good birth, and with intellect, Australia bestows its enthusiastic
idolatry on the individual possessed of great riches. Patriotism, good
conduct, character, intelligence, imagination, fancy, unselfishness,
brilliancy of expression--all these things are quite unnecessary in
local social circles. It is only when they have been translated into a
cash value that they can be seriously considered. It is not that brains
are ruled out of court. They are always tolerated. But it is only when
they have allied themselves with some kind of commercial success that
they are sought after. The ideal before the community--the ideal that
finds expression in society, that shines through the restless eyes of
the women, and stamps itself on the dissatisfied faces of the men--is
nothing if not a monetary one. Strictly speaking, therefore, it is not
an ideal at all. Money will purchase everything that the country has
to offer, and for want of something else it does duty as the country’s
ideal.
It is unfortunate that the continent should be in this position--the
position of having nothing but a large fortune, a motor car, and a
quantity of expensive furniture to aim at. Henry Lawson and one or two
other poorly appreciated writers of talent have endeavoured to inspire
the people with a martial sentiment, but as yet without success. All
invocations to the “star of Australia” have so far fallen on deaf ears.
There is no star of Australia. It has not set, and it has never risen.
Until something unforeseen happens it does not seem likely to rise.
How can it? The well-spring from which patriotic aspirations mount up
has not yet been discovered. People with admirable intentions have
recommended Australia, as an escape from mere frivolous amusements, to
cultivate various forms of the strenuous life--for example, the life in
barracks, the life in libraries, the life on the intellectual mountain
top, the life in the home. It is unquestionable that a new development
of some kind is badly needed. Australia would reap a substantial
benefit, and one reflected throughout all ranks and conditions, if in
the near future it evolved _something_, whether it were a patriotic
ideal, a jingoistic ideal, a home-life ideal, a moral, intellectual,
religious, or even a physical ideal. If it is to play a respectable
part in future questions of magnitude it must, at any rate, develop
some variation in the pleasure-seeking, money-making, work-shirking
propensities that represent the greater part of its social life.
Probably the salvation, when it does come, will be wrought by the
working classes; for though they have blundered industrially, and
failed more than once politically, they have the confidence of numbers,
they are emancipated, and they are quick to learn. The ultimate destiny
of the Australian continent is very largely in their hands.
III
JOURNALISM
The many waves of thought, the mighty tides,
The ground swell that rolls up from other lands,
From far-off worlds, from dim eternal shores
Whose echo dashes on life’s wave-worn strands.
The people who are connected with journalism in Australia, as
elsewhere, fall naturally into three classes--managers, sub-editors,
and newspaper writers. There are numerous subdivisions, but these are
the three cardinal ones. The outside public does not always appreciate
the value of the classification just given. The outside public may,
therefore, in its tolerance, submit to be informed. For modern
journalism has become a vast and comprehensive and complex thing. It
touches every one, interests every one, more or less attracts every
one, more or less mystifies every one. The man who is not an outsider,
but who has had the lot to
See with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine--
who has been caught up and whirled round by the wheels, so to
speak--should be able to claim the privilege of describing his
observations and his sensations.
The managerial class is deserving of much respect, and usually gets
all that it deserves. Its members are few, but its influence is
undoubtedly great. Only a short account need be given of the character
and abilities of the handful of men who either own or manage the great
“dailies” of Australia.
For them the anonymity of the profession does not exist. They live much
in the public eye. They collect the praise; they accept the flattery;
they grow rich on the proceeds. The blame, when there is blame, is also
theirs. But what terrors can the breath of outside criticism have for
men who sell their papers at the rate of 30,000 or 40,000, or 100,000
a day? What profit is there in kicking against the pricks? These men
who control the city newspapers form a separate oligarchy, and a
powerful one. They are not troubled with any misgivings as to their own
potentialities in the cosmos. They have a practical working knowledge
of the world, and a vast confidence in themselves. Sometimes they know
how to write, sometimes they do not. In any case it does not matter.
