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PREFATORY NOTE

The Stamp Memorial Lecture was founded in December 1942 in honour and to the perpetual memory of Josiah Charles Stamp, first Baron Stamp of Shortlands, who was killed by enemy action in April 1941. The Trust Deed requires that the lectures shall have as their subject the application of Economics and Statistics to a practical problem or problems of general interest and that the subject shall be treated from a scientific and not from a party political standpoint. The lectures are open to the public without charge.

May I begin by expressing my appreciation of the honour which has been shown me by asking me to deliver a lecture in memory of the late Josiah Charles Stamp, First Baron Stamp of Shortlands. I am particularly happy because it enables me to pay a tribute to his work in Canada. The late Viscount Bennett, sensitive to the prestige of the name of Stamp, asked him to investigate the problems of marketing grain in Canada and the results were presented in the Stamp Report, an important document in the history of marketing.

Under the terms of the Trust deed this lecture must have as its subject ‘the application of economics or statistics to a practical problem or problems of general interest’ and the subject must be treated ‘from a scientific and not from a party political standpoint’. In these days of totalitarian tendencies it might be argued that these clauses involve a contradiction, or that they are a directive requiring consideration of the problems of totalitarian states. Knowing that the latter alternative might well be regarded as sacrilege to the memory of the man in whose name the trust was created, I am compelled to consider the problem of possible contradiction. In the search for an answer to this problem I have been fortunate in finding in the works of Graham Wallas, who exercised such an important influence on the thought of Lord Stamp, a possible clue. It may seem that I feel directed to lecture on the subject of the subject or directly on the conditions which have led to the formulation of these precise conditions, and that in this way I have reconciled the contradiction and indeed I hope that this will be partly true. Thorold Rogers has remarked that among the calamities afflicting political economy is the fact that ‘all or nearly all its fallacies are partially true’,^[1] which possibly provides a basis for his comment that ‘a cheap investment is to be made in popular delusions, there is no safer speculation’.^[2] I hope that my discussion of popular delusions will not prove an unsafe speculation to my audience.

I am aware that I am only presenting a footnote on the work of Graham Wallas, but it should be said that the subject of his work was in itself inherently neglected. He chose in his later works to concentrate on the problem of efficiency in creative thought. He emphasized the importance of the oral tradition in an age when the overpowering influence of mechanized communication makes it difficult even to recognize such a tradition. Indeed the role of the oral tradition can be studied only through an appraisal of the mechanized tradition for which the material is all too abundant. The lecture as one of the last vestiges of the oral tradition has been overwhelmed by the written tradition and the examination system in spite of the noble efforts to support its continuance by foundations such as that in which I speak. And even such lectures as these are destined for print.

I have attempted elsewhere to develop the thesis that civilization has been dominated at different stages by various media of communication such as clay, papyrus, parchment, and paper produced first from rags and then from wood. Each medium has its significance for the type of script and in turn for the type of monopoly of knowledge which will be built and which will destroy the conditions suited to creative thought and be displaced by a new medium with its peculiar type of monopoly of knowledge. In this lecture I propose to concentrate on the period in which industrialization of the means of communication has become dominant through the manufacture of newsprint from wood and through the manufacture of the newspaper by the linotype and the fast press. Physics and chemistry have been largely concerned notably in the study of electricity with possibilities of increased speed of communication.

The conservative power of monopolies of knowledge compels the development of technological revolutions in the media of communication in marginal areas. In the first half of the nineteenth century in Great Britain ‘taxes on knowledge’ as they were called ensured a monopoly position for The Times such that restriction in the use of paper for newspapers favoured an increase in the production of periodicals and books. This increase was enhanced by an expanding American market unprotected by copyright legislation. American writers were driven into the field of journalism in the United States particularly as a free press was protected under the Bill of Rights. Removal of taxes on knowledge about the middle of the nineteenth century in Great Britain favoured the importation of improvements in techniques in the production of newspapers from the United States and the growth of the new journalism in Great Britain and on the Continent in the latter part of the nineteenth century and in the twentieth century, notably in the Boer War and in the first Great War.

It is necessary at this stage to indicate briefly the major technological changes in communication in North America and in turn in Great Britain and to a lesser extent in Europe. As a result of the use of wood in the manufacture of newsprint the price of the latter declined from 8½ cents per lb. in 1875 to 1½ cents in 1897. With decline in price larger quantities were used and new inventions were developed at later stages in the production of the newspaper to eliminate a series of bottlenecks. Introduction of the linotype in 1886 was followed by a reduction in the cost of composition by one-half. The demands of typesetting machines for large quantities of legible material compelled the use of typewriters.^[3] The cost of printing was vastly reduced with more efficient presses. A double supplement press installed by the New York Herald with a capacity of 24,000 copies of 12 pages each per hour was far surpassed by a quadruple press installed by the New York World in 1887 with a capacity of 48,000 copies of 8 pages per hour, and in turn by an octuple press with a capacity of 96,000 copies of 8 pages per hour in 1893. Improved methods of producing printed paper were supplemented by methods for reproducing illustrations—zinco and the half tone facilitated reproductions of photographs after 1880. Pulitzer’s use of the cartoon had contributed to a quadrupling of circulation by the end of the first year. His success in increasing circulation with pictures was immediately followed by others. The multi-colour rotary press was introduced in the early nineties with pictures. By 1900 nearly all daily papers in the United States were illustrated.

