Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 by Various

V >> Various >> Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884

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In 1869 occurred an important event in the Herald's history. Mr. Bailey,
who had acquired an interest in 1855 and became sole proprietor a year
later, decided to sell out, and on April 1 it was announced that he had
disposed of the paper to Royal M. Pulsifer, Edwin B. Haskell, Charles H.
Andrews, Justin Andrews, and George G. Bailey. All these gentlemen were
at the time and had for some years previously been connected with the
Herald: the first-named in the business department, the next three on
the editorial staff, and the last as foreman of the composing-room. In
announcing their purchase, the firm, which was then and ever since has
been styled R.M. Pulsifer and Company, said in the editorial column: "We
shall use our best endeavors to make the Herald strictly a newspaper,
with the freshest and most trustworthy intelligence of all that is going
on in this busy age; and to this end we shall spare no expense in any
department.... The Herald will be in the future, as it has been in the
past, essentially a people's paper, the organ of no clique or party,
advocating at all proper times those measures which tend to promote the
welfare of our country, and to secure the greatest good to the greatest
number. It will exert its influence in favor of simplicity and economy
in the administration of the government, and toleration and liberality
in our social institutions. It will not hesitate to point out abuses or
to commend good measures, from whatever source they come, and it will
contain candid reports of all proceedings which go to make up the
discussions of current topics. It will give its readers all the news,
condensed when necessary and in an intelligible and readable form, with
a free use of the telegraph by reliable reporters and correspondents."
That these promises have been sacredly fulfilled up to the present
moment cannot be denied even by readers and contemporary sheets whose
opinions have been in direct opposition to those expressed in the
Herald's editorial columns. No pains or expense have been spared to
obtain the news from all quarters of the globe, and the paper's most
violent opponent will find it impossible to substantiate a charge that
the intelligence collected with such care and thoroughness has in a
single instance been distorted or colored in the publication to suit the
editorial policy pursued at the time. The expression of opinions has
always, under the present management, been confined to the editorial
columns, and here a course of absolute independence has been followed.

The Herald, immediately upon coming under the control of the new
proprietors, showed a marked accession of enterprise, and that this
change for the better was appreciated by the reading public was proved
by the fact that during the year 1869 the circulation rose from a daily
average of fifty-three thousand four hundred and sixty-five in January
to sixty thousand five hundred and thirty-five in December, the increase
having been regular and permanent, and not caused by any "spurts"
arising from extraordinary events. On New Year's day, 1870, the Herald
was enlarged for the third time, to its present size, by the addition of
another column and lengthening the pages to correspond. On September 3,
of that year, the circulation for the first time passed above one
hundred thousand, the issue containing an account of the battle of Sedan
reaching a sale of over one hundred and five thousand copies. The
average daily circulation for the year was more than seventy-three
thousand. Finding it impossible, from the growing circulation of the
paper, to supply the demand with the two six-cylinder presses printing
from type, it was determined, early in the year, to stereotype the
forms, so that duplicate plates could be used simultaneously on both.
The requisite machinery was introduced therefor, and on June 8, 1870,
was put in use for the first time. For nearly ten years the Herald was
the only paper in Boston printed from stereotype plates. In 1871 the
average daily circulatian was eighty-three thousand nine hundred, a gain
of nearly eleven thousand over the previous year. On a number of
occasions the edition reached as high as one hundred and twelve
thousand. On October 1 George G. Bailey disposed of his interest in the
paper to the other proprietors, and retired from the firm. In 1872 there
was a further increase in the circulation, the daily average having been
ninety-three thousand five hundred. One issue (after the Great Fire)
reached two hundred and twenty thousand, and several were not much below
that figure. The first Bullock perfecting-press ever used east of New
York was put in operation in the Herald office in June, 1872; this press
feeds itself from a continuous roll of paper, and prints both sides,
cutting and delivering the papers complete. On January 1, 1873, Justin
Andrews, who had been connected with the Herald, as one of its editors
since 1856, and as one of the proprietors who succeeded Mr. Bailey in
1869, sold his interest to his partners, and retired from newspaper life
altogether. Since that date, the ownership in the Herald has been vested
in R.M. Pulsifer, E.B. Haskell, and Charles H. Andrews. The circulation
in 1873 exceeded one hundred and one thousand daily; in 1874 one hundred
and seven thousand; in 1875 one hundred and twelve thousand; in 1876 one
hundred and sixteen thousand five hundred. On November 8, of that year,
the day after the presidential election, the issue was two hundred and
twenty-three thousand two hundred and fifty-six. The two six-cylinder
Hoe presses had given place, in 1874, to two more Bullock machines, and
a Mayall press was added in 1876; the four were run to their utmost
capacity on the occasion just mentioned, and the magnitude of the day's
work will be better understood when it is stated that between 4 A.M. and
11 P.M. fourteen tons of paper were printed and sold, an amount which
would make a continuous sheet the width of the Herald two hundred and
fifty miles long. In 1877 a fourth Bullock press was put in use, and the
Mayall was removed to Hawley Street, where type, stands for fifty
compositors, a complete apparatus for stereotyping, and all the
necessary machinery, materials, and implements are kept in readiness to
"start up" at any moment, in case a fire or other disaster prevents the
issue of the regular editions in the main office.

