The New York
_Herald_ was making a great stir. The _Sun_ was already a profitable
sheet. And now the idea occurred to Horace Greeley to start a daily
paper which should have the merits of cheapness and abundant news,
without some of the qualities possessed by the others. He wished to
found a cheap daily paper that should be good and salutary as well as
interesting. The last number of _The Log-Cabin_ announced the
forthcoming _Tribune_, price one cent.
The editor was probably not solvent when he conceived the scheme, and
he borrowed a thousand dollars of his old friend, James Coggeshall,
with which to buy the indispensable material. He began with six
hundred subscribers, printed five thousand of the first number, and
found it difficult to give them all away. The _Tribune_ appeared on
the day set apart in New York for the funeral procession in
commemoration of President Harrison, who died a month after his
inauguration.
It was a chilly, dismal day in April, and all the town was absorbed in
the imposing pageant. The receipts during the first week were
ninety-two dollars; the expenses five hundred and twenty-five. But the
little paper soon caught public attention, and the circulation
increased for three weeks at the rate of about three hundred a day.
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