The journal had the courage in 1818 to take a stand against lotteries, then resorted to not only for private gain, but to raise capital for bridges, canals, turnpikes, colleges, and churches. Their abolition would mean a sacrifice to the Evening Post, for in some periods of previous years they had furnished one-fifteenth or one-twentieth the whole advertising. But Coleman’s heart was touched by the losses of the poor. “Look at the crowd of poor, ragged wretches that beset the office-keeper’s doors the morning after the day’s drawing is over, waiting with their little slips in their hands, to hear their fate, and the yesterday’s earnings ready to be given to the harpies that stand gaping for the pittance.” He thought there were two palliatives short of abolition: first, to price the tickets so high that only people of means would gamble; and second, as in England, to compel managers to finish the drawings in a week or ten days, so as to end the pernicious practice of insuring the fate of tickets. Three years later, in 1821, an act passed providing that no new lotteries should be authorized.
The Evening Post said nothing against public executions, which during the first quarter of the century drew crowds of thousands; but it did cease at an early date, on principle, to publish long accounts of them. In June, 1819, it barely mentioned the fact that a great concourse gathered for the execution in Potter’s Field, now Washington Square, of a negress named Rose Butler for attempted arson, and that the disappointment was keen when she was respited. Next month her actual hanging was recorded in five lines. Imprisonment for debt was repeatedly attacked by the editor.
Little was said by Coleman or any one else against cock-fighting and other inhuman amusements of the time. In 1807, however, the Evening Post opened its columns to a writer who described with indignant reprobation a bull-baiting which he had just attended. The bull was worried by dogs until, with one horn broken off, his ears in shreds, his tongue almost torn out, and his eyes filled with blood, he stopped fighting and had to be driven away to save his life. In other cities about 1815, notably Philadelphia, a great deal was being said against the employment of chimney sweeps, a set of dirty, underfed, uneducated urchins, who suffered from harsh masters and a dangerous calling. Coleman joined the chorus, and printed extended accounts of British inventions for the mechanical cleaning of flues. It is interesting to note that in 1805 the Evening Post was as willing to give up its revenue from patent medicines as later that from lotteries. The editor, rendered angry by the death of a little girl who had taken a worthless nostrum, denounced “the quack medicines and quack advertisements which ... so much distinguish and disgrace the city.” Some daily papers were filled with advertisements of Restoratives, Essences, Balsams, Lozenges, and Purifiers warranted to cure all human ills; and the vendors had begun to publish in Maiden Lane a weekly organ, the Remembrancer, of which they distributed five hundred copies free.
Upon the contributions steadily made by invention and private enterprise to the comfort of the city many comments may be found in the Evening Post. Some of the most interesting relate to the old sailboat ferries, which were both slow and dangerous. Repeated accidents occurred early in the century. Following the capsizing of a Brooklyn ferry one bitter December day in 1803, with six passengers aboard, Coleman remarked that it was a notorious fact that such craft were placed in charge of fellows who were oftener half drunk than sober, and who, unable themselves to steer, committed the helm to any one who volunteered. He quoted the opinion of a competent sailor that in build these boats were the most dangerous ferries, especially in rough weather, of all he had seen throughout the world. The Paulus Hook (Jersey City) ferries, when contending against head winds and strong tides, required three hours to make a passage, and it was virtually impossible to get a horse and carriage across the North River. On summer Sundays, when many wished to go to Hoboken for picnics, and during the autumn racing on Long Island, prodigious queues would form at the piers. But on July 18, 1812, a steam ferry was set in motion between Manhattan and Paulus Hook by Robert Fulton. Surpassing all expectations, it proved able to accommodate six carriages and horses—driven easily aboard by a floating bridge—and 300 passengers at one time, and to cross during a calm in fourteen minutes, or against the tide in twenty. On July 27 some 1,500 people were ferried across and back; “a proud example of the genius of our country,” said Coleman.
When in the summer of 1807 Fulton’s steamboat, the Clermont, began her regular service between New York and Albany, the Evening Post was jubilant; he had made only a few trips before it wanted the mail service transferred to him. It proudly recorded each new reduction in the time, until one trip from Albany down was made in 28 hours. Even in October great crowds gathered to watch the boat start:
Among the thousands who viewed the scene [wrote “New York” on Oct. 2] permit a spectator to express his gratification at the sight, this morning, of the steamboat proceeding on her trip to Albany in a wind and swell of tide which appeared to bid defiance to every attempt to perform the voyage. The Steam Boat appeared to glide as easily and rapidly as though it were calm, and the machinery was not in the least impeded by the waves of the Hudson, the wheels moving with their usual velocity and effect. The experiment of this day removes every doubt of the practicability of the Steam Boat being able to work in rough weather.
Unfortunately, this particular trip was actually disastrous. Leaving the city at 10 a. m., the boat was forced by the gale and tide to tie up to the bank at noon, staying there overnight. Next morning, before reaching Tarrytown, she ran into a small sloop, and one of her paddle-wheels was torn away. It was 10 o’clock on the morning of Oct. 4 before she set her stiff and hungry passengers ashore in Albany. She was immediately withdrawn, and during the winter was almost completely rebuilt.
The journal appreciatively noticed the opening of steamship navigation on the Raritan and Delaware Rivers in 1809, as a means of shortening the trip between New York and Philadelphia. In March, 1815, it gave an account of the first trip through Hell Gate and the Sound to New Haven. The steamship Fulton left New York shortly after 5 a. m., and, the weather being bad and the wood for fuel poor, did not reach her destination till 4:30 that afternoon. Eight or nine hours would ordinarily be sufficient. The ease with which Hell Gate, theretofore thought impassable by steam, was navigated, amazed every one. No less than $90,000 had been spent on the boat. “We believe it may with truth be affirmed that there is not in the world such accommodations afloat,” wrote a correspondent. “Indeed, it is hardly possible to conceive that anything of the kind can exceed the Fulton in elegance and convenience.”
By the beginning of 1816 the Evening Post was giving much space to the possibilities of coal gas as an illuminant. A schoolmaster named Griscom lectured the evening of Jan. 26 on the light, the audience including the Mayor, Recorder, many aldermen, and prominent business men. He demonstrated the use of gas, argued that it would cost only half as much as lamps or candles, and showed that it gave a superior brilliancy without smoke or odor. At this time, as Coleman emphasized, Londoners had extensively employed coal gas for four or five years. During the summer of 1816 a successful trial was made in Baltimore. At last, seven years later, the Evening Post was able editorially to direct attention to the advertisement of the New York Gas Company, which was just issuing $200,000 worth of stock, and which the city government had given a franchise for lighting all the town south of Grand Street for the next thirty years.
But the use of old-fashioned illuminants involved no such hardships as did the city’s exclusive dependence, when Hamilton’s journal began its career, upon wood for fuel. As regularly as the Hudson froze and snowdrifts blocked the roads, prices soared. In January, 1806, for example, hickory rose from the normal price of $3.50 a load (three loads made a cord) to $7, and some speculators even tried to get $8. In 1821, after a severe snowstorm, $5 was charged for a load of oak, and $7.50 for better woods. It was with unusual satisfaction, therefore, that in the summer of 1823 the journal said that it “congratulated the public on the near prospect of this city being supplied with coal, dug from that immense range” of potential mines lately discovered in Pennsylvania. The new Schuylkill Coal Company and the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company were making preparations to ship the anthracite; and Coleman hoped that the city’s fuel bill of $700,000 or $800,000 would be cut in half.