On February 9, 1878, the Herald was issued for the first time from the
new building erected by its proprietors at No. 255 Washington Street.
This structure has a lofty and ornate front of gray granite with
trimmings of red granite; it covers an irregular shaped lot, something
in the form of the letter L. From Washington Street, where it has a
width of thirty-one feet nine inches, it extends back one hundred and
seventy-nine feet, and from the rear a wing runs northward to Williams
Court forty feet. This wing was originally twenty-five feet wide on the
court; but in 1882 an adjoining lot, formerly occupied by the old Herald
Building, was purchased and built upon, increasing the width of the wing
and its frontage on the court to eighty-five feet. The structure forms
one of the finest and most convenient newspaper-offices in the country.
In the basement are the pressroom, where at the present time six Bullock
perfecting-presses (two with folders attached) are run by two
45-horse-power engines; the stereotype-room, where the latest
improvements in machinery have enabled the casting, finishing, and
placing on the press of two plates in less than eight minutes after the
receipt of a "form"; the two dynamos and the engine running them, which
supply the electricity for the incandescent lights with which every room
in the building is illuminated; and the storage-room for paper and other
supplies. On the first floor are the business-office, a very handsome
and spacious apartment facing Washington Street, and finished in
mahogany, rare marbles, and brasswork; the delivery and mailing rooms,
whence the editions are sent out for distribution at the Williams-court
door. On the second floor are the reception-room, the library, and the
apartments of the editor-in-chief, managing editor, and department
editors. On the third floor are the general manager's office and the
rooms of the news and city editors and the reporters. The entire fourth
floor is used as a composing-room, where stand "frames" for ninety-six
compositors; the foreman and his assistants have each a private office,
and a private room is assigned to the proofreaders. All the editors' and
reporters' rooms are spacious, well lighted, and admirably ventilated;
they are finished in native woods, varnished, and are handsomely
furnished. Electric call-bells, speaking-tubes, and pneumatic-tubes
furnish means of communication with all the departments, and no expense
has been spared in supplying every convenience for facilitating work and
the comfort of the employees.

With increased facilities came continued prosperity. The business
depression in 1877 affected the circulation of the Herald, as it did
that of every newspaper in the country, and the circulation that year
was not so large as during the year previous; still, the daily average
was one hundred and three thousand copies.