With the turn of the century in the United States, the marked increase in the size and circulation of newspapers was accompanied by increasing costs of newsprint and attempts on the part of newsprint companies to strengthen their position by amalgamation, notably in the formation of the International Paper Company, composed of nineteen companies, in 1898. The newspapers began to organize in opposition to a threat to increase prices. With the enormous advantage of control over publicity, they exercised sufficient political pressure to secure the reduction and abolition of tariffs on mechanical pulp and newsprint from Canada. Sensitive to the influence of newspapers over public opinion, Roosevelt I launched a conservation campaign with the slogan ‘We are out of pulpwood’. His successor, W. H. Taft, in all the controversy over the reciprocity treaty in 1911, emerged with the definite result of a low tariff on newsprint. Under Woodrow Wilson, the democratic president, restrictions were removed on imports of newsprint. The success of the efforts of American newspapers was evident in a price of newsprint of 2 cents a lb. or $40.00 a ton in 1914.

The Canadian provinces with their control over large areas of Crown land followed policies designed to compel the importation of American capital and the establishment of paper mills in Canada. Ontario imposed an embargo on pulpwood and on her Crown lands and was eventually followed by Quebec in 1910 and New Brunswick in 1911. Large rivers provided cheap navigation and large power sites and with proximity to the chief American markets by rail and favourable differential railway rates, governmental encouragement, and low labour costs, the province of Quebec was particularly successful in securing the construction of newsprint mills. Since four tons of raw material were necessary to produce a ton of newsprint, transportation rates were an important factor in the choice of sites.

During the war period prices increased to $69.00 a ton in 1918 and after a sharp increase to $130 in 1920 attained a level of $75 a ton in 1922. Under the stimulus of higher prices newsprint mills were established on a large scale. The annual capacity of Canadian mills increased from 715,000 tons in 1917 to 3,898,000 tons in 1930, doubling in the period from 1926 to 1930. Canada surpassed the United States as a producer of newsprint. Mills installed at later dates had the advantage of incorporating new inventions. In 1921 a paper machine 166 inches in width, running 1,031 feet per minute, established a record, but in 1927 machines of 270 inches were being installed. The greater efficiency of plants installed at later dates and the length of time involved in bringing larger plants into production led to a lowering of prices in the late twenties and to a sharp decline during the depression to $53 in 1931 and $46.00 in 1932. Competition of later more efficient plants with older plants became acute, with the result that an elaborate bond structure developed during the period of rapid construction was subjected to an intensive programme of reorganization accompanied by large scale mergers.

In these drastic reorganizations hydro-electric power assumed a more important position. A newsprint mill includes plants for the production of mechanical pulp, sulphite pulp, and newsprint. A ton capacity of newsprint assumes roughly an installation of 100 horsepower of which 85 per cent. is used for mechanical pulp or groundwood. Attempts to increase the proportion of the cheaper mechanical pulp above 75 per cent. of the total content of newsprint have assumed increasing dependence on hydro-electric power. Since power sites are subject to geographic considerations such as geology, topography, size of lakes, which serve as storage basins in a relatively severe cold season, size of rivers, and rainfall, and since they have an enormous initial capital investment, operation at capacity will become an important factor in determining the size of paper mills. Since prices of newsprint tend to be held down by the strong position of newspapers, attempts will be made to divert hydro-electric power to municipal and industrial purposes. Large metropolitan papers such as the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune have attempted to strengthen their position by assuming direct control over newsprint mills, but the possibility of adapting power sites and newsprint mills to the demands of such newspapers is limited. But mills which are not controlled by newspaper companies have a narrower market in which to sell their products. High prices of paper during the war and the post-war period were accompanied by numerous amalgamations of newspapers and the introduction of high-speed equipment in the use of steel cylinders, roller bearings, and ink pumps. Large newspaper owners such as Hearst and Scripps Howard, capable of providing a large steady market, are in a position to play off one newsprint mill against another and secure lower prices. Small newspapers in a weaker position have been linked in various chains to the same purpose. An attempt of the International Paper Company to combat these trends by acquiring newspapers in order to provide a more profitable outlet was defeated by the usual appeal to the importance of a free press and to the danger of control of power interests over the press. Insistence on freedom of the press became a powerful factor in the defeat of newsprint producers. As a result of the strong position of newspapers, newsprint companies have favoured reliance on the sale of hydro-electric power to municipal and industrial consumers, and paper has tended to become a by-product of power production, with the weak marketing position which characterizes by-products.

The increasing production of relatively low priced newsprint has been accompanied by an increase in per capita consumption of paper in the United States from 25 lb. in 1909 to 41 lb. in 1920 and 59 lb. in 1930. In 1914, 2,580 daily newspapers had a daily circulation of 28,777,447 and in 1940 1,878 daily newspapers a circulation of 41,131,611. Although the number of Sunday newspapers was only slightly reduced in the same period, their circulation increased from 16,479,943 to 32,371,092.^[4] In the half-century from 1880 to 1930, in which the major technological changes which we have described have taken place and after which the radio becomes a more important competitor for advertising, the newspaper shifted in its dependence on advertising revenues from 44 per cent. to 74 per cent. In 23 of the largest American cities advertising lineage increased from 662 million in 1914 to 1,293 million in 1929, with the most pronounced increase two years after the war, and declined to 746 million in 1933. The increase in percentage of revenue from advertising is misleading, since the reduction in the price of newspapers to one cent or one halfpenny by 1900 and the relative rigidity of prices of newspapers is essentially designed to increase circulation and to attract advertising. It is safer to say with George Seldes that ‘the real publishers are the advertisers since their financial support of a publication is in most cases all that keeps it alive’.^[5]

The low prices of newspapers incidental to the need for circulation demanded by advertisers assumed an emphasis on changes in the content of the newspaper which would attract the largest number of purchasers. The newspaper was made responsive to the market. The business office occupied a dominant position.^[6] News became a commodity and was sold in competition like any other commodity.^[7] Consequently it was classified in relation to the markets to which it was supplied and in relation to regions which produced it. In the words of Mr. Dooley, ‘Sin is news and news is sin.’ Charles Merz wrote that ‘it is doubtful whether anything really unifies the country like its murders’.^[8] In England R. D. Blumenfeld held that all grades of society were ‘more interested in crime mystery—particularly the murder of a woman—than in any other topic’.^[9] In the production and sale of news, various centres are compelled to specialize as a result of time and other considerations. News follows the sun and with the increasing importance of afternoon and evening papers generally happens in the afternoon. Chicago as a great inland centre and with a definite time−lag from New York has been compelled to concentrate on crime. Mr. Dooley, commenting on Wilbur F. Storey, editor of the Chicago Times in the eighties, wrote:

The malevolent influence and power of publishers has possibly been exaggerated, but in the opinion of Seldes, Hearst proved ‘that news is largely a matter of what one man wants the people to know and feel and think’.^[11] Pulitzer was said to have ‘rather liked the idea of a war—not a big war—but one that would rouse interest and give him a chance to gauge the reflex in his circulation figures’.^[12] The publisher became concerned to secure consumer satisfaction: ‘never write to please the writer, write to please the reader’.^[13] In the words of Brisbane, the Hearst columnist, ‘nobody wants to know what you think. People want to know what they think.’^[14] Beaverbrook advised that ‘you must be ready to put into it your whole heart and soul, your stomach, your liver, your whole anatomy which will appear most of the time to be dangerously stimulating and on occasion positively revolting’.^[15] J. G. Bennett, Jr., stated that a journalist should be ‘inquisitive, catty, human, eccentric, generous and pernicious in turn, kindly and inexpressibly brutal from moment to moment, broadminded, well-read and suspicious. These are among the qualities that fit a man for journalism.’^[16] A later American publisher insisted on printing ‘what any human being would be interested in—something that will not cause people to think, that will not even invite them to think—to enable them to forget rights and wrongs, ambitions and disappointments’.

Arnold Bennett has written a pertinent description of the editor:

News must be selected, its position on the page determined, the proper size of type chosen. ‘Nothing . . . possesses quite such power over people who like to believe they do their own thinking as that which seemingly leaves all thinking to them’.^[18] In perfecting ‘the art of lending to people and events intrinsically dull an interest which does not properly belong to them’,^[19] the definition of journalism given by Arnold Bennett, journalists are exposed to unique advice from editors. The managing editor of the Detroit News held that ‘Four things were necessary to learn to write, the Bible, Shakespeare, the Saturday Evening Post, and the Detroit News’,^[20] advice paralleled by that of Sir William Crawford that ‘copywriters must read the Bible, Kipling, Stevenson, and Burns because they know how to touch the human heart’.^[21]

Under the pressure of publishers and advertisers the journalist has been compelled to seek the striking rather than the fitting phrase, to emphasize crisis rather than developmental trends. In the words of Escott the journalist ‘increasingly seems to think that his duty to his paper requires the discovery of a new crisis or a new era’. ‘The journalist has long been and will always remain, a stormy petrel, a fisher in troubled waters, one whose activities tend to excite not to moderate, the popular passions.’^[22] Success in the industrialized newspaper depends on constant repetition, inconspicuous infiltration, increasing appeal to the subconscious mind and the employment of tactics of attrition in moulding public opinion.^[23] In the words of Northcliffe ‘remember the power of persistency in journalism’.^[24] Journalism has been criticized on a wide front, particularly in England. Lord Salisbury described it as ‘an intelligent anticipation of events that never occur’ and Leslie Stephen as ‘writing for pay upon matters of which you are ignorant’;^[25] ‘to be on the right side is an irrelevant question in journalism’.^[26] Humbert Wolfe wrote of the journalist

An American writer has been more savage: ‘the business of a New York journalist is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. We are intellectual prostitutes.’^[27] A more sober view states that journalism can never be history, ‘its unceasing activities deprive it of the advantages of scientific inquiry. It cannot ever be the rounded truth since the necessity of prompt presentation of what seems to be fact renders impossible the gathering and weighing of all evidence which bears upon the event which must be chronicled.’^[28] But the journalist is not unaware of the pressure of the publisher and the advertiser as his castigations have made clear. Writers as the more sensitive and restive members of the community have been extremely sensitive to repression particularly as they have been slow to organize resistance. Frank Munsey, who systematically bought, closed down, and amalgamated newspapers and was described as ‘one of the ablest retail grocers that ever edited a New York newspaper’^[29] drew the following obituary notice from William Allen White. ‘Frank Munsey the great publisher, is dead. Frank Munsey contributed to the journalism of his day the great talent of a meat packer, the morals of a money changer, and the manners of an undertaker. He and his kind have about succeeded in transforming a once noble profession into an eight per cent. security. May he rest in trust.’^[30] Philip Gibbs wrote regarding Northcliffe that he had never heard him ‘utter one serious commentary on life, or any word approaching nobility of thought, or any hint of some deep purpose’.^[31]

The character of news reflecting the demands of the advertisers particularly after 1900 emphasized discontinuity. Cazamian^[32] suggests that the psychological results were evident in the tremendous success of moving pictures, which at its central roots sprang from the methods of discontinuity. Development of photography and of the cinema were paralleled by the increase in the use of illustrations in the newspapers particularly during the First Great War. Established newspapers had reached new levels of pomposity illustrated by Pulitzer’s comment that ‘The World should be more powerful than the President. He is fettered by partisanship and politics and has only a four years’ term.’^[33] Their monopoly position was accompanied by conservatism in recognizing technological advance. The possibility of tapping lower levels of income and larger numbers for advertisers and recognition of the loosening of restraining rules and habits during the war favoured the establishment of the tabloids.^[34] Pictures spoke a universal language which required no teaching for their comprehension. ‘The boob no longer believes anything he reads in the papers but he does believe everything he sees.’^[35] In the search for a wider circle of readers it became necessary to rely on topics with a universal appeal, notably on sex. Patterson of the New York Daily News, a most successful tabloid, introduced a new order for news—first love and sex, then money, murder, and health.^[36]

