Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian
Libraries)
_The Weinstock Lectures on The Morals of Trade_
THE CONFLICT BETWEEN PRIVATE MONOPOLY AND GOOD CITIZENSHIP.
By JOHN GRAHAM BROOKS.
COMMERCIALISM AND JOURNALISM.
By HAMILTON HOLT.
THE BUSINESS CAREER IN ITS PUBLIC RELATIONS.
By ALBERT SHAW.
COMMERCIALISM AND JOURNALISM
By
HAMILTON HOLT
MANAGING EDITOR OF THE INDEPENDENT
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
_The Riverside Press Cambridge_
1909
COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published December 1909_
BARBARA WEINSTOCK
LECTURES ON THE MORALS OF TRADE
This series will contain essays by representative scholars and men of
affairs dealing with the various phases of the moral law in its bearing
on business life under the new economic order, first delivered at the
University of California on the Weinstock foundation.
COMMERCIALISM AND JOURNALISM
In the United States of America, public opinion prevails. It is an
axiom of the old political economy, as well as of the new sociology,
that no man, or set of men, may with impunity defy public opinion; no
law can be enforced contrary to its behests; and even life itself is
scarcely worth living without its approbation. Public opinion is the
ultimate force that controls the destiny of our democracy.
By common consent we editors are called the "moulders of public
opinion." Writing in our easy chairs or making suave speeches over the
walnuts and wine, we take scrupulous care to expatiate on this phase of
our function. But the real question is: who "moulds" us? for assuredly
the hand that moulds the editor moulds the world.
I propose to discuss this evening the ultimate power in control of our
journals. And this as you will see implies such vital questions as: Are
we editors free to say what we believe? Do we believe what we say? Do
we fool all the people some of the time, some of the people all the
time, or only ourselves? Is advertising or circulation--profits or
popularity--our secret solicitude? Or do we follow faithfully the stern
daughter of the voice of God? In short, is journalism a profession or a
business?
There are almost as many answers to these questions as there are people
to ask them. There are those of us who jubilantly burst into poetry,
singing:--
"Here shall the press the people's rights maintain,
Unawed by influence and unbribed by gain."
On the other hand there are some of us quite ready to corroborate from
our own experience the confessions of one New York journalist who
wrote:--
There is no such thing in America as an independent press. I am
paid for keeping honest opinions out of the paper I am connected
with. If I should allow honest opinions to be printed in one issue
of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation, like
Othello's, would be gone. The business of a New York journalist is
to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to
fawn at the foot of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race
for his daily bread. We are the tools or vassals of the rich men
behind the scenes. Our time, our talents, our lives, our
possibilities, are all the property of other men. We are
intellectual prostitutes.
I come to California, therefore, to tell you with all sincerity and
candor the real conditions under which we editors do our work, and the
forces that help and hinder us in the discharge of our duties to
society and to the journals that we control or that control us.
And, first, let me give you succinctly some idea of the magnitude of
the industry that we are to discuss. The Census, in its latest bulletin
on "Printing and Publishing in the United States," truly and tritely
remarks that "Printing occupies a unique position among industries, and
in certain aspects excels all others in interest, since the printed
page has done more to advance civilization than any other human
agency."
But not only does the printing industry excel all other industries in
human interest, it excels them in the relative progress it is making.
The latest available figures, published in 1905 by the Government, show
that the capital invested in the publishing business had doubled in the
preceding half decade, despite the fact that publishing is almost
unique among industries in the diffusion of its establishments, and in
the tenacity with which it still clings to competition in an age of
combination. Since 1850 the whole industry has increased over
thirty-fold, while all other industries have increased only
fifteen-fold. The number of publications in the country, as given, is
21,394. These are capitalized at $239,505,949; they employ 48,781
salaried officers, and 96,857 wage-earners. Their aggregate circulation
per issue is 139,939,229; and their aggregate number of copies issued
during the year is 10,325,143,188. They consume 2,730,000 tons of
paper, manufactured from 100,000 acres of timber. These 21,394
periodicals receive $145,517,591, or 47 per cent of their receipts,
from advertising, and $111,298,691, or 36 per cent of the receipts from
sales and subscriptions. They are divided into 2452 dailies, of which
about one third are issued in the morning and two thirds in the
evening; 15,046 weeklies; 2500 monthlies, and a few bi-weeklies,
semi-weeklies, quarterlies, etc.
The number of these periodicals has doubled in the last twenty-five
years, but at the present moment the monthlies are increasing the
fastest, next, the weeklies, and last, the dailies. The dailies issue
enough copies to supply every inhabitant of the United States with one
every fourth issue, the weeklies with one every other issue, and the
monthlies with one copy of each issue for nine months of the year. One
third of all these papers are devoted to trade and special interests.
