What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?
“The extraordinary Advance in the Price of Paper … has obliged them to raise the Price.”
In the fall of 1776, William Hall, David Hall, and William Sellers announced that they would raise the price of their newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, starting on January 1, 1777. William Bradford and Thomas Bradford made the same decision about the Pennsylvania Journal. So did John James Humphreys, Jr., for the Pennsylvania Ledger and John Dunlap for Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet. Although they competed for subscribers and advertisers, the printers of those newspapers collaborated in setting a new price and informing current and prospective subscribers. They placed a joint notice, dated October 29, that appeared in each newspaper.
It first ran in the Pennsylvania Gazette and the Pennsylvania Journal on October 30. The Halls and Sellers made it the first item in the first column on the first page of the Pennsylvania Gazette to increase the chances that readers saw it. The Bradfords did the same in the Pennsylvania Journal. Humphreys followed their lead in the Pennsylvania Ledger on November 2. When Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet came out on November 5, it also featured the joint advertisement in the same spot on the first page.
By announcing this change together, the “Publishers of the several weekly NEWS-PAPERS in this City” showed solidarity in the face of “the extraordinary Advance in the Price of Paper, and other Materials in the Printing Business” that “obliged them to raise the Price to FIFTEEN SHILLINGS per Annum.” Printers throughout the new nation reported similar challenges during the Revolutionary War. The printers in Philadelphia “hope[d] that their Customers will not take it amiss to find that Price charged from and after the First Day of January next,” yet they recognized that some subscribers would likely wish to withdraw. For those “who should not incline to have the Papers sent after that Time,” the printers requested that they visit the appropriate office to settle accounts. Otherwise, it was an opt out system rather than an opt in system. If subscribers did not opt out, then the printers “shall conclude they agree to the advanced Price” and would continue to deliver newspapers for the higher subscription fee. In placing a joint advertisement, the printers may have intended to reduce anger or frustration directed from their own subscribers directed at their newspaper by making it clear that the printers of several weekly newspapers found the price increase necessary and none set a higher price than any of the others.
This agreement among the “Publishers of the several weekly NEWS-PAPERS in this City” did not include Henrich Miller and Henrich Millers Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote, a German newspaper, nor Benjamin Towne’s Pennsylvania Evening Post that came out three times a week on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.