[Footnote 1: A recent address before the Outlook Club,
of Montclair, N.J.]
By A.H. SIEGFRIED.
The controlling motive and direct purpose of the average newspaper are
financial profit. One is now and then founded, and conducted even at a
loss, to serve party, social, religious or other ends, but where the
primary intent is unselfish there remains hope for monetary gain.
The first newspapers never dreamed of teaching or influencing men, but
were made to collect news and entertainment and deal in them as in any
other commodity. But because this was the work of intelligence upon
intelligence, and because of conditions inherent in this kind of
business, it soon took higher form and service, and came into
responsibilities of which, in its origin, it had taken no thought.
Wingate's "Views and Interviews on Journalism" gives the opinions of
the leading editors and publishers of fifteen years ago upon this
point of newspaper motive and work. The first notable utterance was by
Mr. Whitelaw Reid, who said the idea and object of the modern daily
newspaper are to collect and give news, with the promptest and best
elucidation and discussion thereof, that is, the selling of these in
the open market; primarily a "merchant of news." Substantially and
distinctly the same ideas were given by William Cullen Bryant, Henry
Watterson, Samuel Bowles, Charles A. Dana, Henry J. Raymond, Horace
White, David G. Croly, Murat Halstead, Frederick Hudson, George
William Curtis, E.L. Godkin, Manton Marble, Parke Godwin, George W.
Smalley, James Gordon Bennett and Horace Greeley. The book is fat with
discussion by these and other eminent newspaper men, as to the
motives, methods and ethics of their profession, disclosing high
ideals and genuine seeking of good for all the world, but the whole of
it at last rests upon primary motives and controlling principles in
nowise different or better or worse than those of the Produce Exchange
and the dry goods district, of Wall Street and Broadway, so that,
taking publications in the lump, it is neither untrue nor ungenerous,
nor, when fully considered, is it surprising, to say that the world's
doing, fact and fancy are collected, reported, discussed, scandalized,
condemned, commended, supported and turned back upon the world as the
publisher's merchandise.
The force and reach of this controlling motive elude the reckoning of
the closest observation and ripest experience, but as somewhat
measuring its strength and pervasiveness hear, and for a moment think,
of these facts and figures.
The American Newspaper Directory for 1890, accepted as the standard
compiler and analyst of newspaper statistics, gives as the number of
regularly issued publications in the United States and territories,
17,760. Then when we know that these have an aggregate circulation for
each separate issue--not for each week, or month, or for a year, but
for each separate issue of each individual publication, a total of
41,524,000 copies--many of them repeating themselves each day, some
each alternate day, some each third day and the remainder each week,
month or quarter, and that in a single year they produce 3,481,610,000
copies, knowing, though dimly realizing, this tremendous output, we
have some faint impression of the numerical strength of this mighty
force which holds close relation to and bears strong influence upon
life, thought and work, and which, measured by its units, is as the
June leaves on the trees--in its vast aggregate almost inconceivable;
a force expansive, aggressive, pervasive; going everywhere; stopping
nowhere; ceasing never.
I am to speak to you of "The Business End" of the American newspaper;
that is of the work of the publisher's department--not the editor's.
At the outset I am confronted with divisions and subdivisions of the
subject so many and so far reaching that right regard for time compels
the merest generalization; but, as best I can, and as briefly as I
can, I shall speak upon the topic under three general divisions:
First.--The personal and material forces which make the newspaper.
Second.--The sources of revenue from the joint working of these
forces.
Third.--The direct office, bearing and influence of these forces.
