“The Wellington Enterprise,” 12-21-1898, pg. 1. Original object held in the collections of the Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio. Photo by author.
On this day devoted to outdoor celebrations in sunshine and heat, I decided to celebrate something a bit different. I’ve written at some length about the history of The Wellington Enterprise over the course of the nineteenth century. (Posts can be found here, here and here.) A few months ago, when I made a research visit to the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland, one of my purposes was to look at a specific issue of that newspaper dated December 21, 1898. I believe it is the first issue of the Enterprise ever to use color printing.
The December 14th edition announced the special publication: “Our Christmas Number. Next week’s number of the The Enterprise will be the Christmas, and will be issued next Monday. It will consist of eight pages, including a specially designed cover, printed in colors. This as well as the inside pages will be of good quality of book paper, all stitched together on our wire stitcher, and will be by far the handsomest holiday paper ever put out in the city. It will not be a conglomerated mass of advertising daubed on paper, but a neat, distinctive, attractive portrayal of great bargains. Such work as this office takes pride in producing…” (pg. 4).
The owners of the paper at that time, brothers operating under the name French Printing Company, had only run the business since 1897 but had very soon gone into financial receivership. They tried a number of schemes to increase circulation, including reducing the paper from eight pages to four but printing it twice per week. This experimentation with color seems to be have been another such attempt to increase advertising dollars and make the company solvent. The plan failed and the newspaper was sold to a small stock company formed expressly to save it, just after the turn of the century.
Enjoy the sunshine and warmth of this Independence Day, dear readers. Do not give a thought to the cold and snows that will be here before we know it.
“The Wellington Enterprise,” 12-21-1898, pg. 7. Original object held in the collections of the Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio. Photo by author.
19th-Century Wellington 