BOWLES, SAMUEL American journalist, was born in Springfield (Mass.), Feb. 9, 1826, and died there Jan. so, 1878. With the exception of a brief period in Boston, he devoted his life to the Springfield Republican, established as a weekly by his father in 1824 and published as a daily after 1844. He is credited with being one of the leaders in the new journalism, giv ing his paper a national reputation by the vigour, incisiveness, and independence of its editorial utterances and the concise and con venient arrangement of its local and general news matter. Then and later the Republican office was a sort of school for young journalists, especially in the matter of pungency and conciseness of style, one of Bowles's maxims being "Put it all in the first para graph." During the controversies resulting in the Civil War he was a general supporter of the Whig and Republican Parties, but he was later independent in politics. He is the author of Across the Continent (1865) and other books describing the West.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.—George S. Merriam's eulogistic Life and Times of Bibliography.—George S. Merriam's eulogistic Life and Times of Samuel Bowles (1885) is virtually a history of American political movements after the compromise of 185o. J. M. Lee's History of American Journalism (1923) ranks Bowles high, as does W. G. Bleyer's Main Currents in the History of American Journalism (1927).