telegram from Mr. AUoway saying that if 
 he was interested there seemed likely to be an op- 
 portunity of acquiring The New York Times with 
 no very large outlay of money. Alloway knew of 
 the financial difficulties of The Times, and of some 
 plans for its reorganization, and telegraphed to Mr. 
 Ochs purely as a friendly act, without authority 
 from any one. Mr. Ochs did not take the matter 
 very seriously; but it happened that the next day 
 he had occasion to go to Chicago. While there he 
 took lunch with his friend, Herman H. Kohlsaat, 
 publisher and proprietor of the Chicago Times- 
 Herald, to whom he incidentally mentioned the tele- 
 gram from Alloway. A general discussion of the 
 New York newspaper situation ensued, and Mr. 
 Kohlsaat observed that he thought The Times was 
 Mr. Ochs's opportunity. To this Mr. Ochs ob- 
 jected that he didn't think he was a big enough 
 man for the job. "Don't tell anybody," Mr. Kohl- 
 saat advised him, "and they'll never find it out." 
 Arriving in New York a few days later, Mr. Ochs 
 met Mr. Alloway and learned from him the infor- 
 mation he had gathered about the situation in The 
 Times office — that a plan of reorganization was 
 being discussed, that several newspaper managers in 
 New York had been approached with the sugges- 
 tion that they try to rebuild The Times, and that 
 
 180 
 
RESTORATION OF THE TIMES, 1896-1900 
 
 for an investment of $250,000 it might be possible 
 to secure control. Mr. Ochs having displayed in- 
 terest, Mr. AUoway arranged an interview with 
 Charles R. Miller, the editor-in-chief. Mr. Ochs 
 and Mr. Miller met for the first time that evening 
 at Mr. Miller's residence. The interview had been 
 arranged for a few minutes after dinner, as Mr. 
 Miller had an engagement to accompany his family 
 to the theatre. Two kindred souls met. The dis- 
 cussion of the situation of The Times and of Mr. 
 Ochs's ideas of newspaper making was so absorbing 
 that the family went ahead to the theatre on the 
 understanding that Mr. Miller would join them 
 later. The performance ended, they returned and 
 found the discussion still in progress. It lasted until 
 midnight, and resulted in convincing Mr. Miller 
 that the man from Chattanooga had some pretty 
 sound ideas about the reconstruction of The Times. 
 Mr. Miller arranged for Mr. Ochs to meet the 
 next day the men who were working out a plan of 
 reorganization for which they had secured some 
 promises of new capital. Charles R. Flint and 
 Spencer Trask, who were at the head of this move- 
 ment, were both favorably impressed, and invited 
 Mr. Ochs at once to join the syndicate they were 
 forming, which had only a day or so left to make 
 its plans operative and hold the tentative subscrip- 
 tions. But the plan required more money from Mr. 
 Ochs than he could command, or would have cared 
 to endeavor to secure. When he declined to become 
 financially interested, Mr. Flint had acquired such 
 confidence in his ideas that he offered Mr. Ochs the 
 management of the proposed reorganized company, 
 
 181 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 and intimated that a salary of $50,000 a year was 
 not beyond the possibilities. In other circumstances 
 Mr. Ochs might have been willing to go down in his- 
 tory as the first Tennessean who ever got such a 
 salary, but he was of the opinion that if he tried 
 to manage The Times for somebody else the most 
 probable result would be the speedy disappearance 
 of the job, the salary and The Times. 
 
 The failure of this plan left the way clear for 
 that faction of the stockholders which wanted to 
 consolidate The Times with The New York Re- 
 corder, a daily newspaper on which several millions 
 had been spent in a fruitless effort to establish it. 
 They had even gone so far as to file at Albany ap- 
 plication for a charter for "The Times-Recorder 
 Company," with a capital of $2,500,000, when 
 Charles R. Miller and Edward Cary, who were the 
 chief editors of the paper and members of its Board 
 of Directors, obtained the appointment of a receiver 
 and circumvented this plan. 
 
 All those interested in the reorganization who had 
 met Mr. Ochs seemed agreed that he was the man 
 The Times needed, and the receiver, Mr. Alfred Ely, 
 was selected by those friendly to Mr. Ochs. But it 
 should be remembered that before his appearance it 
 had been the conviction of most of those interested 
 in The Times that it needed a man experienced in 
 New York journalism to do the work. Every am- 
 bitious managing editor in town had long ago been 
 approached and invited to attempt the restoration 
 of The Times, and with one accord they had all 
 made excuses. Not till the whole field of metro- 
 politan journalism had been searched in vain for a 
 
 182 
 
RESTORATION OF THE TIMES, 1896-1900 
 
 rescuer, not till every one of the men who ought to 
 have known had declared that The Times could not 
 be restored, did Mr. Ochs get his chance. These 
 experienced men, with intimate knowledge of the 
 New York newspaper situation, were of one opinion 
 — ^that it would require several million dollars to re- 
 suscitate The Times and place it in a position to 
 compete with The Herald, The World, The Journal, 
 The Tribune and The Sun, all having men of great 
 wealth as owners or interested in their success. 
 
 Mr. Ochs's experience, to be sure, had been varied 
 enough. He was thirty-eight years old; he had 
 started in the newspaper business at the age of eleven 
 as a carrier of papers, had graduated from that posi- 
 tion to printer's devil, and had worked up through 
 every position which either the news, the editorial, 
 or the business department of Tennessee journalism 
 had to offer until at the age of twenty he had be- 
 come proprietor and publisher of The Chattanooga 
 Times. In eighteen years he had brought this paper 
 to a degree of prosperity remarkable in a city of that 
 size, and to a position in public confidence perhaps 
 still more unusual — for the obstacles to journalistic 
 virtue are perhaps most formidable in the smaller 
 cities. Among southern newspaper men he was al- 
 ready widely known, but Chattanooga is a long way 
 from New York; and the gentlemen who were 
 trying to dig The Times out of the drifts were slow 
 to admit that a problem which was by this time 
 too much for them, and which had been politely 
 evaded by some of the ablest newspaper managers 
 in New York, could be solved by an unknown from 
 a small town. Fortunately, Mr. Ochs was able to 
 
 183 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 gather a formidable volume of letters of recommen- 
 dation. They came from the President of the United 
 States, from Senators, Governors and bishops; from 
 bank presidents, railroad presidents, editors of rival 
 newspapers and people who had known him in Chat- 
 tanooga. That he was able to produce so many of 
 them was perhaps due to the fact that he had been 
 semi-officially recognized as the entertainer of dis- 
 tinguished visitors to Chattanooga, and thus had 
 become fairly well acquainted with a wider circle 
 than the ordinary newspaper man of the interior 
 could know. At any rate he had many letters and 
 their tone was convincing. They served to reinforce 
 the confidence which had gradually been established 
 by personal contact. 
 
 It was expected that the receivership, which was 
 a friendly one, would be required for only a few 
 days, pending the adoption of a plan of reorganiza- 
 tion fathered by Mr. Spencer Trask. But this 
 scheme also miscarried, and with Mr. Trask's en- 
 couragement Mr. Ochs submitted a new plan which 
 he presented personally to nearly every stockholder 
 and creditor of The New York Times Publishing 
 Company. It was approved and accepted, and Mr. 
 Trask consented to act as Chairman of the Reorgani- 
 zation Committee, whose other members were Mar- 
 cellus Hartley, Alfred Ely, James T. Woodward, and 
 E. Mora Davison. The plan was declared operative 
 on July 2, 1896. 
 
 It was a pretty large undertaking for Mr. Ochs 
 to buy control of The Times, even though he was 
 buying it mostly with his ability rather than his 
 money; but it was not much larger, in proportion, 
 
 184 
 
RESTORATION OF THE TIMES, 1896-1900 
 
 than the effort he had made eighteen years before, 
 when, not yet old enough to vote, he had bought 
 The Chattanooga Times by paying $250 in cash — 
 borrowed — and assuming its debt of $I5CX). It 
 seemed to him that the principles which had suc- 
 ceeded in Chattanooga might succeed equally well 
 in New York; at any rate they were the only prin- 
 ciples which he felt competent to put into practice. 
 Only one new resolution did he make on coming to 
 New York — a firm resolve not to have any other 
 outside interest, but to give all his attention, and 
 employ all the resources of his credit, for the inter- 
 ests of The Times. 
 
 The plan of reorganization has already been told 
 in various publications, but may perhaps here be 
 given in outline. A new organization. The New 
 York Times Company, was formed, with a capital 
 of io,ocx) shares of par value of jSioo. Two thou- 
 sand of these shares were traded in for the 10,000 
 shares of the old company. The holders of the out- 
 standing obligations of The Times, amounting to 
 some ^300,000, received in exchange an equal amount 
 of 5 per cent bonds of the new company; and per- 
 haps the most exacting part of the financing of the 
 reorganization was accomplished when $200,000 
 more of these bonds were sold at par, to provide 
 that operating capital the lack of which had been 
 so severely felt in past years. As a persuasive, fif- 
 teen shares of stock were offered to each purchaser 
 of a $1000 bond. Mr. Ochs himself, scraping to- 
 gether all the money he had or could borrow, bought 
 $75,000 of these bonds, receiving with them 11 25 
 shares of stock. Of the remaining capital stock of 
 
 185 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 the company 3876 shares were put into escrow, to 
 be delivered to Mr. Ochs whenever the paper had 
 earned and paid expenses for a period of three con- 
 secutive years. Thus he would have — and within 
 less than four years did have — 5001 of the 10,000 
 shares and $75,000 in bonds, the whole acquired 
 by the payment of $75,000 for the bonds and by 
 his personal services. That $75,000 was the finan- 
 cial investment, and the only investment, aside from 
 his own labors, which the controlling stockholder of 
 The Times made for his majority interest. 
 
 The company thus organized bought The Times 
 at public sale on August 13, 1896. The receiver- 
 ship was terminated by court order; on August 18, 
 1896, the property was formally transferred to the 
 reorganized company, with Mr. Ochs as publisher 
 in unrestricted control; and the saddest chapter in 
 the history of The Times was closed. 
 
 It may be well at this point to puncture a few 
 bubbles of fantasy which have been widely blown 
 about. The Times probably has the distinction of 
 having been more generally misrepresented than any 
 other newspaper in the United States. Some of 
 these misrepresentations are due to malice, some to 
 the somewhat painfully widespread inability of mem- 
 bers of the human race to believe in the honesty of 
 their fellows; a good many of them, one must sup- 
 pose, have no other origin than the myth-making 
 instinct whose pervasiveness is perhaps not fully ap- 
 preciated by any but newspaper men. The rejuve- 
 nated Times succeeded so rapidly and so brilliantly 
 that people who could not understand its success 
 
 186 
 
AIJOLPH S. OCHS, 
 August 18, 1896, 
 
RESTORATION OF THE TIMES, 1896-1900 
 
 found it most convenient to suppose that great sums 
 of money had been poured into it from some secret 
 and probably discreditable reservoir. Ignorance was 
 soon reinforced by hostility; persons who disagreed 
 with the conservatism of The Times editorial policy, 
 and who were quite unable to conceive the idea that 
 a man, and even a newspaper, might honestly be- 
 lieve in conservative principles, thought that the ex- 
 planation could be found in the theory that The 
 Times had been bought by Wall Street bankers. 
 It is unfortunately true that a large percentage of 
 the all too human race can find no explanation for 
 disagreement with its opinions except that those who 
 disagree have been bought by somebody. And the 
 ascription to various eminent financiers of the honor 
 of being the man behind the throne on The Times 
 is probably due quite as much to credulity as to 
 malice. It is more romantic and entertaining to 
 suppose that a newspaper is the mouthpiece of a 
 mysterious malefactor of great wealth, who gives his 
 orders to its editors in a few pregnant monosyllables, 
 than to accept the prosaic truth that it represents 
 the views of its owners and conductors. 
 
 In more recent years the legend of British gold 
 offered a convenient explanation of The Times's at- 
 titude on the Great War to Irish and German enthu- 
 siasts who were used to the idea of subsidized news- 
 papers, but the force of this view was somewhat 
 diminished when the Irish and Germans extended it 
 from The Times to all other American newspapers 
 which failed to see in Sinn Fein and Kaiserism the 
 sum of human perfection. The secret ownership or 
 control of The Times has been ascribed to so many 
 
 187 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 different men that one might suppose some doubt 
 would have arisen in the minds of the most credu- 
 lous; at any rate they couldn't all own it at once. 
 But the number of people who can be fooled all the 
 time is regrettably large. 
 
 A few of the more important myths will here be 
 cited and explained, in so far as they can be ex- 
 plained by anything except the credulity of human 
 nature. It is not to be supposed that the explana- 
 tions will be accepted by Sinn Feiners, admirers of 
 the late Kaiser or devotees of the principles of Karl 
 Marx or Nikolai Lenin. To convince these gentle- 
 men is beyond the power of human logic. But some 
 explanation may perhaps be of interest to the large 
 number of readers of The Times who have heard 
 these various rumors and have perhaps been in- 
 clined to believe them because the paper has not 
 thought them worthy of explicit denial. 
 
 President Cleveland, for example, did not bring 
 Mr. Ochs up from Chattanooga to set a good Demo- 
 cratic paper on its feet. Mr. Cleveland had no more 
 idea, when Mr. Ochs came to New York, that he 
 was going to buy The Times than did Mr. Ochs 
 himself. The only possible basis for this legend lies 
 in the fact that when Mr. Ochs found New Yorkers 
 somewhat reluctant to accejpt the views of a man 
 about whom they knew nothing, he collected a large 
 number of letters of recommendation, as noted 
 above, from everybody whose endorsement seemed 
 likely to be of value. Naturally a recommendation 
 from Mr. Cleveland, then in the White House, 
 would carry a good deal of weight. The President 
 wrote that 
 
 i88 
 
RESTORATION OF THE TIMES, 1896-1900 
 
 ***** in your management of The 
 Chattanooga Times you have demonstrated 
 such a faithful adherence to Democratic 
 principles, and have so bravely supported 
 the ideas and policies which tend to the 
 safety of our country as well as of our party 
 that I would be glad to see you in a larger 
 sphere of usefulness. ***** 
 
 This was Mr. Cleveland's sole contribution to the 
 reorganization of The Times. 
 
 Of the various bankers who have been mentioned 
 as the controlling influence in The Times, August 
 Belmont has perhaps the distinction of having been 
 named most often. Mr. Belmont, as a matter of 
 fact, owned $25,ocxD of the debentures of the old 
 company, which he exchanged for bonds of the new 
 organization, and these bonds were bought by The 
 Times long ago, at par, and retired. 
 
 The assertion that he controlled The Times was 
 some years ago spread rather widely by the Hearst 
 papers, which eventually retracted it when its un- 
 truth was demonstrated. It is doubtless often re- 
 peated by persons who do not realize how it came 
 to be diffused. 
 
 Before the inventive German propagandist sup- 
 plied the more brilliant explanation of British gold, 
 it was a favorite doctrine of Socialist thinkers that 
 The Times was an organ of the Morgan firm. J. P. 
 Morgan & Co. held ^25,000 of the debentures of the 
 old company, like Mr. Belmont, and like him ac- 
 cepted for these obligations an equal amount of the 
 bonds of the new company, which were also bought 
 and paid for by The Times at par value and retired 
 
 189 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 years ago. Numerous other financiers, traction 
 magnates and politicians, shady and otherwise, have 
 also figured in these romances, but none of them ever 
 owned a dollar's worth of The Times Company stock 
 or in any manner had the power to influence the 
 policies of The Times, editorial or other. Nor did any 
 of them ever get anything out of The Times except such 
 information as they may have obtained from its news 
 columns or such moral elevation as they may have 
 derived from the study of its editorial page. And 
 it might be added that none of them was ever in 
 a position to control, influence or affect the paper's 
 policies. 
 
 But theorists who have been unwilling to display 
 favoritism by believing that any one man was the 
 secret master of The Times, when so many have been 
 mentioned, have cherished the belief that the paper 
 was dominated by its bondholders as a group. It 
 is not. The outstanding bonds amount to less than 
 $600,000. The name of every person or institu- 
 tion holding more than i per cent of this not very 
 formidable amount may be found on the editorial 
 page of the paper, twice a year. These bonds rep- 
 resent the residue of an issue of $1,200,000 put out 
 some years ago in financing the construction of The 
 Times Building after retiring the bonds of 1896. 
 The bonds were bought, just as any other bonds 
 are bought, by people who thought they were a good 
 investment; who believed, that is to say, that The 
 Times would be able to pay interest and principal. 
 It will be noted that more than half that issue has 
 already been retired out of earnings. 
 
 As The Times grew and moved into new quarters 
 190 
 
RESTORATION OF THE TIMES, 1896-1900 
 
 it had to make heavy investments in real estate and 
 machinery. The Times Building, Hke any other new 
 building, was mortgaged during its construction. 
 The mortgage was placed like any other mortgage — 
 because those who made the loan thought that the 
 Times Building was a safe risk. It is being con- 
 stantly reduced, and is now less than a million 
 dollars — on property worth several times that 
 amount. So bonds and mortgage, the total in- 
 debtedness of the company, amount to something 
 like $1,500,000. The cash resources of the com- 
 pany are more than sufficient to pay this off at 
 any time. The value of the company's real estate 
 and paper-mill properties, entirely apart from plant, 
 good will and other resources, is several times the 
 indebtedness. So virtually The New York Times 
 as a newspaper entity is free of any indebtedness of 
 any kind or description. 
 
 Where did t he money come from which built up 
 the institution!' Aside from $100.000 of the $200,000 
 of new capital provided by the sale of bonds in 1896, 
 it came out of the earnings. Of the money which 
 the paper has earned during the last twenty-five 
 years, in round figures $100,000,000, 97 per cent 
 has been put into the operation and development 
 of the property and 3 per cent has been kept for 
 the owners in dividends. There have been com- 
 mercial borrowings from time to time, as in any 
 business; but the loans have always been paid 
 promptly, and in no case were the lenders influenced 
 by any other consideration than the belief that they 
 would be paid promptly. 
 
 Indeed, why should the owners of The Times 
 191 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 submit to outside influence? They own a large and 
 prosperous institution, out of debt, which brings 
 them in all the income they can reasonably require. 
 Quite aside from moral considerations and the 
 reluctance which many men feel to sell their souls, 
 the owners and controllers of The Times have no 
 particular use for "British gold," or Wall Street 
 gold, or any other gold that might be offered for the 
 control of the paper. They have all the "gold" 
 necessary for their requirements. 
 
 It is perhaps a tribute to the prosperity of The 
 Times that it is rarely accused of being controlled 
 by its advertisers. It is accused of about every- 
 thing else, but this charge would be too obviously 
 ridiculous. It may be in order to observe, how- 
 ever, that even in the days when it was struggling 
 desperately The Times was never controlled by its 
 advertisers. Certain advertisers, on occasion, may 
 have made efforts to influence the business policy 
 of the paper. They never succeeded; sometimes 
 they withdrew their advertising, but they nearly 
 always came back, and came back knowing that 
 they were buying advertising space and nothing 
 more. 
 
 The Times is sometimes called the organ of the 
 investing classes. The concept of a class organ is 
 somewhat more familiar in Europe than in the United 
 States, where about its only true exemplars, aside 
 from trade journals, can be found in those socialist 
 papers which speak for the modest number of sec- 
 tarians who consider themselves the whole working 
 class. The Times can be called the organ of the 
 investing class only in the sense that most investors 
 
 192 
 
RESTORATION OF THE TIMES, 1896-1900 
 
 read it because of the volume and reliability of its 
 financial news. Because most investors read it, it 
 is the favored medium for financial advertising. 
 But financial advertising, like any other advertising, 
 buys only advertising space. As a matter of fact, 
 the belief that newspapers as a class are controlled 
 by their advertisers is a popular delusion not much 
 more respectable than the belief that breaking a 
 mirror brings bad luck. Breaking some mirrors does 
 bring bad luck — in restaurants and barrooms, for 
 example; and some newspapers may be controlled by 
 their advertisers. The proportion is considerably 
 smaller than it was twenty-five years ago, and it is 
 growing smaller every year. 
 
 No, The Times is not owned or controlled by Lord 
 NorthcliflFe or Wall Street bankers or traction in- 
 terests or the owners of department stores. It is 
 owned by the men and women whose names appear 
 in the list of stockholders, officially published every 
 six months, and controlled by the owner of its ma- 
 jority stock, Adolph S. Ochs. 
 
 As has been said, the $200,000 obtained by the 
 sale of bonds for cash was supposed to provide 
 the working capital for the newspaper. Mr. Ochs 
 discovered after taking charge that 'unfunded ob- 
 ligations of the paper would eat up half that sum, 
 He had, then, about $100,000 to go on; and that 
 is all the fresh capital that has been put into The 
 Times since 1896. It has paid its way out of its 
 earnings. 
 
 The purpose of the new management was an- 
 nounced in the following salutatory published on 
 
 193 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 the editorial page over Mr. Ochs's signature on 
 August 19, 1896: 
 
 To undertake the management of The 
 New York Times, with its great history 
 for right-doing, and to attenipt to keep 
 bright the lustre which Henry J_. Raymond 
 and George Jones have given it is an ex- 
 traordinary task. But if a sincere desire to 
 conduct a high-standard newspaper, clean, 
 dignified and trustworthy, requires honesty, 
 watchfulness, earnestness, industry and 
 practical knowledge appUed with common 
 sense, I entertain the hope that I can 
 succeed in maintaining the high estimate 
 that thoughtful, pure-minded people have 
 ever had of The New York Times. 
 
 It will be my earnest aim that The New 
 York Times give the news, all the news, in 
 concise and attractive form, in language 
 that is parliamentary in good society, and 
 give it as early, if not earlier, than it can be 
 learned through any other reliable medium; 
 to give the news impartially, without fear 
 or favor, regardless of any party, sect or 
 interest involved; to make of the columns 
 of The New York Times a forum for the 
 consideration of all questions of public 
 importance, and to that end to invite 
 intelligent discussion from all shades of 
 opinion. 
 
 There will be no radical changes in the 
 personnel of the present efficient staff. Mr. 
 Charles R. Miller, who has so ably for 
 many years presided over the editorial 
 page, will continue to be the editor; nor 
 will there be a departure from the general 
 tone and character and policies pursued 
 with relation to public questions that have 
 194 
 
RESTORATION OF THE TIMES, 1896-1900 
 
 distinguished The New York Times as a 
 non-partisan newspaper — unless it be, 
 if possible, to intensify its devotion to the 
 cause of sound money and tariff reform, 
 opposition to wastefulness and peculation 
 in administering public affairs and in its 
 advocacy of the lowest tax consistent with 
 good government, and no more government 
 than is absolutely necessary to protect 
 society, maintain individual and vested 
 rights and assure the free exercise of a 
 sound conscience. 
 
 It will be seen that this platform was in large 
 degree a reaffirmation of the traditional principles 
 of The Times. From the ideal of im part talLt.y-Qf 
 news^d ofjiiscussion the-papexJiad indegd departed 
 con siderably in its most Republ ican days, but it had 
 XetSEaed^^fi^r_its_declaration^ in 
 
 1884 . The emphasis upon certain features of this 
 newspaper policy, however, was dictated by condi- 
 tions of the times. Reference to The Times's 
 appeal to "thoughtful, pure-minded people" and 
 the promise that news would be given "earlier than 
 it can be learned through any other reliable medium " 
 were the first guns in the aggressive war against 
 "yellow journalism," which The Times now under- 
 took, and which it carried through to entire success. 
 But at the outset that fight seemed all but hopeless. 
 "Yellow" journalism was a good deal more powerful 
 in the nineties than today; and it was a good deal 
 yellower. 
 
 Mr. Pulitzer, who had awakened the eighties by 
 his development of The World, had been followed and 
 imitated in the early nineties by Mr. Hearst, who 
 
 19s 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 made prodigal expenditures of money and was not 
 hampered by any of the restraints which modified 
 some of the enterprises of his rival. If in some de- 
 tails of outward appearance the journals then called 
 "yellow" are in our day even more excruciating, 
 their character is not so offensive — and it must be re- 
 membered, of course, that The World has undergone 
 such a development in the last two decades that it long 
 ago lost the character of a "yellow" journal as that 
 phrase was understood when the "Yellow Kid" car- 
 toons first brought it into currency. The World and 
 The Journal in 1 896 were considered quite deplorable 
 from most points of view. But they were prosperous; 
 they sold for one cent, and had enormous circulations 
 as circulations went in those days; they made a great 
 deal of noise about themselves and about each other, 
 and attracted a corresponding amount of attention; 
 they spent money wildly for new features, or even 
 to get news. And they embellished the news with 
 such unsavory details as are perhaps less often given 
 to the public today, and in any event are less offen- 
 sive to the somewhat broader tolerance of our time 
 than they were in the nineties. 
 
 The consequent reaction of a considerable part 
 of the reading public was very much the same as 
 forty-five years before, when Raymond had set out to 
 conduct a paper which should be welcomed into the 
 homes which found no interest in the trivialities of 
 The Sun, and were repelled by the vulgarity of The 
 Herald and by what was regarded as the insidious 
 immorality of The Tribune. A good many homes, 
 schools and clubs deliberately excluded The World 
 and The Journal in 1896; but their fierce rivalry, 
 
 196 
 
RESTORATION OF THE TIMES, 1896-1900 
 
 their reckless expenditure, and even in some degree 
 the quality of the brains which they had been able 
 to obtain, gave them a certain advantage over their 
 competitors. Of the other papers of the period, The 
 Sun was brilliantly written, and was read chiefly 
 by people who liked brilliant writing. It printed 
 as much news as its reporters and correspondents, 
 in the pressure of more important business, had time 
 to get, and as its make-up men found it necessary 
 to admit to the columns as an offset to literature. 
 Aside from that, its energies were principally devoted 
 to the contentions that New Yorkers could never 
 be persuaded to ride in subway trains, and that 
 Whitelaw Reid had driven Horace Greeley to the 
 madhouse and the grave. The Herald was a daily 
 directory, had an excellent foreign service, but 
 otherwise had no particular claim on the attention 
 of readers unless they happened to be interested 
 in the doings of a somewhat curiously defined 
 "society" or in premature burial, dogs, and more 
 dubious topics of interest. The Tribune carried a 
 small but genteel stock of Republican ideas, most of 
 which had lain for a considerable time on the shelves. 
 There was room for a paper whose first object was 
 to get the news promptly and publish it with due 
 attention to its relative value — a paper so conducted 
 that nobody need be ashamed to be seen reading it, 
 but containing all the solid content which intelligent 
 readers wanted, and for which, in desperation, they 
 sometimes had to burrow in the muck heaps of the 
 "yellows." 
 
 This ideal of The Times was presently expressed 
 in the motto "All the News That's Fit to Print," 
 
 197 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 first published on the editorial page on October 25, 
 1896, and carried in a box on the front page from 
 February 10 of the following year down to the pres- 
 ent day. Probably no newspaper motto has ever 
 aroused more discussion or more obstinate difference 
 of opinion — a difference, it may be observed, 
 which is to be found in The Times office as well as 
 outside. In its most literal and narrowest inter- 
 pretation it of course suggests that terrible crime 
 widely discussed under the title of "suppression of 
 news." This phrase itself is something of a begging 
 of the question, for no newspaper is large enough to 
 pubHsh accounts of all happenings even if anybody 
 would read them. In every newspaper office every 
 day there must be a selection of the most interesting 
 or important happenings, as many of them as can 
 be crowded into the paper. In the sense that the 
 less interesting or important items have to be left 
 out there is "suppression of news" in every news- 
 paper office all the time, as many self-admiring 
 persons have discovered. 
 
 "All the News That's Fit to Print," however, 
 has been criticised, even by more or less friendly 
 commentators, as implying the exercise of editorial 
 judgment as to what news may be too horrible or 
 obscene for the public — a right which, it is assumed, 
 no editor possesses. But no newspaper ever pub- 
 lished all the harrowing details of the Armenian 
 massacres, for instance. The essential facts were 
 published; the decorative trimmings could well be 
 left to the imagination. It has been argued that 
 if it is news of sufficient importance it is fit to print. 
 The Times has never held otherwise. The fact of 
 
 198 
 
RESTORATION OF THE TIMES, 1896-1900 
 
 an atrocious crime or a deplorable scandal is news. 
 The sordid particulars have sometimes a legitimate 
 news value, but more often their only appeal is to 
 the salacious curiosity. 
 
 The motto has often been contrasted with Dana's 
 remark that "whatever Divine Providence permits 
 to occur I am not too proud to report." But there 
 are certain details of events permitted by Divine 
 Providence which have never been and will never be 
 printed in The Sun, even though mention of the 
 events in a general way may be published as news. 
 It is a question of methods, of treatment, of emphasis 
 — a fact which may easily be proved by the protests 
 which The Times often receives against items pub- 
 lished in its columns which seem to some of its 
 readers unfit to print. There is often a difference of 
 opinion among editors of The Times as to whether 
 the unassailable general principle that what is 
 news should be printed justifies the inclusion of cer- 
 tain details which are of dubious fitness; and no 
 doubt the practice of the paper occasionally fails 
 to agree altogether with this excellent principle. 
 But the influence of the motto is present none the 
 less. It has been described as "a silent monitor 
 at the copy desk"; and in the course of years its 
 influence has been sufficient to keep a good deal 
 of contaminating and worthless material out of the 
 paper. 
 
 If it be held that a doctrine so difficult to define 
 precisely is a rather unsafe guide, it should be re- 
 membered that it was first adopted in somewhat 
 unusual circumstances. In effect, "All the News 
 That's Fit to Print" was a war cry, the slogan under 
 
 199 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 which the reorganized Times fought for a footing 
 against the formidable competition of The Herald, 
 The World and The Journal. What it meant, in 
 essence, was that The Times was going to be as 
 good a vehicle of news as any of those papers, and 
 that it would be free from their indecency, eccen- 
 tricity, distortion or sensationalism. The publisher 
 of The Times once answered a question as to what 
 news is unfit to print with the brief definition, 
 "What's untrue." A great deal of the so-called news 
 published by some of The Times's contemporaries 
 in 1896 was untrue — sometimes, though not very 
 often, deliberately invented; more frequently mis- 
 handled, edited or colored until it conveyed an 
 entirely inaccurate impression. There was to be 
 none of this sort of thing in The Times, and so far as 
 its editors are humanly able to live up to their good 
 intentions, there never has been. Moreover, the 
 columns of The Times were not to be filled with 
 matter which depended for its interest to the public 
 purely on its appeal to prurient cravings or to un- 
 warranted suspicion. The motto selected in 1896 
 might have been restated as "The news, all the 
 news and nothing but the news." This was the 
 sort of paper, and the only sort of paper, which the 
 new publisher of The Times would or could produce; 
 it was still to be seen whether he was right in believ- 
 ing that New York in the nineties offered a living 
 for such a paper, and the experiment was begun 
 under a heavy handicap — with an outworn plant, 
 a tradition of misfortune and a discouraged staff, 
 to say nothing of the general opinion that the new 
 venture had little chance of success. 
 
 200 
 
RESTORATION OF THE TIMES, 1896-1900 
 
 The new publisher was quite as well aware as 
 anybody else of the diflSiculties which he had to face, 
 but he was of the opinion that there were some 
 counterbalancing advantages which had been over- 
 looked by some of the men who had thought The 
 Times beyond hope of recovery. In the first place, 
 it did have a great tradition. Within the memory 
 of many thousands of newspaper readers — indeed 
 until a few years previously — it had been one 
 of the great newspapers of the country. Its name 
 and standing had by no means been destroyed by 
 its comparatively brief period of misfortune. In 
 a sense, the good will was still there. 
 
 It was not on the surface, of course; it would have 
 to be dug out and cultivated, as the experience of the 
 previous management showed. Nevertheless, the 
 gentlemen who had sold the name and good will of 
 the paper for a million dollars in 1893 had, perhaps, 
 given better value than they realized. The Times 
 had fallen into a situation from which it could work 
 out only by showing merit, but once that merit was 
 shown it would find a welcome in many homes 
 where it had been a valued friend in the past. A 
 new paper with a new name would have had to spend 
 an enormous amount of money to establish this 
 friendly disposition which the new management 
 of The Times would find ready to welcome it — if 
 The Times could succeed in recovering the attention 
 of these readers. 
 
 And it should be observed that the reconstruction 
 of The Times involved no change in the essential 
 character of the paper. The new publisher indulged 
 in no eccentric experiments, no efforts to emulate 
 
 201 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 prominent and profitable features of rival publica- 
 tions. It is perhaps fortunate that his capital was so 
 small, for he did not have the money to do this sort 
 of thing, even if he had wanted to. He felt that the 
 chj^l ^sset of The Times was its character, its tradi- 
 tion, its good will. That character was to be pre- 
 served: TlTB~rennrSit of old readers who continued 
 to buy The Times because they liked that kind of 
 paper were not to be driven away by any sudden 
 alteration of the paper's character in the vain eiFort 
 to emulate its competitors. The Times was to be 
 the same kind of paper as of old, a kind of paper 
 which a large part of the reading public was known 
 to like; the changes under the new management were 
 intended only to make it a better paper of that kind. 
 Another item of value was the paper's staff. 
 The new publisher intended to make no changes 
 unless experience showed him that change was 
 necessary, for he had a high admiration for the 
 staff as he found it. Indeed, the men then getting 
 out The Times were, on the whole, the men who had 
 produced and edited it in the days of its greatness. 
 They were no longer getting the results which they 
 had got then; but this was due to a complex of 
 reasons in which the inexperience of the heirs of 
 George Jones, the bad luck of their successors in 
 taking over the paper without any working capital 
 on the eve of a financial panic, and the lack of a 
 sound business organization were most important. 
 Given even a little breathing space from importunate 
 financial obligations, and a somewhat better direc- 
 tion of energy, and they could make it a great paper 
 once more. 
 
 202 
 
RESTORATION OF THE TIMES, 1896-1900 
 
 Nevertheless, the situation was bad enough. 
 When Mr. Ochs assumed the control of The Times, 
 an old and trusted employe, to whom had been con- 
 fided some of the details of the paper's management 
 too painful to be widely disseminated, took him into 
 his office, unlocked his roUtop desk, and with tears 
 in his eyes imparted to the new publisher his shame- 
 ful secret. The Times was printing 19,000 copies 
 a day, and 10,000 of them were coming back unsold. 
 The net circulation was 9000, and it was growing 
 smaller every day. Mr. Ochs said something to the 
 effect that he thought the circulation would be 
 increased before long. "Increased!" said his as- 
 tounded hearer. "Increased! Mr. Ochs, if you 
 could keep it from going down any further you'd be 
 a wonderful man." 
 
 However, the new publisher set to work to see 
 what" Tie could do. One item of waste wEicH was 
 soon reduced, though it was a long time before it was 
 entirely eliminated, was the printing of papers that 
 came back to the office old paper bin from the news 
 stands where they had vainly waited for purchasers. 
 While staying in New York and making arrange- 
 ments for the purchase of The Times Mr. Ochs had 
 noticed that at the news stand he patronized he was 
 always offered The Sun. At first he felt rather 
 flattered at the idea that the keen-eyed newsdealer 
 had judged him to be the sort of man who would 
 want The Sun; for this was in the height of Dana's 
 fame as a producer of newspaper literature, and to 
 be seen reading The Sun was, at that time, a mark of 
 intellectual distinction. But inquiry discovered that 
 the newsdealer was actuated by a more sordid 
 
 203 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 motive. The Sun circulation system allowed no 
 returns; and in consequence the first thing the news- 
 dealer thought of was to sell off his stock of Suns. 
 When they were gone he could turn to the distribu- 
 tion of the other papers with the restful assurance 
 that such copies as he could not sell could be sent 
 back to the office and would cost him nothing. It 
 seemed to Mr. Ochs, upon reflection, that the papers 
 which permitted the return of unsold copies were in 
 effect supplying the capital for the promotion of 
 The Sun. 
 
 So The Times first reduced the return privilege to 
 lo per cent, presently abolished it entirely for the 
 Saturday issue with the literary supplement, and 
 eventually eliminated it altogether. Thereafter the 
 bills for print paper could be paid with the consoling 
 assurance that, at any rate. The Times was paid for 
 every copy sent out to the newsdealers. Meanwhile 
 the new publisher had been finding his way about the 
 office. He had the idea that the essentials of success- 
 ful newspaper publishing were pretty much the 
 same in New York and in Chattanooga; that, as he 
 afterward expressed it, the best policy was "no 
 policy " — a reliance on honesty, industry and un- 
 hampered judgment. In time this doctrine proved 
 its worth by its practical success, but it seemed so 
 strange at the time that years afterward the editor 
 of another New York paper said that Mr. Ochs had 
 come to town and "taught us something new." It 
 did not seem so to him; he thought he had merely 
 reminded New York newspaper men of something 
 they had forgotten. 
 
 In a sense, of course, that statement could be 
 204 
 
RESTORATION OF THE TIMES, 1896-1900 
 
 applied to the rise of almost any successful news- 
 paper. Perhaps the history of journalism could be 
 expressed in a formula of rotary motion. Every 
 twenty years or so somebody achieves a great success 
 by digging up an old truth that had been discarded. 
 One truth rediscovered on The Times in the nineties, 
 however, has perhaps a more generally useful applica- 
 tion than the secrets of the success of other news- 
 papers. This is the ancient but still somewhat 
 surpris ing fact that thorough knowledge and un- 
 remittmg diligence are likely, barrmg'accident7 to^ 
 bririg~results. i'he new puBEsEer of The Times, 
 "who had come from the interior of the country to 
 undertake the solution of a problem which to veterans 
 of New York journalism seemed entirely hopeless, 
 was regarded by a good many observers as a man 
 with more money than brains — a judgment which, in 
 view of the actual state of his fortunes, was anything 
 but complimentary. But he knew every department 
 of the newspaper business from the ground up. 
 
 It was his opinion that The Times staff, as it then 
 existed, was as competent and well equipped a body 
 of men as could be found on any newspaper in the 
 country, and that the paper could be rehabilitated 
 by those men. What they needed _w as_jnofe~CQ- 
 ordination and a litfle more enthusiasm. Too many 
 of the subordinaLes had^atlowedThemselves to slip 
 into a groove and were conducting their own particu- 
 lar duties in a routine grown familiar with years of 
 practice without paying much attention to the 
 relation of their work to the whole. Men were apt 
 to stick to themselves and ignore what went on 
 about them. 
 
 205 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 The arrival of the new publisher brought a good 
 deal of encouragement to men at the top who had 
 become acquainted with him and had caught some- 
 thing of his enthusiasm, but for most of the staff 
 enthusiasm had to wait for acquaintance. When Mr. 
 Ochs came in with the intention of turning The Times 
 around and starting it uphill the majority of the 
 staff watched him with interest, but at first without 
 any great amount of confidence. He was a new man 
 and unknown, and he had undertaken a job which 
 seemed to be too much for anybody. He was wel- 
 come, because the ruin of the paper, without some 
 new stimulus, seemed only a question of time; but 
 it was still to be seen if he could give it that stimulus. 
 
 As for the publisher, he experienced a certain 
 diffidence as he began to familiarize himself with his 
 new associates. He was now set as commanding 
 officer over men, a good many of them older than 
 himself, of whom he had been hearing for years with 
 a certain amount of awe. These great names of 
 New York journalism had resounded rather thunder- 
 ously in Chattanooga, and it required a considerable 
 time for Mr. Ochs to get over his conviction that they 
 were persons of a somewhat different order of pro- 
 fessional eminence, or that, at any rate, they were 
 New Yorkers, while he was fresh from a small town. 
 Nevertheless, he set to work to invigorate the staff, 
 to inspire it with new courage, and to find out in the 
 meantime what was the matter with The Times. 
 Much was done from the very first in bringing the 
 members of the staff together; but it may serve as an 
 illustration of the necessity of beginning pretty 
 much from the ground up that the publisher found 
 
 206 
 
RESTORATION OF THE TIMES, 1896-1900 
 
 that one of his first tasks was to educate the staff 
 into reading the paper. 
 
 They were induced to read The Times by the 
 somewhat roundabout expedient of giving to each 
 man the task of comparing each day's issue of The 
 Times with one of its contemporaries. The pub- 
 lisher had discovered that the writers had preferences 
 among the other morning papers, and he assigned 
 each man to find out every morning what his pet 
 paper had discovered that was unknown to The 
 Times. It perhaps goes without saying that this 
 task of comparison was already part of the work of 
 the news department; it was laid upon the editorial 
 council for purely educational reasons. And it 
 worked. Before long the men who were reading 
 The Times because they had to know if it had been 
 beaten on the day's news found themselves compelled 
 to admit that there was a good deal in it that was 
 worth reading. 
 
 This instance may illustrate the work which had 
 to be done in coordinating the work of the various 
 members of The Times staff. The work was done, be- 
 cause there was a directing influence to see that it was 
 done; and before long The Times had an organization, 
 still rudimentary, but more deserving of the name 
 than anything it had ever known before. There 
 was a man at the head who understood the work 
 of every department from his own experience, and 
 who not only knew whether that work was being 
 well done, but had been able to inspire the workers 
 with a more vivid interest in the welfare of the whole 
 institution. And another element in their confi- 
 dence, perhaps of slower growth, was the realiza- 
 
 207 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 tion that the new chief was in complete and abso- 
 lute control, unhampered by any external influences 
 whatever. It is unfortunately true that outside 
 influence on many newspapers has been — a past 
 tense is used because this condition though still 
 existing in some newspaper offices, is much less 
 general now than it used to be — so strong that 
 a good many newspaper men of wide experience 
 find it hard to believe that it is not universal. 
 The Times has had a good deal of difficulty in 
 persuading some of its employes that news is not 
 to be handled in deference to editorial policy, just 
 as it had trouble in the nineties in convincing them 
 that news was not to be treated with a view to the 
 supposed prejudices of influential outsiders. The 
 new publisher was to a certain extent regarded for 
 a time as the representative of the men who had 
 sunk their money in The Times a few years before; 
 and it took time for the employes to realize that he 
 was conducting it himself, without any orders from 
 outside. When they did realize it, as he took care 
 they should, it gave a tremendous impetus to the 
 industry of a staff which had been afraid of shadows 
 for some time past, and now at last began to realize 
 that they were only shadows. 
 
 Meanwhile there had been some experiments 
 with the contents of The Times. Certain depart- 
 ments had continued for years by the force of in- 
 ertia, and it was suspected by the new publisher 
 that they no longer served any useful purpose. One 
 of the daily features of the paper was a feuilleton, 
 which Mr. Ochs suppressed as soon as he took charge. 
 The paper happened on that dav to be publishing the 
 
 208 
 
RESTORATION OF THE TIMES, 189&-1900 
 
 next to the last instalment of a continued story. 
 Mr. Ochs did not want fiction, and he insisted that 
 the story stop right there, but was persuaded to let 
 the concluding chapters appear next day. 
 
 It is true that the largest newspaper circulation 
 in the world has been built up by the Petit Parisien 
 on the basis of serial fiction and human interest, and 
 it is true that even so dignified a paper as the Temps 
 lately gave up much of its scanty space to the serial 
 publication of Florence Barclay's novel, "The Ros- 
 ary." But, aside from the question of the diflFer- 
 ence in French and American ideas of a newspaper, 
 it must be remembered that the American institu- 
 tion of the popular fiction magazine is unknown in 
 France. The newspapers are both newspapers and 
 fiction magazines, in effect. Whatever may or may 
 not have been the increment in circulation gained 
 by various American newspaper magazine sections 
 through the publication of fiction, it may be doubted 
 if any American paper ever accomplished much by 
 printing fiction in its daily issue, unless it be that 
 peculiar type of fiction which is written for and 
 found only upon the woman's page of evening news- 
 papers. At any rate, The Times never suffered from 
 its abandonment of the popular fiction field to the 
 new venture of Mr. McClure, which was just then 
 opening a new epoch in American magazine history. 
 
 Another department which was abolished was the 
 detailed report of prices in the commodity markets. 
 Again Mr. Ochs found dissent from his opinion that 
 these had no place in The Times, and that people 
 who were interested in this item were a good deal 
 more likely to get it out of the trade papers. So 
 
 209 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 strong was the opposition of the circulation depart- 
 ment to the abandonment of this feature that the 
 publisher finally decided to try dropping out these 
 reports a little at a time. A stick here and a stick 
 there, the space given to commodity markets was 
 reduced without any expected clamors of protest from 
 readers who had learned to look for it every morning. 
 At last, when four whole columns of what is techni- 
 cally known as "punk" had been excised from the 
 paper. The Times did hear from a subscriber at 
 Haverstraw, who wrote that he missed the quota- 
 tions on naval stores. And that was all. It was 
 demonstrated to be a sheer waste of valuable space. 
 Some of this material eventually found its way 
 back into the paper, but in better form. Where the 
 new management found a legitimate field of the news 
 which existing papers had left uncovered it took up 
 and gave some attention to it, but there was to be 
 no more competition with trade journals on their 
 own ground. And when "punk" came back, the 
 deadening routine which had gradually deprived 
 these old departments of their usefulness had dis- 
 appeared. It is probable that by the publication 
 of the complete court calendars, for instance. The 
 Times has gained a considerable number of readers, 
 and the great development of the page of business 
 news, which began early in the history of the present 
 administration but grew gradually through many 
 years, has made The Times the favorite daily of 
 many men in businesses which are served by extraor- 
 dinarily good trade papers. But the entire process, 
 both of subtraction and of addition, has been a 
 matter of special judgment in individual cases. If 
 
 2IO 
 
RESTORATION OF THE TIMES, 1896-1900 
 
 an existing department seemed to be serving no use- 
 ful purpose, it went out; if the addition of a new 
 department promised to justify the effort and ex- 
 pense, it was introduced. How to decide what was 
 ,^^neededand__Bdiat coiild. be aBoHshed? Well, it iT 
 betr a^rig_flo— ttadg^ secret to" say "That this w as a 
 matter of judgiaen£lE[as €d ~orng rpprip"CP 
 
 Hit the niere cutting out of dead wood was only 
 a part, and a small part, of the work. The rise 
 from 9000 to 3 50,000 was not accomplished by mere 
 elimination of useless items, nor by tightening up 
 the business office, establishing a sound accounting 
 system and cutting losses. There had to be some 
 positive achievements. One of the most useful of 
 these was the wide advertisement of the policy ex- 
 pressed in the motto, "All the News That's Fit to 
 Print." That motto, when adopted, aroused a gpod 
 deal of discussion which was fostered and abetted 
 by the management of the paper. For some months 
 a huge electric sign at Twenty-third Street and 
 Broadway made known to the passing throng the 
 legend of The Times. There were some editorial ex- 
 positions of the ideals expressed by the motto, and 
 after these had made Times readers familiar with the 
 intentions of the new publisher a prize of ^100 was 
 offered for any ten-word motto which seemed bet- 
 ter to express those ideals. Richard Watson Gilder, 
 editor of the Century, was asked to act as judge in 
 the contest, which brought out some 20,000 sug- 
 gestions, of which 1 50 were thought good enough to 
 publish. The prize was given to "All the World's 
 News, but Not a School for Scandal"; but to the 
 editors of The Times this did not seem as satisfac- 
 
 211 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 tory as their own device, so though the inventor 
 of this motto got his $ioo, "All the News That's 
 Fit to Print" continued to be the motto of the 
 paper. All this attracted a certain amount of at- 
 tention to the new methods on an old paper, and 
 a certain number of readers were drawn to buy The 
 Times and find out what all the disturbance was 
 about. It is hardly necessary to say that the ad- 
 vertisement would have been useless if they had not 
 discovered, on examining The Times, that it was 
 living up to its promises; that it was giving the 
 news and presenting it with sanity and decency. 
 
