1839-1852
Russell S. Higgins, who came to St. Louis as a printer about 1838, was a partner of Abel Rathbone Corbin in the publication of the Missouri Argus. About the year 1840 Mr. Higgins started the first penny newspaper west of the Mississippi, calling it the People’s Organ. He conducted the penny paper for five or six years and sold it out at a handsome profit. The People’s Organ was one of the few paying newspapers of the period.
(From St. Louis, the Fourth City by William Barlow Stevens, 1909).
“We maintain that the People are absolutely and positively Sovereign;” R.S.Higgins and Theodore W. Mead, publishers; R.S. Higgins editor. Mead departed in 1842. In 1846, Edmund Flagg of the Gazette bought out Higgins’ share of the paper and named C.C. Cody editor. Var: People’s Organ and Reveille, People’s Organ, Organ and Reveille, People’s Weekly Organ, Daily People’s Organ and Reveille, People’s Daily Organ, Daily People’s Organ.
