Some years ago, the library committee, then headed by Sidney T. Miller, arranged for the purchase and establishment of a law library, approximately $32,000 being expended in this way, the money being raised through the sale of bonds to lawyers with the Detroit Trust company acting as trustee under the mortgage.

A branch of the association work is the legal aid bureau which handles cases for poor and deserving people who are unable to pay attorney fees. Special attention is given to cases involving the guardianship of orphans, although landlord and tenant cases, collection of accounts, and other sorts of cases are also handled by the bureau. The bureau, with the aid of special committees, rendered great service to the families of soldiers in need of legal counsel. Perhaps nothing more flattering of the work of the bureau can be said than that it has been copied by bar associations in several other large cities of the United States.

A Women Lawyers' association was organized in August, 1919, with five members, but the number of members has grown substantially since the inception of the association and with the increasing activity of women in the field of law.

Detroit College of Law. Thirty-five years ago, a number of young men studying in the law offices of the city decided to band together and hire an instructor to give them the theory of law and the general principles of the law which they felt they were not receiving in the practical training acquired in the offices of the practicing attorneys. Accordingly they cast about for a suitable instructor and were fortunate in securing Floyd R. Mechem, a well known writer of text books.

On December 20, 1891, therefore, the Detroit College of Law opened its doors with Mechem as dean and Justice Charles D. Long of the supreme court as president. The course of study as first laid out consisted of two years' work with recitations being held three evenings of each week. In 1897 the course was lengthened to three years with the requirement of five nights per week attendance. Day school was established in 1910 but the two courses are identical. The classes first met in the building of the Detroit College of Medicine, but in the fall of 1915 its activities were transferred to the building of the Detroit Y. M. C. A.

From 1891 to 1915, the college was a privately owned institution controlled by William H. Weatherbee and Malcolm McGregor, two prominent Detroit attorneys. In the latter year, however, the control of the college passed into the hands of the Detroit Y. M. C. A., which set aside an entire floor for the conduct of the law school.

Among the instructors in the institution have been numbered some of the most prominent lawyers in Detroit, among them being Charles D. Long, William L. Carpenter, Flavius L. Brooke, all of the Michigan Supreme Court; Alexis C. Angell and Arthur J. Tuttle, of the United States District Court; Judges Fred H. Aldrich, George S. Hosmer, Alfred J. Murphy, Cornelius J. Reilly, and Philip T. Van Zile.

The first class was graduated in 1893 and included twenty-two members, who were: C. C. Smith, W. C. Robinson, L. McSweeney, J. M. Lynch, M. McGregor, H. B. Bloomer, W. C. Stuart, F. C. Ellsworth, J. E. Maloney, J. P. Glendon, G. E. Tegart, O. Guiness, F. T. McArthur, C. S. Lorenger, J. A. Naylor, T. W. Parker, C. A. Howell, A. C. O'Connor, A. J. Murphy, V. Whittmore, W. H. Weatherbee.

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CHAPTER XII

THE PRESS

ERHAPS the first newspapers to come to the hands of residents of Detroit were those early periodicals published in Canada, the Halifax Gazette that first appeared in March, 1752 and the Quebec Gazette that began publication about the time of the close of the French and Indian war. Occasional issues of these papers might have found their way to Detroit in the infrequent mails that formed the line of communication between the western post and Canada. The Pittsburg Commonwealth that was issued in that Pennsylvania city between 1805 and 1809 devoted considerable space to events at Detroit and to the encouragement of immigration to this part of the Northwest Territory, and that the newspaper evinced such an interest in Detroit affairs is the basis for the belief that there might have been some subscribers to the Commonwealth in this city.

News was first disseminated in Detroit after the old French custom of reading important events to the people after the conclusion of the Sunday mass. Illiteracy was so prevalent in those times and the means to print a paper were so noticeably lacking that the methods adopted by the church was as efficient as could be expected. Since the population was at first almost entirely Catholic, everyone in the village and for miles around learned the happenings of the week after they had attended the weekly mass on Sunday at Ste. Anne's church. Later in the Eighteenth Century, the city retained a town crier whose duty it was to announce to the people of the community important events that transpired. Detroit's virtual isolation in the early days, the infrequency and irregularity of its mails, made the news often incorrect when it was finally announced to the people, and it was certainly old to the rest of the world by the time the Detroiters heard of the events. A sort of news service was also maintained for those who could afford it, the news being written on pieces of paper and left at the doors of the subscribers.

It is not to be wondered at, then, that the arrival of a printing press and several fonts of type in 1809 as the purchase of Father Gabriel Richard was attended with no small amount of interest and an equally large demand for the services of the printing plant. Father Richard had made the purchase of the press in Baltimore and had it brought to Detroit, where the printing of tax receipts and blanks of various kinds was sorely needed. Whether the priest operated the press very long himself is not known, but it is believed that he disposed of the press and equipment to one James N. Miller, a native of New York state who later returned to Ithaca where he died in 1838.

