A Brief History of the United StatesMcMaster, John Bach
History
A Brief History of the United States
McMaster, John Bach
United States -- History
The man of business sits down in a revolving chair before a rolltop desk.
In front of him are steel pens, India rubber eraser, blotting paper,
rubber bands, a telephone. He takes up a bundle of typewritten letters,
dictates answers to a stenographer, sends a telegram to some one a
thousand miles away, and before returning home has received an answer. In
1660 there was not in all the land a stenographer, or any of the articles
mentioned; no telephone, no telegraph, not even a post office.
TRAVEL AND COMMUNICATION.--If business calls him from home, he travels in
comfort in a steamboat or a railway car, and goes farther in one hour than
in 1660 he could have gone in two days, for at that time there was not a
steamboat, nor a railroad, nor even a stagecoach, in North America. Men
went from one colony to another by sailing vessel; overland they traveled
on horseback; and if a wife went with her husband, she rode behind him on
a pillion. The produce of the farms was drawn to the village market by ox
teams.
[Illustration: TRAVELING IN 1660.]
NEWSPAPERS AND PRINTING.--In 1660 no newspaper or magazine of any sort was
published in the colonies. The first printing press in English America was
set up at Cambridge in 1630, and was long the only one. The first
newspaper in our country was the _Boston News Letter_, printed in 1704,
and there was none in Pennsylvania till 1719, and none south of the
Potomac till 1732.
LIBERTY OF THE PRESS did not exist. No book, pamphlet, or almanac could be
printed without permission. In 1685, when a printer in Philadelphia
printed something in his almanac which displeased the Council, he was
forced to blot it out. Another Philadelphia printer, Bradford, offended
the Quakers by putting into his almanac something "too light and airy for
one that is a Christian," whereupon the almanac was suppressed; and for
later offenses Bradford was thrown into jail and so harshly treated that
he left the colony.
In New York (1725) Bradford started the first newspaper in that colony.
One of his old apprentices, John Peter Zenger, started the second (1733),
and soon called down the wrath of the governor because of some sharp
attacks on his conduct. Copies of the newspaper were burned before the
pillory, Zenger was put in jail, and what began as a trial for libel ended
in a great struggle for liberty of the press; Zenger's acquittal was the
cause of great public rejoicings. [15]
CHANGES BETWEEN 1660 AND 1760.--By 1760 the conditions of life in the
colonies had changed for the better in many respects. Stagecoaches had
come in, and a line ran regularly between New York and Philadelphia. Post
offices had been established. There were printing presses and newspapers
in most of the colonies, there were public subscription libraries in
Charleston and Philadelphia, and six colleges scattered over the colonies
from Virginia to Massachusetts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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