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1851-1921 By Elmer Davis Originally published 1921 |
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Republican party and practically none of its undesirable elements. And for years thereafter the paper retained this position, and found its independence not only more comfortable and satisfactory than its former party allegiance, but for a time almost as lucrative. The rejection of Blaine did indeed bring losses, which were considerable but not disastrous. And as an offset to the defections the paper won many new readers who had previously found its intense Republicanism somewhat unpalatable.
The income did indeed drop a long way in that year. The net profits of the paper were $188,000 in 1883 and only $56,000 in 1884. But much of this decrease was due to the reduction in price from four cents to two, in the hope of meeting the competition of the two-cent World and Sun, which took effect in September, 1883. And within a few years The Times, despite the loss of circulation income which followed the change to two cents, had recovered most of the lost ground and was very nearly as prosperous as it had been in its best years of the past. The decline of its fortunes in the early nineties was due to a complex of reasons, which will be analyzed presently; but it does not seem that in the long run it lost very much by abandoning the Republican party.
What those readers missed who left it in 1884 was, it may be presumed, not so much Republican editorials as Republican news. Though deeply aggrieved by the alteration in the paper's political allegiance, John Reid stuck to the ship, and before the campaign was over the political correspondents were
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