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members were The Globe, edited by Blair at Washington, and The Enquirer, edited by Ritchie at Richmond, Virginia.

THE GREAT NEWS DISTRIBUTOR

The most important newspaper of the era was not a daily, or even a semi- weekly; it was The Weekly Register established at Baltimore, September 7, 1811, by Ezekiah Niles, an editor of The Evening Post of that city. In its pages the political and economic news of the country was reported with a fairness and fidelity which characterized no other paper of the time. It achieved a national circulation and was extensively quoted by other papers. In fact, it was a sort of general distributor of news for its contemporaries. So accurate was it that it has been quoted by historians and other writers upon American history more than >any other single newspaper in the history of this country. Niles conducted it until 1836 when it was continued by his son, William Ogden Niles, who had attempted to estab- lish The Journal at Albany, New York, not the present Eve- ning Journal of that city, in 1825, but who, upon the failure of that sheet, became associated with his father on The Register in 1827. The younger Niles conducted the paper until June 27, 1849. Its motto was, "The Past the Present for the Fu- ture." The entire series of The Weekly Register has been re- printed in seventy-five volumes and its advertisements told the truth when they asserted that no library was complete without it. The Register was discontinued because the newspapers of the country more and more performed the same service for their readers. The nearest approach to The Register which may be found to-day is The Literary Digest.

NATIONAL REPUBLICAN ORGAN

A political organ which attracted much attention in New York was The American, an evening paper established by Charles King March 3, 1819. (Its daily edition began March 8, 1820.) At the start The American was distinctly a Tammany sheet, or, what amounted to the same thing, a buck-tail paper. It was a loyal supporter of Van Buren, but later was forced to withdraw from its affiliation with the Democratic Party. A new Tarn-