The remaining two thirds are devoted to news, politics, and family
reading.
Undoubtedly there are many contributing causes which have made the
periodical industry grow faster than all other industries of the
country. I shall mention only six.
First. The cheapening of the postal, telephone, and telegraph rates,
and the introduction of such conveniences as the rural free delivery,
so that news and general information can be collected and distributed
cheaply and with dispatch.
Second. The introduction of the linotype machines, rapid and multiple
presses, and other mechanical devices, which vastly increase the output
of every shop that adopts them.
Third. The photo-process of illustrating, which threatens to make
wood- and steel-engraving a lost art, and which, on account of its
cheapness and attractiveness, has made possible literally thousands
of pictured publications that never could have existed before.
Fourth. The growing diffusion of education throughout the country. Our
high schools, to say nothing of our colleges and universities, alone
graduate 125,000 pupils a year,--all of them fit objects of solicitude
to the newsdealer and subscription-agent.
Fifth. The use of wood pulp in the manufacture of paper, by which the
largest item in the cost of production has been greatly diminished.
Sixth. The phenomenal growth of advertising.
I shall not attempt to amplify the first five of these causes
responsible for the unparalleled growth of periodical literature. But
the sixth I shall discuss at some length, for advertising is by all
odds the greatest factor in the case.
In olden times the dailies carried only a very little advertising--a
few legal notices, an appeal for the return of a strayed cow, or a
house for sale. It is only within the past fifty years that advertising
as a means of bringing together the producer and consumer began. And,
curiously enough, the men who first began to appreciate the immense
selling-power that lay in the printed advertisement were "makers" or
"fakirs," of patent medicines. The beginning of modern advertising is
in fact synchronous with the beginnings of the patent-medicine
business.
Even magazine advertising, which is now the most profitable and
efficacious of all kinds, did not originate until February, 1860, when
"The Atlantic Monthly" printed its first "ad." "Harper's" was founded
simply as a medium for selling the books issued from the Franklin
Square House, and all advertisements from outsiders were declined.
George P. Rowell, the dean of advertising agents, in his amusing
autobiography, tells how Harper & Brothers in the early seventies
refused an offer of $18,000 from the Howe Sewing Machine Company for a
year's use of the last page of the magazine; and Mr. Rowell adds that
he had this information from a member of the firm, of whose veracity he
had no doubt, though at the same sitting he heard Mr. Harper tell
another man about the peculiarities of that section of Long Island
where the Harpers originated, assuring him the ague prevailed there to
such an extent that all his ancestors had quinine put into their graves
to keep the corpses from shaking the sand off.
Before the Civil War it is said that the largest advertisement that
ever appeared in a newspaper was given by the E. & T. Fairbanks
Company, and published in the New York "Tribune," which charged $3000
for it. Now the twenty large department stores alone of New York City
spend, so it is estimated, $4,000,000 a year for advertising, while one
Chicago house is said to appropriate $500,000 a year for publicity in
order to sell $15,000,000 worth of goods. Those products which are
believed to be advertised to the extent of $750,000 or more a year
include the Uneeda Biscuits, Royal Baking Powder, Grape Nuts, Force,
Fairy Soap and Gold Dust, Swift's Hams and Bacon, the Ralston Mills
food-products, Sapolio, Ivory Soap, and Armour's Extract of Beef. The
railroads are also very large general advertisers. In 1903 they spent
over a million and a quarter dollars in publicity, though this did not
include free passes for editors, who, I may parenthetically remark,
thanks to the recent Hepburn Act, are now forced to pay their way
across the continent just like ordinary American citizens.
It is computed that there are about 20,000 general advertisers in the
country and about a million local advertisers. Between the two,
$145,517,591 was spent in 1905 to get their products before the public.
The Census gives only the totals and does not classify the advertising
that appears in the dailies, weeklies, and monthlies. The Rev. Cyrus
Townsend Brady, however, has made a very illuminating study[1] of the
advertising and circulation conditions of 39 of the leading monthly
magazines published in the United States. The first thing that struck
his attention was the fact that candid and courteous replies to his
requests for information were vouchsafed by all the publishers--quite a
contrast to what would have happened from a similar inquiry a
generation ago. He next discovered that these 39 magazines, which had
an aggregate circulation of over 10,000,000 copies per month, could put
a full-page advertisement into the hands of 600,000,000 readers, or
seven times the population of the United States, for the astonishingly
insignificant sum of $12,000, or for two thousandths of a cent for each
reader.
[1] _The Critic_, August, 1905.
