HORACE GREELEY.
THE FOUNDER OF MODERN JOURNALISM.
HE men of whom we love to read are those who stand for some great principle, whose lives and deeds exemplify its power. When we think of patriotism, the figure of Washington rises before us, as the man whose life, above all others, was controlled by pure love of country. Practical wisdom, shrewdness, and thrift are embodied in Benjamin Franklin. Astor and Girard represent the power of accumulation; Stewart, Carnegie, and Pullman, the power of organization; and so, when we consider the power of the press, the image which comes up before our mental view is that of Horace Greeley. In almost every personal quality there have been men who far surpassed him,—men who were greater as politicians, as organizers, as statesmen, as speakers, as writers,—but in the one respect of influencing public opinion through the press, of “making his mind the mind of other men,” no man in America has ever wielded such power as the great editor and founder of the New York “Tribune.”
Horace Greeley was one of the poor country boys who have afterward become the bone and sinew of the Republic. He was born in Amherst, New Hampshire, in 1811. His father, Zaccheus Greeley, was a struggling farmer. He moved to Vermont in 1821, and a few years later to the western part of Pennsylvania. Horace was a precocious child; and his mother, Mary Woodburn, who was of Scotch-Irish stock, used to recite to him ballads and stories, so that he really acquired a taste for literature before the age at which many children conquer the alphabet.
In his fifteenth year Horace felt that he could endure farming no longer, and at last procured from his father a reluctant consent that he should definitely seek employment as a printer. He found the longed-for opportunity at East Poultney, Vermont, in the office of the “Northern Spectator.”
In 1830, before Horace’s apprenticeship ended, the “Spectator” collapsed, and he was again set adrift. His father had removed to Western Pennsylvania, and the boy turned his face in that direction. After working for a few months on different country papers, he resolved to try his fortune in New York, and went to that city in August, 1831.
After two years of labor as a printer, so arduous that during much of the time it extended to fourteen hours a day, Mr. Greeley commenced his first editorial work upon a weekly paper called the “New Yorker” of which he was part owner and which lasted until March, 1841, when it went under, with a credit on its books of $10,000 due to Mr. Greeley for editing the paper, all of which was sunk with the wreck.
In the famous campaign of 1840, when Harrison was “sung and shouted into the presidential chair,” Greeley started a small weekly called the “Log Cabin.” He threw all his spirit and energy into it; he made it lively, crisp, and cheap. It attained an almost unheard-of success, reaching editions of eighty and ninety thousand. It was continued for several months after the triumphant election of Harrison, and then merged into the New York “Tribune,” which Greeley started at this time, the first issue appearing April 10, 1841.
The new enterprise soon became successful. It was helped at the start by a bitter attack from the “Sun,” then in the hands of Moses Y. Beach. The defense and rejoinders were equally pungent and amusing. Mr. Greeley always throve best upon opposition. His spicy retorts, and especially his partisan enthusiasm, forced the attention of the public, and the subscription-list of the “Tribune” soon rose from hundreds to thousands; by the third week in May it had 10,000 names on its books.
One thing in particular gave the “Tribune” eminence; that was Greeley’s policy of employing as contributors the best writers of the time. To name all the able men and women who thus won fame for both themselves and the “Tribune,” would make a list too long to print; but among them may be mentioned Bayard Taylor, whose “Views Afoot” first appeared in the form of letters to the “Tribune;” Margaret Fuller, whose articles gave her a wide reputation; George Ripley, Moncure D. Conway, Sydney Howard Gay, and George W. Smalley; and for years Thomas Hughes, the popular author of “Tom Brown at Oxford,” sent frequent and able letters from London. The result of this liberal policy was to make the “Tribune” indispensable to people of intelligence, even though utterly opposed to its political views.
In 1848 Mr. Greeley was elected to Congress, but his strength was as a journalist, not as a legislator. At the close of his brief term he retired from Congress, and during the stormy decade preceding the Civil War he made the “Tribune” a mighty power. He warmly espoused the cause of freedom, and denounced the Fugitive Slave Law, the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and the endless aggressions of the slave power with a vigor and pertinacity which made him one of the best-hated men in America. His course was not always consistent; and he often brought upon his head the wrath of friends as well as enemies. Moreover, in the conduct of a great daily paper much must be left to the judgment of subordinates; and all their mistakes were, of course, laid to the charge of their chief. Many of the old readers of the “Tribune” supposed that every line in the paper was actually written by Horace Greeley. He rarely took the trouble to justify or explain; and, therefore, while in one sense one of the best-known men in the country, he was one of the most misunderstood. Mr. Greeley had no time or thought for personal explanations; he was bent upon saving the country,—individuals could take care of themselves.
