Men like Horace Greeley helped shaped the destiny of this country by their thoughts. "Go West Young Man"... and thousands did. Some made fortunes, others did not. All helped to open the frontier and connect the two sides of the North American continent.
There was a time when men, like Matthew Brady, recorded the times through their photographs which were printed in the newspapers of the day. Information was all important, and his portraits and views brought the rest of the country into their parlors and into their concept of America.
Times have changed. As radio came along, it captured the hearts of the nation only to be displaced by other more novel media. Since the Second World War, newspapers have one after another slipped away and faded into memory. Those that remain are owned and run, seldom individually, but by conglomerates and corporates, and they seldom vary much.
Once, newspapers were full of "All the news that was fit to print" and more. Now, most newspapers are sports, sensationalism, and very little real news of world importance. Elections take place in far off countries, economic crisis takes place, important shifts and changes take place which will indirectly affect us, but often we never hear about these things. Most of today's newspapers are clones of each other, but it wasn't always that way. There were different types of papers years ago and times haven't changed that much, but the quality and content have not progressed. People still like the scandal papers that were popular during Victorian times. "Detective", "Police Gazette", and papers like them were full of bank robbers, murderers, forgers, and scandalous incidents. If you wanted to read about not-so- respectable young ladies who peeked in when "strongman" Sandown was dressing, or about safe cracker Langdon Moore, you would buy these papers. If you wanted to know what was happening in America, England, France, you would read the daily paper as it had news in it, not all about sports figures but about the makers and shakers of the world and what was happening.
When was the last time you read a paper that told you about what was happening in Nicaragua, Brazil, Spain, Morocco? Unless a sensational incident happens, it goes totally unnoticed, and when it affects an American, it can affect the news for a day or so. For example, recently two American scuba divers were accidentally abandoned at sea, on a scuba trip by the crew of an Australian boat. How you can forget two people in shark infested waters is more than a mystery. All we ever heard was that they had stopped searching for these two tourists.
Now if I were a diver or planning on going to Australia, I'd really want to know what happened. It would be more important to me than knowing what some college football score was. I'm not a diver and I'm not going to Australia, but I should have liked to know a lot more about what occurred.
Americas priorities may have shifted, or the papers have usurped the right of the people to know what is going on in the world they are living in. Perhaps, this is why the web has become so popular. It is giving people access to what is happening in this tiny little spec in the galaxy we reside in. It is also the reason that old newspapers, which have been unsalable unless they were pre-1900, or of important events like the bombing of Pearl Harbor, have begun to attract a bit more attention by collectors. Bound volumes have attracted history buffs and researchers because of the continuity.
At one time, newspapers had songs written about them and these have gained popularity with local history buffs as have the postcards showing the paper with its name on it. Of course, the name William Randolph Hearst will always stand out as will the comic pages that are very heavily collected because of the artists that designed them and the characters that appeared in them. Color was rare in newsprint and made these comics treasured items that people kept. Other specials, such as paper toys, paper dolls, cut outs, and postcards were also inserted into the papers and are as coveted today as they were when they were fresh off the press. One of the innovative things that was done back then was that of a hidden image on the card. You would hold the card close to a candle flame and the picture would appear, like magic. One wonders how many fires resulted because of that process. Another fun type was cutouts with moveable parts. Children loved them as well as adults and it is amazing how many of these were lovingly put away and kept.
Some of the names you should look for are Grace Drayton (Weidersheimer) who drew the Campbell Soup kids and her sister Margaret Hayes. Characters like the Yellow Kid, Buster Brown, Felix, became immortal through those comic strips.
Most people are surprised when they peruse through old newspapers how much more interesting they were, because content and intent were very clear, and substance was substantial (pardon the pun). The great writers, artists, commentators, and newsmen like Walter Winchel, Damon Runyon, Bruce Bainsfather, P.G. Wodehouse, are gone and if you don't believe it... other than Dear Abby, does anyone religiously follow the columns in their local newspapers? Very few writers in the caliber of Art Buchwald remain.
Benjamin Franklin originals, not copies of copies, are extremely valuable and rare. Lincoln's assassination - rare but available and still affordable. Nixon's abdication - $1. Kennedy's assassination - $5.00. The knowledge you gain from old papers, priceless.
©1998 Unravel the Gavel