It is but natural that the general public has limited idea of the
personality and mechanism of the publication business, for much of its
movement is at night, and there is separation and isolation of
departments, as well as complicated relation of the several parts to
the whole. Not many years ago a very few men and boys could edit,
print and distribute the most important of newspapers, where now
hundreds are necessary parts in a tremendous complexity. But even
to-day, of the nearly 18,000 publications in the United States, more
than 11,000 are of that class which, in all their departments, are
operated by from two to four or five persons, and which furnish scant
remuneration even for these. Among the thin populations and in the
remote regions are thousands of weekly papers--and you may spell the
weekly either with a double _e_ or an _ea_--where there are two men
and a boy, one of whom does a little writing and much scissoring,
loafing among the corner groceries and worse, begging for
subscribers, button-holing for advertisements, and occasionally and
indiscriminatingly thrashing or being thrashed by the "esteemed
contemporary" or the "outraged citizen;" the second of whom sets the
type, reads the proofs, corrects them more or less, makes the rollers,
works the old hand press, and curses the editor and the boy
impartially; and the third of whom sweeps the office weekly, bi-weekly
or monthly, inks the forms and sometimes pis them, carries the papers,
and does generally the humble and diversified works of the "printer's
devil," while between the three the whole thing periodically goes to
the ---- level pretty sure to be reached now and then by papers of
this class. Yet there are many of these country papers that Mr.
Watterson once styled the "Rural Roosters" which are useful and
honored, and which actively employ as editors and publishers men of
fair culture and good common sense, with typographical and mechanical
assistants who are worthy of their craft.
But the personal workers upon the great magazines and the daily
newspapers are for each a battalion or a regiment, and in the
aggregate a vast army. The _Century Magazine_ regularly employs in its
editorial department three editors and eight editorial assistants, of
whom five are women; in the art department two artists in charge and
four assistants, of whom three are women; in the business department
fifty-eight persons, men and women--a total of seventy six persons
employed on the magazine regularly and wholly, while the printers and
binders engaged in preparing a monthly edition of 200,000 magazines
are at least a duplicate of the number engaged in the editorial, art
and business divisions.
The actual working force upon the average large daily newspaper, as
well as an outline idea of the work done in each department, and of
its unified result in the printed sheet, as such newspapers are
operated in New York, Chicago and Boston, may be realized from an
exhibit of the exact current status in the establishment of a well
known Chicago paper.
In its editorial department there are the editor-in-chief, managing
editors, city editors, telegraph editors, exchange editors, editorial
writers, special writers and about thirty reporters--56 in all.
Working in direct connection with this department, and as part of it,
are three telegraph operators and nine artists, etchers, photographers
and engravers; in the Washington office three staff correspondents,
and in the Milwaukee office one such correspondent--making for what
Mr. Bennett calls the intellectual end a force of 72 men, who are
usually regarded by the business end as a necessary evil, to be fed
and clothed, but on the whole as hardly worth the counting.
In the business and mechanical departments the men and women and their
work are these:
The business office, for general clerical work, receiving and caring
for advertisements, receiving and disbursing cash, and for the general
bookkeeping, employs 24 men and women.
On the city circulation, stimulating and managing it within the city
and the immediate vicinity, 10 persons.
On the country circulation, for handling all out-of-town subscriptions
and orders of wholesale news agents, 30 persons.
On mailing and delivery, for sending out by mail and express of the
outside circulation, and for distribution to city agents and newsboys,
31 persons.
In the New York office, caring for the paper's business throughout the
East, the Canadas, Great Britain and Europe, two persons.
In the composing room, where the copy is put into type, and in the
linotype room, where a part of the type-setting is done by machinery,
95 persons.
In the stereotype foundry, where the plates are cast (for the type
itself never is put on the press), 11 persons.
In the press room, where the printing, folding, cutting, pasting and
counting of the papers is done, 30 persons.
In the engine and dynamo room, 8 persons.
In the care of the building, 3 persons.
These numbers include only the minimum and always necessary force, and
make an aggregate of 316 persons daily and nightly engaged for their
entire working time, and borne on a pay roll of six thousand dollars a
week for salaries and wages alone.
But this takes no account of special correspondents subject to instant
call in several hundred places throughout the country; of European
correspondents; of 1,900 news agents throughout the West; of 200 city
carriers; of 42 wholesale city dealers, with their horses and wagons;
of 200 branch advertisement offices throughout the city, all connected
with the main office by telephone; and of more than 3 000 news
boys--all making their living, in whole or in part, from work upon or
business relations with this one paper--a little army of 6,300 men,
women, and children, producing and distributing but one of the 1,626
daily newspapers in the United States.
