Financial History Issue 122 (Summer 2017) | Page 29
time to time that he continued to be too
friendly with the bottle, but he always
appeared sober on the job.”
Meanwhile, another founder of Dow
Jones, Charles Bergstresser, joined Kier-
nan in 1881. The young reporters began to
chafe at the confines of Kiernan’s limited
news reports. Dow proposed a daily news
report on business, “but Kiernan, an extro-
verted man who was busy with his politics
and advertising interests, wasn’t really
interested. Kiernan simply wanted Dow
to provide good, readable news copy in a
hurry, and if he possessed extra energy, he
could go out to solicit new clients.”
By several accounts, Kiernan grew
wealthy during this period. Aliah O’Neill,
writin g for the website Irish Central,
observes, “At only 35 years old, Kiernan
had amassed a fortune of about $250,000,”
an amount that would be worth about $5.5
million in 2016 dollars.
Kiernan’s growing involvement with
politics came at the time that Dow, Jones
and Bergstresser worked at the news
agency. Kiernan, an alderman in Brook-
lyn, was elected as a delegate to the Demo-
cratic National Convention in 1880 and
then as a New York State Senator rep-
resenting Brooklyn for two terms until
1883. Kiernan moved to Albany to serve
in the state senate, a time that marked his
departure from close engagement with the
news service. “He soon found that politics
would require most of his time and gradu-
ally withdrew from the active manage-
ment of the news department.”
Kiernan was noted for his expensive
lifestyle in Albany, as The World reported,
“for he entertained on a royal scale and
was fully $100,000 poorer at the end of his
second term. He always was a contribu-
tor to every deserving charity.” In 2017
dollars, that would amount to about $2.4
million. Based on this figure, Kiernan may
have lost as much as 40% of his fortune
during his time in Albany.
Dow, Jones and Bergstresser would
leave Kiernan in November 1882 to start
Dow, Jones & Co. Later, the relationship
between the new Dow Jones and Kier-
nan news agencies turned testy. In 1887,
Dow Jones accused the Kiernan agency of
stealing its dispatches concerning a coal
handlers’ strike in Hoboken, NJ. Kiernan’s
company president at the time, William P.
Sullivan, said he was considering a libel
suit against Dow Jones for falsely accusing
his company of stealing news.
Politics & Downfall
During this period of political activity,
Kiernan brought Sullivan on board to run
the daily operations of his news bureau.
The two soon clashed over control of the
firm, a dispute that wound up in court.
Kiernan’s business began to collapse and
legal troubles mounted. In 1887, he was
arrested in a securities fraud case involv-
ing the Columbia Rolling Mill Company
of New Jersey, which accused him of
deceit concerning ownership of real estate
and bonds. The World reported, “Mr.
Kiernan was arrested, but the whole mat-
ter ended in his favor.”
The late 1880s were a period of finan-
cial trouble, and Kiernan lost control of
his business. Another fraud case arose in
1888. The Bank of Montreal sued him for
a fraudulent transfer of ownership interest
in his company, John Kiernan & Co., to
outside parties, a move designed to pre-
vent the bank from collecting on a debt.
By 1892, Kiernan discontinued his
ticker news service, although delivery of
the printed bulletins still remained. Effec-
tively exiled from his news agency and fac-
ing a backdrop of persistent legal troubles,
Kiernan died at his home, 56 First Place,
Brooklyn, on November 29, 1893.
Although he had lost his business and was
out of office, his funeral was a major event
and at least five newspapers carried his obit-
uary. As The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported,
St. Stephen’s Roman Catholic Church “was
packed to the doors and hundreds of people
were unable to gain admission.”
To this point, Kiernan has been rel-
egated to footnote status in the Dow Jones
corporate histories, or overlooked alto-
gether, due to two developments. First,
Kiernan became infatuated with politics
and drifted away from journalism in the
early 1880s. Second, his news of the mar-
ket was ephemeral — bulletins on tissue
paper and ticker tape — so there is little
surviving record of his work. By con-
trast, his proteges — Dow, Jones and Berg-
stresser — established a newsletter and
then a newspaper, which lend themselves
to historical examination.
One enduring lesson of Kiernan’s life,
however, was his ability to evolve with the
changes in news gathering and produc-
tion, from messenger boys with flimsies to
ticker tape machines. He did this by keep-
ing the market’s needs close to his sights,
consistent with the normative practices of
business journalism then and now. “He
knew, by constant interaction with the
Street, what news was most likely to be
relished — a failure, a race, a death, a good
lively rumor — and it rushed all over his
ticker tape.”
Rob Wells is an assistant professor at the
Walter J. Lemke Department of Journalism
at the University of Arkansas. He is author
of a 2016 doctoral dissertation, “‘A Report-
er’s Paper’: the National Thrift News, Jour-
nalistic Autonomy and the Savings and
Loan Crisis,” which won the 2017 Ray
Hiebert History of Journalism Endowed
Award from the University of Maryland,
Philip Merrill College of Journalism.
Note
1.
The literature has several different names
for Kiernan’s news business: The Wall
Street Financial News Bureau, The Kiernan
News Company, John J. Kiernan & Co. and
J.J. Kiernan & Co. Towards the end of the
1880s, press accounts more consistently
called it The Kiernan News Company.
During its first ventures with the Western
Union Telegraph Company in the 1870s,
press accounts and histories referred to it
as The Wall Street Financial News Bureau.
Sources
Alloway, Henry. “Wall Street News Gathering
A Half Century Ago.” The Wall Street Jour-
nal. June 27, 1932.
Hoffman, Deborah. “Email with Deborah
Hoffman, Dow Jones Corporate Archivist.”
March 4, 2017.
O’Neill, Aliah. “John J. Kiernan: The Pioneer of
Wall Street.” Irishcentral.com. July 19, 2010.
www.irishcentral.com.
Quirt, John. The Press and the World of Money:
How the News Media Cover Business and
Finance, Panic and Prosperity, and the Pur-
suit of the American Dream. Byron, CA:
Anton/California-Courier. 1993.
Schwartz, Colleen. “Email from Colleen
Schwartz, Dow Jones Corporate Communi-
cations.” February 23, 2017.
Tofel, Richard J. Restless Genius: Barney
Kilgore, the Wall Street Journal, and the
Invention of Modern Journalism. New York:
St. Martin’s Press. 2009.
Wendt, Lloyd. The Wall Street Journal: The
Story of Dow Jones and the Nation’s Business
Newspaper. Rand McNally & Company. 1982.
www.MoAF.org | Summer 2017 | FINANCIAL HISTORY 27