Captains of Industry; or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making MoneyParton, James
History
Captains of Industry; or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money
Parton, James
Industrial arts -- Biography
There was a young man then in the city named Brandreth, who had brought
a pill over with him from England, and was looking about in New York for
some cheap, effective way of advertising his pill. He visited Bennett in
his cellar and made an arrangement to pay him a certain sum every week
for a certain space in the columns of the "Herald." It was the very
thing he wanted, a little _certainty_ to help him over that awful day of
judgment which comes every week to struggling enterprises,--Saturday
night!
Still, the true cause of the final success of the paper was the
indomitable character of its founder, his audacity, his persistence, his
power of continuous labor, and the inexhaustible vivacity of his mind.
After a year of vicissitude and doubt, he doubled the price of his
paper, and from that time his prosperity was uninterrupted. He turned
everything to account. Six times he was assaulted by persons whom he had
satirized in his newspaper, and every time he made it tell upon his
circulation. On one occasion, for example, after relating how his head
had been cut open by one of his former employers, he added:--
"The fellow no doubt wanted to let out the never failing supply of
good-humor and wit which has created such a reputation for the 'Herald.'...
He has not injured the skull. My ideas in a few days will flow as
freshly as ever, and he will find it so to his cost."
In this humble, audacious manner was founded the newspaper which, in the
course of forty-eight years, has grown to be one of national and
international importance. Its founder died in 1872, aged seventy-seven
years, in the enjoyment of the largest revenue which had ever resulted
from journalism in the United States, and leaving to his only son the
most valuable newspaper property, perhaps, in the world.
That son, the present proprietor, has greatly improved the "Herald." He
possesses his father's remarkable journalistic tact, with less
objectionable views of the relation of the daily paper to the public.
His great enterprises have been bold, far-reaching, almost national in
their character. Mr. Frederick Hudson, who was for many years the
managing editor of the paper, has the following interesting paragraph
concerning father and son:--
"Somewhere about the year 1866, James Gordon Bennett, Sr., inducted
James Gordon Bennett, Jr., into the mysteries of journalism. One of his
first _coups_ was the Prusso-Austrian war. The cable transmitted the
whole of the King of Prussia's important speech after the battle of
Sadowa and peace with Austria, costing in tolls seven thousand dollars
in gold."
He has followed this bold _coup_ with many similar ones, and not a few
that surpassed it. Seven thousand dollars seems a good deal of money to
pay for a single feature of one number of a daily paper. It was not so
much for a paper, single issues of which have yielded half as much as
that in clear profit. And the paper was born in a cellar!
THREE JOHN WALTERS,
AND THEIR NEWSPAPER.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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