Gauvreau, editor of an unsuccessful tabloid, hemmed by Patterson ‘into a pocket from which we could never fight our way out to our first daily million’,^[37] stated that ‘no paper of mass appeal could afford to be without a staff astrologist or a palmist who could tell you how to improve your fortune’.^[38] ‘The space we devote to politics is a dead loss in circulation.’^[39] He wrote ‘Never print anything that a scrub-woman in a skyscraper cannot understand’,^[40] a statement paralleled by R. D. Blumenfeld in England ‘never to forget the cabman’s wife’. We can appreciate his remark that he regarded himself as ‘the parasite clinging to the vitals of the kept press’.^[41] This audience will not be familiar with references to the excitement over ‘Peaches’ Browning or over the Hall Mills murder case but they will be aware of the influence of the tabloids on the older press in a reference to Lindbergh. The Lindbergh flight as ‘the greatest torrent of mass emotion ever witnessed in human history’^[42] has been held to have changed the attitude of France towards the United States. In accounts of the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby the ‘press pulled out all stops in its last great orgy of concentration on an individual case’.^[43] In the intense competition for circulation and for advertising success was won by the use of reading matter and picture appeal in competition with the magazines and by the use of features which emphasized gossip about movie stars. Failure followed the refusal of advertisers to support a number of tabloids appealing to low-income groups.

The problem of adapting news to the needs of increased circulation led to increasing dependence on feature material. The increasing efficiency of press associations brought a decline in the number of scoops^[44] claimed by individual papers and led to increasing dependence on local news and on features. Advertising demanded increased space and larger newspapers, and to preserve a reasonable proportion of reading material it became necessary to depend on syndicates^[45] for feature material. Newspapers formed their own syndicates for the creation of feature material or for the creation of news. Features were designed to secure a firm footing for newspapers in the home and to enhance the value of the paper from an advertiser’s point of view. The large Sunday paper emerged in response to this demand and with it an insatiable demand for features designed to appeal particularly to women and to children. The serial comic was admirably suited to this purpose. ‘The power of the popular strip over circulation is notorious.’ ‘Comics are the lifeblood of the entire syndicate business.’ Comic strip writers are compelled to consider the welfare of their characters with great seriousness if they wish to avoid a flood of protests from readers. Women were the object of attention in the features and in the news because of their influence on the purchase of commodities. Northcliffe advised, ‘Always have one women’s story at the top of all the main news pages of your paper’.^[46] The demand for circulation by advertisers was a demand for entertainment and for a wide variety.^[47] In the twenties the public turned from horseracing and liquor to column reading as a dissipation.^[48] Newspapers carried the writings of columnists with wide and divergent points of view.

The effect of these changes was evident in the decline of the editorial as an influence on public opinion. Mr. Dooley described the mission of the newspaper ‘to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable’. The Hearst press and, to a less extent, the Scripps Howard press systematically and profitably exploited exploitation and newspapers were compelled to turn to other interests. As early as 1899 a study of newspapers showed that in news of crime and vice, in illustrations, and in want and medical advertisements, the percentage of space occupied showed an almost steady increase, with an increase in circulation, while the opposite was the case in political news, editorials, letters and exchanges, and political advertisements.^[49] H. L. Mencken has described the loss of prestige of the editorial writer as compared with the news writer since less ability was required to express opinions than to present readable news and such ability was less well paid. He writes ‘I know of no subject in truth, save baseball, on which the average newspaper even in larger cities discusses with unfailing sense and understanding.’ Another American writer states: ‘I doubt if there is an editorial page in America that is read by five per cent. of the paper’s readers. On the basis of results the average editorial page is the most expensive in the paper—a loss in white space, and composition of editorial labour.’^[50] A study of the American press concludes that the ‘modern commercial newspaper has little direct influence on the opinions of its readers on public questions. It probably seeks to reflect, not make, opinions.’^[51] W. J. Bryan stated that ‘newspapers watch the way people are going and run around the corner to get in front of them’.^[52] Large circulations prevented the newspapers, as someone put it, from attacking anything but the man-eating shark.^[53] You may remember in Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh the efforts of Townley to get Ernest Pontifex out of trouble ‘to see the reporters and keep the case out of the newspapers. He was successful as regards all the higher-class papers. There was only one journal and that of the lowest class, which was incorruptible.’

In emphasizing the necessity of increasing the sale of newspapers, headlines and news have dominated the front page. With few exceptions advertising is confined to the later pages while it may be argued that ‘for practical purposes matter that is more directly profitable to the individual than to the community is called advertising and matter that benefits the community rather than the individual is called news’, or in the words of Ivy C. Lee ‘news is that which people are willing to pay to have brought to their attention; while advertising is that which the advertiser himself must pay to get to the people’s attention’.^[54] The difficulties of separating the indirect sale of advertising, by making the front page sell the newspaper, and the direct sale of advertising has led to the rapid development of publicity men who have become skilled in disguising advertising material and planting it in unexpected places to be picked up as news.^[55] While newspapermen have become suspicious of these news services and reluctant to introduce anything strange in their columns, publicity men have become more ingenious. The politician, following the decline of the editorial page, has been particularly active in attempting to make the front page. Sam Chamberlain, an experienced newspaper man, wrote ‘Give me the right hand column first page and I won’t care what they put on the editorial page’,^[56] and his views were echoed by La Follette in 1924, ‘I don’t care what the newspapers print in their editorials about me if I can keep in their news columns.’^[57] The politician has actually begun to welcome abuse in the news. Frank Kent of the Baltimore Sun explained the power of the political boss in large cities, in that ‘the more violently he is denounced by the press the stronger the trend toward him’.^[58] George Seldes wrote, ‘I believe that Hearst as an ally of any politician is a form of political suicide.’^[59] With the radio the politician capitalized the limitations of the press, Roosevelt II claiming that ‘nothing would help him more than to have it known that the newspapers were against him’. Radio tipped the scales in favour of the individual candidate and overcame the influence of tons of Republican written propaganda. ‘There has been a landslide in every national election since the use of radio became general.’^[60] The success of Roosevelt followed the decline of the press as a medium of political expression.