The array of men employed in the various departments of the Herald at
the present time would astonish the founders of the paper. In 1846 the
editorial and reportorial staff consisted of two men; now it comprises
seventy-seven. Six compositors were employed then; now there are one
hundred and forty-seven. One pressman and an assistant easily printed
the Herald, and another daily paper as well, in those days, upon one
small handpress; now forty men find constant employment in attending the
engines and the six latest improved perfecting-presses required to issue
the editions on time. The business department was then conducted with
ease by one man, who generally found time to attend to the mailing and
sale of papers; now twenty-one persons have plenty to do in the
counting-room, and the delivery-room engages the services of twenty.
Then stereotyping the forms of a daily newspaper was an unheard-of
proceeding; now fourteen men are employed in the Herald's foundery. The
salaries and bills for composition aggregated scarcely one hundred and
fifty dollars a week then; now the weekly composition bill averages over
three thousand dollars, and the payroll of the other departments reaches
three thousand dollars every week, and frequently exceeds that sum. Then
the Herald depended for outside news upon the meagre dispatches of
telegraph agencies in New York (the Associated Press system was not
inaugurated until 1848-49, and New England papers were not admitted to
its privileges until some years later), and such occasional
correspondence as its friends in this and other States sent in free of
charge. Now it not only receives the full dispatches of the Associated
Press, but has news bureaus of its own in London, Paris, New York, and
Washington, and special correspondents in every city of any considerable
size throughout the country. All these are in constant communication
with the office and are instructed to use the telegraph without stint
when the occasion demands. The Herald has grown from a little four-paged
sheet, nine by fourteen inches in dimensions, to such an extent that
daily supplements are required to do justice to readers as well as
advertisers, and it is necessary to print an eight-paged edition as
often as four times a week during the busy season of the year.

The Herald has achieved a great success; it has broadened from year to
year since the present proprietors assumed control. It has been their
steadily followed purpose gradually to elevate the tone of their paper,
till it should reach the highest level of American journalism. They have
done this, and, at the same time, they have retained their enormous
constituency. The wonderful educating power of a great newspaper cannot
easily be overestimated. It is the popular university to which thousands
upon thousands of readers resort daily for intelligent comment on the
events of the world--the great wars, the suggestions of science, the
achievements of the engineers, home and foreign politics, etc. That such
a great newspaper as the Herald, wherein the elucidating comment is kept
up from day to day by cultivated writers trained in journalism, must
perform many of the functions of a university is clear. The news columns
of the Herald are a perfect mirror of the great world's busy life. The
ocean-cable is employed to an extent which would have seemed recklessly
extravagant ten years ago. It has its news bureaus in the great capitals
of civilization; its roving correspondents may be found, at the date of
this writing, exploring the Panama Canal, the interior of Mexico,
studying the railway system of Great Britain, investigating Mormon
homelife, scouring the vast level stretches of Dakota, traversing the
great Central States of the Union for presidential "pointers," making a
tour of the Southern States to secure trustworthy data as to the
progress achieved in education there, and journeying along the coast of
hundred-harbored Maine for the latest information as to the growth of
the newer summer resorts in that picturesque region. In large and quiet
rooms in the home office a force of copy-readers is preparing the
correspondence from all over the world for the compositors; at the news
desks trained men are working day and night over telegrams flashed from
far and near, eliminating useless words, punctuating, putting on
"heads," and otherwise dressing copy for the typesetters. The enormous
amount of detail work in a great paper is not easily to be conveyed to
the non-professional reader. From the managing editor, whose brain is
employed in inventing new ideas for his subordinates to carry into
execution, to that very important functionary, the proof-reader, who
corrects the errors of the types, there is a distracting amount of
detail work performed every day. The Herald is managed with very little
friction; the great machine runs as if oiled. With an abundance of
capital, an ungrudging expenditure of money in the pursuit of news, a
great working-force well disciplined and systematized, it goes on
weekday after weekday, turning out nine editions daily, and on Sundays
giving to the public sixteen closely-crowded pages, an intellectual
bill-of-fare from which all may select according to individual
preference.

