Читать книгу The Story of the Sun: New York, 1833-1918 онлайн

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Day’s quarrel with Bennett, which never reached the physical stage, was the natural outcome of an intense rivalry among the most successful penny papers of that period—the Sun, the Herald, and the Transcript. Against the sixpenny respectables these three were one for all and all for one, but against one another they were as venomous as a young newspaper of that day felt that it had to be to show that it was alive.

Day’s antagonism toward Webb was sporadic. Most of the time the young owner of the Sun treated the fiery editor of the Courier and Enquirer as flippantly as he could, knowing that Webb liked to be taken seriously. Day’s constant bête noire was the commercial and foreign editor of Webb’s paper, Mr. Hoskin, an Englishman.

On January 21, 1836, the Sun charged that Webb and Hoskin had rigged a “diabolical plot” against it. The sixpenny papers had formed a combination for the purpose of sharing the expense of running horse-expresses from Philadelphia to New York, bringing the Washington news more quickly than the penny papers could get it by mail. The Sun and the Transcript then formed a combination of their own, and in this way saved themselves from being beaten on Jackson’s message, sent to Congress in December, 1835.