Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 8.djvu/18

 The Boston Herald.

��In view of these great changes in journalism, the record of the progress of a successful newspaper during the last four decades contains much matter of general interest, and if excuse were needed, this would warrant the publi- cation here of a brief history of The Boston Herald.

Like most, if not all, of the leading journals of the country, The Boston Herald had a very humble origin. Forty years ago some journeymen prin- ters on The Boston Daily Times began publishing a penny paper, called The American Eagle, in advocacy of the Native American or " Know-nothing " party.

Its publishers were " Baker, French, Harmon & Co." The full list of pro- prietors was Albert Baker, John A. French, George W. Harmon, George H. Campbell, Amos C. Clapp, J. W. Monroe, Justin Andrews, Augus- tus A. Wallace, and James D. Stow- ers, and W. H. Waldron was sub- sequently associated with them. The Eagle was successful at the outset, but its fortunes declined with those of the party of which it was the exponent, and in the summer of 1846 it was found to be moribund. The proprietors had lost money and labor in the faiUng en- terprise, and now lost interest. After many protracted discussions they re- solved to estabhsh an evening edition under another name, which should be neutral in pohtics, and, if it proved successful, to let the Eagle die. The Herald, therefore, came into existence on August 31, 1846, and an edition of two thousand was printed of its first number. The editor of the new sheet was William O. Eaton, a Bostonian, then but twenty-two years of age, of little previous experience in journalism.

I'he Herald, it must be admitted, was

��not a handsome sheet at the outset. Its four pages contained but five col- umns each, and measured only nine by fourteen inches. But, unpromising as was its appearance, it was really the liveliest of the Boston dailies from the hour of its birth, and received praise on all hands for the quaUty of its matter.

The total force of brain-workers consisted of but two men, Mr. Eaton having the assistance, after the middle of September, of Thomas W. Tucker. David Leavitt joined the "staff" later on, in 1847, ^"<i made a specialty of local news. The editorial, composing, and press rooms were the same as those of the Eagle, in Wilson's Lane, now Devonshire Street.

" Running a newspaper " in Boston in 1846 was a different thing altogether from journalism at the present^ day. The telegraph was in operation between Boston and New York, but the tolls were high and the dailies could not afford to use it except upon the most important occasions. Moreover, read- ers had not been educated up to the point of expecting to see reports of events in all parts of the world printed on the same day of their occurrence or, at the latest, the day following.

For several years before the extension of the wires overland to Nova Scotia, the newsgatherers of Boston and New York resorted to various devices in order to obtain the earliest reports from Europe. From 1846 to 1850 the revolutionary movements in many of the countries on the continent were of a nature to be especially interesting to the people of the United States, and this stimu- lated enterprise among the American newspapers. Mr. D. H. Craig, after- ward widely known as agent of the Associated Press, conceived the idea of

�� �