GETNYC.com - History of the New York Times, 1851-1921

History of the New York Times
1851-1921

By Elmer Davis

Originally published 1921

Restoration of the Times, 1896-1900

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fragments. This history will attempt for the first time to tell it as a whole, and with fuller and more authentic details than have previously been presented to the reader, in the belief .that it will be found instructive by men engaged in making newspapers and of some interest even to the general public, which believes more and knows less about newspaper making than about almost any other business on earth. The story is unfinished; its action is still going on; its chief actors, or most of them, are still on the stage. This fact perhaps imposes some restraint on the historian, but it is his belief and the belief of the conductors of The Times that no relevant detail of the story has been omitted. Because it is an unfinished story, however, the narrative must be treated as a record rather than as a critical history. It is too early for detached judgment on most of the work of the past twenty-five years in The Times office, and in any case the men who have done that work, and whose views are represented in this part of the narrative, are not the men to pass judgment on what they themselves have done. The rise of The Times possesses, to a rather unusual degree, that romance which attaches to the growth of most great business enterprises; but that side of the story must be left for treatment by persons outside the institution. It could, moreover, easily lead to a distorted view of some of the phases of that growth. The fact that The Times was often, in past years, desperately hard up, has some romantic and dramatic value; but for the purposes of this narrative the fact, which may be assumed, is less important than the policies pursued