Notable exceptions were two evening papers, the _Express_ and the _Daily News_. The _Express_ was established in June, 1836, under the editorship of James Brooks and his brother Erastus, graduates of the _Advertiser_, of Portland, Maine. It was devoted to Whig politics and the shipping of New York. The _Daily News_ took no considerable part in journalism until twenty-five years later, when Benjamin Wood bought it. In other parts of the country the one-cent newspaper, properly conducted, met with the favour which the public had showered upon Ben Day. William M. Swain, who has been mentioned as a fellow compositor with Ben Day, and who tried to dissuade his friend from the folly of starting the _Sun_, saw the wisdom of the penny paper, and saw, also, that the New York field was filled. He went to Philadelphia and established the _Public Ledger_, the first issue appearing on March 25, 1836. The _Ledger_ was not the first penny sheet to be published in Philadelphia, the _Daily Transcript_ having preceded it by a few days. These two newspapers soon consolidated, however. Swain’s _Ledger_ was at once sensational and brave. It came out for the abolition of slavery, and its office was twice mobbed. It was mobbed again in 1844, during the Native American riots. Swain was a big, hard-working man. George W. Childs, his successor as proprietor of the _Ledger_, wrote of him that for twenty years it was his habit to read every paragraph that went into the paper. Swain made three million dollars out of the _Ledger_; but when, during the Civil War, the cost of paper compelled nearly all the newspapers to advance prices, he tried to keep the _Ledger_ at one cent, and lost a hundred thousand dollars within a year. Childs, who had been a newsdealer and book-publisher, bought the paper from Swain in 1864, and raised its price to two cents. When Swain went to Philadelphia he had two partners, Arunah S. Abell and Azariah H. Simmons, both printers, and, like Swain, former associates of Day. Simmons remained with Swain on the _Ledger_ until his death in 1855, but Abell--the man who poked more fun than anybody else at Day for his penny _Sun_ idea--went to Baltimore and there established a _Sun_ of his own, the first copy coming out on May 17, 1837. It was a success from the start. How well it paid Abell to follow Ben Day’s scheme may be judged by the fact that thirty years later Abell bought Guilford, a splendid estate near Baltimore, and paid $475,000 for it. Both Swain and Abell were friends of S. F. B. Morse, and they helped him to finance the electric telegraph. The Baltimore _Sun_ published the famous message--“What hath God wrought?”--sent over the wire from Washington to Baltimore on May 24, 1844, when the telegraph first came into practical use. Abell was the sole proprietor of the Baltimore _Sun_ from 1837 to 1887. He died in 1888 at the age of eighty-two.