Ohio History Journal

JAMES E. CEBULA

 

The New City and the New Journalism:

The Case of Dayton, Ohio

 

 

Prior to the introduction of mass transportation systems, the nineteenth

century city was physically compact, with diverse land usages in close

proximity to each other. With the availability of railroads, street cars, and

inter-urban electric rail lines the urban population could live further away

from the workplace and entrepreneurs would recognize the advantages of

building in less congested areas. These increased options for residential and

factory locations fostered socioeconomic segmentation, as the successful

middle class chose housing locations away from the confusion of the old

city. Industrialists were freed to build new, larger plants on sites with plenty

of space to accommodate mechanization as well as possible expansion. The

different types of land use,the new organization of work, and the expansion

of the city all contributed to a breakdown of traditional communications

links and promoted impersonal types of social relationships. These changes

reshaped the city and produced the metropolis as a new form of human

settlement.

This process of metropolitanization was often accompanied by disorder

and tension. Population growth and congestion, environmental destruc-

tion and pollution, ethnic and racial conflict, labor-capital confrontations,

inadequate public services, and community dissonance over governmental

priorities were all part of the new metropolitan fabric. As Samuel P. Hays

 

 

 

James E. Cebula is Associate Professor of History at Raymond Walters College of the

University of Cincinnati.

 

1. On the growth of the metropolis, see Leo F. Schnore, "Metropolitan Growth and

Decentralization," The American Journal of Sociology, LVI (September, 1957), 171-180;

Hans Blumenfeld, Cities (New York, 1965), 40-57; and Blake McKelvey, The Emergence of

Metropolitan America, 1915-1966 (New Brunswick, 1968). For a historiographical statement

which stresses the need to build bridges between transportation development, urban growth,

and the progressive era reform movements, see Richard C. Wade, "An Agenda for Urban

History," in George Athan Billias and Gerald N. Grob, eds., American History: Retrospect

and Prospect (New York, 1971), 367-399; but see also Robert H. Weibe, "The Progressive

Years, 1900-1917" in William H. Cartwright and Richard L. Watson, Jr., eds., Reinterpreta-

tion of American History and Culture (Washington, D.C. 1973),415-442 which ties the

reforms and changes to the process of modernization. On the role of newspapers of the era, see

Park Dixon Goist, From Main Street to State Street: Town City, and Community in America

(Port Washington, N.Y., 1977), 94-120.

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278                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

and Robert H. Weibe, among others, have shown, organizations,

institutions, and government adjusted to establish a semblance of order for

the new cosmopolitan society. Oddly, while scholars of the city con-

temporary with the emergence of the metropolis credited metropolitan

newspapers with an important role in holding the larger society together,

historians have paid little attention to the relationship between

metropolitanization and the "new journalism" of the era1

Placing the Dayton Daily News into the context of the emergence of

Dayton, Ohio as a separate metropolitan center, this essay explains how

James M. Cox developed a journalistic and business strategy in step with

the city's emerging institutions and social structure. Reflecting a

progressive era ideology which stressed efficiency and social harmony, the

News became the area's leading paper. As such it existed as a principal

communications vehicle for prompting corporate action during a time of

social disorganization.

The growth of Dayton into a metropolitan center took place roughly

between the years 1850 and 1910. In the canal era the commerce and

manufacturing of the Miami Valley town centered around processing

regional farm products. The appearance of the railroad gradually

reworked the national economy. Cheap and efficient transportation as well

as mechanical innovations in agricultural processing soon promoted large-

scale operations in the major urban centers. In response, between 1850 and

1880 Dayton's small scale foundries, farm equipment manufacturers,

linseed oil processors, coopers, flour mills, and distilleries either

disappeared or diversified their activities.

During the railroad era Dayton's growth centered around the

production of transportation equipment. As early as 1849 the Barney and

Smith Car Company began building railroad cars in a plant located on the

periphery of the then geographically small city. Initially producing freight

and passenger cars, the firm later built sleeping cars for George Pullman.

With the completion of the national railroad network at the end of the

nineteenth century, "the Barney" diversified production to include street

and traction cars. Built for an urban market, these products soon became

the firm's primary source of revenue. The company more than tripled its

size, employing more than 4,000 people in 1908 in what had become a

sprawling downtown plant.²

 

 

2. Charlotte Reeve Conover, The Story of Dayton, (Dayton, 1917), 209-210; Ada Cook,

"The Growth of Industry in Dayton" (unpublished M.A. Thesis, Miami University, 1940), 23-

24; A. W. Drury, History of the City of Dayton (Dayton, 1909), 1, 608-658; Harvey W. Crew,

comp., History of Dayton, Ohio (Dayton, 1889), 380-472. For the development of railroads

in Dayton, see U.S. Department of Interior, Bureau of Census, Tenth Census of the United

States, 1880: Social Statistics of Cities, XIX, 397; for detailed discussions of Dayton's

industrial development see Carl M. Becker,"Mill, Shop, and Factory: The Industrial Life of

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The New City and Journalism                                         279

 

By the 1890s Dayton industrialists had clearly adapted their en-

trepreneurial skills to the demand for urban services and consumer goods.