The necessity of dependence on the front page has left its stamp on American political life in the character of personalities and of legislation. Keynoting which ‘implies the ability to . . . give the impression of passionately and torrentially moving onward and upward while warily standing still’ (Lowry)^[61] has been only one of the results. Bryce in The American Commonwealth has emphasized the significance of the absence of foreign problems in the United States in the nineteenth century. To an important extent ambassadorial posts were a part of political patronage distributed among newspaper publishers. Representatives of the press who were distrusted in domestic appointments in the United States were acclaimed as ambassadors in other countries because of the power of the American press, in contrast with representatives of the press in other countries who were largely excluded from diplomatic posts. The results were evident in a lack of experience and continuity in foreign problems, in the refusal of the United States to join the League of Nations and in its blustering foreign policy since the establishment of the United Nations Organization. ‘Agitation carried on by the press unsettles the public mind. The uncertainty prevents unity of action and that lack of unity of action prevents stability.’^[62]

Whitelaw Reid^[63] remarked in the late nineteenth century that ‘news brings circulation and advertisements’, but this view has been modified by the insistence that ‘there is no substitute for circulation’.^[64]

Lasswell has remarked that ‘literacy and the press are offsprings of the machine age. The press lives by advertising, advertising follows circulation and circulation depends on excitement.’^[65] In building up circulation by advertising itself and creating goodwill the newspaper attempts to establish a monopoly position which can be capitalized by advertisers attempting to build up monopoly positions for products being advertised. Circulation is promptly translated into advertising revenue. In news, features, and direct advertising the large advertiser secures a consistent advantage. Large department stores occupy an important position as a source of revenue and in building up newspapers. In the news they have been called ‘the most sacred of sacred cows’.^[66] As has been remarked of the Chicago Tribune, ‘It is the ads for the 1.89 housedress that must meet the payrolls.’^[67] The consistent and heavy users of space are in a position to secure better advertising rates though their success will vary with numerous considerations including the policy of publishers. At one extreme Munsey said ‘I will not quarrel with the sources of my revenue’,^[68] and at the other Scripps insisted on the necessity of constant squabbling with advertisers.^[69] The dangers of dependence on a small number of large advertising patrons who favour a smaller number of papers compels constant attention to the problems of small advertisers. Department stores force down prices in certain advertised lines in order to secure a heavy traffic which will be directed to higher price goods.^[70] The large newspaper securing newsprint under more advantageous circumstances and able to attract large advertisers provides a powerful stimulus to the production and sale of commodities with the most rapid turnover. Certain types of marketing organization such as the department store and certain types of urban communities, planned to give quickest access to the largest possible numbers to the marketing centre, are given direct encouragement. Urban architecture tends to be built around the store window.

The implications of the press in the twentieth century are suggested in the increasing importance of evening as contrasted with morning papers. Evening papers catered to individuals who had exhausted the possibilities of concentrated mental power and demanded relaxation and entertainment rather than information and instruction.^[71] Scripps directed the development of the evening paper to meet the neglected demands of industrial classes. Sports news increased enormously in space. Conservatism of monopoly in the morning papers favoured the advance of technique insisted upon by advertisers in the evening papers. Changes in type and format, adaptation of the colour press,^[72] the introduction of faster presses effectively met the demands of advertisers in the evening and the Sunday papers and most conspicuously in the mail order catalogues.

In the United States the dominance of the newspaper was accompanied by a ruthless shattering of language, the invention of new idioms and the sharpening of words.^[73] In England the impact of this development was checked by the dominance of the book but the similarity of language favoured a rapid borrowing of technical developments from the United States.^[74] Northcliffe took full advantage of American experience. He drastically reduced the reports of debates and, followed by others, introduced in the words of Blumenfeld, ‘one of the most significant changes’,^[75] in the history of British journalism. Following Pulitzer his rule was ‘never attack an institution; attack the fellow at the head of it’.^[76] His success was evident in the eviction of heretical newspaper editors from British newspapers after 1900 and the decline of rational political journalism.^[77]

The effects of the new journalism reflected in the demands of advertisers for circulation and excitement were particularly striking in foreign policy. Complaints had been made from an early date that British correspondents on the Continent had been appointed for their linguistic ability, and their lack of journalistic sense had become evident particularly after the telegraph had superseded the post. On political grounds Beaconsfield had persuaded the Standard to make Abel its correspondent in Berlin in 1878.^[78] The conventional freedom of the Foreign Office from discussion in Parliament and the tendency of the press to turn from domestic to foreign affairs, particularly after the Home Rule controversy, gave The Times a strong stabilizing position in which to attempt to build up friendly relations with Germany. Weakening of The Times’s position as a result of encroachment of papers which had emerged following the abolition of taxes on knowledge and of its loss of prestige over the Irish question brought it to the point of bankruptcy in 1890 when Moberly Bell was appointed as manager. As an organ of comment and criticism it had fallen behind in its news services. In the interests of economy Moberly Bell was compelled to rely on younger inexperienced men to build up its news staff.^[79] In 1897 Greenwood described foreign correspondence as ‘the most difficult and least satisfactory service of the press in Britain’.^[80]

