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45- C. H. Levermore was political revolution ; in this country there was Jackson's tumul- tuous democracy. Anti-Masonry, Abolitionism, and Transcen- dentalism were, all three, the tokens — and products too — of a great moral awakening. The foundations of social order seemed to be crumblmg under the test of destructive criticism. The tablets of the old theology were ground to powder in Boston, and in New York the first of our workingmen's parties began its courageous attacks upon the laws of political economy. Saviors of society appeared here and there, impostors like Joseph Smith and Matthias, and apostles of humanity like Robert Owen. The socialistic seed sown in Europe by Saint-Simon, Cabet and Fourier took root upon our soil and finally produced a harvest of enthusiastic communities and phalanxes, harbingers of a new heaven and new earth wherein should dwell righteousness. These preliminary New Jerusalems usually forbade marriage, and then came Sylvester Graham, com- manding to abstain also from meats and prophesying regeneration by the use of unbolted flour, oatmeal and beans. All this running to and fro increased an appetite for knowledge, and the men were already in existence who would re-organize the press to meet the new demands. In the political world the crowd was newly emancipated from colonial and aristocratic traditions and laws, newly vocal with en- thusiasm for a democratic hero, Old Hickory, and willing to pose before the rest of the world. A new conception of journalistic functions began to take shape. The newspaper must adapt itself to meet the crowd. It must become the representative of the multi- tude rather than a few. Even while the violence of partisanship did not abate, the former proportions of general news and of partisan propaganda were gradually reversed. In this evolution the jour- nalist began to differentiate himself from the politician, and jour- nalism began to emerge as a distinct profession. It was natural that these changes should be most significant and interesting in the field of New York City journalism. Thanks to Martin Van Buren and Thurlow Weed, New York contained the best organized and most eager democracy in the Union. Thanks to the enterprise of its own business men, and subsequently to the policy of DeWitt Clinton, New York City had become the metrop- olis of the country, wherein the new journalism could find its best and largest audience. The leading political papers in New York City in 1829 were the Courier and Enquirer, a Democratic sheet of the old-fashioned sort ; 'Ca^ Journal of Commerce, which may be described as " Adams Anti-Slavery ;" and the Evening Post, Jacksonian. The commer-