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HALE AND HALLECK

In New York the first pretentious step to gather news while it was news was made by Arthur Tappan who had founded The Journal of Commerce as a semi-religious newspaper to com- bat the growing evil influences of the theater. To get the Euro- pean news he used to meet the incoming vessels with a rowboat and thus save time in getting the news into print. Later, he sold his paper to the Boston newspaper men, David Hale and Gerard Halleck. These men, familiar with the news enterprise of Samuel Topliff, built a fast news-yacht which they called "The Journal of Commerce" after their newspaper. The Courier and Enquirer, not to be outdone, promptly put into commission another news-boat, "The Thomas H. Smith." The Journal of Commerce, true to the principles of its founder, refused to collect the news on the Sabbath and appealed to the more provincial subscriber to excuse lack of news on Monday. The Journal of Commerce also built a semaphore telegraph at Sandy Hook by means of which it relayed news from its news-boat to Staten Island where items were promptly taken to its New York office. In this way the paper was able to be first in maritime news for some little time. Whenever important items arrived it got out extra editions in order that it might be first on the streets. Aroused by the enterprise of the penny press, the conservative blanket sheets called "our bed-quilt contemporaries" by the penny papers were not always beaten in the publishing of notable news.

PRIMITIVE PONY EXPRESS

While other papers shared in the honor of its development, the pony express was really started by The Sun, of Baltimore, Maryland. Local newspapers had supplied their customers with the President's messages as follows: they purchased sup- plements previously printed in Washington, but bearing the title of their papers, and then distributed them upon their arrival to their readers. In December, 1838, however, The Sim hired a representative to bring, with the help of "a Canadian pony as nimble as a goat and as swift as the wind," a copy of the message