Paradoxes of Prosperity: Wealth Seeking in Pre-Civil War America

2. New York's Newspaper Giants during the Anxious 1850s

•• two New York’s Newspaper Giants during the Anxious 1850s In the 1850s, no part of America’s mass media was more pervasive than the newspaper, and no paper had more readers than either the New York Herald or the New York Tribune.1 In addition to their daily papers, each published a weekly that was sent to subscribers across the country. These newspapers’ influence was even more far-reaching than circulation numbers suggest, thanks to the frequency with which other papers quoted them. Horace Greeley, publisher of the New York Tribune, used his paper to crusade for the restoration of moral values and the reform of business behavior . James Gordon Bennett, publisher of the New York Herald, scoffed at Greeley and all the others who warned of the negative consequences that often resulted from economic success. Bennett labeled Greeley an alarmist and a moral dictator. Americans,however,and in particular the country’s middle class,were troubled deeply by the paradox of market life and Christian and republican values. Bennett,who reveled in the role of gadfly,stood out as an exception to the rule. It was not a case of his being satisfied with things as they were but rather of not expecting men to be angels or society to be capable of cleansing itself of evil. Bennett found much to criticize and did so often and without sparing the feelings of those he attacked. Both his skepticism and his criticisms revealed a side of American opinion about the paradox that must be recognized. 20 / paradoxes of prosperity There were those who embraced the economic progress of the time and all the baggage that went with it and dismissed the clash between what was and what many thought ought to be as an unpleasant but expected fact of life. While reader response to American market success often took the form of moral outrage, that was not the only response. This chapter begins with the contrarian Bennett because his career established that one did not have to express fear for the American soul to attract readers, and because it represents one in a range of responses to the prosperity-morality paradox. The Herald’s publisher was an unabashed promoter of American business and of what he believed to be the American national interest.While usually the proponent of an optimistic outlook unencumbered by moral questioning, Bennett acknowledged obstacles to individual and national success.Among those obstacles were the detractors of market success, whom he labeled fanatical moralists, insipid do-gooders, social experimenters, and greedy politicians. He placed Greeley in several of those categories. Bennett, the older of the two publishers and the first of them to achieve journalistic success, was a well-educated man. Born in 1795 in Banffshire, Scotland, he left home at fifteen to attend a small Catholic school, Blair’s College in Aberdeen.There he studied Greek, Latin, history, and more.2 In 1819, at the age of twenty-five, Bennett emigrated to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he worked briefly as a teacher before moving to a small town in Maine and another teaching position. The following year he went to Boston and found work as a proofreader for a publishing firm before moving to New York City, where, initially, he settled for odd jobs. While in New York, he met the publisher of the Charleston Courier.The South Carolinian hired Bennett as an agent to buy publishing supplies for his paper, and in 1823 he invited the restless young man to move south and work for his paper as a journalist. Bennett made few friends in Charleston. His off-putting gaze (Bennett was cross-eyed), hooked nose, and disheveled appearance kept him from having any social life, and so he threw himself into his work. For the most part, his job was to translate newspapers arriving from Spain, France, Portugal, and Italy.After ten months in Charleston and having gained experience on a solid newspaper, Bennett returned to New York committed to journalism. Back in New York, Bennett found part-time employment with Thomas Snowden’s Commercial Advertiser and the next year bought a small Sundayonly paper. After it failed, Mordecai Noah hired him to write for his New York Morning Enquirer. Bennett’s amusing freelance efforts making fun of New York’s Newspaper Giants / 21 American customs (including shaking hands) and other light-hearted essays convinced Noah to make him his assistant...