The leading material forces in newspaper production are type, paper,
and presses.
Printing types are cast from a composition which is made one-half of
lead, one-fourth of tin, and one-fourth of antimony, though these
proportions are slightly reduced, so as to admit what the chemist
calls of copper "a trace," the sum of these parts aiming at a metal
which "shall be hard, yet not brittle; ductile, yet tough; flowing
freely, yet hardening quickly." Body type, that is, those classes ever
seen in ordinary print, aside from display and fancy styles, is in
thirteen classes, the smallest technically called brilliant and the
largest great primer.
In the reading columns of newspapers but four classes are ordinarily
used--agate for the small advertisements; agate, nonpareil, and minion
for news, miscellany, etc., and minion and brevier for editorials--the
minion being used for what are called minor editorials, and the
brevier for leading articles, as to which it may be said that young
editorial writers consider life very real and very earnest until they
are promoted from minion to brevier.
A complete assortment of any one of these classes is called a font,
the average weight of which is about 800 pounds. Whereas our alphabet
has 26 letters, the compositor must really use of letters, spaces,
accent marks, and other characters in an English font 152 distinct
types, and in each font there are 195,000 individual pieces. The
largest number of letters in a font belongs to small _e_--12,000; and
the least number to the _z_--200. The letters, characters, spaces,
etc., are distributed by the printer in a pair of cases, the upper one
for capitals, small capitals, and various characters, having 98 boxes,
and the lower one, for the small letters, punctuation marks, etc.,
having 54 boxes.
A few newspapers are using typesetting machines for all or part of
their composition. The New York _Tribune_ is using the Linotype
machine for all its typesetting except the displayed advertisements,
and other papers are using it for a portion of their work, while still
others are using the Rogers and various machines, of which there are
already six or more. It seems probable that within the early future
newspaper composition will very generally be done by machinery.
It has been suggested to me that many of my hearers this evening know
little or nothing of the processes of the printer's art, and that some
exposition of it may interest a considerable portion of this audience.
The vast number of these little "messengers of thought" which are
required in a single modern daily newspaper is little known to
newspaper readers. Set in the manner of ordinary reading, a column of
the New York _Tribune_ contains 12,200 pieces, counting head lines,
leads, and so on; while, if set solidly in its medium-sized type,
there are 18,800 pieces in one column, or about 113,000 in a page, or
about 1,354,000 in one of its ordinary 12-page issues. A 32-page
Sunday issue of the New York _Herald_ contains nearly, if not quite,
2,500,000 distinct types and other pieces of metal, each of which must
be separately handled between thumb and finger twice--once put into
the case and once taken out of it--each issue of the paper. No one
inexperienced in this delicate work has the slightest conception of
the intensity of attention, fixity of eye, deftness of touch,
readiness of intelligence, exhaustion of vitality, and destruction of
brain and nerve which enters into the daily newspaper from
type-setters alone.
Each type is marked upon one side by slight nicks, by sight and touch
of which the compositor is guided in rapidly placing them right side
up in the line. They are taken, one by one, between thumb and
forefinger, while the mind not only spells out each word, but is
always carrying phrases and whole sentences ahead of the fingers, and
each letter, syllable and word is set in its order in lines in the
composing stick, each line being spaced out in the stick so as to
exactly fit the column width, this process being repeated until the
stick is full. Then the stickful is emptied upon a galley. Then, when
the page or the paper is "up," as the printers phrase it, the galleys
are collected, and the foreman makes up the pages, article by article,
as they come to us in the printed paper--the preliminary processes of
printing proofs from the galleys, reading them by the proof readers,
who mark the errors, and making the corrections by the compositors
(each one correcting his own work), having been quietly and swiftly
going on all the while. The page is made up on a portable slab of
iron, upon which it is sent to the stereotyping room. There wet
stereotyping paper, several sheets in thickness, is laid over the
page, and this almost pulpy paper is rapidly and dexterously beaten
evenly all over with stiff hair brushes until the soft paper is
pressed down into all the interstices between the type; then this is
covered with blankets and the whole is placed upon a steam chest,
where it is subjected to heat and pressure until the wet paper becomes
perfectly dry. Then, this dried and hardened paper, called a matrix,
is placed in a circular mould, and melted stereotype metal is poured
in and cooled, resulting in the circular plate, which is rapidly
carried to the press room, clamped upon its cylinder, and when all the
cylinders are filled, page by page in proper sequence, the pressman
gives the signal, the burr and whirr begin, and men and scarcely less
sentient machines enter upon their swift race for the early trains. As
a matter of general interest it may be remarked that this whole
process of stereotyping a page, from the time the type leaves the
composing room until the plate is clamped upon the press, averages
fifteen minutes, and that cases are upon record when the complex task
has been accomplished in eleven minutes.
