Captains of Industry

J >> James Parton >> Captains of Industry

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The family were so poor that it was a matter of doubt sometimes whether
they could get food enough to live through the long winter; and so
Horace, who had learned the printer's trade in Vermont, started out on
foot in search of work in a village printing-office. He walked from
village to village, and from town to town, until at last he went to
Erie, the largest place in the vicinity.

There he was taken for a runaway apprentice, and certainly his
appearance justified suspicion. Tall and gawky as he was in person, with
tow-colored hair, and a scanty suit of shabbiest homespun, his
appearance excited astonishment or ridicule wherever he went. He had
never worn a good suit of clothes in his life. He had a singularly fair,
white complexion, a piping, whining voice, and these peculiarities gave
the effect of his being wanting in intellect. It was not until people
conversed with him that they discovered his worth and intelligence. He
had been an ardent reader from his childhood up, and had taken of late
years the most intense interest in politics and held very positive
opinions, which he defended in conversation with great earnestness and
ability.

A second application at Erie procured him employment for a few months in
the office of the Erie "Gazette," and he won his way, not only to the
respect, but to the affection, of his companions and his employer. That
employer was Judge J. M. Sterrett, and from him I heard many curious
particulars of Horace Greeley's residence in Erie. As he was only
working in the office as a substitute, the return of the absentee
deprived him of his place, and he was obliged to seek work elsewhere.
His employer said to him one day:--

"Now, Horace, you have a good deal of money coming to you; don't go
about the town any longer in that outlandish rig. Let me give you an
order on the store. Dress up a little, Horace."

The young man looked down at his clothes as though he had never seen
them before, and then said, by way of apology:--

"You see, Mr. Sterrett, my father is on a new place, and I want to help
him all I can."

In fact, upon the settlement of his account at the end of his seven
months' labor, he had drawn for his personal expenses six dollars only.
Of the rest of his wages he retained fifteen dollars for himself, and
gave all the rest, amounting to about a hundred and twenty dollars, to
his father, who, I am afraid, did not make the very best use of all of
it.

With the great sum of fifteen dollars in his pocket, Horace now resolved
upon a bold movement. After spending a few days at home, he tied up his
spare clothes in a bundle, not very large, and took the shortest road
through the woods that led to the Erie Canal. He was going to New York,
and he was going cheap!

A walk of sixty miles or so, much of it through the primeval forest,
brought him to Buffalo, where he took passage on the Erie Canal, and
after various detentions, he reached Albany on a Thursday morning just
in time to see the regular steamboat of the day move out into the
stream. At ten o'clock on the same morning he embarked on board of a
tow-boat, which required nearly twenty-four hours to descend the river,
and thus afforded him ample time to enjoy the beauty of its shores.

On the 18th of August, 1831, about sunrise, he set foot in the city of
New York, then containing about two hundred thousand inhabitants, one
sixth of its present population. He had managed his affairs with such
strict economy that his journey of six hundred miles had cost him little
more than five dollars, and he had ten left with which to begin life in
the metropolis. This sum of money and the knowledge of the printer's
trade made up his capital. There was not a person in all New York, so
far as he knew, who had ever seen him before.

His appearance, too, was much against him, for although he had a really
fine face, a noble forehead, and the most benign expression I ever saw
upon a human countenance, yet his clothes and bearing quite spoiled him.
His round jacket made him look like a tall boy who had grown too fast
for his strength; he stooped a little and walked in a loose-jointed
manner. He was very bashful, and totally destitute of the power of
pushing his way, or arguing with a man who said "No" to him. He had
brought no letters of recommendation, and had no kind of evidence to
show that he had even learned his trade.

The first business was, of course, to find an extremely cheap
boarding-house, as he had made up his mind only to try New York as an
experiment, and, if he did not succeed in finding work, to start
homeward while he still had a portion of his money. After walking awhile
he went into what looked to him like a low-priced tavern, at the corner
of Wall and Broad Streets.

"How much do you charge for board?" he asked the bar-keeper, who was
wiping his decanters and putting his bar in trim for the business of the
day.

The bar-keeper gave the stranger a look-over and said to him:--

"I guess we're too high for you."