The amount paid by the purchasers of these 39 magazines was
$15,000,000, for which they received 36,000 pages of text and pictures,
and 25,000 pages of advertisements. Magazine advertisements are better
written and better illustrated than the reading matter. This is because
they are of no use to the man who pays for their insertion if they do
not attract attention, whereas the contributor's interest in his
article after its acceptance is mostly nominal. That is, the advertiser
must win several thousand readers; the contributor has to win but one
editor.
These 39 magazines were found to receive $18,000,000 a year from their
advertisements and $15,000,000 from their sales and subscriptions. This
shows that in monthly magazines the receipts from advertising and
subscriptions are about the same. In weeklies the receipts from
advertising are often four times as much as the receipts from sales and
subscriptions, while in the dailies the proportion is even greater. The
owner of one of the leading evening papers in New York told me that 90
per cent of its total receipts came from advertising. From whatever
standpoint you approach the subject, it is the advertisements that are
becoming the most important factor in publishing. Indeed, some students
in Yale University carried this out to its logical conclusion last
autumn by launching a college daily supported wholly by the revenues
from advertisements. They put a free copy every morning on the door-mat
before each student's room. If it were not for the postal prohibition
many dailies and other periodicals would make money by being given
away.
Thus you see that if there were no advertisements and the publishers
had to rely on their sales and subscriptions for their receipts, the
monthlies would have to double their price, and the weeklies and
dailies multiply theirs from four to ten times. This advantage to the
reading public must certainly be put to the credit of advertising.
The preponderance of advertising over subscription receipts, however,
is of comparatively recent occurrence. Thirty years ago the receipts
from subscriptions and sales of all the American periodicals exceeded
those from advertising by $11,000,000; twenty years ago they were about
equal; and to-day the advertising exceeds the subscriptions and sales
by $35,000,000.
In 1880 the total amount of advertising was equivalent to the
expenditure of 78 cents for every inhabitant in the United States; in
1905 it was $1.79. On the other hand, the per capita value of
subscriptions has increased hardly at all. The reason of this is the
fall of the price of subscriptions. We take more papers but pay less--a
cent a copy. Comparatively few buy the New York "Evening Post" for
three cents. This is all the more remarkable, because advertising is
the most sensitive feature of a most sensitive business and is sure to
suffer first in any industrial crisis or depression.
No wonder that the man who realizes the significance of all these
figures and the trend disclosed by them is coming to look upon the
editorial department of the newspaper as merely a necessary means of
giving a literary tone to the publication, thus helping business men
get their wares before the proper people. Mr. Trueman A. DeWeese, in
his recent significant volume, "Practical Publicity," thinks that this
is about what Mr. Curtis, the proprietor of "The Ladies' Home Journal,"
would say if he ventured to say what he really thought:--
It is not my primary purpose to edify, entertain, or instruct a
million women with poems, stories, and fashion-hints. Mr. Bok may
think it is. He is merely the innocent victim of a harmless
delusion, and he draws a salary for being deluded. To be frank and
confidential with you, "The Ladies' Home Journal" is published
expressly for the advertisers. The reason I can put something in
the magazines that will catch the artistic eye and make glad the
soul of the reader is because a good advertiser finds that it pays
to give me $4000 a page, or $6 an agate line, for advertising
space.
Yes, the tremendous power of advertising is the most significant thing
about modern journalism. It is advertising that has enabled the press
to outdistance its old rivals, the pulpit and the platform, and thus
become the chief ally of public opinion. It has also economized
business by bringing the producer and consumer into more direct
contact, and in many cases has actually abolished the middle man and
drummer.
As an example of the passing of the salesman, due to advertising, "The
Saturday Evening Post" of Philadelphia, in its interesting series of
articles on modern advertising exploits, recently told the story of how
the N. H. Fairbanks Co. made a test of the relative value of
advertising and salesmen. A belt of counties in Illinois were set aside
for the experiment, in which the company was selling a certain brand of
soap by salesmen and making a fair profit. It was proposed that the
identical soap be put up under another brand and advertised in a
conservative way in this particular section, and at the same time the
salesmen should continue their efforts with the old soap. Within six
months the advertised brand was outselling its rival at the rate of
$8000 a year.
The Douglas Shoe is another product that is sold entirely by general
advertising. So successful has the business become that the company has
established retail stores all over the country, in which only men's
shoes are sold at $3.50 a pair. Now other shoe-manufacturers have
adopted this plan, and in most of our large cities there are several
chains of rival retail shoe stores.
But all the advertising is not in the advertising columns. A United
States Senator said last winter that, when a bill he introduced in the
Senate was up for discussion, the publicity given it through an article
he wrote for "The Independent" had more to do with its passage than
anything he said in its behalf on the floor of the upper house;--that
is, his article was a paying advertisement of the bill. And in
mentioning the incident to you, I give "The Independent" a good
advertisement.
