The newspapers of the North and East are filled with remarks upon the death of John Adams, while those from the South are equally filled with the obsequies of Jefferson, neither section having yet heard of the loss sustained by the other. How much is the surprise at each extremity of the country destined to be increased by the information which is now traveling from the South to the North, and from the North to the South! Last evening, in all probability, President Adams heard of the death of his father; at about the same moment news of the decease of Jefferson must have reached Quincy.
To a large proportion of subscribers—the wholesalers, retailers, auctioneers, shippers, and manufacturers—the most interesting news was generally to be found in the column headed “Evening Post Marine List,” and in the advertisements. The shipping news was at this time collected with the utmost attention to accuracy and completeness, for it was as much one of the journal’s grounds for claiming a superior position as its financial news became after the Civil War. A special employee obtained it from the custom house, counting rooms, and wharves, and regularly gathered some dozens or even scores of such items as the following:
CLEARED, Brig Caroline, Lee, Teneriffe, by N. L. and G. Griswold; schrs. Miranda, Sayre, St. Augustine, by the captains, Linnet, Paterson, Shelburne, by do.
ARRIVED, The schr. Red-Bird, Walker, in 12 days from Washington, N. C., with 447 bbl. of naval stores, 700 bushels of corn, for Mr. Gardiner, of Rhode Island. Spoke, five leagues from the capes of Virginia, the schr. Farmer’s Daughter, 24 days from Port Morant for Marblehead, the captain informed that he saw a large ship under jury masts, standing in for Havanna; being about two leagues distant; supposed to be English. At the same time, a brig to leeward, with her main-top-masts gone and both pumps agoing; she had black sides and supposed to be an eastern brig, & was making for Havanna.
Sloop Harriet, Lynds, 60 days from Jamaica, with rum, to George Pratt. Captain L. has experienced the most distressing weather, and his crew would have starved had it not been for supplies received from 3 vessels which he fell in with. On the 5th of Nov. he met with the schr. Goliath, Pinkham (arrived at this port), then out 35 days; and though Captain P. was then short, and on allowance, he humanely divided, as it were, his last mouthful with Captain Lynds. Nov. 10, in lat. 33, fell in with the bark Calliope, 46 days from Kingston for Norfolk—gave her some water, and received some bread and beef. Nov. 14, in lat. 36, got some bread from the ship Lovina, 18 days from Savannah for Philadelphia.
Then, as now, advertisements were the principal support of newspapers, though they yielded a revenue that seems pitiful by modern standards. Until some years after Coleman died in 1828, merchants paid $40 a year for the privilege of advertising, a subscription being thrown in. It was left to their sense of fairness not to present advertisements of undue length, and “display ads” were of course unknown. The monthly rate was $3.50, four insertions could be had for a dollar, and one for fifty cents. A study of the first ledger of the Evening Post, for the years 1801–1804, shows that the largest receipts from a single firm were $276.49, from Bronson and Chauncey. The publishers, T. and J. Swords, paid in eighteen months $157.55—they were destined to be good customers of the Evening Post for decades. But nearly all the accounts were for small amounts. James Roosevelt, the wealthy Pearl Street merchant, paid $57.37 between the beginning of 1802 and Nov. 16, 1803; Minturn and Barker, representing two families long prominent in business, paid $39.55 in the same period; and Robert Lenox paid $91.50. This ledger is a virtual directory of all important business and professional men of the city, in which we meet entries of payments for subscriptions by Hamilton, Burr, Rufus King, Oliver Wolcott, Brockholst Livingston, Morgan Lewis, and many other notables.
Ordinarily, from 1801 to 1825, of the twenty short columns all but four or five were devoted to advertisements. Shipping, auctions, wholesale stores (seldom retail), lotteries, legal notices, and the theater furnished most of the patronage, but the range of advertising was surprising. In 1802 we find such insertions as these:
ST. CROIX RUM.—50 puncheons, just arrived per the brig Harriet, from St. Croix, now landing at Schermerhorn’s Wharf. For sale by CURRIE & WHITNEY, 47 Front Street.