"Well how much do you charge?"

"Six dollars."

"Yes, that's more than I can afford."

He walked on until he descried on the North River, near Washington
Market, a boarding-house so very mean and squalid that he was tempted to
go in and inquire the price of board there. The price was two dollars
and a half a week.

"Ah!" said Horace, "that sounds more like it."

In ten minutes more he was taking his breakfast at the landlord's table.
Mr. Greeley gratefully remembered this landlord, who was a friendly
Irishman by the name of McGorlick. Breakfast done, the new-comer
sallied forth in quest of work, and began by expending nearly half of
his capital in improving his wardrobe. It was a wise action. He that
goes courting should dress in his best, particularly if he courts so
capricious a jade as Fortune.

Then he began the weary round of the printing-offices, seeking for work
and finding none, all day long. He would enter an office and ask in his
whining note:--

"Do you want a hand?"

"No," was the invariable reply; upon receiving which he left without a
word. Mr. Greeley chuckled as he told the reception given him at the
office of the "Journal of Commerce," a newspaper he was destined to
contend with for many a year in the columns of the "Tribune."

"Do you want a hand?" he said to David Hale, one of the owners of the
paper.

Mr. Hale looked at him from head to foot, and then said:--

"My opinion is, young man, that you're a runaway apprentice, and you'd
better go home to your master."

The applicant tried to explain, but the busy proprietor merely
replied:--

"Be off about your business, and don't bother us."

The young man laughed good-humoredly and resumed his walk. He went to
bed Saturday night thoroughly tired and a little discouraged. On Sunday
he walked three miles to attend a church, and remembered to the end of
his days the delight he had, for the first time in his life, in hearing
a sermon that he entirely agreed with. In the mean time he had gained
the good will of his landlord and the boarders, and to that circumstance
he owed his first chance in the city. His landlord mentioned his
fruitless search for work to an acquaintance who happened to call that
Sunday afternoon. That acquaintance, who was a shoemaker, had
accidentally heard that printers were wanted at No. 85 Chatham Street.

At half-past five on Monday morning Horace Greeley stood before the
designated house, and discovered the sign, "West's Printing-Office,"
over the second story; the ground floor being occupied as a bookstore.
Not a soul was stirring up stairs or down. The doors were locked, and
Horace sat down on the steps to wait. Thousands of workmen passed by;
but it was nearly seven before the first of Mr. West's printers arrived,
and he, too, finding the door locked, sat down by the side of the
stranger, and entered into conversation with him.

"I saw," said this printer to me many years after, "that he was an
honest, good young man, and, being a Vermonter myself, I determined to
help him if I could."

Thus, a second time in New York already, _the native quality of the man_
gained him, at the critical moment the advantage that decided his
destiny. His new friend did help him, and it was very much through his
urgent recommendation that the foreman of the printing-office gave him a
chance. The foreman did not in the least believe that the green-looking
young fellow before him could set in type one page of the polyglot
Testament for which help was needed.

"Fix up a case for him," said he, "and we'll see if he _can_ do
anything."

Horace worked all day with silent intensity, and when he showed to the
foreman at night a printer's proof of his day's work, it was found to be
the best day's work that had yet been done on that most difficult job.
It was greater in quantity and much more correct. The battle was won. He
worked on the Testament for several months, making long hours and
earning only moderate wages, saving all his surplus money, and sending
the greater part of it to his father, who was still in debt for his farm
and not sure of being able to keep it.

Ten years passed. Horace Greeley from journeyman printer made his way
slowly to partnership in a small printing-office. He founded the "New
Yorker," a weekly paper, the best periodical of its class in the United
States. It brought him great credit and no profit.

In 1840, when General Harrison was nominated for the presidency against
Martin Van Buren, his feelings as a politician were deeply stirred, and
he started a little campaign paper called "The Log-Cabin," which was
incomparably the most spirited thing of the kind ever published in the
United States. It had a circulation of unprecedented extent, beginning
with forty-eight thousand, and rising week after week until it reached
ninety thousand. The price, however, was so low that its great sale
proved rather an embarrassment than a benefit to the proprietors, and
when the campaign ended, the firm of Horace Greeley & Co. was rather
more in debt than it was when the first number of "The Log-Cabin" was
published.

