BENNETT, JAMES CORDON (1795-1872). An American journalist, born at New Mill, Banff shire, Scotland. Ile studied for the Roman Catholic priesthood at the seminary of Aberdeen, and in 1819 emigrated to Halifax, N. S. Thence, after a brief and highly unsuccessful career as an instructor in bookkeeping, he proceeded to Boston, where he became a proofreader in the establishment of Wells and Lily, then publishers of the North American Review. In 1322 he was appointed Spanish translator and general assist ant in the office of the Charleston (S. C.) Cou rier. Subsequently he appears as a paragraphist in New York, and in 1828-32 as Washington cor respondent of the Enquirer. For thirty days, in 1832, he published the Globe, and in 1833-34 was part owner and principal editor of the Philadel phia Pennsylvanian. Through both journals he was a vigorous partisan of Jackson and Van Buren, by whom he was totally and irritatingly ignored. On May 6, 1835, from a cellar at No. 20 Wall Street, be issued the first number of the Noe York Herald—a lively little sheet of four four-column pages. On June 13 he included in the Herald the first Wall Street financial article printed in any newspaper in the United States, and in December introduced modern American reportorial methods by his graphic accounts of the great fire, to which were added a picture of the burning Exchange, and a map of the devas tated district. He obtained the transmission by
telegraph of the first speech ever thus reported in full—that of Calhoun on the Mexican War. Ile wrote trenchant, often cynical, editorials, which made enemies for the writer, but increased the circulation of his paper. But his chief aim was the collection and dissemination of contem poraneous intelligence, in illustration of which may be cited the fact that during the Civil War he maintained an extra staff of 63 correspond ents at an expense for four years of $525,000. At the time of his death the profits of the Herald were estimated at not far from $750,000 yearly. He was frequently accused of utter lack of conviction. James Parton wrote, in 1867, that "His paper is generally read and its pro prietor universally disapproved." It may at least be said that his civic principh»vas not lofty, who declared: "We have never hem in a minority, and we never shall be." Consult Parton, Famous of Recent Tilnes (Boston, 1S67).