The activity of the new journalists became evident in the South African War when a small noisy group through control over the telegraph and the press were able to foment friction. The editor of the Cape Times was a special correspondent of two London dailies and editors of leading Johannesburg journals were imported from England to support the policy of Rhodes. The difficulties of The Times gave Northcliffe an opportunity to exploit personalities in the growth of antagonism to Germany. Newspapers ceased to emphasize views important to France and became anti-German; as it was in the words of Norman Angell ‘most profitable to increase that national danger which was already her greatest danger’.^[81] Lack of professional standards was responsible for the remarks of Sir Mount Stuart Grant Duff: ‘The diplomatists and foreign ministers of Europe would get on perfectly well together and settle their own differences but for the new journalists intermeddling and stirring up international jealousy and spite.’^[82] The emphasis on personalities was evident in the claim that the resentment of Edward VII at criticism by the Kaiser of his participation in a week-end game of baccarat—the Tranby Croft episode—was the real beginning of the Anglo-French entente.^[83] We can perhaps subscribe to Acton’s remark that ‘nothing causes more envy and unfairness in men’s view of history than the interest which is inspired by individual characters’.^[84] Control of The Times by Northcliffe after 1908 facilitated a combination of prestige and circulation. The influence of American experience is shown in the work of F. W. Wile, a correspondent of the Chicago Daily News, and a temporary correspondent of the Daily Mail, who interviewed the British Secretary of War and gave the exclusive news to the Daily Mail for which he was rewarded by being placed in charge of the Berlin Bureau. Wile writes that immediately prior to the outbreak of war a member of the Foreign Office in Berlin about to sign his passport ‘threw down the pen on the table, and said he absolutely refused to sign a passport for Wile because he hated him so and because he believed he had been largely instrumental in bringing about the war’.^[85] Whether we believe him or believe that he believed this, the remark is sinister. Norman Angell wrote that where the instructive modes of conduct were pretty evenly balanced, the power of an individual such as Northcliffe was decisive.^[86]

The impact of the new journalism imported from the United States and adapted to Great Britain was even more conspicuous in the First Great War. The role of Northcliffe in the reorganization of the Cabinet has been discussed at length and I shall be content with a comment by Mr. Winston Churchill after the Coalition. Northcliffe ‘wielded power without official responsibility, enjoyed secret knowledge without the general view, and distributed the fortunes of national leaders without being willing to bear their burdens’.^[87] But the new journalism brought a new type of politician. Frank Dilnot has described the friendly, informal way of Lloyd George with journalists, ‘so far as Cabinet Ministers are concerned is something of a revolution’.^[88] H. W. Massingham commented on the change. ‘Unhappily for political society it breeds a dozen Lloyd Georges for one Courtney—our suicidal journalism understands only the first type and ignores or belittles the other’.^[89] The new type of politician had few scruples in using the press. Whether or not we accept the opinion of George Lansbury that Lloyd George would have ended the war at the time of the Russian Revolution if he thought he could have beaten Northcliffe and the Daily Mail,^[90] it is clear that Lloyd George’s control over the Daily Chronicle became a measure of self-defence.

After the war Kennedy Jones admitted that the press had over-emphasized its importance and power and that it lost prestige and was distrusted by the public. Northcliffe and the Daily Mail were followed by Beaverbrook and the Daily Express. Interest in European politics was displaced by interest in Imperial preference. Large newspapers must have a foreign policy. The density and distribution of large centres of population in Great Britain, as contrasted with the United States, favoured the establishment of regional editions of the large London papers. In turn the small number of papers with large circulation made a policy of control over newsprint mills and supplies of raw material more important than in the United States. In turn large aggregations of capital were wholly concerned with circulation and advertising revenue. In the use of insurance schemes and other devices to increase circulation the attempt to secure acceptance of British Empire preference occupied an important place. It would be dangerous to accept the claims of the newspapers concerned but Beverley Baxter wrote that Neville Chamberlain saw Beaverbrook and ‘a real peace was arranged based on a broad if not a precise acceptance of Beaverbrook’s policy’. ‘Beaverbrook won the battle of policy and lost the battle of personalities.’^[91] In any case free trade came to an end. As in the United States, the monopoly position of a group of papers invited competition from others anxious to take advantage of improved technology and to serve neglected purchasers and readers. The phenomenal success of the Daily Herald in expanding circulation pointed to the limitations of established papers. Newspapers such as the Morning Post, unable to compete in the race for circulation, became ‘a parasite in the advertising business’ and disappeared.^[92] The claim that obsession with advertising and circulation in the period from 1919 to 1939 coincided with a lack of intelligent interest in public affairs, and a lack of effective opposition to foreign policy at an early date, appears to have justification.^[93] Foreign policy reflected the lumpy character of technological development and the monopolistic demands of newspapers.

The impact of Anglo-American journalism on Continental journalism was delayed as a result of differences in language and the stronger position of the book.^[94] French newspapers were less subject to the overwhelming influence of the advertiser and more subject to the influence of direct subsidy shown in the effects of Russian and Italian bribery. Journalists played a more important role in political life. A common proverb prevailed that journalism led to everything provided one got out of it. The German press retained the characteristics it had developed under the tutelage of Bismarck. A student of the press has referred to ‘the poisoning of public opinion by the newspaper press in all the great countries’.^[95] Kent Cooper, manager of the Associated Press, stated that ‘the mighty propaganda carried on through these channels in the last hundred years has been one of the causes of war that has not yet been uncovered’.^[96] But European civilization was still dominated by the book, and war between Germany and Anglo-Saxon countries could be described as a clash between the book and the newspaper. Germany was unable to appreciate the power of the newspaper in Anglo-Saxon countries, and collapse was in fact a result of increasing difficulties of understanding incidental to differences in development of the newspaper in the two regions. By the newspaper, democracy had completely expelled the book from the normal life of the people.^[97] One is perhaps in danger of accepting at face value the description of the work of propagandists during the war from 1914 to 1918 but undoubtedly much can be attributed to the work of Northcliffe, ‘a master of mass suggestion’.^[98] Advertising technique had not developed in Germany to the point that propaganda could be effectively used or effectively resisted.