The first work to come from the little press was a twelve-page spelling book entitled "The Child's Spelling Book, or Michigan Instructor." The small edition of this book was run off and placed on

the market on August 1, 1809. The establishment of the press in Detroit was the signal for the publication of the village's first newspaper, and on the last day of August appeared the Michigan Essay, or Impartial Observer. Since but one edition of this paper has ever been found, it is not known whether or not the little periodical ever appeared more than once or enjoyed a relatively successful existence. The press continued to turn out a small but useful stream of books of various kinds, all of which were in French and were of a religious.

nature.

The Michigan Essay, published by James N. Miller, was a fourpage, four-column, sheet 16 by 94 inches in page size. Subscription rates were quoted as being five dollars per year for Detroit residents, four and a half dollars a year in Canada and Michigan, and four dollars a year for more distant subscribers. Advertising rates were fifty cents for the first insertion and twenty-five cents for every insertion thereafter for a specified amount of space. The reading matter of the only issue ever discovered included extracts from American, English and Dutch newspapers, and only one and a half columns of the paper were printed in the French language. No local news of even the slightest character is carried in the paper. Ste. Anne's school was the only advertiser in this, the first issue of the Essay.

The first successful paper to appear in Detroit was the Detroit Gazette. It came into being in 1817 as the result of a suggestion of Lewis Cass, John P. Sheldon and Ebenezer Reed forming the firm of Sheldon & Reed for the publication of the Gazette, issuing the first number on July 25, 1817. Supporting the principles of the Democratic party, the Gazette was a four-column sheet printed with very poor type on sheets 161⁄2 by 91⁄2 inches in size, the back page being devoted to the reprinting of important articles in French. The first printing office of the newspaper was "on Attwater street, a few rods above the public wharf," which was the old Conrad Seek House near Wayne street. That the people of the city and surrounding country wanted a newspaper is unquestionable, but that they were unwilling to pay their subscription rates is equally irrefutable, because in 1820, and again in 1829, statements in the paper complained of the fact that the Michigan subscribers "paid or did not pay as it suited their fancy," while subscribers out of the state invariably paid cash in advance for their subscriptions to the Gazette. To secure some of the overdue subscription money, the subscription rate of the paper in Detroit was reduced to three dollars from four dollars. Though the paper was leased in July, 1828, to H. L. Ball, Sheldon continued as the editor, and it was not long after this that the fearless Sheldon became embroiled in his trouble with the Supreme Court that resulted in his incarceration in the county jail for contempt of court and his elevation in the minds of Detroiters almost to the rank of hero for his stand.

It so happened that when one John Reed was tried before the Wayne County Circuit court, Sheldon challenged a juror who was dismissed from the jury because of the impeachment of Sheldon. Although Reed was convicted, the Supreme Court in January, 1829, granted Reed a new trial on the technicality resulting from Sheldon's

challenge of the juror. The fiery editor of the Gazette attacked the members of the supreme bench through the columns of his paper in such a manner as to bring about his arrest and imposition of a $100 fine for contempt of court. Sheldon refused the offer of two men to pay his fine and was taken to the Wayne county jail. On the same day that Sheldon was remanded to the custody of the sheriff, a public meeting was held, at which was appointed a committee to raise money to pay Sheldon's fine, no person to give more than 122 cents. On March 7, two days after Sheldon's imprisonment, about 300 citizens of the city met at the jail where the fearless editor was feted and dined by his admiring townspeople. His sentence of nine days concluded, Sheldon was taken in triumph to the Mansion House and from there, after luncheon, to his home in Oakland county. He resigned the editorship of the Gazette on April 23 and was succeeded by Ebenezer Reed, his former partner. The last issue of the Gazette appeared the day before the resignation of Sheldon, and four days later, the plant burned down, Ulysses G. Smith, a printer, being convicted of arson in connection with the fire. Promises of resuming publication were never kept, and Detroit's first substantial newspaper closed its career with the disastrous fire of April 26.

The journalistic history of Detroit shows a long list of defunct newspapers, many of which lived for several years and some of which lasted but a few months. That many newspapers were started and then suspended is due to various reasons. In the first place, papers were frequently issued to support the candidacy of a politician for some office, and his failure to win the election automatically resulted in the suspension of publication by his paper. Political parties, the minority in the community, often influenced a newspaper man to start a paper as an organ of their party, but lacking the necessary support and the party patronage secured through the one in office, the paper went to the wall after a short struggle for existence. In the early days, it was the exception rather than the rule for a newspaper to be free from financial trouble. Political lines were so sharply drawn in those days that merchants of one party would refuse to advertise in a paper supporting the opposite party; the paper supporting the party not in power failed to get any of the public printing, the revenue from which formed, no inconsiderable part of the paper's income at that time. For these reasons, then, and for others of less importance, the history of Detroit, and every other community for that matter, reveals a large journalistic graveyard.

On May 10, 1825, appeared the first issue of the Michigan Herald, a weekly published by Joseph Seymour and Henry Chipman that put out its last edition on April 30, 1829.

The Detroit Debating Society sponsored the monthly publication named the Herald of Literature and Science, which first appeared on May 14, 1831, but was discontinued after four or five numbers had been run off the press.

Published by two Bostonians, B. Kingsbury and G. P. Burnham, and printed by G. L. Whitney, the Detroit Evening Spectator and Literary Gazette first appeared on October 20, 1836, and was discontinued