Universities advertise themselves in many and devious ways--sometimes
by the remarkable utterances of their professors, as at Chicago;
sometimes by the victories of their athletes, as at Yale; and sometimes
by the treatment of their women students, as at Wesleyan. But perhaps
the most extraordinary case of university advertising that has come to
my attention was when, not so very long ago, a certain state
institution of the Middle West bought editorials in the country press
at advertising rates for the sole purpose of influencing the state
legislature to make them a larger appropriation. In other words the
University authorities took money forced from a reluctant legislature
to make the legislature give them still more money.
The charitable organizations are now beginning to advertise in the
public press for donations, and even churches are falling into line.
The Rev. Charles Stelzle, one of the most conspicuous leaders of the
Presbyterian Church, has just published a book entitled "Principles of
Successful Church Advertising," in which he says:--
From all parts of the world there come stories of losses in
[church] membership, either comparative or actual. In the face of
this, dare the Church sit back and leave untried a single method
which may win men to Christ, provided that this method be
legitimate?... The Church should advertise because of the greatness
of its commission, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel
to every creature." To fulfill this command does not mean that
Christian men are to confine themselves to the methods of those who
first heard the commission.
The question whether advertising pays will never be known in the
individual case, for, like marriage, you can't tell till you try it.
But in the aggregate, also like marriage, there is no doubt of its
value. The tremendous power of persistent advertising to carry an idea
of almost any kind into the minds of the people and stamp it there, is
amazing. How many "Sunny Jims," for instance, are there in this
audience? If there are none, it is singular; for learned judges have
referred to him in their decisions, sermons have been preached, and
volumes written about him, though it took a million dollars and two
years of persistent work to introduce this modern "Mark Tapley" to the
public. Have you a little fairy in your home? Do you live in Spotless
Town? Do you use any of the 57 varieties? "There's a reason." "That's
all." Formerly a speaker used a quotation from the Bible or Shakespeare
when he wanted to strike a common chord. Nowadays he works in an
allusion to some advertising phrase, and is sure of instant and
universal recognition.
The Socialists and other utopian critics, who are supposed to drill to
the bedrock of questions, have looked upon advertising as essentially a
parasite upon the production and distribution of wealth. They tell us
that in the good time coming, advertising will be relegated to the
scrap-heap of outworn social machinery, along with war, race prejudice,
millionaires, the lower education of women, and other things of an
undesirable nature. This has not been the experience, however, of those
"sinister offenders" who have come nearest to the cooeperative ownership
of wealth in this country--I refer of course to "The Trusts." When the
breakfast food trust was formed, one of the chief reasons for the
combination was that the rival companies thus hoped to save the cost of
advertising that had hitherto been required when they sold their
food-stuffs in competition with each other. But they very soon found
that their sales fell off after they stopped advertising, and they kept
on falling off until the advertising was resumed. This teaches us that
the American people have not enough gumption to buy even the staple
products they need except through the stimulus of hypnotic
suggestion--which is nothing but another name for advertising. Even
such a benevolent institution as a great life insurance company could
not get much new business on its own merits. If all the money now spent
on agents' commissions, advertising, yellow-dog funds, and palatial
offices were devoted sacredly to the reduction of the rates of
insurance, probably fewer rather than more persons would insure. The
American people have to pay to be told what is good for them, otherwise
they would soon abolish editors, professors, and all the rest of us who
get paid for preaching what others practice.
Now while advertising pays the consumer who buys, the advertiser who
sells, and the publisher who brings both together, there is a limit to
the amount of advertising which can be "carried" by a certain amount of
reading matter. In newspapers we see the result of this in the vast
Sunday editions, with sometimes fifty or a hundred detachable pages. In
the magazines the case is different. Interesting and attractive as
magazine advertising has become--it certainly should be so, considering
the advertisers pay good money to put it before the people--it is not
enough alone to sell a magazine, and when it forms more than half or
two thirds of the number the issue becomes too bulky and the value of
the advertising pages themselves decreases. In making sandwiches the
ham must not be sliced too thin. That necessitates starting a new
magazine; and so we find from three to a dozen periodicals issued by
the same house, often similar in character and apparently rivals. This
accounts for the multiplication of magazines. It is not a yearning for
more love stories.
Thus you see advertising has made possible the great complex papers and
magazines of the day with their corps of trained editors, reporters,
and advertising writers, in numbers and intellectual calibre comparable
with the faculty of a good-sized university. Advertising makes it
possible to issue a paper far below the cost of manufacturing--all to
the benefit of the consumer. So far as I know there is not an important
daily, weekly, or monthly in America that can be manufactured at the
selling price. But, on the other hand, with the growth of advertising a
department had to be created in every paper for its handling. As
advertising still further increased, rival papers competed for it and
the professional solicitor became a necessary adjunct of every paper,
until now the advertising department is the most important branch of
the publication business, for it is the real source of the profits.
