within the limits of this Meeting, and pay the same to William Bradford and bring an account hereof to the next Monthly Meeting.

One of the English Governors before Fletcher had desired a printer, but could obtain none. It was in 1668, four years after the capitulation, that Sir Francis Lovelace sent to Boston for that purpose. In a letter written by him then he said:

"I am not out of hopes, ere long, to have a printer here of my own, having already sent to Boston for one; but whether I shall speed or no is uncertain."

At that time there was no printing press on this side of the water except in Cambridge. Boston had not yet attained to the dignity of one, and Philadelphia was a wilderness. When James the Second became king, the half liberal policy he had observed while Duke of York was changed, and he forbade the introduction of printing into his colonies. His instructions the next year to Governor Dongan were very strict. He said:

"Forasmuch as great inconvenience may arise by the liberty of printing within our Province of New York, you are to provide, by all necessary orders, that no person keep any press for printing; nor that any book, pamphlet, or other matters whatsoever be printed-without your especial leave and license first obtained."

From this rule there had been no deviation. There were but few printers in England, and a long apprenticeship must be passed before journeyman's wages could be earned. There their wages were high, in comparison with those that the ploughman, the hod carrier, the shoemaker received, and the workmen could live in comparative luxury. Why should they move? Coming to America toil must be encountered without proper tools to work with, for each master was but little richer than his man. The emigrant in coming here cut himself off from his relatives and his friends, and he believed also, unless extraordinarily well informed, that he would be murdered by Indians, who prowled through every settlement and village. Such were the stories current in England.

Col. Fletcher landed in New York on the 30th of August, 1692. During the Winter his affairs in this colony kept him busy, as he was obliged to go to Albany to repel the attacks of the Indians, and as there was much other business to attend to.

Leisler's insurrection and his execution had embittered his adherents, and the party he belonged to and the anti-Leislerians were almost in a state of war. Fletcher therefore found no time to go to Pennsylvania, where he was also Governor, William Penn having been arbitrarily deprived of his authority there, until the Spring. His arrival on the Delaware was on the 26th of April, 1693, the Council being immediately called together. Among the matters discussed the next day was the seizure of Bradford's utensils. Fletcher took the printer's side, and it was ordered, on his suggestion, that his tools should be given him at once, which was accordingly done.

It is probable that Bradford had already set his press in motion in this city, not waiting for the decision of the Philadelphians. On the 23d of March, 1693, it was resolved in the Council that "if a Printer will come and settle in the City of New York for the printing of our Acts of Assembly and Publick Papers he shall be allowed the sum of £40 current money of New-York per annum for his salary, and have the benefit of his printing, besides what serves the publick." The offer was accepted by Bradford, the researches of George H. Moore showing that his salary began, probably concurrently with his labor, on the 10th of April, as a warrant was drawn on the 12th of October for six months, "due on the 10th preceding."

The tenth of April, 1693, may, therefore, be assumed as the date of the beginning of printing in New York. By Bradford's action Philadelphia was deprived of a press, none being again set up there for several years. Cambridge had been provided with one since 1639, and Boston since 1675. Connecticut did not rise to this dignity till 1709, nor Maryland till 1726. Virginia had a printer as early as 1682, but what his name was is not known. He was soon stopped, and in 1683 Lord Effingham, in his instructions, was ordered "to allow no person to use a printing press on any occasion whatever." No other printer appeared in that province until 1729, when William Parks began his labors in Williamsburg.

Bradford could not have foreseen, nor could any one of that time, the prodigious extension of the art he followed that would take place in the two centuries which should next elapse, of which

we are at the limit, and we perhaps are just as unable to see the progress that will be made in the next century. The amount of work that could then be done in New York was very small. It was limited by the difficulty of getting printers' supplies, by the impossibility of circulation of printed matter at any great distance from the place of publication, by its comparative costliness, and by having no custom of using this way of publicity. There were no roads; pamphlets and newspapers could be sent easily only by water. Even in this century a sloop was sometimes eight days in going from New York to Albany. There were no practiced writers, nor had the public become accustomed to reading what one might say. There was no little jobwork with which the printer could fill in his odd time, and the paper and ink he bought were very dear. Up to 1832 a newspaper in this city was entirely too costly for a poor man to buy. Bradford could not have foreseen that in 1889 more than a thousand paper mills would be in operation in America, making their product chiefly from the trees that were then an impediment to civilization; that thirty type foundries and as many ink factories would be required to furnish the printers with type and ink; that the printers would number a hundred thousand; that single offices would do more printing in a year than the whole of Great Britain did when he first trod these streets, and that Philadelphia and New York, towns in which Indians were at all times to be seen, the streets still unpaved and unlighted, their denizens dependent for their food upon the farmers who lived within a day's journey, and the places surrounded by solitudes so dense that bears, wolves, and foxes could be killed a couple of miles from the centre of population, and mocking birds could be heard in the streets, would within three lives after his be much greater than Paris or London then were and draw for their ordinary food supplies upon the whole world. Here is the place where the printing press, now a massive machine, built of iron, steel, and brass, and weighing many tons, instead of a tottering thing of wood, is at its greatest activity in the New World, only equaled by one city and only surpassed by one other city in the Old World.