In addition to Barney and Smith, producers of bicycles, stoves, sewing

machines, streetcar fare registers, commercial ledgers and scales, and cash

registers all prospered. The rise of the National Cash Register Company

demonstrated the new orientation. John Patterson's cash register company

employed only seventy-nine people in 1878 and occupied the second and

third floors of a small downtown building, but in the next twenty years

Patterson moved to suburban South Park and built a giant corporation

housed in fifteen buildings. In step with the quickened pace of urban

commerce, he advertised that the "cash register is needed and can be sold

wherever money is handled." Through saturation advertising, sales trainee

programs, patent controls, an efficient assembly line process and cut-throat

competition, Patterson ultimately gained control of the world cash register

market. By 1908 "the Cash," the largest firm in Dayton, employed more

than 5,000 people.³

The need for factory and housing space necessitated Dayton's physical

growth. It took the city until after the Civil War to grow beyond its original

boundaries. In 1868 City Council annexed the growing residential suburbs

of North Dayton, Riverview, and Dayton View and large industrial areas

east of the Miami Canal; these additions were quickly tied to the old city by

a series of streetcar lines. During the next forty years, as the rise of the new

industries occurred, Dayton added large tracts of land in all directions. It

also tripled its population from 38,678 in 1880 to 116,577 by 1910.⁴

City government gradually adjusted to the change, and in a piecemeal

fashion responded to the increased demands for improved municipal

services. In 1864 a professional fire department replaced the volunteer fire

companies. As new residential and industrial areas developed, additional

fire houses were added. Dayton voters approved a bond issue to construct a

sanitary water works in 1869. In the following year, the wooden Main

Street bridge was rebuilt of iron to handle safely the increased traffic

between Dayton View and the central business district. Three years later

 

 

Dayton, Ohio, 1830-1900" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cincinnati, 1971),

and Charles H. Paul,"Industrial History of Dayton," in Charlotte Reeve Conover, ed.,

Dayton and Montgomery County (4 vols.; New York, 1932), II, 475-520. George B. Cox, the

political boss of Cincinnati, was a member of the Board of Directors of the Barney and Smith

Co. during its urban era.

3. Conover, Dayton and Montgomery County, 11, 481; Drury, History of Dayton, 1,638-

653; Joseph W. Sharts, Biography of Dayton: An Economic Interpretation of Local History

(Dayton, 1922), 61-62.

4. Drury, History of Dayton, I, 234-242, 574-576: Dayton City Plan Board, "The City of

Dayton Growth of Annexation Map," April, 1969; U.S., Department of Commerce and

Labor, Bureau of Census, Thirteenth Census of the United States. 1910: Abstract of the

Census, Supplement for Ohio, 568

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280                                                    OHIO HISTORY

 

city officials created a Board of Police Commissioners to govern the newly

reorganized, armed, and uniformed police force.

The simultaneous additions of new services indicated the complexity of

the growing urban center. A Board of Health was created in 1888 and two

years later the city belatedly began to build a sewage system. Street paving

began in 1888 and twenty years later the city had fifty-eight miles of paved

roads. Experimenting with new governmental forms to manage the

transformed city, in 1900 a Board of City Affairs was created to serve as a

bipartisan executive body. Reconstituted two years later as the Board of

Public Service, these changes presaged the Dayton City Manager Plan.

The "Gem City" also became one of five cities in Ohio in 1898 to operate a

state employment office to provide some order to the search for labor and

jobs. As a result of this growth and creativity a new and vastly different city

had emerged, requiring different and more efficient communications.⁵

It was the appearance of the Dayton Daily News as the dominant

regional newspaper that completed Dayton's emergence as a separate

metropolitan center. During the transitional era the city lacked an

independent press with area-wide influence. While the circulation of local

papers languished, the Cincinnati Times-Star suburban edition dominated

circulation in the region and the Cincinnati Post had more circulation

within Dayton than all the Dayton papers combined. The local papers still

functioned primarily as political voices controlled by opposing factions.