Whatever brains they want they can easily purchase. They live in large
mansions in the suburbs, arrive at their offices at eleven o’clock in
the morning, go regularly to Government House, and deal in Napoleonic
fashion with complaints from the sub-editor, with suggestions from the
commercial world, with expostulations from aggrieved politicians, and
with applications for increases of salary from unsatisfied members of
the staff. They have won their way to big positions, and they know it.
It is an excellent and a pleasant thing to be the proprietor or the
manager of a large newspaper in Australia.
The sub-editors, again, form a class by themselves; they resemble
the managers in that they are not really journalists. Possibly at
some stage of their individual careers they may have been, but they
are so no longer. As a matter of fact they are the sworn enemies of
journalism. They stand like the British infantry at Waterloo--a sort
of cold iron palisade against which the effervescence of youthful
journalistic enterprise dashes itself in vain. They represent not so
much the literary, as the commercial instinct of the paper. They are
the outposts which a cautious management sets to keep watch against
the Philistines. The sub-editor has tremendous responsibility and very
little power. Therein lies the tragedy of his existence. Before he
begins his long series of vigils under the electric lamp, he knows that
while he will get no manner of praise if everything goes right, he will
get short and decisive shrift if anything goes wrong. He knows this
very well; and the knowledge makes him what he is.
A strange existence, a strange personality is that of the sub-editor.
He seems to resemble the patient, sleepless Eremite of Keats’s last
sonnet; he is always there, and he is always “watching with eternal
lids apart.” It is impossible not to admire him. He must, to be in
any sense worthy of his post, possess great abilities. The machine
that he controls is vast, unwieldy, and yet sensationally rapid in its
flight. The Rio Grande of Paterson’s Steeplechase did not require a
touch half so firm or half so fine to keep him in his course. Of the
thousand objectionable, offensive, libellous, dangerous, unnecessary
or unwise things that come under the sub-editor’s notice every week,
how many get past him? How many does he suffer to see the light of day?
It is impossible not to admire the sub-editor, but it is difficult to
like him. He must be a man without pity and without remorse. If he
made allowance for good intentions, if he judged otherwise than by
results, he would ruin his paper in a month. If he did not effectively
discourage the swarm of budding writers who attempt to rush him, he
would speedily have to cease publication. If he were not constantly
saying unpleasant things, he would inaugurate a reign of chaos. And
yet there are one or two first-class sub-editors in Australia who are
well liked, and by none better than by their victims. It is a strange
anomaly, but there it is. In any case it is a great tribute to the
personality of the man.
Of the third class, the order of journalists proper, a great deal
might be said. This class includes all those who get their living
by furnishing copy to the newspapers of the country. They are a
motley crowd; they number in their ranks representatives of all the
professions, and of no profession at all. They embrace men and women of
good social position, and men and women who are distinctly outside the
pale. They have no definite organisation, no professional status, no
formal rules of etiquette, no exclusive caste, no artificial barriers
against membership. They have one standard of living, unorthodoxy; one
bond of fellowship, Bohemianism; one passport to success, ability; one
aversion, dulness; one insidious enemy, human nature; one unreliable
friend--the world.
For these workers of the community there should be, in the aggregate,
a feeling of considerable respect and of no little sympathy. Of
respect, because in the mass they accomplish great things. The really
first-class journalist showers a wealth of good phrasing, clever
word-painting, wise discrimination, light fancy, brilliant humour,
and saving common-sense on the breakfast-tables of a quarter of a
million people each morning. He does all this and more. The result
has come to be looked upon as necessary, obvious, mechanical, in a
sense inevitable. It represents to the average reader the outpourings
of a great machine. And a machine it certainly is, but one that is
intricately fashioned, piece by piece, out of the minds and bodies,
and hopes and fears, and personal gifts and graces of tens of hundreds
of unrecognised writers. Unrecognised--the word that expresses always
the salvation of the bad journalist, and always the detriment, or the
ultimate ruin, of the good one.