The paper is brought from the mill tightly rolled upon wooden or iron
cores. Some presses take paper the narrow way of the paper, rolls for
which average between 600 and 700 pounds. Others work upon paper of
double the width of two pages, that is, four pages wide, and then the
rolls are sometimes as wide as six feet, and have an average weight of
1,350 pounds. Each roll from which the New York _Tribune_ is printed
contains an unbroken sheet 23,000 feet (4-1/3 miles) long. A few hours
before the paper is to be printed, an iron shaft having journal ends
is passed through the core, the roll is placed in a frame where it may
revolve, the end of the sheet is grasped by steel fingers and the roll
is unwound at a speed of from 13 to 15 miles an hour, while a fan-like
spray of water plays evenly across its width, so that the entire sheet
is unrolled, dampened, for the better taking of the impression to be
made upon it, and firmly rewound, all in twenty minutes. Each of these
rolls will make about 7,600 copies of the _Tribune_.
When all is ready, paper and stereotyped pages in place, and all
adjustments carefully attended to, the almost thinking machine starts
at the pressman's touch, and with well nigh incredible speed prints,
places sheet within sheet, pastes the parts together, cuts, folds and
counts out the completed papers with an accuracy and constancy beyond
the power of human eye and hand.
The printing press has held its own in the rapid advance of that
wonderful evolution which, within the last half century, in every
phase of thought and in every movement of material forces placed under
the dominion of men, has almost made one of our years the equivalent
of one of the old centuries. Within average recollection the single
cylinder printing machine, run by hand or steam, and able under best
conditions to print one side of a thousand sheets in one hour, was the
marvel of mankind. In 1850, one such, that we started in an eastern
Ohio town, drew such crowds of wondering on-lookers that we were
obliged to bar the open doorway to keep them at a distance which would
allow the astonishing thing to work at all.
To-day, in the United States alone, five millions of dollars are
invested in the building of printing presses, many of which, by
slightest violence to figure of speech, do think and speak.
Inspiration was not wholly a thing of long-gone ages, for if ever men
received into brain and worked out through hand the divine touch, then
were Hoe, and Scott, and Campbell taught of God.
Under existing conditions newspapers of any importance, in the smaller
cities, use one and sometimes two presses, capable of producing from
7,000 to 9,000 complete eight page papers each hour, each machine
costing from $10,000 to $15,000. Papers of the second class in the
large cities use treble or quadruple this press capacity, while the
great papers, in the four or five leading cities, have machinery
plants of from four to ten presses of greatest capacity, costing from
$32,000 to $50,000 each, and able to produce papers of the different
numbers of pages required, at a speed of from 24,000 to 90,000 four
page sheets, or of from 24,000 to 48,000 eight, ten, or twelve page
sheets per hour, each paper complete as you receive it at your
breakfast table--printed, pasted, cut and folded, and the entire
product for the day accurately counted in lots of tens, fifties,
hundreds or thousands, as may be required for instantaneous delivery,
while, as if to illustrate and emphasize the ever upward trend of
public demand for the day's news, quick and inclusive, Hoe & Co. are
now building machines capable of producing in all completeness 150,000
four page papers each hour.