The Treaty of Versailles reflected the influence of the printing press by its emphasis on self-determination as a governing principle but it neglected the importance of the spoken word which was capitalized by the radio. Limitations of the press in Germany facilitated the rapid development of the radio in contrast with restrictions imposed on it through the influence of the press with its interest in advertising in England. Regions dominated by the German language were powerfully influenced by Hitler in his efforts to extend the German Reich. In regions dominated by the English language during the war resources were mobilized more effectively by the speeches of Churchill and Roosevelt. Dissimilarities in language were an important factor in the development of underground movements in occupied countries. The Russian language proved an effective barrier to German propaganda. With the radio and events changing dramatically from moment to moment, people of the same language began to rely on it for information and with the possibilities of control of technical equipment it became a powerful instrument for propaganda.^[99] If the First World War might be regarded as a clash between the newspaper and the book, the Second World War was a clash between the newspaper and the radio.

Technological advance in communication implies a narrowing of the range from which material is distributed and a widening of the range of reception in which large numbers receive, but are unable to make, any direct response. Those on the receiving end of material from a mechanized central system are precluded from participation in healthy, vigorous, and vital discussion. Instability of public opinion which follows the introduction of new inventions in communication designed to reach large numbers of people is exploited by those in control of the inventions. Mr. Hearst has advised that the important thing for a newspaper to do in making circulation is to get excited when the public is excited.^[100] The lumpy character of new developments in communication and the appeal to lower levels of intelligence by unstable people accentuates instability if not insanity. It is only necessary to recall the effects of the radio as shown in the Munich crisis and especially in Orson Welles’s Invasion from Mars. In the attempt to reach larger numbers, a new type of skill on the part of the writer becomes necessary in which, in contrast with the monotony of hard labour which leaves more time to think, the fatigue and monotony of the new type of brain-work leaves exhaustion.

As a result of the emphasis on simplicity on the part of the writer, the problems of government become more complex. Large numbers of professional organizations and dispensers of propaganda learned their trade during the First World War.^[101] ‘The epidemic itch for manipulating the public has infected the population in a rash of press agents, publicity experts, advertisers, and propagandists.’^[102] As a result the role of the civil service becomes more important and the position of bureaucracies is strengthened. Dicey’s^[103] remark that ‘laws . . . are . . . among the most potent of the many causes which create public opinion’ has gained in weight. Even Kennedy Jones conceded the power of government as a source of news and deplored the development of an agency system in Downing Street in which the agent was chosen for his ability to gauge correctly the effects of suppression of truth. Governments with their control over news can exercise what is called leadership. To give the appearance of maintaining control over policy, newspapers are compelled to keep very close to government leaders and are precluded from criticism. To appear consistent the newspaper is compelled to adopt a broad policy which will permit change without the appearance of change and the possibility of unostentatiously taking curves.

We have suggested that the enormous technological advance at various stages in the production of the newspaper has been supported by the increasing power of advertising reflected in changes in the character of news, features, and editorial opinions. The new journalism emphasized a vast range of interests at the expense of politics and with the rise of public relations agencies lost the power to expose abuses, particularly abuses from which it gains. As a result of its interrelation with news, features, and editorial opinion, advertising became monopolistic in relation to a monopolistic press and imposed its influence on political, social, and economic life. The consequent maladjustments were evident in the boom of the twenties and the depression and were to an important extent a result of expansion of the press and of a new instrument of communication—the radio. Public opinion became less stable and instability became a prime weakness serving as a forced draft in the expansion of the twenties and exposed to collapse in the depression.

The highly sensitive system created in advertising through the press faced disaster and compelled large-scale state intervention. We can appreciate Thorold Rogers’s remarks that ‘variations of high and low prices, which a century ago would have excited little attention and caused little alarm, in our day when production and trade are so sensitive and so complicated rouse the gravest apprehensions and exercise the attention of the most laborious and acute investigators into economical phenomena and economical agencies’.^[104]

Government intervention implied the growth of nationalism. Advertising through the press contributed directly and indirectly to the growth of tariffs except as we have seen in such raw materials as newsprint used by advertisers, and the inadequacies of tariffs in the depression were met by manipulation of exchange rates and concern with monetary control with results suggested by Professor Robbins in his analysis of the great depression. Maine’s remark that ‘energy poured into the study of economics and especially of money leads to the neglect of politics and government’^[105] have been amply underlined. Economic writing and discussion have become increasingly nationalistic, concerned with specific legislation and specific economic and social trends. To paraphrase Mr. Dooley, when the whole world goes crazy the social scientist must go crazy too.

The weakness of the social sciences has been shown in the increasing concern with national statistics. Von Beckerath has stated that ‘truth in the social sciences is often nothing but consistency and conformity to facts, endeavours and ideas with the basic tenets of the respective society’.^[106] For example, concentration on study of the business cycle has possibly influenced the course of business cycles in the sense that nature copies art. The creation of a belief in the business cycle may lead to action on the part of business men designed to respond to the business cycle and possibly intensify, possibly check, the violence of booms and depressions. Nations which have not had the advantage of special studies of the business cycles will probably have different types of business cycles. Professor Ohlin has complained of the insularity of Anglo-American economic thought in the neglect of Wicksell’s work for a period of two decades, but he forgets the bias of economics which makes the best economists come from powerful countries. The influence of economists in special studies is reinforced by their active role in business and government. Business men and governments are apt to insist on hearing and reading what they want to hear and read and consequently are provided with what they want to hear and read.

