There are two mornings of the year on which newspapers have not hitherto been published in the city of New York,—the 5th of July, and the 2d of January. A shadow appears to rest on the world during those days, as when there is an eclipse of the sun. We are separated from our brethren, cut off, lost, alone; vague apprehensions of evil creep over the mind. We feel, in some degree, as husbands feel who, far from wife and children, say to themselves, shuddering, "What things may have happened, and I not know it!" Nothing quite dispels the gloom until the Evening Post—how eagerly seized—assures us that nothing very particular has happened since our last. It is amusing to notice how universal is the habit of reading a morning paper. Hundreds of vehicles and vessels convey the business men of New York to that extremity of Manhattan Island-which may be regarded as the counting-house of the Western Continent. It is not uncommon for every individual in a cabin two hundred feet long to be sitting absorbed in his paper, like boys conning their lessons on their way to school. Still more striking is it to observe the torrent of workingmen pouring down town, many of them reading as they go, and most of them provided with a newspaper for dinner-time, not less as a matter of course than the tin kettle which contains the material portion of the repast. Notice, too, the long line of hackney-coaches on a stand, nearly every driver sitting on his box reading his paper. Many of our Boston friends have landed in New York at five o'clock in the morning, and ridden up town in the street cars, filled, at that hour, with women and boys, folding newspapers and throwing off bundles of them from time to time, which are caught by other boys and women in waiting. Carriers are flitting in every direction, and the town is alive with the great business of getting two hundred thousand papers distributed before breakfast.
All this is new, but it is also permanent. Having once had daily papers, we can never again do without them; so perfectly does this great invention accord with the genius of modern life. The art of journalism is doubtless destined to continuous improvement for a long time to come; the newspapers of the future will be more convenient, and better in every way, than those of the present day; but the art remains forever an indispensable auxiliary to civilization. And this is so, not by virtue of editorial essays, but because journalism brings the events of the time to bear upon the instruction of the time. An editorial essayist is a man addressing men; but the skilled and faithful journalist, recording with exactness and power the thing that has come to pass, is Providence addressing men. The thing that has actually happened,—to know that is the beginning of wisdom. All else is theory and conjecture, which may be right and may be wrong.
While it is true that the daily press of the city of New York is limited by the telegraph, it has nevertheless a very great, an unapproached, national importance. We do not consider it certain that New York is always to remain the chief city of the United States; but it holds that rank now, and must for many years. Besides being the source of a great part of our news, it was the first city that afforded scope for papers conducted at the incredible expense which modern appliances necessitate. Consequently its daily papers reach the controlling minds of the country. They are found in all reading-rooms, exchanges, bank parlors, insurance-offices, counting-rooms, hotels, and wherever else the ruling men of the country congregate. But, above all, they are, and must be, in all newspaper offices, subject to the scissors. This is the chief source of their importance. Not merely that in this way their contents are communicated to the whole people. The grand reason why the New York papers have national importance is, that it is chiefly through them that the art of journalism in the United States is to be perfected. They set daily copies for all editors to follow. The expenditure necessary for the carrying on of a complete daily newspaper is so immense, that the art can only be improved in the largest cities. New York is first in the field; it has the start of a quarter of a century or more; and it therefore devolves upon the journalists of that city to teach the journalists of the United States their vocation. It is this fact which invests the press of New York with such importance, and makes it so well worth considering.
It is impossible any longer to deny that the chief newspaper of that busy city is the New York Herald. No matter how much we may regret this fact, or be ashamed of it, no journalist can deny it. We do not attach much importance to the fact that Abraham Lincoln, the late lamented President of the United States, thought it worth while, during the dark days of the summer of 1864, to buy its support at the price of the offer of the French mission. He was mistaken in supposing that this paper had any considerable power to change votes; which was shown by the result of the Presidential election in the city of New York, where General McClellan had the great majority of thirty-seven thousand. Influence over opinion no paper can have which has itself no opinion, and cares for none. It is not as a vehicle of opinion that the Herald has importance, but solely as a vehicle of news. It is for its excellence, real or supposed, in this particular, that eighty thousand people buy it every morning. Mr. Lincoln committed, as we cannot help thinking, a most egregious error and fault in his purchase of the editor of this paper, though he is in some degree excused by the fact that several leading Republicans, who were in a position to know better, advised or sanctioned the bargain, and leading journalists agreed not to censure it. Mr. Lincoln could not be expected to draw the distinction, between the journalist and the writer of editorials. He perceived the strength of this carrier-pigeon's pinions, but did not note the trivial character of the message tied to its leg. Thirty or forty war correspondents in the field, a circulation larger than any of its rivals, an advertising patronage equalled only by that of the London Times, the popularity of the paper in the army, the frequent utility of its maps and other elucidations,—these things imposed upon his mind; and his wife could tell him from personal observation, that the proprietor of this paper lived in a style of the most profuse magnificence,—maintaining costly establishments in town and country, horses, and yachts, to say nothing of that most expensive appendage to a reigning house, an heir apparent.