The organization of the Herald force is almost ideally perfect. Its
three proprietors, all of whom are still on the ascending grade of the
hill of life, share in the daily duties of their vast establishment.
Colonel Royal M. Pulsifer is the publisher of the paper, and has charge
of the counting-room, the delivery, press, and composition rooms, the
three last departments being under competent foremen. A large share of
the wonderful business success of the Herald is due to his sagacity and
liberality. He is a publisher who expends at long range, not expecting
immediate returns. Under this generous and wisely prudent policy of
spending liberally for large future returns the Herald has grown to its
present proportions. The editor-in-chief of the paper is Mr. Edwin B.
Haskell, who directs the political and general editorial policy of the
paper. He has the courage of his independence, and is independent even
of the Independents. Since he assumed the editorial chair, the Herald
has fought consistently for honest money, for a reformed civil service,
for the purification of municipal politics, for freer trade, and local
self-government. The editor of the Herald writes strong Saxon-English,
believing that in a daily newspaper the people should be addressed in a
plain, understandable style. He has an unexpected way of putting things,
his arguments are enlivened by a rare humor, and clinched frequently by
some anecdote or popular allusion. The third partner, Mr. Charles H.
Andrews, is one of those newspaper men who are born journalists. He has
the gift of common sense. His judgment is always sound. The news end of
the Herald establishment is under control of Mr. Andrews, and to no man
more than to him is due the wonderful development of the Herald's news
features. The executive officer of the Herald ship is the managing
editor, Mr. John H. Holmes, who is known to newspaper workers all over
the country as a man of great journalistic ability. He has the
cosmopolitan mind; is free from local prejudices, and can take in the
value of news three thousand miles away as quickly as if the happening
were at the office door. An untiring, sleepless man, prodigal of his
energies in the development of the Herald into a great world-paper,
Mr. Holmes is a type of that distinctively modern development, the
"newspaper man." Men of adventurous minds, of breadth of view, and
delighting in positive achievements, take to journalism in these days as
in the sixteenth century they became navigators of the globe, explorers
of distant regions, and founders of new empires.

Years ago the Herald outgrew the provincial idea that the happenings of
the streets must be of more importance, and, consequently, demanding
more space, than events of universal interest in the chief centres of
the world. The policy of the paper has been, while neglecting nothing of
news value at home, and while photographing all events of local
importance with fulness and accuracy, to keep its readers _au courant_
with the world's progress. In all departments of sporting intelligence
the Herald is an acknowledged authority; its dramatic news is fuller
than that of any paper in the country; it "covers," to use a newspaper
technicality, the world's metropolis on the banks of the Thames not with
a single correspondent, but with a corps of able writers; during the
recent troubles in Ireland one of its special correspondents traversed
that distracted country, giving to his paper the most graphic picture of
Irish distress and discontent, and he capped the climax of journalistic
achievement by interviewing the leading British statesmen on the Irish
theme, making a long letter, which was cabled to the Herald and
recabled back the same day to the London press, which had to take, at
second-hand, the enterprise of the great New-England daily. At Paris,
the world's pleasure capital, the chief seat of science, it is ably
represented, and its Italian correspondence has been ample and
excellent. When public attention was first drawn to Mexico by the
opening up of that land of mystery and revolutions by American
railway-builders, the Herald put three correspondents into that field,
and made Mexico an open book to the reading public. It is one of the
characteristics of the paper's policy to take up and exhaust all topics
of great current interest, and then to pass quickly on to something new.
In dealing with topics of interest of local importance, the paper has
long been noted for exhaustive special articles by writers of accuracy
and fitness for their task. Its New York City staff comprises a general
correspondent, a political observer, a chronicler of business failures,
an accomplished art critic, a fashion writer, a theatrical
correspondent, and three general news correspondents, using the wires.
The Herald is something more than a Boston paper. It has a wide reach,
and employs electricity more freely than did the oldtime newspaper the
post-horse.

In its closely-printed columns the Herald has, during the last decade,
given to its readers a cyclopaedia of the world's daily doings.
Portraitures of men of affairs done by skilled writers, the fullest
records of contemporaneous events, the gossip and news of the chief
towns of the globe,--all this has made up a complete record to which the
future historian may turn.

To manage such a paper requires a cooerdination of forces and an
intellectual breadth of view deserving to be ranked with the work and
attributes of a successful general. Not to wait for the slow processes
of legislation, to be up and ahead of the government itself, to be alert
and untiring--this is the newspaper ideal. How near the Herald has come
to this, its enduring popularity, its great profits, and its wide fame
and influence, best show.

* * * * *

WACHUSETT MOUNTAIN AND PRINCETON.

By Atherton P. Mason.

Almost the first land seen by a person on board a vessel approaching the
Massachusetts coast is the summit of Wachusett Mountain; and any one
standing upon its rocky top beholds more of Massachusetts than can be
seen from any other mountain in the State. For these two reasons, if for
no others, a short historical and sceno-graphical description of this
lonely and majestic eminence, and of the beautiful township in which it
lies, would seem to be interesting.

