Newspaperdom Half a Century Ago

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NEWSPAPERDOM HALF A CENTURY AGO.

There are few things that are more suggestive and instructive in their way than a bundle of old newspapers. One looks upon them with an interest somewhat similar to that which is elicited by accidentally lighting upon, in some half-forgotten, seldom-opened drawer, a budget of ancient letters, when the hands that penned them have moldered into dust, when the incidents they discuss and the many interests that clustered around them have long since passed away and been forgotten; when the hopes and fears that once made their pages palpitate with life have faded into nothingness, and there remain but a few sheets of discolored paper, fit only for the flames.

An interest somewhat similar in some respects, we say, but very different in others. For private records are of but little use except to the families preserving them, while a file of old newspapers presents us with a more or less perfect “brief abstract and chronicle of the time,” showing us, as in a mirror, the progress of politics, and the moral and social status of their day. They are worth all the formal histories that could be concocted. Turning over their yellow pages, we see in their dingy type the forms and phrases of persons and things as they were, and mark the fluctuations of events from day to day.

Some such thoughts as these passed through our mind the other day, as we pored over half a dozen old New York papers left for our inspection by a friend, Mr. John W. Hanford,¹ whilom of the Health Office. On looking them over, we came across a number of the Public Advertiser, a journal long since extinct, dated Saturday morning, July 15, 1809. It is a queer looking little sheet, printed on paper that now-a-days a grocer would be ashamed to wrap his teas and sugars in, and the typography is to match. There is no editorial matter, unless a puff of Joel Barlow, and five column speech of his, can be considered so. It is a Fourth of July oration (fancy the enterprise exhibited in publishing a speech eleven days after its delivery!) and really, for all we can see in it, might as well have been delivered last “glorious 4th” as fifty years ago. It seems as if some cast-iron mould must have made on the first of these celebrations, that has lasted ever since and won’t on any account be modified or changed—so absolutely impossible it appears to say anything new on the great topic. However, enough about Mr. Barlow and his oration. Here is the “Foreign News”:

RUSSIA AND TURKEY.—The ship Sally, Capt. Frost, has arrived at Baltimore in 61 days from Amserdam. She brings advices that Russia had commenced hostilities against the Turks.

Another victory had been obtained by the French, near Echmul, over an army commanded by Prince Rosenburg, consisting of 80,000 men—the flower of the Austrian army; all the artillery, field equipage, &c., have fallen into the hands of the French.

How strangely this sounds at the present date, when the Telegraphic Cable² is flashing over to us to-day’s European news, and people are already beginning to grumble even at its dilatoriness. But the people of fifty years ago had more patience than is possessed by the present generation.

Perhaps the advertisements contained in the paper are the most entertaining portions of it. There are any quantity of wood cuts of ships, schooners, &c., and announcements of days of sailing for Kingston, Jamaica; for Charleston, S.C.; for Liverpool, for St. Thomas and St. Croix, etc. How little those old fogies of fifty years ago dreamed how soon the giant Steam, which was at that very moment making their tea-kettle covers clatter on the domestic hearth, was to change the whole science of navigation and revolutionize the world! How strange, viewed from the stand-point of 1858—look the notices concerning “Albany sloops.”"Albany sloop s"​ In those times a voyage from Albany to New York was a matter of as much serious consideration as a sail across the Atlantic is now. Among the old Dutch village burghers up the Hudson it was a subject to be seriously thought over and talked over for months, and when undertaken, it was a matter of long, tedious days, involving the laying in of a stock of provisions and the consumption of pipes innumerable. But now, nous avons change tout cela.³

We find no flourishing hotel notices in the columns of the Advertiser. It would be hard to say what were the St. Nicholas, the Astor House or the Metropolitan of that day. There are three or four notices of coffee houses—a term now almost out of use in New York—and one of the City Hotel, Broadway, where “genteel” clubs are informed that they can be accommodated, and those who wish it are told they can have “an excellent dinner, every day at three and a good supper every night at nine and ten o’clock.”

Among other things we noticed were the names of streets now obsolete or that have been re-baptized. Thus one persons advertises a porter-house called the “Old Bay Tree” at No 16 “Little George street,” and another informs the public that he has a handsome pony for sale at 32 Magazine street. Another feature noticeable at once, is the change of occupation to which different streets have been devoted. Thus we find a firm advertising to sell five thousand pieces of yellow nankeen at No. 20 Wall street. Bulls and Bears and Board of Brokers!—only think of selling nankeen in that street, so sacredly devoted to Plutus.

We find that there was just as much of quackery then, as now, in New York. The longest advertisement contained in the paper is one of that disgusting class which nearly all of the journals of to-day give publicity to. The Patent Medicines were not yet in all their glory, but those who wanted to poison themselves with nostrums then, had quite as good an opportunity as at present.

Leaving the Public Advertiser,⁴ and looking over the rest of the journals, we see the rapid improvement which journalism in this country has already commenced to make. For instance, here is a number of the Sun⁵ of 1834. Here the little sheet is decently printed, on good paper, and there are regular editorials, local items and court news. The Sun, Era⁶ and Signal,⁷ of 1839, are quite decent looking sheets.

But compare any of these with the Herald,⁸ Tribune ⁹and Times¹⁰ of to day! What a mighty—what an astonishing difference! Those fair broad pages, that fine, clear type, the literary ability displayed on their pages, the quantity of news from all climes and nations, transmitted with the rapidity of the electric flash, and spread before an eager public by the mighty arms of the steam press—what comparison can possibly be instituted between Now and Then? If the reader wants to see at a glance the progress that has been made during the last half century in all directions, let him quietly compare as we have, a New York journal of fifty years ago side by side with a New York journal of to day.

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