Because the solicitor seeks the advertiser, and, therefore, is in the
position of one asking for favors, he puts himself under obligations to
the advertiser, and so in his keenness to bring in revenue for his
paper, he is often tempted to ask the aid of the editor in appeasing
the advertiser. Thus the advertiser tends to control the policy of the
paper.
And this is the explanation of the condition that confronts most
publications to-day. By throwing the preponderating weight of
commercialism into the scales of production, advertising is at the
present moment by far the greatest menace to the disinterested practice
of a profession upon which the diffusion of intelligence most largely
depends. If journalism is no longer a profession, but a commercial
enterprise, it is due to the growth of advertising, and nothing else.
There was a time, not so very long ago, when journalism was on the
verge of developing a system of professional ethics, based on other
considerations than those of the cash register. Then a Greeley, Bowles,
Medill, Dana, or Raymond, with a hand-press and a printer's devil,
could start a paper as good as any university consisting of Mark
Hopkins, a student, and a log. In those days the universal question
was, "What does old Greeley have to say?" because old Greeley was the
ultimate source of his own utterances. Imagine the rage he would have
flown into if any one had dared insinuate that the advertisers dictated
a single sentence in "The Tribune"! But now the advertisers are
aggressive. They are becoming organized. They look upon the giving of
an advertisement to a publisher as something of a favor, for which they
have a right to expect additional courtesies in the news and editorial
columns.
Advertising is also responsible for the fact that our papers are no
longer organs but organizations. The individuality of the great editor,
once supreme, has become less and less a power, till finally it
vanishes into mere innocuous anonymity. To show you how far the editor
has receded into public obscurity, it is only necessary to try to
recall the portrayal of a modern editor in a recent play. Stage
lawyers, stage physicians, and stage preachers abound; when you think
of them your mind calls up a very definite image. But no one has yet
attempted to portray the typical editor, and it is doubtful if the
populace would recognize him if he were portrayed, for the modern
editor is a mystery.
Despite the editorial impersonality which controls modern newspapers,
the editors still touch life in more points than any other class of
men. And for this reason, if for no other, it is important to know the
limitations under which they work. I leave aside the limitations that
come from within the editor himself; for manifestly ignorance,
prejudice, venality and the like, in the editor are in no wise
different from similar faults in other men.
There are just two temptations, however, peculiar to the editor, that
tend to limit his freedom: first, the fear of the advertisers, and
second, the fear of the subscribers. The advertisers when offended stop
their advertisements; the readers, their subscriptions. The editor who
is afraid to offend both must make a colorless paper indeed. He must
discuss only those things about which every one agrees or nobody cares.
The attitude of such an editor to his readers is, "Gape, sinner, and
swallow," and to his advertisers, as Senator Brandegee said at a recent
Yale Commencement in regard to a proposed Rockefeller bequest, "Bring
on your tainted money." As a rule, the yellows are most in awe of the
mob, while the so-called respectables fear the advertising interests.
Now let me take up in some detail the influences brought to bear upon
us which tend to make us swerve from the straight and narrow path. I
invite your attention first of all to the Press Agent, that
indispensable adjunct of all projects that have something to gain or to
fear from publicity. I have seen the claim made in print, though
doubtless it is a press agent's story, that there are ten thousand
press agents in the city of New York,--that is, men and women employed
to boom people and enterprises in the papers and magazines. You are
familiar with the theatrical press agent, the most harmless, jovial,
inventive, and resourceful of his kind. He is the one who writes the
articles signed by Grand Opera singers which appear in the magazines.
It is he who gets up stories about Miss "Pansy Pinktoes," her
milk-baths, the loss of her diamonds, the rich men who follow her. It
is he who got for me an interview with a Filipino chief at Coney Island
three summers ago, whose unconventional remarks and original philosophy
on America and the inhabitants thereof startled me no less than our
readers.
When the press agent has no news, he manufactures it. The readers of
the New York papers the other day read that a prominent Socialist, who
occupied a box in the theatre where a play was given in which Socialism
is attacked, stood up and offered to harangue the audience between the
acts. The actor who played the role of the wicked capitalist came on
the stage and invited the audience to vote whether they cared to hear
the Socialist or him. The audience thereupon voted both down. But the
management the next Sunday evening very kindly offered the use of the
stage for a debate on Socialism, to which the leading Socialists and
anti-Socialists of the city were invited. The meeting was a great
success, and all the reporters in town were present, just as by some
singular coincidence they happened to be on the first night.