Our friends in the English press tell us, that the Herald was one of the principal obstacles in their attempts to guide English opinions aright during the late struggle. Young men in the press would point to its editorials and say:
"This is the principal newspaper in the Northern States; this is the Times of America; can a people be other than contemptible who prefer such a newspaper as this to journals so respectable and so excellent as the Times and Tribune, published in the same city?" "As to (American) journalism,"
says Professor Goldwin Smith, "the New York Herald is always kept before our eyes." That is to say, the editorial articles in the Herald; not that variety and fulness of intelligence which often compelled men who hated it most to get up at the dawn of day to buy it. A paper which can detach two or three men, after a battle, to collect the names of the killed and wounded, with orders to do only that, cannot lack purchasers in war time. Napoleon assures us that the whole art of war consists in having the greatest force at the point of contact. This rule applies to the art of journalism; the editor of the Herald knew it, and had the means to put it in practice.
Even here, at home, we find two opinions as to the cause of the Herald's vast success as a business. One of these opinions is this,—the Herald takes the lead because it is such a bad paper. The other opinion is,—the Herald takes the lead because it is such a good paper. It is highly important to know which of these two opinions is correct; or, in other words, whether it is the Herald's excellences as a newspaper, or its crimes as a public teacher, which give it such general currency. Such success as this paper has obtained is a most influential fact upon the journalism of the whole country, as any one can see who looks over a file of our most flourishing daily papers. It is evident that our daily press is rapidly becoming Heraldized; and it is well known that the tendency of imitation is to reproduce all of the copy excepting alone that which made it worth copying. It is honorable to the American press that this rule has been reversed in the present instance. Some of the more obvious good points of the Herald have become universal, while as yet no creature has been found capable of copying the worst of its errors.
If there are ten bakers in a town, the one that gives the best loaf for sixpence is sure, at last, to sell most bread. A man may puff up his loaves to a great size, by chemical agents, and so deceive the public for a time; another may catch the crowd for a time by the splendor of his gilt sheaf, the magnitude of his signs, and the bluster of his advertising; and the intrinsically best baker may be kept down, for a time, by want of tact, or capital, or some personal defect. But let the competition last thirty years! The gilt sheaf fades, the cavities in the big loaf are observed; but the ugly little man round the corner comes steadily into favor, and all the town, at length, is noisy in the morning with the rattle of his carts. The particular caterer for our morning repast, now under consideration, has achieved a success of this kind, against every possible obstacle, and under every possible disadvantage. He had no friends at the start, he has made none since, and he has none now. He has had the support of no party or sect. On the contrary, he has won his object in spite of the active opposition of almost every organized body in the country, and the fixed disapproval of every public-spirited human being who has lived in the United States since he began his career. What are we to say of this? Are we to say that the people of the United States are competent to judge of bread, but not of newspapers? Are we to say that the people of the United States prefer evil to good? We cannot assent to such propositions.
Let us go back to the beginning, and see how this man made his way to his present unique position. We owe his presence in this country, it seems, to Benjamin Franklin; and he first smelt printer's ink in Boston, near the spot where young Ben Franklin blackened his fingers with it a hundred years before. Born and reared on the northeastern coast of Scotland, in a Roman Catholic family of French origin, he has a French intellect and Scotch habits. Frenchmen residing among us can seldom understand why this man should be odious, so French is he. A French naval officer was once remonstrated with for having invited him to a ball given on board a ship of war in New York harbor. "Why, what has he done?" inquired the officer. "Has he committed murder? Has he robbed, forged, or run away with somebody's wife?" "No." "Why then should we not invite him?" "He is the editor of the New York Herald." "Ah!" exclaimed the Frenchman,—"the Herald! it is a delightful paper,—it reminds me of my gay Paris." This, however, was thirty years ago, when Bennett was almost as French as Voltaire. He was a Frenchman also in this: though discarding, in his youth, the doctrines of his Church, and laughing them to scorn in early manhood, he still maintained a kind of connection with the Catholic religion. The whole of his power as a writer consists in his detection of the evil in things that are good, and of the falsehood in things that are true, and of the ridiculous in things that are important. He began with the Roman Catholic Church,—"the holy Roman Catholic Church," as he once styled it,—adding in a parenthesis, "all of us Catholics are devilish holy." Another French indication is, that his early tastes were romantic literature and political economy,—a conjunction very common in France from the days of the "philosophers" to the present time. During our times of financial collapse, we have noticed, among the nonsense which he daily poured forth, some gleams of a superior understanding of the fundamental laws of finance. He appears to have understood 1837 and 1857 better than most of his contemporaries.