The little paper had given the editor two things which go far towards
making a success in business,--great reputation and some confidence in
himself. The first penny paper had been started. The New York "Herald"
was making a great stir. The "Sun" was already a profitable sheet. And
now the idea occurred to Horace Greeley to start a daily paper which
should have the merits of cheapness and abundant news, without some of
the qualities possessed by the others. He wished to found a cheap daily
paper that should be good and salutary, as well as interesting. The last
number of "The Log-Cabin" announced the forthcoming "Tribune," price one
cent.

The editor was probably not solvent when he conceived the scheme, and he
borrowed a thousand dollars of his old friend, James Coggeshall, with
which to buy the indispensable material. He began with six hundred
subscribers, printed five thousand of the first number, and found it
difficult to give them all away. The "Tribune" appeared on the day set
apart in New York for the funeral procession in commemoration of
President Harrison, who died a month after his inauguration.

It was a chilly, dismal day in April, and all the town was absorbed in
the imposing pageant. The receipts during the first week were ninety-two
dollars; the expenses five hundred and twenty-five. But the little paper
soon caught public attention, and the circulation increased for three
weeks at the rate of about three hundred a day. It began its fourth week
with six thousand; its seventh week, with eleven thousand. The first
number contained four columns of advertisements; the twelfth, nine
columns; the hundredth, thirteen columns.

In a word, the success of the paper was immediate and very great. It
grew a little faster than the machinery for producing it could be
provided. Its success was due chiefly to the fact that the original idea
of the editor was actually carried out. He aimed to produce a paper
which should morally benefit the public. It was not always right, but it
always meant to be.

JAMES GORDON BENNETT,

AND HOW HE FOUNDED HIS HERALD.

A cellar in Nassau Street was the first office of the "Herald." It was a
real cellar, not a basement, lighted only from the street, and
consequently very dark except near its stone steps. The first furniture
of this office,--as I was told by the late Mr. Gowans, who kept a
bookstore near by,--consisted of the following articles:--

Item, one wooden chair. Item, two empty flour barrels with a wide, dirty
pine board laid upon them, to serve as desk and table. End of the
inventory.

The two barrels stood about four feet apart, and one end of the board
was pretty close to the steps, so that passers-by could see the pile of
"Heralds" which were placed upon it every morning for sale. Scissors,
pens, inkstand, and pencil were at the other end, leaving space in the
middle for an editorial desk.

This was in the summer of 1835, when General Jackson was President of
the United States, and Martin Van Buren the favorite candidate for the
succession. If the reader had been in New York then, and had wished to
buy a copy of the saucy little paper, which every morning amused and
offended the decorous people of that day, he would have gone down into
this underground office, and there he would have found its single chair
occupied by a tall and vigorous-looking man about forty years of age,
with a slight defect in one of his eyes, dressed in a clean, but
inexpensive suit of summer clothes.

This was James Gordon Bennett, proprietor, editor, reporter,
book-keeper, clerk, office-boy, and everything else there was
appertaining to the control and management of the New York "Herald,"
price one cent. The reader would perhaps have said to him, "I want
to-day's 'Herald.'" Bennett would have looked up from his writing, and
pointed, without speaking, to the pile of papers at the end of the
board. The visitor would have taken one and added a cent to the pile of
copper coin adjacent. If he had lingered a few minutes, the busy writer
would not have regarded him, and he could have watched the subsequent
proceedings without disturbing him. In a few moments a woman might have
come down the steps into the subterranean office, who answered the
editor's inquiring look by telling him that she wanted a place as cook,
and wished him to write an advertisement for her. This Would have been
entirely a matter of course, for in the prospectus of the paper it was
expressly stated that persons could have their advertisements written
for them at the office.

The editor himself would have written the advertisement for her with the
velocity of a practiced hand, then read it over to her, taking
particular pains to get the name spelled right, and the address
correctly stated.

"How much is it, sir?"

"Twenty-five cents."