Consequently, Dayton publishers depended upon these special interests to

finance the bulk of their operating expenses, a situation which severely

restricted editorial independence. Further reflecting this crude stage of

journalistic development, the Dayton papers carried brief summaries of

telegraphic news, while day old, preset "boiler plate" shipped daily from

Cincinnati made up the bulk of the layout. Pictures were non-exsistent and

staffs were small. National advertisers generally ignored the local

newspapers in favor of the Cincinnati dailies. Since Dayton publishers did

not rely on advertising, James M. Cox, founder of the Dayton Daily News,

reminisced that ads did not "change from one season to another. I found

watermelons advertised in the Christmas holidays and ice skates on the

fourth of July".6

Cox viewed the newspaper as a basic component of the metropolitan

order. Industry, transportation, commerce, and journalism, he believed,

all played interrelated roles in the development of a city. In an enthusiastic

editorial, Cox described Dayton as the hub of a "large geographic wheel,"

 

5. Drury, History of Dayton, 1, 504-536; Tenth Census, 1880: Social Statistics of Cities,

XIX, 397-401; Ohio Bureau of Labor Statistics, Twenty-Fourth Annual Report, 1900, 3, 15-

18.

6. James M. Cox, Journey Through My Years (New York, 1945), 38-39; Dayton Daily

News, October 12, 1901, 4; April 9, 1906, 4.

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The New City and Journalism                                       281

 

with the various interurban lines serving the city as "spokes." Noting a

metropolitan competition between Dayton and Cincinnati, he op-

timistically observed that the communities between the two centers

increasingly looked towards Dayton because of the city's "diversified

industries, aggressive stores and intelligent businessmen." Urging

Daytonians to assert vigorously their independence from the "Queen City,"

Cox pledged that the News would do its part in the struggle for

metropolitan identity.⁷

In 1898 when Cox took control of the faltering Morning Times and

Evening News, the two papers had a combined circulation of 2,600 while

the Cincinnati Post and the Cincinnati Times-Star were engaged in

circulation battles for control of the Dayton area market. Cox immediately

challenged their journalistic imperialism by consolidating his holdings into

an evening paper, waging an aggressive advertising sales program, and

launching an intensive circulation drive. With special advertising deals to

Dayton merchants and boosting the city to his readers, Cox and the News

gradually won the circulation battle in Dayton. Within six months the sales

of the Times-Star fell from "the thousands" to "a few hundred." While

engaged in continued competition with the Cincinnati papers in the

outlying areas south of Dayton, Cox helped strengthen the Gem City's ties

to satellite towns in other directions by extending circulation into Xenia,

Piqua, and Greenville early in 1899.8

Three years later the Cincinnati papers abandoned the Dayton market

and the News dominated circulation in the city and in outlying areas within

a radius of twenty miles. In addition to the aggressive sales techniques,

several other factors contributed to the success. An improvised triple-deck

gasoline-powered press enabled the News "to go to bed" two hours later

than its competition and still reach the street corners earlier with more up-

to-date news. The Cox paper also had a monopoly on the Associated Press

wire service in Dayton. When the AP began to sell its news to any buyer in

1901, Cox purchased a double service. This connection consistently gave

him more news copy than his competition. At the same time, the efficient

interurban lines out of Dayton permitted the News to reach the streets in

outlying areas-such as Franklin, twenty miles to the south-fifteen

minutes before the Cincinnati papers. Conscious of Horace Greeley's

advice to small town journalists "that the subject of deepest interest to an

 

 

7. Dayton Daily News, January 2, 1899, 4; September 12, 1898, 2.

8. George F. Stevens, "From Penny Paper to Post and Times Star: Mr. Scripps First Link,

"The Cincinnati Historical Society Bulletin, XXVII (Fall, 1969), 212; Dayton Daily News,

December 22, 1898, 4; December 27, 1898, 4; January 2,1899, 4. Dayton was an intricate part

of the first interurban railroad boom, which ended around 1903. Of the seventeen lines built

into Ohio, seven ran into Dayton. See George F. Due, The Electric Interurban Railways in

America (Stanford, 1964), 13-30.

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282                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

average human being is himself; next to that he is concerned about his

neighbors," Cox made suburban columns regular features. They not only

won readers in the outlying towns, but also fostered loyalty to Dayton and

allowed the News to enhance Dayton's regional dominance. In the process

of becoming the primary news medium in the area, the Daily News thus

helped to extend and define Dayton's metropolitan region.⁹

With the Cincinnati papers out of the area, Cox and the News proceeded

to transform journalism in Dayton. The Dayton Journal had initially

welcomed Cox's entrance into the Gem City newspaper arena with some

condescension:

The Evening News has been sold and will hereafter be a Democratic paper.

Democratic papers have never paid in Dayton and never will. Four of them have

failed.

