At the time, most newspapers sold for five cents (equal to $1.43 today) or more, a relatively high price which limited their appeal to readers who were reasonably well-off.

Swain and Abell drew on the success of the New York Herald, one of the first penny papers and decided to use a one cent cover price to appeal to a broad audience.

It had lost circulation by supporting the Copperhead Policy of opposing the American Civil War and advocating an immediate peace settlement with the Confederate States of America.

[3] In December 1864, the paper was sold to George William Childs and Anthony J. Drexel for a reported $20,000 (equal to $402,085 today).

He changed the editorial policy to support the Union, raised advertising rates, and doubled the cover price to two cents.

Circulation growth led the firm to outgrow its facilities; in 1866 Childs bought property at Sixth and Chestnut Streets in Philadelphia, where the Public Ledger Building was constructed.

Designed by John McArthur Jr., the building had at its corner a larger-than-life-sized statue of Benjamin Franklin by Joseph A. Bailly (1825–1883), which Childs had commissioned.

In 1870, Mark Twain mocked the Ledger for its rhyming obituaries, in a piece entitled "Post-Mortem Poetry",[5] in his column for The Galaxy: There is an element about some poetry which is able to make even physical suffering and death cheerful things to contemplate and consummations to be desired.In 1902, Adolph Ochs, owner of The New York Times, bought the paper from George W. Childs Drexel for a reported $2.25 million.

In 1913, Cyrus H. K. Curtis purchased the paper from Ochs for $2 million and hired his step son-in-law John Charles Martin as editor.

[11] In 1930, despite the circulation slump caused by the Great Depression, Curtis expanded by buying The Philadelphia Inquirer for $18 million, but he did not consolidate the two newspapers.

[8] In 1934, the Public Ledger was absorbed into the Inquirer, and management was assumed by John C. Martin, son-in-law of Curtis' second wife.

In 1939, John Martin was forced out of the management of the Evening Ledger, and control was assumed by Cary W. Bok, Curtis's younger grandson.

[citation needed] In 1931, a Public Ledger reporter, Hubert Renfro Knickerbocker, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for a series of articles he authored on the Five Year Plan of the former Soviet Union.