Meanwhile, there had appeared in connection with this new institution,
"The Press," a certain factor of the utmost importance: Capitalist
also in origin, and, therefore, inevitably exhibiting all the
poisonous vices of Capitalism as its effect flourished from more to
more. This factor was _subsidy through advertisement_.
At first the advertisement was not a subsidy. A man desiring to let a
thing be known could let it be known much more widely and immediately
through a newspaper than in any other fashion. He paid the newspaper
to publish the thing that he wanted known, as that he had a house to
let, or wine to sell.
But it was clear that this was bound to lead to the paradoxical state
of affairs from which we began to suffer in the later nineteenth
century. A paper had for its revenue not only what people paid in
order to obtain it, but also what people paid in order to get their
wares or needs known through it. It, therefore, could be profitably
produced at a cost greater than its selling price. Advertisement
revenue made it possible for a man to print a paper at a cost of 2d.
and sell it at 1d.
In the simple and earlier form of advertisement the extent and nature
of the circulation was the only thing considered by the advertiser,
and the man who printed the newspaper got more and more profit as he
extended that circulation by giving more reading matter for a
better-looking paper and still selling it further and further below
cost price.
When it was discovered how powerful the effect of suggestion upon the
readers of advertisements could be, especially over such an audience
as our modern great towns provide (a chaos, I repeat, of isolated
minds with a lessening personal experience and with a lessening
community of tradition), the value of advertising space rapidly rose.
It became a more and more tempting venture to "start a newspaper," but
at the same time, the development of capitalism made that venture more
and more hazardous. It was more and more of a risky venture to start a
new great paper even of a local sort, for the expense got greater and
greater, and the loss, if you failed, more and more rapid and serious.
Advertisement became more and more the basis of profit, and the giving
in one way and another of more and more for the 1d. or the 1/2d.
became the chief concern of the now wealthy and wholly capitalistic
newspaper proprietor.
Long before the last third of the nineteenth century a newspaper, if
it was of large circulation, was everywhere a venture or a property
dependent wholly upon its advertisers. It had ceased to consider its
public save as a bait for the advertiser. It lived (_in this phase_)
entirely on its advertisement columns.
V
Let us halt at this phase in the development of the thing to consider
certain other changes which were on the point of appearance, and why
they were on the point of appearance.
In the first place, if advertisement had come to be the stand-by of a
newspaper, the Capitalist owning the sheet would necessarily consider
his revenue from advertisement before anything else. He was indeed
_compelled_ to do so unless he had enormous revenues from other
sources, and ran his paper as a luxury costing a vast fortune a year.
For in this industry the rule is either very great profits or very
great and rapid losses--losses at the rate of £100,000 at least in a
year where a great daily paper is concerned.
He was compelled then to respect his advertisers as his paymasters. To
that extent, therefore, his power of giving true news and of printing
sound opinion was limited, even though his own inclinations should
lean towards such news and such opinion.
An individual newspaper owner might, for instance, have the greatest
possible dislike for the trade in patent medicines. He might object to
the swindling of the poor which is the soul of that trade. He might
himself have suffered acute physical pain through the imprudent
absorption of one of those quack drugs. But he certainly could not
print an article against them, nor even an article describing how they
were made, without losing a great part of his income, directly; and,
perhaps, indirectly, the whole of it, from the annoyance caused to
other advertisers, who would note his independence and fear friction
in their own case. He would prefer to retain his income, persuade his
readers to buy poison, and remain free (personally) from touching the
stuff he recommended for pay.
As with patent medicines so with any other matter whatsoever that was
advertised. However bad, shoddy, harmful, or even treasonable the
matter might be, the proprietor was always at the choice of publishing
matter which did not affect _him_, and saving his fortune, or refusing
it and jeopardizing his fortune. He chose the former course.
In the second place, there was an even more serious development.
Advertisement having become the stand-by of the newspaper the large
advertiser (as Capitalism developed and the controls became fewer and
more in touch one with the other) could not but regard his "giving" of
an advertisement as something of a favour.
There is always this psychological, or, if you will, artistic element
in exchange.
In pure Economics exchange is exactly balanced by the respective
advantages of the exchangers; just as in pure dynamics you have the
parallelogram of forces. In the immense complexity of the real world
material, friction, and a million other things affect the ideal
parallelogram of forces; and in economics other conscious passions
besides those of mere avarice affect exchange: there are a million
half-conscious and sub-conscious motives at work as well.