 

But the Republican paper proved a poor prophet. Before long Cox

confronted the other Dayton publishers with advertising innovations,

journalistic crusades, special features, expanded news, circulation-building

contests, and political independence.10

To increase the value of advertising and make it commercial

communication, Cox adopted the rule that the News would accept no

advertisement without the authority to make changes in format. This

technique not only assured readers of advertising credibility; it also

guaranteed advertisers an attractive presentation. To entice leading

merchants to expand advertising, Cox made private deals to the effect that

"if no worthwhile results accrued" after a period of time the merchant need

not pay. If business improved, the News won a steady customer. The plan

worked well and before long Cox stopped special arrangements and

"imported a good ad-writer" from Chicago.11

During these early years Cox characterized the News as "the People's

paper." Muckraking crusades appeared regularly. Arousing the curiosity

of readers, they also provoked lawsuits. One of the more dramatic of these

exposures involved the efforts of the A.E. Appleyard Company to secure a

right-of-way for the Dayton, Lebanon, and Cincinnati Railroad through

newly developed residential sections of the city. The News campaigned

 

 

9. Dayton Daily News, June 21,1900,4; September 23,1900,4; October 12,1901,4; April 9,

1906, 4; Cox, Journey, 43; John W. Oliver, History of American Technology (New York,

1956) describes the development of presses. Horace Greeley is quoted in Robert E. Park,

Ernest W. Burgess, and Roderick O. McKenzie, The City (Chicago, 1967), 84. See the first few

months of the News for the gradual expansion of suburban columns.

10. Dayton Journal, August 15, 1898, 2. These techniques were the basic innovations that

characterized the journalism of the 1880s. See Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism

(New York, 1950), 411-415, and Arthur M. Schlesinger, The Rise of the City (New York,

1933), 187-195.

11. Cox, Journey, 39-42.

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The New City and Journalism                                            283

 

vigorously against granting the right-of-way and charged political

collusion between Appleyard and Joseph Lowes, the Republican political

leader in the city. Appleyard countered with a criminal libel suit and the

sheriff padlocked the Daily News office. Doubting the ability of Cox to

post bond, the other afternoon papers published extras announcing the

closing of the News. Through a political associate, Joseph Dowling, Cox

raised the bond money. Within a half hour after the lawsuit became news,

the Daily News issued an extra "emblazoned with the story of the closing

that had not closed." The courts eventually dismissed the suit and the

D.L.&C. failed to get the right of way. "This experience," Cox recalled,

"did the paper a great deal of good. We installed a three-deck

press . . . and red ink disappeared from our ledger."¹²

Whenever possible, the News added special features. Almost immediate-

ly after taking control, Cox added a women's editor and a society section.

Syndicated newsletters, stock market quotations, and book serializations

soon became regular attractions. McClure's Saturday Magazine supple-

ment won wide readership for the Saturday edition. The local news staff

expanded as circulation grew. The double Associated Press wire service

provided extensive sports coverage, as well as national and international

news. In several circulation-building contests, trips to Washington, D.C.

and New York City were awarded to the most diligent News coupon

clippers. Charitable institutions also benefited. The News made periodic

$500 wagers with its competition over the issue of circulation leadership;

the purse went to local hospitals. Special editions and supplements

highlighted industrial and suburban development, while periodically Cox

devoted an entire page boosting the prospects of the Gem City.13

Although the News remained partisan to the Democratic Party, it was

not, like earlier pre-metropolitan papers, a house organ. When Cox

purchased the paper, Joseph Dowling, the Montgomery County

Democratic Party chairman, became a leading stockholder in the Dayton

News Company. Cox and Dowling soon came into conflict over editorial

policy. In 1902 Cox struck for independence and purchased all the

 

12. Cox, Journey, 42-49; Hilton and Due, The Electric Interurban Railways, 23-29;

Dayton Daily News, September 10, 1902, 1; September 25, 1902, 1; September 26, 1902, 1;

September 30, 1902, 4. Some other crusades involved attacks on Republican bossism, the

"Clean Up Dayton Program," a defense of Dayton from John H. Patterson's eccentricities, an

attack on the Barney and Smith Car Company's contract labor system, garbage collection,

police reform, and numerous others. In 1899, after the first crusade against Dr. Joseph Lowes,

Republican "boss" of Dayton, Cox faced his first lawsuit. Lowes challenged Cox to prove

charges of corruption. Unable or unwilling to do so, Cox resolved the matter outside the

courts. When the case came to trial Cox paid a token settlement of $1.00: Daily Dayton News,

December 15, 1899,4.