All this tremendous combination of brain, nerve, muscle, material,
machinery and capital depends for its movement and remuneration upon
but two sources of income--circulation and advertisements--the unit
measurements of which are infinitesimal--for the most part represented
by wholesale prices; from one-half a cent to two cents per copy for
the daily newspaper, and in like proportion for the weeklies and
monthlies; and by from one-tenth of a cent to one cent per line per
thousand of circulation for advertising space. Verily, in a certain
and large sense, the vast publishing interests rest upon drops of
water and grains of sand. Under right conditions no kind of business
or property is more valuable, and yet no basis of values is more
intangible. Nothing in all trade or commerce is so difficult to
establish or more environed by competitions, and yet, once
established, almost nothing save interior dry rot can pull it down. It
depends upon the judgment and favor of the million, yet instances are
few where any external force has seriously and permanently impaired
it.
About two hundred years have gone since the publication of the first
number of the first American newspaper. It was a monthly, called
_Publick Occurrences, both Foreign and Domestic_, first printed
September 25, 1690, by Richard Pierce, and founded by Benjamin Harris.
At that time public favor did seem to control newspaper interests, for
that first paper aroused antagonism, and it was almost immediately
suppressed by the authorities. Only one copy of it is now in
existence, and that is in London. The first newspaper to live, in this
country, was the Boston _News Letter_, first issued in 1704 and
continued until 1776. New York's first newspaper, the New York
_Gazette_, appeared October 16, 1725. At the outbreak of the
revolution there were 37 newspapers, and in 1800 there were 200, of
which several were dailies. In 1890 there were 17,760, of which there
were 13,164 weeklies, 2,191 monthlies, 1,626 dailies, 280
semi-monthlies, 217 semi-weeklies, 126 quarterlies, 82 bi-weeklies, 38
bi-monthlies, and 36 tri-weeklies.
The circulations belong largely to the weeklies, monthlies and
dailies, the weeklies having 23,228,750, the monthlies 9,245,750, the
dailies 6,653,250, leaving only 2,400,000 for all the others.
The largest definitely ascertainable daily average circulation for one
year, in this country, has been 222,745. Only one other daily paper in
the world has had more--_Le Petit Journal_, in Paris, which really, as
we understand it, is not a newspaper, but which regularly prints and
sells for one sou more than 750,000 copies. The largest American
weekly is the _Youth's Companion,_ Boston, 461,470. The largest
monthly is the _Ladies' Home Journal_, Philadelphia, 542,000. The
largest among the better known magazines is the _Century_, 200,000. Of
the daily papers which directly interest us--those of the city of New
York--the actual or approximate daily averages of the morning papers
are given by "Dauchy's Newspaper Catalogue" for 1891, as follows:
_Tribune_, daily, 80,000; Sunday, 85,000. _Times_, daily, 40,000;
Sunday, 55,000. _Herald_, daily, 100,000; Sunday, 120,000. _Morning
Journal_, 200,000. _Press_, daily, 85,000; Sunday, 45,000. _Sun_,
daily, 90,000; Sunday, 120,000. _World_, daily, 182,000; Sunday,
275,000. Of the afternoon papers, _Commercial Advertiser_, 15,000;
_Evening Post_, 18,000; _Telegram_, 25,000; _Graphic_ (not the old,
but a new one), 10,000; _Mail and Express_, 40,000; _News_, 173,000;
_Evening Sun_, 50,000; _Evening World_, 168,000. The entire
circulation of New York dailies, including with those named others of
minor importance, and the German, French, Italian, Bohemian, Hebrew
and Spanish daily newspapers, is 1,540,200 copies.
Obviously, there is and must be ceaseless, incisive and merciless
competition in securing and holding circulations, as well as in the
outward statements made of individual circulations to those who
purchase advertising space. In this, as in all other forms of
enterprise, there are honest, clean-cut and business-like methods, and
there are the methods of the time-server, the trickster and the liar.