During the war Mr. Greeley’s course was somewhat erratic and unstable, but he kept a hold upon a large class of readers who believed in him, to whom he was a mental and moral lawgiver, who refused to believe any evil of him; and, if some visitor to the city—for a large proportion of “Tribune” readers were country, and particularly Western, people—on coming back, reported that in an interview with Mr. Greeley the editor had indulged in unlimited profanity, the unlucky individual was incontinently discredited and voted a calumniator.
In the years following the war, Greeley’s pen was more busy than ever. Beside his editorial writing in the “Tribune,” he prepared the second volume of his war history, “The American Conflict,” and his delightful autobiography, “Recollections of a Busy Life.” He was always intensely interested in the growth of the West, where he had made a memorable tour in 1859, extending to Salt Lake City; and now he unceasingly advocated western emigration. His terse advice, “Go West, young man, and grow up with the country,” became a sort of national watchword, and many thousands of Eastern people resolved to turn their faces toward the empire of the West.
In 1872 a curious political combination was made. Probably such a surprise was never sprung upon the country as the nomination of Horace Greeley for the Presidency, by a convention of “Liberal Republicans” and bolting Democrats. That he should be defeated at the polls was inevitable. He worked hard through the canvass, traveling and addressing meetings; body and mind suffered from the fatigue and excitement. To add to his troubles, Mrs. Greeley, who had been out of health for a considerable time, died at this period; his health gave way; he became unable to sleep; and sleeplessness was followed by inflammation of the brain, which soon ended his life.
Horace Greeley sleeps in Greenwood Cemetery, Long Island, on a hill overlooking the beautiful bay of New York, and within sight of the great city where his busy life was spent.
A DEBTOR’S SLAVERY.
(FROM “RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.”)
HE New Yorker was issued under my supervision, its editorials written, its selections made for the most part by me, for seven years and a half from March 22, 1834. Though not calculated to enlist partisanship, or excite enthusiasm, it was at length extensively liked and read. It began with scarcely a dozen subscribers; these steadily increased to 9,000; and it might under better business management (perhaps I should add, at a more favorable time), have proved profitable and permanent. That it did not was mainly owing to these circumstances: 1. It was not extensively advertised at the start, and at least annually thereafter, as it should have been. 2. It was never really published, though it had half-a-dozen nominal publishers in succession. 3. It was sent to subscribers on credit, and a large share of them never paid for it, and never will, while the cost of collecting from others ate up the proceeds. 4. The machinery of railroads, expresses, news companies, news offices, etc., whereby literary periodicals are now mainly disseminated, did not then exist. I believe that just such a paper issued to-day, properly published and advertised, would obtain a circulation of 100,000 in less time than was required to give the New Yorker scarcely a tithe of that aggregate, and would make money for its owners, instead of nearly starving them, as mine did. I was worth at least $1,500 when it was started; I worked hard and lived frugally throughout its existence; it subsisted for the first two years on the profits of our job-work; when I, deeming it established, dissolved with my partner, he taking the jobbing business and I the New Yorker, which held its own pretty fairly thenceforth till the commercial revulsion of 1837 swept over the land, whelming it and me in the general ruin.