 Meanwhile some new and valuable features had 
 been added to the paper. The first of these, and 
 one of the most important, was the illustrated Sun- 
 day magazine, first published as part of the Sunday 
 paper on September 6, 1896, three weeks after Mr. 
 Ochs took control. Newspaper Sunday magazines 
 in that day were distinguished chiefly by the so- 
 called comic supplement — a feature which The 
 Times has never had, never needed, and never de- 
 sired. The magazine section, in the narrower sense 
 of the word, was also influenced chiefly by the "yel- 
 low" journals; the type is still represented by some 
 belated survivals, rather less flamboyant than 
 twenty-five years ago. Against this The Times 
 off"ered a pictorial supplement printed on good coated 
 paper and illustrated with half-tone photographs. 
 It was as great an advance in its day as the more 
 recent rotogravure pictorial supplement, and it gave 
 a real illustrated news magazine to the New York 
 newspaper pubhc. 
 
 This magazine was popular from the very first. 
 212 
 
RESTORATION OF THE TIMES, 1896-1900 
 
 Perhaps its greatest accomplishment was the publi- 
 cation of the pictures of Queen Victoria's jubilee in 
 1897. Fifty photographs of the procession on June 
 22 were bought at 10 guineas apiece from the offi- 
 cial photographer and rushed to New York; and on 
 July 4 The Times Illustrated Magazine published 
 sixteen pages of them. They were not only pub- 
 lished in The Times before any other New York paper 
 had them, but they were well printed so that the 
 reader could see what they were — something which 
 a reproduction on ordinary newsprint could hardly 
 have accomplished. That feat, which cost altogether 
 $5000 — a considerable sum to The Times of 1897 
 — is still remembered in the office as one of the first 
 of a long series of beats, and it added greatly to the 
 reputation of the illustrated magazine. But week 
 in and week out that magazine was widely prized; 
 and when it was discontinued in September, 1899, 
 after three years of existence, chiefly because The 
 Times had attained so large a circulation that the 
 magazine could no longer be produced by the inade- 
 quate plant then available, it left a good many 
 mourners, who only in recent years have found an 
 adequate substitute in the present pictorial and mag- 
 azine supplements of the Sunday paper. 
 
 Perhaps the most important service of that maga- 
 zine in the long run was its effect on other news- 
 papers, many of which were inspired to imitate it. 
 This was true in a still higher degree of the next 
 feature of the rejuvenated Times — the Saturday Re- 
 view of Books, first published on October 10, 1896, 
 and edited then and long afterward by Francis W. 
 Halsey. In this pubhcation was carried put an idea 
 
 213 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 of the publisher of The Times that a newspaper book 
 review should be a literary newspaper, treating 
 newly published books as news and containing be- 
 sides other news of literary happenings. While open 
 to criticism from several standpoints, the treating of 
 books as news is certainly more in accordance with 
 the function of a daily newspaper, as well as some- 
 what easier to do well, than more serious effort at 
 hterary criticism. And in The Times Saturday Re- 
 view the news of the literary world was assembled and 
 presented better than ever before in an American daily. 
 Moreover, the new tabloid form, with the excellent 
 typography and good quality of paper used, attracted 
 the attention of readers to book news which they 
 might have passed by in the columns of the regular 
 edition. 
 
 As an example of the conviction of students of 
 literature that it did meet a long-felt want may be 
 cited the action of Professor C. Alphonso Smith, 
 then at the Louisiana State University, who required 
 all members of some of his classes in English literature 
 to take The Times Book Review in order to keep up 
 with current events in the literary field. This pub- 
 lication, too, has since been imitated, and in some 
 instances improved upon, but in 1896 it was a new 
 idea which once more made the New York public 
 realize that something was happening on The Times. 
 Its ultimate service to the cause of book reviewing 
 in the United States — a cause which still needs all 
 the help it can get, but which is considerably better 
 oflF than it was in 1896 — was perhaps even greater 
 than its contribution to the well-being of The Times. 
 
 For a considerable time, indeed, it seemed that 
 214 
 
RESTORATION OF THE TIMES, 1896-1900 
 
 this new publication was to be a gratuitous and dis- 
 interested contribution to American letters. It 
 found immediate favor with readers, but not with 
 advertisers. Book publishers argued that when the 
 book reviews were embodied in the regular news 
 columns of the paper, as had previously been the 
 custom, they and the adjacent advertising would be 
 seen by the general reader; whereas if they were 
 segregated in a special supplement they would re- 
 ceive the attention only of the limited and presum- 
 ably impecunious section of the reading pubhc which 
 was interested in books. Only very slowly did the 
 publishers realize that people who were interested in 
 books were more likely to buy books when they had 
 any money to buy them with than those who irri- 
 tably turned over the sheet in order to escape from 
 the book reviews to the sporting news on the next 
 page. After the first publisher tried the experi- 
 ment of advertising in the Book Review others soon 
 followed, and before long the publication was pay- 
 ing its way. 
 
 There were disadvantages about the pubUcation of 
 the literary supplement on Saturday. It had to 
 be in the form of loose sheets, folded into the 
 rest of the paper. If the reader did not want the 
 Book Review he merely opened up the paper and 
 let the sheets flutter out — and they fluttered well. 
 The Saturday morning paper, naturally, was read by 
 people on their way downtown to work. Those who 
 didn't care to carry the Book Review about with 
 them — they rarely failed to "look over" it — let it 
 blow away in the wind, so one morning the man- 
 agement of The Times was attracted, and rather ag- 
 
 215 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 grieved, by a cartoon in Life entitled "The Littery 
 Supplement," and depicting a citizen desperately try- 
 ing to struggle out of an elevated station through a 
 heap of discarded sheets of The Times Saturday 
 Book Review. 
 
 This was publicity, though not of the most favor- 
 able sort; but it was finally decided that the Book 
 Review would go better with the Sunday paper, in 
 most instances delivered at the home, where it could 
 be conveniently laid aside for reading at leisure. 
 Once more, however, the book publishers were dis- 
 turbed by the change. Some of them had scruples 
 against advertising in a Sunday paper. One or two 
 publishers held out for a little while and insisted on 
 advertising only in the regular issue of Saturday; 
 but their rivals soon began to get results which 
 gradually drew all the book advertising into the Book 
 Review supplement to the Sunday edition. 
 
 The more recent history of The Times Book Re- 
 view is another matter. Superficially, its combina- 
 tion with the magazine section may seem to be a 
 reversal of the principle on which the literary sup- 
 plement was originally separated from the body of 
 the paper; but the present-day Book Review and 
 Magazine is still in a process of development whose 
 event, it is hoped, will justify the belief of the man- 
 agement of The Times that a still better literary 
 newspaper is attainable than has ever yet been pro- 
 duced. If the history of the various transforma- 
 tions of The Times literary supplement shows any- 
 thing, it shows that books are, generally speaking* 
 bought by the people who like to read about books; 
 and that literary advertising will bring results if 
 
 216 
 
RESTORATION OF THE TIMES, 189&-1900 
 
 placed alongside literary news, wherever that may be. 
 
 Still another feature was added to The Times on 
 November 8, 1897, in the weekly financial review 
 which was published for a number of years there- 
 after as a supplement to the Monday morning paper. 
 Each of these additions to the paper brought new 
 readers, and others were constantly being attracted 
 by the slow and steady improvement of the quality 
 of the paper. 
 
 Another innovation of the new management was 
 the giving over of much of the space allotted to 
 letters from readers to the views of those who dis- 
 agreed with the editorial opinions of the paper. This 
 was not wholly a novelty in American journalism, 
 but The Times now began to do it on a scale previ- 
 ously unknown. Not so very many years before 
 1896 most American newspapers {The Times among 
 them) had been reluctant to print even news which 
 did not accord with editorial policy. That time had 
 passed, and the new management of The Times now 
 made a point of opening its columns to the presen- 
 tation of views on any side of any subject, as a 
 matter of news and as a contribution to the forma- 
 tion of well-grounded opinion. Almost all decent 
 newspapers do that now, but it was a novelty in 
 the nineties. 
 
 It has, perhaps, some perils; certain inveterate 
 self-advertisers have nothing to do but flood the 
 columns of all newspapers with their letters, and if 
 the editors occasionally feel that other people have 
 a right to be heard these correspondents at once 
 conclude that they are being suppressed for un- 
 worthy reasons. Also, if a book review opens its 
 
 217 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 correspondence page to all comers, that page is likely 
 to be filled with complaints from authors who feel 
 that the reviewers did not do justice to their works. 
 Nevertheless, the practice is now universally recog- 
 nized as useful and necessary, an opinion which was 
 a rarity in the days when The Times first began to 
 invite letters from people who disagreed with it. 
 
 The editorial page was as good as ever. In the 
 campaign of 1896, when the paper supported the 
 Gold Democratic ticket of Palmer and Buckner, 
 The Times's editorial arguments for sound money 
 were powerful and effective. The publisher and the 
 editors took the issues of that campaign so seriously 
 that they all marched in the great gold parade, the 
 biggest New York had ever known; and they had 
 the satisfaction of feeling at the end of the cam- 
 paign that The Times's editorial attitude had counted 
 for a good deal in the sound money discussion. 
 The improvement of the news columns in the direc- 
 tion of impartiality, which had made much progress 
 since the secession of The Times from the Republi- 
 can Party, was carried still further under a new 
 publisher who was interested in politics only as an 
 external observer and good citizen. The loss of. 
 subscribersjiadrb een stopped; in the fir st ^year an d 
 aJialT of the_new ma nagement the cireiJatioii_ha3', 
 more than - doubled; ^nd th e_d eficit was n ow^rapidly 
 ^PPISas hj-Qg the vanish mg point. 
 
 Advertising was coming to^cKe'paper in increasing 
 amounts. It had been the boast of Mr. Jones that 
 no man had ever been asked to subscribe to The 
 Times or to advertise in The Times. If he chose to 
 do either, that was his own affair; but nobody 
 
 218 
 
CARR V. 
 
 VAN ANDA, 
 
 Mana^ng 
 
 Editor. 
 
 {.P) Under wood A 
 Vnderwood- 
 
 LOUIS WILEY, 
 
 Business Manager. 
 
RESTORATION OF THE TIMES, 1896-1900 
 
 would give him any provocation. Whatever the 
 merits or demerits of this attitude, the time for it 
 had passed by 1896. If a newspaper owner of that 
 period chose to regard his paper as something which 
 he published for his own personal pleasure there was 
 considerable danger that the public would respect 
 his reticence. The new management of The Times 
 had space to sell for legitimate advertising, which 
 in its opinion would satisfy the purchaser and give 
 him his money's worth, and they did not regard it 
 as beneath their dignity to tell him about it. 
 
 Nevertheless, certain types of advertising were 
 from the first carefully excluded. While not all 
 patent medicines are kept out of The Times's ad- 
 vertising columns, the rules adopted under the new 
 management were so strict that almost all of this 
 matter was automatically rejected. Patent medi- 
 cine advertising was much more general, of course, 
 twenty-five years ago; today it survives in a few 
 metropolitan journals of somewhat antediluvian 
 standards, and is a welcome guest of many publi- 
 cations in the smaller towns. Some of it is legiti- 
 mate advertising, but so much of it is not that The 
 Times felt that its publication could do no good, 
 while in many instances it did positive harm. 
 
 Word puzzles and similar schemes in which prizes 
 were offered for something which looked easy, but 
 was generally impossible of accompHshment, were 
 also excluded. Persons who offered something for 
 nothing, who guaranteed the cure of illnesses or the 
 payment of large dividends, also found themselves 
 compelled to display their wares in other papers. 
 It was and is the conviction of the publisher of Th( 
 
 219 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 Times that honesty is the best pohcy, and that busi- 
 ness success cannot be securely founded on misrep- 
 resentation and fraud. There is doubtless a consid- 
 erable part of the public which will always be too 
 stupid to know that it is being deceived, or too list- 
 less to care; but The Times was not aiming at that 
 class of readers. 
 
 It has sometimes been objected that discrimina- 
 tion against objectionable advertising should logically 
 be carried to the point of investigating all advertis- 
 ing before publication. The Times does not do this. 
 It does investigate all advertisements as to which it 
 has any reason to entertain suspicion; and if the 
 suspicion remains after investigation, even though 
 nothing is proved, the reader is given the benefit of 
 the doubt and the advertising is excluded. The 
 principles above mentioned result in the wholesale 
 exclusion from The Times of those classes of adver- 
 tisements in which there is most likely to be mis- 
 representation. In other fields a sharp watch is 
 maintained for fraudulent advertising, with results 
 which may be fully appreciated if The Times'' s finan- 
 cial advertising, for example, be compared with that 
 of some of its contemporaries. 
 
 Elimination of questionable material is, of course, 
 considerably easier in financial than in mercantile 
 advertising. In this latter field it has seemed to 
 The Times that the exercise of ordinary vigilance is 
 about all that can be expected of a newspaper. The 
 newspaper may do a good deal in the suppression of 
 improper claims by advertisers, but it cannot do all 
 the reader's thinking. 
 
 Two instances of rejection of advertising by The 
 220 
 
RESTORATION OF THE TIMES, 1896-1900 
 
 Times, very early in the history of the present man- 
 agement, deserve special notice. As permitted, 
 though not enjoined, by the election laws of 1896, 
 the Board of Aldermen in that year voted that the 
 complete canvass of the vote in the city should be 
 published in six daily newspapers. The Times was 
 one of the six papers selected, but it promptly at- 
 tacked the decision as a waste of public money and 
 urged that publication be confined to the one paper 
 mandatory under the law — which would not have 
 been The Times. This report was of enormous vol- 
 ume, and its publication, at the ordinary rates, would 
 have brought to every paper carrying it some $33,600 
 — a total of over $200,000. The Times needed $33,- 
 600 rather badly just then, but it declined the 
 advertisement in an editorial which called the elec- 
 tion canvass "a waste of public money." The mem- 
 bers of the Board of Aldermen professed to be 
 startled and horrified by the discovery that the ex- 
 pense would be so heavy. Certainly they were 
 horrified by this proclamation to the public that 
 so much money was being thrown away, and the 
 publication was finally reduced to the smallest 
 amount permitted by law, none of which came to 
 The Times — a result, of course, which had been ex- 
 pected. 
 
 Some months later all the regular advertising of 
 the city government was unexpectedly offered to 
 The Times. This amounted to about $150,000 a 
 year, a sum which would have made a tremendous 
 difference to The Times of that period. Moreover, 
 assurances were brought to the management of the 
 paper by a gentleman who was a friend both of the 
 
 221 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 publisher and of the Tammany leaders that this offer 
 was made with absolutely no strings. It was neither 
 the expectation nor the desire of Tammany that 
 The Times should feel itself influenced in any way, 
 and it was understood that the allotment of the 
 advertising did not in any way involve a modifica- 
 tion of The Times' s general hostility to Tammany in 
 local politics. The only reason for this sudden wind- 
 fall', said the gentleman who brought the news, was 
 the conviction of the Tammany leaders that it was 
 a good thing for the general interests of the Demo- 
 cratic Party to have a conservative Democratic 
 paper maintained in New York City. That paper's 
 feelings about Tammany did not enter into the case. 
 
 The publisher of The Times had entire confidence 
 in the good faith of the gentleman who gave him 
 these assurances, and saw no need for questioning 
 the good faith of the Tammany leaders. For 
 whether or not their intentions were honorable, 
 their proposal was unacceptable. It was asking too 
 much of human nature to suppose that thereafter 
 when The Times had reason to attack Tammany, 
 as it certainly would (its exposures of graft pay- 
 ments for gambling-house protection were not very 
 far in the future), the subconscious, if not the con- 
 scious minds of those in The Times office might be 
 affected by the thought that $150,000 was at stake. 
 By that time the paper might have got accustomed 
 to living on a higher scale, and would have missed 
 the $150,000 more than if it had never had it. More- 
 over, The Times was still far behind its rivals in cir- 
 culation. If this considerable revenue were suddenly 
 awarded to the smallest in circulation of New York 
 
 222 
 
RESTORATION OF THE TIMES, 1896-1900 
 
 morning papers, everybody would believe that Tam- 
 many had bought The Times, no matter how pure 
 the motives of the organization or of the paper's 
 management. The shadow was as bad as the sub- 
 stance, in this case; from any point of view the offer 
 was unacceptable. 
 
 Years later, in Mayor McClellan's administration, 
 The Times was designated for a large part of the city 
 advertising — the greater part mandatory in con- 
 nection with condemnation proceedings in the mat- 
 ter of the Ashokan water supply. By that time the 
 paper's circulation was large, and was growing by 
 leaps and bounds. Its revenues were also large and 
 increasing; there could no longer be any serious sus- 
 picion that The Times had reason to sell its soul for 
 advertising patronage, and its selection as an adver- 
 tising medium was a natural choice, for that selec- 
 tion had in the meantime been made by great num- 
 bers of private advertisers who had found that ad- 
 vertising in The Times would sell their goods. 
 
 Principles of this sort temporarily cost the paper 
 a good deal of money. But on the whole it was 
 fighting its way slowly back to prosperity. In its 
 antagonism to "yellow" journalism it was beginning 
 to find a good many friends. It was not alone in its 
 attack upon the methods of The Journal and The 
 World; The Sun and The Press, for example, made 
 much more of a crusade out of it. But their effort 
 was chiefly destructive; they devoted a good deal of 
 space to attacks upon the personalities and prac- 
 tices of the "yellow" press. The Times was less con- 
 cerned in holding up to the pubHc view infamies 
 already quite apparent to those who were capable 
 
 223 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 of being disturbed by them than in demonstrating to 
 persons who did not like "yellow" journalism that 
 The Times was the sort of paper they wanted. 
 
 The "yellows" fought back, of course. The World 
 graciously referred to some of its journalistic critics 
 as "doomed rats struggling in a pit," and endeavored 
 to make it clear that a monopoly of journalistic 
 purity was possessed by The World. In The World's 
 opinion. The Times was owned by the trusts; it had 
 been bought up by Wall Street speculators for their 
 own selfish purposes. The basis of this legend, 
 started in a quarter where it would probably be 
 promptly repudiated today, was the very moderate 
 amount of obligations of The Times held by certain 
 bankers mentioned in the earlier part of this chap- 
 ter. The Worldf'pi course, saw some advantages in 
 circulating the suspicion that Mr. Ochs was not solely 
 directing The Times, and it chose to regard him, 
 and to speak of him, as "caretaker of the deficit." 
 
 The Times was making its way, slowly, but with 
 increasing sureness among those who were disturbed 
 by the tendencies of The World and The Journal. It 
 was advertised by the assertion that "It does not soil 
 the breakfast cloth." And this negative virtue no 
 less than its positive excellences was winning it 
 new readers all the time. Mr. Jason Rogers of The 
 New York Globe has said that "If ever a newspaper 
 was built brick upon brick, through the recommen- 
 dation of one reader to a friend who was not yet 
 reading, The New York Times was so built." This 
 description, which could be generally appHed to the 
 growth of The Times in the last twenty-five years, is 
 especially accurate as a description of the paper's 
 
 224 
 
RESTORATION OF THE TIMES, 1896-1900 
 
 recovery in its first year and a half under the new 
 management. It might have gone on growing at 
 this steady pace, with no sudden mutations of for- 
 tune, had it not been for an event which, if not ex- 
 actly unforeseen, could hardly have been provided 
 against, which subjected the paper to an almost 
 ruinous strain, and put it in jeopardy from which 
 there was no escape but by the desperate expedient 
 that, almost overnight, made its fortune. This 
 event was the Spanish War. 
 
 The very first issue of The Times, on September 
 i8, 1851, had carried an editorial on the Cuban 
 question. Crittenden's filibusters, who had gone to 
 aid the Lopez rebellion, had lately been captured and 
 shot, and the rising itself had been put down. The 
 Times saw in the failure of the Lopez rising proof 
 that the Cubans did not want independence, and it 
 opposed the annexationist agitation of that day on 
 very solid grounds. For of course the Cuban ques- 
 tion, in the fifties, was only part of the larger ques- 
 tion of the slave empire of the Golden Circle. An- 
 nexation was desired by those who wanted another 
 slave state, and opposed in the North precisely be- 
 cause that was the motive of those who wanted it. 
 Even the article above referred to took a couple of 
 paragraphs to explain that Americans would al- 
 ways sympathize with any people struggling to be 
 free. 
 
 By 1898 the Cuban question was on a wholly dif- 
 ferent basis. Cuba was no longer a partisan interest 
 in American politics, nor was there any doubt as to 
 the popular support of the revolution which had be- 
 
 225 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 gun in 1895. The Times had held in Cleveland's 
 Administration, and in the first year of McKinley's, 
 that the distress and disorder in the island must be 
 ended, and that if they could not be ended by Spain 
 on a basis satisfactory to Cuba there might be 
 need of American intervention. As the situation 
 became more critical 7%!? Times editorial page dis- 
 cussed the right of intervention according to inter- 
 national law, coming to the conclusion that the 
 United States Government would undoubtedly be 
 justified in taking that step, should it prove impos- 
 sible to settle the Cuban question by other means, 
 on the ground of safeguarding the peace and safety 
 of our own people who could not be persuaded to 
 sit quietly by while the Cubans were fighting for 
 freedom. President McKinley afterward acknowl- 
 edged that these articles had been of great value in 
 helping him to clarify his own views about the rights 
 and duties of our Government in the crisis. In the 
 weeks leading up to the declaration of war The 
 Times had maintained a temperate attitude, hoping 
 that some satisfactory solution might be reached 
 without hostilities, but insisting that the Cuban 
 question must now be settled, and finally settled. 
 When the course of the war brought unexpected ac- 
 quisitions of territory in the Pacific and the Carib- 
 bean, The Times could see little merit in the argu- 
 ments of the anti-imperialists. In its opinion there 
 was not much use talking about the desirability of 
 expansion. Expansion had happened; it had come 
 as an incident in an apparently inevitable historical 
 development; and it had to be accepted as a fact. 
 Mr. Bryan's zealous anti-imperialism only rein- 
 
 226 
 
RESTORATION OF THE TIMES, 1896-1900 
 
 forced in the minds of the editors of The Times the 
 impression that his attitude on the currency had al- 
 ready created, and his personality and the two major 
 issues which he had selected led The Times to give 
 its support to the Republican Presidential ticket in 
 1900, for the first time in sixteen years. 
 
 But if The Times's editorial reaction to the issues 
 of the Spanish War honorably carried on the tradi- 
 tions of the paper's history, the other departments 
 found the war all but disastrous. Advertising fell 
 off ruinously in the spring and summer of 1898, 
 when a good many excitable persons expected to be 
 awakened any morning by the roar of Cervera's 
 guns bombarding Coney Island. This loss, borne 
 by all the papers, naturally fell with particular 
 weight on the one which was just beginning to strug- 
 gle back to financial security. The Times, indeed, 
 managed to enliven the early period of the conflict 
 by a private war of its own with certain advertisers. 
 The North German Lloyd Steamship Company had 
 sold a vessel to the Spanish Government, for use as 
 a troopship or converted cruiser. The Times ob- 
 served editorially that whatever the legal aspects of 
 this sale of war material to the enemy, it was pretty 
 poor business in the North German Lloyd thus to 
 affront the people which was its best customer. 
 This observation stirred up a too zealous official of 
 that company not only to withdraw his own adver- 
 tising from The Times, but to endeavor to persuade 
 other steamship lines to follow his example, on the 
 ground that this was unwarranted and intolerable 
 criticism of a foreign transportation company. 
 
 This coming to the attention of The Times, its 
 227 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 editors were moved to the comment, several times 
 repeated on the editorial page, that this transaction 
 involved something which looked very much like 
 criminal conspiracy. The right of the North Ger- 
 man Lloyd to withdraw its own" advertising was con- 
 ceded, but when it attempted to form a combination 
 against The Times it was taking a pretty long chance. 
 The German line had chosen a highly unpopular 
 issue, and before long friends of its managers were 
 coming to The Times office and begging the paper 
 to let up on them. The attempted combination was 
 abandoned. Even if the German line had been suc- 
 cessful, the loss of steamship advertising would have 
 made no very great diminution in the income of any 
 newspaper; but just then, in 1898, The Times needed 
 all it could get — and indeed a good deal more. 
 
 Nor was it able to recover any of the lost ground 
 on the basis of enormous increases in circulation. 
 Some increase there was; The Times was growing 
 from week to week — but growing slowly. And the 
 war had suddenly forced it into a situation where it 
 could not hope to compete against its more prosper- 
 ous rivals. 
 
 The Spanish-American War was probably, from 
 the viewpoint of a certain type of newspaper man, 
 the most convenient war ever fought. It was a little 
 war; it was a short war, and it was near at hand. 
 Nor had there been any great conflicts in recent 
 years which might have overshadowed it or enabled 
 the country to view it in proper perspective. And, 
 though the fighting was on a small scale, the issues 
 were indeed important — important to the whole 
 country. Here was a war, almost on the front door- 
 
 228 
 
RESTORATION OF THE TIMES, 1896-1900 
 
 step, in which a people which had been at peace for 
 a third of a century had an overwhelming interest. 
 This alone made it a tremendous news story. More- 
 over, it did not last long enough for the enthusiasm 
 of the early weeks to be cooled. It was brilliantly 
 successful; there were no defeats to sober the coun- 
 try, no long casualty lists to divert attention. Its 
 history could be, and was, what was called a few 
 years later a "glory story." 
 
 And, above all, it was a war on a small scale. It 
 was not so big that the doings of the armies over- 
 shadowed the competitive enterprise of the news- 
 papers. As a happy hunting ground for war corre- 
 spondents it has seldom been equaled. The arma- 
 das of dispatch boats loaded with reporters, feature 
 writers and photographers sent down by some of 
 the New York papers were about as formidable as 
 Sampson's fleet, and their doings took up pretty 
 nearly as much space in dispatches. As for the 
 campaigns ashore, the readers of some papers might 
 justifiably have been in doubt whether the war was 
 primarily a field for the doings of eminent person- 
 ages who had volunteered from civil life or a con- 
 venient arrangement for exploitation of the famous 
 correspondents who happened to write about the 
 eminent personages. The fact that a battle had been 
 fought, and that we had won it, was less important 
 than that Mr. A, the renowned politician, and Mr. 
 B, the noted Yale halfback, had taken part in the 
 battle; and this again was of less consequence (ac- 
 cording to some newspapers) than that the doings 
 of Mr. A and Mr. B had been reported by the fa- 
 mous correspondent X, and depicted by the cele- 
 
 229 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 brated artist Y. And before the public had time to 
 tire of this sort of thing the war was over, and every- 
 body but the few thousand victims of "canned 
 horse" and the Cuban cHmate had come home. 
 
 In all this The Times had no part, for the pa infuL 
 reason that it had no money. It was laboriously 
 paying its way; it could manage to meet current ex- 
 penses, but it could not plunge into any of the wild 
 expenditures undertaken by the more prosperous 
 New York papers. As an example of what those 
 papers which could aflFord it were doing may be 
 mentioned The Herald's dispatch of some 2000 words 
 on the night of July 3, which alone of special dis- 
 patches to individual newspapers brought, in time 
 for publication next morning, the details of the de- 
 struction of Cervera's fleet. It was filed at Port 
 Antonio, Jamaica, for transmission via Kingston 
 and Panama, and to take precedence of the hun- 
 dreds of thousands of words of press dispatches piled 
 up at the Port Antonio telegraph office it was sent 
 at double the commercial rates, prepaid, the total 
 cost being ^3.25 a word, paid in gold. 
 
 The Times could not do this or anything Uke it. 
 Even dispatch boats and special cables were an im- 
 possible luxury. When the news came The Times 
 displayed it as intelligently and satisfactorily as 
 anybody, and its editorial comment on the news 
 was sound and well informed; but the news itself 
 was everybody's news — it came from The Associ- 
 ated Press. The Times did, indeed, have a little 
 mail correspondence, but that counted for nothing 
 in a time when the victories of Schley and Shafter 
 were less important in themselves than the oppor- 
 
 230 
 
RESTORATION OF THE TIMES, 1896-1900 
 
 tunities which they afforded for shrieking headUnes, 
 signed cablegrams in twelve-point full face and 
 smudgy pictures by staff artists. The Times was 
 still a good newspaper, but it couldn't compete in 
 calling the attention of the public to its excellence. 
 
 So the end of the war found the management of 
 The Times facing the possibility that the work of 
 the past two years had been in vain. The meagre 
 hundred thousand dollars of operating capital with 
 which Mr. Ochs had started was gone, and the re- 
 ceipts of the paper, though gradually improving, were 
 not suflSicient to make it up. It was apparent that 
 something had to be done, but when the publisher put 
 forward his idea of the proper remedy many people 
 thought that it meant sudden and irretrievable ruin. 
 He proposed to cut the price to one cent. It had 
 been forty-seven years since The Times had sold at 
 that price, and the one-cent field among morning 
 newspaper readers had long been left to The World 
 and The Journal. It had come to be the general 
 opinion that that was the sort of thing people wanted 
 for one cent; that those who thought that no news- 
 paper was worth more than that would be quite 
 content with what was offered them and had no ap- 
 petite for anything else. 
 
 The publisher thought otherwise. It was his be- 
 lief that a great many people who found the differ- 
 ence between three dollars and ten dollars for a year's 
 newspaper bills sufficient to be worth considering 
 were reading The World and The Journal only be- 
 cause they were cheap. Give them a choice and a 
 good many of them might prefer a paper of the char- 
 acter which The Times had established. It was not 
 
 231 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 to be doubted that there were a good many objec- 
 tions to the proposal. There would be an immediate 
 and considerable decrease in circulation revenue, 
 though at the low price of paper in those days it 
 would still be possible for The Times to get more 
 than enough income from a one-cent circulation to 
 pay for the paper on which the news was printed. 
 The question, of course, was whether the circulation 
 would increase sufficiently to bring in advertising. 
 There was a danger that advertisers who had been 
 used to regarding The Times as appealing to a con- 
 stituency small in quantity but high in quality 
 would come to the conclusion that it had merely 
 lowered the quality without corresponding increase 
 in quantity. What The Times hoped to do was to 
 increase the quantity while retaining the same qual- 
 ity- 
 
 In other words, it did not expect to cut in on the 
 natural field of The World and The Journal. It was 
 not going to be a "yellow" journal; it was not going to 
 compete for the favor of those who wanted "yellow" 
 journals. Mr. Ochs said in an interview published 
 in a trade paper a few months later (January, 1899): 
 
 Such papers as The World and The Journal 
 exist because the public wants them. I 
 hold that some of their features are open to 
 criticism, but each of them has done infi- 
 nitely more good than harm. 
 
 It was quite clear to the publisher of The Times 
 that there was a large part of the one-cent public 
 which wanted precisely what it was getting for one 
 cent. The question which could be decided only by 
 trial was whether there might be also a part of the 
 
 232 
 
RESTORATION OF THE TIMES, 1896-1900 
 
 one-cent public that wanted something of a differ- 
 ent sort. And The Times resolved to find out. 
 
 In the editorial announcement of the change of 
 price on October lo, 1898, some of the aspects of the 
 matter as they appeared to The Times management 
 were stated as follows: 
 
 It is the price of the paper, not its char- 
 acter, that is changed. In appeaUng to a 
 larger audience The Times by no means pro- 
 poses to offend the taste or forfeit the confi- 
 dence of the audience it now has, already 
 large, discriminating, and precious to it as 
 lifelong friends. That statement we make 
 in full sincerity and with firm resolution. ■ 
 We wish to make it with all possible empha- 
 sis, so that no reader of The Times in the 
 past need scan the columns of this morning's 
 issue, or of any subsequent issue, with the 
 least misgiving or apprehension lest the re- 
 duction in price may be concurrent with a 
 lowering in tone and quality. The old 
 readers of The Times and the new shall find 
 it a clean, truthful, carefully edited news- 
 paper at one cent, a paper that recognizes 
 its obligation to give its readers all the 
 news, but values its own good name and 
 their respect too highly to put before them 
 the untrue or the unclean, or to affront 
 their intelligence and their good taste with 
 freaks of typographic display or reckless 
 sensationalism. . . . 
 
 During the past two years The Times 
 has made a large advance in circulation. 
 . . . No paper, however, ever increases 
 in circulation fast enough to satisfy its con- 
 ductors. It has seemed to the management 
 of The Times that while the growth of its 
 
 233 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 sales was steady and substantial, it was too 
 slow; that, while its circulation has reached 
 a large figure for a newspaper of its charac- 
 ter, it ought to be larger. . . . 
 
 The proposition that many thousands of 
 persons in this city of three and one-half 
 million souls buy and read one-cent news- 
 papers chiefly on account of their price and 
 not on account of their character and qual- 
 ity seemed sound. We believe these thou- 
 sands would like to read a newspaper of the 
 character and quality of 7%.? Times in pref- 
 erence to, or let us generously suppose in 
 conjunction with, the papers they have been 
 reading. The Times has determined to ex- 
 tend its appeal beyond those readers with 
 whom quality is indispensable and price a 
 matter of no consequence to the presumably 
 much larger number of persons to whom 
 both price and quality are of consequence. 
 
 This emphasis on the unaltered character and 
 quality of the paper now ofl^ered at one third of the 
 former price was terribly necessary. Many readers 
 would be certain to feel that only a "yellow" paper 
 could be produced for one cent and would look with 
 cynical eagerness for the expected deterioration in 
 quality. Indeed, this view seems to have been held 
 by some people in The Times office. On the night 
 the change was announced one of the reporters 
 came in with what he joyfully heralded to the night 
 city editor as "a beautifully sensational story." It 
 did not appear in the paper; indeed, the publisher 
 afterward observed that he wouldn't have had a 
 "sensational" story in that day's issue for any con- 
 sideration. And, little by little, doubting readers 
 
 234 
 
THE PRESENT HOME, 
 
 THE TIMES ANNEX, 
 
 WEST 43RD ST.— TIMES SQUARE. 
 
RESTORATION OF THE TIMES, 1896-1900 
 
 of The Times became convinced that their fears were 
 needless. It was the same paper they had been 
 getting; nothing had been changed but the price. 
 Some unfriendly comment, however, was occa- 
 sioned by the change, and for other reasons. It 
 must have been known to anybody in the news- 
 paper business in New York that the editorial ob- 
 servation of October lo that "it has seemed to the 
 management of The Times that while the growth of 
 its sales was steady and substantial, it was too slow," 
 was certainly not an overstatement. Newspaper 
 men pretty generally suspected what was indeed 
 the fact, that The Times had virtually been driven 
 to the step; and there were some who ungenerously 
 attributed it to base reasons. A gubernatorial cam- 
 paign was going on at the time, and the newspaper 
 was supporting Augustus Van Wyck, the Demo- 
 cratic candidate. The suspicion not unnaturally 
 sprang up in many minds that this reduction of in- 
 come was only possible because there was some 
 compensating revenue which had suddenly been 
 opened to the paper. Only one newspaper. The 
 Evening Mail, came boldly out and said that The 
 Times had been subsidized by Tammany; and when 
 The Times promptly called that paper to account, it 
 as promptly apologized. But the suspicion per- 
 sisted among some readers, and one of them, who 
 was frank enough to express his opinions in a letter 
 to the editor, was answered by an editorial state- 
 ment which pointed out that it would be rather 
 transparently stupid to take this step in the middle 
 of a political campaign if its reason were that which 
 the political position of the paper might suggest. 
 
 235 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 Stronger than the conviction that The Times had 
 sold out to Tammany was the behef of most 
 practical newspaper men that this meant the be- 
 ginning of the end. The changes of price in the 
 eighties, which had such unhappy results, were re- 
 called, and it seemed to be the general conviction 
 that The Times would find it impossible to retain 
 its quality at one cent. The Tribune and The Her- 
 ald, whose comments on the change were in a 
 friendly tone which bore evidence of the more civ- 
 ilized spirit which was coming into New York jour- 
 nalism, nevertheless expressed their conviction that 
 high quality could not long be given at low price. 
 One may surmise that their conviction was perhaps 
 strengthened by the fear that if it were possible, 
 their own readers might wonder why they couldn't 
 do it; and though the suspicion is perhaps ungen- 
 erous, one cannot help feeling that the friendly tone 
 of their references to the subject was perhaps due 
 to the conviction that this meant the speedy disap- 
 pearance of an old rival. 
 
 More gratifying to The Times, among the numer- 
 ous remarks on the change in other papers, were 
 those of The Philadelphia Record, which expressed a 
 belief based on its own experience that The Times 
 would find, as The Record had found, that it was 
 possible to be both decent and cheap. Since The 
 Record, selling at one cent, was at that time one of 
 the most profitable newspaper properties in the 
 country, this encouragement was welcome as a hope- 
 ful token of what might be ahead of The Times. 
 
 And The Record's prediction was right. At first 
 the reduction applied only to sales in the city; out- 
 
 236 
 
RESTORATION OF THE TIMES, 1896-1900 
 
 of-town customers still paid three cents, as they 
 had paid before. But with the announcement came 
 an immediate demand from these subscribers for a 
 reduction of The Times to two cents out of town, 
 which was the price charged in those parts for The 
 World and The Journal. It had been the intention 
 to make this change eventually; it had been delayed 
 because the presses were barely able to take care of 
 the increased city circulation anticipated from the 
 reduction. But the protests of out-of-town sub- 
 scribers made it apparent almost at once that there 
 was opportunity to make great gains in that field 
 also. The change was made one week after the 
 original announcement, with the assistance of other 
 papers who lent The Times the use of part of their 
 mechanical plant until its own could be appropri- 
 ately expanded. It might be remarked for the bene- 
 fit of the nonprofessional reader that newspapers 
 have always, even in the days of their most bitter 
 vituperation of each other, been ready for such re- 
 ciprocal assistance in case of any really serious need 
 — a fact which might have suggested to their read- 
 ers long before the smoke began to blow away that 
 a good deal of the harsh language was emitted 
 merely for the joy of battle. 
 
 The Times' s circulation began to jump. It no 
 longer climbed slowly and laboriously; it vaulted 
 from pinnacle to pinnacle. Less than a month 
 showed that the reduction of price had done all that 
 had been hoped, and it continued to do more in the 
 following months. The most skeptical eventually 
 had to admit that the quality of The Times was as 
 good as ever — indeed, better than ever, for the re- 
 
 237 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 newed prosperity of the paper made it possible to 
 spend more money for news. And the gain in cir- 
 culation was astounding. In September, 1898, the 
 daily average circulation was 25,726. In Septem- 
 ber, 1899, one year later, it was 76,260. There are 
 few if any parallels to this sudden rise in American 
 newspaper history. 
 
 The gain in advertising was commensurate. In 
 1898 the advertisements printed amounted to 2,433,- 
 193 agate lines. In 1899 they had risen to 3,378,750. 
 And the increase had not been accompanied by any 
 loss in character. Some of the advertisers supposed 
 that the drive at a one-cent circulation meant re- 
 duction of rates, since the increase in circulation 
 might be offset by the lower buying power of the new 
 readers. It did not seem so to' the management of 
 The Times; in a single month, shortly after the 
 change, more than $50,000 worth of advertising was 
 refused because it was offered below the regular 
 rates of the paper. The Times was preparing to 
 build up a high-class constituency at a low price. 
 It succeeded amazingly, and long before it had 
 achieved the full measure of its intent the late An- 
 drew Carnegie, as shrewd a judge of values as ever 
 came from Scotland, pronounced it "the best cent's 
 worth in the world." 
 
 It may be admitted that when the change was 
 made it was not supposed by the management of 
 The Times that the one-cent price would be long 
 retained. Newspapermen in the latter part of 1898 
 knew that The World and The Journal, by their 
 enormously expensive competition, which came to a 
 climax in the covering of the Spanish War, had 
 
 238 
 
RESTORATION OF THE TIMES, 1896-1900 
 
 eaten heavily into their profits. The fight was 
 beginning to cost more than it was worth, and it was 
 generally understood that the papers were preparing, 
 by agreement, to raise their price to two cents. 
 When that time came. The Times was going to two 
 cents with them; but the management believed that 
 it would be more profitable to come up to two cents 
 than down to it — that most of the readers who 
 had learned to like The Times at one cent would stay 
 with it when the price was increased, especially as 
 there would be no one-cent morning papers left. 
 But The World and The Journal, faced with this 
 sudden and amazingly vigorous competition in their 
 own field, did not dare to try it; they were quite 
 possibly afraid that if they went to two cents The 
 Times would stay at one cent and attract many of 
 their readers. As suggested above, the publisher of 
 The Times was not of this opinion; but since his 
 competitors stuck to the old price he did the same, 
 and there was no change until the unprecedented 
 expenses of the World War, nearly twenty years 
 afterward, forced all the morning papers to go back 
 to two cents. 
 
 From the morning of October lo, 1898, the pros- 
 perity of The Times was assured. It had turned 
 the corner and the old penniless days were soon to 
 become only a memory. It was thereafter only a 
 question of the degree of the paper's success, and it 
 presently increased beyond the dream of any one 
 in the office. Of the fact of success there was never, 
 from the end of 1898, any doubt. 
 
 Though the rate of progress was slower for a few 
 years after that, the progress was without inter- 
 
 239 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 mission. So well was The Times getting ahead that 
 the paper was able in 1900 to undertake at an expense 
 of $50,000 the publication of a special edition at the 
 Paris Exposition. This younger sister of The New 
 York Times, to which it bore a very strong family 
 likeness, was published within the Exposition 
 grounds in June, July, August, September and 
 October under the editorship of George W. Ochs, a 
 brother of the publisher. It showed the French 
 a good deal about American newspaper methods and 
 aroused their respect, even if it did not excite their 
 emulation, and it furnished American visitors to the 
 Exposition with a plentiful supply of home news and 
 world news such as they were quite unable to get 
 from the old established competing publication 
 which devoted most of its space to the doings of the 
 European aristocracy and the mathematical per- 
 plexities of the Old Lady from Philadelphia. It was 
 a good newspaper, and it was an excellent advertise- 
 ment for The New York Times. 
 
 By this time, however, The Times was getting 
 to the stage where it hardly needed any longer to 
 advertise itself. Its reputation was attending to 
 the advertising. The general belief among the 
 newspaper men of 1896 that The Times could 
 not be revived had been so strong that some of 
 the paper's competitors did not realize that it was 
 catching up with them until it was some distance 
 ahead. 
 
 The old United Press, which had been maintained 
 at heavy expense by The Sun, The Herald, The 
 Tribune and The Times, and whose drain on The 
 Times's resources had done a good deal to bring 
 
 240 
 
RESTORATION OF THE TIMES, 1896-1900 
 
 the paper into its financial misfortunes, went to 
 pieces soon after the new management assumed con- 
 trol of The Times. The Times, The Herald and The 
 Tribune at once applied for admission to The Associ- 
 ated Press, then incorporated under the laws of 
 Illinois, and The Herald and The Tribune were 
 admitted with full rights and privileges, but The 
 Times was able to get in only as a sort of stepchild, 
 on what was known as a Class B membership, with 
 no right of protest. Fortunately for the paper, the 
 Supreme Court of Illinois decided in 1900 that 
 The Associated Press was a public utility and com- 
 pelled to furnish its news to anybody. This forced 
 a reorganization under the laws of New York. Mr. 
 Ochs, through his Chattanooga Times membership, 
 was one of the leading members of The Associated 
 Press and had been active in the work of the organ- 
 ization. Now that there was to be a reorganization 
 in New York, The Times received full membership, 
 and he was welcomed to the councils of the leaders 
 and became one of the charter members of the new 
 body. And for twenty years past he has been a 
 member of the Board of Directors and of its Execu- 
 tive Committee. 
 
 By that time the prosperity of The Times was 
 securely estabhshed, and the reorganization com- 
 mittee was dissolved on July i, 1900. The 3876 
 shares which had been held until the publisher 
 should have made the paper pay its way for three 
 consecutive years were transferred to him. The 
 experiment, regarded as hopeless by all the experts, 
 had succeeded in less than four years, and it was 
 already evident that bigger things were«head. In 
 
 241 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 this recovery many men played their parts, but the 
 contribution of the new publisher may be suggested 
 by the remark made, years later, by one of the 
 veterans of The Times staff: "He found the paper 
 on the rocks, and made them foundation stones." 
 
 242 
 
^ 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 Conservatism, Independence, Democracy: 
 1900-1914 
 
 ON September i8, 1901, The Times celebrated 
 its golden jubilee, which was commemorated on 
 September 25 in a special historical supplement 
 whose publication was deferred for a week on account 
 of the funeral of President McKinley. The ad- 
 vertisements published in that supplement, 224 in 
 number, were all representative of firms which had 
 been doing business in New York City on September 
 18, 1 85 1, and ever since, a convincing demonstration 
 that even in this city of rapid and enormous changes 
 there was still a commercial substratum of old tradi- 
 tions with prospects of something like permanence. 
 In the editorial comment on the anniversary there 
 was of course some discussion of the changes in the 
 character of journalism between 1851 and 1901, the 
 chief of which was the extensive publication by 
 papers at the beginning of the twentieth century of 
 what may be called "personal news," the chronicle 
 of happenings in the lives of individuals themselves 
 of no great importance. The reading public had 
 become interested not only in the big news, in public 
 affairs and events of great importance, but in the 
 reporting of things on which the reader could make 
 the comment, "That might have happened to me." 
 It might have been supposed in igoi that the 
 243 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 development of the art of news-getting in future 
 decades would be chiefly in this same direction. But 
 the editors of The Times suspected even then that 
 this was not wholly true, for in their editorial re- 
 marks on the future of the paper they gave their 
 principal attention to the "alliance for mutual 
 benefit" which had just been concluded with The 
 London Times — an arrangement of which more 
 will presently be said — by which The New York 
 Times obtained all rights to the world news service 
 of its English contemporary. Said a Times editorial 
 article on the jubilee day: 
 
 The occasional triumph known in the lingo 
 of journalism as a "beat" may shed a fleet- 
 ing lustre on the name of a newspaper. 
 Of those The Times has had its share in 
 the half century of its life. But the daily 
 habit of gathering into its columns from 
 the four corners of the earth all the news 
 which vigilance and faithful effort can 
 obtain and in which inteUigent minds are 
 likely to be interested gives enduring char- 
 acter and reputation and determines the 
 public judgment. 
 