One of our most successful operatic managers--impressario, I believe,
is the more correct appellation--was about to produce the opera of
"Salome," which had been taken off the rival stage after its first
performance, on the assumption that New York was shocked. The singer
was not only to sing the part, if one can sing a Strauss opera, but was
also to dance it. Finally, about a week before the opera was produced,
a new soprano was engaged to sing another role hitherto taken by the
prospective Salome. Instantly the dread headlines on all the front
pages of the metropolitan press announced that Miss Garden would resign
before Madame Cavalieri should sing in any of _her_ roles. Mr.
Hammerstein's "eyes twinkled," as the reporters besieged him. He said
he guessed he could untangle matters. Out of the kindness of his heart
he had thought the rehearsals of "Salome" were too fatiguing for Miss
Garden, and so got assistance for her. After a three or four days'
operatic war, in which literally columns of printers' ink was shed, the
_entente cordiale_ was resumed, and the song-birds became doves of
peace again. The New York "Evening Post" printed the next day an
editorial entitled, "Genius in Advertising"; and a week later the
opera, or rather the song and dance of "Salome," was given, with seats
selling at ten dollars apiece, and "standing room only" signs at the
box-office.
This desire for publicity on the part of the histrionic profession goes
so far, that often absolute fakes are sent out to the poor,
unsuspecting editor. Here is a statement that was printed, let us hope
in good faith, in one of the Brooklyn papers not long ago. It referred
to the leading lady in a popular stock company.
Miss S. has a remarkably fine collection of miniatures painted on
ivory. Her attention was attracted to them several years ago by a
miniature of one of her ancestors, painted by Edward Greene
Malbone, which came into her possession. The delicate quality of
the painter's art that was of necessity lavished upon the ivory
pleased her as an amateur and she began to collect. Miss S. has
haunted the antique shops of Manhattan and Brooklyn during the few
leisure moments that came to her, in her search after miniatures.
She now owns something like one hundred examples of famous
miniatures. One of her greatest treasures is a portrait of John
Dray, by that master-painter of miniatures, Richard Cosway.
The publication of this article brought such a number of requests from
the friends of Miss S. to see her collection, that the ingenious press
agent was obliged to invent and publish another fabrication--this time
of a midnight robbery in which the collection disappeared. This
shameless story was told me by the press agent himself, and he gave me
from his scrap-book the fake clipping I have just read.
Similarly the imitation riots, and protests from delegations of
negroes, where Thomas Dixon's Ku-Klux play, "The Clansman," was to be
produced, were often due to the initiative of the enterprising press
agent--at least so he told me.
I would not have you think, however, that the press bureau is not in
many instances a perfectly legitimate institution, and cannot be used
with all propriety by religious, reform, political, and other
organizations. The woman's suffrage movement, for instance, has a
well-equipped and organized bureau; while the two great political
parties during campaign times have sent out for many years news-articles
and editorials of great value to the country and partisan press.
Perhaps the most efficacious press bureau of the legitimate kind is
that of the Christian Scientists. Every time an editor prints anything
derogatory to the Rev. Mary Baker G. Eddy, or her influential cult, a
suave and professionally happy gentleman immediately sends his card
into the sanctum, and, holding the offensive clipping in one hand,
together with a brief and well-written reply, says with the utmost
courtesy:--
"Inasmuch, my good sir, as you deemed it worth while to devote so
much of your valuable space to spreading broadcast before your
intelligent audience an error about Christian Science, I feel sure
that your sense of justice will make plain to you the privilege of
giving us space to demonstrate the real truth of the matter."
To the editor with a conscience--and some of us still have the vestiges
of one--this is a hard argument to evade; and as a result Christian
Science gets twice as much notice in the papers as it would were there
no smiling press agent to follow up every unfavorable reference, no
matter how obscure the publication. The next time the editor wants to
point a jest at the expense of Christian Science, he thinks twice and
then substitutes some other cause that does not employ an editorial
rectifier.
But perhaps the best use of a publicity bureau was made recently by the
street-railway company of Roanoke, Virginia, and the water company of
Scranton, Pennsylvania. Both of these companies had become very
unpopular, one as a result of poor street-car service, and the other on
account of a typhoid epidemic supposed to have been started from the
pollution of the company's reservoir. Both companies appropriated a
good sum of money, hired a press agent, and bought advertising space in
the local papers every day for a month or more. These advertisements
gave the companies' side of the case with such candor and convincing
fairness that they soon became the talk of the town, personal letters
were written to the papers about them, and the hostility toward them
very quickly turned to a feeling of good-will. It pays to take the
public into your confidence.
And now the staid "Rail-Road Age-Gazette" has sounded the call for a
great press agent to arise and stem the growing public hostility to the
railroads. The "Age-Gazette" did not use the phrase "press agent," as
the appellation has not as yet come into its full dignity. It employed
the more euphonious term "Railroad Diplomatist." Still, high-sounding
titles have their use, as when some of my brother editors call their
"reporters" "Special Commissioners," and their foreign correspondents
"Journalistic Ambassadors."