The vastly greater number of publications secure and hold their
clientage by making the best possible goods, pushing them upon public
patronage by aggressive and business-like means, and selling at the
lowest price consistent with excellence of product and fairness alike
to producer and consumer. But of the baser sort there are always
enough to make rugged paths for those who walk uprightly, and to
contribute to instability of values on the one hand, and on the other
to flooding the country with publications which the home and the world
would be better without. Every great city has more of the rightly made
and rightly sold papers than of the other sort, and the business man,
the working man, the professional man, the family, no matter of what
taste, or political faith, or economic bias, or social status, or
financial plenty or paucity, can have the daily visits of newspapers
which are able, brilliant, comprehensive, clean and honest. But all
the time, these men and families will have pressed upon their
attention and patronage, by every device and artifice of the energetic
and more or less unscrupulous publisher, other papers equally able and
brilliant and comprehensive, but bringing also their burden of
needless sensationalism and mendacity, undue expansion of all manner
of scandal, amplification of every detail and kind of crime, and every
phase of covert innuendo or open attack upon official doing and
private character--the whole infernal mass procured, and stimulated
and broadcast among the people by the "business end of it," with the
one and only intent of securing and holding circulation.
Take a representative and pertinent example. Eight years ago there
were in New York ten or eleven standard newspapers, as ably and
inclusively edited and as energetically and successfully conducted,
business-wise, as they are now. Even at their worst they were decently
mindful of life's proprieties and moralities and they throve by
legitimate sale of the most and best news and the best possible
elucidation and discussion thereof. The father could bring the paper
of his choice to his breakfast table with no fear that his own moral
sense and self-respect might be outraged, or that the face of his wife
might be crimsoned and the minds of his children befouled. But there
came from out of the West new men and new forces, quick to see the
larger opportunity opened in the very center of five millions of
people, and almost in a night came the metamorphosis of the old World
into the new. It was deftly given out that existing conditions were
inadequate to the better deserts of the Knickerbocker, the Jersey-man,
and the Yankee, and that a new purveyor of more highly seasoned news
and a more doughty champion of their rights and interests was hither
from the land of life and movement--at two cents per copy. There was a
panic in New York newspaper counting rooms, and prices tumbled in two
days from the three and four cents of fair profit to the two and three
cents of bare cost or less. The new factors in demoralization cared
nothing for competition in prices or legitimate goods, for they had
other ideas of coddling the dear people. Ready to their purpose lay
disintegrated Liberty, waiting for a rock upon which to plant her feet
and raise her torch, and the new combination between the world, the
flesh and the devil, waiting and ready for access to the pockets of
the public, was only too ready to set up Liberty and itself at one
stroke, if only the joint operation could be done without expense to
itself. The people said, "What wonderful enterprise!" "What a generous
spirit!" The combination, with tongue in cheek and finger laid
alongside nose, said to itself as it saw its circulation spring in one
bound from five figures into six, "Verily we've got there! for these
on the Hudson are greater gudgeons than are they on the Mississippi."
From then until now, with an outward semblance and constant pretense
of serving the people; with blare of trumpet and rattle of drum; with
finding Stanley, who never had been lost; with scurrying peripatetic
petticoats around the globe; with all manner of unprofessional and
illegitimate devices; with so-called "contests" and with all manner of
"schemes" without limit in number, kind, or degree; with every
cunningly devised form of appeal to curiosity and cupidity--from then
until now that combination has been struggling to hold and has held an
audience of the undiscriminating and the unthinking. But, further,
and worse, a short-sighted instinct of self-preservation has led
other papers to follow somewhat at a distance in this demoralizing
race. None of them has gone to such lengths, but the tendency to
literary, mental and moral dissipation induced by a hitherto unknown
form of competition has swerved and largely recast the methods of
every New York daily save only the _Tribune_, _Times_, _Commercial
Advertiser_, and _Evening Post,_ while the converse side of securing
business clientage is illustrated in a way that would be amusing if it
were not pathetic, by that abnormal and fantastic cross between news
and pietetics which mails and expresses itself to the truly good.