 And indeed the remarkable growth of The Times 
 in the following years was largely due to its diligence 
 in obtaining, and sound judgment in handling, the 
 big news, much of it foreign news. This had been 
 notably true even before the outbreak of the war 
 of 1914-1918 gave to American journalism a test 
 from which The Times emerged perhaps more bril- 
 liantly than any of its competitors. Even so early 
 as 1901 it was apparent that the American people 
 were in the world, whether they liked it or not; 
 
 244 
 
CONSERVATISM, INDEPENDENCE, 1900-1914 
 
 that the long introversion of the decades after the 
 Civil War had at last come to an end. The world 
 was visibly drawing into a closer interrelation, and 
 the years between 1901 and 1914 were to see the 
 development of a peaceful internationalism, an 
 assimilation of all nations, or at least of the upper 
 and middle classes of all nations, to a common 
 standard of life, such as had not been known since 
 the Roman Empire broke down. 
 
 It was to be the destiny of The Times to find its 
 most brilliant opportunities in responding to the 
 demands of this new age for news from far wider 
 fields than those in which the majority had had any 
 interest in the latter part of the nineteenth century. 
 The isolation of the seventies and eighties, an isolation 
 always more apparent than real, had ended when 
 Dewey's guns boomed in Manila Bay. "Personal 
 news" had reached its utmost popularity in the 
 nineties; with a new era of international peace it 
 may once more come back, as it has begun to come 
 back since the war, to overshadowing importance; 
 but the editors of The Times in 1901 judged rightly 
 the tendencies of the age which was beginning. For 
 a third of a century the American people, like some 
 orders of mediaeval monks, had been trying to 
 find peace by gazing at its own navel, and it was 
 just awakening to the discovery that the world 
 contained sights of somewhat more absorbing 
 interest. 
 
 The Times set forth upon this new era in the 
 enjoyment of a higher degree of material prosperity 
 than it had ever known in its best days of old. Its 
 paid circulation in its jubilee month averaged 
 
 24s 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 102,472 per day — a stupendous figure by the 
 standards of Raymond and Jones, but one which the 
 conductors of the paper could already see was only 
 a beginning. Even they hardly realized in 1901 
 that the circulation of The Times would reach the 
 figures of today, which are seldom much below, and 
 often above, those of its most aggressively "popu- 
 lar" contemporaries in New York morning journal- 
 ism. That some New York papers have a circula- 
 tion of 300,000 or 400,000 a day is not surprising; 
 the only surprising circumstance is that they do 
 not sell a miUion a day, for there is nothing in them 
 which anybody cannot understand. That a paper 
 such as The Times, which, though not aiming eX' 
 pressly at a limited number of intelligent readers, 
 does give up its pages rather to the news of general 
 interest and high importance than to items which 
 tickle the fancy, should have a circulation of 350,000 
 is somewhat more remarkable, and those who produce 
 The Times may be pardoned if they regard it as 
 rather encouraging for the future of a democracy 
 which is likely to get into a good deal of trouble 
 unless it knows what is going on. 
 
 The Times in 1901 was firmly on its feet; it had 
 won back its old position and somewhat more. 
 The history of that recovery has been told; the 
 chronicle of the years that were to come before the 
 outbreak of the World War is a somewhat different 
 story, the story of the paper's emergence from the 
 crowd, so to speak, to a position which may at least 
 be described as that of a primus inter pares in the 
 prompt and reliable presentation of the news of the 
 world. Some of the war cries of the earlier years 
 
 246 
 
CONSERVATISM, INDEPENDENCE, 1900-1914 
 
 were to be heard less frequently in the future. The 
 crusade against "yellow" journalism, for example, 
 gradually died away. There was no longer so much 
 need for a crusade, for the bright orange journalism 
 of the nineties was, in some quarters at least, slowly 
 fading into a somewhat more respectable color. 
 
 The Times had of course contributed a good deal 
 to the war against "yellow" journalism, but its war 
 aims were of a somewhat different sort from those 
 of its associates. To use a terminology familiar 
 to present-day readers, it was not fighting a war of 
 conquest or annihilation. It might aspire to some 
 disannexations of those portions of the reading 
 public which had been attracted into the sphere of 
 influence of the "yellow" journals, though they right- 
 fully belonged to The Times, but that had been 
 accomplished by the reduction of price in 1898. Its 
 conductors never had the desire which was apparently 
 cherished by some of their contemporaries to blot 
 out certain others. 
 
 The object, and the only object, of The Times's 
 criticism of "yellow" journalism was to familiarize 
 every newspaper reader with the fact that The Times 
 would give him what its conductors regarded as the 
 good elements that were to be found in their more 
 sensational contemporaries, and would give them 
 at the same low price, without the other features 
 which many readers found objectionable. It was 
 their purpose to see that nobody should read the 
 "yellows" under the misapprehension that there and 
 there alone could he get the news, and get it for 
 one cent. When this fact had been advertised, 
 when everybody knew what The Times offered, then 
 
 247 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 it was the reader's business to decide what kind of 
 paper he wanted. After that The Times was con- 
 tent with the steady growth that came year by year 
 as more and more readers came to find The Times 
 more satisfactory than the papers which had pre- 
 viously been their favorites. 
 
 The history of this intervening period between 
 1900 and 1914 can perhaps best be told in compart- 
 ments; by taking up first the editorial views of The 
 Times and their reactions on the public, then the 
 development of the news side of the paper, and 
 finally some episodes in its business history which 
 are pertinent to the story of the paper's rise to 
 power, and interesting also as having some bearing 
 on the rising ethical standards of the newspaper 
 business. 
 
 The Times^s position as an independent Democratic 
 newspaper was maintained in the early years of the 
 twentieth century, with the qualification that it was 
 somewhat more independent than Democratic. For 
 Mr. William Jennings Bryan The Times has never 
 had much admiration, except in so far as it wel- 
 comed him as imparting to politics something of 
 that character, at once hilarious and consecrated, 
 which the Rev. Dr. Billy Sunday gives to religion. 
 The Times supported the Republican Presidential 
 ticket in 1900 because at last the Republican Party 
 had been driven into genuine support of the sound 
 money issue, and because the RepubHcans, though 
 by no means united in their opinion on the future 
 duties and responsibilities of the United States as a 
 world power, were free from that academic sort of 
 
 248 
 
CONSERVATISM, INDEPENDENCE, 1900-1914 
 
 anti-imperialism which pleased Mr. Bryan. Mr. 
 McKinley, though by no means a giant among 
 statesmen, was learning more about the business 
 of being President, and his latest utterances indi- 
 cated that he understood some of the demands of 
 the day a little better than the gentleman who so 
 soon was to succeed him. 
 
 For Mr. Roosevelt's character, energy and patriot- 
 ism The Times always had the highest respect, and 
 its editors would not deny that on the whole he 
 was an immensely valuable asset to the America of 
 his time. But the President of the United States 
 has to be not only the worshiper and preacher of 
 ideals but an official performing certain functions. 
 For many of Mr. Roosevelt's actions The Times 
 had only praise, but its editors were inclined to 
 think that the effect of much of his radical teachings 
 went a good deal further than he himself would 
 have liked to believe, and they could not fail to note 
 that one of the great problems of the time, tariff 
 reform, was an issue when he came into office and 
 an issue that had got no further forward when he 
 went out. 
 
 The Democratic Party in 1904 had repudiated 
 most of the heresies which Mr. Bryan had raised 
 to the level of dogmas, and seemed to be turning 
 back toward the sounder positions of Cleveland's 
 day. The Times accordingly supported Alton 
 B. Parker. As in 1872 and 1880, the people were 
 once more inclined to trust the Republican Party, 
 and unhappily the Democratic leaders seemed to 
 think after the defeat of 1904 that -the only way to 
 overcome Roosevelt's popularity was by adopting 
 
 249 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 his doctrines. When Mr. Bryan was once more the 
 Democratic candidate in 1908, The Times supported 
 Taft, but the betrayal of pledges by the Republican 
 Party which followed immediately drove away from 
 it all its independent supporters, as well as a con- 
 siderable fraction of the party membership. In 
 the agitation which beset the Democratic Party 
 during the years when every aspiring politician 
 had his eye on a nomination that carried more 
 prospect of election than those of previous cam- 
 paigns, The Times was chiefly interested in keeping 
 the party from running off the track. In the pre- 
 convention campaign of 1912 it had no favored candi- 
 date, but when it became apparent that the nominee 
 must be either Woodrow Wilson or Champ Clark 
 The Times declared its opinion that Mr. Wilson was 
 as well equipped for the Presidency as any man the 
 party could nominate, and considerably better 
 equipped than any one else whose nomination could 
 be regarded as a possibility. After the convention 
 Mr. Wilson believed, and said in a telegram to the 
 publisher of The Times that that editorial had greatly 
 contributed to his nomination. His record as 
 Governor of New Jersey, his speeches during the 
 preconvention campaign, and the character of much 
 of his support had marked him as a radical candidate. 
 Some of the leaders in the Baltimore convention 
 believed, or allowed themselves to be convinced 
 by enemies of Mr. Wilson, that the conservative 
 elements in the party would not support him if he 
 was nominated. These fears were blown away by 
 this editorial in The Times. If the leading conserva- 
 tive paper in the party, a paper which had shown its 
 
 250 
 
CONSERVATISM, INDEPENDENCE, 1900-1914 
 
 independence by supporting the Republican candi- 
 date in two elections out of the last three, was satis- 
 fied with Mr. Wilson, there could be no fear of any 
 serious bolt. 
 
 The Times was not wholly In sympathy at that 
 time with Mr. Wilson's ideas of government, but its 
 conductors realized that the choice lay between 
 him and Champ Clark. Speaker Clark's conserva- 
 tism, in the opinion of The Times, consisted rather in 
 a certain antiquity of manner, and a resolute in- 
 difference to things that had happened in recent 
 decades, than in any real understanding of conserva- 
 tive ideas; and Mr. Wilson's intellectual equipment 
 was so far superior that The Times thought it wiser to 
 trust a man competent to fill the Presidential office, 
 who might be expected to learn as he went along. 
 
 The subsequent history of The Times's editorial 
 support of President Wilson is sufficiently well 
 known. No newspaper ever gave an administration 
 more loyal support; no favors were received in re- 
 turn and none would have been accepted. The 
 Times has never been willing to pose as an amplifying 
 transmitter for whispers from the lips of authority. 
 To become recognized as the mouthpiece for any 
 administration would have meant the surrender in 
 some measure of the paper's independence, or at 
 any rate of its reputation for independence; it would 
 have required a somewhat different attitude on the 
 part of its conductors, a complaisance toward ten- 
 dencies in the administration with which they were 
 dissatisfied, a willingness to shut their eyes to some 
 things that existed, and to pretend to see things 
 that were mere figments of the imagination. 
 
 251 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 But it may be said by critics of the Wilson 
 administration that on the major issues of these 
 eight years the paper supported the President. It 
 did so in many cases because it happened to agree 
 with the President. The Underwood-Simmons tariff 
 The Times regarded as the most satisfactory that 
 had been enacted in many years, and for Mr. Wil- 
 son's services to the country in obtaining the passage 
 of the Federal Reserve act it felt that no praise 
 could be too high. There was much room for 
 criticism and dissatisfaction in Mr. Wilson's first 
 year, but, as a rule, on minor points. Mr. Bryan's 
 disruption of the diplomatic service, for example, 
 was deplorable in itself, but it was part of the price 
 of the Federal Reserve act. Had Mr. Bryan been 
 left outside the administration that enactment 
 might have been impossible over his opposition. 
 
 In the principal crises of the later years of Mr. 
 Wilson's administrations The Times supported the 
 President because the choice was not between Mr. 
 Wilson and ideal perfection, but between Mr. Wilson 
 and concrete alternatives which seemed less desirable. 
 In the opinion of its conductors he was a President 
 who rose to most of the unusually heavy responsi- 
 bilities laid upon him, and on the dominant issues of 
 his day took a position against which nothing could 
 be said except that he was perhaps a few years ahead 
 of the average voter. And in its editorial summary 
 of his eight years in oifice, on February 27, 1921, 
 The Times took the position that Mr. Wilson had 
 been a great President, whose true importance and 
 usefulness would be increasingly apparent as time 
 went on. As was said in that article: 
 
 252 
 
CONSERVATISM, INDEPENDENCE, 1900-1914 
 
 It made a world of difference whether 
 throughout the war and at the end of the 
 war we had in the White House a common 
 man, or a man above the common. A Presi- 
 dent content to patch up the shattered 
 world and set it spinning again in the old 
 grooves would have been overlooked alto- 
 gether. He never would have helped the 
 nation to find its soul, he would not have 
 found his own. ... As if by predestination, 
 when the war came, one was at the post of 
 duty and of trial who, by his gifts and 
 abilities, seemed to be designated above all 
 others for a service such as no American 
 had ever before been summoned to under- 
 take. 
 
 Yet, because the paper was not always able to 
 agree with the administration, it incurred the usual 
 inconveniences of those who see some right on both 
 sides. To most Republicans it was a rabid Demo- 
 cratic paper, to be abhorred for its partisanship; 
 and by thick-and-thin, for-better-for-worse adherents 
 of Mr. Wilson, it was accused of damning the ad- 
 ministration with faint praise. 
 
 Most of the matters, however, on which The Times 
 criticised those in office between 1913 and 1921 were 
 questions outside the President's own field of activity. 
 The election of 1912 had brought not only Woodrow 
 Wilson but the Democratic Party into power, and 
 on many issues the President was wiser than his 
 party. The criticism has been made that The Times 
 was a consistent supporter of Wilson, yet was 
 opposed to almost everything that Wilson did. 
 That is a mistake. The Times was a consistent 
 supporter of Wilson, though disagreeing with his 
 
 253 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 attitude on some of the less important issues of his 
 administration; its opposition was for the most 
 part directed against the eccentricities of the Demo- 
 cratic majority in Congress, which the President 
 was often compelled, for political considerations, to 
 ignore, or to meet with an acquiescence which must 
 at times have come hard. 
 
 It may be asked, then, why The Times in recent 
 years has consistently supported the Democratic 
 Party. The answer is, first, that the publisher of 
 The Times is a Democrat not by geography — 
 though Mr. Ochs spent his early hfe in Tennessee, 
 his father had been a Captain in the Union 
 Army — but by conviction, and so is its editor-in- 
 chief, Mr. Miller, who comes from New Hampshire. 
 But that answer, after all, does not explain much, 
 for there are no longer very many Democrats left 
 in the Democratic Party. That party once meant 
 something; it meant that one of the great political 
 organizations of the country believed that the 
 people in a democracy could better be trusted, in 
 the long run, than any group whatever of benevolent 
 oligarchs, and that the federal organization of the 
 United States was more than a mere historical acci- 
 dent — that it met the needs of a numerous people 
 occupying a country of enormous extent, with wide 
 differences in natural conditions and in the public 
 sentiment of far distant localities. In that sense 
 the conductors of The Times are among the few 
 Democrats surviving. And it might be added that 
 this fundamental concept of the Democratic Party's 
 philosophy explains the fact that the two chief 
 Democratic papers of the country. The Times and 
 
 2S4 
 
CONSERVATISM, INDEPENDENCE, 1900-1914 
 
 The World, can both be Democratic while disagreeing 
 on most details. The World is liberal and The Times 
 conservative, but they are agreed in the opinion 
 that the union of these states is and of a right ought 
 to be a Federal union, as well as in the view that 
 political wisdom and capacity for government, even 
 if not bestowed very liberally on the people at large, 
 are not to be found more highly concentrated in any 
 particular economic, religious or geographic sub- 
 division of the people. 
 
 These doctrines were once the distinguishing 
 mark of a Democrat. They are now conspicuous 
 chiefly by their rarity; about the only distinction 
 between a Democrat and a Republican today is that 
 the Democrat is generally out of office. The cen- 
 tralizing movement of recent years, which has pretty 
 well blotted out state lines and tended to turn over 
 the control of Government more and more to bureau- 
 crats, has been promoted quite as much by Demo- 
 crats as by Republicans. The Republicans, to be 
 sure, have been inclined to favor oligarchies whose 
 claim to superiority was their possession, real or 
 pretended, of executive ability; while the Demo- 
 crats have generally bowed down before oligarchies 
 of pretended superiority of moral virtue. But 
 whether the favored few are protected manufactur- 
 ers or officials of the Anti-Saloon League, the effect 
 is the same. 
 
 What is the duty of a Democrat in such a time.? 
 It might be held that his motto should be, "My 
 party, right or wrong; if right, to keep it right; if 
 wrong, to make it right." The Times has not been 
 able to go quite so far as this; sometimes the Demo- 
 
 2SS 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 cratic Party has been so wrong that the only way 
 to make it right was by supporting the Republican 
 ticket. But, generally speaking, the conductors of 
 the paper have believed that the Democratic Party 
 needed all the intelligent support it could get and 
 all that could conscientiously be given by those who 
 hold to the old Democratic doctrines. So long as 
 old-fashioned JefFersonian Democrats and conserva- 
 tive Democrats found it possible to stick to the 
 party they could act as a brake on the exuberant 
 and misdirected energies of those Democrats whose 
 chief representative in recent history has been Mr. 
 Bryan. By clinging to the party and doing their 
 best to remind it that it is, or ought to be, some- 
 thing more than a mere aggregation of jobless poli- 
 ticians, these Democrats could perhaps do a real 
 service to the country in holding the party to certain 
 standards, and thus making it a really effective 
 check on the Republicans. 
 
 For the genius of the Democratic Party shines 
 best in adversity. Out of office the party often dis- 
 plays pubHc spirit and sometimes real statesmanship. 
 Once in control of the Government, the Democrats 
 are likely — in the opinion of the management of 
 The Times — to forget their own principles and be- 
 come mere imitators of the RepubHcans. Opinions 
 may differ as to whether it is admirable to be a Re- 
 publican, but certainly it is better to be a real Re- 
 publican than a poor carbon copy. Republicanism 
 can best be practiced by men who are Republicans 
 year after year, in office or out, and not by diluted 
 imitations who no sooner find themselves in control 
 of the Government than they begin to wonder, 
 
 256 
 
CONSERVATISM, INDEPENDENCE, 190Q-1914 
 
 rather frantically, how the Republicans would do it, 
 and then try their best to do the same. 
 
 Ninety years ago the Democratic Party, or that 
 controlling faction of it led by Andrew Jackson, 
 really meant something in national affairs. When it 
 came back after the misfortunes under Van Buren 
 and the Whig interlude that followed, it had bound 
 itself to the service of a sectional oligarchy, and it 
 remained in bondage till the Civil War. Since then 
 the party has always been, in effect, the opposition. 
 Even the great vote that ought to have carried 
 Samuel J. Tilden to the White House was largely a 
 protest vote. By undeserved good luck the Demo- 
 cratic Party had as its leader in the '80s and '90s 
 one of the strongest and wisest statesmen of Ameri- 
 can history. What did it do with him.? It nomi- 
 nated him, to be sure, and renominated him twice, 
 but that was because Grover Cleveland had shown 
 that he could be elected, and no other Democrat 
 since the war had been able to do that. When he 
 was once in office some of his own followers were 
 the first to stick their knives in his back. 
 
 But whether or not the country would be best 
 served by a condition in which the Republicans, per- 
 petually in power, would be prodded into virtue and 
 efficiency by a Democracy perpetually in opposition, 
 such a condition is impossible. Ambitious young men 
 join the party which has the offices at its disposal. A 
 few Democrats have to be elected now and then to en- 
 courage the others. This may perhaps explain why 
 The Times, though Democratic, is apt to be more crit- 
 ical of the Democrats in office than of their opponents. 
 Nothing surprising or out of the ordinary is to be ex- 
 
 2S7 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 pected from the Republican Party — except under such 
 unusual leaders as Roosevelt, and, after all, Roosevelt 
 kept the country expecting great and wonderful things 
 for seven and a half years, few of which happened. 
 In ordinary times everybody knows what the Re- 
 publican Party is; good or bad, it is a fixed quan- 
 tity. There is more exhilaration in supporting and 
 criticising the Democrats, whose worst can be in- 
 credibly bad, whose best is sometimes surprisingly 
 good, and who are just as likely to display the one 
 as the other. At any rate, there is always the pos- 
 sibility that with the proper support, and the proper 
 amount of well-timed castigation, the Democrats 
 may be driven to do something which ordinarily 
 would be entirely beyond their vision — the Federal 
 Reserve act, for instance. It is the difference be- 
 tween marrying a domestic disposition and an artis- 
 tic temperament. 
 
 So it will be observed that The Times is Demo- 
 cratic both because its principal personages believe 
 in the traditional Democratic doctrines, and because 
 they think the public welfare is best served by giv- 
 ing the paper's support to the Democratic Party in 
 the hope that, being constantly reminded of its 
 basic principles, it may occasionally go back to those 
 doctrines. This attitude would in itself make it im- 
 possible for The Times ever to become the organ of 
 an Administration even if other and decisive con- 
 siderations did not prevent it. And it may be noted 
 that The Times has never, under the present man- 
 agement, had a candidate whom it pushed vigor- 
 ously for the nomination. Its support of Wilson 
 during the 191 2 convention was, as explained above, 
 
 258 
 
HONOR ROLL 
 
 •k HAROLD J. BEHL . 
 if WILLIAM BRADLEY 
 if JOYCE KILMER 
 if W. S. MANNING 
 if EDWARD B. PIERCE 
 
 A. R. ADDISON 
 
 JULIUS OCHS ADLER 
 
 ABRAHAM FRANK AGMAN 
 
 RICHARD ALDRICH 
 
 EDWARD ROSCOE ALLEN 
 
 ROBT. K. ALLISON 
 
 RICHARD F. AMES 
 
 CHARLES WALTER ATKINSON 
 
 EDWARD A. ATKINSON 
 
 CARL E. BARTLETT 
 
 WALLACE A. BAWER 
 
 W. BERRYMAN 
 
 H. M. BJORCK 
 
 GORDON BLAIR 
 
 JOS. F. BLAND 
 
 THOMAS S. BOSWORTH 
 
 FRANCIS J. BOYLAN 
 
 FREDERICK A. BOYD, JR. 
 
 CHARLES W. BOYLE 
 
 FRED BRAZONG 
 
 MICHAEL BRIENZA , 
 
 WILLIAM F. BROSNAN 
 
 LEE D. BROWN 
 
 H. M. BUGGELYN 
 
 E. BURQUIST 
 
 JESSE S. BUTCHER 
 
 ARTHUR G. CAMPBELL 
 
 S. M. CHAMBERS 
 
 ANTHONY CITRO 
 
 ROBERT C. COCHRANE 
 
 WILLIAM D. COLGAN, JR. 
 
 WALTER H. COLLINS 
 
 THOMAS COOK 
 
 GEORGE COOPER 
 
 WALTER COULTER 
 
 CHARLOTTE HOLMES CRAWFORD 
 
 BENJAMIN CULLEN 
 EDW. B. CUMMERFORD 
 JOHN WEBSTER CURLEY 
 LEE CURTIS 
 GEORGE CUSACK 
 CHARLES DALY 
 CLARENCE H. DEBAUN 
 LOUIS DECOLLE 
 PATRICK S. DELANEY 
 EDWIN F. DELANO 
 JOSEPH DIXON 
 EDWARD DOYLE 
 HUGH PENTLAND DUNN 
 ALBERT ELDRED 
 HERBERT ELLUM 
 EDWARD WALDO EMERSON 
 MORRIS FACTOR 
 C FARRELL 
 JOHN FEY 
 HAROLD FINCH 
 EARL N. FINDLEY 
 JOHN FINN 
 
 EDWARD J. FITZSIMMONS 
 GEORGE H. FLANAGAN 
 SIMEON T. FLANAGAN 
 GERALD E. FORCE 
 ROBERT J. FORESMAN 
 BENTLEY J. GEIGER 
 ARTHUR GORTON 
 CHARLES GOTTSCHALK 
 JEANETTE C. GRANT 
 FRANK B. GRISWOLD 
 EDWARD GROSS 
 WM. A. GROTEFELD 
 L. A. GUNDERSON 
 GUSTAV HANSON. JR. 
 
HONOR ROLL— Continued 
 
 H. HARMAN 
 ROLAND H. HARPER 
 ALFRED HARRIS 
 EDWARD J. HARRIS, JR. 
 A. E. HARTZELL 
 FRANKLIN A. HARWOOD 
 HAftOLD B. HAVILAND 
 
 william j. hegarty 
 elLiott p. henry 
 thos. j. herlihy 
 john himpler 
 ulrich hofele 
 philip d. hoyt 
 c. f. hughes 
 
 L. HUGHES 
 
 Michael a. hughes 
 
 rtOWARD HUMPHREY 
 
 george e. hyde 
 chas. jenks 
 Carl o. johnson 
 
 W. R. JOYCE 
 feUDOLPH C. KARR 
 feDWARD J. KEAN 
 ROBERT F. KELLEY 
 WM. JAY KELLEY 
 JOHN F. KIERAN 
 JOHN KIMBALL 
 EDWARD KliAUBER 
 MORTIMER J. KROLL 
 MAURIC LANGERMAN 
 WM. LANIGAN 
 WM. LEARY 
 GEORGE LEHMAN 
 GEORGE LEONARD 
 GERSON LEVY 
 JOSEPH LISSON 
 G. C. LOHSS 
 CLARENCE E. LOVEJOY 
 WILLIAM H. LUBRECHT 
 ALLEN LUTHER 
 WILLIAM F. LYNCH 
 WRIGHT McCORMICK 
 JAMES McCANN 
 THOMAS McCANN 
 NEIL MacNEIL 
 ANDREW E. MAGNUSON 
 CHARLES P. MAILE 
 AUSTIN M. MALONE 
 EDWARD F. MANNIX 
 LOUIS J. MERRELL 
 JAMES D. MILLS 
 ROBERT C. MORTON 
 EDWARD MOTIZZ 
 MATTHEW J. MURPHY 
 PATRICK J. MURPHY 
 WILLIAM MURPHY 
 
 FRANK L. NELSON 
 
 JOHN NELSON 
 
 JAMES E. NIX 
 
 JACK NYDICK 
 
 GEORGE F. O'CONNER . 
 
 JAMES W. OSBORNE. JR. 
 
 FRANCIS XAVIER PAVEblCH 
 
 GEORGE PAYNE 
 
 ARTHUR H. PENNEY 
 
 JOHN PETERS 
 
 EDW. J. POLOQUIN 
 
 MICHAEL PROZAN 
 
 RAPHAEL J. REARDOri 
 
 EDWARD REYNOLDS 
 
 ROBERT H. ROESEN 
 
 MARTIN L. ROMAN 
 
 GEORGE L. ROONEY 
 
 R. ROWAN 
 
 REGINALD G. RUSSOlU 
 
 TRACY J. RYAN 
 
 OSCAR SALVAIL 
 
 J. J. SANFORD 
 
 J. ARNOLD SAVAGE 
 
 GEORGE H. SCHNEIDERMAN 
 
 SAMSON H. SHAHBOODAGHIAN 
 
 CHARLES J. SHARKEY 
 
 J. SHARKEY 
 
 JOHN SIMONS 
 
 A. LEONARD SMITri, JR 
 
 JAMES JOSEPH SMITH 
 
 WILLIAM SMITH 
 
 R. J. SPRAGUE 
 
 EDWARD J. STEWART 
 
 JOSEPH F. SULLIVAN 
 
 ARTHUR HAYS SULZBERGER 
 
 WILLIAM A. SWANJSON 
 
 PAUL LELAND SWjGART 
 
 JAMES M. TAYLOR 
 
 GROVER C. THEIS 
 
 FREDERIC D. THOMAS, JR. 
 
 BERNARD S. THOMSON 
 
 BERNA D TRAC^Y 
 
 CHARLES B. VOLfcKENS 
 
 H. H. WALKER 
 
 CHARLES J. WALSH 
 
 C. C. WEAVER 
 
 H. C. WEAVER 
 
 SAMUEL WEISS 
 
 MICHAEL WEISSMAN 
 
 E. B. WELLS 
 
 JAMES A. WHitEHOUSE 
 
 S. T. WILLIAMSON 
 
 EDWARD A. WIRTH 
 
 ALEXANDER WOOLLCOTT 
 
 RICHARD B. VVRIGHT 
 
 EZRA WRIGHt 
 
 THE SIGHT tS 
 WE 5HAU nCMT FOR THE THINGS which ^ 
 CAHRIED NEAHE5T OUR HEARTS 
 TO SUCH A TASK W£ DEDICATE OUR LiVE 
 
CONSERVATISM, INDEPENDENCE, 1900-1914 
 
 due to specific circumstances which had not been 
 present in the pre-convention campaign. 
 
 In the Spring of 1920, to be sure, The Times did 
 suggest John W. Davis as a man worthy of the con- 
 sideration of the Democratic National Convention. 
 But it was a suggestion and no more, and inspired 
 chiefly by a desire to remind the delegates that all 
 the talent of the party was not embodied in the per- 
 sons of William G. McAdoo, James M. Cox and A. 
 Mitchell Palmer. Mr. Davis was not personally 
 known to the conductors of The Times; but he was, 
 as Baedeker says, well spoken of. He was suggested 
 to the party without much expectation that he 
 would be nominated — and indeed it would have 
 been rather unfortunate to waste him in a year 
 when no Democrat could have been elected. He 
 was mentioned in the hope that some Democrats 
 might be stirred to remember that their party 
 had after all more talent than its leadership often 
 allowed to become visible. 
 
 The more important aspects of the editorial posi- 
 tion of The Times in recent years are, however, those 
 lying outside of party affiliations or partisan doc- 
 trines. It will probably be generally admitted that 
 The Times for years past has been regarded as the 
 most eminent champion of so-called conservatism in 
 the American press. This is by no means the same 
 thing as saying that it is the most conservative 
 newspaper; it is not, by a good deal. But its wide 
 circulation, its consistency of doctrine, its vigorous 
 adherence to views which have often been unpopu- 
 lar, have given it a certain primacy among those 
 
 259 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 marshaled on the conservative side. This position 
 became more clearly defined, perhaps, during the 
 World War and in the discussion of subsequent is- 
 sues; but it was established years before that. And 
 its conservatism is partly, though not wholly, 
 responsible for the distinction which The Times 
 undoubtedly enjoys — and that word is used advis- 
 edly — of being more thoroughly hated by Com- 
 munists, Socialists and radicals, to say nothing of 
 pro-Germans and Irish extremists, than any other 
 newspaper in the United States. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that the editors of The 
 Times are so eccentric as to take pride in a measure 
 of intellectual isolation, or so inhuman as to derive 
 a fiendish pleasure from the disapproval of their fel- 
 lows. If they are proud of their enemies, it is be- 
 cause they believe that the widespread antagonism 
 to the editorial views of the paper is in more ways 
 than one directly due to its merits. The readers of 
 The Times represent a far wider range of political 
 opinion than the ordinary newspaper constituency. 
 A great many people who cordially despise the po- 
 litical and economic opinions of its editors feel that 
 they have to buy the paper in order to get the news. 
 If any one doubts this, let him observe that the 
 radical weeklies, for example, cite The Times news 
 columns as authority for most of their statements of 
 fact. There is no doubt a certain crafty precaution 
 in this; if the news report should happen to be 
 wrong, the radical commentator can offer the apol- 
 ogy that he was misled by the untrustworthy "capi- 
 talist" press. Nevertheless, the radical weeklies 
 continue to get their news from The Times. Simi- 
 
 260 
 
CONSERVATISM, INDEPENDENCE, 1900-1914 
 
 larly, many stalwart Republicans and convinced 
 opponents of the League of Nations have in the past 
 two years started the day by hating The Times over 
 the breakfast grapefruit; but they find that they 
 have to have it in preference to papers which might 
 better reflect their own political opinions, and thus 
 start them to the ofiice with a pleasant sense of the 
 Tightness of the world. Forty years ago, when news- 
 papers were chiefly political, these men would not 
 have taken The Times; today, when a newspaper is 
 first of all a newspaper, they feel that they have to 
 have it to find out what is going on. 
 
 A second reason for the dislike for The Times 
 which is felt among radicals, at least, is that The 
 Times stands for something. When the Socialist 
 orator comes to the congenial theme of the iniquity 
 of the "capitalist" press, he thinks of The Times as 
 its most prominent representative. The Times is 
 frankly and pretty consistently conservative — not 
 so consistently, of course, as radicals seem to think; 
 no human institution could be so regularly of one 
 mind as that — but on the whole always to be found 
 on the Right (it being understood that for obvious 
 reasons of delicacy this word is used in the sense 
 familiar in European politics, and not necessarily 
 with an ethical implication). Certain newspapers, 
 which need not be mentioned, represent pretty 
 nearly the same general opinions on politics and 
 economics as The Times, but nobody ever wastes 
 much hostility on them. There are other journals 
 whose political views are so variable, or so negligible, 
 that you might as well hate the city directory. 
 Much of this antipathy to The Times is, then, mere 
 
 261 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 recognition of the fact that the paper has opinions 
 of which it is not ashamed, and which it advocates 
 with all the vigor that its editors are able to com- 
 mand. In the frequent denunciations of its policies, 
 which its editors read with interest, there are many 
 which are quite obviously not directed at The Times 
 as an individual newspaper, but at The Times as the 
 most prominent, powerful, and easily recognizable 
 representative of a whole school of opinion. 
 
 Furthermore, a great many critics of The Times 
 are persons of whose friendship the paper would be 
 ashamed. It is sufficient to cite in this connection 
 the bitter attacks made upon it during the war by 
 German agents or their Irish sympathizers. But 
 even before the war The Times had many critics 
 whose hostility it could not regard as anything but 
 a badge of merit. Not all of them, by any means, 
 could be included in this classification, but a suffi- 
 cient number to explain the fact that almost any 
 radical orator can move his audience to wild cheers 
 by a few maledictions on The Times. The paper 
 has never had much confidence in efforts to remove 
 all human evils overnight by a magic formula. It 
 has distrusted patented and proprietary remedies 
 for political and economic ills. In both minor and 
 major matters it has usually managed to awaken 
 the fiery hostility of the long-haired. It has not be- 
 Heved and does not believe in socialism, Fourieristic, 
 Marxian or Leninist; in Greenbackism, Free Silver, 
 or the political-economic system of the Nonparti- 
 san League; in putting the Government into busi- 
 ness; in the medical sociology of anti- vivisection or 
 the artistic philosophies of dadaism. And since it is 
 
 262 
 
CONSERVATISM, INDEPENDENCE, 1900-1914 
 
 the common peculiarity of most of these gospels 
 that their devotees become somewhat intolerant and 
 think that unbelievers might as well be hurried to 
 the stake, those who are moved to cast doubt on 
 the saving virtues of the new doctrine naturally 
 come in for a good deal of denunciation. 
 
 Yet this conviction throughout all the various di- 
 visions of liberalism and radicalism that hatred for 
 The New York Times is one of the essentials of sal- 
 vation is in large measure a somewhat recent growth. 
 Why was not The Times so cordially disliked fifty 
 years ago? It was, of course, by Democrats; but 
 this was an ordinary manifestation of partisan ani- 
 mosity and involved no real conviction on the part 
 of the enemies of the paper that it was Satan's right 
 arm. And however poor an opinion its editors may 
 entertain of their antagonists of today, there is no 
 doubt that these antagonists, or nearly all of them, 
 are wholly sincere. Why this difference.? It is 
 largely due, perhaps, to a change of emphasis in the 
 issues; the violence of political opinion has been 
 steadily dying away in the United States ever since 
 the end of the great political upheaval of the Civil 
 War. It is not all gone, but it has been growing less 
 every year since the impeachment of Andrew John- 
 son. People who hate violently today are apt to 
 do so for economic reasons, or for reasons which, 
 though partly political, racial, or temperamental in 
 origin, they have been taught to regard as economic. 
 
 Yet The Times^s general position on economic 
 questions has always been pretty much the same. 
 In economics as in politics, it has never thought it 
 advisable to burn the barn in order to get rid of the 
 
 263 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 rats. No doubt those who think ill of the paper 
 might represent this general continuity of doctrine 
 on The Times's editorial page by saying that the 
 paper has stood still while the country has moved 
 on. But neither of these statements would be true. 
 The paper has stood still only on certain fundamen- 
 tal issues, such as that two and two make four, or, 
 at any rate, have made four in all past human his- 
 tory, and that it is somewhat unlikely that by vir- 
 tue of some mystic gospel from Kansas, North Da- 
 kota or Russia, two and two can be made to add up 
 to six and a half. Nor is it true that the rest of the 
 country, or the rest of American journalism, has 
 moved away to the Left while The Times remained 
 in splendid isolation in its old position just beyond 
 the Right Centre. 
 
 Radicalism is nothing new in America; not even 
 economic radicalism. But there has been a consid- 
 erable change in the character, if not in the volume, 
 of American radicalism, due largely to the changing 
 racial composition of the American people. Eco- 
 nomic radicalism in the early days of The Times was 
 largely a matter of agrarian or easy-money agita- 
 tion. It was conducted, as a matter of course, 
 chiefly by native Americans; recent immigrants, less 
 numerous than now and mostly of a different racial 
 provenance, were too busy graduating from the pick 
 and shovel to capitalistic comfort to stop and re- 
 member that America was the country where no 
 poor man had a chance. Dilettante radicalism of 
 the wealthier classes had not yet appeared, or rather 
 had sunk out of sight after its manifestation by such 
 men as Jefferson in the early days of the Republic. 
 
 264 
 
CONSERVATISM, INDEPENDENCE, 1900-1914 
 
 The radical movements In the earlier days of The 
 Times found most of their support among farmers; 
 they were native products; and their votaries usu- 
 ally recovered their balance after two or three good 
 crop years. The general characteristic of these de- 
 lusions was a conviction that economic evils could 
 be ended by the printing of unlimited paper money, 
 or the validation of unlimited token money; and this 
 conviction usually disappeared as men and the coun- 
 try grew older, and the specific grievance faded 
 away in periods of prosperity. Passing of hard 
 frontier conditions brought better times to the 
 prairie states; young men who had followed some 
 peerless leader of the day in the earnest conviction 
 that poverty could be cured by happy improvisa- 
 tion often discovered, as they grew older, that in 
 default of more palatable remedies poverty could be 
 cured by work. Radicalism in those days was apt 
 to be only a form of wild oats. 
 
 But the newer radicalism is different in quality. 
 It is not a question of removing specific grievances, 
 real or fancied; the whole world, to the contempo- 
 rary radical, is only one great grievance. And the 
 cure of this painful condition must be exactly thus 
 and so, otherwise it is no cure. This radicalism Is a 
 matter of dogma — at least the most popular and 
 conspicuous of its manifestations, Marxian Social- 
 ism, is a matter of dogma. The world is divided 
 into the true believers and the infidels; and the in- 
 fidels shall not see salvation. 
 
 The influence of socialist intolerance even on non- 
 socialist radicalism has probably contributed a good 
 deal to the conviction of most radicals that no man 
 
 265 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 can honestly be conservative. Those who disagree 
 with the radicals are actuated only by the desire to 
 continue grinding down the faces of the poor, or to 
 preserve their ill-gotten gains from those who would 
 like to pass them around. And it should not be for- 
 gotten that these doctrines, and most of their ad- 
 herents, came from parts of the Continent of Europe 
 where the give-and-take of political activity has 
 been unknown till quite recent years. Granting the 
 numerous faults of Anglo-Saxon institutions, it re- 
 mains true that the races who have lived for a con- 
 siderable time under those institutions are able to 
 find other explanations for difference of political 
 opinion than the innate and total depravity of the 
 opposition. 
 
 It may be conjectured that these considerations 
 explain, in large measure at least, the embittered 
 tone of most current radicalism. All conservatives, 
 of course, are the targets of its wrath; The Times 
 happens to be a conspicuous target, standing out 
 above the crowd. Also, the reasons suggested above 
 for the paper's unpopularity among opponents of its 
 political views are valid in considerable measure in 
 the field of economic controversy. Some Socialists 
 prefer to get the news from their own sectarian or- 
 gans; but a good many of them, with praiseworthy 
 eagerness to find out what is happening, look for 
 pleasant as well as unpleasant information in the 
 columns of The Times. It may be held, indeed, that 
 only a devout Bolshevik can get full pleasure out of 
 reading The Times; for after he has read the news he 
 can turn to the editorial page and enjoy a complete 
 catharsis of the emotions, ending with the gratify- 
 
 266 
 
CONSERVATISM, INDEPENDENCE, 1900-1914 
 
 ing conviction that The Times editors are a gang of 
 scoundrels and that his own moral purity is posi- 
 tively dazzling by contrast. 
 
 In the period now under discussion The Times 
 gradually won its way to this position of conserva- 
 tive leadership. It had and still has a conviction, 
 which the little experience available has justified, 
 that the Government is about as poor a business 
 manager as can be found. 
 
 During the trust prosecutions, which offered such 
 lavish and innocuous entertainment to the public 
 for a decade or so, The Times was inclined to regard 
 each case on its merits. In some few of these cases 
 the paper was of the opinion that misconduct had 
 been proved and that the offending corporation 
 should suffer the penalty, such as it was, of dissolu- 
 tion; but it was unable to admit that size alone was 
 a crime, or that the power to do evil was to be re- 
 garded as no less criminal than the actual doing of 
 evil; and the view on this point has since been ac- 
 cepted by the courts. It seems probable that on 
 both of these issues the position taken by The Times 
 is much more generally accepted today than a few 
 years ago. For several years The Times labored to 
 show that bench and bar had fallen under the spell 
 of an ancient legal phrase, "restraint of trade." The 
 courts have now come to the view that the restraint 
 must be actual, not potential. 
 
 The direct primary, the initiative and referendum, 
 the recall of Judges and other officials, and similar 
 mechanical devices by which, it was widely believed 
 ten years ago, the purity of political life could be 
 automatically safeguarded, also found The Times 
 
 267 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 somewhat incredulous as to their merits. This in- 
 credulity, it may be observed, was based principally 
 on a study of politics not only in the present but in 
 the past, and on the conviction that political im- 
 provement must usually be effected by raising the 
 standard of civic consciousness in the electorate. It 
 is one of the misfortunes of most radicals that they 
 think, or appear to think, that the beginning of the 
 world was contemporaneous with the beginning of 
 their consciousness of the world. Very often that is 
 why they are radicals; it is unknown to them that 
 their panaceas have already been tried on the pa- 
 tient without producing much improvement. Con- 
 servatism, in its literal meaning, implies an inclina- 
 tion to preserve the good that has come down from 
 the past, and a reluctance to discard institutions 
 that have worked at least well enough to survive 
 until there is strong reason to believe that substi- 
 tutes would be more satisfactory. But American 
 conservatism, thanks to the character of most of the 
 opposition, has rarely been forced back to this de- 
 fensive line. Most of its campaigns have been in 
 the nature of outpost fighting; its principal work 
 has been to remind the public of the existence of the 
 past when so many thinkers of contemporary pub- 
 lic life appear to believe that history begins with 
 the Communist Manifesto. 
 
 The Times's attitude toward sociahsm, syndical- 
 ism, and similar movements is sufficiently well known 
 to need no particular mention here. On other is- 
 sues, however, it should be remarked for the sake 
 of the record that the conservatism of the paper has 
 not been so unvarying as some of its critics seem to 
 
 268 
 
CONSERVATISM, INDEPENDENCE, 1900-1914 
 
 think. At the time of the State Constitutional 
 Convention of 1915, for example, The Times thought 
 there was need of a far more extensive revision of 
 the fundamental law than the convention even at- 
 tempted. The document finally produced, though it 
 seemed to The Times a rather inadequate response 
 to the opportunity, nevertheless received the paper's 
 support on the ground that it was a considerable 
 improvement over the Constitution of 1894, and 
 made some much needed changes in the direction of 
 simplification and economy, and making the gov- 
 ernment of the State more easily controlled by the 
 voters. On this occasion the mass of the electorate 
 was considerably more conservative than The Times, 
 preferring the old Constitution with all its imper- 
 fections to a new one against which no serious ar- 
 gument was ever attempted except that it had been 
 made by a body in which Elihu Root was one of the 
 leaders. 
 
 In the matter of prohibition the paper has ex- 
 pressed a good deal of dissatisfaction with the theory 
 of Constitutional prohibition as well as with the 
 practice of the Volstead act. The basis of this is 
 not so much a belief that in questions such as this 
 action by the several states is more likely to re- 
 sult in an approximation of the popular will, though 
 some of the editors of The Times do believe that. 
 Whatever the merits of our Federal system, it is 
 dying; every day the states are losing more of such 
 power as is left them to a centralizing Federal Gov- 
 ernment, and not very many people seem to care. 
 The doubts of The Times about the wisdom of pro- 
 hibition arise rather from a skepticism as to the 
 
 269, 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 readiness of the people for any such drastic meas- 
 ures, and a belief that it is poor policy to make such 
 a sweeping change practically irrevocable by its 
 embodiment in the Constitution. 
 
 The judgment of history is at best a somewhat un- 
 certain criterion, even after some centuries have af- 
 forded opportunity for inspection of the results of 
 political action and reaction. To appeal to the 
 judgment of history, after a decade, is a little too 
 hazardous. The archaeologist from the Island of 
 Yap, excavating the pyramidal ruins of Manhattan 
 in the year 4921, may perhaps understand just where 
 the United States was headed in the beginning of 
 the twentieth century; he will certainly know whether 
 or not it got there. Contemporary observers can 
 only guess. Still, taking the evidence for what lit- 
 tle it is worth, the editors of The Times may feel that 
 there is no great reason to fear that their position 
 on the issues of these years was mistaken. 
 
 This period, between the Spanish War and the 
 World War, was the age of muckraking; the day 
 of a great emotional revival in American public life; 
 of a new infusion of morality into politics, and of 
 politics into morality. 
 
 The Times during this carnival of purity was com- 
 pelled to preserve its attitude of conscientious skep- 
 ticism, and consequently was as unpopular with fol- 
 lowers of the new gospel as the village infidel at pro- 
 tracted meeting; for it steadfastly refused to stagger 
 down to the mourners' bench. And now the revival 
 is over, and most of those who hit the sawdust trail 
 have fallen from grace and gone back to walk in 
 darkness till the next day of Pentecost. The Times 
 
 270 
 
CONSERVATISM, INDEPENDENCE, 1900-1914 
 
 contemplates their side-slips without exultation; 
 rather with a certain sadness. It would be a won- 
 derful thing if life were what the reformers thought 
 it was, but experience has shown that it is not. It 
 was the painful duty of The Times, at the height of 
 the revival, to remind the reformers of the lessons of 
 experience; to express its doubts as to the value of 
 measures which introduced new evils without cur- 
 ing the old; and to suggest that neither was the 
 past as black as it was painted, nor could the future 
 reasonably be expected to be one unspotted smear 
 of rose-color. This is what conservatism means, 
 and The Times is not ashamed of it. 
 
 The attitude of The Times toward union labor has 
 been pretty widely misrepresented. The Times be- 
 lieves in trades unionism as a valuable contribution 
 to the national well being. It does not think, how- 
 ever, that the followers of the organized trades are 
 the whole people, or a specially privileged part of the 
 people. It believes that the American Federation 
 of Labor has rendered very great services to the 
 nation at large as well as to the men enrolled in it, 
 but it believes that the members of the Federation 
 are part of the people, and that their interests can- 
 not be considered apart from the general interest. 
 