We had a Peace and Arbitration Congress in New York two years ago.
Being chairman of the Press Committee, I employed a firm of press
agents to get for us the maximum amount of publicity. As a result we
received over ten thousand clippings from the papers of the United
States alone. I do not mean to claim that the Congress would not have
been extensively noticed without the deft work of the agents; but they
unquestionably helped a great deal. The newspapers welcome them when
they represent such well-known philanthropic institutions as the Peace
Society, the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and the
People's Institute, because the copy they "turn in" requires little or
no further editing before it is sent to the printer. But when they are
employed to promote financial ventures, wars on labor unions,
anti-municipal ownership campaigns, or other private and class
interests, then the editors discount what they provide and they
actually do more harm than good to the cause they are intended to
promote.
Press agents, however, are sometimes enabled to get illegitimate matter
into our best papers. I recall to your memory the reports favorable to
the companies sent out during the great insurance investigations in New
York. "Collier's" has told the whole story.[2] One of the agents
employed testified on the witness-stand that a great insurance company
agreed to pay a dollar a line for what he could get into the papers. He
made his own arrangements with the journals that took his stuff, and
the difference between the price he had to pay and the dollar a line he
got from the insurance company was to be his private rake-off. He
succeeded in securing the publication of six dispatches of about two
hundred and fifty words, in such well-known newspapers as the St. Paul
"Pioneer Press," the Boston "Herald," the Toledo "Blade," the Buffalo
"Courier," the Florida "Times-Union," the Atlanta "Constitution," and
the Wilmington "News." It is only fair to state, however, that there
was nothing in the evidence to show whether the papers went into the
arrangement on a business basis, or were fooled into thinking the
dispatches they published were genuine reports of the proceedings
before the committee.
[2] _Collier's_, Nov. 11, 1905.
Examples of the use of press agents for both legitimate and
illegitimate purposes could be extended almost indefinitely. The
Standard Oil Company, I understand, now issues all its manifestoes to
the public through a trained press-representative; and the fight
against Messrs. Gompers, Mitchell, and Morrison, in the Buck Stove
controversy, was conducted with the aid of a press bureau, as one of
the lawyers in the case informed me. Whenever such a question comes
before the people as the choice between the Nicaragua and Panama routes
for the interoceanic canal, a press bureau is usually an important
factor in the campaign. The big navy craze and the Japan war cry can
hardly be accounted for except on the theory that it has been for
somebody's interest to agitate them through the press. Whenever the
Naval appropriation bill comes before Congress, the Far-Eastern
war-clouds threaten in thousands of newspaper sanctums, while all of us
shudder at the danger of war, for the benefit of ordnance
manufacturers, battleship builders, and every incipient "Fighting Bob"
who hopes some day to command another American Armada on its
gastronomic voyage around the world.
Fortunately none of our papers are subsidized by the government itself,
as is so often the case with the semi-official organs of Europe. Nor
are any of our papers directly in the pay of foreign governments,
though the espousal of the infamous reactionary regime in Russia by
some of them is at least open to suspicion. The danger of manufactured
public opinion in this country comes not from governments. Even the
political parties are losing the allegiance of the press. The days when
the Republican organs told the people the worst Republican was better
than the best Democrat, and the Democratic papers said the same about
the Republicans, have happily passed, never to return again, though the
spirit still lingers in the organs of the Socialist, Populist, and
Prohibition parties. The growth of the great politically-independent
press is one of the most hopeful signs of the times.
But we have only jumped out of the frying-pan of politics into the fire
of commercialism, and the fight of the future will therefore be to
extricate ourselves from the fetters of commercialism, just as we have
already broken away from the bonds of party politics.
But the press agent has come to stay. Indeed, his business has now
assumed such proportions that the profession of anti-press agent will
doubtless soon come into existence. I know already of one gentleman in
New York whose aid has been invoked when people want things kept out of
the papers. On more than one occasion he has prevented good spicy bits
of scandal from seeing the light; though in his case I can aver that it
was his personal influence with the editors, rather than any improper
lubricant, that kept the papers silent.
Now let me turn from the press agent to the advertiser as a twister of
editorial opinion. Here let me say at once, and with all emphasis, that
the vast majority of advertisements are not only honest but dependable.