Wachusett, or "Great Watchusett Hill," as it was originally called, lies
in the northern part of the township of Princeton, and is about fifty
miles due west from Boston. The Nashaways, or Nashuas, originally held
this tract and all the land west of the river that still bears their
name, and they gave to this mountain and the region around its base the
name of "Watchusett." Rising by a gradual ascent from its base, it has
the appearance of a vast dome. The Reverend Peter Whitney[2] speaking of
its dimensions, says: "The circumference of this monstrous mass is about
three miles, and its height is 3,012 feet above the level of the sea, as
was found by the Hon. John Winthrop, Esq., LL.D., in the year 1777: and
this must be 1,800 or 1,900 feet above the level of the adjacent
country." More recent measurements have not materially changed these
figures, so they may be regarded as substantially correct.

The first mention, and probably the first sight, of this mountain, or of
any portion of the region now comprised in Worcester County, is recorded
in Governor Winthrop's journal, in which, under the date of January 27,
1632, is written: "The Governour and some company with him, went up by
Charles River about eight miles above Watertown." The party after
climbing an eminence in the vicinity of their halting-place saw "a very
high hill, due west about forty miles off, and to the N.W. the high
hills by Merrimack, above sixty miles off," The "very high hill" seen by
them for the first time was unquestionably Wachusett.

"On the 20th of October, 1759, the General Court of Massachusetts,
passed an act for incorporating the east wing, so called, of Rutland,
together with sundry farms and some publick lands contiguous thereto,"
as a district under the name of Prince Town, "to perpetuate the name and
memory of the late Rev. Thomas Prince, colleague pastor of the Old South
church in Boston, and a large proprietor of this tract of land." The
district thus incorporated contained about nineteen thousand acres; but
on April 24, 1771, its inhabitants petitioned the General Court, that
it, "with all the lands adjoining said District, not included in any
other town or District," be incorporated into a town by the name of
Princeton; and by the granting of this petition, the area of the town
was increased to twenty-two thousand acres.

The principal citizen of Princeton at this period was the Honorable
Moses Gill, who married the daughter of the Reverend Thomas Prince. He
was a man of considerable note in the county also, holding office as one
of the judges of the court of common pleas for the county of Worcester,
and being "for several years Counsellor of this Commonwealth." His
country-seat, located at Princeton, was a very extensive estate,
comprising nearly three thousand acres. Mr. Whitney appears to have been
personally familiar with this place, and his description of it is so
graphic and enthusiastic, that it may be interesting to quote a portion
of it.

"His noble and elegant seat is about one mile and a quarter from the
meeting-house, to the south. The mansion-house is large, being fifty by
fifty feet, with four stacks of chimneys. The farmhouse is forty feet by
thirty-six. In a line with this stands the coach and chaise house, fifty
feet by thirty-six. This is joined to the barn by a shed seventy feet in
length--the barn is two hundred feet by thirty-two. Very elegant fences
are erected around the mansion-house, the outhouses, and the garden.
When we view this seat, these buildings, and this farm of so many
hundred acres under a high degree of profitable cultivation, and are
told that in the year 1776 it was a perfect wilderness, we are struck
with wonder, admiration, and astonishment. Upon the whole, the seat of
Judge Gill, all the agreeable circumstances respecting it being
attentively considered, is not paralleled by any in the New England
States: perhaps not by any this side the Delaware."

Judge Gill was a very benevolent and enterprising man, and did much to
advance the welfare of the town in its infancy. During the first thirty
years of its existence, it increased rapidly in wealth and population,
having in 1790 one thousand and sixteen inhabitants. For the next
half-century it increased slowly, having in 1840 thirteen hundred and
forty-seven inhabitants. Since then, like all our beautiful New-England
farming-towns, it has fallen off in population, having at the present
time but little over one thousand people dwelling within its limits. Yet
neither the town nor the character of the people has degenerated in the
last century. Persevering industry has brought into existence in this
town some of the most beautiful farms in New England, and in 1875 the
value of farm products was nearly a quarter of a million dollars.
Manufacturing has never been carried on to any great extent in this
town. "In Princeton there are four grist mills, five saw mills, and one
fulling mill and clothiers' works," says Whitney in 1793. Now lumber and
chair-stock are the principal manufactured products, and in 1875 the
value of these, together with the products of other smaller
manufacturing industries, was nearly seventy thousand dollars.

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