History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

326
EDUCATION AND MANUFACTURES.
On the 15th of June, 1850, was published at Salt
Lake City, under the editorship of Willard Richards,
the first number of the Deseret News, a weekly paper,
and the church organ of the saints. 14 In this number,
a copy of which I have before me, is a report of
the conflagration which occurred in San Francisco on
Christmas eve of 1849, and of Zachary Taylor's message
to the house of representatives relating to the
admission of California as a state.
ber of the Frontier Guardian and Iowa Sentinel, the paper having then passed
into the hands of Jacob Dawson & Co.
"Until Aug. 19, 1851, it was issued as an eight-page quarto, the pages
being about 8J by 6^ in., and without column rules. After that date it was
' suspended for want of paper until Nov. 19th. We got short of type, and
we melted down and
I happened to have some stereotyped plates, . . .which
used for type. We were short, too, of paper, and all went to work to make it.
We collected all the rags we could and made the pulp, sifted it through a sieve,
and pressed it as well as we could.' Taylor's Rem., MS., 17. The terms were
$5 per year, payable half-yearly in advance, single copies being sold for fifteen
cents. There seems to have been some difficulty in collecting subscriptions,
for in the issue of November 15, 1851, the editor states that payment will be
due at the office on receipt of the first number, ' and no one need expect the
second number until these terms are complied with, as credit will not create
the paper, ink, press, or hands to labor.' In his prospectus, Richards said
that the Deseret News is designed ' to record the passing events of our state,
and in connection refer to the arts and sciences, embracing general education,
medicine, law, divinity, domestic and political economy, and everything that
may fall under our observation which may tend to promote the best interest,
welfare, pleasure, and amusement of our fellow-citizens. . .We shall ever take
pleasure in communicating foreign news as we have opportunity; in receiving
communications from our friends at home and abroad; and solicit ornaments
for the News from our poets and poetesses. ' In the first issue is the following,
perhaps by Beta, who afterward wrote a number of papers styled the Chronicles
of Utah in the Salt Lake City Contributor:
To my Friends in the Valley.
Let all who would have a good paper,
Their talents and time ne'er abuse;
Since 'tis said by the wiso and the humored,
That the best in the world is the News.
Then ye who so long have been thinking
What paper this year you will choose,
Come trip gayly up to the office
And subscribe for the Deseret News.
And now, dearest friends, I will leave you;
This counsel, I pray you, don't lose;
The best of advice I can give you
Is, pay in advance for the News.
Fortunately for the prospects and reputation of the paper, such effusions were
rare even in its early pages. The Deseret News was at first less ably edited,
and inferior, as to type and paper, to the Frontier Guardian. It appears,
indeed, to have lacked support, for in the first number are only two advertisements,
one from a blacksmith and the other from a surgeon-dentist, who
also professes to cure the scurvy. In Nov. 1S51 it appeared in folio and in
greatly improved form; for years it was the only paper, and is still the leading
Mormon journal, in the territory.