Taking Sides in the "Bloodless Croton War":The Coverage of the Croton Aqueduct Strike and Labor's Relationship with the Penny Press Mark Bernhardt In April 1840, Irish laborers working on New York City's Croton Aqueduct went on strike, demanding higher wages and freedom from the requirement they shop at company stores. Initially, these unskilled workers received support from James Gordon Bennett, publisher of the New York Herald, and Moses Yale Beach, publisher of the New York Sun. Both Bennett and Beach blasted the contractors for paying unethically low wages and exploiting their workers by forcing them to buy basic necessities at exorbitant prices. However, as time passed, the two editors became more supportive of the contractors and increasingly critical of the strikers. They published the contractors' rebuttals to the workers' charges and characterized the strikers as violent hooligans preventing others from earning a living. The coverage of the Croton Aqueduct strike in the Herald and Sun reveals the unsteady relationship these papers had with laborers at a volatile time in the city's history in a particularly insightful way because of the strike's complexity, not just pitting employees against employers, but also dividing unskilled workers from skilled, strikebreakers from strikers, and Irish immigrants from the general population. In 1833, Benjamin Day founded the Sun (selling the paper to Beach in 1838). He and several imitators, including Bennett, developed a new business model and style of journalism to take advantage of social and economic changes in the city, exploiting untapped markets and revenue sources. Rather than sell papers that targeted upper-class readers by annual subscription and accept funding from a political party for supporting its platform, they sold papers designed for the city's rapidly expanding working- and middle-class populations for a penny-per-issue on the street and [End Page 9] generated the bulk of their revenue by selling advertising space.1 This approach gave the Penny Press, so named because of how the papers were sold, a more diverse audience and greater political independence compared to other papers. The Penny Press' furnishing of papers for the masses had important ramifications for New York's labor movement. An economic depression crippled the labor press after 1837, which had advocated for the interests and unity of the working class, and a short time later the Penny Press became the primary newspapers supporting labor.2 However, the Penny Press was never fully committed to backing strikes. Their business model required publishers to balance the disparate labor interests of readers, often divided along lines of profession and ethnicity, and the business community, which opposed strikes, to succeed financially. While their independence from political parties and upper-class subscribers gave them the freedom to stand for anyone they chose, in opting to take one side they inevitably risked alienating the other. Seeking a middle ground, Bennett and Beach adopted specific stances on labor issues that offered both employers and workers some support. First, they endorsed the right to organize and strike, although Bennett opposed certain unions he perceived as too radical and both believed the strike should be used as a last resort. Second, they backed the right to work and opposed attempts, especially the use of intimidation or violence, to stop people from crossing picket lines. Third, they sided with property owners and opposed threats to or the destruction of private property as a method of labor activism. Consequently, as the coverage of the Croton Aqueduct strike reveals, the labor press collapse left striking workers, particularly the unskilled, with a less committed ally and no other press support. With more sides involved than in most strikes, the Croton Aqueduct strike coverage provides a detailed view of whose interests Bennett and Beach [End Page 10] favored and the type of support different categories of workers could anticipate from their papers. By supporting both workers and employers to varying degrees at different times they managed not to alienate either, but ultimately favored employers by criticizing the workers with the weakest bargaining position for using their most valuable bargaining chips. The Penny Press and its Audience The Herald's and Sun's wavering commitment to the Croton...