Leaving out of account a few stock phrases which deceive nobody, such
as "the most for the money," "the cheapest in the market," etc., what
is said about the goods to be sold is not in the least overdrawn. I
have taken the pains to go over the advertising columns of the leading
papers and periodicals of New York during the month of February, and,
with the exception of a few medical, financial, and perhaps real-estate
advertisements, I could find absolutely nothing that on the face of it
seemed fraudulent, and very little that was misleading. The advertisers
have at last come to realize that for the long run, whatever the rule
may be for the short run, it does not pay to overstate the qualities of
their merchandise. You can now order your purchases by mail from the
advertising pages of any reputable publication about as safely as over
the counter of a store. At all events the phenomenal growth of the
mail-order houses and their sales through advertising, lend strength to
this opinion. On the 15th of March, 1909, a single Chicago mail-order
house sent to the Post Office six million catalogues, weighing four
hundred and fifty tons, and all were to be distributed within a week.
Many periodicals now claim that they will not take advertisements that
look fraudulent or even misleading. Some papers, like the London
"Times," have a guaranteed list of advertisements which they have
investigated and vouch for, though naturally the advertisers have to
pay extra for the guarantee.
"The Sunday School Times" printed, several weeks ago, a long list of
secular papers that were "going dry," as so many of our Southern
states. The fact that our best periodicals no longer accept liquor
advertisements is another one of the encouraging signs of the coming of
the new journalism.
The vigorous fight that "The Ladies' Home Journal" and "Collier's"
waged against the patent-medicine concerns is too fresh in the public
memory to need recounting here. The two pictures printed cheek by jowl
in "The Ladies' Home Journal,"--one, of the tombstone above the mortal
remains of Lydia E. Pinkham, whose inscription showed that she had been
dead since 1883, and the other an advertisement representing Lydia in
1905, sitting in her laboratory at Lynn, Massachusetts, engrossed in
assuaging the sufferings of ailing womanhood,--these are eloquent of
the type of fraud perpetrated through the press upon a gullible public.
Similarly, in the negro papers the favorite advertisements are those
that claim to straighten kinky hair and bleach complexions--all fakes,
of course. Perhaps the most fraudulent advertisements, however, are
those which purpose to sell mines in Brazil, Mexico, Alaska, or
wherever else the investor is unlikely to go. These offer their shares
often as low as ten cents each, and guarantee fabulous profits. I have
a college classmate who is extensively interested in Mexican mines, and
he tells me that literally 99 per cent of all the mining companies that
float their shares through advertisements are pure, or rather impure,
swindles. I am not in the least surprised, for I know how many letters
come to a financial editor from the dupes of these slick mine
promoters, asking advice as to how they can get their money back.
The most demoralizing advertisements are those paid for by loan-sharks,
clairvoyants, medical quacks, and the votaries of vice. The New York
"Herald" has recently stopped printing its vicious personals. It also
refuses fortune-tellers the hospitality of its columns, though it is
not so squeamish in regard to loan-agencies and patent medicines. How
many papers still publish the advertisement of Mrs. Laudanum's soothing
syrup for babies? When you remember that the proprietary medicine
concerns have been accustomed to spend forty million dollars a year,
which is distributed among the papers of the land, you can see that it
requires considerable financial independence for a publisher to forego
a taste of their patronage.
It is a curious fact that, aside from the country weeklies, the papers
most plentifully besprinkled with medical advertisements are the yellow
journals, the religious weeklies, the socialistic and other propaganda
organs, and in general those which preach most vociferously reform and
the brotherhood of man.
The danger from the advertising columns is not, as I have said, that
the advertisements misrepresent the goods, but that the terms on which
they are solicited tend to commercialize the whole tone of the paper
and make the editor afraid to say what he believes. The advertiser is
coming more and more to look on his patronage as a favor, and he seldom
hesitates to withdraw his advertisement if anything appears that may
injure his business or interfere with his personal fad or political
ambition.
Let me give you some examples of the withdrawal of advertisements to
punish too daring and independent editors.
A few weeks ago the paper which, in my opinion, has the ablest
editorial page in the country lost some very valuable musical
advertising because it had published letters of a decidedly
compromising nature, written by a man high in the musical world to a
lady who was suing him for damages. Another paper, which many consider
the brightest in America, discharged its dramatic critic after a
theatrical firm had taken out all their advertising. But strange to
say, as soon as a new critic was engaged, the advertising was forthwith
resumed. I refrain from giving the name of this newspaper because one
brave and witty little weekly published the story with names and dates,
and is now being sued for libel.
"Life" states that in Cincinnati, lately, every theatrical
advertisement in all other newspapers carried this line:--
"We do not advertise in 'The Times-Star.'"
The paralyzing power of advertising is again exemplified in the case of
a New York evening paper which was so much interested in the
popularization of bicycles that it organized the first bicycle parade
ever held in the city. Just before the day of the parade, however, it
printed an article telling the people that it cost only some fifteen or
twenty dollars to manufacture bicycles that sold at from seventy-five
to one hundred and twenty-five dollars. Instantly all the bicycle
advertising was withdrawn, and the paper lost thousands of dollars.