Iowa
Old Press
Lyons Mirror
Lyons, Clinton County, Iowa
October 15, 1857
Banking House Closes
The Bellevue Republican of Sept. 20th, say that the
banking house of Jonas Clark, at Maquoketa, has closed its doors,
and it is thought depositors will sustain much loss.
[transcribed by K.W., August 2009]
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City Advocate
Lyons, Clinton County, Iowa
October 24, 1857
Bellevue Republican Suspends Publication
Concluded to Quit
The publisher and editor of the Bellevue Republican has
concluded to suspend the publication of a paper in that embryo
city, and winds the concern up with the following good advice to
its citizens:
“If the citizens of the place wish one to be firmly
established, they need the services of competent and active
printers to superintend its publication. Mere political
demagogues or business men with tastes remote from the heart of
the people, can never do the work. A more hearty support should
also be tendered the institution. Residents of the country should
oftener remember their indebtedness, and not expect some dozen
help-cats to live and thrive without the staple commodity-Cash!
Pardon our sermon and please remember its advice.”
These are facts that apply everywhere in the West as well as in
Bellevue. There is always an anxiety to have a newspaper in a
town as soon as a blacksmith shop, a tavern and a store are put
in operation, and very frequently promises are made to induce
their establishment, which are little heeded after the paper gets
going, and at the end of a year its publisher finds himself
involved in a debt which he cannot pay, with a meager list of
subscribers, and all the fair promises leaving him to his own
destruction. We believe that many publishers in the state of Iowa
will find themselves in that situation, ere a twelve months
passes over, and that very many of the papers started in this
state within the last two years will cease to exist. It may be
said that printers should know better than to be caught in such
snares and so they should, but they do not and hence the fact
that so many more newspapers are started than continue to be
published past the first year. But people will learn only by
experience, and not by example, else many a dollar would have
been saved that has been, and will again be sunk in attempting to
publish newspapers where it is impossible to make them pay.
[transcribed by K.W., July 2009]