13. Cox, Journey, 36-53; Dayton Daily News, December 10, 1900, 4; May 10, 1907, 1;

December 30, 1901, 4; the April 9, 1906 "Greater Dayton Edition" is an example of town

boosterism to promote circulation.

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284                                          OHIO HISTORY

outstanding stocks with personal notes. Rather than be a "kept editor," he turned the Dayton Daily News into a profitable business and used its news columns and editorial page as a personal voice. Initially Cox had taken the position that the editorial page bore no relationship to the news. The news should "be a reflection of what is happening in the world," he asserted in 1900. As he moved toward independence, however, the distinction became blurred. Eighteen months later he wrote: When the press takes an independent course, when it opposes wrong and attempts no longer to disguise facts for political effect, then will better conditions prevail generally and the press will occupy its proper place as a public benefactor, a blessing to the world, a protection to the people.   The News became increasingly independent. In another year and a half Cox and Dowling battled openly for control of the Montgomery County Democratic Party through rival delegations at the Ohio Democratic Convention. Cox supported Alton B. Parker in 1904, but in the following spring asserted that the Democrats had entered a "new era." "The issues of the twentieth century eclipse the great theories of years gone by-different questions demand different considerations. The one great principle of Democracy is that the people rule . . .," Cox announced to his readers. Nevertheless, in spite of this open-mindedness to progressive politics, Cox believed the problems of the day lay not in the system but in the people. The

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The New City and Journalism                                          285

 

role of the independent Dayton Daily News was to educate. Editorially the

paper commented:

We do not hope to reform things in a day. The evil is too deep-seated to be cured

by a newspaper article. But please God,just so long as we have the power to write we

shall call attention to the hypocrisy as we find it: just so long as it is a newspaper, the

Dayton Daily News will denounce the rich criminal in the same terms that it

denounces the poor criminal, and seek at all times to have people understand that

"The name is but the guinea's stamp: the man's a man for a 'that'."¹⁴

Determined to educate its readers, the News sought to define community

standards. "That which insures the most good to the community should

always be the beacon light of guidance to public officials," Cox

editorialized. Broadly conceived, his ideas went beyond the "good

government" cliches of the mugwumps to a plea for an adequate response

to changed conditions. Time and again the News appealed for more

efficient police and fire protection, better lighted streets, safe railroad

crossings, underground electric lines, a consolidated traction loop, better

garbage service, regulation of saloons and prostitution, schools free of

politics, flood controls, and abatement of industrial smoke. "There is the

need for the facilities of a city-not a town," Cox wrote after a large

downtown fire. If urban services did not improve, he warned, "Dayton

businessmen might go elsewhere." If public officials "efficiently let out

contracts," they could offer services at minimum costs to the taxpayer, he

reasoned. If "good citizens" organized, if they removed "incompetents," if

"more business methods" penetrated municipal institutions, good city

government would become a reality, Cox asserted.¹⁵

In the new city the need for diverse forms of recreation arose. To make

Dayton a first class city in this area, Cox pressed for parks, Sunday

baseball, a symphony orchestra, a concert hall, and water recreation

facilities. If the city lacked the funds for parks, the News editorially

suggested the creation of a park corporation with the city guaranteeing a

profit as an alternative. Private enterprise, it was felt, could probably carry

 

 

14. Drury, History of Dayton, 1,405; Cox, Journey, 38; Walt Whitman coined the phrase

"kept editor." See Park, et al., The City, 90; Dayton Daily News, November 17, 1900, 4;

September 4, 1901, 4; the quotation is from May 7, 1902, 4; the News of May 25, 1904, 1 and

Dayton Journal, May 27, 1904, 1 both reveal Cox's open conflict with Dowling. Dayton Daily

News, March 20, 1905, 4, is the source of the "new era" quotation. Cox announced the

independence of the News on February 7, 1906, 4; and the statement on society is found in the

News of February 13, 1907, 4.

15. In general these ideas are studded throughout the News from 1898 to 1909 when Cox

turned to politics. Specifically the Dayton Daily News, January 14, 1902, 4, contains the

"greatest good" quotation, and February 4 and 5, 1900,4 have the statements on the fire. The

other recommendations can be found in the following places: September 2, 1898, 4;

September 13, 1898, 4; October 17, 1898, 4; December 14, 1898, 1; March 3, 1898,4; April 8,

1899, 4; April 19, 1900, 1, 4; May 2, 1901, 4; August 15, 1901,4; January 15, 1902,4; July 5,

1902, 4; January 2, 1904, 1,4; March 28, 1905, 2; March 14, 1906, 2; February 16, 1907, 1,4;

March 1, 1907, 4.

