Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/470

 460 C. H. Levermore Out of the cellar at No. 20 Wall Street came the first copy of the Daily Herald, May 6, 1835, a little four-page penny paper, with four columns to a page. At the outset Bennett went straight to his mark. In the first place, his salutatory spoke of " princi- ples, political party principles " as " steel -traps to catch the public." "We mean," wrote Bennett, "to be perfectly understood on this point, and openly disclaim all steel-traps, all principle as it is called, all party, all politics." A little later he made a plainer statement of his real political principles : " We have never been in a minority, and we never shall be." In other words his paper had become his party, and its pecuniary success his creed. To insure the triumph of that creed it was necessary that the Herald should voice the dominant sentiment of the day. Instead of preaching the gospel of one party in adversity and in success alike, as party organs did and do, the Herald must tread in the newest footmarks of shifting majorities. It might expostulate or satirize judiciously, but it must please. Thus the Herald was ordinarily a powerful expositor of Hunker democracy and it enjoyed a large circulation and influence in the South, yet in the two presidential campaigns in which the Whigs were successful the Herald kept in the van of the shouting multitude, first for " Tippecanoe and Tyler too," and afterwards for " Old Rough and Ready" Taylor. Such was the first effect of triumphant democracy upon the press, as estimated by the most far-sighted journalist of that era. In the second place, the cheap papers, the Sun and the Herald, re- jected the cumbrous credit system altogether. This cash system was tantamount to an emancipation from creditors, subscribers, and advertisers. The old cry of "Stop my paper" lost much of its terror. In the third place, Bennett literally fulfilled his editorial promise to "give a picture of the world." He, first, in 1835, went on 'Change, note-book in hand, and wrote daily descriptions and reports of the stock markets. He first seized upon the opening of steam communication with Europe to organize upon that continent a bureau of foreign correspondence. He first in 1838 adopted the practice of reporting in full the proceedings of courts of law when cases of public interest were on the docket. In the same year he first began to publish in full the speeches of prominent public men in Congress and out of it. He vied with the elder papers in the race to meet the incoming ships from Europe, but when Bennett stationed his boats off Montauk Point and ran special locomotives over the Long Island Railway or even from Boston, his dignified contemporaries retired. He first in 1839 reported the proceedings of the religious