These men are entitled to sympathy, or would be if they did not include
in their ranks so many specimens of moral obloquy, so many hopeless
outcasts from all the paths of reasonably sane and tolerable behaviour.
Journalism makes a man acquainted with strange bed-fellows. Yet, taking
it right through it contains probably more _ability_ than all the rest
of the professions put together, though possibly less _knowledge_ than
is to be found in any one of them. The newspaper writer, considered
as a type, is always overworked, and always underpaid. Australia in
this respect is no exception to other parts of the world. The men who
labour behind the veil of anonymous journalism are rewarded for the
most part with a living wage, and are swept out of sight as the new
generation comes along. When their initiative goes, they go. Time is
their deadliest enemy. Instead of fighting for them as it fights for
the barrister and the medical man, it is constantly threatening them
with loss of initiative, with loss of energy, with loss of brilliance.
Honey is proverbially sweet for a season; but no one knows better than
the journalist that the laurel which he wins this morning cannot last
till to-morrow.
As to the products of this handiwork--what is to be said of them? The
Australian newspaper has already developed a character of its own.
Its place is somewhere between the startling sensationalism of New
York and San Francisco, and the solemn impressiveness of the older
London school. The representative editor balances himself between
these two modes of journalism. He is seldom quite free from the
English traditions, but he knows his readers; he knows that they, too,
are somewhat under the influence of the older and more respectable
associations; he knows that, while they have no taste for solid
reading, and are always ready to be excited or amused, they have yet
a contempt for machine-made sensationalism, for foolish and frothy
elaboration, for staring capital letters, for shriekful epithets, for
the flimsier kind of composition that rears itself on a basis of sand.
Hence it may be that the press of the Commonwealth has followed, for
the most part, a middle course, and has endeavoured to be neither
too dull nor too picturesque. The effort has often resulted in
insignificance; but it has now and again achieved great success.
For purposes of illustration it is not necessary to go beyond Melbourne
and Sydney. The smaller capital cities, Adelaide, Brisbane, and Perth,
are content as a rule to follow their leaders. Whatever is good or
bad, or in any way distinctive at the centre, you will find reflected,
though in a slighter and paler fashion, in the towns further north
and further west. The same lines of demarcation hold good throughout
the continent. In each city one morning paper calls itself “liberal”
or “national,” while its rival goes one better, and styles itself
“radical” or “democratic.” The word “conservative” has become a taunt,
and is never an acknowledged title. The predominant tendency is for
the younger and more democratic organ to go beyond its older and more
serious competitor. The only important exception seems to be that in
Perth, where the _West Australian_ occupies a unique position. It
is the accented mouthpiece of “groperism”; that is to say, of those
privileged few who came to the State in early days, and monopolised
as much of the earth as seemed worthy of their attention. Needless
to add, these people are more conservative than they care to admit.
The newspaper of their choice is singularly popular considering the
circumstances. Under the guidance of an extraordinarily far-seeing and
subtle-minded editor who has a rare faculty for flattering a democratic
audience, while really ruling and guiding it--who knows also how to
bend to the storm when to beat against it is no longer possible--the
_West Australian_ is more widely read, and more influential, to-day
than it ever was, and that in the midst of a people containing a
stronger socialistic infusion than is to be met with elsewhere in
Australia.
It is in Melbourne and Sydney, however, that we get the most useful and
instructive illustrations of the working of the journalistic machine.
The _Age_ and _Argus_ in the former city; the _Morning Herald_ and
_Daily Telegraph_ in Sydney, represent the best that Australia has
yet been able to accomplish in this field of enterprise. The _Age_
is referred to first because it claims, and with an emphasis that
frightens contradiction, to have the largest circulation of any daily
south of the line. Its political influence, though perhaps hardly what
it was, has also to be reckoned with. The _Age_ has been in existence
just fifty-two years; it has been consistently fortunate in the men
behind it. More especially it has been fortunate in its proprietor.
