The story of the Sun, New York: 1833-1928 / by Frank M. O'Brien ; with an introduction by Edward Page Mitchell ...

NEW YORK LIFE IN THE THIRTIES 83
comparable to the young printer's achievement in making
a popular, low-priced daily newspaper-and not only
making it, but making it stick.
Bennett and his Herald were the first to profit by the
example of Ben Day. It should have been easy for Bennett, yet he had already failed at the same undertaking.
He was at work in the newspaper field of New York as
early as 1824, nine years before Day started the Sun.
He failed as proprietor of the Sunday Courier (1825),
and he failed again with the Philadelphia Pennsylvanian.
He had a wealth of experience as assistant to Webb and
as the Washington correspondent of the Enquirer.
It was no doubt due to the success of the Sun that Bennett, after two failures, established the Herald. He saw
the human note that Ben Day had struck, and he knew,
as a comparatively old newspaperman-he was forty when
he started the Herald-what mistakes Day was making in
the neglect of certain news fields, such as Wall Street.
iutt the value of the penny paper Day had already proved,
and I)ay had established, ahead of everybody else, the
newsboy system, by which the man in the street could get
a paper whenever he liked without making a yearly investment.
Bennett may have written the constitution of popular
journalism, but it was Day who wrote its declaration of
independence. If it had not been for the untrained Day,
fifteen years younger than Bennett, it is possible that
there would have been no Herald to span nearly a century
under the ownership of father and son; and the two James
Gordon Bennetts not only owned but absolutely were the
Herald from May 6, 1835, when the father started the
paper, until May 14, 1918, when the son died.