Competitors Tried to Crush Him.
Bennett was right in trusting to the readers' intelligence, for his following increased. But though the public came to him in goodly numbers, the battle was a desperate, up-hill one. Five years after he started, all the papers in the city banded together to crush him. The records of the fight are curious now, chiefly for the profusion of the epithets that were hurled at him. One paper, in one short broadside, managed to call him an "obscene rogue," "profligate adventurer," "venomous reptile," "pestilential scoundrel," "polluted wretch," "habitual liar," and "veteran blackguard."
Bennett weathered the storm, seldom bothering about hitting back, but all the time striving to make his paper brighter and more readable. His adversaries soon realized that they were losing ground, and they gradually relinquished the struggle.
Twelve years after he had started the Herald, Bennett got into a dispute with Horace Greeley concerning the relative circulation of the Herald and Tribune. The dispute was settled by an impartial committee, and this committee found that the Herald had a daily circulation of 16,711 to the Tribune's 11,455, while the Weekly Herald had a circulation of 11,455 to a circulation of 15,780 for the Weekly Tribune. On the whole, the result was a decided victory for Bennett.