Before Google, before Lexis-Nexis, before clipping services, if you wanted to find an old article there was just one place to go: the gaslit New York basement full of stacks of millions of newspapers maintained by an African-American news dealer known as Back Number Budd. Every newspaper reporter knew about him from the 1880s through the 1910s, and visited to rummage through old articles. Lawyers showed up at his door for evidence to use in their cases. His clients included Ulysses S Grant, the families of John Jacob Astor and Jay Gould, historical societies, and libraries.
As a child in Washington, DC, Robert M. Budd sold newspapers to Civil War soldiers on nearby battlefields. He discovered that they would pay premium prices for old newspapers covering battles they had been in--three or five dollars, for a paper that had sold for two cents a week before. Later, when he opened a newspaper stand, in midtown New York, he gathered and sold old newspapers too. He set up shop in the Tenderloin, an area full of hotels and theaters and brothels. He bought old newspapers from the hotel lobby cleaning people, probably by the pound, and sorted and resold them. Eventually he had between five and eight million copies of newspapers, enumerated down to the last copy on his advertisements and business cards.
If you walked by his store on your way to Wallack’s theater in New York around 1885, how could you not be pulled in by the Civil War-era headlines of newspapers displayed at the head of a staircase? Heading down the steps, you’d enter the cramped basement where Budd kept shop from 1881 to 1905. Climb over the shoeshine stand and squeeze past the youths and men leafing through yellow-covered dime novels, and you’d meet the man himself: brown skinned, sharp eyed, with a handsome mustache.
You might hear an outraged customer complaining, “How can this dog-eared four-year-old Tribune be worth more than a crisp new one?” He sneers. His pale face is sweaty under his top hat.
“So a dollar is too much, eh, cause you when you bought it new it was 3 cents, right?”
“This is a swindle! I’m going to complain to the publisher! Mr. Greeley won’t stand for this.”
“Well it’s around 15 years too late for Mr. Greeley to help you, but you know I’ve heard that before. Plenty of publishers send me copies so I can keep them for them. They don’t have room either. So where is that paper you bought for 3 cents?” Budd leans on his counter.
“I threw it out.”
“So did everyone else who bought it that day. Not me! I saved them. And I don’t just have them in a big pile like maybe you’d have in your house. Not in some crumbly barrel with the mice getting at them. No, I saved them all nice and orderly. I like things in order. I got them rolled up nice, and organized by date, like a calendar. I pay the rent on the shop to keep them in. I pay a boy to help sort them. Isn't that worth a dollar?”
“But it was just trash. How would I know I’d need it?”
“Isn’t that my point? You thought it was trash. You were fooled. You saw the 3 cent price, you thought that’s all it was worth, and after you read it all up, you calculated you’d used it up, and it wasn’t even worth 3 cents. And that’s where Back Number Budd comes in. I’ve seen you before. I’m not saying I’ve met you, but many a man comes in here with that look on him: gotta have it. But I’m a fair man. I don’t jack up the price when I see your hunger. I set it by how long ago the paper was, and by how many others want it. If the shelf gets empty, I gotta take that into consideration. Because it’s like the Library of Congress in here. I have to keep at least one of everything. If it’s getting too low, I might even print up a few more, and that takes money too.”
There was no arguing with Budd. He stood his ground.
Junk dealers at the time, some of them African-Americans, bought and sold used papers by the pound for various forms of reuse as paper. Back Number Budd understood something very special and very modern about his old newspapers. Newspapers were information, and his sorting and organizing them made them into a record unavailable elsewhere. They became more valuable as they became more rare. He repeatedly explained this to reporters who interviewed him. He even wrote it out in an advertising booklet, attacking the idea that his work was a trick or a swindle. “Is this not a great enterprise? Does it not deserve Success? Is not my experience in Newspaper Business since 1863 worth at these late dates of my life, a few dollars? or would you have me work during my old age or bad health? I begin to think you all would. But as I have had the enterprise to accomplish what no other dealer in the world ever attempted, I can stand being called a trust.... My address can never be forgotten. It is BACK NUMBER BUDD, New York City, USA.”
In fact, Budd did work into old age. His business suffered two fires one in 1895, and a completely devastating one in 1922. By then, his work had been eclipsed by clipping services. Reporters were more likely to research background for their articles at the New York Public Library’s growing newspaper collection. His business limped along for a few years after the second fire....
Reporters continued to visit Budd until close to his death in 1933. He had already appeared often in the press, not just in stories about his business, but about his colorful marital life–including coverage of a divorce where he spitefully paid alimony in pennies....