The large advertiser still _mainly_ paid for advertisement according
to circulation, but he also began to be influenced by less direct
intentions. He would not advertise in papers which he thought might by
their publication of opinion ultimately hurt Capitalism as a whole;
still less in those whose opinions might affect his own private
fortune adversely. Stupid (like all people given up to gain), he was
muddle-headed about the distinction between a large circulation and a
circulation small, but appealing to the rich. He would refuse
advertisements of luxuries to a paper read by half the wealthier class
if he had heard in the National Liberal Club, or some such place, that
the paper was "in bad taste."
Not only was there this negative power in the hands of the advertiser,
that of refusing the favour or patronage of his advertisements, there
was also a positive one, though that only grew up later.
The advertiser came to see that he could actually dictate policy and
opinion; and that he had also another most powerful and novel weapon
in his hand, which was the _suppression_ of news.
We must not exaggerate this element. For one thing the power
represented by the great Capitalist Press was a power equal with that
of the great advertisers. For another, there was no clear-cut
distinction between the Capitalism that owned newspapers and the
Capitalism that advertised. The same man who owned "The Daily Times"
was a shareholder in Jones's Soap or Smith's Pills. The man who
gambled and lost on "The Howl" was at the same time gambling and
winning on a bucket-shop advertised in "The Howl." There was no
antagonism of class interest one against the other, and what was more
they were of the same kind and breed. The fellow that got rich quick
in a newspaper speculation--or ended in jail over it--was exactly the
same kind of man as he who bought a peerage out of a "combine" in
music halls or cut his throat when his bluff in Indian silver was
called. The type is the common modern type. Parliament is full of it,
and it runs newspapers only as one of its activities--all of which
need the suggestion of advertisement.
The newspaper owner and the advertiser, then, were intermixed. But on
the balance the advertising interest being wider spread was the
stronger, and what you got was a sort of imposition, often quite
conscious and direct, of advertising power over the Press; and this
was, as I have said, not only negative (that was long obvious) but, at
last, positive.
Sometimes there is an open battle between the advertiser and the
proprietor, especially when, as is the case with framers of artificial
monopolies, both combatants are of a low, cunning, and unintelligent
type. Minor friction due to the same cause is constantly taking place.
Sometimes the victory falls to the newspaper proprietor, more often to
the advertiser--never to the public.
So far, we see the growth of the Press marked by these
characteristics. (1) It falls into the hands of a very few rich men,
and nearly always of men of base origin and capacities. (2) It is, in
their hands, a mere commercial enterprise. (3) It is economically
supported by advertisers who can in part control it, but these are of
the same Capitalist kind, in motive and manner, with the owners of the
papers. Their power does not, therefore, clash in the main with that
of the owners, but the fact that advertisement makes a paper, has
created a standard of printing and paper such that no one--save at a
disastrous loss--can issue regularly to large numbers news and opinion
which the large Capitalist advertisers disapprove.
There would seem to be for any independent Press no possible economic
basis, because the public has been taught to expect for 1d. what it
costs 3d. to make--the difference being paid by the advertisement
subsidy.
But there is now a graver corruption at work even than this always
negative and sometimes positive power of the advertiser.
It is the advent of the great newspaper owner as the true governing
power in the political machinery of the State, superior to the
officials in the State, nominating ministers and dismissing them,
imposing policies, and, in general, usurping sovereignty--all this
secretly and without responsibility.
It is the chief political event of our time and is the peculiar mark
of this country to-day. Its full development has come on us suddenly
and taken us by surprise in the midst of a terrible war. It was
undreamt of but a few years ago. It is already to-day the capital fact
of our whole political system. A Prime Minister is made or deposed by
the owner of a group of newspapers, not by popular vote or by any
other form of open authority.
No policy is attempted until it is ascertained that the newspaper
owner is in favour of it. Few are proffered without first consulting
his wishes. Many are directly ordered by him. We are, if we talk in
terms of real things (as men do in their private councils at
Westminster) mainly governed to-day, not even by the professional
politicians, nor even by those who pay them money, but by whatever
owner of a newspaper trust is, for the moment, the most unscrupulous
and the most ambitious.
How did such a catastrophe come about? That is what we must inquire
into before going further to examine its operation and the possible
remedy.