Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/268

242 The Whig party, which had replaced the Federalists as an opposition party to the Democrats, was the party of the business man, while the Democratic party, under Jackson, was becoming the party of the laboring class, especially at the north. As yet, however, no paper intended solely for this working class had appeared. The presses were still worked by hand, and the average circulation of the eleven six-cent dailies published in New York was said to be not more than 1,700 each. "

Important indeed was the discovery that the papers were real business factors, and that the advertisements, rather than the circulation, were the means of making them profitable investments. The business world at large was now beginning to realize the value of the newspapers for making public announcements, and this tendency had increased so much that the matter of circulation was, in a great majority of instances, important only as it enabled the newspapers to command advertisements.

With such conditions before them it was inevitable that shrewd publishers, men possessed of initiative, would recognize the value of journals that would appeal to the great mass of the people who were then not readers of the papers; journals, also, which could be sold at a price that would be within the reach of the poorest.

It was in Philadelphia, where so many important journalistic innovations had begun, that the public was offered the first paper for one cent. It was called the Cent, and was issued in 1830 by Dr. Christopher Columbus Conwell, from a little office in Second Street, below Dock Street. Conwell had received his education at Mount St. Mary's and Georgetown Colleges and had graduated in medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.