Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
How to fill paper a concern even back then
If you’re following the daily Gazette 200 Pages From the Past, you’re at least looking at a page a day from the earliest editions of the Arkansas Gazette.
Believe it or not, there are other editions that are even harder to read. Editor William E. Woodruff had boxes of 5½-point type.
Perhaps, like me, you find yourself laughing out loud — when not horror-stricken by the death-trap Arkansas Territory’s thugs, power-grabbers, open flames, diseases, mud-bog roads and routine racial bigotry. I run around the office interrupting co-workers to show them shaggy old jokes that Woodruff snagged from other publications to pack the back pages of his four-page weekly Gazette.
For instance, below is a little something that Woodruff published Nov. 10, 1829.
To help readers understand, the Gazette explained in footnotes that “ads” were advertisements; “leaders” were important articles printed in large letters; and “double lead” was a technical phrase for a mode of printing employed only when an article was “either supposed to be or wished to be supposed super-important.”
And “standing matter” included articles already set in type but not yet used, such as jokes, murders in America, discoveries in the East Indies: fillers.
Also, there were “quacks.” These were health-product ads, “those benevolent affairs of aid to the afflicted, which announce that ‘Rheumatisms and Lumbago are effectually relieved by a new process’; that ‘the most excruciating toothache is allayed in one minute by the unrivaled anodyne cement’; that ‘gout is cured without medicine in a few hours’ and ‘blotched faces in no time at all’; that ‘red whiskers are changed in a single night to beautiful shades of brown or black’; that ‘the healthy functions of the stomach and intestinal canal are restored by an improved domestic instrument,’ &c. &c. &c.”
There were gradations of rank and respectability among advertisements such that “a high aristocractical feeling pervades their association in a well regulated paper.” And so, the quacks were “never allowed to show their faces in the genteel company of the other advertisements, unless there happens to be a lack of gentility.” Instead they were to be “held together in what is technically called ‘the back page of the paper.’”
Here is the item Woodruff took from Sharpe’s London Magazine:
HOW TO MAKE A PAPER
Newspaper Secrets Scene — The Sanctum of the Establishment.
The Editor sitting with his hands in his breeches pockets, leaning back in his chair, and looking very earnestly at the ceiling. In about ten minutes, he gets up and walks to the window, breathes hard upon the glass, and flourishes a capital R with his finger in the wet he has made. Looks at his watch, and rings the Printer’s bell. — Enter Printer.
Editor.— How much matter have you got, Mr. Pica?
Mr. P.— (After a pause) — Not more than two columns, Sir.Editor.— The devil! How many ads can you muster today?
Mr. P.— Three columns and a half, sir, including quacks; but I must use “When men of education and professional skill” and “real blessing to Mothers.”
Editor.— Have you no standing matter?
Mr. P.— Not a line, sir. I used the last of the standing matter yesterday, the account of the American Sea Serpent, which was left out full two months ago to make room for the Fire in Fleet Street.
Editor.— (Musing) Very well: I’ll touch your bell as soon as I have any copy ready.
Mr. P.— The men are all standing still, sir, just now. If you have any matter you intend to use a week hence, they may as well be going on with it.
Editor.— (Rummages among his papers) — Here, take this “Romantic Suicide.” It will do for any day when you want half a column for the back page.
[Exit Mr. Pica, and in a minute, enter Reading Boy in a hurry.]
Boy.— Copy, if you please, sir.
Editor.— I have just given Mr. Pica half a column.
Boy.— Oh, I beg your pardon, sir; I did not see Mr. Pica, I came from down stairs. Exit.
Editor.— (Puts his hands into his breeches pockets again, and begins to whistle a tune.) — This will not do. — I must write something — but what is it to be about, I know no more than the monument. (Nibs his pen — settles his inkstand — and gets his paper ready.) — The Parliament is up — the Law Courts have adjourned for the long vacation — the Opera House and the winter theatres have closed — and the Hay market and English Opera House, they have both got pieces which are having a run — nothing stirring — not even a case of decent oppression in a night constable — or of tyranny in a police magistrate. Whigs and Tories have shaken hands, and political delinquencies are too common to be either new or scandalous. The editor of a daily paper may be aptly compared to a galley slave. When the winds roar and the tempest is abroad, and the waves swell, his bark moves along swiftly; but when the calm comes, and the sky is serene, and the breeze is hushed and the sea is smooth, it is then he must ply the oar, and tug, and pull, and toil to give the vessel motion. (Takes his pen and writes furiously) that will do for one of those short leaders about nothing — which look very much as if they alluded to something that could not be mentioned. (Reads.)
“There are certain rumors
afloat — upon a delicate subject, which has lately occasioned a great sensation in particular quarters. We are in possession of facts connected with this extraordinary affair, which we may perhaps feel ourselves at liberty to mention in a few days. Meanwhile, all we can say at present is, that disclosures must take place, however painful they may be to more than one distinguished individual. We shall only add that the Duke of Wellington left town yesterday in his travelling chariot with four horses for Windsor, after a private interview of nearly three hours with an illustrious personage; and that it is reported his Grace ordered summonses to be issued for a cabinet [council] this day, before his departure from London. We shall not [lose] sight of this business.”
(Rings the Printer’s bell — Mr. Pica enters.) Make this the first leader, and you may as well put it in double leads.
Mr. P.— Very well, sir. There’s a long police case just come in of a baronet’s daughter taken up for shoplifting and an account of the bursting of a gasometer which killed eleven men, three boys, and an old woman, who lived in a front garret over the way.
Editor.— Use them both; the shoplifting under the head, “Mysterious Charge of Theft,” and the accident of the gasometer under that of “Tremendous Explosion! Fifteen lives lost!”
Mr. P.— We shall do better with the ads than I expected. Robins has just sent a long list of his auctions, which he says must go in today; and Murray’s clerk has left eight or ten good book ads, so I shall be able to make out a full page without using the quacks.
— the end — Was that fun to read? I think it was fun to read.