It was thirty-two years before Bradford had a competitor;

another third of a century was required to bring up the number to four or five; and the round century showed less than a score of employers and a hundred journeymen. Since that time, however, the workmen have doubled every dozen years, and almost every year have begun new trades, branches of the old ones, separating still further one handicraft from the other.

We are not informed where the first printing press was housed. It was undoubtedly in some dwelling, the lower part, the most accessible, being occupied as a pressroom and composing room. No special strength for the floors was required, for the press was chiefly wood and the type would weigh but a few hundred pounds. Such a building could probably be easily secured in the neighborhood desired, near the Old Produce Exchange, the site of which is now occupied by the United States Military building. There he was convenient to the Governor, and to the officers of the fort; the merchants met at the lower end of Broad street, and vessels landed at Whitehall and Coenties slips. The dwelling undoubtedly had a bit of a garden with it. Fifty years later Kalm, the Swedish naturalist, describes the appearance of the town, with its gardens and trees. More cannot be told of the circumstances which surrounded him, for the records are lacking. He appears never to have owned any landed property, nor were any leases recorded in his name.

We have no absolute knowledge as to the work which was first printed by him in this city. Hildeburn enumerates thirteen pieces which were executed in 1693 in this city. It has generally been supposed that the first of these were two proclamations issued under date of June 8th giving permission to Warner Wessels and Antie Christians to collect money for the redemption of some captives in the Barbary States. The proclamations exist in both English and Dutch, in the latter form being discovered by John Romeyn Brodhead in the archives of the Dutch Reformed Church of this city, and afterwards by him also among the state papers at Albany in English. The other pieces, except two later proclamations, are not dated. Recently, however, Dr. George H. Moore, whose authority is very high on early New York typography, has entered into an examination of this question, and is inclined to think that a "Journal of the Late Actions of the French

at Canada "* is first. The publication of this little book was undoubtedly the reason why Fletcher brought Bradford to this city, and I therefore think it very probable that he was put upon it as soon as his office was established and the copy was ready. The book was licensed in London, September 11, 1693, and was advertised five days later. An average passage from New York to London at that time was from seven to nine weeks, and it may, therefore, have finished printing as early as the middle of July. From its size it would probably have taken Bradford, if he were alone, about two weeks to do, or if he had an assistant eight or nine days. This would bring its beginning to the first of July. But he had been at that date three months in New York, if his duties began with his salary, and two months, if he had departed from Philadelphia as soon as his tools were delivered to him. is, therefore, probable that some of the smaller pieces preceded this, for even if he began upon the narrative of Col. Fletcher's exploits at the beginning of his labors in Manhattan it would have been set aside for a temporary matter, which could have been finished in a day. It is true that the pamphlet might have been completed at a very early period, and could not be dispatched to London for want of a ship thither bound. It was a very frequent thing for American ports to be without means of sending news abroad.

It

The book, thus reprinted in London, does not exist in its American original. Lord Bellomont, Fletcher's successor, characterizes it as a fiction. In a letter to the Lords of Trade on the 12th of November, 1698, he says that "the printed accounts of his great

*A | Journal of the | Late Actions | of the | French at Canada. | With | The Manner of their being, Repuls'd, by | His Excellency, Benjamin Fletcher, Their | Majesties Governour of New-York. | Impartially Related by Coll. Nicholas Reyard, and Lieu- | tenant Coll. Charles Lodowick, who attended His Excellency, during the whole Expedition. | To which is added, | I. An Account of the present State and Strength of Canada, | given by Two Dutch Men, who have been a long Time Pri- | soners there and now made their Escape. | II. The Examination of a French Prisoner. | III. His Excellency Benjamin Fletcher's Speech to the Indians. | IV. An Address from the Corporation of Albany, to His Excellency, Returning Thanks for His Excellency's early Assistance for their Relief. | Licensed. Sept. 11th, 1693, Edward Cooke. | London, Printed for Richard Baldwin, in Warwick-Lane, 1693. | Quarto. Title and preface two leaves. Text, 22 pages.