The money paid, the editor would instantly have resumed his writing.
Such visitors, however, were not numerous, for the early numbers of the
paper show very few advertisements, and the paper itself was little
larger than a sheet of foolscap. Small as it was, it was with difficulty
kept alive from week to week, and it was never too certain as the week
drew to a close whether the proprietor would be able to pay the
printer's bill on Saturday night, and thus secure its reappearance on
Monday morning.

There were times when, after paying all the unpostponable claims, he had
twenty-five cents left, or less, as the net result of his week's toil.
He worked sixteen, seventeen, eighteen hours a day, struggling unaided
to force his little paper upon an indifferent if not a hostile public.

James Gordon Bennett, you will observe, was forty years old at this
stage of his career. Generally a man who is going to found anything
extraordinary has laid a deep foundation, and got his structure a good
way above ground before he is forty years of age. But there was he, past
forty, and still wrestling with fate, happy if he could get three
dollars a week over for his board. Yet he was a strong man, gifted with
a keen intelligence, strictly temperate in his habits, and honest in his
dealings. The only point against him was, that he had no power and
apparently no desire to make personal friends. He was one of those who
cannot easily ally themselves with other men, but must fight their fight
alone, victors or vanquished.

A native of Scotland, he was born a Roman Catholic, and was partly
educated for the priesthood in a Catholic seminary there; but he was
diverted from the priestly office, as it appears, by reading Byron,
Scott, and other literature of the day. At twenty he was a romantic,
impulsive, and innocent young man, devouring the Waverley novels, and in
his vacations visiting with rapture the scenes described in them. The
book, however, which decided the destiny of this student was of a very
different description, being no other than the "Autobiography of
Benjamin Franklin," a book which was then read by almost every boy who
read at all. One day, at Aberdeen, a young acquaintance met him in the
street, and said to him:--

"I am going to America, Bennett."

"To America! When? Where?"

"I am going to Halifax on the 6th of April."

"My dear fellow," said Bennett, "I'll go with you. I want to see the
place where Franklin was born."

Three months after he stepped ashore at the beautiful town of Halifax in
Nova Scotia, with only money enough in his pocket to pay his board for
about two weeks. Gaunt poverty was upon him soon, and he was glad to
earn a meagre subsistence for a few weeks, by teaching. He used to speak
of his short residence in Halifax as a time of severe privation and
anxiety, for it was a place then of no great wealth, and had little to
offer to a penniless adventurer, such as he was.

He made his way to Portland, in Maine, before the first winter set in,
and thence found passage in a schooner bound to Boston. In one of the
early numbers of his paper he described his arrival at that far-famed
harbor, and his emotions on catching his first view of the city. The
paragraph is not one which we should expect from the editor of the
"Herald," but I have no doubt it expressed his real feelings in 1819.

"I was alone, young, enthusiastic, uninitiated. In my more youthful days
I had devoured the enchanting life of Benjamin Franklin written by
himself, and Boston appeared to me as the residence of a friend, an
associate, an acquaintance. I had also drunk in the history of the holy
struggle for independence, first made on Bunker Hill. Dorchester Heights
were to my youthful imagination almost as holy ground as Arthur's Seat
or Salisbury Craigs. Beyond was Boston, her glittering spires rising
into the blue vault of heaven like beacons to light a world to liberty."

In the glow of his first enthusiasm, and having nothing else to do, he
spent several days in visiting the scenes of historic events with which
his reading had made him familiar. But his slender purse grew daily more
attenuated, and he soon found himself in a truly desperate situation, a
friendless, unprepossessing young man, knowing no trade or profession,
and without an acquaintance in the city. His last penny was spent. A
whole day passed without his tasting food. A second day went by, and
still he fasted. He could find no employment, and was too proud to beg.
In this terrible strait he was walking upon Boston Common, wondering how
it could be that he, so willing to work, and with such a capacity for
work, should be obliged to pace the streets of a wealthy city, idle and
starving!

"How shall I get something to eat?" he said to himself.

At that moment he saw something glittering upon the ground before him,
which proved to be a silver coin of the value of twelve and a half
cents. Cheered by this strange coincidence, and refreshed by food, he
went with renewed spirit in search of work. He found it almost
immediately. A countryman of his own, of the firm of Wells & Lilly,
publishers and booksellers, gave him a situation as clerk and
proof-reader, and thus put him upon the track which led him to his
future success.

