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

84

THE STORY OF "THE SUN"

Day's success with the Sun was responsible for the
birth, not only of the Herald, but of a host of American
penny papers, which were established at the rate of a
dozen a year. Of the New York imitators the Jcffersonian, published by Childs and )evoe, and the Man,
owned by George H. Evans, an Englishman who was the
Henry George of his day, were not long for this world.
The Transcript, started in 1834, flashed up for a time as
a dangerous rival of the Sun. Three compositors, William
J. Stanley, Willoughby Lynde, and Billings Hayward,
owned it. Its editor was Asa Greene, erstwhile physician
and bookseller and always humorist. He wrote Tth Adventures of Dr. Dodimus Duckworth,.TT;e Perils of Pearl
Street, and The Travels of Ex-Barber Fribbleton in
America-this last a travesty on the books of travel turnedc
out by Englishmen who visited the States.
William H. Attree, a former compositor, wrote the
Transcript's lively police-court stories, the Sun's rival having learned how popular was crime. The Transcript
lasted five years, the earlier of them so prosperous that
the proprietors thought they were going to be millionaires.
But Reporter Attree went to Texas with the land boomers,
and Lynde, who wrote the paragraphs, died. When the
paper failed, in 1839, Hayward went to the Herald, where
he worked as a compositor all the rest of his life.
The other penny papers that sprang up in New York
to give battle-while the money lasted-to the Sun, the
Transcript, and the Herald, were the True Sun, started
by some of Day's discharged employees; the MIorning
Star, run by Major Noah, of the Evening Star; the New
Era, already mentioned, which Richard Adams Locke
started in 1836 in company with Jared D. Bell and Joseph