It owes its power, its prestige, its circulation, its character, its
very existence to David Syme, who is still, at a venerable age, an
active, working journalist, and who has the distinction of being the
most respected and the most disliked man in Australia--perhaps also
one of the very best liked by the few who know him really well. That
he has used his immense power fearlessly, and on the whole for good,
is unquestionable. The present editor of the _Age_ acts up to the
policy of the proprietor. Never laying claim to pyrotechnical skill
as a writer, and not giving too much rein to his imagination, he is
yet pre-eminently shrewd, far seeing, clear-sighted, well informed,
capable, and where business interests are concerned, inflexible as
death itself. In private life no man could be more popular or more
deferentially urbane.
The _Argus_ suffers now, and has always suffered, from want of definite
and decisive leadership. On its general staff it has had during the
past ten or fifteen years more brilliant men--considered as reporters,
at any rate--than any other daily paper in the English language. But
instead of advancing to meet the times it has stood still, and talked
impressively of _many_ things. More particularly it has talked about
the dangers of empiricism, and the responsibilities of the press.
People read it, and will continue to read it, not so much for its
opinions, as for the graceful manner in which most of its writers
contrive to deal with the English language. For the rest its views on
Imperialism and Free-trade fall on unwilling ears.
The _Morning Herald_ is the oldest paper in the Commonwealth, and is
built on the same lines as the _Argus_. It has done great things for
the tone and temper of Australian journalism. Latterly, it has been
showing signs of democratic restlessness that have caused its older
admirers a certain amount of alarm.
The _Daily Telegraph_ is the Mary Jane of Australian journalism. It
is the most active, the most aggressive, the most tireless, the most
sensation-loving, the most hysterical, the most shrill-voiced, the most
daring, and the most inventive paper published on the continent. It is
a slab of San Francisco tumbled down in the vicinity of Botany Bay.
This reference to certain leading journals brings up a large
question--the question of the power of the newspaper press in
Australia. Is it an excessive power? And how does it compare with the
power of the press in other countries? So far as their political creeds
are concerned, the Australians have been called a newspaper-ridden
community. They are often too tired to think, and they let the paper
think for them. The writer recollects calling upon a prominent official
who had just returned to Melbourne after a visit for political purposes
to England. The first, and almost the only observation this gentleman
made, was that “They are not afraid of the newspapers in the old
country.” It was this circumstance that had impressed him more than
anything else, although during his absence he had been everywhere,
and had seen a great deal. If you are a public man you must read and
despise the papers. If you do not read them, you will miss something.
If you do not despise them, they will worry the life out of you. The
_Age_ is the stock instance of a paper from which tens of thousands
of adult, and supposedly intelligent voters have been content to take
their opinions. This journal has made and unmade many Ministries.
The _Sydney Daily Telegraph_ is aspiring to fill the same _rôle_,
but so far with not the same success. It is quite certain, however,
that Australian newspapers of the larger class possess more influence
in certain directions than is good either for themselves or for the
community.
Another question very often debated is that of the fairness or
otherwise of the press of the Commonwealth. Some of the leading
journals have a habit of assuring the public that they are scrupulously
fair; others discreetly say nothing on the subject; but almost every
one has adopted an admirable and impressive motto which it places on
view in a conspicuous place over the leading columns. The motto may
be intended as a salve for the consciences of the management. There
is a well-known story of a man who was not religious, but who always
took off his hat when passing a church. Having paid that homage to his
better instincts, he naturally felt more at liberty to cultivate his
other ones. Having hoisted his motto, and having made obeisance to
the abstract idea of fairness, the newspaper proprietor feels that he
must not allow himself to be regarded as in any sense a bigot, or a
moral fanatic. He has passed the church and taken off his hat. For the
rest, there are the interests of his paper to think about. If these
interests do not always coincide with the interests of individuals, the
circumstance is much to be regretted--from the point of view of the
individuals.