These are forms of competition which the business end of legitimately
conducted newspapers is compelled to meet. In a certain way these
methods do succeed, but how, and how long and how much shall they
succeed except by unsettling the mental and moral poise of the people,
and by setting a new and false pace for publishers everywhere whose
thoughts take less account of means than of ends? Which shall we hold
in higher esteem and in our business patronage--Manton Marble and
Hurlbut, gentlemen, scholarly, wise leaders, conscientious teachers,
with barely living financial income; or their successors, parvenus,
superficial, meretricious, false guides, time-serving leaders, a
thousand dollars a day of clear profit, housed in the tower of Babel?
Considered in the large, the circulation side of the American
newspaper has many indefensible aspects. As "nothing succeeds like
success," or the appearance of success, the prestige of not a few
newspapers is ministered unto by rotund and deceptive representations
of circulation. Then, as few can live, much less profit, on their
circulations alone, it becomes greatly important to make the
advertiser see circulations through the large end of the telescope,
and so the fine art of telling truth without lying is a live and
perennial study in many counting rooms. Discussing the circulation
question not long ago with the head of a leading religious paper, he
told me that the number of copies he printed was a thing that he never
stated definitely, because the publishers of the other religious
newspapers lied so about their circulations that he would do himself
injustice if he were to tell the truth about his own. The secular
papers should set an example for their religious brethren, but they do
not, for from many of them there is lying--systematic, persistent, and
more or less colossal. Not long ago, within a few days of each other,
three men who were simultaneously employed on a certain paper told me
their _actual_ circulation, _confidentially_, too. One of them put it
at 85,000, the second at 110,000, and the third at 130,000, and each
of them lied, for their lying was so diversified and entertaining that
I felt a real interest in securing the truth, and so I took some
trouble to ask the pressman about it. He told me, _very_
confidentially, that it was 120,000--and he lied.
By this time my interest was so heightened that I told my personal
friend, the publisher, about the inartistic and incoherent mendacity
of his subordinates, whereupon he laughingly showed me his circulation
book, which clearly, and I have no doubt truthfully, exhibited an
average of 88,000. The wicked partner is nearly always ready to show
the actual record of the counting machines on the presses, and
"figures never lie" but the truth-telling machines which record actual
work of the impression cylinders make no mention of damaged copies
thrown aside, of sample copies, files, exchanges, copies kept against
possible future need, copies unsold, copies nominally sold but sooner
or later returned and finally sold to the junk shop, and all that sort
of thing. One prints a large extra issue on a certain day for some
business corporation which has its own purpose to serve by publication
of an article in its own interest, whereby many thousands of copies
are added to that day's normal output, and he makes the exceptional
number for that day serve as the exponent of his circulation until
good fortune brings him a similar and possibly larger order, and his
circulation is reported as "still increasing." Another struck a
"high-water mark" of "190,500" the day after Mr. Cleveland was
elected, and that has been the implied measure of circulation for the
last six years. Another, during a heated political campaign, or a
great financial crisis, or some other dominant factor in public
interest, makes a large and genuine temporary increase, but the
highest mark gained does enforced duty in the eyes of the marines
until another flood tide sweeps him to a greater transient height.
These are types of the competitions of the circulation liar. At this
very hour there are four daily newspapers each of which has the
largest circulation in the United States. Of the nearly 18,000
American publications only 103 furnish detailed, open, and entirely
trustworthy statements of circulation.
As to the general public this is no great matter, but to the vast
number of business men who buy the real or fancied publicity afforded
by newspaper advertising it is of exceeding importance. That the large
buyers of advertising space are not more and oftener swindled is
because they understand the circulation extravaganza and buy space
according to their understanding. The time is coming, and it should
come soon, when newspaper circulations shall be open to the same
inspection and publicity as is now the case with banks and insurance
companies, and when the circulation liar and swindler shall be
amenable to the same law and liable to the same penalty as stands
against and is visited upon any other perjurer and thief.
_(To be continued_.)
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