 For those movements, mostly outside the Federa- 
 tion, which tend toward syndicalism The Times has 
 no sympathy, for it believes that syndicalism is mor- 
 ally and economically unsound. When the railroad 
 brotherhoods hold up the Government as they did 
 in 1916, the Government is more to blame than the 
 railroad brotherhoods; but The Times has been un- 
 
 271 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 able to regard the railroads as existing solely for the 
 interest of their employes. 
 
 The Times does not pretend to have a patented 
 cure for industrial ills, nor to know where that cure 
 can be found. It does have a pretty strong sus- 
 picion, however, as to where it cannot be found. 
 Socialists and syndicalists object to the trades union 
 philosophy that it implies a constant state of indus- 
 trial war, or at best of industrial truce, between 
 employer and employe. The Times has not found 
 it so in practice. 
 
 When the new publisher took over The Times in 
 1896 he discovered that the composing room was 
 heavily, even ruinously, overmanned. The pub- 
 lisher felt that as a matter both of right and of 
 expediency this condition should be discussed with 
 the union officials, and a conference with the then 
 head of Typographical Union No. 6 made it plain 
 that that gentleman's ideas of a fair day's work for 
 a fair day's pay coincided with those of the pub- 
 lisher of The Times; so the payroll of the compos- 
 ing room was reduced $1000 a week without any 
 lessening of its efficiency. The composing room has 
 since found plenty of work for several times the 
 number of men then employed, but relations have 
 always been good, and such differences as arose have 
 always been settled in an amicable manner. 
 
 272 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 Modern News-gathering, 1900-1914 
 
 QO much for the editorial policies from 1900 to 
 ^ 1914- The period under discussion was, how- 
 ever, above all a period of development in the news 
 service of The Times. All the newspapers in New 
 York had a better idea of what was news in 1914 
 than they had in 1900, all of them knew more about 
 what to do with news when they had it, and though 
 they made less noise about the getting of the news 
 than they had been inclined to do in the nineties, 
 they got more news and more rehable news than they 
 had ever done before. In this gradual improvement 
 The Times led the way. Whatever its relative posi- 
 tion in New York journalism — which is a matter 
 of opinion, perhaps — that position was higher in 
 1914 than in 1900. It was to become higher still 
 during the war, but in the years before the war 
 was laid the foundation of the great organization for 
 getting and publishing the news which is the chief 
 distinction of The Times today. 
 
 The history of the paper's growth in this period 
 is not easy to tell, for it is not a matter of isolated 
 "beats," of great individual achievements rising 
 from a level plain of daily routine, of great crusades 
 or magnificent exposures. The Times has had plenty 
 of "beats" and has shown its enterprise in digging 
 up more than one neglected field of the news, but 
 
 273 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 its real preeminence is a matter of high average 
 rather than of scattered peaks of achievement. Day 
 in and day out it gets more news, and handles it 
 more intelligently, than any paper knew how to do 
 a decade or two ago; and this implies, obviously, 
 the slow assembling of an especially competent staff, 
 the indoctrination of every man with a gradually 
 evolved set of principles, as well as unusually effi- 
 cient direction from above. The Times as a news- 
 paper is far from perfect; its conductors know that 
 better than anybody else. Its news-gatherers may 
 overlook some things; its editors may make mis- 
 takes in dealing with what they have to give the 
 public. But there can be no very serious doubt 
 that The Times makes fewer mistakes of this sort 
 than its contemporaries. 
 
 In the building of this news organization credit 
 must be given to the men at the top — to Henry 
 Loewenthal, at present in charge of the business 
 news department, whose connection with The Times 
 began in 1875 ^"d who was managing editor from 
 1896 to 1904; to Arthur Greaves, city editor from 
 1900 to 1915; to WiUiam C. Reick, who from 1906 
 to 1912 was associated with the general manage- 
 ment of the paper, and chiefly to Carr V. Van 
 Anda, who has been managing editor since 1904 and 
 has been most directly concerned with the extraor- 
 dinary development of the news department and 
 with reaching its highest peak. Under all these 
 men The Times was steadily coming into prominence 
 as a paper which, while giving less attention than 
 some of its contemporaries to spectacular demon- 
 strations of its enterprise, was learning how to get 
 
 274 
 

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MODERN NEWS-GATHERING, 1900-1914 
 
 the news wherever it happened and about as soon 
 as it happened, and to present it to the public with 
 some appreciation of its relative importance and 
 interest. 
 
 A business connection which has already been 
 mentioned deserves somewhat more detailed notice 
 here, for in the earlier years of this period it proved 
 of considerable value. This was the "alliance for 
 mutual interest and advantage" with The London 
 Times, begun on September 2, 1901. No doubt this 
 alliance has been the pretext — it could hardly be 
 called the excuse — for much of the belief that The 
 New York Times is owned or controlled by Lord 
 Northcliffe. In fact, it was precisely what it was 
 called at the time, an alliance for mutual benefit. 
 The alliance consisted only of this — that The New 
 York Times bought the full rights for publication in 
 North America of The London Times news service, 
 The London Times receiving reciprocal rights to 
 The New York Times news service for publication 
 in England. It was an arrangement of the same 
 general character as those which the paper now 
 maintains with The London Daily Chronicle, the 
 Paris Matin and The Chicago Tribune. To suppose 
 that it involves ownership of The New York Times 
 in England is very much the same as saying that a 
 man is owned by the restaurant where he occasion- 
 ally dines. 
 
 As for Lord Northcliffe, a genius in newspaper 
 making, he had nothing to do with The London Times 
 when this contract was concluded. That paper was 
 then owned by the Walter family, and managed by the 
 Walters and Moberly Bell. The arrangement was 
 
 27s 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 continued for some years after Lord NorthclifFe 
 bought The London Times, but relations with him were 
 sharply broken off at the beginning of the World 
 War because of some difference of opinion between 
 him and the management of The New York Times 
 with respect to news exchange arrangements. This 
 has been told so often that very few of those who 
 still repeat the story of a NorthclifFe influence on 
 The New York Times have even the poor excuse of 
 ignorance. 
 
 Aside from its effect in furnishing nonexplosive 
 ammunition for credulous Sinn Feiners, the con- 
 nection was on the whole a useful one. It was most 
 useful at the beginning, when the relative position 
 of the two papers was not quite what it is today. 
 In the early years of the twentieth century it gave 
 The New York Times a connection with a worldwide 
 news service of much intrinsic value and still greater 
 reputation, which proved particularly valuable in 
 the Russo-Japanese War. Later on it was less im- 
 portant, for The New York Times was becoming able 
 to collect the news of the world on its own initia- 
 tive; not so much by means of a widely traveling 
 staff of special correspondents as by a few centralized 
 offices which had learned how to get the earliest re- 
 ports from almost anywhere. 
 
 Much of the development of The Times news de- 
 partment has a purely technical or intramural in- 
 terest, but a good deal of it has such bearing on 
 the general improvement in journalistic methods 
 that it deserves to rank almost as a public service. 
 This is especially true of the paper's share in the 
 
 276 
 
MODERN NEWS-GATHERING, 1900-1914 
 
 development of wireless telegraphy. To Marconi 
 and the other men who were perfecting that inven- 
 tion in the early years of the twentieth century The 
 Times gave not only publicity and encouragement 
 but sometimes a rather insistent support which drove 
 them on to do more than they would ever have 
 dreamed they could do if there had been nobody 
 there to tell them. The war would undoubtedly 
 have forced the development of long-distance wire- 
 less in any case, but it is due in some degree to The 
 New York Times that the art was so far advanced 
 as it was when the war began. 
 
 In the early years of wireless the interest of The 
 Times was chiefly, if not wholly, that of a newspaper 
 eager to give the news. Marconi's announcement 
 on December 14, 1901, that transatlantic communi- 
 cation had been established between Poldhu, Corn- 
 wall, and St. John's, Newfoundland, received the 
 display in the news columns, and the enthusiastic 
 comment in the editorial columns, which its im- 
 portance warranted. But these first transmissions 
 went no farther than the sending across the Atlantic 
 of a single letter — S — whose three dots in the 
 Morse code, repeated at stated intervals, did indeed 
 convince the inventor that he could send a message 
 from Europe to America, but left him far short of 
 the goal of a service which would be commercially 
 useful. His experiments were continued, without 
 much publicity; and by a curious accident The 
 New York Times was deprived of the news of one of 
 the most interesting of these experiments, the dis- 
 patch of the first transatlantic wireless press message. 
 
 On December 16, 1902, Dr. (afterward Sir) George 
 * ^77 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 R. Parkin, then one of the correspondents of The 
 London Times, visited Marconi at his new station 
 at Glace Bay, Nova Scotia. By this time Marconi 
 was able to send matter eastward across the Atlantic 
 with fair success, though he had had Httle luck with 
 westward messages. Dr. Parkin wrote out and sent 
 a twenty-five-word Marconigram to The London 
 Times, expressing the sentiments proper to the oc- 
 casion, and then came back to New York and told 
 for the first time the thrilling story of the epoch- 
 making event, of the successful transmission of a 
 message, without wires, across the Atlantic, and 
 of the progress Marconi was making. The con- 
 ductors of The New York Times, however, were 
 deeply interested in what Marconi was doing, and 
 they were delighted to learn that Dr. Parkin had 
 written an account, some two thousand words in 
 length, of what he was the first newspaper repre- 
 sentative permitted to witness. 
 
 Since the alliance between the two papers was 
 hen in force. Dr. Parkin had the story typed on 
 New York Times stationery and mailed it himself, 
 in a plain envelope, to his paper in London. A car- 
 bon copy was left in The New York Times ofl&ce, to 
 be published simultaneously with the London pub- 
 lication; 7*^1? New York Times was to be advised 
 by cable of The London Tim.es's receipt of the story. 
 The editors waited for days and weeks and the mes- 
 sage did not arrive. And at last Dr. Parkin's origi- 
 nal story came back through the dead letter office, 
 refused at The London Times office because of in- 
 sufficient postage calling for the payment of surtax 
 refund. Years later one of the managers of The 
 
 278 
 
MODERN NEWS-GATHERING, 1900-1914 
 
 London Times explained this by saying that that 
 paper received an enormous amount of unsolicited 
 correspondence from all over the world, and that 
 such of it as did not have enough postage paid was 
 declined. Whatever Lord Northcliffe may have done 
 to The London Times, it is probable that its mail no 
 longer goes back to the Post Office unopened. 
 
 It was years later before Marconi was able to 
 open up a regular transatlantic service, and in the 
 meantime The New York Times had so unfailingly 
 displayed its confidence in him that when regular 
 service was begun between Clifden, Ireland, and 
 Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, on October 17, 1907, the 
 first message accepted for transmission westward 
 came to the paper from its London office. Of the 
 ten thousand words or so sent by wireless that 
 night a good deal was New York Times news, and 
 one of the dispatches from the Paris office carried 
 a message of greeting from Georges Clemenceau, 
 then Premier for the first time. Naturally The Times 
 made a great display story of the opening of regular 
 wireless communications, and among the "follows" 
 which it printed the next morning was Dr. Parkin's 
 account of his experience nearly five years before. 
 
 For some years thereafter a considerable propor- 
 tion of The Times European news for the Sunday 
 issue came through by wireless, but the delays in 
 transmission were so great that the most important 
 news was generally sent by cable. When the regu- 
 lar Marconi service was first opened most of the 
 cable company officials had taken it rather lightly, 
 and some were incredulous. Others professed to be- 
 lieve that its competition would not be dangerous; 
 
 279 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 and for a matter of four years they were justified. 
 Some of them foresaw that eventually wireless might 
 carry a much higher percentage of transatlantic mes- 
 sages than it could handle in 1907, but they were 
 optimistic enough to think that there would be 
 plenty of business for all. And they were right; 
 the war and the continuing interest in European 
 news which survived the war have kept both wire- 
 less and cables busy enough. 
 
 But from 1907 to 191 2 the wireless service could 
 not be depended on for sure and speedy transmis- 
 sion of important news. Since the wireless rate was 
 only five cents a word, and the minimum cable rate 
 on press messages was double that, the wireless was 
 used wherever possible. In those days The Times 
 published two or three pages of general European 
 news in one of its Sunday sections — society and 
 fashion notes, the movements of American tourists, 
 and such similar items as occupied most of the little 
 attention that was given by Americans to European 
 affairs before the war — and the wireless was useful 
 and cheap for this sort of service. A story written 
 on Thursday did not need to get to the office on 
 Friday if it was intended for the Sunday paper. In 
 those days The Times did a great deal more for the 
 wireless companies than the wireless companies did 
 for The Times; every dispatch was carefully marked 
 "By Marconi Wireless Telegraph," and the value of 
 this acknowledgment was undoubtedly great. 
 
 Still the wireless remained distinctly a secondary 
 matter; anything urgent had to be put on the cables. 
 And this might have continued indefinitely if The 
 Times had not been moved to some reflections, early 
 
 280 
 
MODERN NEWS-GATHERING, 1900-1914 
 
 in January, 191 2, by the chance consideration of a 
 wireless message which had come through from Lon- 
 don in five hours. This was considerably less than 
 the average time required for ordinary press mes- 
 sages by the Marconi service, and on reflection no 
 reason was seen why there should be even this 
 much delay. The Hertzian waves traveled fast 
 enough for any taste; the delays, then, must be in 
 the land connections from European capitals to 
 Clifden, and from Glace Bay to New York. 
 
 It was the old story of the early days of news- 
 gathering, when the utmost speed in getting Euro- 
 pean news to Cape Race might be nullified by the 
 indolence of a telegraph operator in the Maine woods. 
 Once smooth out the land connections and there was 
 no reason why wireless could not come as fast as 
 cables. So The Times suddenly informed the offi- 
 cials of the Marconi company that on an appointed 
 date, about two weeks ahead, it would give them 
 its entire London business. Suggestions for the 
 prompt handling of this business were offered by 
 The Times. Wires to Glace Bay were arranged for 
 by the paper, and after much insistence by The 
 Times the Marconi officials managed to get better 
 service to Clifden. At the time named the new serv- 
 ice was begun, and was a success from the start. 
 From the middle of January, 1912, to the outbreak 
 of the war virtually all of The Times dispatches from 
 London came by wireless; they arrived in good 
 time; and in the beginning nobody was so surprised 
 at the achievement as the officials of the wireless 
 company. 
 
 Present-day readers of The Times will remember 
 281 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 the page — usually the third or fourth — headed 
 "By Marconi Wireless Telegraph to The New 
 York Times" — which in those days contained each 
 morning all the European news of interest to Ameri- 
 can readers, except in the cases when something 
 was important enough for the front page. If the 
 wireless companies were startled, the cable com- 
 panies were scandalized. The suspicion that this 
 matter did not come by wireless at all was rather 
 widely expressed; every cable company thought it 
 was sent over the lines of its competitors. One of 
 the chief cable experts in Germany, with truly Ger- 
 man inability to realize that what had once been 
 true was not necessarily still true, insisted weeks 
 after the new plan was adopted that The Times was 
 still getting all its foreign news by cable. There 
 were men in Germany, however, who understood 
 well enough the possibilities of the wireless tele- 
 graph, and the time was not far away when Ger- 
 many was to make more use of it than anybody 
 ever dreamed in 191 2. 
 
 When the war broke out the military importance 
 of the wireless telegraph caused considerable restric- 
 tions to be placed on its use, but it proved invaluable, 
 particularly to American correspondents in Germany 
 before 1917. It would probably have come into gen- 
 eral use during the war in any case, but its impor- 
 tance would not have been so promptly recognized 
 if The Times had not demonstrated two years earlier 
 that the wireless was capable of doing a great deal 
 of work in very good time. It is not pretended that 
 the paper's motives in giving invaluable advertising 
 and a very necessary stimulus to the wireless com- 
 
 282 
 
MAJOR JULIUS 
 
 OCHS ADLBR. 
 
 © Underwood A 
 
 Underwood 
 
 ARTHUR HAYS 
 
 SULZBERGER. 
 
 c^ Underwood & 
 
 Underwood. 
 
 KATE L. STONE. 
 
 ASSISTANTS TO THE PUBLISHER. 
 
MODERN NEWS-GATHERING, 1900-1914 
 
 panics were entirely altruistic; when it had shown 
 the wireless experts what they could do it got its 
 European news at half the price of cables. As soon 
 as other newspapers woke up sufficiently to realize 
 what could be and was being done, they shared in 
 the benefit. 
 
 In other uses of the wireless The Times was again 
 a pioneer. The naval fighting off Port Arthur in 
 the Russo-Japanese War was covered for The London 
 Times and The New York Times by Capt. Lionel 
 James in a dispatch boat equipped with the De 
 Forest wireless, through which he maintained com- 
 munication from 150 miles out at sea with the cable 
 station at Wei-Hai-Wei. The naval battle of April 
 13, 1904, for instance, in which the Russian flag- 
 ship Petropavlovsk was sunk, was reported to 
 The Times from both land and sea — the official 
 Russian version from Port Arthur coming by 
 way of Petrograd, and Captain James's eyewitness 
 reports sent by wireless from his boat and cables 
 from Wei-Hai-Wei. Throughout the fighting around 
 Port Arthur The Times thus had a long lead over 
 its competitors — for though the Japanese Army was 
 the first to break the long domination of war by the 
 correspondents who wrote about it, and to intro- 
 duce the modern idea that the war correspondent's 
 place is in the home, their naval authorities had not 
 yet sufficiently realized the importance and possible 
 danger of wireless communication to put any restric- 
 tion on James's activities. Perhaps, too, in that 
 particular war the Japanese felt a certain reluctance 
 to hamper the correspondent who represented the 
 leading newspaper of an allied country, and what 
 
 283 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 was becoming one of the most important papers 
 in the most friendly neutral nation. 
 
 The C Q D call from the White Star liner Republic, 
 sinking in collision on January 23, 1909, which 
 brought up other ships in time to save her 1600 
 passengers, may have been obliterated from the 
 memory of most readers by the greater and more 
 spectacular marine disasters of more recent years; 
 but it was a great news story in its day, and 
 the more so since it was the first prominent in- 
 stance in which wireless had proved of immense 
 value in saving life at sea. All the papers had that 
 story, of course, though the Republic's wireless oper- 
 ator as a matter of course sent his story to The Times. 
 If The Times handled the news somewhat better 
 than some of the others, it was only because by 
 that time The Times was learning the art of han- 
 dling big stories with a thoroughness which had not 
 yet been known in New York journalism. As a 
 matter of fact, the first actual wireless call for help 
 had come nearly three years earlier — from the 
 Nantucket lightship, battered by storms, on De- 
 cember 10, 1905. There again it was everybody's 
 story. But The Times shares with The Chicago Trib- 
 une the distinction of having printed the first news 
 story sent by wireless of a rescue at sea. The 
 freighter St. Cuthbert, afire off Cape Sable, on Feb- 
 ruary 2, 1908, was sighted by the liner Cymric, which 
 managed to rescue in a heavy sea thirty-seven of her 
 crew of fifty-one. A correspondent of The Chicago 
 Tribune aboard the Cymric sent the story to his own 
 paper as soon as the liner was near enough to shore 
 for the short-distance wireless of those days to com- 
 
 284 
 
MODERN NEWS-GATHERING, 1900-1914 
 
 municate with shore stations, and having sent the 
 news he remembered that The New York Times was 
 interested in anything connected with wireless teleg- 
 raphy, and accordingly sent a query by wireless to find 
 out if the paper wanted the story. It did, and it got it. 
 
 These episodes of the past seem commonplace 
 enough today, when the wireless is as much a mat- 
 ter of course as the telegraph; when The Times has, 
 as it has had for more than a year past, its own 
 receiving station just off the news room on the third 
 floor of the Times Annex, and receives there in addi- 
 tion to its own dispatches everything else that comes 
 through the air, even from such a distance as the 
 Russian frontier, where the Bolshevist wireless oper- 
 ators are sending out the daily fiction feuilleton of 
 the Soviet Government. But in their day they were 
 considerable achievements, requiring not only a good 
 deal of work but a good deal of imagination and faith. 
 
 Somewhat similar to certain of these demonstra- 
 tions of the possibility of wireless telegraphy was 
 the round-the-world cable message sent by The Times 
 to itself on August 20, 1911. The Commercial 
 Cable Company had then lately opened its Pacific 
 line, and The Times wanted to see just what could 
 be done in the way of getting a message from New 
 York across the country, across the Pacific, up 
 through the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean 
 and back to New York. A brief dispatch was re- 
 ceived in the office sixteen and a half minutes after 
 it was sent, and this without any preliminary [smooth- 
 ing of the way such as speeds the congratulatory 
 messages of Kings and Presidents opening a new line. 
 To the nonprofessional reader this may seem pur- 
 
 285 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 poseless, a mere advertising of The Times and inci- 
 dentally of the cable companies. But it was not. 
 It was a test of the possible speed of transmission 
 of messages under ordinary conditions; it gave the 
 editors of The Times some data by which they could 
 estimate what ought to be expected in the case of 
 real news, and thereby would necessarily keep the 
 cable companies somewhat more alert to see that 
 in the sending of news messages there would be no 
 inexplicable delays. 
 
 Perhaps, to complete the record of The Times in- 
 terest in wireless telegraphy, it should be mentioned 
 that the publisher of The Times bought some shares 
 of stock in the American Marconi Company. He 
 bought them at the market price, of course; bought 
 them partly because he believed in the future of 
 wireless telegraphy and thought they would be a 
 good investment, and largely because he wanted to 
 promote the development of an industry that prom- 
 ised increased facilities and reduced rates for inter- 
 national communications. This stock he eventually 
 sold at a considerable loss. It deserves mention here 
 only because the incident was distorted to make it 
 appear that Mr. Ochs was in some mysterious way 
 "involved in the English Marconi scandal." And 
 although he never owned, bought or sold a single 
 share of English Marconi stock, there are no doubt 
 some people who have believed the story. As has 
 been observed above, the people who will believe 
 an5rthing are regrettably numerous. 
 
 Another of the modern arts in whose development 
 The Times took a keen interest was aviation. In the 
 
 286 
 
MODERN NEWS-GATHERING, 1900-1914 
 
 decade before the war, indeed, aviation and wireless 
 were the two chief special interests of the office. 
 The Times published more news about their progress 
 than its contemporaries, and gradually acquired a 
 sort of special position in both aviation and wireless 
 news, which attracted to it automatically a good 
 deal of information about the progress of these arts. 
 But in aviation as in wireless The Times did more 
 than merely give publicity to what was going on. It 
 promoted and inspired a good deal of the develop- 
 ment in the early years of the new invention, and 
 more than once was able to incite the experts to the 
 accomplishment of things which of their own accord 
 they would never have attempted. For in those days 
 the art of aviation and of airplane construction was 
 rather primitive. An airplane was a dangerous and 
 incalculable machine, just how dangerous and incal- 
 culable fliers alone knew. Editors of 7"^!? Times, who 
 did not have to do the flying, were perhaps rather 
 insistent that the aviators should crowd their luck 
 and see how far they could develop their art; but 
 the fact remains that many of these enterprises 
 would not have been attempted if the aviators had 
 not been prodded — and none of them met with 
 any misadventure while working for The Times. 
 
 One of the first big display stories about aviation 
 which The Times printed dealt with an exhibition 
 promoted by another paper. On May 29, 1910, 
 Glenn Curtiss flew from Albany to New York for a 
 prize oiFered by The World. With an entirely rea- 
 sonable caution, Mr. Curtiss was rather slow in get- 
 ting away — so slow that The World apparently lost 
 faith in him and announced that another aviator 
 
 287 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 was on the way to Albany and would probably make 
 the flight before Curtiss did. The Times had more 
 confidence in Curtiss, as well as a fuller realization 
 of the importance of this demonstration of the powers 
 of the airplane; so when Curtiss did start, The Times 
 was right under him with a special train and cov- 
 ered the whole story much more fully than The 
 World. A fortnight later, on June 13, 1910, Claude 
 Hamilton flew from New York to Philadelphia and 
 back in a single day for a prize off"ered by The Times. 
 Eleven years have brought such progress in avia- 
 tion that it is hard to realize what an achievement 
 this was at the time; as a matter of fact, Hamil- 
 ton's machine broke down in Jersey on the return 
 trip, had to be patched up, and was brought back to 
 New York at very great risk to the flier. 
 
 In October of the same year The Times and The 
 Chicago Evening Post promoted an aviation meet at 
 Chicago, at the end of which there was to be a race 
 from Chicago to New York for a $25,000 prize of- 
 fered by the two papers. The meet was a great 
 success, artistically and financially; so great a suc- 
 cess in the latter respect that the aviation company 
 which got the gate receipts was rather reluctant to 
 hazard its machines and its fliers on a trip to New 
 York even for $25,000. At last, however, on Oc- 
 tober 10, Eugene Ely did make the attempt, only 
 to come down just over the Indiana line. Aviation 
 engineers tinkered with his engine for days and fi- 
 nally concluded that it was impossible to go on; not 
 till later was it discovered that nothing was the mat- 
 ter with it except that a clot of mud had stopped up 
 an air valve and prevented ignition. But for that, 
 
 288 
 
MODERN NEWS-GATHERING, 1900-1914 
 
 there is a chance that the flight from Chicago to 
 New York — possibly even a non-stop flight — 
 might have been completed without mishap. 
 
 It was six years before The Times again tried to 
 promote a flight from Chicago to New York. This 
 time it was to be a non-stop flight, with Victor Carl- 
 strom of the Curtiss staffs trying it alone. In that 
 interval the war had forced aviation to an unex- 
 pected development, and fliers in Europe were doing 
 things that could not have been dreamed of three 
 or four years earlier. But once more the attempt 
 was unsuccessful as a non-stop flight, and again be- 
 cause of a trivial mishap — a loose nut on a feed 
 pipe which had somehow escaped the attention of 
 the battalion of engineers and mechanics who had 
 examined the machine. Carlstrom spent the night 
 at Hammondsport, N. Y., and finished the flight to 
 New York next day. This episode is notable also 
 in that the American Telephone and Telegraph Com- 
 pany developed for The Times a quite efficient news 
 service, having instructed all its agents along the 
 line of Carlstrom's flight to keep watch for the aviator 
 and report instantly when he appeared. 
 
 Always in those years The Times was eager to find 
 out what aviators were doing, and to encourage them 
 to do still more. Among its other endeavors to pro- 
 mote aerial navigation may be mentioned the off'er 
 of a cup for a flight from Boston to Washington in 
 July, 191 1, which was won by Harry Atwood, and 
 its promotion of an air race around Manhattan Is- 
 land in October, 191 3, in connection with the Aero- 
 nautical Society's meet. Not long after that the 
 war broke out, and aviation was forced to a devel- 
 
 289 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 opment which no longer needed any journalistic 
 stimulus. 
 
 The two great special interests of The Times were 
 combined in an enterprise which the paper promoted 
 in conjunction with The London Daily Telegraph 
 and The Chicago Record-Herald in October, 1910 — 
 Walter Wellman's attempt to fly across the Atlantic 
 in a dirigible balloon. Wellman succeeded in flying 
 about a thousand miles, but unfortunately not in a 
 straight line, as a northeast wind caught him ofi^ 
 Nantucket and drove him down to the latitude of 
 Hatteras, where he and his companions were rescued 
 by a passing steamer. Though the attempt to cross 
 the Atlantic was unsuccessful, Wellman's dirigible, 
 of course infinitely more primitive than the airships 
 which finally did make the flight in 1919, made a 
 record creditable enough for that period. In the first 
 hours of the flight Wellman kept in communication 
 with The Times by wireless — the first time, as far 
 as can be learned, that an aviation story was cov- 
 ered by wireless from the air — and the wireless 
 again brought the news of his rescue out at sea, 
 though in this case the messages were dispatched 
 from the rescuing steamer. 
 
 The automobile business was at this period going 
 through the transition from a dangerous sport of the 
 idle rich to a basic industry meeting the needs of the 
 proletariat. Automobile news for a long time was 
 prominent in every paper, more prominent than it 
 is now, because the automobile attracted both a 
 sporting and a commercial interest. Its promotion, 
 however, was being taken care of by so many people 
 
 290 
 
MODERN NEWS-GATHERING, 1900-1914 
 
 that The Times, though publishing very full and 
 trustworthy automobile news, had no occasion to do 
 in this field anything like its work in aviation and 
 wireless. One event, however, it did promote — a 
 New York-to-Paris automobile race, in collaboration 
 with the Paris Matin, early in 1908. 
 
 If one single news story published in The Times in 
 this period were to be marked out as more famous 
 than all the rest, it would have to be Admiral Peary's 
 story of the discovery of the North Pole. Before 
 Peary started north on his final trip The Times had 
 arranged for exclusive news publication of his story 
 in New York and had agreed to act as his agent in 
 selling other rights. It had advanced $40CX) to him, 
 as he needed that much to make the expedition pos- 
 sible, to be repaid out of the profits from the use and 
 sale of the rights to Peary's story of the trip. As 
 it turned out, Peary's story sold so well that he 
 realized through The Times nearly three times this 
 amount. 
 
 It was, accordingly, a good deal of a disappoint- 
 ment to the conductors of The Times when early in 
 September, 1909, Peary being still absent beyond 
 communication in the north, the little known Dr. 
 Frederick Cook suddenly appeared en route to 
 Copenhagen and announced that he had discovered 
 the Pole on April 21 of the previous year. 
 
 The Times's reaction to the news was, however, 
 about the same as the reaction of nearly everybody 
 else. It was incUned to give Dr. Cook the benefit 
 of the doubt, and, when more details of his alleged 
 exploit began to come in and proved to be vague, 
 
 291 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 confusing and rather suspicious, The Times was still, 
 like most other people, inclined to wait for proof 
 before discrediting the story. 
 
 But all this was changed when on September 6, 
 while Cook was dining with the King of Denmark 
 and receiving all the honors that Copenhagen could 
 bestow, Peary reached Indian Harbor and sent word 
 to The Times by wireless and cable that he had 
 found the Pole. Everybody believed Peary; he was 
 an explorer and scientist of the highest standing, 
 and the whole world took his word. The trouble 
 began a day or two later when Peary informed his 
 family, and the public, that Cook's story need not 
 be taken seriously. By that time Cook had sold 
 the right of publication of his narrative to The New 
 York Herald, which had syndicated it everywhere. 
 It turned out to be a bad bargain for The Herald, 
 but it was an excellent bargain for Cook in more 
 ways than one. Aside from the price he received — 
 which, according to rumor, was, through a mistake 
 in cable transmission, ten times what he had asked, 
 but which to James Gordon Bennett seemed not 
 exorbitant for what Cook had to offer — he found 
 at once a large number of newspapers enrolled on 
 his side and compelled in their own interest to ad- 
 vocate his claims to the very last. 
 
 It may be said that The Times was in luck and 
 The Herald was out of luck. But it was not a ques- 
 tion of luck; The Times had reason for putting up 
 money for Peary's story before he started north, for 
 he was the most experienced and probably the most 
 renowned of Arctic explorers. In so far as success 
 in reaching the Pole was not a matter of chance, 
 
 292 
 
MODERN NEWS-GATHERING, 1900-1914 
 
 ?eary was a better bet than anybody else. Ben- 
 nett's purchase of Cook's story, after Cook had as- 
 serted that he had discovered the Pole, was natural 
 enough, for nobody knew much about Cook then. 
 It must be regarded as an unfortunate lapse from 
 impartiality of judgment, however, that the papers 
 which had published Cook's story for the most part 
 felt that they had to believe it, or at any rate to 
 pretend that they believed it. 
 
 Peary's detailed story came through by wireless 
 rather slowly, and was published in The Times on 
 September 9, 10 and 11, 1909. In the meantime a 
 correspondent of The London Chronicle, Philip Gibbs, 
 who was to become famous as a war correspondent 
 a few years later — and more famous through the 
 American publication of his work in The New York 
 Times and papers which bought the news from The 
 Times than even his home paper made him — had 
 subjected Dr. Cook and his story to an intensive 
 study, and had come to the conclusion that there 
 was nothing in it. For a few days Gibbs was almost 
 alone in saying this outright, but Peary's heated de- 
 nunciations of Cook forced the issue and the world- 
 wide civil war was on. In the promotion of domestic 
 strife in every nation, in the setting of households 
 against each other and bringing not peace, but a 
 sword to every breakfast table. Cook and Peary did 
 better than Lenin and Trotzky ever dreamed of 
 dping. 
 
 That war is ancient history, and there is no longer 
 any doubt as to who was right. The Times, which 
 had obtained the North Pole story on its own ini- 
 tiative, was equally successful in obtaining the ac- 
 
 293 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 counts of the two discoveries of the South Pole by 
 Amundsen and Scott, though in both cases it could 
 do no more than buy the American rights from 
 British owners — in the case of Scott, the Central 
 News; in the case of Amundsen, The London Chron- 
 icle. Of course, exclusive rights to American publi- 
 cation of great news stories of this sort were not 
 any too widely respected. The narratives of Amund- 
 sen and Scott were stolen and published by other 
 newspapers, though The Times owned the copyright. 
 Naturally, The Times sued all the New York news- 
 papers that republished these stories without per- 
 mission. The suits failed on technical points. The 
 common-law sanction of a right of prior publication 
 by the purchaser or gatherer of news, finally estab- 
 lished in the litigation by which The Associated 
 Press compelled the Hearst services to stop the prac- 
 tice of "lifting" Associated Press bulletins, had not 
 yet been established when these cases were tried, 
 and The Times got no material compensation from 
 those who had infringed its rights. But its lawsuits 
 did have one important and valuable result; at each 
 successive stage of the suits, when technical decisions 
 went against The Times, the appropriating news- 
 papers gleefully announced their victory, telling 
 their readers over and over how The Times had 
 bought the news but they had been able to take 
 it and "get away with it." This unintentional ad- 
 vertisement of The Times was quite helpful. 
 
 Of the great news stories of the period to which 
 everybody had access, and in dealing with which an 
 individual newspaper could distinguish itself only by 
 specially competent treatment, the one most vividly 
 
 294 
 
MODERN NEWS-GATHERING, 1900-1914 
 
 remembered in The Times office is the sinking of the 
 Titanic in April, 1912. The Times was more for- 
 tunate than other papers in handling that story cor- 
 rectly from the moment when the news of the first 
 wireless call for help was received in newspaper 
 offices. "More fortunate" is the proper term, for the 
 general conviction that the Titanic was unsinkable 
 was so strong, and so gallantly maintained for 
 twenty-four hours after the disaster by the officials 
 of the White Star Line, that there was good excuse 
 for reluctance to believe that the disaster had been 
 serious. 
 
 It happened that The Times by careful compari- 
 son of the first dispatches about the collision with 
 the iceberg and by repeated inquiries of its own 
 promptly made up its mind that the Titanic was 
 gone. It held to that view all through the con- 
 fused reports of the next day, even though officials 
 of the line still asserted that there was no news con- 
 firming the suspicion; and it was right. 
 
 When the Carpathia landed with the survivors 
 The Times covered the story more completely than 
 any other New York paper, though they all did 
 their best. One feature, the stories told by the 
 Titanic's two wireless operators, though arranged 
 for by wireless before the Carpathia' s arrival, could 
 not have been obtained when the ship docked but 
 for the opportune assistance of Senator Marconi; 
 but the rest of the news was gathered by the dili- 
 gence of The Times's own reporters, who performed 
 feats of interviewing on that night which showed 
 the high standard of news-getting ability to which the 
 staff had been brought. Altogether, the paper 
 
 29s 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 printed fifteen pages of news about the Titanic the 
 next morning. Its work on this famous story ex- 
 cited widespread admiration, and members of The 
 Times staff visiting the offices of European news- 
 papers have been gratified to learn that some of 
 them had considered copies of The Times of that 
 period worthy of preservation as models to be studied- 
 Even certain New York editors wrote to friends in 
 The Times office expressing ungrudging admiration. 
 
 The Times's poHtical news in this period was 
 steadily gaining wider recognition for trustworthiness. 
 Like everything else on The Times, the political cor- 
 respondence was less spectacular than that of some 
 other papers, but in the long run it was apt to be 
 more trustworthy. There were, however, a number 
 of outstanding feats of news enterprise which sup- 
 plied the spectacular element from time to time. 
 Such was, for example, the publication in advance 
 of the draft of the Republican national platform of 
 1908, as drawn up by the leaders of the Roosevelt 
 forces at the convention. President Roosevelt at 
 once went into eruption upon seeing this news in 
 The Times, and declared that it was not a correct 
 version. But when the platform was adopted and 
 made known to the world it was found to differ 
 only in half a dozen minor points of phraseology 
 from the version printed in The Times — which, of 
 course, was presented as nothing more than the 
 draft agreed on by the dominating Roosevelt faction 
 at the time of publication. This achievement set 
 a precedent to which Times political reporters have 
 managed to Hve up ever since; in most subsequent 
 
 296 
 
MODERN NEWS-GATHERING, 1900-1914 
 
 campaign years The Times has managed to obtain 
 the platform of one or the other national conven- 
 tions before it was formally given out to the press 
 at large. 
 
 Accomplishments such as this are the result of 
 long preparation; they imply a well-organized staff 
 of veteran political reporters with a wide acquaint- 
 ance, with many friends in high place, and with 
 qualities that command confidence. An illustration 
 of the competence of The Times political staff under 
 different circumstances was afforded at Mr. Taft's 
 inauguration in 1909. It may be remembered that 
 in that year a bhzzard suddenly descended on Wash- 
 ington on the night of March 3, and by the time 
 the inauguration ceremonies had been concluded the 
 next day practically all the telephone and telegraph 
 wires leading out of the town were out of commis- 
 sion. The stories of the day's events written by 
 The Times staff were prepared in quintuplicate. 
 One copy was kept on file in the office of the Wash- 
 ington correspondent of The Times, and all through 
 the evening desperate but unavailing efforts were 
 made to get this through on the leased wires or by 
 telephone. Another was filed with the Western 
 Union for transmission on any other wires they 
 might be able to open. Two more were dispatched 
 by messengers on trains for New York. Both trains 
 were held up by snowdrifts, but one of them reached 
 Philadelphia late at night and the copy was tele- 
 graphed on by The Times correspondent there. But 
 before it reached the office, most of the news had 
 already arrived. The Times managed to find a tele- 
 graph wire open from Washington to New Orleans, 
 
 297 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 and the fifth copy of each story was sent over that 
 wire to New Orleans, thence to Chicago, thence to 
 Albany, and finally into the office in New York, 
 circling the area devastated by the blizzard. The 
 Times had all its special dispatches about the inau- 
 guration in its first edition the next morning. 
 
 The Times was able on occasion not only to get 
 news from politicians but to send news to politicians. 
 During the Democratic National Convention at 
 Baltimore in 191 2 special trains brought down every 
 morning the city edition of The Times, so that be- 
 fore the morning sessions had begun the delegates 
 were reading the news of what they had been doing 
 up to four or five o'clock that morning — and since 
 the work of national conventions is mostly done after 
 midnight in smoke-filled rooms, there is a big dif- 
 ference between the first edition and the last edition 
 in convention week. It might be mentioned here 
 that during the Republican convention at Chicago 
 last year The Times sent a moderately late edition, 
 carrying news received up to three a.m., to Chicago 
 by airplane. 
 
 In 1903 Thomas A. Janvier wrote for The Times 
 a series of articles on the early history of New York, 
 and the paper announced a competition for the 
 school children of the city in the writing of essays 
 based on Janvier's articles. The interest aroused 
 by this was enormous. In thousands of homes the 
 entire family was excited by the son's or daughter's 
 efi^ort to win one of the prizes or medals offered for 
 the best compositions, and the result was not only 
 an increase in the circulation of The Times, which, of 
 
 298 
 
LAYING THE CORNERSTONE, 
 TIMES BUILDING, JANUARY 18, 1904. 
 
 TIMES SQUARE, 
 THE CENTRE FOR NEWS. 
 
MODERN NEWS-GATHERING, 1900-1914 
 
 course, was the principal purpose of the competition, 
 but the educating of a great many children, and a 
 great many parents, in the past of a city whose his- 
 tory is less known to its inhabitants than probably 
 any other in America. It hardly needs to be said 
 that the increase in circulation created by this com- 
 petition would have been only temporary and illu- 
 sory if new readers attracted to The Times, who first 
 read it in order to see what chance Johnny or Gladys 
 was likely to have of getting a medal, had not found 
 that it was worth reading all the time. The con- 
 test was a good piece of advertising, but it would 
 not have brought results if the merchandise adver- 
 tised had not been satisfactory. 
 
 The results which it did bring were so gratifying 
 that The Times has done the same thing on several 
 occasions since then — notably in 1909, when in 
 commemoration of the Lincoln centenary there was 
 a competition of essays based on a series of articles 
 on the life of Lincoln by Frederic Trevor Hill. But 
 though these competitions were always useful, both 
 to The Times and to those who participated in them, 
 none of the later ones had the effect of the first. 
 For in 1903 the idea had been new and striking in 
 its novelty; and it was so effective that all the 
 other papers soon imitated it. 
 
 But the story of those years is, after all, the story 
 of a steadily improving news service, a staff con- 
 stantly more alert for news, and better educated in 
 the handling of news. There are other stories, many 
 of them, that were important enough at the time, 
 but are hardly relevant to the history of The Times 
 
 299 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 as a whole. One or two of them may be mentioned 
 as indicative of certain tendencies which have be- 
 come more prominent in the character of The Times 
 in more recent years. When Theodore Roosevelt, 
 returning from Africa, made his famous speech at 
 the Guildhall, London, on June i8, 1910, The Times 
 had a verbatim report of it sent by cable. The 
 idea that the public would be interested in every 
 word of a speech delivered at a great distance was 
 then a novel one; it was still novel years later, in 
 the war, when The Times developed the habit of 
 publishing in full the speeches of Lloyd George, of 
 Bethmann-Hollweg, Hertling and Czernin, and 
 other leaders of the European Governments. In 
 this process, which may be described as the docu- 
 mentation of current history. The Times has always 
 maintained a long lead over its rivals. Other papers 
 may think that the public does not want to read 
 long speeches, and will be satisfied with a summary 
 and a few quotations. The Times has found that 
 at least in such a crisis as the World War a large 
 part of the public is interested in long speeches, ver- 
 batim speeches; that on some occasions every word 
 of such speeches is news. Roosevelt's Guildhall 
 speech was news, and deserved to be printed in full. 
 As a matter of fact, the idea that a speech which 
 would be printed in full if it were delivered in New 
 York, with an advance copy sent to the city editor, 
 can be dismissed with a column summary if it is 
 delivered in London or Paris, has no sound founda- 
 tion. It rests on a tradition coming down from the 
 days when cables were few and press cablegrams 
 necessarily brief and expensive. With modern facili- 
 
 300 
 
MODERN NEWS-GATHERING, 1900-1914 
 
 ties of communication, there is no reason why news 
 from London, Paris and Berlin cannot be handled as 
 its importance deserves. 
 
 The great development of The Times sporting 
 news has come since the end of the war, but on cer- 
 tain occasions before the war it covered big sport- 
 ing events rather more fully than was its custom. 
 One of these was the Jeffries- Johnson fight at Reno 
 in 1910, when the stories sent by regular members 
 of The Times staff were supplemented by expert 
 criticism contributed by John L. Sullivan. Mr. 
 Sullivan, though then appearing for the first time 
 as a journalist, knew enough about prize fighting to 
 make, and defend, the prediction that Johnson was 
 going to win; which, being contrary to the wish and 
 belief of a majority of the public, brought to The 
 Times a considerable volume of protest. However, 
 Sullivan was right. On the value of these occasional 
 contributions from outside experts there may be di- 
 vergent opinions; but at any rate the paper which 
 published the first literary works of Henry Adams 
 and John L. Sullivan may be credited with a cer- 
 tain breadth of taste, as well as with a keen reali- 
 zation of the variety of belletristic talent produced 
 in Boston. 
 
 Perhaps two matters of special interest to The 
 Times may here be mentioned, although their most 
 notable development falls in a later period. One of 
 the hobbies of the paper has been the protection of 
 the city parks. Special interests of this sort are 
 more in the line of some other New York papers; In 
 general The Times has not given much attention to, 
 
 301 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 them, for while realizing that they offer consider- 
 able opportunities for public service it considers 
 them outside the field of straight newspaper work 
 to which it is devoted. Its interest in the parks, 
 however, has seemed necessary, since it is a duty 
 which has been neglected by others. 
 
 The number and variety of the schemes for the 
 invasion of city parks, especially Central Park, would 
 be inconceivable to those who have not had occasion 
 to study them. From such magnificent schemes as 
 the cutting up of the whole park into building lots 
 down to trivial incursions, ostensibly for special or 
 temporary purposes, almost every use has been 
 suggested for Central Park by persons who call them- 
 selves practical men. It has seemed to the manage- 
 ment of The Times that the most practical use of 
 Central Park, or any other park, is to keep it as a 
 park — as a place where residents of the city may 
 get into the open air and make some effort to get 
 back to a sort of nature. Some of the other plans 
 for using the park space have been well enough in- 
 tended, but The Times has always thought that New 
 York needed it as a park more than as an athletic 
 field, a site for public buildings, or anjrthing else. 
 
 The most notable incident in this long and 
 measurably successful struggle to preserve the park 
 against encroachments, and the most difficult, be- 
 cause the aims of those who wanted to invade the 
 park were excellent in themselves, was the "park 
 trench" episode in the spring of 1918. The mem- 
 bers of the Liberty Loan Committee, then in the 
 fourth loan campaign, had allowed themselves to be 
 persuaded by an enthusiastic publicity man that 
 
 302 
 
MODERN NEWS-GATHERING, 1900-1914 
 
 popular interest could be aroused by the exhibition 
 in New York of a model trench sector such as those 
 in which American soldiers were fighting in France 
 
 — which was correct — and that the place for this 
 exhibition was the Sheep Meadow in Central Park 
 
 — which to The Times seemed entirely erroneous. 
 The damage that would have been done to the park 
 by the digging of trenches, though considerable, 
 could have been repaired; the harm done to the idea 
 of the integrity of the park could not have been re- 
 paired. For that was in the palmy days of drives 
 
 — drives for all sorts of causes, most of them worthy. 
 The Liberty Loan campaigns being the greatest and 
 most obviously necessary drives, minor enterprises 
 were inclined to follow their lead. Had the prece- 
 dent once been established of using the park for 
 visual education of this sort, every drive that fol- 
 lowed would have come forward with the same de- 
 mand; and it would have been as difficult to draw 
 the line between drives which wanted to get into the 
 park as it was later found to discriminate between 
 campaigners who wanted space on the steps of the 
 Public Library, or the privilege of soliciting con- 
 tributions in the public schools. 
 
 The fight to keep the trenches out of the park is 
 perhaps remembered chiefly because it produced 
 Mayor Hylan's memorable remark about "art ar- 
 tists." But it is worthy of remembrance because it 
 succeeded in keeping the trenches out of the park. 
 In the course of the campaign The Times had occa- 
 sion to do a good deal in the way of educating the 
 public in the elementary philosophy of parks — a 
 task it had undertaken before, but never at such 
 
 303 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 length or with such earnestness. It may be hoped 
 that this effort was not without effect, and that a 
 somewhat larger percentage of the population of 
 New York City now understands that the purpose 
 of setting aside land for a park is to have a park, 
 and not to provide a convenient building site for 
 some structure intended for a worthy purpose, whose 
 promoters do not want to pay the current prices of 
 real estate. 
 
