Don't Take The Papers

Who doesn’t take the papers these times?  We did suppose that every man who could read took the papers now, but such it seems is not the fact.  Of course they all do in Davenport, if they don’t take their own they take somebody else’s; as it is a fact; they all read them.  But up at Maquoketa, we learn from the Sentinel, there are actually men in business who don’t take their own county paper.  Of course they are punished for it, such conduct toward publishers of newspapers is like curses, it “comes home to roost.”  And thus it happened to them: one chap sold out his cotton goods rapidly, and when he came to buy he had to pay an advance of five cents on his old retail price.  Another covey emptied his tea boxes at 50 cents per pound and ordered a fresh supply, for which he had to pay 75 cents for precisely the same article.  Verdict of the people, served ‘em right!

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Tuesday Morning, March 4, 1862, p. 1