put he incurred others, and was not, for any week, free from anxiety. The price of the paper was low, and its unlooked-for sale involved the proprietors in expenses which might have been avoided, or much lessened, if they had been prepared for it. The mailing of single numbers cost a hundred dollars. The last number of the campaign series, the great "OK" number, the number that was all staring with majorities, and capital letters, and points of admiration, the number that announced the certain triumph of the Whigs, and carried joy into a thousand Log Cabins, contained a most moving "Appeal" to the "Friends who owe us." It was in small type, and in a corner remote from the victorions columns. It ran thus:—“ We were induced in a few instances to depart from our general rule, and forward the first series of the Log Cabin on credit-having in almost every instance a promise, that the money should be sent us before the first of November. That time has passed, and we regret to say, that many of those promises have not been fulfilled. To those who owe us, therefore, we are compelled to say, Friends! we need our money-our papermaker needs it! and has a right to ask us for it. The low price at which we have published it, forbids the idea of gain from this paper: we only ask the means of paying what we owe. Once for all, we implore you to do us justice, and enable us to do the same." This tells the whole story. Not a word need be added.

The Log Cabin was designed only for the campaign, and it was expected to expire with the twenty-seventh number. The zealous editor, however, desirous of presenting the complete returns of the victory, issued an extra number, and sent it gratuitously to all his subscribers. This number announced, also, that the Log Cabin would be resumed in a few weeks. On the fifth of December the now series began, as a family political paper, and continued, with moderate success, till both it and the New Yorker were merged ir. the Tribune.

For his services in the campaign-and no man contributed as much to its success as he-Horace Greeley accepted no office; nor did he even witness the inaugur tion. This is not strange. But it is somewhat surprising that the incoming administration had not the decency to offer him something. Mr. Fry (W. H.) made a speech one evening at a political meeting in Philadelphia. The

next morning, a committee waited upon him to know for what of fice he intended to become an applicant. "Office?" said the astonished composer-"No office." 'Why, then," said the committee, "what the h―ll did you speak last night for ?" Mr. Greeley had not even the honor of a visit from a committee of this kind.

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The Log Cabin, however, gave him an immense reputation in all parts of the country, as an able writer and a zealous politician-a reputation which soon became more valuable to him than pecuniary capital. The Log Cabin of April 3d contained the intelligence of General Harrison's death; and, among a few others, the following advertisement:

66 NEW YORK TRIBUNE.

"On Saturday, the tenth day of April instant, the Subscriber will publish the first number of a New Morning Journal of Politics, Literature, and General Intelligence.

"The TRIBUNE, as its name imports, will labor to advance the interests of the People, and to promote their Moral, Social, and Political well-being. The immoral and degrading Police Reports, Advertisements and other matter which have been allowed to disgrace the columns of our leading Penny Papers, will be carefully excluded from this, and no exertion spared to render it worthy of the hearty approval of the virtuous and refined, and a welcome visitant at the family fireside.

"Earnestly believing that the political revolution which has called William Henry Harrison to the Chief Magistracy of the Nation was a triumph of Right Reason and Public Good over Error and Sinister Ambition, the Tribune will give to the New Administration a frank and cordial, but manly and inde pendent support, judging it always by its acts, and commending those only so far as they shall seem calculated to subserve the great end of all govern ment-the welfare of the People.

"The Tribune will be published every morning on a fair royal sheet—(size of the Log-Cabin and Evening Signal)—and transmitted to its city subscribers at the low price of one cent per copy. Mail subscribers, $4 per annum. It will contain the news by the morning's Southern Mail, which is contained in no other Penny Paper. Subscriptions are respectfully solicited by

HORACE GREELEY, 30 ANN ST.

CHAPTER XIII.

STARTS THE TRIBUNE.

The Capital-The Daily Press of New York in 1841-The Tribune appears-The Oment unpropitious-The first week-Conspiracy to put down the Tribune-The Tribun triumphs-Thomas McElrath-The Tribune alive-Industry of the Editors-The.. independence-Horace Greeley and John Tyler-The Tribune a Fixed Fact.

Horace Greeley.

WHO furnished the capital? But he was scarcely solvent on the day of the Tribune's appearance. True, and yet it is no less the fact that nearly all the large capital required for the enterprise was supplied by him.

A large capital is indispensable for the establishment of a good daily paper; but it need not be a capital of money. It may be a capital of reputation, credit, experience, talent, opportunity. Horace Greeley was trusted and admired by his party, and by many of the party to which he was opposed. In his own circle, he was known to be a man of incorruptible integrity-one who would pay his debts at any and at every sacrifice-one who was quite incapable of contracting an obligation which he was not confident of being able to discharge. In other words, his credit was good. He had talent and experience. Add to these a thousand dollars lent him by a friend, (James Coggeshall,) and the evident need there was of just such a paper as the Tribune proved to be, and we have the capital upon which the Tribune started. All told, it was equivalent to a round fifty thousand dollars.