 The defense of the parks is a matter in which The 
 Times has felt under obligation to take up a public 
 duty neglected by others. The other special inter- 
 est of the paper mentioned above is still more pecu- 
 liarly its own, for it was invented by the pub- 
 lisher of The Times. This is the annual Christmas 
 appeal for the Hundred Neediest Cases, chosen from 
 the lists of four of the leading charitable societies in 
 the city. The appeal was first ipade in 191 2, and 
 aroused an interest that increased from year to 
 year. By 1920 the individual contributions had 
 mounted into the thousands, and a total of more 
 than $111,000 was raised — every cent of which 
 goes directly to the relief of the cases whose history 
 is told in The Times, or others like them, and only 
 less needy, when the first hundred have been re- 
 lieved; for in several years the response was sufficient 
 to cover more than two hundred cases, comprehend- 
 ing about a thousand persons each year. The ad- 
 ministrative expenses come out of the general funds 
 of the charitable societies, so that all the money 
 raised by the appeals goes directly for relief. The 
 total of contributions in each year's appeal is here 
 tabulated : 
 
 304 
 
MODERN NEWS-GATHERING, 1900-1914 
 
 1912 $ 3,630.88 
 
 1913 9.646.36 
 
 1914 1S5O3246 
 
 1915 31.819.92 
 
 1916 55.792-45 
 
 1917 62,103.47 
 
 1918 81,097.57 
 
 1919 106,967.14 
 
 1920 111,131.00 
 
 What has been accompHshed by this appeal.? 
 First of all, of course, the relief of hundreds of desti- 
 tute families — the raising of hundreds of thou- 
 sands of dollars, most if not all of which would never 
 have been contributed to charity if The Times had 
 not, day after day, in the weeks before Christmas of 
 each year, presented the stories of these families who 
 were in desperate need. With few exceptions, the 
 cases selected for presentation in these appeals have 
 been families, or individuals, who needed only tem- 
 porary help in order to get back on their feet again 
 and become able to pay their way. That this result 
 has been achieved in hundreds of instances is proved 
 by the records of the charitable societies. Many 
 orphan children have been adopted into kindly 
 homes. Some of those who were aided in the earlier 
 years have since been listed among the contributors 
 to the fund. More and more of them will appear in 
 this character as time goes on, and children who 
 have been aided to get an education, or whose dis- 
 abled parents have been enabled to bring them up 
 properly, become self-supporting members of society. 
 
 But the wider usefulness of the annual campaigns 
 lies in the education of the public. Many people 
 
 30s 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 who have never given to organized charity before 
 are stirred by this Christmas appeal; and when they 
 have once begun to learn something about the des- 
 titution which is always to be found in New York 
 City, their interest is apt to continue and they be- 
 come regular contributors. Some of them go fur- 
 ther and give personal attention to charitable work; 
 and all of them learn something about the nature of 
 that work, and the conditions which it is trying to 
 improve. The conductors of The Times do not 
 know the solution of the problem of poverty, nor 
 even if there is a solution; but they think that a so- 
 lution is more likely to be found if everybody 
 studies the problem. 
 
 These considerations were in large part responsi- 
 ble for the refusal, by the management of The Times, 
 of the offer of $1,000,000 as a standing endowment, 
 the interest on which should be applied to the relief 
 of the Hundred Neediest Cases, on condition that 
 The Times should undertake the investigation of the 
 cases and the administration of the fund. A suffi- 
 cient reason for refusing this offer was the fact that 
 The Times is a newspaper and not a charitable so- 
 ciety, and that its conductors find that getting out a 
 newspaper takes all their time and ability. It was 
 felt that the gentleman who made this offer could 
 do more effective work for the relief of poverty if he 
 allowed his money to be handled by the people who 
 have given a lifetime of study and practice to relief 
 work. 
 
 Such a magnificent gift might have inclined other 
 possible contributors to think that the need had 
 already been met. And it can never be fully met, 
 
 306 
 

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MODERN NEWS-GATHERING, 1900-1914 
 
 at least not until everybody in New York has come 
 to understand it. The educational value of the annual 
 campaigns has certainly been great, and is greater 
 every year. Indeed, they have already won their 
 place in literature; Mr. Robert W. Chambers pre- 
 sented as the heroine of one of his recent novels an 
 orphan who had been adopted by a wealthy gentle- 
 man after he had read her story as one of the 
 Hundred Neediest Cases. 
 
 On April I, 191 3, The Times abandoned the seven- 
 column page which it had presented to its readers 
 for the past forty-eight years and went to eight col- 
 umns. The change was chiefly due to a conviction 
 that the narrower column was somewhat easier to 
 read, but it was also based in some degree upon the 
 need of getting more reading matter into the paper 
 without increasing the size of the page. Already 
 the number of pages had increased, though it was 
 not yet foreseen that the time would come when the 
 paper would print forty pages on a week day, as 
 happened occasionally in 1919. 
 
 But The Times, increasing the quantity of its of- 
 fering to readers, had maintained the same quality 
 which it had always presented. It was still the 
 same solid, dignified, reliable paper; the only differ- 
 ence was that it was appealing to more and more 
 readers every year. 
 
 The average circulation, which had been more 
 than i02,ocxD in the jubilee year, rose gradually to 
 143,460 in 1907; leaped the next year to 172,880; 
 passed 200,000 in 191 1; reached 225,392 in 191 2, and 
 was around the quarter-million mark at the out- 
 
 307 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 break of the war, when the great achievements of 
 The Times news service sent it leaping once more. 
 
 Though its worldwide renown was chiefly a growth 
 of the war years, The Times was already recognized 
 as one of the great newspapers of the country, great 
 not only in circulation and volume of business, but 
 in character. A good many people did not like the 
 kind of paper which The Times was and always had 
 been, but they had to admit that it was an excellent 
 paper of the kind, and more and more people every 
 year were coming to prefer that kind. 
 
 In the articles on New York journalism written 
 by Will Irwin for Collier s Weekly in 191 1 The Times 
 was called a "commercial newspaper" — a some- 
 what curious epithet, since all newspapers are con- 
 ducted with the purpose, even if that object is not 
 always attained, of making a profit. Mr. Irwin was 
 compelled, however, to admit that The Times came 
 "the nearest of any newspaper to presenting a truth- 
 ful picture of life in New York and the world at 
 large," and indeed his only criticism was that it did 
 not crusade. This, of course, was during the muck- 
 raking epoch, and it is a striking tribute to The 
 Times that in that day when every institution was 
 being violently assaulted a muckraker could find 
 nothing to say against the paper except that it did 
 not wield the muckrake. 
 
 The great news feats mentioned above all played 
 their part in attracting attention to the paper and 
 winning new readers, but it cannot be repeated too 
 often that in the newspaper business as in any other 
 business customers who are attracted by advertis- 
 ing can be held only by the quality of the merchan- 
 
 308 
 
MODERN NEWS-GATHERING, 1900-1914 
 
 dise. For whatever reason people began to read 
 The Times, they continued to read it because they 
 found it an enterprising and trustworthy newspaper. 
 The essay competitions had taken it into the pubhc 
 schools, where in many cases it came to be regarded 
 as the best guide to current events. And in private 
 schools, too, The Times was always welcomed where 
 some of its competitors were regarded with a suspi- 
 cious eye. The proprietor of its ablest rival in the 
 morning newspaper field once graciously called at- 
 tention to the fact that The Times was the only 
 morning newspaper taken at the select school which 
 his daughter attended. 
 
 309 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 Some Aspects of Business Policy 
 
 n^EE TIMES had begun to gain circulation very 
 ■* soon after the new pubHsher took charge. With 
 this, of course, went an enormous increase in the 
 business of the paper. There was built up an un- 
 usually efficient business department, managed for 
 many years past by Louis Wiley and previously by 
 the late John Norris. Within four years after the 
 assumption of control by the new management the 
 circulation of The Times, at the beginning of the 
 new century, had reached 100,000; ten years later 
 it had passed 200,000, and now in the twenty-fifth 
 year of the present management it circulates an 
 average of 330,000 copies on week days and 500,000 
 on Sundays. 
 
 And this is a genuine circulation. There are no 
 return privileges which permit of subtle distinctions 
 between the number of papers distributed and the 
 number sold, nor has the circulation been padded or 
 inflated by any irregular methods. Some illustrations 
 of the principles of The Times on this point may 
 here be offered with apologies to the well-intentioned 
 friends of the paper with whose ideas the manage- 
 ment was unable to agree. 
 
 One day during the Presidential campaign of 1900 
 the Republican National Committee happened to 
 be meeting in New York. That morning The Times 
 
 310 
 
SOME ASPECTS OF BUSINESS POLICY 
 
 carried an editorial on the issues of the campaign 
 which struck the RepubUcan managers as about the 
 most forcible presentation of the case which they 
 had seen anjrwhere. Mr. Luther Little of the Com- 
 mittee was accordingly instructed to call on the 
 publisher to express the Committee's thanks and 
 appreciation and to order one million copies of that 
 issue for distribution. 
 
 To his profound surprise, the publisher of The Times 
 refused to accept the order. He felt that the wide 
 free distribution of a marked newspaper might easily 
 create, in the minds of many who received it, a false 
 impression to the effect that the appearance of the 
 article and the purchase of the copies might be in 
 some way a bargain. The Times, of course, would 
 not receive payment of any sort for what appeared 
 in its reading columns, and it did not want to incur 
 even the suspicion. Mr. Little argued, not without 
 plausibility, that The Times must have printed that 
 editorial hoping that people would read it, and here 
 a million more readers were offered. But the pub- 
 lisher of the paper felt that readers of that sort 
 would do the paper little good, while the accompany- 
 ing suspicions would do positive harm. 
 
 The conductors of The Times were publishing a 
 paper for the people who liked the sort of paper 
 they were publishing. They did not want it forced 
 on anybody's attention or given away free because 
 it contained something which happened to strike 
 the fancy of gentlemen who were able to order and 
 distribute a million copies. Circulation of such char- 
 acter, it was felt, could do the paper no good and 
 might do a great deal of harm. The only readers 
 
 3" 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 The Times sought were readers who would buy the 
 paper because they wanted it. They did not wish it 
 to be classed with the sort of campaign literature 
 that is distributed free. 
 
 A somewhat similar issue arose in the same cam- 
 paign when the Republican State Committee of 
 New Jersey wanted to buy 20,000 copies of The 
 Times every day during the last three months of 
 the canvass. This proposal also was declined. This 
 sort of thing had been a commonplace of the polit- 
 ical journalism of an earlier period. The weekly 
 editions of such New York newspapers as had strong 
 partisan sympathies, in the sixties and seventies had 
 been in campaign years little more than campaign 
 pamphlets, full of praise of the party's candidates, 
 violent attacks on the opposition, and argument in 
 defence of the party's position; and for their circula- 
 tion in those years they had depended largely on 
 the party committees, which bought and distributed 
 many thousands of copies. 
 
 This, of course, was in effect a subsidy from the 
 party to the paper, but according to the journalistic 
 ethics of past years there was nothing irregular about 
 accepting it. By 1900 newspaper standards in some 
 quarters were somewhat higher, but still the action 
 of the management of The Times surprised a good 
 many newspaper men, as well as the party managers, 
 who had supposed that the paper would regard the 
 proposed arrangement as advantageous to both sides. 
 
 The reluctance of The Times was not due simply 
 to the fact that it was not a Republican paper and 
 did not want to become identified in any way with 
 the party leadership. Its conductors felt that The 
 
 312 
 
SOME ASPECTS OF BUSINESS POLICY 
 
 Times had no right to accept compensation in any 
 form for its editorial opinion, even though that com- 
 pensation was after the fact and the opinion had 
 been formed without any expectation of it. 
 
 This question has been raised several times since 
 in somewhat different form, and without political 
 connections. A number of requests have been made 
 for a considerable number of copies of the paper for 
 free distribution on account of an article appearing 
 in the editorial or news columns. Always the re- 
 quest has been refused, though permission to reprint 
 articles from The Times for distribution has been 
 freely granted, on condition that the reprint contain 
 some statement making it clear that The Times had 
 no hand in the distribution. It has been the pub- 
 lisher's opinion that this policy prevented the 
 growth of mistaken opinions not only outside, but 
 more particularly within The Times office. He was 
 seeking the confidence of the public, but he regarded 
 as still more essential the confidence of those who 
 were associated with him in making the newspaper. 
 Mr. Ochs has always felt that he need not be con- 
 cerned about public opinion with respect to The 
 Times if its editors believe in his sincere desire for 
 clean, honest work. 
 
 Some years ago a prominent Western manufac- 
 turer wrote to The Times and ordered the paper sent 
 daily for a year to fifty clergymen in his town. His 
 reason was that he regarded The Times as a good 
 newspaper, in fact, the best newspaper, and he 
 thought that ministers in a small city of the interior 
 might have their outlook on the world broadened by 
 the study of its pages. 
 
 313 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 The Times refused to send the papers to the ad- 
 dresses he had forwarded. The publisher held that 
 the orders could be filled only if they came with the 
 knowledge and consent of the recipients, that is, if 
 they really wanted the paper. The Times was not 
 to be forced on anybody who had not asked for it, 
 and it was not to be distributed in quantity by out- 
 siders, thereby perhaps incurring the suspicion that 
 it was in some way an organ or a mouthpiece for 
 the views of the individuals or classes accelerating its 
 distribution. 
 
 More recently the same question was raised by a 
 banker in South Carolina, who admired The Times 
 financial news and its editorial discussions of finan- 
 cial problems. He thought that the bankers of his 
 state, inclined to be absorbed in their own local 
 affairs, would be better off for learning something 
 about world trade and world finance, and, accord- 
 ingly, ordered The Times sent regularly to 450 of 
 them at his expense. In this case, again, The Times 
 could not but regard this as a compliment, and had 
 no doubt whatever of the correct intentions of the 
 man who wanted to pay for the papers. But again 
 the publisher felt that, while it might be good for 
 South Carolina bankers to read The Times, it was not 
 good for The Times to be distributed gratis. 
 
 The banker who had made the offer still thought 
 that his colleagues needed education, so when The 
 Times refused to fill his order he attempted partially 
 to carry out his purpose through the medium of a 
 Charleston newsdealer. The sudden increase of 450 
 copies in this dealer's order at once aroused suspicion 
 in the office, and when this suspicion was verified 
 
 314 
 
JOHN H. FINLEY, 
 Associate Editor. 
 
SOME ASPECTS OF BUSINESS POLICY 
 
 The Times, although rather gratified by this evidence 
 of the persistent conviction of the banker that it 
 was a good paper, refused to fill the order. 
 
 It may be addec* that in the belief of the man- 
 agement these principles are not in conflict with the 
 action of certain large hotels which see advantage 
 to themselves in providing each guest in his room 
 with a copy of The Times every morning. 
 
 It can be assumed from these illustrations that 
 there is nothing artificial about The Times' s circu- 
 lation. Its subscribers are people who desire it, who 
 want it, and who know why they want it. 
 
 Of course, the Increase in circulation brought with 
 it a great increase in advertising. The volume of 
 advertising published in 1896 had been more than 
 quadrupled by 1914, and the rates were several times 
 increased during this, period. The Times has not 
 been always a single-rate paper in the strictest sense 
 of the word, but it has always been a single-rate 
 paper to the extent that everybody paid the same 
 price for the same service. 
 
 The advertising rates have been very slowly ad- 
 vanced with the greatest consideration for the ad- 
 vertiser's problem in adjusting his appropriation for 
 space in The Times to the increased rates. And 
 whereas the net return to The Times per column in 
 1896, with a circulation of less than 20,000, was $45, 
 in 1921 the rate for a circulation of 340,000 — more 
 than seventeen times larger — was only $150. 
 
 The management of The Times has always felt 
 that all good advertising, that is honest advertising, 
 has a certain news value. It is information for the 
 
 31S 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 public, of some interest and advantage to the public. 
 In discriminating between advertisements, when 
 limitations of space compelled discrimination, it has 
 been the policy to give preference so far as possible 
 to advertising which possessed news interest in a 
 higher degree. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that anybody seriously 
 believes any longer that The Times is in any way 
 controlled or influenced in its editorial policies by its 
 advertisers. Some papers may be so influenced, 
 though it may be doubted if this could be said of any 
 important one in New York City. The papers which 
 are too tender of advertisers' feelings are, naturally, 
 poor papers, financially poor, which cannot afford to 
 lose advertising. In recent years The Times has 
 sometimes been compelled to refuse advertising, 
 offered for insertion in a single day, the total amount 
 of which would have filled many pages and yielded 
 perhaps $20,000, because it did not have room enough 
 to hold all that was offered; so no sane man is likely 
 to suppose that its policies are affected by the wishes 
 of any advertiser. 
 
 However, The Times has not always been prosper- 
 ous. In poverty as in affluence, none the less, it has 
 always held the same principles, and in consequence 
 it has had a number of disagreements with advertisers 
 who thought that somehow their business dealings 
 with The Times gave them the privilege of complain- 
 ing of its editorial positions, its news publications, 
 or its business policies. 
 
 In one instance, at least, and a rather important 
 one, in the early history of the present management 
 twenty years ago, an advertiser came into conflict 
 
 316 
 
SOME ASPECTS OF BUSINESS POLICY 
 
 with the paper on a point of advertising policy. A 
 regular advertiser called the attention of The Times 
 to the advertisement of a competitor which in his 
 opinion was so misleading as to be downright fraudu- 
 lent. Investigation showed that in this particular 
 case he was right, and the objectionable advertise- 
 ment was refused thereafter. But the complainant, 
 not satisfied with this, began to ask some humiliating 
 promises from the management of The Times with 
 respect to its policies. The conductors of The Times 
 were even more anxious than this overzealous ad- 
 vertiser to keep their columns free from undesirable 
 matter, but they were unwilling to enter into an 
 argument with an advertiser about the policies of 
 the paper. The position taken by the management 
 of the paper was set forth in the letter given below, 
 which closed the incident until years later the gentle- 
 man found it desirable, in the interests of his busi- 
 ness, to bring his advertising back to The Times 
 without asking for anything more than space in the 
 paper. 
 
 The publisher of The Times set forth his views in 
 this letter as follows: 
 
 The New York Times 
 Office of the Publisher 
 New York, Nov. 21, 1901. 
 
 You must excuse me from discussing with 
 you the policy of The New York Times. It 
 is a subject we do not care to discuss with 
 an advertiser. We consider it a privilege to 
 any one to be permitted to make an an- 
 
 317 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 nouncement in the columns of The Times 
 aside from the fact that our rates for adver- 
 tising space are far from commensurate with 
 the service rendered. If The^ New York 
 Times as it appears every day is not a suffi- 
 cient recommendation for the use of its col- 
 umns by advertisers (such as we will accept), 
 assurance otherwise would be of little or no 
 value. 
 
 We do not want to sail under false colors. 
 The New York Times is not published solely 
 for the purpose of attracting advertisers. 
 We hope, however, to attract by the number 
 and the class of our readers. We are seeking 
 to secure the good-will and confidence of in- 
 telligent, discriminating newspaper readers. 
 The advertiser is a secondary consideration. 
 We take great pride in the knowledge of the 
 fact that we have succeeded in impressing 
 the honesty of our efforts upon the largest 
 number of the best citizens of this city, rep- 
 resenting both readers and advertisers. Of 
 course, there are some exceptions. Among 
 the latter class a conspicuous example is 
 yourself. You seem to wish that The New 
 York Times should go about as a mendicant, 
 begging for advertising patronage. We will 
 never do anything of the kind and are happy 
 to say there is no occasion for our doing so. 
 
 This all leads to the statement that if your 
 advertisement remains out of The New York 
 Times until you have some assurance other 
 than the paper as it appears every day, as to 
 the poHcy of the publisher, The Times, as 
 long as it is under its present management, 
 will endeavor to get along without your 
 business. 
 
 ******* 
 
 318 
 
SOME ASPECTS OF BUSINESS POLICY 
 
 Some of the differences of opinion with the book 
 publishers have already been told. A later episode, 
 however, involved something far more serious than 
 a mere disagreement on the advertising value of 
 The Times literary supplement; it was, indeed, per- 
 haps the most formidable attempt ever made by 
 advertisers to coerce The Times. The Book Pub- 
 lishers' Association threatened to withdraw, and 
 then withdrew, all of its members' advertising from 
 The Times because of the insertion of cut-rate 
 prices of their books in the advertisement of a 
 department store. 
 
 While admitting that the competition of a depart- 
 ment store selling certain articles at cut rates offered 
 some formidable problems to business men dealing 
 only in these articles, the publisher of The Times had 
 occasion to ask the publishers how it happened that 
 the store could get these books. That was a matter 
 between the book publishers and the store; the 
 advertising of the dealer's wares was the affair of 
 the store and The Times. Indeed, the management 
 of the paper observed that if the fact was not 
 advertised that books could be purchased at lower 
 prices than those charged by the publishers, it 
 would deserve to be given to the readers of The Times 
 as news. 
 
 This concept of a paper's responsibility as being 
 first of all to its readers rather than to any advertiser 
 or group of advertisers was somewhat novel to the 
 book publishers, but they presently found that The 
 Times could not be moved by the loss of their adver- 
 tising, and that in fact they were hurting nobody but 
 themselves. After a few weeks they came back, con- 
 
 319 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 tent to let the paper run its own business without 
 further interference and recognizing the wisdom of 
 The Times's attitude. 
 
 Another heavy advertiser's custom was lost, in 
 this case forever, through a difference of opinion on 
 the relative value of advertising and news. This 
 gentleman had arranged for the publication of what 
 he considered an important announcement in a half- 
 page advertisement on June i6, 1904, the morning 
 after the burning of the excursion steamer General 
 Slocum, with the loss of more than a thousand lives. 
 At that time the mechanical facilities of The Times 
 did not permit the printing of more than sixteen 
 pages. The advertisement was omitted on the 
 ground that the space was needed for news and that 
 the paper's duty to its readers demanded that newr 
 be given the right of way. 
 
 Perhaps the most notable difference with adver- 
 tisers was a disagreement with one of the largest and 
 best advertisers in the country, who withdrew his 
 advertising from The Times because of a personal 
 grievance, arising out of an incidental publication in 
 another paper controlled by the publisher of The 
 Times. This item was mistakenly attributed to the 
 publisher, and some exacting demands were accord- 
 ingly made which could not be comphed with. Al- 
 though it involved the loss of more than a million 
 dollars' worth of the most desirable advertising, the 
 management of The Times was adamant in its refusal 
 to make the publication requested. After ten years' 
 absence the advertiser returned to The Times with- 
 out any conditions, and good relations were happily 
 restored. 
 
 320 
 
SOME ASPECTS OF BUSINESS POLICY 
 
 It was in a later period, in 1915, that an attempt 
 was made to control The Times's dramatic criticism 
 by somewhat different methods. A producer con- 
 ceived the mistaken impression that the chief dra- 
 matic critic of The Times was prejudiced against his 
 productions, and in spite of the fact that very few of 
 the reviews responsible for this impression had been 
 written by the critic in question, the producer sud- 
 denly refused to admit him to his theatres. For a 
 time the critic managed to review the producer's 
 plays under the protection of an injunction, but this 
 was presently vacated. While the doors of the 
 theatres were closed to The Times critic, the advertis- 
 ing columns of The Times were closed to the producer, 
 and publication of hjs offered announcements was 
 refused. 
 
 In the legal fight the paper was beaten. It was 
 developed that while the laws of New York regard 
 the theatre as a public institution to the extent that 
 its owner cannot exclude classes or racial groups of 
 the public, it is sufficiently private to permit him to 
 keep a man out if he does not like him. The lessee 
 of a theatre cannot refuse to admit a negro, but he 
 can refuse to admit a critic, provided the critic is 
 white. Having no colored critics on its staff, The 
 Times was compelled to continue to ignore the pro- 
 ducer as the producer ignored The Times; and after 
 the ignoring had gone on for several months the pro- 
 ducer discovered that he was cutting off his nose to 
 spite his face. Consequently the critic was read- 
 mitted to the theatre, and the advertising was read- 
 mitted to The Times. It need hardly be said, however, 
 that this restoration of peace bv joint resolution did 
 
 321 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 not Imply any change in the critic's attitude. He 
 continued to judge these productions, as all other 
 productions, on their merits as he saw them; and by 
 that time the producer had cooled off and recog- 
 nized that his notion that the critic was prejudiced 
 had no foundation. So that even in this case, when 
 beaten in the courts. The Times achieved the sub- 
 stance of victory. 
 
 These are old, unhappy far-off things. It is now 
 established and well known that The Times will not 
 accord special favors to advertisers, nor permit them 
 improperly to influence its news, editorial or busines 
 policies; it is so well known that in recent years no- 
 body has tried it. But it was not so well known in 
 the past, and the management of the paper sometimes 
 paid pretty heavily for the retention of its independ- 
 ence. In this matter, too, however, the conductors 
 of the paper have always felt that good business and 
 good morals were identical. If it is morally dishonest 
 to permit advertisers to dictate the policies of the 
 paper, it is likewise commercially ruinous in the long 
 run — at least for a paper such as The Times. There 
 are readers who can be fooled all the time, but The 
 Times does not appeal to very many of that class. 
 
 The unexpectedly rapid growth of the paper had 
 very early begun to make it uncomfortable in its 
 cramped quarters in the old Times Building, and its 
 conductors presently began to look around for a new 
 building site. While they were looking they had to 
 move (in 1904) to temporary new quarters at 41 
 Park Row, around the corner from the site which 
 The Times had occupied for forty-six years. The old 
 
 32Z 
 
SOME ASPECTS OF BUSINESS POLICY 
 
 Times Building was still owned by the estate of 
 George Jones. A difference with it about the 
 terms of the lease compelled the paper to move, but 
 it was known that this change was only for a short 
 time until a new and greater Times Building could 
 be erected. 
 
 The Times Building is a landmark in the history 
 of the paper no less than in the course of Broadway. 
 The move uptown was one of Mr. Ochs's intuitions; 
 and the building which was erected was a monu- 
 mental piece of architecture, and gave invaluable 
 publicity to the paper. Its construction involved 
 some important and interesting engineering problems, 
 and incidentally it put a heavy strain upon the re- 
 sources of The Times. But the perilous paths were 
 traversed successfully without The Times forming 
 any embarrassing associations or commitments; and 
 the enterprise required the expenditure of several 
 millions in cash. 
 
 In a history of this character, however, the Times 
 Building can be given little more than passing men- 
 tion. The Herald had set the example in moving up- 
 town from Park Row, but the publisher of The Times 
 showed an accurate prevision of the direction of 
 growth of the city's uptown centre by selecting for 
 his new building the triangle between Broadway, 
 Seventh Avenue and Forty-second Street. What is 
 now the Times Square district was then a region of 
 no particular importance or distinction, occupied for 
 the most part by lodging houses and flats, with some 
 few hotels and restaurants, mostly second or third 
 class, scattered among them. Broadway — the 
 Broadway of tradition — still had its centre of grav- 
 
 323 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 ity somewhere between the Flatiron Building and 
 Herald Square. Yet it was evident that the corner 
 where the Interborough subway, then under con- 
 struction, met several surface car lines would become 
 the pivotal point of transportation distribution when- 
 ever the subway was opened. The conductors of The 
 Times were right in their judgment of the future of 
 the Times Square district, but a very brief experience 
 was to show that they had fallen far short of foresee- 
 ing the great development that was coming to The 
 Times. If they had known in the early years of the 
 century how the paper was going to grow they would 
 never have put up the new building on that narrow 
 plot of ground, which allowed so little space on each 
 floor that The Times had outgrown the building 
 almost before it was settled in it. 
 
 However, the erection of that building offered 
 serious problems enough. Part of the land was pur- 
 chased in fee simple from the Subway Realty Com- 
 pany, part had to be obtained by the purchase of 
 a long-term lease from Charles Thorley. But the 
 purchase of the land was only a beginning; the build- 
 ing had to be erected in a sense straddHng the sub- 
 way, for some of the pillars supporting it are planted 
 right between the old subway tracks. This called 
 for a good deal of engineering ability and implied a 
 good deal of expense; and the construction involved 
 an endless series of annoyances to the owners of The 
 Times. 
 
 The building cost several hundred thousand dollars 
 more than was anticipated, as buildings have a way 
 of doing, and at one time it looked as if, while the 
 seventeen stories of the building proper could be 
 
 324 
 
SOME ASPECTS OF BUSINESS POLICY 
 
 completed, there would be no money left to finish the 
 tower which gave to the structure its chief architec- 
 tural distinction. It was suggested to the publisher 
 that he had room enough in the building as it stood, 
 and that he could finish the tower later. But he felt 
 that to leave the tower unfinished was only a procla- 
 mation to the whole town that he had bitten off more 
 than he could chew. By desperate effort the money 
 was raised; and the building, the cornerstone of which 
 had been laid with the collaboration of Bishop Potter 
 on January i8, 1904, was occupied by the paper on 
 January i, 1905. 
 
 It had cost a great deal of money, and a great deal 
 of effort to get the money, but it was worth it. It 
 filled one of the most commanding positions in the 
 landscape of New York City with a structure ade- 
 quate in every way. At the time of its construction 
 it was the tallest structure in town, except the Park 
 Row Building — and taller than that if extension 
 beneath the pavement were included. But it was 
 more than a tall building — it was a beautiful tall 
 building, and erected in a period when very few archi- 
 tects had come to realize that a skyscraper could just 
 as easily be beautiful as well as useful. C. L. W. Eid- 
 litz and Andrew C. Mackenzie, who designed the 
 building, had found their inspiration in Giotto's cam- 
 panile at Florence, and their plans provided not only 
 for splendid lines but for ornamentation which was 
 effective — and expensive. It was hard to build and 
 hard to finance, but it was a magnificent signpost 
 calling attention to the paper, at a point which was 
 soon to become the centre of midtown business and 
 of the night life of the city. Evervbody in New York 
 
 32s 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 saw the Times Building when they came into the mid- 
 town district; it was a standing reminder that the 
 paper was doing great things. 
 
 A still greater advertisement was given to the 
 paper when in 1904 the Board of Aldermen gave the 
 name of Times Square to the previously nameless 
 open space between Forty-third and Forty-seventh 
 Streets at the intersection of Seventh Avenue and 
 Broadway. Some name was needed, for the subway 
 had two stations on Forty-second Street and had to 
 differentiate between them somehow; and the pre- 
 cedent already set by the naming of Herald Square 
 led the city authorities and the owners of the subway 
 to agree that this new centre of the city's life deserved 
 to be named for the paper which was doing so much 
 to develop the neighborhood and contributing an 
 architectural monument to the city. Naturally, this 
 change passed unnoted by the other morning news- 
 papers, most of which to this day ignore the fact in 
 the geography of New York City which is obvious 
 to anybody who has ever been in the neighborhood 
 and prefer the name of Longacre Square, which never 
 had any official standing. It was a local designation 
 like San Juan Hill, owing its origin to the fact that 
 some carriage builders who formerly had shops on the 
 square named it after the London Street where 
 carriage factories predominate. 
 
 As an advertisement it is believed that the Times 
 Building has been worth every cent it cost, and more, 
 besides the reward that comes from the conscious- 
 ness that its erection, in that place and at that 
 time, was a oublic service. Times Square fulfilled 
 
 326 
 
SOME ASPECTS OF BUSINESS POLICY 
 
 all the expectations which the management of the 
 paper had entertained when selecting it as the location 
 of the paper's new home. It became and has remained 
 the pivotal centre of the city and is the hub of its 
 transportation systems. 
 
 But the conductors of The Times, accurately esti- 
 mating the future development of New York, had 
 far underestimated their own future. The paper 
 grew so fast that the Times Building was soon cramp- 
 ing it. The next move was to a site as near as possible 
 to Times Square, to the structure known as the Times 
 Annex. This building, of 147 feet front, at 217-229 
 West Forty-third Street, was designed by Mortimer 
 J. Fox, and if not so architecturally ambitious as the 
 Times Building, was considerably more extensive. 
 When virtually all departments of the paper were 
 moved into it, on February 2, 1913, it was the larg- 
 est, finest and most completely equipped newspaper 
 home in North America. It is probably architectur- 
 ally unsurpassed by any newspaper building in the 
 world, except the magnificent structure which houses 
 La Prensa at Buenos Aires. But, though it was 
 planned on such a large scale that when the paper first 
 moved in, five of its thirteen floors had been set 
 aside as a reserve for growth — though the men who 
 had had to move twice in ten years thought that this 
 time they would make sure of allowing room for all 
 the expansion likely to be needed in many years to 
 come — after eight years this building is already far 
 too small, and some departments of The Times have 
 overflowed into temporary quarters in five recon- 
 structed apartment houses next door, which The 
 Times has purchased anticipating further growth, 
 
 327 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 while those that remain are beginning to be cramped 
 and crowded. 
 
 The years before the war and the early months of 
 the war saw the establishment of some subsidiary 
 publications of The New York Times Company 
 which in effect cover more fully certain outlying 
 fringes of the newspaper field which had previously 
 been handled by the newspaper itself. The weekly 
 financial review was in January, 1913, raised to the 
 dignity of an independent magazine. The Annalist, 
 appearing every Monday, dealing with commerce, 
 economics, and finance. After eight years it has a 
 larger circulation than any other magazine in its 
 field. 
 
 In April of the same year the paper for the first 
 time began the publication of The New York Times 
 Index, which from that time on was much more com- 
 plete than it had ever been before, and which, pub- 
 lished quarterly in convenient form, provided a 
 chronological guide to the news which has become 
 absolutely indispensable to students of contemporary 
 history, and is a useful index, as to dates, for any 
 American morning newspaper. 
 
 The war caused the production, in August, 1914, 
 of The Current History Magazine, which began as a 
 mere repository for long articles on the war, some of 
 them reprinted from The Times and others too ex- 
 tensive for publication in a newspaper. But as it 
 developed it became a sort of reservoir of documen- 
 tary exhibits on current history, and in its present 
 form it includes a review of the month's news from 
 every country in the world, comments descriptive, 
 
 328 
 
SOME ASPECTS OF BUSINESS POLICY 
 
 explanatory, or apologetic on the news by experts or 
 by partisan pleaders (and both kinds have their use), 
 and finally a collection of original records and docu- 
 ments which make it perhaps the most valuable of 
 periodical source books. 
 
 A great development in pictorial illustration was 
 made possible by the introduction in April, 1914, of 
 the rotogravure presses. A German newspaper con- 
 taining pictures printed by this process, then un- 
 known in America, came by chance to The Times 
 some months before that, and the management was 
 at once struck by the fact that this method made 
 possible much better reproductions of photographs 
 than any then in use. A special trip to Germany re- 
 sulted in the purchase of rotogravure presses and 
 their installation in The Times office. The superiority 
 of the pictorial supplement printed by this process 
 was so apparent that other papers soon followed 
 The Times's example. The Times, however, which 
 was the first in the field, developed a greater interest 
 in pictorial illustrations than it had had before that 
 time. The paper has never done much in the way 
 of printing photographs in its news section on ordi- 
 nary newsprint paper, and consequently had never 
 needed the staff photographers who were so im- 
 portant a part of other newspaper organizations. 
 But the rotogravure presses not only gave the con- 
 ductors of The Times a greater interest in the Sunday 
 pictorial supplement; they made possible the estab- 
 lishment of a new and independent publication of 
 The New York Times Company, The Mid-week 
 Pictorial, first issued in September, 1914. This, like 
 The Current History Magazine, began as a war publi- 
 
 329 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 cation and has survived the war as a pictorial weekly 
 newspaper. To serve the increasing needs of the 
 Sunday and mid-week pictorials The Times Wide- 
 world Photo Service was organized in 191 9, under 
 the direction of Charles M. Graves, and already has 
 some notable feats to its credit. 
 
 In at least one use of the rotogravure presses The 
 Times is still without competition. The Annalist and 
 The Times Sunday Book Review and Magazine are 
 now printed by this process, which makes possible an 
 excellence of typography otherwise unattainable in 
 such publications, and a fineness and fidelity in the 
 reproduction of photographs which had never pre- 
 viously been achieved in any newspaper supplement. 
 
 330 
 
THE TIMES BUILDING^ 
 ILLUMINATED FOR VICTORY 
 
 © Brown Bros. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 The Times in the War, 1914-1918 
 
 ' I ''O the biggest news story of modern times the 
 -■■ American press as a whole reacted in a manner 
 highly creditaWe. It would almost be safe to say 
 that there was not a single newspaper in the coixntry 
 which was not a better paper, from the technical 
 point of view, at the end of the war than at its begin- 
 ning. That is to say, its editors knew more about 
 what news was, how to get it, and how to present it 
 to their readers. Also, the great majority responded 
 honorably to the secondary but sometimes highly 
 important duty of interpreting and clarifying the 
 news by editorial comment. Most of the influential 
 papers of the country understood at the outset at 
 least the general causes of the war, and were able to 
 assess rightly the responsibility for its outbreak. 
 
 In general, the service of The Times during the 
 war consisted in its doing what the other papers, or 
 most of the other respectable papers, did, but doing 
 it better. The merit of its war news is sufficiently 
 well known. It was thanks chiefly to the excellence 
 and the universal scope of its news service that the 
 circulation of the paper, which was about 250,000 
 at the beginning of the war, had risen to some 390,000 
 at its close. But it should not be forgotten that 
 The Times in editorial analysis of the causes of the 
 war was amazingly accurate from the very outset, 
 
 33i 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 so accurate that it brought down on itself almost 
 at once the wrath of the Germans and their sym- 
 pathizers, and within a few months had earned the 
 honorable distinction of being the principal focus of 
 the vituperation which the Germans and pro-Ger- 
 mans fired at an unsympathetic American press. 
 
 The news department of a paper should not be, 
 and that of The Times is not, influenced by editorial 
 policies. But it is sometimes forgotten by amateur 
 critics of journalism that the editorial page has a 
 function going somewhat beyond the mere assertion 
 of opinion. It is often the duty cf the editorial 
 writers to interpret the news, to discriminate be- 
 tween the probable and the improbable, the ten- 
 dentious and the more or less impartial, in the great 
 volume of news reports which come to the oflSce. 
 Since human nature is fallible, it has been found 
 advisable to print all the news and leave to the 
 editorial page the assessment of its relative worth, 
 rather than exercise discrimination at the news desk 
 and suppress everything that fails to accord with 
 the news editor's judgment of the probabilities. 
 
 The general reader may disagree with the 
 editorial interpretation. That is his privilege, for 
 it is presented only as an interpretation. But 
 editorial writers are somewhat better informed than 
 the average reader. They probably know more of 
 the news than he does, for they read half a dozen 
 papers a day where he reads one or two; a newspaper 
 prints all the news it gets, so long as that news is not 
 libelous, but a single paper does not always get it 
 all. But the editorial writers have read much out- 
 side of the daily papers; they have a background 
 
 332 
 
THE TIMES IN THE WAR, 1914^1918 
 
 of solid information which enables them to under- 
 stand a good deal that is dark to the man in the 
 street. Elucidation based on wider and more thorough 
 knowledge is probably the most important function 
 of the editorial page today. 
 
 There has rarely been a better example of the 
 performance of this function than The Times' s edi- 
 torials on the outbreak of the war. Information 
 available then was far from complete; it consisted 
 only of vague and scanty official statements on the 
 diplomatic exchanges. The accounts of the secret 
 conferences in which every Government of Europe 
 was going over the situation in the last week of 
 July, 1914, as well as the story of much of the actual 
 diplomatic negotiation, did not come to public 
 knowledge till much later. But after the lapse of 
 seven years, despite all the voluminous publication 
 of secret archives which since the armistice has in- 
 formed the world of what went on behind the scenes 
 in those days, there is not one line of The Times 
 editorial analysis of the responsibility for the war, 
 written in the days when the war was being made, 
 which would have to be retracted today. 
 
 The Times, to be sure, like all the world, was slow 
 to believe that the conflict that had been so long 
 expected that it had come to seem impossible was at 
 last at hand. It held the same hope that everybody 
 held in the summer of 1914 in the moderating influ- 
 ence of financiers and business men, and above all it 
 believed, until belief was no longer possible, that the 
 German Emperor had the will to avert the war as 
 he undoubtedly had the power. But the events 
 of the week leading up to the declaration of war 
 
 333 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 convinced The Times that Austria was responsible 
 for the war in the sense that the criminal recklessness 
 of Austrian statesmen had deliberately provoked 
 it, and that Germany was responsible in that if the 
 Kaiser had forbidden it there would have been no 
 war. 
 
 On July 27, 1914, when Austria had refused to 
 accept the Serbian reply to the ultimatum and had 
 stood out before the world as plainly determined to 
 fight, The Times said in an editorial article: 
 
 It will be freely said that Count Berchtold 
 has seized what seemed to him a most 
 propitious moment for dealing a blow at 
 Pan-Slavism and strengthening Pan-Ger- 
 manism, and incidentally reviving the Ger- 
 man party in Austria. . . . The only 
 hope of peace seems to be in the awakening 
 of the German conscience. 
 
 Four days later, when it was evident that the 
 German conscience either had not awakened or was 
 unable to affect the consciences of the rulers of 
 Germany, The Times observed : 
 
 Now is the very best of all times for tak- 
 ing account of the frightful wrong involved in 
 governmental systems which permit great 
 and prosperous peoples to be dragged into 
 the war without consulting their will and 
 their welfare. 
 
 On August 2 The Times pronounced the famous 
 speech of the German Emperor about the sword 
 which had been forced into his hand "a piece of 
 pompous humbug," and after deploring the fact 
 that evidently some European peoples, even those 
 
 334 
 
THE TIMES IN THE WAR, 1914r-1918 
 
 \diich had been regarded as highly cultured, were 
 no more than a dumb herd which could be driven, 
 physically and psychologically, where the leaders 
 willed, went on to say that 
 
 there is a possibility, historically justified, 
 that a general European war would be fol- 
 lowed by changes which would make the 
 herd vocal. 
 
 Four days later it resumed this same argument, go- 
 ing so far as to make the prediction, later sustained 
 in every particular, that the war was very likely to 
 result in revolution in Russia, revolution in Germany 
 and the break-up of Austria-Hungary. 
 
 Agairi, on August 6 The Times observed that while 
 every nation going into the war found plenty of 
 excuse for justifying its course of action, 
 
 the historian will have no trouble in plac- 
 ing his finger on the cause of the war, and 
 there are men in Vienna today whose de- 
 scendants for many generations will redden 
 at the verdict. 
 
 The peculiar German mind was of course not so 
 well understood in those days. It takes a good deal 
 to make the average German redden, even today, as 
 the trials of war offenders at Leipzig showed. Never- 
 theless, even the Germans are likely to accept the 
 truth of this judgment in time; the rest of the world 
 has already ratified it. But in the summer of 1914 
 it did not command universal acceptance, even 
 though the majority of Americans thought Germany 
 in the wrong. The chief public service of The Times 
 in the war was that from the very beginning it 
 
 33S 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 understood where the rights and wrongs of the 
 conflict lay, it was able to justify its position by 
 sound argument, and it never ceased to maintain 
 that position with all the vigor which its editors 
 were able to command. The furious hostility 
 toward the paper which the Germans and their 
 sympathizers soon displayed is the best measure 
 of Its success in performing this duty. 
 
 However, there was an equally important duty 
 to be performed in giving to the public every bit of 
 information as to the underlying causes, as well as 
 the immediate occasion, of this vast and multiplex 
 conflict. It is not too much to say that before the 
 war had been going on three months The Times had 
 become the principal forum for debate on the issues 
 of the war. Despite the fact that its editors were 
 firmly convinced that Germany was in the wrong. 
 The Times realized the necessity of hearing every- 
 thing that could be said on both sides. As was said 
 on the editorial page a few months after the war 
 began, " access to its columns has been denied to no 
 German sympathizer, if reputable, responsible and 
 literate." Some of them, indeed, were neither repu- 
 table nor responsible, but if they seemed to have 
 anything of value to contribute to the discussion 
 The Times heard them. 
 
 The principal Item in this discussion was unques- 
 tionably the publication in full of the arguments of 
 the various European Governments — the White 
 Papers, Yellow Books, Orange Papers and so on, con- 
 sisting of the diplomatic correspondence leading up 
 to the outbreak of the war, or as much of it as the 
 several governments were inclined to give out to the 
 
 336 
 
THE TIMES IN THE WAR, 1914-1918 
 
 public. Long extracts from these were, of course, 
 sent to The Times by cable as soon as they were 
 issued, but It seemed to The Times that the im- 
 portance of the issue made it imperative to present 
 the whole case, or as much of it as the governments 
 themselves had given out. 
 
 The first copy of the British White Paper was 
 brought to this country at the end of August, 1914, 
 by the Rev. Dr. Frederick Lynch, who had received 
 it in advance of publication from an official friend 
 just as he was boarding his steamer at Liverpool. 
 He gave it to a Times reporter, and it was published 
 in full on the following Sunday. The presses were 
 still printing It when, In the small hours of Sunday 
 morning, Frederic William Wile, Berlin correspondent 
 of The Times, arrived with a copy of the German 
 White Paper. A corps of translators was set to 
 work at 2 a.m.; by 10 o'clock Sunday evening they 
 had finished their task, and the document was 
 printed in full in Monday morning's Times. Thus 
 early in the war The Times presented to Its readers 
 on two successive days all that was obtainable from 
 official sources on both sides of the case. The two 
 documents were reprinted In pamphlet form and 
 distributed at cost to some hundreds of thousands 
 of eager readers throughout the United States and 
 Canada. 
 
 After the British and German statements came 
 the official documents of the French, Russian, 
 Austrian and Belgian governments, giving to the 
 world what each saw fit to publish of its diplomatic 
 records, and having set the precedent The Times 
 published them all, in full. Again they were repub- 
 
 337 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 lished in tabloid form, and before the end of 1914 
 The Times was in effect running an extension uni- 
 versity on the issues of the war. At that time its war 
 news was on the whole about the same as the war 
 news of other papers, so far as related to the actual 
 fighting; but from the very start it surpassed all 
 its competitors in giving the news about the reasons 
 for the war. ' 
 
 Here was the official brief of each government; 
 it seemed to the management of The Times that the 
 next thing was argument from the briefs. An at- 
 tempt was made to have eminent American lawyers 
 discuss the White Papers as attorneys for the two 
 governments, but this proved to be impossible for 
 the somewhat significant reason that the three or 
 four American lawyers known to be sympathetic 
 with Germany, or inclined to entire neutrality, who 
 were asked to present the German side of the argu- 
 ment refused to argue the German case if they were 
 restricted to the evidence put forward in these 
 official documents. Clearly they were able to 
 realize that the German White Paper presented a 
 pretty poor case. When it proved impossible to 
 present this debate, the publisher of The Times 
 finally persuaded James M. Beck to analyze alone all 
 the arguments, not as a representative of either side, 
 but as an impartial reviewer. 
 
