What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago this week?

“The great and daily Increase in the Number of Customers to this Paper.”

John Holt’s address to readers of the New-York Journal in the July 14, 1774, edition did not include an element that many likely expected to encounter.  It did not request that subscribers and others who owed money for goods and services provided by Holt’s printing office send payment or else face legal action.  Colonial printers frequently ran such notices, what Isaiah Thomas, printer of the Massachusetts Spy, termed a “‘dunning’ advertisement” a month earlier.  Instead, Holt expressed appreciation to his customers and expounded on the satisfaction he derived from serving the public by disseminating the news.

He also took the opportunity to promote the New-York Journal to readers who were not yet subscribers, commencing his notice by noting a “great and daily Increase in the Number of Customers to this Paper.”  Drawing attention to an increase in circulation also signaled to prospective advertisers that placing notices in the New-York Journal would be a good investment, especially since Holt’s newspaper competed with the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury and Rivington’s New -York Gazetteer.  Yet he framed the recent increase in subscribers as approval of “the Sentiments and Measures he has from Inclination and a Sense of Duty endeavoured to inculcate and promote for the public Good.”  For instance, the front page of that edition featured two items reprinted from the South-Carolina Gazette that Holt “republished both on account of the excellent sentiments they express, which are equally applicable to all the British Colonies, and to show that our brethren in South Carolina concur with the other Colonies in resenting and opposing the tyrannical acts of the British Parliament.”  The first of those editorials encouraged colonizers to “UNITE,” echoing the sentiments expressed in the “UNITE OR DIE” image that recently replaced the British coat of arms in the masthead.

Holt allowed that more customers meant “private Advantage to himself,” alluding to more revenue in his printing office, but emphasized that his editorial decisions “have been generally acceptable to all Ranks of People.”  He considered this a “double Pleasure,” while leaving no doubt that he regarded serving the public more important than earning his livelihood.  The printer asserted that “he shall ever receive more Pleasure from those Advantages he may receive in common with the Society of which he is a Member than in those peculiar to himself.”  Positioned first among the advertisements in that issue of the New-York Journal, Holt’s notice did not explicitly make demands of readers, neither to settle accounts nor to become subscribers.  Instead, the printer cultivated support for his newspapers in a more subtle manner, explaining that “the public Good” motivated his editorial perspective and gently suggesting to readers that they become patrons of a newspaper that was already increasing in circulation because “all Ranks of People” appreciated his approach to delivering news and editorials.