In the present year, 1855, there are two hundred and three periodicals published in the city of New York, of which twelve are daily papers. In the year 1841, the number of periodicals was one hundred, and the number of daily papers twelve. The Courier and Enquirer, New York American, Express, and Commercial Advertiser were Whig papers, at ten dollars a year. The Evening Post and Journal of Commerce, at the same price, leaned to the 'Democratic' side of politics, the former avowedly, the latter not. The

"

Signal, Tatler, and Star were cheap papers, the first two neutral, the latter dubious. The Herald, at two cents, was-1 -the Herald! The Sun, a penny paper of immense circulation, was affectedly neutral, really Democratic,' and very objectionable for the gross character of many of its advertisements. A cheap paper, of the Whig school of politics, did not exist. On the 10th of April, 1841, the Tribune appeared-a paper one-third the size of the present Tribune, price one cent; office No. 30 Ann-street; Horace Greeley, editor and proprietor, assisted in the department of literary criticism, the fine arts, and general intelligence, by H. J. Raymond. Under its heading, the new paper bore, as a motto, the dying words of Harrison: "I DESIRE YOU TO UNDERSTAND THE TRUE PRINCIPLES OF THE GOVERNMENT. I WISH THEM CARRIED OUT. I ASK NOTHING MORE."

The omens were not propitious. The appallingly sudden death of General Harrison, the President of so many hopes, the first of the Presidents who had died in office, had cast a gloom over the whole country, and a prophetic doubt over the prospects of the Whig party.

The editor watched the preparation of his first number all night, nervous and anxious, withdrawing this article and altering that, and never leaving the form till he saw it, complete and safe, upon the press. The morning dawned sullenly upon the town. "The sleety atmosphere," wrote Mr. Greeley, long after, "the leaden sky, the unseasonable wintriness, the general gloom of that stormy day, which witnessed the grand though mournful pageant whereby our city commemorated the blighting of a nation's hopes in the most untimely death of President Harrison, were not inaptly miniatured in his own prospects and fortunes. Having devoted the seven preceding years almost wholly to the establishment of a weekly compend of literature and intelligence, (The New Yorker,) wherefrom, though widely circulated and warmly praised, he had received no other return than the experience and wider acquaintance thence accruing, he entered upon his novel and most precarious enterprise, most slenderly provided with the external means of commanding subsistence and success in its prosecution. With no partner or business associate, with inconsiderable pecuniary resources, and only a promise from political friends of aid to the extent of two thousand dollars, of which but one half was ever realized, (and that long

since repaid, but the sense of obligation to the far from wealthy friend who made the loan is none the less fresh and ardent,) he undertook the enterprise-at all times and under any circunstances hazardous-of adding one more to the already amply extensive list of daily newspapers issued in this emporium, where the current expenses of such papers, already appalling, were soon to be doubled by rivalry, by stimulated competition, by the progress of business, the complication of interests, and especially by the general diffusion of the electric telegraph, and where at least nineteen out of every twenty attempts to establish a new daily have proved disastrous failures. Manifestly, the prospects of success in this case were far from flattering."

The Tribune began with about six hundred subscribers, procured by the exertions of a few of the editor's personal and political | friends. Five thousand copies of the first number were printed, and

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we found some difficulty in giving them away," says Mr. Greeley in the article just quoted. The expenses of the first week were five hundred and twenty-five dollars; the receipts, ninety-two dollars. A sorry prospect for an editor whose whole cash capital was a thousand dollars, and that borrowed.

But the Tribune was a live paper. FIGHT was the word with it from the start; FIGHT has been the word ever since; FIGHT is the word this day! If it had been let alone, it would not have died; its superiority both in quantity and the quality of its matter to any other of the cheap papers would have prevented that catastrophe; but its progress was amazingly accelerated in the first days of its existence by the efforts of an enemy to put it down. That enemy was the Sun.

"The publisher of the Sun," wrote Park Benjamin in the Evening Signal, "has, during the last few days, got up a conspiracy to crush the New York Tribune. The Tribune was, from its inception, very successful, and, in many instances, persons in the habit of taking the Sun, stopped that paper-wisely preferring a sheet which gives twice the amount of reading matter, and always contains the latest intelligence. This fact afforded sufficient evidence tc Beach, as it did to all others who were cognizant of the circumstances, that the Tribune would, before the lapse of many weeks, supplant the Sun. To prevent this, and, if possible, to destroy the