 Mr. Beck was a former Assistant Attorney General 
 of the United States and was one of the leaders of 
 the New York bar, but his discussion of the case pre- 
 sented by the White Papers before "the supreme 
 court of civilization" made him internationally 
 famous. Arguing from the briefs presented by the 
 
 338 
 
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THE TIMES IN THE WAR, 1914-1918 
 
 several governments, he reached the conclusion that 
 Germany was in the wrong, and supported his opin- 
 ion by an able and searching analysis. First pre- 
 sented in The Times of Sunday, October 25, 1914, 
 his articks were reprinted in pamphlet form under 
 the title of "The Evidence in the Case," by several 
 governments, notably the English, and millions of 
 copies distributed over the world in many languages. 
 Extracts and summaries of his argument were 
 published the world over, and gave to millions of 
 readers the foundation for opinions which had been 
 somewhat confused by the volume and the obscurity 
 of the official documents. 
 
 Second only in importance to the White Papers 
 and their like were the innumerable arguments con- 
 ducted in the columns of The Times by sympathizers 
 of the two sides. All papers had thmr share of such 
 discussions, of course, but The Times had more of 
 them, and of more distinguished authorship. Nota- 
 ble among these were the letters exchanged between 
 Charles W. Eliot and Jacob H. Schiff, published in 
 The Times in December, 1914; the arguments pre- 
 sented by G. K. Chesterton and various other 
 British authors on the side of the Allies, and those of 
 Dr. Bernhard Dernburg, Arthur von Briesen, Pro- 
 fessor William Milligan Sloane and Professor John 
 W. Burgess on the German side. Throughout most 
 of the war military experts, usually officers either 
 active or retired of the United States Army, analyzed 
 each day the military operations from the technical 
 standpoint. German sympathizers in the fall of 
 1914 complained that the military critic showed too 
 much partisanship for the Allies, so for some months 
 
 339 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 The Times published frequent comments on the 
 military situation by a former officer of the German 
 Army. 
 
 All these discussions, of course, took place either 
 on the editorial page or in the Sunday magazine, 
 and were supplementary to the voluminous argu- 
 ments which were part of the news of the day. There 
 were in addition a number of important contributions 
 on the war as affecting purely American interests, of 
 which the most notable were a series by Theodore 
 Roosevelt in the fall of 1914 on "What America 
 Should Learn From the War, " the articles contrib- 
 uted toward the end of 1916 by a publicist who 
 concealed his identity under the signature of "Cos- 
 mos," and the later series signed by "An American 
 Jurist," who, as has since been announced, was 
 Robert Ludlow Fowler, Surrogate of New York 
 County and one of the most accomplished scholars 
 on the bench. In quieter times Judge Fowler's series 
 of brilliantly written articles would have been 
 generally accepted as something of a classic. 
 
 Of course, partisans of each side were often indig- 
 nant that any space should be given to the other 
 side; and because the Germans were Germans their 
 indignation was most violent, and most inclined to 
 the imputation of base motives. Before the w.ar 
 was two months old a group of more or less authentic 
 Americans in Munich saw fit to send to the German 
 press a protest against the "prejudiced and unfair" 
 attitude of The Times, which was duly sent abroad 
 by the industrious German wireless. Before long 
 the most notorious German propagandists in America 
 were accusing The Times of suppression of news, and 
 
 340 
 
THE TIMES IN THE WAR, 1914r-1918 
 
 beginning that vast campaign of calumny which 
 was taken up by the SociaHsts and Sinn Feiners 
 when prudential motives imposed silence on the 
 Germans, later in the war, and joyfully resumed 
 by the whole crew when they came out of their holes 
 after the armistice. Every honest and patriotic 
 American newspaper was the target of these attacks; 
 the assertion that the whole American press had 
 been bought by British gold seemed reasonable 
 enough to persons who were unfamiliar with the 
 idea of any but a purchased press; and these accusa- 
 tions against any paper were only proof that that 
 paper was honestly and fearlessly doing its duty. 
 But The Times was probably honored by more 
 denunciation than any other paper in the country, 
 though The World and The Tribune were close 
 behind it in this honorable competition. Fortu- 
 nately, the American people were making up their 
 minds, and most of them knew exactly what all this 
 Teutonic clamor was worth. 
 
 However, not all the criticism came from one 
 side. Just as half a century before some superheated 
 northern patriots had accused The Times of sym- 
 pathy with secession because it had a correspondent 
 who sent the news from Charleston, so in the World 
 War some sympathizers with the Allies could see 
 nothing but sympathy with Germany in any in- 
 clination to give the Germans a hearing. In Novem- 
 ber, 1 91 4, for instance, a reverend clergyman wrote to 
 The Times that he couldn't stand "such dishes of 
 German arrogance and insolence as you are serving 
 daily to your readers." His emotional reaction was 
 wholly creditable, but he and some others like him 
 
 341 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 forgot that it was highly important that the Ameri- 
 can people should learn what the Germans really 
 were and learn it by the most convincing and con- 
 victing evidence, that which proceeded out of their 
 own mouths. 
 
 It is possible that in the early months of the war 
 The Times gave up nearly as much space to German 
 arguments as to those of the opposition, for the 
 Germans saw from the first that the balance of 
 opinion was against them, and they made desperate 
 efforts in their tactful way to turn the scales. These 
 arguments were apt to be convincing, but in the 
 opposite direction; and, anyway, the actions of the 
 Germans always spoke louder than their words. 
 Even before the Lusitania, the Germans had realized 
 that their cause before American public opinion was 
 lost, and had already begun to supplement their 
 arguments and persuasions with sabotage and vio- 
 lence. What part the editorial columns of The Times 
 may have had in the formation of American public 
 opinion can best be determined by those outside the 
 office, but attention may be called to one editorial, 
 one of the most forceful and important which has 
 ever appeared in The Times, which deserves special 
 mention as an example of historical and political 
 insight. This article, two columns in length, was 
 written by Charles R. Miller, the editor in chief, and 
 appeared on December 15, 1914. It wks headed 
 "For the German People, Peace with Freedom." 
 
 That editorial began with the flat statement, 
 "Germany is doomed to sure defeat." It analyzed 
 the military situation, the probabilities of the future; 
 
 342 
 
THE TIMES IN THE WAR, 1914-1918 
 
 but its argument was founded chiefly on moral 
 considerations, on the belief that the world would 
 not let Germany win; that a German vict(wy meant 
 the negation of all human progress, and that every 
 free people, if forced to the issue, would find itself 
 compelled to resist the German attack on civiliza- 
 tion. "Yet," the article continued, "the downfall 
 <rf the German Empire may become the deliverance 
 of the German people, if they will betimes but seize 
 and hold their own." And! then it analyzed the 
 situation of the German people, paying all the 
 cost of the war, sure to endure the consequence of 
 defeait, yet unable to win anything from victory in 
 a conflict which they had undertaken at the com- 
 mand of their rulers and whose issues, eyen if success- 
 ful, would profit those rulers alone. 
 
 "If," the article continued, "Germany chooses to 
 fight to the bitter end, her ultimate and sure over- 
 throw will leave her bled to exhaustion, drained of 
 her resources, and under sentence to penalties of 
 which the stubbornness of her futile resistance will 
 measure the severity. We could wish that the Ger- 
 man people, seeing the light, might take timely 
 measure to avert the calamities^ that await themt." 
 
 The article created a sensation. It was repub- 
 lished and commented on throughout the world, 
 and is generally regarded as one of the greatest 
 editorials ever appearing in an American newspaper. 
 It is reproduced in full in an appendix to this volume. 
 
 This analysis of the issue raised by German 
 aggression, of the relations between the German 
 masses and the oligarchy that ruled them, of the 
 only possible escape for the Germans and the 
 
 343 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 inevitable consequences of refusal to take that way 
 of escape, was justified in every detail by the 
 history of the next four years. Some two years 
 and four months later the President of the United 
 States came around to these opinions, which he 
 expressed in his speech of April 2, 1917; and a year 
 and seven months after that the German people were 
 at last convinced of the soundness of this reasoning, 
 by the only argument they were able to understand 
 — and, unfortunately, too late to be able to escape 
 the penalties of delay. 
 
 This editorial may stand as a summary of The 
 Times* s position on the war, so far as it was purely a 
 European war. New issues were raised in the spring 
 of 1915, both by the sinking of the Lusitania and by 
 Germany's transference of the war, so far as possible, 
 to American soil; but before that had happened The 
 Times had recognized German aggression as a 
 menace to the whole world, and though continuing 
 to publish all the arguments on the German side, was 
 using all its influence to convince the American 
 people that the world could not let Germany win 
 the war. As has been said, the German propagan- 
 dists and their American sympathizers already looked 
 on The Times as their chief antagonist, and were 
 flinging at it every accusation, old and new, which 
 their active imaginations could devise. To most of 
 the readers of the paper these charges were evidently 
 only a satisfying proof that the Germans felt that 
 The Times was dangerous. But a good deal can be 
 forgotten in three or four years, and already memory 
 of the ways of German propagandists before 1917 is 
 
 344 
 
THE TIMES IN THE WAR, 1914-1918 
 
 fading, as well as the recollection of the influence 
 which they had, for a considerable time, in circles 
 where they should have been better understood. 
 
 The culmination of these attacks upon The Times 
 came in March, 191 5 — not in a meeting of German 
 singing societies or the Clan-na-Gael, but in a hearing 
 before a committee of the United States Senate, 
 where all the enmity that had been aroused by 
 The Times's criticisms of impromptu statesmanship 
 flared into open view, and all the calumnious whispers 
 that had been spread abroad by persons unable to 
 imagine that any man or any newspaper could 
 advocate any opinions except for a cash considera- 
 tion were dignified by the attention of eminent 
 Senators. 
 
 This episode deserves extended notice, for it is 
 important not only in the history of The Times but 
 in the history of modern journalism; perhaps, even, 
 it has some interest as an illustration of recent 
 tendencies in the United States Senate. Because 
 the editors of The Times had expressed their opinions 
 on some questions of public policy, opinions not 
 altogether in agreement with those of the Senators 
 on the committee, they were summoned to Wash- 
 ington and asked if anybody was paying them for 
 those opinions, and if so, who. The pretext for 
 this inquisition — in view of the course taken by 
 the committee, it can hardly be called anything else 
 — was The Times's Jopposition to the administration 
 bill for the purchase of foreign ships interned in 
 American harbors. The paper opposed this because 
 it opposed the intrusion of the government into 
 business, and because it had its doubts whether the 
 
 34S 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 purchase in time of war of ships interned to escape 
 capture by the enemy was valid in international 
 law. There was much, and reasonable, opposition 
 to this measure; The Times had no monopoly of its 
 opinion. But the Senate appointed a committee to 
 inquire "if influence had been exerted" against the 
 bill. The possibility that there might be room for 
 two honest opinions on the subject did not seem to 
 occur to the Senators. 
 
 However, this suspicion, if not very creditable to 
 the collective intelligence of the Senate, was at least 
 more legitimate than some of the innuendoes with 
 which the members of the committee decorated the 
 sessions devoted to questioning editors of The Times. 
 For the information of the Senators, who displayed 
 a great deal of curiosity about the ownership of The 
 Times, the managing editor furnished not only the 
 list of all persons owning more than one per cent of 
 the capital stock, which was published an5rway twice 
 a year, but a table showing how much each one of 
 them owned. The discovery that the publisher of 
 The Times owned 62 per cent of the stock, that its 
 editor owned something more than 14 per cent, and 
 that nearly half the residue was owned by other per- 
 sons who had no occupation excepting contributing 
 their bit toward getting out The Times, was ap- 
 parently something of a disappointment to the 
 committee; but the Senators still had a good many 
 questions to ask. 
 
 The next session of the committee, in which the 
 editor-in-chief was examined, began very much in 
 the form of a class in elementary journalism. The 
 Ship Purchase bill was forgotten; Senators asked 
 
 346 
 
I^etISe^ 
 
 ^T l-S U B WAY STAT: O H ^^^T", 
 
 MAIN ENTRANCE TIMES BUILDING. 
 
THE TIMES IN THE WAR, 1914-1918 
 
 Mr. Miller why The Times opposed parcel posts; why 
 it thought this and that about the railroads and 
 about the trust prosecutions; why certain stories 
 were not put on the front page. The Times by that 
 time was virtually on trial for all its opinions, and 
 its editor no doubt experienced some weariness as he 
 laboriously explained that the editors of a news- 
 paper advocate certain policies because they believe 
 them best for the public interest, that not all the- 
 news can be put on the front page, that the relative 
 value of different news stories is a matter of judg- 
 ment and that the judgment of all newspapers is not 
 always identical. 
 
 Having got through this, however, the committee 
 took up another line of argument. Senator T. J. 
 Walsh of Montana, its Chairman, asked if The Times 
 had "any business connections of any character in 
 England." Mr. Miller said that it had none aside 
 from maintaining its own correspondents there. 
 Then Senator Walsh wanted to know if Mr. Ochs 
 had "any financial support of any kind in England." 
 Mr. Miller said that he had none whatever, where- 
 upon Senator Walsh explained, rather apologetically, 
 "I asked because I was informed that that was the 
 case." 
 
 Mr. Miller's denial was made still more emphatic 
 by an editorial next day, on March 17, which con- 
 tained this statement: 
 
 That there may be no cause to believe 
 that Mr. Miller's answer to the impertinent 
 inquiry about Mr. Ochs's private affairs 
 does not fully and satisfactorily end the in- 
 quiry, Mr. Ochs wishes to make the asser- 
 
 347 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 tion as broad and sweeping as language will 
 permit that he is in possession, free and un- 
 incumbered, of the controlling and major- 
 ity interest of the stock of The New York 
 Times Company, and has no associate in 
 that possession, and is not beholden or ac- 
 countable to any person or interest in Eng- 
 land or anyivhere else in the world, nor has 
 he ever been beholden or accountable in 
 any form, shape or fashion, financial or 
 otherwise, for the conduct of The New York 
 Times, except to his own conscience and to 
 the respect and confidence of the news- 
 paper-reading public, and particularly the 
 readers of The New York Times — and 
 more particularly to the respect and confi- 
 dence of those who are associated with him 
 in producing The New York Times and ex- 
 pressing its opinions. 
 
 The conductors of The Times could say no more 
 on the question of English ownership, but they still 
 had something to say about Senator Thomas J. 
 Walsh, who "had been informed that that was the 
 case." Who had informed him? The Times asked 
 this question, rather insistently, and bit by bit the 
 truth came out. Just before that session of the 
 committee opened there had come a letter, addressed 
 to "The Hon. Chairman," signed by a name which 
 Senator Walsh read as "Arthur M. Abbey." The 
 writer said that he had just come back from Eng- 
 land, where he had heard at the Junior Constitu- 
 tional Club in London that "a well-known English- 
 man has been backing Mr. Ochs with money to get 
 control of The New York Times," and that "I un- 
 derstand that Mr. Miller is also mixed up in some 
 
 348 
 
THE TIMES IN THE WAR, 1914-1918 
 
 way with this Englishman." So that nobody would 
 go astray, the writer added, "the name of Lord 
 NorthclifFe was mentioned," and he threw in for 
 good measure that "Mr. Ochs has also been mixed 
 up in the Enghsh Marconi scandal." 
 
 The Times again denied each and every one of 
 these charges and asked for more information about 
 "Arthur M. Abbey." Who was he? What did Sen- 
 ator Walsh know about him, that he regarded his 
 communication as sufficiently important to spread 
 on the record of a Senate committee the suggestion 
 that The Times was controlled by foreigners? At 
 the Junior Constitutional Club in London he was 
 unknown; and it presently appeared that he was 
 equally unknown to Senator Walsh. The Senator 
 finally sent The Times the original letter, and in 
 the office the handwriting and style were soon rec- 
 ognized as identical with those of a whole series of 
 scurrilous letters which had been coming regularly 
 to The Times office from New York — and not from 
 London. Of the hardly legible signatures to these 
 letters some seemed to resemble "G. M. Hubbell" 
 and others "A. M. Abbey"; some of the letters were 
 not signed at all. But they were all abusive, all 
 plainly the work of one writer, and all the work of 
 the same man who had informed Senator Walsh 
 that "such was the case." 
 
 No doubt this spreading of the facts upon the rec- 
 ord did something to weaken the legend of British 
 ownership of The Times. This fiction continued to 
 be one of the staples of German, Irish and Socialist 
 argument; but it is significant that the next attack 
 made on The Times from a source pretending to 
 
 349 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 reputability, more than five years later, began with 
 the rejection of all suspicion of outside influence and 
 developed the entertaining theory that the editors 
 of The Times were simply constitutionally incapable 
 of understanding the truth. It was admitted that 
 they, like all men, needs must love the highest when 
 they see it, but it was argued that they were pretty 
 poor judges of altitude. Perhaps not all enemies of 
 the paper are so generous, but belief in the North- 
 clifFe ownership has in general been confined, in recent 
 years, to circles where it is still asserted that Presi- 
 dent Wilson was owned by Wall Street and that 
 Germany fought a defensive war. 
 
 However, the chief importance of this incident 
 does not lie in its bearing on the reputation of The 
 Times. As was said in the paper's editorial columns 
 at the time : 
 
 This is not a personal issue. It is a ques- 
 tion of the extent to which a government's 
 machinery may be privately misused to an- 
 noy and attempt to discredit a newspaper 
 whose editorial attitude has become dis- 
 tasteful and embarrassing. 
 
 And it was in the name, not of The Times, but of 
 the whole American press — a press which for nearly 
 two centuries had been free from governmental con- 
 trol — that Mr. Miller, at the close of his interro- 
 gation by the committee on The Times's editorial 
 attitude toward every subject of public interest, ad- 
 dressed some remarks to the committee: 
 
 I can see no ethical, moral or legal right 
 [he said] that you have to put many of the 
 questions you put to me today. Inquisi- 
 3 SO 
 
THE TIMES IN THE WAR, 1914-1918 
 
 torial proceedings of this kind would have 
 a very marked tendency, if continued and 
 adopted as a policy, to reduce the press of 
 the United States to the level of the press 
 in some of the Central European empires, 
 the press that has been known as the rep- 
 tile press, that crawls on its belly every day 
 to the Foreign Office or to the Government 
 officials and Ministers to know what it may 
 say or shall say — to receive its orders. 
 
 Questions of that kind, he said, "tend to repress 
 freedom of utterance and to put newspapers under 
 a sort of duress." Nor was it to be supposed that 
 newspapers would be free from all restraint if a 
 Senatorial committee did not now and then turn 
 aside to give publicity to the commonplaces of Ger- 
 man propaganda. "We appear before the jury 
 every day," said Mr. Miller. 
 
 We appear before the grand inquisition, 
 one of the largest courts in history; we are 
 judged at the breakfast table. We feel that, 
 if we were improperly influenced by anybody 
 outside of the office, there is none so quick 
 to discover that as the reader of the paper. 
 
 That The Times, in this case, was fighting for the 
 freedom of the entire American press was pretty 
 generally recognized. There was much editorial 
 comment on Mr. Miller's statement and on the 
 committee's procedure. The World called the ques- 
 tions "a public inquisition without an open arraign- 
 ment"; The Baltimore American said that the hear- 
 ing was "the most extraordinary exhibition of bad 
 judgment, peevishness or evil motives the country 
 has had from a Senate committee for years." 
 
 3SI 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 Bad judgment and peevishness, no doubt, had 
 more to do with it than evil motives. For more than 
 a year thereafter Congress, a timorous body at best, 
 was extraordinarily sensitive to the compulsions of 
 bought-and-paid-for German propaganda, as witness 
 the Gore and McLemore resolutions. Only very 
 slowly, in response to the obvious feeling of the 
 country, and under the leadership of a few men of 
 patriotism and courage, did Congress gradually re- 
 cover the hardihood to call its soul its own. The 
 chief criticism against this particular committee is 
 that it was willing to believe, and to give currency 
 to, anything it heard from anybody, anonymous or 
 otherwise. 
 
 No doubt the Senators took a certain very human 
 joy in getting newspaper editors up before them and 
 putting them through a third degree; no doubt they 
 felt entirely justified by the argument that news- 
 paper editors often criticise Senators. But no news- 
 paper ever accused a Senator of selling his soul to 
 foreigners, on no better evidence than an anony- 
 mous letter. 
 
 From the sinking of the Lusitania the war became 
 a domestic issue. On that issue The Times consist- 
 ently supported President Wilson. The election of 
 191 6 proved that the President had judged public 
 sentiment pretty well. There will always be room 
 for argument as to how the country would have re- 
 sponded if the Lusitania issue had led to war in the 
 spring of 191 5. But it should be remembered that 
 the President's middle-of-the-road policy was being 
 assailed from two sides, as too pusillanimous and as 
 
 352 
 
THE TIMES IN THE WAR, 1914-1918 
 
 too aggressive. The Times stood with the President 
 against those who for one reason or another thought 
 that the Lusitania incident ought to be passed over 
 in silence, in the full confidence that he would not 
 be unduly precipitate, but would not yield on essen- 
 tial issues of American rights. 
 
 It was theopinion of The Times that in the spring 
 of 191 5 the American public, as a whole, was not 
 ready to fight over the Lusitania. Whatever may 
 have been the effect of the German arguments based 
 on the fact that the ship carried some ammunition 
 in her cargo, and that the passengers had been 
 warned, it was not believed by the conductors of 
 The Times that the mass of the people, particularly 
 in the West and in the rural districts, had as yet 
 sufficiently appreciated the fundamental issues of 
 the war to make them willing to fight Germany. It 
 was doubted if Congress could be persuaded to de- 
 clare war, and, even if it could have been, the con- 
 ductors of The Times felt that the division of pub- 
 lic sentiment, and the evidently lukewarm feeling 
 of a good part of the public, would have given much 
 aid and comfort to the enemy. Besides, America 
 was notably unprepared for war in the spring of 
 1915. By 1917 great war industries had been built 
 up, and two years of prosperity had given the na- 
 tion financial and industrial strength which made 
 its intervention decisive. These conditions were not 
 present when the Lusitania was sunk, and The Times 
 felt that the President should be supported in his 
 efforts to preserve peace, so long as that was honor- 
 ably possible. 
 
 It took nearly two years more of the demonstra- 
 353 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 tion of German methods to convince the majority 
 that America could not honorably and safely keep 
 out of the war. Through those years The Times 
 supported the President, holding, as he did, that 
 there must be, after the war, some sort of world or- 
 ganization which should, in so far as possible, pre- 
 vent this thing from happening again. The Times 
 had opinions far more decided than the President's 
 on the need for a righteous settlement of this war as 
 a foundation for any durable peace, and by 191 7 the 
 President had got around to this view. The little 
 evidence available suggests that the editors of The 
 Times had perhaps a more logical interpretation of 
 the President's position in 191 5 and 1916 than he 
 had himself; but from 1917 on, at any rate, there 
 was rarely occasion for disagreement. Perhaps one 
 exception should be made to this. In the winter of 
 1917-18 The Ti'm^j, though it did not exactly support 
 Senator Chamberlain against the President, sup- 
 ported the substance of Chamberlain's views that 
 more energy was needed in the executive depart- 
 ments if the war was to be won. 
 
 The Times realized, however, what a good many 
 even of the friendly critics of the Wilson adminis- 
 tration forgot in those days, that public officials are 
 human beings and have to be accepted more or less 
 as they are, failings and all. Its editors believed 
 not only that President Wilson was a trustworthy 
 and able leader, but that he was on the whole more 
 trustworthy and more able than any other man in 
 sight. Above all, he was President, he was the head 
 of the State, the nation's leader; and in war times 
 it is the duty of every citizen to support the leader. 
 
 354 
 
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THE TIMES IN THE WAR, 1914r-1918 
 
 Mr. Wilson had a way of doing more seasonably, 
 better and more efficiently than they ever dreamed 
 of, the things his critics blamed him savagely for not 
 doing. His injustice to Chamberlain in the begin- 
 ning of 1 91 8, like his desertion of Garrison in the 
 beginning of 1916, might create a very bad impres- 
 sion; but it did not prove that in the long run either 
 Chamberlain or Garrison could have done better 
 than Wilson, even had they been in a position to try. 
 During 1918 The Times editorial page, continuing 
 its general policies on the war and support of the 
 administration, opened up one or two special lines 
 of discussion. It gave rather more room than other 
 papers to consideration of the political readjust- 
 ments in Europe that might be expected to follow 
 the end of the war, and to presentation of the claims 
 and possibilities of the various nationalistic revolu- 
 tionary movements. It took, too, the most promi- 
 nent place in denunciation of the behavior of the 
 Russian Bolsheviki. It is sometimes forgotten that 
 the Bolshevist revolution in Russia first affected the 
 world as a phase of the war. Western Europe and 
 America might have afforded to stand off and watch 
 the Bolsheviki reconstruct society, if they had not 
 begun by destroying the eastern front and releasing 
 hundreds of thousands of German troops for service 
 in France, and if they had not at once begun to talk 
 of promoting revolutions in the countries fighting 
 Germany. To be sure, they were going to start a 
 revolution in Germany as well, but Brest-Litovsk 
 showed how little they could or would accomplish 
 against the German military group. In Germany, 
 as in Russia, they began their revolution only after 
 
 3SS 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 the imperial power had been broken by a less rad- 
 ical revolution; and in Germany only after the way 
 had been prepared by Foch's armies. 
 
 So when The Times argued, as it did with vigor 
 and persistence in 191 8, for the sending of allied 
 troops to Siberia, it was chiefly in the hope that 
 they might get through to reestablish an eastern 
 front. For Bolshevism as a political and economic 
 gospel The Times had no use, but it regarded this 
 aspect of the movement as less important than Bol- 
 shevism as a practical factor in a war whose decision 
 was still in doubt. 
 
 Toward the end of the war occurred an incident 
 which brought The Times more criticism, probably 
 than anything else in its history — the publication 
 on September 16, 191 8, of an editorial favoring the 
 consideration of the Austrian proposal for a "pre- 
 liminary and non-binding" discussion of peace terms. 
 The opinion which found expression in this article 
 was first, that the Austrian proposal meant the be- 
 ginning of the end — which was true; and second, 
 that it was worth considering, on the theory that 
 when conferences had begun the enemy would rap- 
 idly give way to complete surrender. Whether that 
 would or would not have happened Is, of course, a 
 question to which there can be no answer. If the 
 Shiftiness of the Germans in their subsequent nego- 
 tiations with Mr. Wilson suggests that this prelimi- 
 nary conference might have given opportunity for 
 a good deal of intrigue, it is true on the other hand 
 that the rapid caving in of the German morale in 
 the fall of 191 8 might have led to exactly the same 
 
 3S6 
 
THE TIMES IN THE WAR, 1914^1918 
 
 result as did occur. It was not generally foreseen in 
 the middle of September that the war would be 
 over in less than two months; but the editor of The 
 Times had become convinced from his study of the 
 German press, and the other sources of information 
 available, that Germany was on the verge of col- 
 lapse, and was confident that if peace delegates once 
 met, the people of the Central Powers would insist 
 on peace at any price. In the Austrian proposal 
 he recognized evidence that Austria and Germany 
 were exhausted and would soon be ready to surren- 
 der on any terms at all. And The Times declared 
 that the Allies must insist on such peace terms as 
 were finally imposed on Germany at Versailles. It 
 was convinced that if negotiations began Germany 
 would soon be forced to accept whatever terms the 
 Allies might lay down. 
 
 That may have been a mistake, but it was at 
 least a tenable view. It was, unfortunately, a some- 
 what too long-sighted view for the popular mind in 
 the tenseness of the time, when everybody's blood 
 was at fever heat and there was general apprehen- 
 sion that peace negotiation might lose the fruit of 
 victory. The deviousness of German diplomacy was 
 well known, and the exhaustion of German endur- 
 ance was not generally understood. Perhaps some 
 of the phrases in the editorial were chiefly responsi- 
 ble for the unfavorable criticism, phrases expressing 
 a feeling such as everybody exhibited a few weeks 
 later on armistice day. If the editor of The Times 
 gave premature expression to that feeling, it was 
 because he saw further ahead than most people and 
 knew that this appeal meant that peace was near. 
 
 357 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 It must be added that the wide discussion of this 
 editorial, and the unfavorable reaction to it, was in 
 considerable part the work of other New York news- 
 papers, who talked of '^'The Times' s white flag" and 
 even ventured on some insinuations about "Aus- 
 trian gold," against the paper which every German 
 propagandist for four years past had been accusing 
 of subserviency to British gold. 
 
 No doubt these competitors of The Times were 
 inspired in part by vigilant patriotism, but other 
 motives may have had something to do with their 
 agitation. The Times had been making enormous 
 gains in circulation. It was within a very few thou- 
 sands of the largest circulation in New York, and it 
 had already distanced all the other morning papers. 
 The Herald — then, of course, a different paper and 
 under different ownership than at present — under- 
 took a great circulation campaign to win over Times 
 readers under such slogans as "Read an American 
 Paper." As had happened fifty-two years before, when 
 Raymond took the unpopular step of advocating 
 conciliation of the beaten South, The Times' s spotless 
 record for loyalty during the war was ignored by 
 journals which had found it a dangerously success- 
 ful business rival. But this loyalty, and the leader- 
 ship in news and opinion which The Times had won, 
 was not forgotten by the public. The circulation of 
 the paper was not affected, the clamor soon died 
 away, and the assaults of jealous and failing com- 
 petitors were as futile as they were groundless. 
 
 At the outbreak of the war the miHtary authori- 
 ties of all the nations engaged had the idea, correct 
 
 3S8 
 
THE TIMES IN THE WAR, 1914-1918 
 
 enough from a purely military viewpoint, that the 
 newspapers and the public need know nothing about 
 what was going on until it was all over. The suc- 
 cess of the Japanese in keeping war correspondents 
 out of the way in Manchuria had shown other army 
 officers what could be done, and the strategic ad- 
 vantage that was to be derived from doing it. Some 
 months passed before it began to be apparent to 
 the various governments, and in time even to the 
 military commanders, that every nation wanted to 
 know what was going on, and would fight better if 
 it knew. In the early months the task of news get- 
 ting was hard enough, and the news that was ob- 
 tained was mostly official and open to considerable 
 suspicion. 
 
 Eventually, of course, all this was changed. Be- 
 fore the end of the war the correspondent had be- 
 come a personage universally respected — if not, like 
 MacGahan and Forbes and Russell and the men of 
 their day, respected because he was more important 
 than the war he was covering, at any rate respected 
 and treated with some deference because Ministers 
 and Generals knew that the public wanted to know 
 what was happening and that this man was going 
 to tell it. 
 
 The New York Times at the outbreak of the war 
 was getting its war news from The London Daily 
 Chronicle, and from its own correspondents in Lon- 
 don and Paris. It was unable to get the other side 
 of the case from its own correspondent in Berlin, for 
 the German Government had locked up and then 
 expelled this gentleman on the ground that, though 
 an American citizen, he was correspondent not only 
 
 359 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 for The Times but for The London Daily Mail, and 
 consequently might be engaged in espionage. But 
 the war was only a few weeks old when The Times 
 got another correspondent into Germany, a corre- 
 spondent who through school and family acquaint- 
 ances had unusual facility of access to German mili- 
 tary circles, and who, during 1914, 191 5 and 1916, 
 succeeded in presenting probably the best picture 
 given in the American press of the operations of the 
 German Army on all fronts. This correspondent 
 was Cyril Brown, at present The Times correspon- 
 dent in Berlin, who almost at the beginning of 
 his career in Germany managed, partly by his own 
 ingenuity and partly by the assistance of a train- 
 man whom he had met while covering a strike in 
 Jersey City some years before, to get to German 
 Great Headquarters at Mezieres-Charleville and send 
 to The Times the first account anywhere published 
 of the scenes there. Brown's subsequent operations 
 took him to every German battle front, and in addi- 
 tion, with the assistance of Joseph Herrings, he cov- 
 ered the political news from Berlin. 
 
 Other American correspondents in Germany per- 
 formed a brilliant and useful work in interviewing 
 the leaders of the German Government and sending 
 out to the world their opinions on the progress of 
 the war, though it is to be regretted that some of 
 them eventually came to believe a good deal of 
 what was said to them; but Brown, while doing com- 
 paratively little of this sort of thing, outdistanced all 
 other American writers in his reporting of the Ger- 
 man Army in action. 
 
 Now and then he had assistance, as for example 
 360 
 
THE TIMES IN THE WAR, 1914-1918 
 
 during Mackensen's Serbian campaign in the fall of 
 191 5, and in the early days of the Verdun offensive, 
 when The Times obtained by special arrangement 
 the reports of the staff correspondents of several 
 Berlin dailies in addition to the news gathered by 
 its own men. To make sure that nothing going on 
 in Germany was overlooked, The Times sent Garet 
 Garrett in 191 5 and Oscar King Davis at the end of 
 191 6 to write special articles on the economic situa- 
 tion and the wearing qualities of German morale. 
 
 Besides getting the news out of Germany, The 
 Times now and then got some news into Germany 
 — notably in February, 1917, when the German 
 Government had been aroused by rumors that Am- 
 bassador Bernstorff was being detained in America 
 after the rupture of diplomatic relations and that 
 all German ships in American ports, and their crews, 
 had been seized. These false reports had inspired the 
 German Government with the idea that Ambassa- 
 dor Gerard and all Americans in Berlin might be de- 
 tained by way of retaliation. A private message 
 from the managing editor of The Times to O. K. 
 Davis, correcting these false impressions, was shown 
 by the correspondent to the German Foreign Office 
 and was chiefly responsible for the release of the 
 Americans in Beriin. 
 
 On other fronts, as the war went on. The Times 
 was better and better served. Of the numerous and 
 usually able correspondents of The London Chron- 
 icle the most distinguished was Philip Gibbs, whose 
 dispatches from the British front in the later years 
 of the war were perhaps the most generally popular 
 war correspondence of the period. Gibbs's peculiar 
 
 361 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 talent happened to meet a very general psycholog- 
 ical need of the public in 1917 and 1918; and he was 
 more widely read, and probably on the whole more 
 generally admired, in America than even in England. 
 
 Of The Times's own correspondents with the allied 
 armies Wythe Williams, head of the Paris office in 
 the early days of the war, wrote a number of excel- 
 lent stories from the battle-fronts in France and 
 Italy. Edwin L. James, at present Paris correspond- 
 ent of The Times, was the principal correspondent 
 with the American armies in 191 8, and supplied 
 thrilling accounts of their achievements. Walter 
 Duranty brilliantly described the successful resist- 
 ance of the French armies to the German onslaught 
 of 1918. Charles A. Selden sent the political news 
 from Paris in the same year. Charles H. Grasty of 
 the executive staff of the paper, possessing a wide 
 acquaintance among both soldiers and statesmen, 
 wrote a great deal from the British, French and 
 American battle-fronts, though the greater part of his 
 correspondence was political. Of the many others 
 who at various times and from various fronts sent 
 dispatches to The Times, perhaps special mention 
 should be given to Georges Le Hir, who wrote from 
 Verdun in the spring of 1916 some of the best battle 
 pictures of the war. 
 
 The news from the battle-fronts was constantly 
 supplemented by all kinds of news about the war 
 from the writers, newspapers, and press ' agencies of 
 every country in Europe presented each morning 
 for what it was worth to the readers of The Times. 
 The most important contribution to the assembling 
 of this news was that of the London office, headed 
 
 362 
 
VIEWS OF THE COMPOSING ROOM 
 
I— I 
 
 a 
 
 O 
 
 o 
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 2; 
 
 W 
 
 H 
 
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 H 
 
THE TIMES IN THE WAR, 1914^1918 
 
 by Ernest Marshall, which without making much 
 parade of its merits acquired an extraordinarily high 
 standard of all-round efiiciency. Mention should 
 be made also of Enid Wilkie, correspondent at The 
 Hague, who was responsible for most of the news 
 about what was going on in Germany after America 
 declared war. 
 
 The amount of news received by The Times, by 
 cable and wireless, from its own correspondents, on 
 a number of days in the latter part of the war sur- 
 passed in the total number of words the dispatches 
 of the largest news associations, and often exceeded 
 all the special dispatches to all other American news- 
 papers combined. The handling of this mass of 
 news in the office naturally involved problems unex- 
 ampled in magnitude if not new in kind, and in the 
 delicate technical question of make-up, the arrange- 
 ment of news with due consideration of its relative 
 importance, as well as of the appearance of the page 
 on which it is printed. The Times in the course of the 
 war developed a general style to which many of its 
 competitors paid the compliment of imitation. It 
 was impossible, in the war period, to get all the big 
 news on the front page, but The Times usually got 
 more of it there than other papers, and in an ar- 
 rangement which was at once pleasing to the eye 
 and calculated to make it easy for the reader to see 
 at once what had happened, as well as to give him 
 some idea of the importance of the various dis- 
 patches. 
 
 The war make-up involved a considerable devel- 
 opment in the art of headline composition. The 
 limitation of the width of the column is one of the 
 
 363 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 chief technical difficulties in the presentation of news 
 to a public which has learned to look for headlines 
 that tell the story. And even when the head is ex- 
 tended to two or three columns, or seven or eight, 
 the wider room for display does not remove all the 
 difficulties. The Times in its headlines tries, and 
 its conductors hope with a fair degree of success, to 
 be fair and accurate; to pack the substance of the 
 story, w^ithout prejudice, into the four or five words 
 which may be all of the story that some readers will 
 ever read. 
 
 Carr V. Van Anda, the managing editor, was in 
 charge not only of the great organization which was 
 collecting the news all over the world, but of the 
 no less intricate and efficient organization within the 
 office which had the work of arranging and present- 
 ing the news. In this latter field he was ably as- 
 sisted by F. T. Birchall, assistant managing editor. 
 The mechanical department under the very com- 
 petent supervision of Charles F. Hart successfully 
 responded in those days to a heavy strain and made 
 an important contribution to the success of the 
 paper. 
 
 From the day the Lusitania was sunk the war 
 was no longer a European question, and thereafter, 
 week in and week out, it pretty steadily dominated 
 the news in every New York paper. Even then, of 
 course, most papers of the interior found it less im- 
 portant than events closer home, and continued to 
 give it rather limited space until America came in. 
 As the war went on more and more of the most in- 
 telligent class of readers all over the country found 
 that if they really wanted news about the war they 
 
 364 
 
THE TIMES IN THE WAR, 1914^1918 
 
 could find it in greatest volume and most satisfac- 
 torily presented in The Times. 
 
 The first award of the Pulitzer gold medal for 
 "disinterested and meritorious service" by a news- 
 paper was made by the School of Journalism of 
 Columbia University to The New York Times in 
 June, 1918, "for publishing in full so many official 
 reports, documents, and speeches by European states- 
 men relating to the progress and conduct of the war." 
 The editors of The Times believed that their circula- 
 tion contained an unusually high proportion of 
 readers who were willing to give the time to reading 
 long speeches and long documents, not necessarily 
 because they had superfluous time on their hands, 
 but because they realized that in a war of this kind 
 full understanding required careful study, and that 
 study of the evidence was the most important busi- 
 ness of any intelligent man. The editors thought, 
 too, that The Times more than any other paper was 
 read by people who were capable of forming their 
 own opinions from study of the original evidence 
 in full, and who would rather have every word avail- 
 able for their own study than accept a summary 
 made by somebody else. 
 
 An illustration of the methods of The Times in 
 getting together these documents from the most 
 widely scattered sources may be found in the his- 
 tory of the publication of Prince Lichnowsky's fa- 
 mous memorandum on German diplomatic methods 
 and the outbreak of the war. Parts of this had 
 been published in various German and Swedish 
 papers, and in The New Europe of London, and 
 
 36s 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 many extracts from these publications had been 
 cabled to the American press. But the document 
 was for the first time printed in full in The New 
 York Times, the text having been laboriously assem- 
 bled from the five or six partial publications in Ger- 
 many, Sweden and England. Something like this 
 The Times was doing constantly during 191 8, and 
 by industry and vigilance succeeded in piecing to- 
 gether a good deal of evidence which other publica- 
 tions, both in America and abroad, had been con- 
 tent to accept in fragmentary form. 
 
 Every one was calling on his reserves in 1918, 
 from Foch and Ludendorff down to the humblest 
 citizen on the internal front who was setting his 
 teeth and accustoming himself to new privations, 
 and the human race as a whole was probably liv- 
 ing more intensely and putting more of its poten- 
 tial abilities into action than ever before. It is per- 
 haps natural, then, that The Times was at its best 
 in this last year of the war. Its conductors are not 
 conscious of any particular deterioration since that 
 time, but there was more opportunity for excellence 
 to display itself in the conditions of this last war year. 
 
 In the interchange of speeches that made up the 
 most visible though by no means the only phase of 
 the "peace offensives" of the winter of 1917-18 
 The Times had scored again and again by printing the 
 addresses in full, by a make-up and typography which 
 put the news out where the reader could see it and 
 gave him some hints about its relative importance, 
 and in the case of speeches delivered by German or 
 Austrian statesmen very often by getting the news 
 a day earlier than the other papers. The peace of- 
 
 366 
 
THE TIMES IN THE WAR, 1914-1918 
 
 fensive broke down and LudendorfF began a new 
 offensive of a different kind on March 21, 1918. In 
 The Times office it was recognized on the evening 
 of that day that this was the great and decisive con- 
 flict of the war, although elsewhere, and even in 
 London, it was some days before the magnitude and 
 importance of LudendorfTs operations was per- 
 ceived. From that time on The Times was gener- 
 ally a day ahead of the crowd. Every correspondent 
 had been instructed on the evening of March 21 
 thenceforward to spare no expense or effort to get 
 his news into the office promptly. The result was 
 that day after day The Times was the only Ameri- 
 can paper which had its own dispatches describing 
 the fighting of the day before. The Associated 
 Press news arrived on time, for the Associated 
 Press had, properly enough, received special facili- 
 ties for getting its news through. Other American 
 papers had special dispatches from their own cor- 
 respondents, but for two or three months they gen- 
 erally got them and published them a day late. 
 Within a few weeks after March 21 The Times was 
 able to announce that since that date it had scored 
 more than one hundred beats, including such items 
 of news as Foch's appointment as generalissimo, the 
 removal of General Gough after the defeat of the 
 British Fifth Army, and Count Czernin's speech 
 against Clemenceau, which had the result of bring- 
 ing to the light the Austro-French peace negotiations 
 of the previous year. 
 
 The official censorships of the various European 
 governments interfered considerably, of course, with 
 
 367 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 the news dispatches of The Times, as they did with 
 those of all other papers. No effort was made to 
 circumvent these censorships, but in one instance the 
 censorship was evaded by a sort of impromptu code, 
 with the result that The Times beat all other papers, 
 in America and elsewhere, on two highly important 
 news stories. Under cover of the ostensible discus- 
 sion by cable of some changes in The Times's Euro- 
 pean staff information was obtained of the decision 
 to supplant Joffre as generalissimo of the French 
 armies, of the consideration of various men for his 
 position and finally of the appointment of Nivelle. 
 A few months later the same formula brought to 
 The Times office, again in advance of the official an- 
 nouncement, the news that Nivelle was to be re- 
 placed by Petain. 
 
 Like all other newspapers, however, The Times 
 tolerated foreign censorships because it had no choice, 
 and not because it liked their methods or admired 
 their results. When America came into the war and 
 the first draft of the Espionage Act contained a pro- 
 vision for an American censorship. The Times was 
 one of the most vigorous opponents of any such 
 measure. The experience of European governments 
 had shown that, while censors may occasionally be 
 necessary, they are always stupid, and the likeli- 
 hood that personal or political considerations would 
 influence a censor in Washington was quite as 
 strong as the certainty that such considerations had 
 already played their part in Europe. 
 
 Eventually the clause was deleted from the Es- 
 pionage Act, and in place of Government regulation 
 came the " voluntary censorship," by which Ameri- 
 
 368 
 
THE TIMES IN THE WAR, 1914r-1918 
 
 can newspapers refrained from printing news that 
 might be of mihtary advantage to the enemy. 
 
 One hundred and eighty-nine members of The 
 Times staff, including two women, served in the 
 armed forces of the United States during the war. 
 Of these the following five were killed or died in 
 service : 
 
 Major William Sinkler Manning, 
 of the Washington Bureau; 
 
 Lieutenant William Bradley, 
 of the business office; 
 
 Sergeant Joyce Kilmer, 
 
 of the Sunday magazine staff; 
 
 Private Harold J. Behl, 
 proofreader; 
 
 Private Edward B. Pierce, 
 of the composing room. 
 
 369 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 The Times Today 
 
 'TpHE end of the war found The Times at the height 
 -*■ of its influence and power, but the peak of its 
 business prosperity was still to come. In the boom 
 of 1919 and the early months of 1920 The Times 
 at last expanded in size from the 24-page issue which 
 had been the limit for the week-day paper up to the 
 end of the war, and often since then has printed 
 32, 36 or even 40 pages a day. Even so, the volume 
 of advertising offered was so great that day after 
 day much of it had to be refused on account of lack 
 of space. Yet the total printed in 1920 was more 
 than 23,000,000 agate lines — nearly 80,000 columns, 
 and almost ten times the amount printed in the first 
 year of the new management. The greatest volume 
 of advertising ever carried in the paper was on 
 Sunday, May 23, 1920, when The Times printed in 
 all 767 columns of advertisements. The paper on 
 that day contained altogether 136 pages, including 
 24 pages of rotogravure pictorial supplement and 
 16 pages of tabloid book review. It weighed two 
 pounds and ten ounces, and no doubt it felt like 
 ten pounds and two ounces to the weary house- 
 holder who picked it off the doorstep; but experi- 
 ence has shown that even in a paper of that size 
 there is nothing that a good many readers do not 
 want. 
 
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THE TIMES TODAY 
 
 The impression is widely prevalent that as the 
 paper increases in size the pubUsher loses money on 
 account of the high price of newsprint. This, how- 
 ever, is a mistake. The advertising rates include 
 the cost of the paper on which advertisements are 
 printed, so that the increased cost involves only 
 pages devoted to news. The only danger in in- 
 creasing the size of the paper is that it may pos- 
 sibly become so bulky as to dissatisfy the reader, 
 and The Times has not yet felt that handicap. 
 Some of its readers complain that it is too large, 
 but nobody complains that it prints too much news 
 about the things in which he is interested. The 
 man whose chief interest is in the stock market may 
 think there is too much news about sports, and vice 
 versa; but there is not too much financial news for 
 the investor, nor too much sporting news for the 
 follower of sports. From the four-page paper of six 
 short columns which Raymond got out in 1851 to 
 The Times of forty eight-column pages which has oc- 
 casionally appeared in recent years is a long jump; 
 but no greater than the increase in the extent of the 
 intelligent reading public, nor in the variety of that 
 public's interests. 
 
