Charles Dow, co-founder of Dow Jones and Company, Inc. and expert financial analyst, wrote a series of vivid reports on Colorado’s Silver Boom. In 1879, Dow, a reporter for the Providence (Rhode Island) Journal, was sent to Colorado to report on the mining frenzy. He arrived in Leadville and filed six reports on the silver mining industry. These famous “Leadville letters” are a valuable insight into that era’s history and a brilliant profile of the mining camps, balancing meticulous descriptions of the geology and the mines with humor. So intrigued was Dow with the mining industry that he abandoned newspaper work for a time to manage a silver mine in Leadville.
In 1880, he moved to New York City to become a financial journalist for the Kiernan News Agency, a firm that delivered news in the form of handwritten “slips” or “flimsies” to banks and brokerage houses. Two years later, he joined Edward D. Jones in organizing Dow Jones and Company to provide financial news to Wall Street. On Christmas Eve of 1885, Dow became a member of the prestigious New York Stock Exchange.
The first edition of The Wall Street Journal appeared on July 8, 1889 with Dow as Editor. The paper compiled stock price averages—he is credited with originating these—and quickly grew into the most influential publication on Wall Street. He gained a reputation for being a quiet, but reliable, reporter who took shorthand notes on his shirt cuffs and had the ability to turn routine financial reporting into expert financial analysis. He laid the basis for an increasingly sophisticated method of market trend analysis which was elaborated into the famous “Dow Theory,” which is today as important to the business and financial community as is The Dow Jones New Service, The Dow Jones Averages, and The Wall Street Journal.
Between publication of the first Journal and the early months of 1902 when he sold the business to Clarence Barron, Dow’s reports and editorials earned him a highly respected position among financial leaders and his legacy of theories and publications remain an essential part of today’s financial markets.
