64 



BENNETT, JAMES G. 



Wall Street, where Bennett transacted all the 

 business of the little concern : received adver- 

 tisements, sold copies of the paper, and wrote 

 all the articles, reports, and paragraphs, he- 

 hind a deal board. The late "William Go wans, 

 bookseller, wrote the following description of 

 a visit to the office, soon after the paper was 

 established : " The proprietor, editor, and 

 vender, was seated at his desk, busily engaged 

 writing, and appeared to pay little or no atten- 

 tion to me as I entered. On making known 

 my object in coming in, he requested me to 

 put my money down on the counter, and 

 help myself to a paper ; all this time he con- 

 tinuing his writing operations. The office was 

 a single, oblong, underground room ; its furni- 

 ture consisted of a counter, which served also 

 as a desk, constructed from two flour-barrels, 

 perhaps empty, standing apart from each other 

 about four feet, with a single plank covering 

 both ; a chair, placed in the centre, upon which 

 sat the editor, busy at his vocation, with an 

 inkstand by his right hand ; on the end nearest 

 the door were placed the papers for sale." It 

 was a small four-page sheet, sold for one cent. 

 There was very little news, for Bennett had no 

 money to spend in collecting news ; but it was 

 bright, sharp, insolent, personal, concise, and 

 novel. Readers stood aghast at the boldness 

 of this unkown Scotchman, who violated all 

 the proprieties which newspapers had been ac- 

 customed to respect, and attacked private char- 

 acter with such reckless freedom and such 

 wicked good-humor. The paper soon became 

 popular. It offended all parties and all creeds. 

 It was denounced from the Catholic pulpits for 

 blasphemy. It shocked the sense of decency 

 of all respectable Protestants ; and of course 

 people bought it out of curiosity. Bennett 

 had no assistant in writing it. He rose at five 

 in the morning, and worked in his room until 

 eight. Then he sat in his cellar until after 

 noon, selling papers, writing advertisements 

 for customers whose education had been neg- 

 lected, and preparing copy for the printers. 

 At one he went out into the streets to pick up 

 news and gossip. From four to six he was 

 again at his counter, and the evening was 

 spent gathering materials for reports in the 

 next day's paper. He could not have gone 

 through these sixteen or seventeen hours of 

 drudgery had not his vigorous constitution 

 been strengthened by the abstemious and reg- 

 ular habits by which his life was always 

 marked. At the end of five weeks, the paper 

 was gaining headway, but still he did not meet 

 expenses. He now thought of telling the pub- 

 lic every day what had been done in the stock 

 market the day before. The money article, 

 now such an important feature of every lead- 

 ing newspaper, was then unknown. The first 

 ever published in the United States appeared 

 in the Herald, June 13, 1835. At the end of 

 the third month, the receipts equalled the ex- 

 penditures, and Mr. Bennett hired his first re- 

 porter. The next month the printing-office 



was burned, and Anderson and Smith, discour- 

 aged, abandoned the enterprise. But the Her- 

 ald was "raked out of the ashes," and rees- 

 tablished, on August 31, at No. 202 Broadway, 

 with Bennett as sole proprietor, and the print- 

 er of his own name almost his sole compositor. 

 Thence the office was removed, October 12th, to 

 No. 148 Nassau Street, " a remarkably pious, 

 theological, and religious neighborhood," says 

 the Herald of that date, with the Bible Socie- 

 ty, Tract Society, Dr. Spring's Church, and 

 Arthur Tappan's Antislavery Society, for sur- 

 roundings. At this time Bennett advertised, 

 editorially, for a business partner, and ex- 

 plained briefly how the Herald had been es- 

 tablished, and its condition and prospects. The 

 statement is a revelation of character as well 

 as a history of the paper. " Heretofore," he 

 says, "I have done everything myself. I have 

 written my own editorials ; for I employ, at 

 five dollars a week, no Peter Simple " (alluding 

 to Dr. Townsend, an editor of the Star, who 

 had just before assaulted him for his personal 

 allusions to his colleagues). "I have written 

 my own police-reports I have writen my own 

 "Wall-Street reports I have written my own 

 squibs, crackers, and jeux cPesprit. I have 

 been my own clerk and accountant, posted my 

 own books, made out my own bills, and gen- 

 erally attended to the business in the office. 

 Now, as the business of the Herald is rapidly 

 increasing, I should like to get some compe- 

 tent business person to become connected with 

 me as a part owner and proprietor, one who 

 would devote the whole of his time, as I do 

 mine, to thebusiness of the office. I will ven- 

 ture to say, without any boast, that for the 

 last six months I have written .more matter 

 for the press, and collected more facts of every 

 kind, than any three editors in this city. But, 

 in addition to this labor, the business concerns 

 of such an establishment as the Herald are a 

 little more than one man can do. I would, 

 therefore, like to have a business partner, in 

 whom I could place entire confidence, and, if 

 he could bring into the concern capital suffi- 

 cient to make certain improvements, enlarge- 

 ments, etc., we could make the Herald in less 

 than a year surpass every paper in the city, 

 and yield a clear annual income of from $12,- 

 000 to $20,000." In seven years he had, un- 

 aided, made the income of the paper $100,000, 

 and for many years past it has been ten or fif- 

 teen times the highest expectations of 1835. 



After its reestablishment, the Herald had 

 a struggling but not doubtful existence. Its 

 total cost for an edition of 2,000, which it at- 

 tained in September, 1835, was fifty dollars a 

 day. It contained only local news, the chief 

 topic of interest being told in detail, the minor 

 news condensed but never omitted. The great 

 fire of December 16, 1835, gave the struggling 

 journalist an opportunity to display his pecul- 

 iar talents in this direction, and for many 

 weeks after the fire the Herald was filled with 

 accounts of the appearance of the ruins, the 