 The most important feature of The Times^s edi- 
 torial policy since the war has been its championship 
 of the League of Nations, a cause in which its edi- 
 tors were interested long before the armistice, and 
 which they regard as destined to ultimate triumph 
 in some form — most probably in a form very much 
 like that which was adopted by the Paris peace con- 
 ference. Throughout that conference The Times 
 
 371 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 steadily supported the general policies of President 
 Wilson, though it could not agree with him on some 
 details. Its editors felt that it was a mistake for 
 him to go to Paris in person, but later they came to 
 the conclusion that the President had been right, 
 and that by his presence at the conference he had 
 obtained some results which would have been im- 
 possible for any negotiator of less eminence. They 
 thought, and still think, that he made a mistake in 
 not taking with him representative leaders of the 
 Republican party, as well as in showing too plainly 
 an opinion reasonable enough in itself of the endow- 
 ments and the character of some eminent Senators. 
 On some of the territorial, political or economic 
 items of the peace settlements, too, The Times could 
 not accept the President's views. 
 
 But its conductors thought that these objections 
 were all of minor importance and irrelevant to the 
 principal issues. With the President's opinion that 
 the League was all-important they were in entire 
 accord, as well as with his position on most of the 
 territorial and economic questions in dispute. They 
 thought the Treaty of Versailles was not ideally per- 
 fect, but about the best treaty that could have been 
 obtained. And they held the opinion, none too com- 
 mon in the United States in 1919, that after all the 
 President was the representative of the entire Ameri- 
 can people at the peace conference, that it was im- 
 possible for him to get his way on every point of 
 difference with the other delegates, and that an en- 
 lightened view of national interest, to say nothing 
 of those more general considerations of universal 
 welfare which his opponents so vehemently dis- 
 
 372 
 
THE TIMES TODAY 
 
 claimed, made it advisable for the American people 
 to forget trivial objections and give their consider- 
 ation rather to the things the President had done. 
 He had, after all, won the chief points for which he 
 was contending as the constitutionally designated 
 negotiator for the American people, and won them, 
 if at the price of some concessions, over strenuous 
 opposition. It was unlikely that any other American 
 official would ever be able to impose American views 
 so extensively on the other great powers of the world. 
 
 There can be no doubt that much of the antago- 
 nism which finally wrecked Mr. Wilson's peace plans 
 was due to his personality rather than his accomplish- 
 ments, to his methods rather than his results. It 
 seemed to The Times that ordinary common sense 
 might suggest that the people whom he represented 
 should give first consideration to the work which he 
 had done, and to the effect of that work upon their 
 own interests, rather than to their opinions of Mr. 
 Wilson as an individual. No doubt, some consci- 
 entious opponents of the League took this point of 
 view, and based their opposition to the Treaty on 
 an honest conviction that it was harmful to Ameri- 
 can interests. But there is evidence everywhere in 
 plain sight that a good many people opposed the 
 Treaty merely because they disliked the President. 
 
 Throughout the fight in the Senate and through 
 the campaign of 1920 The Times gave its utmost 
 support to the cause of the League and to those 
 public men who promised to support that xause. 
 The violent debate within the Republican Party as 
 to whether the election of Mr. Harding meant a 
 victory for the League or the utter rejection of the 
 
 373 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 League it viewed with sympathetic but detached in- 
 terest, convinced that the logic of facts would pres- 
 ently bring to reason those Republican leaders who 
 are capable of reason. Until that time shall come 
 The Times's view of the particular accomplishments 
 of the Republican Administration is determined by 
 its judgment of their specific merits and not by gen- 
 eral or doctrinal considerations. 
 
 Yet, in spite of its conviction that the League is 
 necessary and indeed inevitable, in spite of its sup- 
 port of the Democratic ticket in the 1920 campaign, 
 The Times has given its support to many of the 
 policies of President Harding. This does not mean 
 that The Times is always an administration paper. 
 It does mean, however, that the conductors of The 
 Times realize that the President of the United States 
 is the President of the whole people and not of a 
 single party, that his public acts affect the whole 
 people and that it is to the interest of every citizen 
 to get as effective and competent an administration 
 as possible. With the type of partisanship which 
 sees the entrance of the opposition into power as 
 meaning nothing but opportunity for criticism The 
 Times has little sympathy. It preferred Mr. Cox to 
 Mr. Harding; but Mr. Harding having been elected 
 it realized that he was going to be the Chief Magis- 
 trate of the United States for the next four years, 
 and that sensible citizens would do well to encour- 
 age all the praiseworthy policies which his adminis- 
 tration might pursue without stopping to fear that 
 they might bring prestige to the RepubHcan Party. 
 
 Whether Republican, Independent or Democratic, 
 The Times has never been able to convince itself that 
 
 374 
 
THE TIMES TODAY 
 
 opposition must mean consistent hostility to every- 
 thing done by the party in power. Its conductors 
 regard the interests of the nation as somewhat more 
 important than the record of any party, and they 
 have been genuinely glad to be able to commend many 
 of the works accomplished or attempted by President 
 Harding and the leading members of his Cabinet. 
 With some of the elements in the Republican Party 
 The Times is entirely out of sympathy, and had repre- 
 sentatives of those factions been chosen to direct the 
 executive functions of the government, the paper 
 would no doubt have had occasion to criticize their 
 conduct rather severely; but, considering the record of 
 the administration purely on its merits, the editors of 
 The Times have been pleased to be able to recog- 
 nize the fact that its performance, in the early 
 months at least, has been meritorious in a rather 
 high degree. 
 
 Several changes in the personnel of the paper in 
 recent years may call for special mention. Mr. 
 George McAneny resigned as President of the Board 
 of Aldermen on February i, 1916, to become execu- 
 tive manager of The Times. His duties were chiefly 
 confined to the study of the newsprint paper situation 
 which gave so much concern to all American papers 
 during the war period and which is The Times's 
 chief item of expenditure. In 1920 The Times spent 
 for print paper $5,963,839.42. In 1897, the first full 
 year under the present management, that item cost 
 only $45,955-63. On January i, 1918, the Tidewater 
 Paper Company, of Bush Terminal, Brooklyn, with 
 a capacity of 30,000 tons of newsprint per year, was 
 
 375 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 acquired by the New York Times Company in order 
 to insure a supply of paper in New York free from 
 outside interruptions by strikes, weather, etc. 
 
 With The Times's paper supply contracted for and 
 assured for the next five years, Mr. McAneny with- 
 drew from the Times organization in March, 1921, and 
 soon afterward was appointed chairman of the 
 Transit Commission. 
 
 Mr. Samuel Strauss, well known as one of the live- 
 liest of magazine critics of current affairs, was with 
 The Times as treasurer of the company from 191 2 
 to the end of 191 5. Mr. RoUo Ogden, editor-in-chief 
 of The New York Evening Post for many years, came 
 to The Times on May 15, 1920, as associate editor; 
 and Dr. John H. Finley, Commissioner of Education 
 of the State of New York, resigned that office and 
 joined The Times staff, also as an associate editor, 
 on January 17, 1921. 
 
 Note may be made here of the following members 
 of The Times's staff who died either in its service or 
 after long years with the paper: 
 
 Edward Cary, for forty-six years an editorial 
 writer and for much of that period associate editor; 
 died May 23, 1917. 
 
 Theodore Lawrence Peverelly, for forty-three 
 years a member of the business staff; died February 
 4, 1904. 
 
 Arthur Greaves, city editor from 1900 and a 
 reporter for many years before; died October 19, 1915. 
 
 Charles Welborne Knapp, treasurer of The New 
 York Times Company and formerly publisher of 
 The St. Louis Republic; died January 6, 1916. 
 
 Edward Augustus Dithmar, whose forty years 
 376 
 
THE TIMES TODAY 
 
 of service as dramatic critic, London correspondent, 
 literary editor and editorial writer, ended with his 
 death on October i6, 1917. 
 
 Montgomery Schuyler, for twenty-four years an 
 editorial writer; died July 16, 1914. 
 
 Jacob H. Thompson, for thirty-seven years with 
 the paper, much of the time as exchange editor; died 
 September 8, 1905. 
 
 John Hebard Paine, for fourteen years with The 
 Times, the last four years as night city editor; died 
 October 2, 1920. 
 
 John Norris, for many years business manager, 
 died March 21, 1914. 
 
 Barnet Phillips, whose thirty-three years of 
 service Included editorial work on the Sunday edition 
 and book reviewing; died April 8, 1905. 
 
 Leopold Wallach, general counsel of The Times 
 from August 18, 1896, to his death on January 25, 
 1908. 
 
 Elbridge G. Dunnell, Washington correspond- 
 ent of The Times from 1879 to 1902; died February 
 
 3. 1905- 
 Leonard B. Treharne, on The Times staff for 
 
 twelve years, most of that time as night city editor; 
 
 died October 17, 1904. 
 
 Major John M. Carson, In The Times Washing- 
 ton office from 1874 to 1882 and 1902 to 1905, and 
 for several years chief Washington correspondent; 
 died September 29, 191 2. 
 
 George Butler Taylor, for twenty-six years a 
 reporter, died November 2, 1905. 
 
 Field Lynn Hosmer, forty years in service as 
 reporter and editorial auditor; died January 8, 1914. 
 
 377 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 George B. Mover, for twelve years superintend- 
 ent of The riw^j- buildings, died December 9, 1915- 
 
 As to the news service of The Times there is little 
 to add to what has been written in the last two 
 chapters. It has continued as it was during the 
 war, though perhaps with a somewhat higher degree 
 of efficiency, due to experience. The Peace Confer- 
 ence was covered for The Times by members of the 
 paper's own staff — Richard V. Oulahan, head of 
 the Washington Bureau; Ernest Marshall, head of 
 the London office; Charles A. Selden and Edwin L. 
 James, of the Paris office, and Charles H. Grasty of 
 the executive department — and by Gertrude Ather- 
 ton, until she fell ill and had to return to America. 
 They scored a number of "beats," notably on the 
 occasion of President Wilson's threat to abandon 
 the Peace Conference, but most of the leading 
 American papers scored "beats" during the nego- 
 tiations. As before, the excellence of The Times 
 was rather in a higher average than in out- 
 standing single achievements. Indeed, it could be 
 said that the war and the Peace Conference both 
 proved the value of the American system of news- 
 paper training. Generally speaking, the best war 
 correspondents and the best political correspondents 
 at the Peace Conference were men who had gone 
 through the ordinary routine of the American re- 
 porter, rather than experts who had specialized in 
 war correspondence or international politics all their 
 lives. Most American reporters found that they 
 could learn what they needed about war and inter- 
 national politics; while the sense of news values, 
 
 378 
 
w 
 H 
 
 a 
 
 o . 
 
 Woo 
 
 « 
 
 Oh 
 H 
 
 m 
 
 H 
 
THE TIMES TODAY 
 
 and the diligence in getting news, which is devel- 
 oped by the ordinary reportorial training in America, 
 and which, of course, had been very highly devel- 
 oped in the men who were selected for the important 
 assignments of the war and the peace negotiations, 
 cannot be improvised by specialists when they are 
 suddenly faced by extraordinarily keen competition. 
 
 Perhaps there should be special mention of the 
 Washington correspondence of The Times, which is 
 probably not only more voluminous, but more im- 
 partial, than that of any other paper. The practice of 
 coloring the news to suit editorial policy, which 
 was once too common in the American press, has 
 pretty generally disappeared in recent years except 
 in a minority of papers. But it has tended to sur- 
 vive longest in the Washington correspondence, 
 where there is still, in the case of most newspapers, 
 a tendency to hunt out first of all such news as agrees 
 with the paper's prejudices. 
 
 This does not involve suppression of news, nor 
 even distortion. The relativity of truth is a com- 
 monplace to any newspaper man, even to one 
 who has never studied epistemology; and, if the 
 phrase is permissible, truth is rather more relative in 
 Washington than anywhere else. Now and then it 
 is possible to make a downright statement; such and 
 such a bill has passed in one of the houses of Congress, 
 or failed to pass; the administration has issued this 
 or that statement; the President has approved, or 
 vetoed, a certain bill. But most of the news that 
 comes out of Washington is necessarily rather 
 vague, for it depends on the assertions of statesmen 
 who are reluctant to be quoted by name, or even by 
 
 379 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 description. This more than anything else is respon- 
 sible for the sort of fog, the haze of miasmatic exha- 
 lations, which hangs over news with a Washington 
 date line. News coming out of Washington is apt 
 to represent not what is so but what might be so 
 under certain contingencies, what may turn out to be 
 so, what some eminent personage says is so, or even 
 what he wants the public to believe is so when it is 
 not. 
 
 For an illustration one need go no further back 
 than the various semi-official assertions on high 
 authority of the intentions of the Harding adminis- 
 tration about cooperation with Europe, which turned 
 out to be pretty nearly lOO per cent untrue. The 
 explanation is that most of these assertions came 
 from irreconcilable Senators who honestly thought 
 they could speak for the administration and who 
 were accepted by correspondents as speaking for 
 the administration; but who, as a matter of fact, 
 knew less about the real intentions of the adminis- 
 tration than the White House doorkeeper. 
 
 Obviously, then, the Washington correspondent 
 has a pretty wide field of choice. On almost any 
 question he can get directly opposite opinions — 
 and most "news" from Washington is a matter of 
 opinion — from equally high authority, and from 
 authority which he is not permitted to identify. It 
 is not strange that between two stories of appar- 
 ently equal merit he is inclined to prefer the one 
 which will be most welcome in the office. Generally 
 speaking. The Times Washington correspondence 
 has been very little open to criticism on this point. 
 No paper supported the League of Nations more 
 
 380 
 
THE TIMES TODAY 
 
 vigorously than The Times;, its editorials consist- 
 ently favored the League, and its columns once 
 more, as during the war, became the principal 
 forum for the debates of publicists. Yet it was evi- 
 dent through the entire discussion, to those who read 
 The Times Washington correspondence, that there 
 was little chance of the League finding favor in the 
 Senate. The Times supported Cox in the 1920 
 Presidential campaign, but its political correspond- 
 ence made it fairly plain long before the election that 
 Harding was certain to win. 
 
 It should be added that The Times, alone of promi- 
 nent Democratic papers, denounced as false, slander- 
 ous and contemptible the "campaign of whispers" 
 against Mr. Harding during the last weeks of the 
 campaign. 
 
 The year 1919 gave The Times, always so keenly 
 interested in aviation, a chance to cover very fully 
 the news of the first flights across the Atlantic. Its 
 interest in wireless telegraphy had already been vin- 
 dicated, and at present all newspapers are enjoying 
 wireless service which might have been somewhat 
 longer delayed if The Times had not been so fully 
 convinced of the possibilities of this art a decade ago. 
 The end of the war brought, of course, an increase 
 in the amount of space devoted to local news, which 
 had been somewhat reduced in the days when the 
 dispatches from the battle-fronts were of supreme 
 importance; as well as a great expansion in The 
 Times sporting department, responding to the great 
 increase of interest in sports which followed the com- 
 ing of peace. 
 
 381 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 The Times was the only paper in the United States, 
 or in the world, which printed the full text of the 
 draft of the peace treaty. As will be remembered, 
 the document was given to Senator Borah on June 9, 
 1 919, by a correspondent of The Chicago Tribune ^ and 
 by vote of the Senate was spread upon the Congres- 
 sional Record. That night the Washington corre- 
 spondents of The Times got proof sheets from the 
 government printers as fast as the copy was set up, 
 and dispatched the text to New York on twenty-four 
 telegraph and telephone wires obtained for the occa- 
 sion. On the morning of June 10 The Times had all 
 of it — sixty-two columns, occupying most of the 
 first eight pages of the second section of a forty-page 
 paper. 
 
 The news service of The Times today is pretty well 
 known to several hundred thousand readers who pre- 
 fer The Times to any other paper. If anything 
 further is to be said about its quality it may best be 
 said by the mention of one or two instances of The 
 Times' s methods and their results. During the politi- 
 cal conventions of 1920 The Times pretty regularly 
 had more news and more reliable news than the other 
 papers, and had it first. These conventions were 
 covered by a staff of nine men, all regular employes 
 of the paper. The Times saw no need for hiring re- 
 nowned experts, humorists, or fiction writers to 
 supplement the work of its own men; and if any 
 of its readers missed these features they did not 
 say so. 
 
 The Democratic National Convention at San 
 Francisco offered some technical problems of excep- 
 tional difficulty. Because San Francisco is 3000 
 
 382 
 
THE TIMES TODAY 
 
 miles west of New York, and because New York 
 saves daylight while San Francisco does not, San 
 Francisco time is four hours earlier than that of New 
 York. That meant that the first edition of most 
 New York morning papers was going to press at a 
 little past midnight, only a few minutes after the 
 night sessions of the Democratic Convention were 
 beginning in San Francisco. Despite this fact. The 
 Times had some news from the beginning of the night 
 sessions in its first edition on every night of the con- 
 vention, and its second edition, coming off the presses 
 shortly before 2 o'clock, had about as much news as 
 other papers were able to get on the streets at day- 
 light. 
 
 Another difficulty in getting the news out of San 
 Francisco was due, or rather seemed likely to be due, 
 to the limited telegraphic facilities. Even the highest 
 ofiicials of the Western Union and the Postal did not 
 realize, in advance, just how much their local organ- 
 izations were going to be able to accomplish. As it 
 turned out, the Western Union wire arrangements 
 were more than sufficient to handle all the news of 
 the convention; but this was not known beforehand. 
 As a matter of precaution The Times, which was un- 
 able to obtain the lease of direct wires into its office 
 from the telegraph companies, finally made a round- 
 about connection through Canada. A telephone 
 wire was leased for night service from San Francisco 
 to Vancouver and another from New York to Mon- 
 treal. Between these two cities connection was 
 established by a lease of a Canadian Pacific railroad 
 telegraph wire, and the whole circuit was operated 
 by telegraph with a " relay " at Vancouver — operated 
 
 383 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 so well that news dictated to a telegraph operator m 
 the convention hall at San Francisco was in The 
 Times office in New York within two minutes. 
 
 The long-distance telephone was used every night 
 during the convention, and was responsible for the 
 publication in the first edition, on the final night, of 
 news which foreshadowed Palmer's withdrawal a 
 little later in the evening. 
 
 All these are things such as all papers do, now and 
 then, and the only distinction of The Times is that it 
 does them more regularly, more smoothly and, on the 
 whole, with more success. As a final instance of the 
 operation of The Times news service today may be 
 mentioned the handling of the news of the German 
 reparations proposals of April 26 last — proposals 
 which, it will be remembered, were sent to the 
 United States Government in the vain hope of ob- 
 taining American mediation in some form, and which 
 embodied the last German eflFort at cpmpromise be- 
 fore the surrender to the allied demands, which took 
 place a few days later. 
 
 The American declaration that all previous Ger- 
 man offers were unsatisfactory reached the German 
 Cabinet at 11 a.m. on April 26 — that is, 5 a.m. 
 New York time. It was known that the answer 
 would be prompt; that, as a matter of form, it 
 would be sent to the American government; but 
 that, since Mr. Harding and Mr. Hughes would not 
 even transmit to the allied governments any pro- 
 posal which those governments were likely to re- 
 ceive with disfavor, there would be informal inquiries, 
 as soon as it was received, to find out if it were ac- 
 ceptable. If not, it would wither and die in a Wash- 
 
 384 
 
THE TIMES TODAY 
 
 ington pigeonhole, so far as official transmission was 
 concerned. 
 
 The German note came to Washington on the 
 evening of Wednesday, April 26, and a vague and 
 general intimation as to its contents was given out to 
 all the correspondents there. A summary of the note 
 was also given to The Associated Press in Berlin, 
 and on the morning of Thursday, April 27, that was 
 all that the other New York Papers had about the 
 German offer. 
 
 But The Times realized that the text of the note 
 might be available not only in Berlin, where it was 
 written, and in Washington, where it was received, 
 but also in London and Paris, where the governments 
 would be informally acquainted with its text before the 
 note was officially transmitted. Consequently The 
 Times correspondents in Washington, London, Paris 
 and Berlin were all instructed to try to get the note 
 verbatim. In Washington and Berlin only in- 
 adequate summaries were obtainable; the summary 
 given out by the German government was in one or 
 two points seriously misrepresentative and tended 
 to represent the offer as larger than it actually 
 was. 
 
 But The Times correspondents both in London and 
 in Paris obtained and cabled the full text of the note 
 on Wednesday night, the Paris copy arriving first, 
 but only ten minutes ahead of that from London. 
 The Times alone of New York papers published it in 
 full on Thursday morning. The Times alone of New 
 York papers published the fact that the French gov- 
 ernment had officially refused to consider the offer 
 and had notified Secretary Hughes of its decision to 
 
 38s 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 this effect. Two other papers in New York had Pans 
 dispatches predicting, on the basis of Premier 
 Briand's speech in the Chamber that afternoon, that 
 the French Government would reject the note; the 
 others had not even that much. The Times was also 
 the only New York paper which printed on Thursday 
 morning the comments of the Paris press in their 
 issues of the same day — comments, of course, which 
 could be transmitted only because of the five-hour 
 difference in time, but which no other New York 
 paper received in time for publication. 
 
 Thus on one of the most important pieces of world 
 news in the year 1921 The Times alone, except for 
 the papers which purchase The Times' s news service 
 for publication in other cities, published the contents 
 of the German proposal and the fact of the French 
 refusal to consider it. An achievement of this sort 
 tells a good deal more about the quality of a paper 
 than the exclusive publication of a single story ac- 
 quired by the wide acquaintance of some member of 
 its staff. It is a feat which cannot be performed on 
 the spur of the moment; it implies an intricate and 
 highly trained organization. That organization is 
 the chief distinction of The Times today. 
 
 The story of the modern Times has been told — 
 inadequately and imperfectly, but as fully and im- 
 partially as it can be told by its own family. In 
 those twenty-five years The Times has gone further 
 and grown faster than even the men who controlled 
 it foresaw, and its growth is not yet ended. There is 
 room for improvement, and the men who get it out 
 every day are constantly trying to improve it; there 
 
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THE TIMES TODAY 
 
 is room for still greater increase in prosperity and 
 influence. 
 
 No more than an3^hing else on earth will American 
 journalism ever again be the same as before 1914. 
 What the opportunities and demands of the future 
 will be no newspaper man can see very clearly, 
 though some of them think they can see after a fash- 
 ion; but it is safe to say that they will require a 
 higher standard of merit from all newspapers than 
 that which was sufficient from 1865 to 1914. It will 
 probably be impossible for American newspapers of 
 the future to achieve greatness, or even much no- 
 toriety, by mere vigorous expression of partisan 
 political views. No New York paper, at least, will 
 ever again become great and prosperous by excellence 
 merely in local news. Newspapers of the future must 
 give the news, and the news of the world. They must 
 combine in proper proportion the covering of the 
 news in their home town, as they have learned that 
 art in the last half century, with the presentation of 
 the news from every continent as some of them have 
 learned to present it since 1914. 
 
 Modern science has made news-gathering more 
 difficult in the sense that it has broadened immeasur- 
 ably the possibilities of getting news and thus en- 
 abled the most enterprising newspapers to set a very 
 high standard for their competitors. The example 
 given above will suggest that when a news story may 
 be covered simultaneously by cable, wireless or tele- 
 graph, in London, Paris, Berlin and Washington, the 
 paper which expects to cover it merely by a telegram 
 from the Washington office is sometimes going to be 
 left behind. A good newspaper of today needs a 
 
 387 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 larger, more intricate, more efficient and more ex- 
 pensive organization than the best editors of twenty 
 years ago could have imagined. 
 
 It is possible that the progress of invention will 
 make competition still keener in another direction. 
 Last year, during the Republican Convention at 
 Chicago, The Times sent its city edition out by air- 
 plane mail and delivered it at Chicago in the course 
 of the afternoon. Before many years have gone this 
 may be a matter of course; and thus for the first 
 time it may be possible to have in America some- 
 thing approaching a really national newspaper. 
 There can never be national newspapers in this 
 country as in France and England, because of the 
 limitations our vast distances impose upon deliv- 
 ery; but when New York papers are delivered every- 
 where east of the Mississippi on the day of publica- 
 tion, as they certainly will be within a decade or so, 
 they will have an opportunity for taking on a good 
 deal more of a national character than they have 
 ever had in the past. 
 
 Undoubtedly The New York Times today ap- 
 proaches the character of a national newspaper 
 more nearly than any other in America. It does so, 
 of course, because of its copious presentation of 
 general news, national and international, which is 
 made possible by the fact that The Times is fortu- 
 nate enough to have in the city where it is published 
 a large clientele which will be interested in this news. 
 One of the obstacles in the way of establishing a sort 
 of generalized national newspaper such as is some- 
 times talked of by doctrinaires is the fact that 
 every newspaper has to be printed and published 
 
 388 
 
THE TIMES TODAY 
 
 somewhere; that the difficulties of distribution 
 make it inevitable that a very large proportion of its 
 reading public will be local; and that most people 
 want to find in their paper a good deal of news about 
 the town in which they live. The Times attempts 
 to cover the local news as adequately as its com- 
 petitors, but it is fortunate In being the favorite 
 with that part of the New York reading public 
 which is also keenly interested in the news of the 
 world. It Is, accordingly, able to devote a great 
 deal more of Its space to the presentation in extenso 
 of news of general interest, and consequently has a 
 larger circulation outside the metropolitan district 
 than any other New York paper. It is widely read 
 in Washington; and in California it probably has a 
 larger circulation than all other New York papers 
 combined. 
 
 It is only a guess, but probably a safe guess, that 
 The Times is also more generally read over the 
 world than any other American paper. It has mail 
 subscribers In the Aland Islands, In Mauritius, and 
 all over the South Seas; in almost every state or 
 colony of Africa; in SIvas of Anatolia, In Tarsus of 
 Cilicia, in Bagdad and In Bandar Abbas. And by 
 no means all of its Asiatic subscribers are wandering 
 Americans; even outside of Japan and China, a good 
 many of them are Asiatics who find something of 
 interest In The New York Times. 
 
 The newspaper business In the future will not be a 
 game for pikers. The Times today has some 1 800 em- 
 ployes; Its dally pay roll exceeds ^10,000; it uses a dally 
 average of nearly 200 tons of paper. The cost 
 of news-getting may be surmised from the fact that 
 
 389 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 some ^25,000 was spent by The Times in covering 
 the two national conventions of 1920. It would 
 be rather hazardous to assert that nobody could 
 come into the New York newspaper field today on a 
 "shoestring," as Mr. Ochs did in 1S96, and succeed 
 — hazardous, because even in 1896 all the experts 
 said that he could not rehabilitate The Times without 
 spending millions of dollars. But at least it seems 
 quite unlikely that anything like this could be done 
 now. 
 
 In the past twenty-five years five New York 
 papers have died. The Advertiser, The Mercury, 
 The News and The Press have all disappeared. 
 Neither The Herald nor The Sun has disappeared in 
 name, but at any rate there is only one morning 
 paper where both The Herald and The Sun grew 
 before. Of the papers which were in existence in 
 1896 and are still appearing today some have sur- 
 vived because they have made money, and some 
 because they are owned by wealthy men who can 
 stand the loss. And it is significant that the only 
 new daily paper which has been established in New 
 York in the past twenty-five years — a paper, it 
 should be observed, which is of a somewhat special- 
 ized character, predominantly a "picture paper," 
 and can be produced much more cheaply than 
 a daily of the ordinary type — is owned by the 
 wealthy corporation which publishes The Chicago 
 Tribune, and which could not only supply The Daily 
 News with its telegraph and cable news and its 
 features without added cost, but could put up the 
 money to keep it going till it got on its feet. 
 
 The increased cost of production has reduced 
 390 
 
THE TIMES TODAY 
 
 the number of papers in most of the other cities of 
 the country as well as in New York. It takes 
 money not only to start a paper but to keep it going 
 if it does not pay its way — more money than was 
 needed twenty-five years ago. The natural result is 
 concentration, the absorption of failing papers by 
 their more prosperous competitors. That perhaps 
 may not be altogether in the public interest, espe- 
 cially in a city of secondary rank which used to 
 support two or three morning papers and now has 
 only one. Even Chicago has now only two morning 
 newspapers in the English language. It is con- 
 ceivable that in a city of two and three quarter 
 million people there are a good many readers who 
 are not wholly satisfied with either of those papers, 
 but to start another in successful competition would 
 require both unusual ability and a great deal of 
 money. 
 
 New daily papers, unjless supported by men who 
 are quite willing to go on throwing millions into them 
 until they get on their feet in competition with 
 established papers whose annual income already 
 runs into the millions, are more likely to renounce 
 all hope of competing with those already established 
 in the covering of general news, and restrict them- 
 selves to particular interests. Even that will imply 
 some serious disadvantages; for example, with two 
 or three such publications competing with newspapers 
 of the more usual type there is bound to be a good 
 deal of waste in advertising. With certain news- 
 papers confining their energies to only a part of the 
 field, advertisers will be in doubt just how to reach 
 the public they want, and a good deal more of their 
 
 391 I 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 money will be required. In the opinion of the 
 management of The Times, advertising which does 
 not bring results is disadvantageous not only for the 
 advertiser, but for the newspaper; and the most 
 satisfactory situation for both is that in which the 
 actual situation of every newspaper both as to 
 quantity and quality of circulation is well known. 
 
 These dangers may not be imminent, in view of the 
 high cost of establishing a newspaper of any kind 
 in a large city; but in somewhat modified form 
 evils of this general character exist in present-day 
 advertising. In the opinion of the publisher of 
 The Times the most widespread defects of advertising 
 today are lost motion and low visibility; and it may 
 be in order to quote some of his thoughts on this sub- 
 ject dehvered to the Associated Advertising Clubs of 
 the World in their convention at Philadelphia on 
 June 26, 1916: 
 
 It may startle you if I say that I doubt 
 if there is any business in the world in 
 which there is so much waste of time, 
 money, and energy as in advertising and 
 its correlative instrumentalities. It may 
 be rank heresy for me to say this, yet I 
 affirm that more than 50 per cent of the 
 money spent in advertising is squandered, 
 and is a sheer waste of printer's ink, be- 
 cause little thought and less intelligence are 
 applied, and ordinary common sense is 
 entirely lacking; too frequently the dishon- 
 esty stamped on its face is about all the 
 inteUigent reader discerns. 
 
 The first essential of successful adver- 
 tising is something to advertise; the next, 
 to know how to advertise, and when and 
 392 
 
THE TIMES TODAY 
 
 where. Too many advertisers have naught 
 to advertise save their impotence and their 
 folly. Too often the impelling reason is 
 vanity — to see their names in print — and 
 the greatest damage results when business 
 prudence is dethroned and the advertising 
 is done for ulterior reasons, either to favor 
 some individual or to promote some sinister 
 purpose. But it is not of that kind of wast- 
 age I wish to speak, for we have no interest 
 in that sort of advertiser. I have in mind 
 some well-intentioned advertisers' lost mo- 
 tion and consequently low visibility. 
 
 I say some advertisers — though I should 
 say many advertisers. To my mind the 
 worst evil is the thoughtless and careless 
 method in buying advertising space. If 
 the advertiser wishes to build a house or a 
 factory he investigates and informs him- 
 self; employs an architect; usually invites 
 proposals and awards the construction to a 
 responsible builder. When he buys his sup- 
 plies he studies the markets; he informs 
 himself; he engages efficient assistants. 
 To sell his goods or products, he concen- 
 trates all his faculties to study the trade 
 and meet competition. But when he 
 comes to advertising, his business judg- 
 ment seems atrophied; his conceit pre- 
 dominates; his prejudices have full sway; 
 favoritism and personal feelings are potent 
 influences. The care and scrutiny he exer- 
 cises in all other branches are woefully lack- 
 ing in his advertising department. The 
 attitude assumed toward the publication 
 favored — I use the word favored advisedly 
 — is one of benevolence. 
 
 Let me illustrate the advertiser's lost 
 motion by an example. He decides to adver- 
 
 393 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 tise. He consults various agencies; he too 
 often selects the cheapest — lost motion. 
 A list of publications is selected; too often 
 the controlling factors are extra commission 
 or rebate, personal friendship, low rates — 
 lost motion. In the preparation of copy: 
 little time and poor talent employed — 
 lost motion. Finally, cheap papier-mache 
 impressions of the advertisement are sent 
 to the pubHcations instead of good electro- 
 types, resulting in bad pririting — lost 
 motion, and certainly low visibility, if any 
 visibility at all. 
 
 There are few acts of advertisers more 
 stupid than to give time and thought to 
 the preparation of copy, to fuss and fume 
 with artists and compositors for an effec- 
 tive display, pay large sums for space, and 
 then, to save a few pennies or a little time, 
 mar the whole effect by supplying the 
 publication a matrix from which to make 
 a stereotype pjate. You often see evidence 
 of that kind of advertising shortsighted- 
 ness, for it stands out like a sore thumb. 
 
 Now, about lost motion and low visibility 
 by the advertising agent. The most glar- 
 ing fault is when the agent uses his credit 
 and standing beyond his personal resources 
 and speculates in the result of his client's 
 business. That's low visibility, for if he 
 would look beyond his nose he would dis- 
 cover breakers ahead and about them 
 frightful wreckage of some of the stoutest 
 ships, even when steered by the ablest 
 mariners. It is the exception that proves 
 the rule if an advertising agent, departing 
 from his legitimate business, avoids disaster. 
 
 An agent mars his reputation as a safe 
 adviser and counselor when, for the small 
 
 394 
 
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THE TIMES TODAY 
 
 immediate profit in sight, he takes the busi- 
 ness of an advertiser who has nothing to 
 advertise except, perhaps, a bad name; or 
 one whose advertising a tyro in the business 
 should know would bring no results. Here's 
 where truth should prevail, and the pro- 
 posed advertiser warned against wasting 
 his money. 
 
 "I only handle advertising which my 
 expert knowledge and experience cause me 
 to believe will justify the expenditure." 
 What a drawing card that would be for an 
 agent if he could succeed in making those 
 interested know its truth. 
 
 Now, as to the publisher — the third 
 party to the transaction. How about his 
 lost motion and low visibility? I cannot 
 even begin to catalogue his delinquencies 
 under that head; it would consume too 
 much time. But this I will say, that there 
 is no other business in which there is so 
 much lost motion and low visibility as in 
 the publishing business. The wastage is 
 frightful, appalling, and disheartening to 
 those who have the temerity to acquaint 
 themselves with the facts. 
 
 I refer especially to newspaper publishers, 
 and it is of their bad practices I shall say 
 a few words, for I cannot trust myself to 
 unloose my pent-up feelings on that sub- 
 ject, in fear lest it largely partake of self- 
 condemnation. 
 
 In the matter of advertising rates there 
 seems to be only one established rule, viz., 
 "All the traffic will bear." There seems 
 to be no standard, no basis from which to 
 begin, and consequently rates are altogether 
 arbitrary. Common sense and ordinary 
 rules of logic play little part. Rates are 
 
 395 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 fixed in the easiest way; that is, along the 
 line of least resistance. Is it any wonder 
 that the advertiser is disquieted and not 
 trustful when he is asked to sail the un- 
 charted seas ? 
 
 The besetting sin is low rates. If you wish 
 to see intelligent advertising, effective 
 advertising, advertising that attracts the 
 reader, where there is the least lost motion 
 in space and words, you will find it in the 
 publications maintaining what the adver- 
 tiser considers high rates; and, on the other 
 hand, the thoughtless, worthless advertising 
 predominates where the rates are low. 
 
 I am not comparing largely circulated 
 publications with those of small circulation. 
 I have in mind publications of relatively 
 the same circulation. When rates, in a de- 
 sirable medium, are what the advertiser 
 thinks comparatively high, he must con- 
 sider quality, and nine times out of ten the 
 quality or character of the circulation is 
 the deciding factor. Cheap rates destroy 
 more advertising than they create, for 
 they encourage useless and profitless ad- 
 vertising. 
 
 I have a theory that the basic rate should 
 be one cent a line per thousand circulation, 
 in a publication where the advertising 
 columns are given the consideration to 
 which they are entitled, and the advertising 
 placed to the best advantage for results 
 with regard to the publication's good repu- 
 tation and the reader's interest. There 
 may be less advertising space in the pub- 
 lication, but what there is would be better 
 done and more effective. I am discussing 
 advertising in its broadest aspect; cases 
 in which there is something to advertise 
 396 
 
THE TIMES TODAY 
 
 and advertising space is purchased with 
 a view to the result of its direct appeal. 
 
 I wish to make clearer what I have just 
 said regarding the placing of advertising 
 with reference to the publication's good 
 reputation and the reader's interest. I 
 mean the advertisement should not be dis- 
 guised; the reader should recognize it as an 
 advertisement; no sailing under false colors. 
 Advertising that cannot pay one cent a 
 line per thousand circulation is hardly 
 worth doing. 
 
 Newspapers have a variety of rates, 
 usually the highest for the business that 
 naturally comes to them, and the lowest for 
 such as prefer another medium; not infre- 
 quently this discrimination is against the 
 interests of the best clients. 
 
 The ideal newspaper advertising rate is 
 a flat rate — one rate for all kinds of ad- 
 vertising; no time or space discount; a 
 space limitation and extra charge for per- 
 missible exceptions and preferences. 
 
 There is no good excuse for reducing the 
 rate because the advertisement has news 
 value, for the greater the news value the 
 stronger the justification for remunerative 
 rates. 
 
 A word with reference to th'fe belief in 
 some quarters that the advertiser bears too 
 great a proportion of the expense of pub- 
 lication. This creates the popular delusion 
 of an unequal division of the expense be- 
 tween advertisers and readers. An estab- 
 lished newspaper is entitled to fix its 
 advertising rates so that its net receipts 
 from circulation may be left on the credit 
 side of the profit and loss account. To 
 arrive at net receipts, I would deduct from 
 
 397 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 the gross the cost of promotion, distribution, 
 and other expenses incidental to circulation. 
 I affirm this on the principle that the 
 advertiser wishes to encourage the widest 
 distribution, for without impairing its 
 merits the less costly the publication the 
 larger its circulation, hence the more 
 valuable and less costly the advertising; so, 
 the less the reader pays, the less the ad- 
 vertising costs, and if circulation augments 
 profits the publisher is rewarded for stimu- 
 lating it. To assert that therefore the 
 newspaper is solely or dangerously depend- 
 ent on the advertiser is to declare that 
 advertising has no value, that advertisers 
 have no intelligence, and that the pub- 
 lisher does not know independence when 
 he enjoys it. It is an axiom in newspaper 
 publishing — "more readers, more inde- 
 pendence of the influence of advertisers; 
 fewer readers and more dependence on 
 advertisers." It may seem like a contra- 
 diction (yet it is the truth) to assert: the 
 greater the number of advertisers, the less 
 influence they are individually able to exer- 
 cise with the publisher. 
 
 A lot of nonsense is circulated about the 
 advertiser's control of the newspaper. A 
 newspaper improperly controlled by an 
 advertiser is the exception that proves the 
 rule. , 
 
 There are some compensations for those dis- 
 advantages which modern conditions have brought. 
 The high cost of estabHshing a newspaper or of 
 conducting an unsuccessful newspaper makes it 
 rather unlikely that in the future papers will be 
 maintained, as they have sometimes been in the 
 
 398 
 
THE TIMES TODAY 
 
 past, for ulterior reasons — that is, with some other 
 purpose than the presentation of the news. Finan- 
 cial or political interests are not likely to buy 
 papers to support their views if they are going to 
 have to spend millions on this type of publicity — 
 a type which is apt to be unremunerative, since a 
 paper subservient to external interests is usually 
 very soon recognized for what it is, and loses all 
 standing in consequence. Nor will it be so easy in 
 the future as it has been in the past for wealthy 
 men to buy newspapers as playthings. 
 
 The larger scale of present-day journalism has 
 some other advantages. It has pretty nearly re- 
 moved some of the temptations, such as subservience 
 to advertisers or to political subsidies, which were 
 constantly present with the publisher of past years. 
 The perils of journalism today are those of most other 
 human activities — slackness, routine, over-confi- 
 dence, shortsightedness. They are most serious, 
 perhaps, on the most successful papers, where the 
 temptation to ride on a great reputation is most 
 seductive. If American newspaper history teaches 
 anything, it teaches that riding on a reputation is 
 the surest road to ruin. Every paper in New York 
 can read that in its own record. 
 
 For these consolations, such as they are, all news- 
 paper men who take their business seriously should 
 be thankful. In a sense, perhaps, the newspaper 
 business is a public utility, but it differs from other 
 public utilities in that competition is essential to its 
 usefulness. Theoretically, there can be too much 
 competition in the newspaper field, but there is not 
 likely to be in the next few decades. And it is a bad 
 
 399 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 thing for any business to become so expensive that 
 only a rich man can even dream of coming into it and 
 shaking it up, for experience has shown that men who 
 have acquired wealth in other occupations rarely 
 provide very formidable competition when they go 
 into the newspaper business; and, like all other busi- 
 nesses, it needs shaking up now and then. In the 
 larger cities at least the newspaper field is virtually 
 closed, restricted to those who now occupy it. The 
 responsibility on them is all the heavier, for unless 
 they do their work well it will not be done. And it 
 has to be done in a democracy. 
 
 The recovery of The Times since 1896 is without 
 parallel in modern newspaper history, ^nd for the 
 reasons given above it is likely to remain without 
 parallel. Yet it may be that its history has some 
 useful lessons for newspaper makers. What those 
 lessons are any reader may infer from the story which 
 has here been told. In the opinion of the manage- 
 ment of The Times, perhaps the most important les- 
 son is that integrity, common sense and good judg- 
 ment are more likely to bring success than wild 
 extravagances, constant experimentation and the 
 frantic following of each new fashion. The fact that 
 a particular policy or a particular feature has been a 
 success on one paper is no guarantee that it will be 
 successful everywhere. In the newspaper business, 
 as in most other businesses, the surest road to success 
 — in the opinion of the management of The Times — 
 is to know what you want to do and know how to do 
 it. If the new publisher who took charge of The 
 Times in 1896 had tried to imitate The Herald, The 
 
 400 / 
 
THE TIMES TODAY 
 
 World or The Journal — the three brilliantly successful 
 papers of the day — he would merely have accom- 
 plished his own ruin; and he could not have rebuilt 
 The Times if he had not known his business from the 
 ground up. Contrary to the opinion held in some 
 quarters, newspaper making is skilled labor; it can- 
 not be performed by any well-intentioned amateur. 
 
 401 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 
 
 Twenty-five Years' Record of Advertising Growth 
 of "The New York Times" 
 
 YEAR AGATE LINES 
 
 1896 2,227,196 
 
 1897 2,408,247 
 
 1898 M33»I93 
 
 1899 3.378,750 
 
 1900 3,978,620 
 
 I9OI 4,957.205 
 
 1902 5,501,779 
 
 1903 5,207,964 
 
 1904 5,228,480 
 
 I9OS 5,958,322 
 
 ^906 6,033,457 
 
 1907 6,304,298 
 
 1908 5,897,332 
 
 ^909 7,194,703 
 
 I9IO 7,550,650 
 
 I9II 8,130,425 
 
 I912 8,844,866 
 
 ^913 9,327,369 
 
 ^914 9,164,927 
 
 I915 9,682,562 
 
 ^916 11,552,496 
 
 ^917 12,509,587 
 
 ^9^8 13,518,25s 
 
 I9I9 19,682,562 
 
 ^920 23,447,395 
 
 402 
 
HISTORY OF THE NEW ^ORK TIMES 
 
 Twenty-five Years' Record of Circulation Growth 
 of "The New York Times" 
 
 YEAR COPIES 
 
 October, 1896 2i,Si6 
 
 " 1897 22,456 
 
 1898 25,726 
 
 " 1899 76,260 
 
 " 1900 82,106 
 
 1901 102,472 
 
 1902 105,416 
 
 " 1903 106,386 
 
 1904 118,786 
 
 " 1905 120,710 
 
 1906 131,140 
 
 1907 143.460 
 
 1908 172,880 
 
 1909 184.317 
 
 " 1910 191,981 
 
 1911 197.37s 
 
 1912 209,751* 
 
 1913 230,360* 
 
 1914 259,673* 
 
 191S 318,274* 
 
 1916 340.904* 
 
 1917 357.225* 
 
 191 8 368.492* 
 
 1919 362,971* 
 
 1920 342,553* 
 
 April 1921 352,528* 
 
 * Average net paid daily and Sunday circulation reported] to the Post Office De- 
 partment for the six months immediately preceding, in accordance with Act of Con- 
 gress August 24, xgxs. 
 
 403 
 
" All the News That's Fit to Print." 
 
 ^fEW YORK. TUESDAY, DEC. ID, 1314. 
 
 FOR THE GERMAN PEOPLE, PEACE 
 WITH FREEDOM. 
 
 Germany Is doomed to sure defeat. 
 Bankrupt In statesmanship, over- 
 matched in arms, under the moral con- 
 demnation of the civilized world, bo- 
 frtended only by the Austrian and the 
 Turli., two backward-looking and dylns 
 nations, desperately battling against 
 the hosts of thr^e great Powers to 
 which help and reinforcement from 
 Sta,tea now neutral will certainly 
 conle should the decision b6 long de- 
 ferred, she pours out the Wood of her 
 heroic subjects and wastes her dimin- 
 ishing substance in a hopeless strog- 
 Ble that postpones but cannot alter the 
 fatal decree. Yet the doom of the 
 Qcrman Kmpire may become the de- 
 liverance of the German people if they 
 will betimes but seize and hold their 
 own. Lelpslc bfegan and Waterloo 
 achieved the emancipation of the 
 French people from the bloody, selfish 
 and sterile domination of the Corsican 
 Ogre. St. Helena made it secure. 
 Sedan Sent the little Napoleon sprawl- 
 ing and the statesmen of France in- 
 stantly established and proclaimed the 
 Republic. Will the Germans blindly 
 insist on having their Waterloo, their 
 Sedan — their St. Helena, too? A 
 million Oermans have been sacrificed, 
 a millloTi German homes are desolate. 
 Must other millions die and yet other 
 millions mourn before the people of 
 Ctommny take In the court of reason 
 and human liberty their appeal from 
 th6 imperial and military caste that 
 rushes them to their ruin? 
 
 They have their full justification in 
 th6 incompetence and failure of their 
 rulers. German diplomacy and Ger- 
 man militarism have broken down. 
 The blundering Incapacity of the 
 
Kaiser's counselors and servants In 
 Statecraft at Berlin and In foreign 
 rapitais committed Germany to a war 
 against the joined might of England. 
 France and Russia. Bismarcjc \trould 
 never have had it so. Before he let 
 the armies tak& the field, before he 
 gave Austria tlie "free- hand," he 
 would have had England and Russia 
 by the ears, he would have Isolated 
 France, as ho did in 1870. The old 
 Emperor, a man not above the com- 
 mon in capacity, surpassed the wisdom 
 of his grandson in this, that he knew 
 better than to trust Jiis own judgment 
 and he was sagacious enough to call 
 great men to his aid. Wilhelm JL 
 was wretchedly served at Vienna by 
 an Ambassador blinded by Russo- 
 phobia, at St. Petersburg by another 
 who advised his home Government that 
 Russia would not go to war, and at 
 London by the muddling Lichnowskt, 
 wh6se first guesses were commonly 
 vrtohg and his second too late to be 
 serviceable. Germany literally forced 
 en alliance for this war between 
 England and Russia, two Powers 
 often antagonistic In the past and 
 having now no common interest save 
 the curbing of Germany. The ter- 
 tible misjudgment of the General 
 Staff hurled Germany headlong into 
 the pit that Incompetent diplomacy 
 had prepared. The Empire went to 
 war with three great nations ablo to 
 meet her with forces mora than 
 double her own. 
 