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286                                                 OHIO HISTORY

 

out the program more efficiently. Recalling industrialist Paul Sorg's

building of the Sorg Theatre in Middletown, Cox urged "prominent

Daytonians" to build a concert hall and assured them it would yield ample

profits. 16

The publisher of the News viewed the growing suburbs of Dayton from

the point of view of a downtown businessman. He reasoned that the

suburbs, for all practical purposes, existed as part of the city since they

reaped the advantages of the "cosmopolitan life" of Dayton. These

suburbanites derived their livelihoods in Dayton, depended upon Dayton's

streetcar service, used the entertainment facilities of the city, and generally

garnered high property valuations because of their proximity to the

advantages the city provided. The News urged its suburban readers to

incorporate with Dayton. The suburbanites would gain by the extension of

Dayton's police and fire protection, as well as its schools. The city would

gain because annexation would "help lighten the [tax] burden" and make

"a bigger and better Dayton."17

The deterioration of residential areas bordering on the retail district also

concerned Cox. Seeing slums which fostered crime and disease as a

detriment to the community, the News editor believed that as long as

landlords continued to rent decaying tenements to the poor, the problem

would remain. If private investors razed the slums and built public housing,

Cox claimed, the physical and moral health of the entire community would

improve. According to Cox's optimistic view, these activities would

remove blight, provide jobs, and turn the slum dwellers into "good

citizens." Thus the community would elevate the poor to the level of the

middle class.18

Though the News was characterized as "the People's paper," it directed

its editorials at the middle class. In the Spring of 1907 the News listed eight

essential "Dayton needs" without which, Cox suggested, Dayton could not

become a great city. Each proposal stemmed from the recognition of a

changing city and the need for increased efficiency demanded by the new

industrial-technological order. To insure prosperity, the paper urged the

city to give a railroad right-of-way to the National Cash Register Company

in order to keep the firm in Dayton. For safety reasons, Cox proposed that

the City insist on overhead grade crossings. To fulfill the recreational needs

of home owners, Cox called for a park system in the residential areas that

ringed the business district. To accomodate pedestrians using the central

business district, a system of public comfort stations was recommended.

For health purposes, Cox advanced a call for an efficient sanitation

 

 

16. Dayton Daily News, May 22, 1900, 4; April 13, 1901, 4.

17. Dayton Daily News March 28, 1905, 2; May 29, 1907, 6.

18. Dayton Daily News, December 25, 1903, 4: January 2, 1904, 4.

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The New City and Journalism                                           287

 

department. To provide for public safety and the protection of property

interests, Cox pressed for improved flood-control measures. To satisfy the

needs of suburban readers, he appealed to the city to extend a number of

streets and advised the creation of a bridge across the Miami River at Fifth

Street to give Edgemont residents direct access to the downtown. As

industry expanded, Cox noted the need for a skilled labor force and

suggested the establishment of a manual training school. Finally, the list

urged community support of the newly created Dayton Chamber of

Commerce, an organization Cox had encouraged Dayton businessmen to

establish since 1898.19

Dayton doubled its population between 1890 and 1910. However, the

type of people coming into the city changed. In 1890 the foreign-born had

made up almost a fourth of the population, but by 1910 they constituted

only slightly more than one-tenth of the total. These figures suggest that the

greatest part of the growth came from the rural countryside and that

Dayton was only slightly influenced by the new foreign immigration.

Consequently, the News failed to appeal to southern and eastern

Europeans.²⁰ To the contrary, Cox and his readers witnessed the arrival of

unfamiliar groups with disdain. "The Anglo Saxon is the grandest race that

evolution has produced," remarked the News when confronted by the

arrival of eastern Europeans in Dayton. Viewing the new immigrants as

lazy and unskilled people who would have a negative impact upon the

employment scene once the economy slowed down, the News editorialized

that southern and eastern Europeans did not understand politics and thus

posed a threat to political stability. They could, Cox believed, prevent

honest government from becoming a reality. To resolve the dilemma, Cox

recommended immigration restriction on the national level and urged the

city to enact property and residence requirements for voting rights, as well

as the creation of immigrant schools where American culture could be

transmitted.²¹

 

 

19. Dayton Daily News, April 21, 1907, 4; October 6, 1898, 2. Christopher Tunnard, The

Modern American City (Princeton, N.J. 1968), 67-103, looking at the city from an

architectural vantage point and land usage, argues that the metropolis which emerged in the

twentieth century reflected the values and interest of the middle class.

