Rise of Metropolitan Jountalisiii 457
chase of $40 worth of type. The paper was at first sold for two cents, but after the first week, the price was lowered to one cent. At that price the paper lived for just two weeks more. It would not deserve this mention but for its influence upon Greeley's subsequent success.
Out of all the various attempts to make a cheap newspaper that could live, only three succeeded, each after its kind, the Sun, the Herald, and the Tribune. The Sun was the pioneer. It was first issued, September 3, 1833, by Benjamin H. Day, an intelligent workingman, and a job printer by occupation. There had been several similar experiments during the preceding year, but they had all come to a speedy and untimely end. The Sun was the first penny newspaper that endured and it remained a penny sheet until 1861. It started with a circulation of 300. Its first issue contained twelve columns of matter, each column ten inches long. It was at the outset chiefly an advertising medium, and had no political influence. It scarcely made room at that time for financial or market items, or even editorial notes. It was filled with bits of local news and with advertisements for "Help Wanted," but this made it popular with the masses in search of employment. The first large increase of the visible radiance of the Sun was derived from the lively imagination of its editor, Richard Adams Locke.
One day in 1835, Mr. Locke, who had formerly been a reporter for the Courier and Enquirer, made some discoveries about the moon, wrote out the details, attributed the article to a "Supplement of the Edinburgh Philosophieal Journal," and published the story as "filling" in the columns of the Sun. The article purported to describe discoveries made by Sir John Herschel at the Cape of Good Hope, and related by him to the Edinburgh Journal. Sir John was then at the Cape and had set up a new telescope there. The story ran that his telescope had revealed everything on the surface of the moon, and had discovered inhabitants, houses, soil, crops, animals, and modes of living. Everyone believed it at first, and everyone bought the Sun to read about it. The large papers were sadly deceived. The New York Daily Advertiser said "Sir John has added a stock of knowledge to the present age that will immortalize his name, and place it high on the page of science." Other papers claimed to have received the news as soon as the Sun did, but asserted that it had until now been crowded out by pressure of reading matter. The Albany Advertiser stated that it had read in an Edinburgh scientific journal an account of discoveries by Sir John Herschel, discoveries that filled the editor, so he said, with "unspeakable emotions of pleasure and astonishment." The New York