 Then the worth of that iron military 
 discipline and of the forty years of 
 •ceaseless preparation to which Ger- 
 many had sacrificed so mufch of the 
 productive power of her people was 
 put to the test. Again the colossal Im- 
 perial machine broke down. It was 
 not through Incompetence. The Ger- 
 man Army was magnificent In its 
 strength. In equipment, and In valor. 
 It was overmatched. It had attempted 
 the impossible. . That was the fatal 
 Ijluhder. The first rush upon Paris 
 
 406 
 
was intended to be Irresistible; that 
 ■was the plan of the General Staff; 
 Franco crushed, Russia could be sent 
 about her business. It vras not ir- 
 resistible. It was checked, it was re* 
 pulsed. When the Invaders were 
 driveii back from the Harne to the 
 Alsne and the Belgian frontier Ger- 
 many's ultimate defeat was registered 
 In the book of fate and heralded to the 
 watching world. Germany's battle line 
 has been forced back to where it stood 
 when it first encountered the 51rench. 
 Calais • is freed .. from her menace, 
 Tannenberg was ; but an incident 
 to the swarming hordes of Russia. 
 "What boots it if she enters Lodz, 
 If she seize Warsaw, what even 
 If by some unlocked for turn of for- 
 tune she again approach the walls of 
 Paris? KiTCHENEE'a new million of 
 trained men will be ia France before 
 the snows have melted in the Vos^es, 
 and Russia is inexhaustible. 
 
 There is within the Cterman view an 
 even more sinister portent. The 
 world cannot, will not, let Germany 
 win in this war. With her dominating 
 all Europe peac6 and security would 
 vanish from the earth. A few months 
 ago the world only dimly comprehend- 
 ed Germany, now it knows her thor- 
 oughly. So if England, France and 
 Russia cannot prevail against her, 
 Italy, with her two millions, the sturdy 
 Hollanders, the Swiss, hard men in a 
 fight, the Danes, the Greeks and the 
 men of the Balkans Will come to their 
 aid and make sure that the work is 
 finished, once for all. For their own 
 peace and safety the nations must de- 
 molish that towering structure of mili- 
 tarism in the centre.of Europe that has 
 become the world's danger-spot,, its 
 greatest menace. 
 
 The only possible ending of the war 
 Is through the defeat of Germany. 
 Driven back to her Rhine strongholds, 
 she will offer a stubborn resistance. 
 Even with the Russians near or act- 
 ually In Berlin she would fight on, 
 407 
 
But for what? Why? Because the 
 German people, the very people, axe 
 resolved to get. themselves all killed 
 before this Inevitable day of the en- 
 emy's triimiph? Not at all. ¥he 
 weary men in the trenches and the 
 distressed people merely obey the or- 
 ders given by Imperial and military 
 authority; For the men in those high 
 quarters defeat would be the end of 
 all. IDesperation, with some possible, 
 admixture of blind confidence, will 
 continue the. war. teut.why should the 
 German people make further sacrifice 
 of blood to save the pride and the 
 shoulder' straps of German official- 
 dom? It means a million more battle- 
 field graves. It -means frightful addl- 
 tioiis tb the bin of costs and to the 
 harshness of the terms. Since the 
 more dreadful ending Is in plain vjew, 
 why not force the better ending now? 
 
 But this is revolution. That may be 
 so; call it so. Definitions are useful, 
 they are not deterrent. Is there in all 
 history an*y record of a whole people 
 rising against their rulers in the 
 midst of a great war? Iiet the his- 
 torians answer the question. Is it con- 
 ceivable that the loyal German peo- 
 ple, made one by the love of the 
 Fatherland and devoted to the ac- 
 complishment of the imperial Ideals, 
 could be stirred to revolt while still 
 unconquered? That concerns the 
 prophets. We are concerned neither 
 with precedents nor with prophecy. 
 We have aimed here to make clear the 
 certainty of Germany's defeat and to 
 show that if she chooses to fight to 
 the bitter end her ultimate and sure 
 overthrow will leave her bled to ex- 
 haustion, drained Of her resources, and 
 under sentence to penalties of which 
 the stubbornness of her futile resist- 
 ance will measure the severity. We 
 could wish that the German people, 
 seeing the light, might take timely 
 measures to avert the calamities that 
 await them. 
 
 It may weirbe. doubted that they 
 408 
 
■will see the light. But have not the 
 men of German blood tn this country 
 a duty to perform to thelrbeleaguered 
 brethren In the-old homo?. Americans 
 of Qerman birth or, of German descent 
 should see and feel the truth; jabout 
 the present position of Germany, this- 
 probability .for the near, thff certainty 
 for the remoter, future. At homd the 
 Gerftians cannot ' know the whole 
 truth; It Is not permitted them, tcf 
 know, It. It will te' unfraternal and 
 most cruel for German- Americans 
 further to k^ep the ti:uth from them, 
 or to fail in thefr plain duty to mak^ 
 known to them how low the imperial 
 and miiitaristlc ^deal lias fallen in tiie 
 world's «steem, and to bring them, to 
 .understand that the eneriiles they now 
 confront are but the. first line of clv- 
 SJlzation's defenses against the menacer 
 of the sword that forever rattles in 
 its scabbard. The sword must go, the 
 scabbafd, too, fOid the shining armor. 
 If the Germans hefe have ^t all the 
 ear of the Germans there, .can they 
 not tell them s6? They have como 
 here to escape the everlasting: din of 
 war's trappings; they have come to 
 find peacd and, quiet .in a land of lib- 
 erty and law, where government rests 
 on the consent of the governed, where 
 the people by their chosen representa- 
 tives, when there is a question of go- 
 ing Into the trenches to be slain, have 
 something to say about It. Have they 
 ever tried to get into the . heads of 
 their friends in the Fatherland some 
 idea of the comforts and advantages 
 of being governed In- that, way? In- 
 stead of vainly trying to change the 
 weri-matured convictions of the Amer- 
 icans, why not labor for the conver- 
 sion of their brother Germans? 
 
 The State Is Power, said Teeitsciike. 
 Ha would have written Tennyson's 
 line " The. Individual withers, the State 
 Is more and more." . In the German 
 teaching the State is everything, to 
 the State the individual must sacrifice 
 everything. ' With us the State fa the 
 
 409 
 
social organization by whichimen as-' 
 sure to themselves the free play of In- 
 dividual genius, each man's right In 
 peace and security to work out his in- 
 dividual purposes.' If tha German- 
 Americans prize the prlvlleses they 
 have enjoyed under our theory of the 
 State, ought they not ta teU the Ger- 
 mans at home what It means for the 
 individual to be free from quasi-Vas- 
 saiage? There is no people on earth, 
 more worthy to enjoy the blessinss of 
 freedom than the Germans.' Gemiany 
 lias taken her place in the' very front 
 of civilization, freed from "the double 
 incubus of imperialism dnd militarism 
 the German genius would have a 
 marvelo.us development. It Is not in 
 the thought of Germany's foes to 
 crush the German people, the world 
 would not let them be crushed. It has 
 for them the highest esteem. It will 
 acclaim the day when it can resume 
 friendly and uninterrupted relations 
 with them.. But the headstrong, mis- 
 guided, and dangerous rulers of Ger- 
 many are going to te called to stern 
 account, and the reckoning will be 
 paid by the German people in just the 
 proportion that they make common 
 cause with the blindly arrogant ruling 
 class. "When representative Ameri- 
 cans and men of peace like Dr. Eliot 
 and Andrew Cabnegie Irislst that there 
 can be no permanent peace until an 
 end has bfeen made of German milir 
 tarism, sober-minded Germans, here as 
 well as In Germany, ought not to. turn 
 a deaf ear to such voices, for they 
 speak the opinion of the wsrld. The 
 bill of costs mounts frightfully with 
 every month's prolongation of the war 
 and the toll of human lived is every 
 day ruthlessly taken. It may be a 
 counsel of unattainable perfection to 
 say that the German people ought now 
 to end the war. But for their own 
 happiness, for their own homes, for 
 their interests and their future, it Is 
 true. The truth of the counsel is un- 
 conquerable. ! 
 
 410 
 
Roster of 
 
 The New York Times 
 
 Company 
 
 Adolph S. Ocas President 
 
 Charles R. Miller Vice-President 
 
 Julius Ochs Abler Vice-President 
 
 Arthur Hays Sulzberger Vice-President 
 
 Julius Ochs Adler Treasurer 
 
 Ben. C. Franck • • • Secretary 
 
 BOARD OF DIRECTORS 
 
 Adolph S. Ochs Charles R. Miller Ben. C. Franck 
 
 G. W. Ochs Oakes Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger 
 
 PUBLISHER 
 
 *Adolph S. Ochs 
 
 Executive Council 
 
 Adolph S. Ochs Charles R. Miller Carr V. Van Anda 
 
 Julius Ochs Adler Louis Wiley Arthur Hays Sulzberger 
 
 Assistants to the Publisher 
 
 Julius Ochs Adler Arthur Hays Sulzberger *Ben. C. Franck 
 
 *Kate L. Stone, Secretary to the Publisher 
 
 Secretaries and Clerks 
 
 ALICE M. JENKINS MAURA L. o'sULLIVAN C. R. SAFFORD 
 
 peter BROWN JOHN R. HOUSTON ANDREW JORDAN 
 
 JOHN o'bRIEN JOHN o'dONNELL ANNA CARROLL 
 
 J. BENTLEY SQUIER, JR. 
 
 Attorney 
 
 Alfred A. Cook, General Counsel 
 George Norris, Associate Attorney 
 
 • Twenty-five years or more with The Times. 
 
 411 
 
ROSTER OF THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY 
 EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT 
 
 ♦Charles R. Miller, Editor-in-chief 
 
 RoLLO Ogden, Associate Editor 
 
 John H. Finley, Associate Editor 
 
 Editorial Staff 
 
 Henry E. Armstrong *E. A. Bradford John Corbin 
 
 Elmer Davis Edward M. Kingsbury *F. C. Mortimer 
 
 Frank D. Root Charles H. Grasty 
 
 NEWS DEPARTMENT 
 
 Carr V. Van Anda, Managing Editor 
 
 Frederick T. Birchall Assistant Managing Editor 
 
 Alden March Day News Editor 
 
 Osmund Phillips City Editor 
 
 David H. Joseph Assistant City Editor 
 
 J. W. Phoebus Night City Editor 
 
 Ernest V. Chamberlin Assistant Night City Editor 
 
 Joseph F. Tebeau Telegraph Editor 
 
 Wilson L. Fairbanks Assistant Telegraph Editor 
 
 John F. O'Neil Make-up Editor 
 
 H. J. Learoyd Assistant Make-up Editor 
 
 Ralph H. Graves Sunday Editor 
 
 Henry Irving Brock Assistant Sunday Editor 
 
 Charles M. Graves Editor Rotogravure Pictorial 
 
 Victor W. Talley Asst.Ed.RotogravurePictorial 
 
 Alfred D. Noyes Financial Editor _ 
 
 Franklin K. Sprague Assistant Financial Editor 
 
 *Henry Loewenthal Business Editor 
 
 Bernard Thomson Sports Editor 
 
 William J. Slocum Assistant Sports Editor 
 
 Clifford Smythe Book Review Editor 
 
 James B. Stewart Real Estate Editor 
 
 Richard Aldrich Music Editor 
 
 Alexander Woollcott Dramatic Editor 
 
 Wilbur Finley Fauley Society Editor 
 
 Elizabeth Luther Gary Art Editor 
 
 Edward N. Dart Director Art Department 
 
 Edwin Marcus Cartoonist 
 
 Laurence V. Updegraff Editor Correspondence 
 
 Charles V. Vanderhoof Manager Sjoidicate News 
 
 Walter Littlefield Foreign Publications 
 
 Harry T. Smith Foreign Publications 
 
 *R. W. Welch American Publications 
 
 Jennie Welland Manager Library and Index 
 
 Thomas Bracken Manager News Index 
 
 Irving E. Pfeiffer Subject Index 
 
 Frederick Meinholz Manager Wireless Station 
 
 Richard V. Oulahan Manager Washington Office 
 
 Hal. H. Smith Asst. Mgr. Washington Office 
 
 Ernest A. Marshall Manager London Office 
 
 Edwin L. James . Manager Paris Office 
 
 ♦ Twenty-five years ot more with Tie Times. 
 
 412 
 
ROSTER OF THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY 
 
 News and Editorial Staff 
 
 *ABRAHAMS, MICHAEL B. 
 ACKERMAN, JOHN D. 
 ANDREWS, HENRY V. 
 AUSTIN, FREDERICK A. 
 BARCLAY, GEO. E. 
 BEAN, RODNEY 
 BECAN, JOHN 
 BELL, JEFFERSON G. 
 BERONOWSKl, ANDREW 
 BLAKE, GEO. W. 
 BLANPIED, RALPH D. 
 BLYTHE, WALTER E. 
 BOND, F. FRAZER 
 BRADY, EDWARD 
 BRANNAN, DANA 
 BROADWELL, ARTHUR 
 BROWN, CYRIL 
 BROWN, JOHN 
 BROWN, PERCY 
 BURGESS, ARTHUR 
 BUTCHER, JESSE S. 
 CAMPBELL, JOHN R. 
 CASARIO, EUGENE 
 CHASE, W. B. 
 CHESTERTON, GEO. L. 
 CLARKE, HAZEL 
 CLARKE, VINCENT 
 COLLINS, WILLIAM 
 CONNERY, TIM 
 CORTESI, ELIZABETH 
 CORUM, MARTENE W. 
 CRANE, F. W. 
 CROUCH, H. C. 
 CURLEY, JOHN W. 
 DAVIDSON, CHARLES M. 
 DAWSON, JAMES 
 DAWSON, ROBERT P. 
 DAY, JOSEPH T. 
 DELANO, EDWIN F. 
 DE NARDO, ANTHONY 
 DE PUY, FRANK A. 
 DICKEY, CARL 
 DONLON, J. S. 
 DURANTY, WALTER 
 EATON, MALCOLM 
 EVERETT, ETHEL W. 
 FARDON, JAMES 
 FELD, ROSE C. 
 FELLEMAN, HAZEL 
 FINCH, TOLITA MAY 
 
 FISCHER, ELIZ. M. 
 FISKE, D. W. 
 FOLEY, MAURICE 
 FORD, COREY H. 
 FOX, ARTHUR 
 GLEASON, LILLLAN 
 GOBETZ, ARTHUR 
 GODDARD, PERCIVAL S. 
 GORDON, JOHN J. 
 GORMAN, HERBERT S. 
 GRANT, J. C. 
 GROVE, J. H. 
 HAGERTY, JAMES A. 
 HAGGERTY, MICHAEL F. 
 HALLIGAN, EDWARD 
 HAMBIDGE, C. G. 
 HAMEL, GASTON 
 HAMILTON, THOMAS C. 
 HARDING, JOHN W. 
 HARRIS, FRANCES D. 
 HARRISON, JAMES R. 
 HAYS, GENE 
 HEATH, ELIZ. M. 
 HEDDEN, GEORGIANA 
 HERTEL, H. H. 
 HINTON, HAROLD B. 
 HIRSCHEL, IRVINO 
 HIRSCHEL, TOBIE 
 HOLLAND, JAMES 
 HOLME, LEONARD R. 
 HOYT, PHILIP b. 
 HUGHES, CHARLES F. 
 HUNTER, FRANK 
 HUNTINGTON, WM. R. 
 HUTCHISON, PERCY A. 
 IRWIN, JR., r. N. 
 IVERSON, REGINALD 
 JAEGER, FREDA. 
 JANNET, ADY 
 JOHNSTON, ALVA 
 JONES, WATKIN 
 KAUFMAN, GEO. 8. 
 KEARNEY, AGNES 
 KEARNS, FRANK 
 KEENAN, WALTER M. 
 KELLY, MRS. F. F. 
 KELLY, JOHN 
 KEPPLE, ERNEST P. 
 KING, EARL 
 KLAUBER, EDWARD 
 
 KNOX, PURVES T. 
 KROLL, MORTIMER J. 
 KURTH, JR., OTTO 
 KURTZ, HENRY 
 LANE, MILTON 
 LARITY, THOMAS 
 LARNED, RICHARD M. 
 LAVIN, JOHN 
 LAWSON, WILLIAM E. 
 LEA, J. H. 
 LEWIS, HENRY N. 
 UNN, JR., THOMAS C. 
 LONG, E. JOHN 
 LOTT, ELLA K. 
 LYMAN, LAUREN D. 
 MaCNEIL, NEIL 
 MARSHALL, FRANCES W. 
 MARTIN, WALTER T. 
 MASON, JOSEPH 
 *MCCAHILL, W. J. 
 MCDONALD, ANNA 
 MCDONALD, GEORGE 
 MCDOWELL, R. K. 
 MCGINITY, LEO A. 
 MCGILL, FRED W. 
 MCMANUS, JOHN 
 MCSWEENEY, EDWARD 
 MICHAEL, C. R. 
 MILLAR, H. PERCY 
 MORAN, STEVE 
 MUELLER, LOGAN E. 
 MUENCH, FRED 
 MULLER, WILLIAM 
 NAINOR, ANDREW 
 NETZER, JACK 
 NIXON, WILSON K. 
 O'CONNELL, JOHN J. 
 o'cONNOR, F. J. 
 OWEN, JOHN 
 OWEN, RUSSELL D. 
 PHILIP, P. J. 
 PORTER, R. S. 
 PRAET, JAMES J. 
 RAE, BRUCE 
 RAUCH, MAY 
 
 RICHARDSON, WILLIAM D. 
 RIDDELL, BEATRICE 
 ROBINSON, F. H. 
 ROBINSON, JOHN E. 
 ROSENBERG, R. 
 
 • Twenty-five years or more with The Times. 
 
 413 
 
ROSTER OF THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY 
 
 News and Editorial Staff — Continued 
 
 ROSENTHAL, DELPHINE 
 ROWLAND, EDITH 
 RYAN, JOHN 
 SACKETT, WILLIAM E. 
 SAPIA, JANE 
 SCHLOSSER, WILLIAM 
 SCHOCH, WALTER 
 SCHUMANN, CHARLES 
 SCHWARTZ, SADIE 
 SHAPS, JACK 
 SNYDER, FRANCES 
 SOULE, H. P. 
 SPEARING, JAMES O. 
 SPEERS, L. C. 
 SPENCER, H. S. 
 STARK, LOUIS 
 STAUB, WILLIAM 
 STEFFEN, CHARLES 
 STEFFEN, J. HAL. 
 
 STEPHENS, DOLORES 
 STEWART, EDWARD J. 
 STRUSINSKI, NICHOLAS 
 SUETTER, BENJAMIN 
 SULLIVAN, JOS. F. 
 SWARTZ, ARTHUR 
 TAFT, MARY A. 
 TALLEY, TRUMAN H. 
 THOMPSON, C. W. 
 THORNE, VAN BUREN 
 TURPIN, RUFUS E. 
 VAN NESS, FRED A. 
 VULTEE, L. H. 
 WADE, MARGARET 
 WALL, FLORENCE 
 WALSH, LEONARD 
 WAMSLEY, WILBUR F. 
 WARN, W. A. 
 WATERS, JOSEPH 
 
 WEAVER, JOS. A. 
 WEBER, ABRAHAM 
 WELDON, M. L. 
 WHITE, EDITH 
 WHITNEY, C. H. 
 WIDLIZKA, ANTAN 
 WILKIE, ENID 
 WILL, ALLEN S. 
 WILLIAMS, FLORENCE E. 
 WILLIAMS, T. W. 
 WILLIAMSON, S. T. 
 WILSON, WILLIAM R. 
 WIMBROUGH, A. C. 
 WOOD, LEWIS 
 WRIGHT, JEAN 
 WRIGHT, WILLIAM C. 
 YERION, RUTH 
 YOUNG, JAMES C. 
 ZOLOTOW, SAMUEL 
 
 BUSINESS DEPARTMENT 
 
 *Louis Wiley, Business Manager 
 
 Edwin S. Friendly Assistant Business Manager 
 
 Hugh A/ O'Donnell Bus. Manager Representative 
 
 B. T. Butterworth Advertising Manager 
 
 Harris H. Walker Assistant Advertising Manager 
 
 Frank W. Harold Advertising Censor 
 
 Arnold Sanchez Manager Credit Department 
 
 James M. Kirshner Manager Charge Department 
 
 R. Alexander Lawe Manager Bookkeeping Department 
 
 William W. Miller Classified Advertising Manager 
 
 Irma Kory Assistant Classified Advertising Mgr. 
 
 *Charles a. Flanagan Circulation Manager 
 
 Louis O. Morny Subscription Manager 
 
 William Johnson Chief Circulation Inspector 
 
 Michael A. O'Reilly Chief Circulation Bookkeeper 
 
 William A. Hurley Manager Annex Publication Office 
 
 Edward H. Taylor Supervisor Branch Offices 
 
 Edward B. Wells Mgr. Times Building Publication Office 
 
 William Kean Manager Downtown Office 
 
 A. H. Mandelberg Manager Harlem Office 
 
 Chester M. Goode Manager Brooklyn Office 
 
 Bernard Van Camp Manager Messenger Department 
 
 Sadie L. McNulty Incoming Mail Department 
 
 Anna Groh Outgoing Mail Department 
 
 Mildred L. Bischof Manager File Department 
 
 AnnaKottman Circulation Manager Index 
 
 Catherine Maguire Chief Telephone Operator 
 
 ♦ Twenty-five years or more with The Times. 
 
 414 
 
ROSTER OF THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY 
 Business Department — Continued 
 
 ADAMS, WALTER S. 
 AGOADO, JOSEPH 
 ALLUISI, GEORGE 
 APPLEGATE, GERTRUDE G. 
 ARDELL, HERBERT S. 
 ASTON, HENRY H. 
 BABCOCK, FRANCIS M. 
 BACHRAN, JOHN E. 
 BACON, MRS. HATTIE 
 BALL, E. SULLIVAN 
 BANGS, GILBERT M. 
 BANKS, HARRIET D. 
 BARNETT, GEORGE F. 
 BASILOWITZ, MICHAEL 
 BAXTER, IRVING C. 
 BECK, AUGUSTUS 
 BEERE, SEYMOUR 
 BELL, ROBERT 
 BENDER, WILLL/IM 
 BENNETT, MAE V. 
 BERGEN, MARGARET 
 BERGEN, PHILIP 
 BERGER, HELEN 
 BERKERY, ROSE 
 BIGELOW, BURT M. 
 BIGGS, RICHARD 
 BISSETT, WILLIAM 
 BLOCH, LENA 
 BOEHM, HULDA M. 
 BOLEI, EVELYN 
 BOND, FRANK 
 BRADLEY, MARGARET 
 BRENNEN, CATHERINE 
 BRENNEN, CHARLES J. 
 BRENNEN, MAY 
 BROSNAN, AGNES 
 BROWN, HARRY W. 
 BRUMER, FRANCES 
 BUCHOLZ, CLAIRE 
 BURKE, ANNA 
 EURNES, MARJORIE 
 BZENAK, ANNA 
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ROSTER OF THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY 
 
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ROSTER OF THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY 
 
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ROSTER OF THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY 
 
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 CASSIDY, EDWARD GAMMON, WALTER KUHN, JOHN 
 
 CLARK, GEORGE GERRITY, GEORGE LANE, ALBERT 
 
 CLIFFORD, CORNELIUS GERRITY, JAMES LANIGAN, KENNETH 
 
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 COTTER, THOMAS GROTE, LOUIS LOGAN, GEORGE 
 
 COULTER, WALTER HAASE, HARRY LYONS, WILLIAM 
 
 COYNE, EDWARD HANSON, C. MaCDONALD, JOSEPH 
 
 DALY, CHARLES HARDY, RAYMOND MCCARTHY, EDWARD 
 
 • Twenty-five years or more with The Times. 
 
 421 
 
ROSTER OF THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY 
 
 Press Room — Continued 
 
 MCEVOy, EDWARD 
 MCGUIRE, ARTHUR 
 MCKEE, JOHN 
 MCLAUGHLIN, B. 
 MCPARTLAND, RICHARD 
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 422 
 
 PATTERSON, DAN J. 
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ROSTER OF THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY 
 
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 FRAZEE, JOHN MOONEY, JOHN 
 GALLAGHER, MIKE MUIR, WM. F. 
 
 » Twenty-five years or more with The Times. 
 
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 MERZ, JOHN 
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 PATTERSON, ANNIE 
 PATTERSON, MARY 
 RYAN, FRANK 
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 SULLIVAN, PATRICK 
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 424 
 
ROSTER OF THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY 
 AUDITING DEPARTMENT 
 
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 ZIMMERMAN, ALBERT 
 
ROSTER OF THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY 
 
 CURRENT HISTORY, MIDWEEK PICTORIAL AND 
 WAR VOLUMES 
 
 George W. Ochs Oakes Editor and Manager 
 
 Editorial Staff 
 
 BLYTHE, WALTER E. 
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 PRESTON, THOS. B. 
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 Business Office 
 
 Kresge, Homer D Manager 
 
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 aloen, john 
 ames, richard 
 
 ANNALIST 
 
 Edward G. Rich, Editor 
 
 CULLUM, WELCOME H. 
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 Manager Business Office 
 
 POLLOCK, JOHN 
 
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 Charles M. Graves, Manager 
 
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 NESENSOHN, JOHN A. 
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 Sales Manager 
 
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 426 
 
ROSTER OF THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY 
 
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 Brooklyn, N. Y. 
 
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ROSTER OF THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY 
 Tidewater Paper Mills Company — Continued 
 
 L. C. MERRITT 
 JOHN MILLER 
 HENRY MULLEN 
 M. NADLER 
 CHRIS NAGEL 
 GEORGE NEWBY 
 EDW. NORDENBERG 
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 JAMES PETERSON 
 T. PETTONE 
 JOS. PITTULE 
 STEVE POLICKEL 
 CHARLES PROSSER 
 F. RHOOP 
 JNO. RIORDAN 
 
 BENJ. ROSS 
 A. J. RUDOLPH 
 ALFRED RUEL 
 ALBERT SAGATAS 
 AUGUST SANDSTROM 
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 JOHN SCHICK 
 CARL SCROXTON 
 E. F. SEEMS 
 GEORGE SEILER 
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 ORVILLE SLATER 
 T. STANKOWITZ 
 
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 0. WHITMAN 
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 T. WILLISITISKI 
 
 1. WYEROSKI 
 JOHN WYZLINSKI 
 
 428 
 
INDEX 
 
 "Abbey, Arthur M.," 34J 
 Adams, Henry, 76; "Education 
 
 of Henry Adams," 76 
 Advertiser, The, 390 
 Advertising, 26, 192, 193, 219 et 
 
 seq., 238, 317, 319 et seq., 370, 
 
 392,402 
 Albany Evening Journal, 3, 4, 31 
 "All the News That's Fit to 
 
 Print," 197, 198, 199, 212 
 Alloway, Harry, 180 
 Annalist, The, 328 
 Antipathy to Times, 260 et seq. 
 Anti-Saloon League, 255 
 Appomattox Courthouse, battle of, 
 
 SI . 
 
 Arctic, disaster, 35, 36 
 Arthur, Chester A., 152 
 Associated Press, 43, 179, 230, 241, 
 
 367,38s 
 Astor, John Jacob, 97 
 Atherton, Gertrude, 378 
 Aviation, development of, 287 et 
 
 seq.; prizes, 288, 289 
 
 Baltimore American, The, 351, 
 Barnum, P. T., 10 
 Beck, James M., 338, 339 
 Beecher, Henry Ward, 61, 124 
 Behl, Private Harold J., 369 
 Bennett, James Gordon, 7, 8, 9, 10, 
 
 r, 21' 63, 77. 79 
 
 BemstoriF, German ambassador to 
 
 U. S., 361 
 Bigelow, John, 134, 140; 1869, 81, 
 
 83; 82 
 BirchaU, F. T., 364 
 Blaine, James G., 128, 131, 150, 
 
 151 
 Blanket sheets, 6^ 
 Board of Supervisors, New York, 
 
 1869,90 
 Bolsheviki, Russian, 3SS 
 Book reviews, 38, 213 et seq. 
 Borah, Senator, 382 
 Bradley, Lieut. William, 369 
 
 Brest-Litovsk, 355 - 
 
 Briand, Premier, 386 
 
 Brisbane, Albert, 11 
 
 Brisbane, Arthur, II 
 
 British "White Paper," 337, 338 
 
 Brook Farm, 10 
 
 Bryan, William Jennings, 74, 226, 
 
 248, 249, 252 
 Bryant, WiUiam CuUen, 82 
 Buchanan, James, 37 
 Bull Run, battle of, 55 
 Burgess, John W., 339 
 Burns, George H., 36 
 Burnside, General, $j 
 Business policy of Times, 3 10 ;< seq. 
 
 Cabell, southern orator, 31 
 Cable, ocean, 37, 43, 119, 162, 
 
 163, 164, 231, 283 
 Campaign Times, 24 
 Capital of Times, xv, 17, 27, 169, 
 
 170, i8s, 191, 193 
 Caricatures, 64 
 Carson, Major J. M., 377 
 Cartoons, 130, 196 
 Cary, Edward, xiv, 73, 78, 137, 
 
 169, 182, 376 
 Censorship, American, 368 
 Century, The, 211 
 Chamberlain, Senator, 354 
 Chandler, Zachariah, 135 
 Charities fostered by Times, 304 
 
 et seq. 
 Chattanooga Times, The, Adolph S. 
 
 Ochs, publisher of, in 1896, 
 
 178 
 Chesterton, G. K., 339 
 Chicago Daily News, 390 
 Chicago Evening Post, The, 288 
 Chicago Record-Herald, The, 290 
 Chicago Tribune, The, 27s, 284, 
 
 382, 390 
 Christmas contributions, 304 
 Circulation of Times, xviii, 26, 27, 
 
 64, 118, 169, 203, 211, 24s, 
 
 246, 307. 310, 31S. 389, 402 
 
 429 
 
INDEX 
 
 Civil War, 14, 16, 46, 48 it seq., 84, 
 
 263 
 Clark, Champ, 250, 251 
 Clemenceau, Georges, 367 
 Cleveland, Grover, 154, 155 et seq., 
 
 171, 189 
 Collier's Weekly, 308 
 Columbia School of Journalism, 
 
 365. . 
 Commercial Cable Company, 285 
 Confederacy, southern, sympathy 
 
 of New York papers with, 
 
 S9 
 Conkling, 144 
 Connolly, Richard B., 90, 95, 97, 
 
 98, 102, 103, 106, 126 
 Conservatism of Times, 266 et 
 
 seq. 
 Cook, Dr. Frederick, 291 et seq. 
 Cooper, Peter, 96, 100 
 "Copperheads," 68, 71, 72 
 Courier and Enquirer, 4, 11, 13 
 Court calendars, reports of, 210 
 Cox, James M., 259, 374, 381 
 Croker, 86 
 
 Crounse, Lorenzo, 58 
 Cuban question, 225 
 Current History Magazine, 328 
 Curtiss airplane, 288 
 Czemin, Count, 367 
 
 Dana, Charles A., 6, 77, 94, 95, 
 161, 203, 199 
 
 Davjdson, E. Mora, 184 
 
 Davis, Jefferson, 66, 71 
 
 Davis, John W., 259 
 
 Davis, Oscar King, 361 
 
 De Forest wireless, 283 
 
 Democratic Party, 9, 32; and Gold 
 standard, 74, 160; National 
 Convention m San Francisco, 
 1920, 382; pohcies of, 253, et 
 seq.; and Sun and Herald, 9 
 
 Demburg, Dr. Bemhard, 339 
 
 Dithmar, E. A., 376 
 
 Douglas, Stephen A, 50 
 
 Dunnell, E. G., 377 
 
 Dyer, Henry L., 168 
 
 Editorials, 218; during World 
 War, 33S; editorial attacks, 
 22, 23 
 
 Eidlitz,C.L.W.,32S 
 
 Eliot, Charles W., 339 
 
 Ely, Alfred, 182, 184 
 
 England, relations with, 160 
 
 Erie Railroad conspiracy, 82, 98 
 
 Espionage Act, 368 
 
 European news, 24, 25, 38, 275, 
 
 279 et seq. 
 Evening Mail, New York, 235 
 Everett, Edward, 6i 
 Expenses of Times, 26, 63, 77, 240, 
 
 389 
 
 Federal Reserve Act, 252, 258 
 Field, Cyrus W., 100 
 Fillmore, Millard, 29 
 Financial News in Times, 217, 
 
 Fire report in Times, 25 
 
 Fisk, James, Jr., 75, 82, 100, 
 
 126 
 Flint, Charles R., 181 
 Foch, Marshal, 366 
 Foord, John, 98, 106, 130 et seq., 
 
 no 
 
 Forbes, John M., 149 
 Foster, John W., i6a 
 Fourieristic Socialism, lo,- 79 
 Fowler, Robert Ludlow, 339 
 Fox, Mortimer J., 327 
 Franco-Prussian War, 37, 123 
 Free Silver, 74, 178 
 Free-Soil Democrats, IJ 
 Free-Soil Whigs, 14 
 Freedman's Bureau Bill, 66 
 
 Garfield, James A., 144 et seq. 
 
 Garrett, Garet, 361 
 
 Garrison, William Lloyd, 48 
 
 Gatling gun, 60 
 
 German propaganda, 187, 189, 
 
 262, 340 et seq. 
 German "White Paper," 337, 338 
 Gibbs, Philip, 293, 361 
 Gilder, Richard Watson, 2U 
 Globe, New York, 224 
 Gold Detnocratic ticket, 74 
 Golden jubilee of Tim^s, 1901, 
 
 243 
 Gould, Jay, 75, 82, 100, 148 
 Grant, U. S., General, 39, 56, 65, 
 
 82, 125, 149 
 Grasty, Charles H., 362, 378 
 Greaves, Arthur, xv, 274, 376 
 
 430 
 
INf)EX 
 
 Greeley, Horace, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 
 13, 21, 22, 32, 59, 69, 70, 80, 
 83, 8s, 121, 197 
 
 Green, Andrew H., 112, 126 
 
 Hall, A. Oakey, 89, 93, 95, 100, 
 
 102, 109, lie 
 Halsey, Francis W., 213 
 Hamilton, Claude, 288 
 Hanna, Mark, 160 
 Harding, Warren G., 373, 381, 
 
 384 
 Harper, Fletcher, Jr., 27 
 Harper's Weekly, 93, 95 
 Hart, Charles F., 364 
 Hartley, Marcellus, 184 
 Havemeyer, William F., 112 
 Hayes, Rutherford B., 131 et seq. 
 Headlines, display, 39, 106 
 Hearst, William Randolph, 294 
 Herald, New York, 7, 8, 9, 12, ig, 
 
 22, 26, 33, 34, 3S, 36, SO, 64, 
 
 76, 117, 197, 200, 236, 241, 
 
 292, 323, 390, 400 
 Hewitt, Abram S., 136 
 Hill, David B., 158 
 Hill, Frederic Trevor, 299 
 HoSinan, John T., 89, 95 
 Honor Roll of Times, 369 
 Hosmer, F. L., 377 
 "Hubbell, G. M.," 349 
 Hughes, Charles E., 384 
 Hurlburt, William Henry, 45 
 
 Income of Times, 118, 156 
 Index, New York Times, 328 
 Irish question, 12, 262 
 Italy, War in 1859, 41, 44 
 
 Jackson, Andrew, 257 
 
 James, Edwin L., 362 
 
 James, Lionel, Capt., 283 
 
 Janvier, Thomas A., 298 
 
 Japan, in World War, 359 
 
 "Jasper," S4 
 
 Jenmngs, Louis J., 84 et seq., 105 et 
 
 seq., 128, 130 
 Jerome, Leonard W., 27, S9> 81 
 JofFre, General, 28, 368 
 John Brown's Raid, 49 
 Johnson, Andrew, 15, 68, 73 
 Johnston, Albert Sidney, 41 
 Johnston, W. £., 42 
 
 Jones, George, 3, 4, 5, 12, 13, 17, 
 18, 19, 26, 27, 6s, 77, 80, 81, 
 83, 92, 100, 102, 116, 126, 129, 
 149, 164; death, 166 
 
 Jones, Gilbert, 168 
 
 Journal, New York, 196, 200, 222, 
 224, 231, 232, 237, 238, 239, 
 
 390 
 Journalism, history of, 79 
 Jubilee Supplement of Times, vii 
 
 Kansas-Nebraska Act, 32 
 Kilmer, Sergeant Joyce, 369 
 Knapp, C. W., 376 
 Kohlsaat, Herman H., 180 
 Kossuth, Louis, 28, 29, 40 
 
 La Prensa, 327 
 
 League of Nations, 261, 371, 378 
 
 Le Hir, George, 362 
 
 Lee, Robert E., 39, 56, s8, S9, 7° 
 
 Letters from Readers, 217, 235 
 
 Liberty Loan Committee, 303 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham, 16, 49, 62, 6^, 
 
 66, 299 
 Lloyd George, David, 300 
 Loewenthal, Henry, xv, 274 
 London Daily Chronicle, 275, 293, 
 
 359 
 London Daily Mail, 360 
 London Daily Telegraph, 290 
 London Times, 42, 84, 244, 27s et 
 
 seq. 
 Ludendorff, 366 
 Lusitania, 344, 352, 3S3, 364 
 Ljmch, Rev. Dr. Frederick, 337 
 
 Mackenzie, Andrew C, 325 
 "Malakoff" (Dr. W. E. Johnston), 
 
 42,44 
 Manhattan Elevated Railway 
 
 Company, 148 
 Manning, Major William Sinkler, 
 
 369 
 Marconi, 277, 278 
 Market reports, 209 
 Marshall, Ernest, 378 
 Matin (Paris), 27s 
 Maverick, Augustus, vii, 6, 14, 
 
 20, 23, 36, 47 
 McAdoo, William G., 259 
 McAneny, George, 37s 
 McCall, John A., 160 
 
 431 
 
INDEX 
 
 McQure, S. S., 209 
 McDowell, General, 55 
 McKinley, William, 226, 243 
 Meade, General, 56 
 Mercury, New York, iji 
 Miller, Charles R., xiii, 137, 150, 
 161, 169, i8i, 182, 194, 254, 
 
 „.„342.347. 350,351 
 Miller, Warner, 158 
 Morgan, Christopher, 1 1 
 Morgan, E. B., 17, 18, 104, 128 
 Morgan, J. P. & Co., 189 
 Mormons, 41 
 
 Morning Telegraph, The, 178 
 Moyer, G. B., 378 
 "Mugwump" campaign, ISS 
 
 Nation, The, 78 
 
 Neanderthal Socialism, II 
 
 New Harmony, 10 
 
 New York City, historical articles 
 on, 298; government of, 75; 
 politics, 86 et seq., 89, 1 10 
 
 New York Life Insurance Com- 
 pany, 164 
 
 New York Printing Company, 92 
 
 New York Times Publishing Com- 
 pany, 169, 184, 185, 348 
 
 News-gathering, 274 et seq. 
 
 Nivelle, General, 368 
 
 Norris, John, xiv, 377 
 
 North American Review, 77 
 
 North German Lloyd Steamship 
 Company, 227, 228 
 
 Northcliffe, Lord, 275, 349 
 
 Norwell, Caleb C, 83 
 
 O'Brien, James, 102, 103 
 Ochs, Adolph S., 6, 172, 178 et seq., 
 ^ , ^i It seq, 254, 347, 389 
 Ogden, Rollo, 376 
 Oneida Community, 10 
 O'Rourke, Matthew J., 182 
 Oulahan, Richard V., 378 
 
 Paine, J. H., 377 
 
 Palmer, A. Mitchell, 259 
 
 Paper, cost, 26, 375 
 
 Paris Exposition edition of Times 
 
 1900, 240 
 "Park Trench" scheme of Liberty 
 
 Loan Committee, 303 
 
 Parker, Alton B., 249 
 Parkin, Dr. George R., 278 
 Payne, George Henry, 79 
 Peace Conference, 378 
 Peary, Admiral, 291 et seq. 
 Personal journalism, 162 
 Petain, General, 368 
 Petit Parisien, 209 
 Peverelly, T. L., 376 
 Philadelphia Record, 236 
 Phillips, abolitionist, i860, 49 
 Phillips, Barnet, 377 
 Pictorial Supplement of Times, 
 
 212, 329 
 Pierce, Private Edward B., 369 
 Plumb, J. B., 17 
 Political newSj 296 et seq. 
 Post, George B., 165 
 Press, New York, 223 
 Price of Times, 27, 169, 233, 239 
 Prohibition, 269 
 Pulitzer, Joseph, 161, 195 
 
 Radicalism in America, 264 et seq. 
 
 Railroad, use of in journahsm, 8 
 
 Raymond, Henry J., vii, 3 et seq., 
 
 11 et seq., 14, 26 et seq., 39, 48 
 
 et seq., 55, 56, 65 et seq., 71, 
 
 74, 77, 78, 358 
 Recorder, New York, 182 
 Reick, William C, xv, 274 
 Reid, John C, 123, 132, 137, 139, 
 
 151. 156 
 Republic (White Star Liner), 284 
 Republican Party, 15, 16, 32, 253 
 
 et seq. 
 Restoration of Times, 1896-1900, 
 
 175 et seq. 
 Richardson, Albert D., 84 
 Roosevelt, Theodore, 149, 249, 
 
 258, 296, 300, 340 
 Root, Frank D., 147 
 Ruggles, Francis B., 17 
 Russo-Japanese War, 276, 283 
 
 St. John, Daniel B., 17 
 Saturday Book Review, 213 <■/ seq. 
 Schiff, Jacob H., 339 
 Schuyler, Montgomery, 377 
 Scott, Winfield, 19, 29, 30 
 Selden, Charles A., 362, 378 
 Semi-weekly Times, 24 
 
 432 
 
INDEX 
 
 Senate, U. S., inquisition of Times 
 
 .„ in 1915,345.351. 
 
 Sensational journalism, 234 
 Seward, William H., 16, 49 
 Shepard, George, 84 
 Ship Purchase Bill, 345, 346 
 Simonton, James W., 41 
 Sjnn Fein, 187, 341 
 Size of page of Times, 371; of issue, 
 
 27, 370 
 Slavery, 7, 14, 31, 48 et seq. 
 Sloane, William Milligan, 339 
 Socialism, 268 
 
 Spanish War, 226 et seq.; 238 
 Speeches reported in full, 300 
 Spinney, George F., 169 
 Sporting News of Times, 301, 
 
 371 
 Springfield Republican, IJI 
 Star, The, 113 
 
 Star Route frauds, 1881, 146 
 Steamship, use of in journalism, 
 
 8,37 
 Stevens, Thaddeus, 65 
 Strauss, Samuel, 376 
 Sumter, Fort, attack on, 51, 62 
 Sun, New York, 6, 7, 9, 19, 94, 203, 
 
 204, 223, 224, 390 
 Sunday Magazine of Times, zi2 
 Sunday Times, The, first issue, 63 
 Sweeney, Peter B., 90, 100 
 Swinton, William, i'8 
 Sjmdicalism, 26S 
 
 Taft, William Howard, 250, 297 
 Tammany Hall, 8, 12, 18, 59, 76, 
 
 86, 88, 97, lis, 222, 23s, 
 
 236 
 Tariff, 74, 146, 249 
 Taylor, G. B., 377 
 Taylor, James B., 81, 92, 128 
 Telegraph, use of in journalism, 8, 
 
 33. 37, 43, 53, 289, 297, 383 
 Temps, Le (Pans), 209 
 Thompson, J. H., 377 
 Tilden, Samuel J., 74, 1 12, 114, 
 
 I2S, 130, 133 etseq. 
 Tilton, Theodore, 124 
 Times Buildings, first, 47, 322; 
 
 second, 165, 322; present, 
 
 191, 322 et seq. 
 Times for California, 24 
 Times Illustrated Magazine, 213 
 
 Times-Recorder Company, 182 
 
 Times, The New York, character 
 of, ix et seq., 6, 24, 176, 188, 
 243 et seq., 370 et seq.; estab- 
 lishment of, 5; first issue, 20, 
 225; policies, ix, 48, S3. 1S4. 
 219 't -f^?-, 243 ^' ^^i-' 31° ^' 
 seq., 370 et seq., etc.; staff, 48, 
 60, 370 et seq., etc. 
 
 Titanic disaster, 29s 
 
 Tracy, Benjamin F., 74 
 
 Trask, Spencer, 181, 184 
 
 Tribune, New York, 3, 4, s, 8, 9, 
 II, 12, 19, 20, 23, 26, 33, S9. 
 76, 83, 84, 94, 123, 133, 13s, 
 196,236,241,341 
 
 Truman, Ben C, Major, S7 
 
 Trusts, 267 
 
 Tweed, W. M., 40, 75, Si et seq., 
 89, no 
 
 Typographical Union, 274 
 
 Underwood-Simmons Tariff Act, 
 
 _ 252 
 United Press organization, 179; 
 
 _ end of, 240 
 United States as world power, 248 
 
 Van Anda, Carr V., xiii, 274, 364 
 Venezuelan question, IS9 
 Verdun, battle of, 362 
 Versailles, Treaty of, 372 
 Viaduct Railroad scheme, 100 
 Victoria, Queen, 37; jubilee of, 
 
 213 
 
 Von Briesen, Arthur, 339 
 
 Wade, Ben, 65 
 
 Wall Street, 75, 83, 164 
 
 Wallach, Leopold, 178, 377 
 
 Walsh, T. J., Senator, 347 
 
 War Department, in Civil Wat, 
 
 Weather, 25 
 
 Webb, James Watson, 4, s. 9, 28, 
 
 29, 30 
 Webster, Daniel, 29 
 Weed, Thurlow, 4, 16, 17 
 Weekly Family Times, 23, 24 
 Wellman, Walter, 290 
 Wells, David A., 74 
 Wesley, E. B., s, 12, 17, z6, 27 
 Westbrook, Theodoric R., 148 
 
 433 
 
INDEX 
 
 .337 
 
 Whig, 9, 14, 29, 32 _ 
 
 "White Paper," British, 373; 
 
 German, 337, 338 
 Wile, Frederic WiUiam, ; 
 Wiley, Louis, xiv 
 Wilkie, Enid, 363 
 Williams, George F., 57 
 Williams, Wythe, 362 
 Wilson, Woodrow, 250, 251, 252, 
 „,. 35°. 3S2 et seq., 372 
 Wireless, use of in journalism, 
 
 277 et seq. 
 
 Wood, Fernando, 88 
 Woodward, James T., 184 
 World, New York, 183, 195, 196, 
 200, 222, 231, 232, 237, 238, 
 239, 255, 287, 341, 3SI, 390 
 World War, 187, 246, 253, 300, 
 331 et seq. 
 
 Yancey, William L., 50 
 "Yellow" journalism, 7, 195, 234, 
 
 247 
 Young, Brigham, 41 
 
 434 
 
CXWBBRVATfON 2001