Some admirable diatribes have been uttered from pulpits and platforms,
and from Supreme Court benches, on the subject of newspaper morality in
Australia. During the hearing of a recent libel case in Melbourne, a
learned judge lashed himself into a white-heat of indignation over the
sinfulness of press writers who advocate views which they do not hold,
and refrain from publishing statements which they do not like. His
Honour found it hard to believe that such monsters could be discovered
walking the earth in the guise of men. Similar sentiments have been
echoed and re-echoed everywhere. There is nothing in the world quite
so fine as the average man’s idea of what a newspaper _ought_ to be.
No matter what this average man may be prepared to do, or to advocate,
or to believe himself, he is shocked beyond measure to find that even
an influential newspaper may have commercial instincts, that it may
not be disposed to love its enemies, that it may object to publishing
statements which tell against it, that it may be both unable and
unwilling to set an example of sublime innocence and spotless purity to
the people who read its pages.
A newspaper’s virtue, like a woman’s, has a special meaning, and the
meaning which outsiders attach to the word “virtue,” as applied to a
newspaper, is not necessarily that which obtains within the craft. The
goal which every management has in view is the goal of success--not
spiritual or ethical, but hard, financial, and materialistic success.
The proprietor’s virtue, the editor’s virtue, the writer’s virtue,
are synonymous, among members of the profession, with the ability to
produce a readable, a saleable, and an otherwise valuable article.
No one blames a lawyer for advocating a cause in which he does not
believe; no one censures a grocer for selling a brand of tea which he
does not personally like; no one objects to a carpenter putting up
houses in which he would not care to dwell. Why should the newspaper
be accused of unfairness when it does what is best for itself? Like
every private individual, it must keep within bounds. If it commits a
transgression there is always the libel law. If it indulges in personal
malice, there is always the gaol. The singular thing is that so many
journals--particularly the patriarchs of Sydney and Melbourne--should
be so anxious to assure the public of the excellence of their
intentions. As though good intentions had ever a market value, as
though the commercial instinct and the highest moral principles were
not always and necessarily opposed!
What of the newspaper writer’s calling as such? Is it worth following?
From the outside it looks attractive enough. Even from the inside it
has its charms, meretricious and otherwise. There is a certain glitter
and glamour about the profession, particularly in its early stages. The
absence of class distinctions helps the journalist, and makes his work
infinitely more agreeable. To a man with a real literary turn--or what
is even better, a news’ instinct--promotion comes rapidly. He escapes
the dull routine of other callings; he comes almost immediately into
the larger portion of his inheritance. The reputation that blossoms
towards the end of life, the rewards that come eventually, but with
glacial slowness, the solid and sure gains of experience, all these are
no part of his outlook. But he acquires in a few months a reputation
and a standing that elsewhere are only the product of years. He
steps at once into a wide and breezy circle; he is thrown into daily
contact with the most interesting, the most notorious, and the most
illustrious personages of the time. About the work itself there is a
peculiar, mirage-like quality; it always seems to be pointing beyond
the desert of daily drudgery, beyond the arid region of hack-work and
small salaries, to the smiling country of fortune and literary fame.
The young newspaper writer “never is, but is always to be, blest.”
There are many people who do not require to be warned against
journalism; they drift into it, or fall into it, after chequered
experiences elsewhere. But to the youth who has a choice of
professions, and who thinks of choosing this one, a word of counsel may
be tendered. There is no calling that makes such demands on talent,
that asks so much, or that treats its tried servants so badly in the
end. The man on the general staff of a big Australian daily, may for a
year or two, or for a dozen years, have a good share of what the heart
desires. He may have a degree of reputation, an amount of ready money,
a following of friends; but the money, the friends, the reputation are
all liable to vanish at brief notice. The more brilliant the writer
is, the more quickly does he exhaust his stock of nervous energy. After
the first few years, time, as already remarked, begins to work, not
_for_, but _against_ him; the more capable and the more talked of he
is, the more insidiously do adverse influences begin to grow up. As a
rule, his is not the temperament which weighs chances, or lays up store
for the future: and when the day of his mental ascendancy is past, the
management regretfully but firmly shows him the door.