This firm lasted only long enough to give him the means of getting to
New York, where he arrived in 1822, almost as poor as when he left
Scotland. He tried many occupations,--a school, lectures upon political
economy, instruction in the Spanish language; but drifted at length into
the daily press as drudge-of-all-work, at wages varying from five to
eight dollars a week, with occasional chances to increase his revenue a
little by the odd jobbery of literature.

Journalism was then an unknown art in the United States, and no
newspaper had anything at all resembling an editorial corps. The most
important daily newspapers of New York were carried on by the editor,
aided by one or two ill-paid assistants, with a possible correspondent
in Washington during the session of Congress. And that proved to be
James Gordon Bennett's opportunity of getting his head a little above
water. He filled the place one winter of Washington corespondent to the
New York "Enquirer;" and while doing so he fell in by chance in the
Congressional library with a volume of Horace Walpole's gossiping
society letters. He was greatly taken with them, and he said to himself:
"Why not try a few letters on a similar plan from Washington, to be
published in New York?"

He tried the experiment. The letters, which were full of personal
anecdotes, and gave descriptions of noted individuals, proved very
attractive, and gave him a most valuable hint as to what readers take an
interest in. The letters being anonymous, he remained poor and unknown.
He made several attempts to get into business for himself. He courted
and served the politicians. He conducted party newspapers for them,
without political convictions of his own. But when he had done the work
of carrying elections and creating popularity, he did not find the idols
he had set up at all disposed to reward the obscure scribe to whom they
owed their elevation.

But all this while he was learning his trade, and though he lived under
demoralizing influences, he never lapsed into bad habits. What he said
of himself one day was strictly true, and it was one of the most
material causes of his final victory:--

"Social glasses of wine are my aversion; public dinners are my
abomination; all species of gormandizing, my utter scorn and contempt.
When I am hungry, I eat; when thirsty, drink. Wine and viands, taken for
society, or to stimulate conversation, tend only to dissipation,
indolence, poverty, contempt, and death."

At length, early in 1835, having accumulated two or three hundred
dollars, he conceived the notion of starting a penny paper. First he
looked about for a partner. He proposed the scheme to a struggling,
ambitious young printer and journalist, beginning to be known in Nassau
Street, named Horace Greeley. I have heard Mr. Greeley relate the
interview.

"Bennett came to me," he said, "as I was standing at the case setting
type, and putting his hand in his pocket pulled out a handful of money.
There was some gold among it, more silver, and I think one fifty-dollar
bill. He said he had between two and three hundred dollars, and wanted
me to go in with him and set up a daily paper, the printing to be done
in our office, and he to be the editor.

"I told him he hadn't money enough. He went away, and soon after got
other printers to do the work and the 'Herald' appeared."

This was about six years before the "Tribune" was started. Mr. Greeley
was right in saying that his future rival in journalism had not money
enough. The little "Herald" was lively, smart, audacious, and funny; it
pleased a great many people and made a considerable stir; but the price
was too low, and the range of journalism then was very narrow. It is
highly probable that the editor would have been baffled after all, but
for one of those lucky accidents which sometimes happen to men who are
bound to succeed.

There was a young man then in the city named Brandreth, who had brought
a pill over with him from England, and was looking about in New York for
some cheap, effective way of advertising his pill. He visited Bennett in
his cellar and made an arrangement to pay him a certain sum every week
for a certain space in the columns of the "Herald." It was the very
thing he wanted, a little _certainty_ to help him over that awful day of
judgment which comes every week to struggling enterprises,--Saturday
night!

Still, the true cause of the final success of the paper was the
indomitable character of its founder, his audacity, his persistence, his
power of continuous labor, and the inexhaustible vivacity of his mind.
After a year of vicissitude and doubt, he doubled the price of his
paper, and from that time his prosperity was uninterrupted. He turned
everything to account. Six times he was assaulted by persons whom he had
satirized in his newspaper, and every time he made it tell upon his
circulation. On one occasion, for example, after relating how his head
had been cut open by one of his former employers, he added:--

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