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Newspapers

"The first thing that strikes the stranger is their extraordinary number . . . almost every town, down to communities of two thousand in number, has not only one but several daily papers. . . . many families are not contented with one but must have two or more," observed the British traveler Alexander Mackay who visited America during the Nauvoo years. The noted European visitor Friedrich Raumer believed that "by reading the daily papers, the citizens of the United States are certainly excited and instructed in a greater variety of ways than those of any other country." Although foreign observers seem to have agreed that newspapers were widely read in early nineteenth-century America, they did not all agree on the benefits of the practice. Mrs. Trollope thought it prevented reading more elevated material: "Where newspapers are the principal vehicles of the wit and wisdom of the people, the higher graces of composition can hardly be looked for . . . the general taste is decidedly bad; . . . from the mass of slip-slop poured forth by the daily and weekly press."

Whatever the literary tastes of the American people in 1840, their literacy cannot be denied, and newspapers were the most popular reading material. The 1840s have been called the "Golden Age" of American journalism. In 1776 there were thirty-seven papers in the thirteen colonies. By 1840 the number had grown to fourteen hundred. The textbook Popular Technology, published in 1841, noted that "all Europe, with its 200,000,000 of inhabitants, does not support as many regular publications as the United States, with its 17,000,000." This unusually large number of newspapers, however, resulted in low circulations for most papers and consequently little profit. Many were subsidized, directly or indirectly, by political groups or leaders.

Most newspapers during the Nauvoo era were weeklies or semiweeklies. There were only three daily papers in all of Illinois in 1840. Few daily papers had circulations exceeding two thousand; most had circulations of no more than five hundred. The European traveler Chevalier noted in 1839 that most American papers had little influence outside their local districts and they were consulted more for the news than for opinions, as newspapers were in Europe.

The smaller newspapers aspired to paid subscriptions of about four hundred in order to stay in business, but lack of subscribers did not deter most communities of any reasonable size from establishing a newspaper. It was usually put together in a print shop that took in printing jobs for the general public and also sold paper, books, and related items. The print shop in Nauvoo, which was owned by the Times and Seasons, was first located in a large brick building on the corner of Bain and Water streets on the flats and contained a type foundry, a book bindery, and stationery shop. Without the supplemental income these facilities produced, newspapers could not survive except by subsidy. Although the subscription list might total four or five hundred, subscriptions often ran unpaid for years despite the pleadings, threats, and blacklisting resorted to by the editors.