Nationalism weakens an interest in universal laws. Similarity in patterns of development in administrative techniques within nations are misinterpreted as laws. The results are evident in the character of writing in the social sciences in this century. A letter from Hume to Adam Smith contains the sentence: ‘Nothing, indeed, can be a stronger presumption of falsehood than the approbation of the multitude’,^[107] and this opinion persisted in such remarks in the nineteenth century as those of G. C. Lewis: ‘The concurrence of the crowd is a proof of the worst side’,^[108] or of George Sand: ‘There is nothing so undemocratic as the mass of the people.’ The necessity of a sustained interest in the social sciences was reflected in a comment of Christopher North that ‘political economy is not a subject for a magazine’^[109] and of Marshall, ‘you cannot afford to tell the truth for half a crown’.^[110] The contrast in the twentieth century became evident in the belief of Keynes that it could be sold for two half-crowns. The tradition of Marshall’s monopoly of teaching and his reluctance to publish was continued by Pigou and led to a disequilibrium of economic thought and the outpouring of Keynesian literature. The decline in influence of the politician in the press was shown in the political failure of the Versailles Treaty and the success of Keynes’s Economic Consequences of the Peace.

The limitations of these new attempts to offset the influence of nationalism have been suggested in Mantoux’s Economic Consequences of Mr. Keynes in which it was argued that the point of view of Anglo-Saxon law and its concern with trade and commerce ignored the point of view of continental and Roman law and its concern with political and military considerations. The weakness of the social sciences as a result of the obsession with national statistics became evident in this neglect of differences which had become more acute with the later development of the press on the Continent. The impact of science on industrialism in England reduced the possibility of speculative interest in law peculiar to the Continent. The rigid concept of property in Roman law failed to provide a basis for the growth of trade and of political economy in contrast with the elastic concept of ownership in common law. In common-law countries political economy emerged to meet the problems of law in industry and commerce. Under the influence of law, Adam Smith extended his speculations to political economy but his tradition was not sufficiently strong to resist the influences of nationalism. The interrelations of law and political economy have been noted by Sir Henry Maine.

Political economy as an extension of law was accompanied by an enormous advance in order and in turn of industry and commerce in the nineteenth century and had the advantages and limitations of law. ‘The less of science claimed for law, the greater the element of justice dispensed in its administration. The more the law seeks formal objectivity the less justice it may be feared will be strained out.’^[112] ‘Social things do not lend themselves to precision and whatever principles we get that are precise do not lend themselves to social things.’^[113] ‘If the social sciences as sciences formulate themselves so analytically and autonomously as to rise above custom and gossip they cease to be social. If they remain social they will be so involved in the medley of life as no longer to be scientific in terms of the indicated precision.’^[114] Bagehot wrote that ‘the practical value of the science of political economy . . . lies in its middle principles’.^[115] ‘No social science of any department is decisive in the sense of being in a position to dictate to us the necessary or the best lines of conduct.’^[116]

The effects of nationalism shown in a concern for aggregates, estimates, and averages has accentuated a narrowing interest in mathematical abstractions and a neglect of the limitations of precision. Maurice Dobb has complained of the obsession with algebraic symbols and the neglect of the value of labour. European writers such as Pareto who did important work in mathematics round out their studies by treatises in sociology. Marshall has commended Bentham for stressing the importance of measurement. ‘When you have found a means of measurement you have a ground for controversy and so it is a means of progress’,^[117] but there have been signs that it has become a basis of immodest finality. We are reminded of Pliny’s comment that magic embraced religion, mathematics, and medicine, the three arts that most rule the human mind. We would do well to remember the statement of Gibbon: ‘As soon as I understood the principles I relinquished forever the pursuit of mathematics, nor can I lament that I desisted before my mind was hardened by the habit of rigid demonstration, so destructive to the finer feelings of moral evidence.’ Hallam wrote that

The neglect of law and of qualitative considerations has accentuated an interest in the price system with the result that the impact of advertising through the press on the social sciences has been overwhelming. The powerful influence of the logic of mathematics and the natural sciences has contributed to the rigidity of law and increased the complexity of legislation and the power of bureaucracy and authoritarianism. The cumulative effects have been evident in the crowding of weaker students from mathematics and the natural sciences into the social sciences where their slight knowledge of mathematics gives them an advantage. It is perhaps the cumulative bias of mathematics which has led Professor T. V. Smith to remark that whereas growth is continuous, social science seems almost to shift base from time to time rather than to grow from more to more upon the same trunk.^[119]

Perhaps the most serious results of these tendencies are shown in the lack of interest among social scientists in other civilizations than those of the west, in the neglect of philosophical problems, and in the obsession with scholastic problems of reconciling dynamic and static theories. The Chinese concept of time, for example, as plural and characterized by a succession of times, which reflects their social organization with its interest in hierarchy and relative stability, as well as their concept of space, has been adapted through collective collaboration and experience to social life. The Western concept of time with its linear character, reinforced by the use of the decimal system, has in contrast a capacity for infinite extension to the past and the future and a limited capacity for adaptation.^[120] Our study of the press has suggested that insistence on time as a uniform and quantitative continuum has obscured qualitative differences and its disparate and discontinuous character. Advertisers build up monopolies of time to an important extent through the use of news. They are able to take full advantage of technological advances in communication and to place information before large numbers at the earliest possible moment. Marked changes in the speed of communication have far-reaching effects on monopolies over time because of their impact on the most sensitive elements of the economic system. It is suggested that it is difficult to overestimate the significance of technological change in communication or the position of monopolies built up by those who systematically take advantage of it. The disequilibrium created by the lumpy character of technological change in communication strikes at the heart of the economic system and has profound implications for the study of business disturbance. One might dilate on the implications of varying rates of development to the problem of international understanding and on the effects of rapid extensions of communication facilities on instability and the savagery of war, as Liddell Hart has done in comparing the savagery in the period following the invention of printing and that of the present century. Freedom of the press as guaranteed by the Bill of Rights in the United States has become the great bulwark of monopolies of time. The results of the American revolution hang heavily over the world’s destiny. It should be clear that improvements in communication tend to divide mankind, and perhaps I may be excused for ending this lecture without encroaching on copyright by using the words of a title of one of Aldous Huxley’s novels, Time must have a Stop.

Mis-spelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.

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[The end of The Press: A Neglected Factor in the Economic History of the Twentieth Century by Harold Adams Innis]