I had married in 1836, deeming myself worth $5,000, and the master of a business which would thenceforth yield me for my labor at least $1,000 per annum; but, instead of that, or of any income at all, I found myself obliged throughout 1837 to confront a net loss of about $100 per week—my income averaging $100, and my inevitable expenses $200. It was in vain that I appealed to delinquents to pay up; many of them migrated; some died; others were so considerate as to order the paper stopped, but very few of these paid; and I struggled on against a steadily rising tide of adversity that might have appalled a stouter heart. Often did I call on this or that friend with intent to solicit a small loan to meet some demand that could no longer be postponed nor evaded, and, after wasting a precious hour, leave him, utterly unable to broach the loathsome topic. I have borrowed $500 of a broker late on Saturday, and paid him $5 for the use of it till Monday morning, when I somehow contrived to return it. Most gladly would I have terminated the struggle by a surrender; but, if I had failed to pay my notes continually falling due, I must have paid money for my weekly supply of paper—so that would have availed nothing. To have stopped my journal (for I could not give it away) would have left me in debt, beside my notes for paper, from fifty cents to two dollars each, to at least three thousand subscribers who had paid in advance; and that is the worst kind of bankruptcy. If anyone would have taken my business and debts off my hands, upon my giving him my note for $2,000, I would have jumped at the chance, and tried to work out the debt by setting type, if nothing better offered. If it be suggested that my whole indebtedness was at no time more than $5,000 to $7,000, I have only to say that even $1,000 of debt is ruin to him who keenly feels his obligation to fulfil every engagement yet is utterly without the means of so doing, and who finds himself dragged each week a little deeper into hopeless insolvency. To be hungry, ragged, and penniless is not pleasant; but this is nothing to the horrors of bankruptcy. All the wealth of the Rothschilds would be a poor recompense for a five years’ struggle with the consciousness that you had taken the money or property of trusting friends—promising to return or pay for it when required—and had betrayed this confidence through insolvency.
I dwell on this point, for I would deter others from entering that place of torment. Half the young men in the country, with many old enough to know better, would “go into business”—that is, into debt—to-morrow, if they could. Most poor men are so ignorant as to envy the merchant or manufacturer whose life is an incessant struggle with pecuniary difficulties, who is driven to constant “shinning,” and who, from month to month, barely evades that insolvency which sooner or later overtakes most men in business; so that it has been computed that but one in twenty of them achieve a pecuniary success. For my own part—and I speak from sad experience—I would rather be a convict in a State prison, a slave in a rice swamp, than to pass through life under the harrow of debt.
Let no young man misjudge himself unfortunate, or truly poor, so long as he has the full use of his limbs and faculties, and is substantially free from debt. Hunger, cold, rags, hard work, contempt, suspicion, unjust reproach, are disagreeable; but debt is infinitely worse than them all. And, if it had pleased God to spare either or all of my sons to be the support and solace of my declining years, the lesson which I should have most earnestly sought to impress upon them is—“Never run into debt! Avoid pecuniary obligation as you would pestilence or famine. If you have but fifty cents, and can get no more for a week, buy a peck of corn, parch it, and live on it, rather than owe any man a dollar!” Of course I know that some men must do business that involves risks, and must often give notes and other obligations, and I do not consider him really in debt who can lay his hands directly on the means of paying, at some little sacrifice, all that he owes; I speak of real debt—which involves risk or sacrifice on the one side, obligation and dependence on the other—and I say, from all such, let every youth humbly pray God to preserve him evermore.
THE PRESS.
ONG slumbered the world in the darkness of error,
And ignorance brooded o’er earth like a pall;
To the sceptre and crown men abased them in terror,
Though galling the bondage, and bitter the thrall;
When a voice, like the earthquake’s, revealed the dishonor—
A flash, like the lightning’s, unsealed every eye,
And o’er hill-top and glen floated liberty’s banner,
While round it men gathered to conquer or die!
’Twas the voice of the Press, on the startled ear breaking,
In giant-born prowess, like Pallas of old;
’Twas the flash of intelligence, gloriously waking
A glow on the cheek of the noble and bold;
And tyranny’s minions, o’erawed and affrighted,
Sought a lasting retreat from its powerful control,
And the chains which bound nations in ages benighted,
Were cast to the haunts of the bat and the mole.
Then hail to the Press! chosen guardian of Freedom!
Strong sword-arm of justice! bright sunbeam of truth;
We pledge to her cause (and she has but to need them),
The strength of our manhood, the fire of our youth;
Should despots e’er dare to impede her free soaring,
Or bigot to fetter her flight with his chain,
We pledge that the earth shall close o’er our deploring,
Or view her in gladness and freedom again.
But no!—to the day-dawn of knowledge and glory,
A far brighter noontide-refulgence succeeds,
And our art shall embalm, through all ages, in story,
Her champion who triumphs—her martyr who bleeds,
And proudly her sons shall recall their devotion,
While millions shall listen to honor and bless,
Till there bursts a response from the heart’s strong emotion,
And the earth echoes deep with “Long Life to the Press!”