20. Thirteenth Census, Ohio Supplement, 635. Almost half of the 13,847 foreign-born

population of Dayton in 1910 were German. Hungarians represented about 25 percent. The

Germans came in the mid-nineteenth century and the Hungarians were imported by Barney

and Smith early in the decade as contract laborers. For migration from rural areas to the cities

and the growth of metropolitan America, see Stephen Thernstrom, "Urbanization,

Migration, and Social Mobility in Late Nineteenth Century America," in Barton J. Bernstein,

ed., Towards a New Past (New York,1968), 158-175.

21. Dayton Daily News, April 4, 1906, 4; August 5, 1903, 2; August 11, 1903, 4; June 26,

1905,4. For a statement arguing that the newjournalism appealed to the new residents coming

into the cities, see Louis Filler, "Truth and Consequence: Some Notes on ChangingTimes and

the Muck-rakers," The Antioch Review, 28 (Spring, 1968), 27-41.

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288                                                          OHIO HISTORY

 

The black population of Dayton amounted to approximately 5,000 in

1910. Sociologist Frank Quillin, who had investigated race relations in

Ohio, later wrote that he "found nothing quite so radical" as the system of

segregation in Dayton. Many hotels, restaurants, saloons, and department

stores, he reported, were closed to black people. For most blacks housing

opportunities were restricted to the West Side section, while limitations on

economic mobility existed as labor unions excluded blacks "except in very

rare instances. . . ." Discrimination seemed to increase as the city grew,

Quillin noted.²²

The News reflected community standards in the area of black-white

relations. Accepting the harsh reality of economic and social segregation,

the News referred to Jim Crow restrictions as immoral but "necessary to

prevent a grave reign of terror" because Negroes without education could

not govern. When the Democrats in Dayton lost the election of 1898, Cox

suggested that the city government disenfranchise blacks who "sold their

votes." Generally the News disapproved of lynching, but after the riots of

1904 in nearby Springfield the paper suggested that racial violence could be

avoided by speedy trials and the elimination of appeals and new trials based

upon technical mistakes. "Good Christian people," the editor wrote, "are

fed up with abuses of law." To justify its position on the inferiority of

blacks, the News observed that the brains of Africans failed to develop

because the skull solidified earlier than other peoples as a natural defense

mechanism to prevent death via hard blows to the head!²³

Antagonistic in the area of race relations, Cox and the News promoted

harmony in labor relations. Cox disapproved of child labor and

strikebreakers and consistently favored laws to eliminate such abuses. The

News benevolently approved of labor's right to strike but believed that

neutral arbitration would eventually, in the best interest of the community,

eliminate strikes. In the area of capital-labor relations, welfare capitalism

 

 

22. Frank Quillin, The Color Line in Ohio: A History of Race Prejudice in a Typical

Northern State (Ann Arbor, 1913), 134-140. For additional accounts of labor union and

hiring discrimination, see the Cleveland Gazette during these years, but especially see the issue

of January 20, 1906, 2. On black residential patterns in Dayton, Quillin's observations have

been confirmed through the biweekly Dayton social notes column of the Cleveland Gazette.

The local journalist usually noted the addresses of black people or locations of events when

reporting social news. The streets listed generally were located in the West Side. The paucity of

black economic opportunities can be seen through the pride the Gazette's localjournalist took

in the black community's tiny middle class. See the following issues of the Gazette: March 14,

1902, 2; January 17, 1903, 1; January 24, 1903,1; March 7 1903,1; August 1, 1903, 1. See also

David Gerber, Black Ohio and the Color Line: 1860-1915 (Urbana, 1976), 290-291.

23. Dayton Daily News, November 16, 1898, 2; November 10, 1898, 4; May 30, 1899, 4;

June 24, 1899, 4; March 9, 1904, 4; January 9, 1907,2; February 28, 1906,4; March 2, 1906,4.

Referring to the Associated Press, the News prime source of news, the Dayton columnist of

the Cleveland Gazette charged that they are "always most industrious in their effort to cater to

southern prejudice." Cleveland Gazette, May 30, 1903, 1.

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The New City and Journalism                                           289

 

served as Cox's guide. On capital and labor, he wrote:

One is indispensible to the other. Every man who works hard should be paid enough

to live comfortably, send his children to school, genteely attired if he is frugal.

