American News Company
| Distributor, Wholesaler | |
| Industry | Newspapers, Books, Comics, Magazines |
| Founded | 1864 |
| Founder | Sinclair Tousey |
| Defunct | 1957 |
| Headquarters | New Jersey, New York City |
|
Key people
|
Henry Garfinkle, Myron Garfinkle |
| Divisions | Union News Company |
American News Company was a magazine, newspaper, book, and comic book distribution company founded in 1864 by Sinclair Tousey, which dominated the distribution market in the last quarter of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. The company's abrupt 1957 demise caused a huge shakeup in the publishing industry, forcing many magazine, comic book, and paperback publishers out of business.
The American News Company had its roots in two New York City newspaper and periodical wholesaling firms: Sinclair Tousey's company on Nassau St., and the firm Dexter, Hamilton & Co. at 22 Ann St. These were the two largest news and periodical wholesalers in New York City at the time of their merger on Feb. 1, 1864, when American News Company was formed. The seven original partners were Sinclair Tousey, John E. Tousey, Harry Dexter, George Dexter, John Hamilton, Patrick Farrelly, and Solomon W. Johnson. These partners formed the core of the company's management up until the death of the last surviving partner, Solomon Johnson, in 1913. Sinclair Tousey was the company's first president, followed after his death by Harry Dexter, who was succeeded by Solomon Johnson.
The company's Boston branch was formed by taking over the wholesale periodical business of Boston bookseller Alexander Williams. In 1854 Williams had bought out the business of Fetridge & Co., which operated on the corner of State St. and Washington a large magazine store known as the Periodical Depot or the Periodical Arcade. Williams worked up an extensive trade as a jobber of newspapers and periodicals to out of town dealers all over the East Coast, and by the time ANC was organized the wholesale side of the business had grown too large for Williams to handle alone. Along with two smaller competing firms, Dyer & Co. and Federhen & Co., the Boston trade was reorganized as a subsidiary of American News under the name New England News Company, with Williams as one of the principal shareholders. Initially an officer of the new corporation, Williams was a bookstore proprietor at heart and left soon afterward in 1869 to take over the famous "Old Corner Bookstore".
Two years after the company formed it added to its newspaper and magazine business a book jobbing department, under the supervision of a Mr. Dunham; this grew to be one of the largest in the country.
With the end of the Civil War, the firm grew rapidly along the expanding railroads as they opened up the West, with the commencement of coast-to-coast continental rail service in 1869. Legislation passed by Congress required the railroads to transport newspapers and periodicals as second class bulk mail at a special low subsidized rate—one cent per pound for any distance between news agencies, so that a bundle of New York newspapers could be sent across the continent to Los Angeles for the same price that it could be shipped across the river to Newark—and ANC exploited the availability of cheap rail transport to expand their distribution network across the continent, so far ahead of the competition that they effectively shut any possible rivals out of the market, establishing their periodical depots by the hundreds in every city and large town on the rail system. At the same time, the number of periodicals being published in America was exploding: Frank Mott, in A History of American Magazines, estimates that the number of titles being published boomed from 700 at the end of the Civil War to 3300 in 1885.
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