Benjamin Henry Day was an American printer and journalist. He was the first to prove that newspapers at a popular price could be successful and established a "penny paper" the Sun.
Background
Benjamin Henry Day was born on April 10, 1810 in West Springfield, Massachusetts, United States. He was sixth in descent from Robert Day, who came from England with his wife Mary in the Elisabeth in 1634 and settled at Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, to become, two years later, one of the original settlers of Hartford, Connecticut, United States. Robert’s son Thomas established himself in West Springfield, Massachusetts, United States, where this branch of the family lived for two centuries. Benjamin H. Day was the son of Henry Day and Mary Ely, his mother being a descendant of Elder William Brewster, fourth signer of the Mayflower compact.
Career
Day entered the office of the Springfield Republican as an apprentice soon after it was founded by Samuel Bowles in 1824.
When he was twenty years old and a first-class compositor, he went to New York City and worked at the case in the offices of the Evening Post, the Commercial Advertiser and the Journal of Commerce.
In 1833 the business depression, caused by the faulty banking system and the visitation of cholera on the city, made Day’s business so poor that in desperation he started a newspaper. It was based on the obsession of Dave Ramsey, a compositor with whom he worked on the Journal of Commerce in 1830, that a one-cent daily, to be called the Sun, would be successful. The “penny paper” was not a new idea.
The Cent in Philadelphia, the Bostonian in Boston, and the Morning Post in New York City had tried and failed. The solemn “six-penny” papers held the New York field. Day got out the first number of the Sun on September 3, 1833, practically single-handed, in a 12 x 16 room at 222 William Street, setting the type, rewriting news from other papers, and “lifting” advertisements to make a show of prosperity. There were four pages. The Sun announced that its object was “to lay before the public, at a price within the means of everyone, all the news of the day. ”
Day engaged a reporter, George W. Wisner, at four dollars a week and hired newsboys to hawk the Sun— an innovation in journalism. In four months the paper had a circulation of 4, 000, almost equaling that of the Morning Courier and New York Enquirer. In April 1834, the Sun sold 8, 000 copies daily. In the summer of 1835 Wisner left the Sun, and his place was taken by Richard Adams Locke, who wrote for the Sun the Moon Hoax, a fabrication which made the circulation (Sun, August 28, 1835) the highest in the world. Day boasted that with 19, 360 copies daily he had surpassed the 17, 000 circulation of the London Times. In that year he used steam power for printing—its first trial in America.
“From the epoch of the hoax, ” wrote Edgar Allan Poe ‘The Sun’ shone with unmitigated splendor. The start thus given the paper insured it a triumph.
Its success firmly established ‘the penny system’ throughout the country. ”
On New Year’s Day 1836, when the size of the Sun’s page was increased to 14 x 20 inches, Day boasted that his paper had a circulation “double that of all the six-penny respectables combined. ”
Of all his rivals who had rushed in to compete with the Sun in the popular field, only James Gordon Bennett’s Herald had survived; Horace Greeley’s Tribune was not founded until 1841.
Day sold the Sun to his brother-in-law and mechanical superintendent, Moses Yale Beach, in 1838, for $40, 000. The price was low, considering that Day had made in some years $20, 000 profit. In 1840 Day established another penny paper called the True Sun, which he sold after a few months. In 1842, with James Wilson, he founded Brother Jonathan, a monthly which republished English novels.
This afterward became the first American illustrated weekly, with Nathaniel P. Willis as one of its editors.
Day retired from business in 1862, when the Civil War caused a paper famine, and he spent the remainder of his life at ease. He died in New York City.
He was not a great editor, but he proved that newspapers at a popular price could be successful.
Achievements
Day established the Sun at a price within the means of everyone.
He used steam power for printing—its first trial in America.
He established Brother Jonathan - the first American illustrated weekly.
Personality
Day was a man of industry and determination.
His portraits show an intellectual forehead and an aggressive jaw.
He was inclined to be professionally belligerent, as is indicated by his journalistic assaults on J. Watson Webb of the Courier and Enquirer and Bennett of the Herald.
Connections
On September 13, 1831 Day married Eveline Shepard and a year later, with savings from his wages, set up as a job printer.