Capital should receive a fair return on its investment and be compensated for the

large element of risk attached to its operation. There is no reason why this condition

cannot be created and kept.²⁴

 

In accordance with these views, Cox arbitrated the People's Railway

Company strike in 1900. He later urged workers at the National Cash

Register Company to settle their differences with John Patterson without a

strike, as N.C.R. was viewed as "the most humane factory in the world" and

the loss of its payroll to the economy of Dayton would be "detrimental to

all." Recognizing the problems created by inflation, the News offered no

solution other than that labor should not act against the public interest. In

opposition to the alternative of socialism, Cox argued that welfare

capitalism and labor unions continually improved the lot of the worker. To

a local socialist he wrote that

We do not consider people with money our enemies. In our system if we tried for it,

we could become wealthy. People become rich because they covet wealth and

sacrifice other things for it-even honor, honesty and happiness.²⁵

 

The formula Cox used to build the Dayton Daily News-crusades,

promotions, more news, editorial independence, advertising innovations, a

professional staff-derived from Joseph Pulitzer. "Competition was keen

and we kept hustling," Cox recalled. The other Dayton papers "spruced

up" and added new equipment and features, but by the early 1900s the

News dominated Dayton journalism. The Mail Order Journal, a nationally

recognized trade magazine for advertisers, listed the Cox paper among the

best one hundred in the country. This endorsement insured the bulk of the

advertising done by outside firms in Dayton for the News. As readership

increased, advertising rates based upon circulation also rose. In the spring

of 1907, the three editions of the News claimed a circulation of more than

thirty thousand, 25 percent greater than the Herald, its afternoon

competition.²⁶

 

24. Dayton Daily News, October 14, 1898, 4; July 15, 1899, 4; July 31, 1900, 4.

25. Dayton Daily News, May 4, 1901, 4 contains the statement on N.C.R. For a detailed

account of this strike, see Daniel Nelson, "The New Factory System and the Unions: The

National Cash Register Company Dispute of 1901," Labor History 15 (Spring, 1974), 163-

178. Nelson's account does not use the Dayton Daily News. Several years after the strike the

News would charge that Patterson bribed A.F. of L. officials to help break the strike. See Cox,

Journey, 48; Dayton Daily News, July 11, 1902, 4, deals with the place of labor; Dayton Daily

News, September 5, 1902, 4; October 5, 1901, 4; Cox's reply to the socialist is found in the

News of March 14, 1906, 4.

26. Cox, Journey, 38, 52; Dayton Daily News, April 9, 1906, 4; December 3, 1900, 7;

December 20, 1900, 4; April 15, 1904, 4; April 3, 1907, 1. The News guaranteed circulation

• 13
 

290                                                          OHIO HISTORY

 

Circulation Figures: Major Afternoon Dayton Newspapers, 1901-1907

 

Evening Herald          Dayton Press                                    Daily News

 

 

1901                            7,688                                     8,704                             16,305

1905                            17,518                                   -                                    21,198

1907                            23,876                                   -30,347

 

 

 

Source: George P. Rowell, comp., Leading Newspapers (New York: G. P. Rowell & Co.,

1902). pp. 52-53; American Newspaper Directory (New York: Printers Ink Publishing Co.,

1908) p. 881.

 

Concurring with Pulitzer that the modern newspaper needed accuracy,

reliability, and "more and greater public service" to "win the confidence of

the people," Cox doubted that the press could become a vital force in the

community without this confidence. Once the readers accepted the paper's

credibility, then the press could achieve the ultimate objective of arousing

"public interest and emotion on matters concerning the public good." Cox

had come to believe that the newspaper, by informing the public on matters

of politics, economic and social situations, commercial and mercantile

activities, attitudes, entertainment, and whatever else it dealt with, could

unite the metropolitan community. As fewer newspapers dominated

metropolitan zones, the dream approached reality.²⁷ Business incentive

prompted new journalistic techniques. Technology kept pace. Both in turn

led to fewer regional newspaper voices. The process helped to define the

predominant values of the city and extended the area served by the

institutions of the metropolis.²⁸

 

 

 

 

 

 

equal to that of the combined total of its two closest rivals. See the American Newspaper

Directory (New York, 1908), 881.

27. Mott, American Journalism, 436; Dayton Daily News, January 2, 1901,4; September

24, 1898, 4; May 2, 1899, 4; September 28, 1901,4; McKelvey, Metropolitan America, 72-73

For Cox's conception of the unity of the community, see Journey, 46-49.

28. Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform (New York, 1955), 186-197: Herbert Shapiro,

ed., The Muckrakers and American Society (Boston, 1968), v; Dayton Daily News, June 24,

1899, 4; January 14, 1902, 4; Cox, Journey, 49. For an early sociological statement on the

relationship between newspapers and metropolitanization, see Roderick D. McKenzie, "The

Rise of Metropolitan Communities," in Recent Social Trends: Report of the President's

Research Committee on Social Trends, I (New York, 1933), 443- 496. Fora more generalized

statement on the relationship between the "technological explosion" and the extension of the

city and "its complex organs and organizations over the entire landscape, see Lewis Mumford,

The City in History (New York, 1961), 34 et passim.

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