increased. A new six-cylinder Hoe press was put
in use, alongside the four-cylinder machine, and both
were frequently taxed to their utmost capacity to print
the large editions demanded by the public. The
bills for white paper during the year were upwards
of seventy thousand dollars, which, in those ante-war
times, was a large sum. The circulation averaged
over forty thousand per diem. In 1859 the system
of keeping an accurate account of the circulation
was inaugurated, and the actual figures of each day’s
issue were recorded and published. From this
record it is learned that the Herald, from a circulation
of forty-one thousand one hundred and ninety-three
in January, rose to fifty-three thousand and twenty-six
in December. Twelve compositors were regularly
employed this year, and the weekly composition bill
was two hundred dollars. The year 1860 brought
the exciting presidential campaign which resulted in
the election of Abraham Lincoln. Great pains
were taken to keep the Herald’s readers fully
informed of the movements of all the political parties,
and its long reports of the national conventions,
meetings, speeches,
etc., in all parts of the
country, especially in New England, brought it to the
notice of many new readers. The average daily
circulation for the year was a little over fifty-four
thousand, and the issue on the morning after the November
election reached seventy-three thousand seven hundred
and fifty-two, the largest edition since the Webster
trial. E.B. Haskell, now one of the proprietors,
entered the office as a reporter in 1860, and was
soon promoted to an editorial position. A year
later R.M. Pulsifer, another of the present proprietors,
entered the business department.
The breaking out of the Civil War in the spring of
1861 created a great demand for news, and an increase
in the circulation of all the daily papers was the
immediate result. It is hardly necessary to say
here that the Herald warmly espoused the cause of
the Union, and that the events of that stirring period
were faithfully chronicled in its columns. To
meet a call for news on Sunday, a morning edition for
that day was established on May 26; the new sheet
was received with favor by the reading public, and
from an issue of ten thousand at the outset its circulation
has reached, at the present time, nearly one hundred
thousand. The Herald’s enterprise was appreciated
all through the war, and as there were no essential
changes in the methods of its management or in the
members of its staff, a recapitulation of statistics
taken from its books will suffice here as a record
of its progress. In 1861 the average circulation
was sixty thousand; the largest edition (reporting
the attack on the sixth Massachusetts regiment in Baltimore),
ninety-two thousand four hundred and forty-eight; the
white paper bill, one hundred and eight thousand dollars;
the salary list, forty thousand dollars; telegraph
tolls, sixty-five hundred dollars. In 1862 the