(From Photo in the Possession of Mrs. Jennie Beach Gasper)
ALFRED ELY BEACH
A Son of Moses Y. Beach; He Left “The Sun” to Conduct the “Scientific American.”
Beach Brothers, as the new ownership of the Sun was entitled, made but one important change in the appearance and character of the paper during the next few years.
Up to the coming of the telegraph the Sun had devoted its first page to advertising, with a spice of reading-matter that usually was in the form of reprint—miscellany, as some newspapermen call it, or bogus, as most printers term it. But when telegraphic news came to be common but costly, newspapers began to see the importance of attracting the casual reader by means of display on the front page. The Beaches presently used one or two columns of the latest telegraph-matter on the first page; sometimes the whole page would be so occupied.
In 1850, from July to December, they issued an Evening Sun, which carried no advertising.
On April 6, 1852, Alfred Ely Beach, more concerned with scientific matters than with the routine of daily publication, withdrew from the Sun, which passed into the sole possession of Moses S. Beach, then only thirty years old. It was reported that when the partnership was dissolved the division was based on a total valuation of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the paper which, less than nineteen years before, Ben Day had started with an old hand-press and a hatful of type. Horace Greeley, telling a committee of the British parliament about American newspapers, named that sum as the amount for which the Sun was valued in the sale by brother to brother.
“It was very cheap,” he added.