FOR SALE—A likely Negro Wench, 16 years old—sold for no fault. For terms, enquire of WILLIAM LEAYCROFT, 109 Liberty Street.
TAKE NOTICE
LOTTERY TICKETS to be had at the Book and Stationery Store of NAPHTALI JUDAH, No. 84 Maiden-Lane. Tickets in the Lottery No. 1, for the encouragement of Literature—$25, the highest prize—for sale in Halves, Quarters, and Eighth Parts. The Lottery will positively commence drawing in this city on the first Tuesday in February next. Owing to the great demand for Tickets, they will rise from the present price of six dollars and a half, in a few days.
Editor Coleman would have lifted his brows had he been told that within a little more than a century St. Croix rum, lotteries to encourage literature, and the sale of likely negro wenches would all be outlawed.
The circulation of the Evening Post rose only slowly, and like all the other New York newspapers of the time, until after the War of 1812 it found the struggle for existence a harsh one. At the beginning of 1804 the whole group, except the youngest and weakest, Irving’s Morning Chronicle, concerted to raise their yearly subscription price from $8 to $10; this meaning, in the instance of Coleman’s journal, the difference between $9,600 and $12,000 a year. The reason alleged was the heavy increase in the cost of labor and materials. Journeymen printers, recently paid $6 a week, were now asking $8; the faithfullest clerk and most dogged collector in town could once have been had for $300 a year, and now any such employee wanted $400; while paper had risen until it cost the editor $7,000 to $8,000 a year. The Gazette and the Mercantile Advertiser caused much ill-feeling when they immediately broke faith and reverted to the $8 rate, but Coleman stood by his guns. To help in holding his subscribers, he advanced his printing hour from four p. m. to two. Year after year there was a slight increase in the daily circulation, though it hardly kept pace with the growth of population; in 1815 it stood at 1,580 copies daily, and in 1820 at 1,843.
Arrears long cost New York editors the same sleepless nights which they cost the owners of some ill-managed country journals to-day. City residents paid regularly, for they could be reached through the ten-pound court if they did not; but in 1805 Coleman despairingly affirmed that “not one in a hundred” of the subscribers to the semi-weekly were prompt. In some centers, as Boston, from $500 to $1,000 was due the Post and Herald, and in Kingston, Canada, more than $60 was owed merely for postage. “The loss that arises from neglected arrearages would amount to not less than 30 per cent.,” lamented the editor. It was necessary to send a collector up through New York and New England to Upper Canada, stopping for money all along the mail routes.
When Michael Burnham took charge, on Nov. 16, 1806, business affairs were greatly systematized; a fact of which we find evidence both in the disappearance of complaints of arrears, and in the ledgers and a curious old account book, 1801–1810. These accounts throw much light on mechanical details. A frequent charge for “skins” presumably refers to the buckskins which were cut and rolled into balls, soaked in ink, and then used by the printers’ devils to pound the forms and thus ink the type. Almost daily charges appear for candles and quill pens. The journal seems to have paid many of the expenses of apprentices, for there are numerous entries for “cloathing” and for board at $3 a week. Coleman drew upon the till occasionally, as is shown by an item of May 25, 1809: “Boots for Mr. Coleman, $10.” But all the improvements that Burnham made in the business management did not save Coleman at times before 1810 from half-resolving to let the Evening Post die and to return to the bar again; in the year named, when he was trying to arrange his English debts, he confessed such a hesitation. When Duane of the Aurora charged that the Federalist newspapers in seaport towns were bribed “by support in the form of mercantile advertisements” to oppose all Jefferson’s measures, Coleman bitterly replied that Federalist merchants actually neglected their press. Taking up a copy of the chief Federalist organ in Philadelphia, and one of the chief neutral journal there, he found six ship advertisements in the former and forty in the latter; while “on a particular day not long since the New York Gazette had eighty-five new advertisements, the Mercantile Advertiser sixty-one, and the Evening Post nine.”