AMERICAN JOURNALISM is too important to• be passed over without especial notice. If in England the press can claim to be " the fourth estate," it is at. least second in point of power and influence in the United States, where the only superior power is the people themselves. There are published in the United States and Terri tories at this time (Jan., 1880) nearly 9000 newspapers and magazines, scattering their issues like an incessant fall of snow over every city, village, and farm from the St. Law rence to the gulf, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. About 800 of these are issued daily except Sundays (many of them on that day also); 60 are issued three times a week, 120 twice a week, nearly 7000 once a week, 40 once in two weeks, 90 semi-annually, 17 once in two months, and between 50 and 60 quarterly. The extremes of circulation vary widely. Some daily newspapers print 120,000 copies every day in the week except Sunday, and others print less than 1000. Certain weeklies have reached the enormous edition obi% quant*of a million; and others print but a few' hundreds. But . .
the aggregate circulation of serial printed matter in the United States is immensely greater in variety, in extent, and in ratio to population, than in any other country. Of native-born whites the proportion of such as cannot read is insignificant; and the uni• vernal reading of newspapers is one of the peculiarities that first strikes the attention of a stranger. Free and unabashed as the air, the newspaper penetrates every nook and corner, circulates in every office and warehouse, in every parlor and hovel, in the hotel and the railway car, in the prison and the church. In 1870, according to the best authority, there were 5871 newspapers and periodicals in the United States, and 7642 in all the world besides. We had, therefore, one newspaper to every 6525 inhabitants; leaving to the world outside an average of one periodical for every 200,000 inhabitants. In Hudson's History of Journalism it is estimated that the number of copies of news papers printed in Great Britain in 1870 was 350,000, and the same in France. The census returns show that over 1,500,000,000 copies were issued in the United States in the same year. That is to say, for every printed sheet in Great Britain, or France, there were more than four printed sheets in the United States. This ratio is doubtless greater to-day, for
the increase of newspapers has been such in this country as to warrant the claim that the number of all journals is about the same as in all the world besides, while the aggregate circulation is at least one third more in the United States. The census to be taken this year (1880) will probably show one newspaper to about 5000 of our population.
i And yet journalism in the United States is comparatively of modern growth. The oldest n6wspaper in English is the London Gazette, begun in Nov., 1665. The oldest living newspaper, the Frankfort Gazette, started in 1615. The oldest in the United States is the Neto Hampshire Gazette, started in Oct., 1736; so that our journalism is only in its 125th year, while that of England is 90 years older. But the very first newspaper in this country was Publick Occurrences, issued in Boston, Sept. 25, 1690, by Richard Pearce for Benjamin Harris, and immediately suppressed by the government. Then came, April 20, 1704, the Boston News-Letter. In 1719 appeared in Boston the Gazett4 and in Philadelphia the same year the American Mercury. In 1721 James Franklin started the Boston Courant, which lived under the care of Benjamin Franklin about six years. The Need York Gazette started in 1725; the Annapolis (Md.) Gazette in 1727; the Charleston (S. C.) Gazette in 1731; the Williamsburg (Va.) Gazette in 1736. In his history of Journalism Hudson considers the subject by "eras." Within the first era, 1690-1704, the only noteworthy event, after the prompt suppression of the eublick Occurrences, hap pened in New York, where Benjamin Fletcher, then lieutenant-governor of the colony, hav ing induced William Bradford, a printer of Philadelphia, to quit that city and set up in New York, caused the reprinting, in 1696, of a copy of the London Gazette, which contained an account of an engagement with the French not long before the peace of Ryswick. That was the only victory of types over official red tape in the 14 years following the suppression of the Publick Occurrences. However, news was circulated, much as it was in ancient Rome, in written and printed letters, circulars and hand-bills; and theological and political battles were fought in pamphlets, acknowledged or anonymous, the favorite weapon of the Mathers and other disputants Of the time.