Production of newspapers was increased from 250 to 1,000 copies an hour to 12,000 copies by 1853. Taxes on paper, advertisements, and newspapers accentuated the importance of The Times monopoly and by the middle of the century its circulation exceeded the total of all other London papers. Media such as periodicals and magazines concerned with material other than news carried lighter taxes and expanded rapidly. In the struggle for the elimination of ‘taxes on knowledge’[303] the tax on paper was reduced, and in 1840 the penny postage was established. The possibilities of cheap large-scale agitation were shown in the success of the attacks on the Corn Laws and in the removal of the stamp and advertisement taxes in the fifties and the paper tax in 1861. As a result newspapers were established to challenge the position of The Times, such as the News in 1846 and the Daily Telegraph in 1855. The height of the political influence of The Times was reached in the Crimean War through the effective correspondence of Russell. The telegraph was exploited by new competitors in London and by provincial newspapers whose demands brought government ownership. The deteriorating effects of monopoly on The Times were shown in the unfortunate dependence on the New York Herald[304] for American news and support of the Southern States. In the Franco-Prussian war co-operation between the News and the New York Tribune enabled them to dominate in news. Acceptance of the Pigott papers, which were proved to be forgeries, brought loss of prestige and, by 1890, The Times was practically bankrupt. The Education Act of 1870 created a new demand for reading material which led to publication of Tit-Bits and Answers, the predecessors of the new journalism in the Daily Mail and the Daily Express.
The effects of cheaper paper and of the Education Act were evident also in the publishing industry. The circulating libraries of Mudie and Smith designed to meet the demand of women for fiction supported the three-volume novel which sold at 31s. 6d. Competition in the sale of single volumes led to the issue of a circular on 27 June 1894 declaring that after six months they would pay only 4s. a volume for novels in sets. By 1897 only one-volume novels appeared on the market. Triumph of the 6s. novel compelled publishers to concentrate on fiction commanding a wide sale. In the twentieth century the dominance of the circulating library in its demands for cloth-bound volumes was weakened further by the large-scale production and sale of small paper volumes.
The monopoly position of The Times, which accentuated the importance of media not concerned with news, had important results for the United States with its absence of international copyright legislation. The literature[305] of periodicals, magazines, and books associated with the names of Ainsworth, Dickens, Collins, Thackeray, Trollope, and others, was exported to the United States. American literature was restricted or confined to newspapers and media in which English competition was relatively ineffective. American authors found an outlet in journalism. ‘Freedom of the press’ and the growth of large centres contributed to the growth of newspapers and to the rapid improvement of technique. The cylinder press, the stereotype, the web press, and the linotype brought increases from 2,400 copies of 12 pages each per hour to 48,000 copies of 8 pages per hour in 1887 and to 96,000 copies of 8 pages per hour in 1893. Completion of the Atlantic Cable increased the importance of European news but introduced a condensed form of writing which enabled the American to develop independently of the English language. Copyright legislation in 1890 protected American authors and accentuated differences in literature.
The importance of advertising in large centres strengthened the financial position of large newspapers and intensified competition between newspapers and centres. The demand for news to increase circulation hastened the development of the telegraph and the organization of news services. Monopoly positions were quickly made and quickly destroyed by technical change. The disturbances were reflected in political change. The journalistic activities of J. G. Bennett, Sen., the penny press, and street sales weakened the monopoly of the subscription system of the large blanket sheets of the mercantile press and were accompanied by the political disturbances of the Jacksonian age. The metropolitan press destroyed the single authority of Congress and after 1840 the party machine shifted power from Washington.[306] Introduction of fast presses by the Chicago Tribune in the fifties coincided with the rise of the Republican party followed by the election of Abraham Lincoln as President. Commercial activity in the North accompanying expansion of newspapers led to increasing friction with the less active South and development of the Middle West introduced a decisive element which contributed to the Civil War. Success of the North was followed by the dominance of the Republican party until Pulitzer, with experience in St. Louis, introduced a fast press in New York and contributed to the return of the Democratic party under Cleveland. In turn W. R. Hearst, with experience in San Francisco, entered the New York field, and with Pulitzer's desertion sponsored the Democratic party.
The manufacture of paper from wood pulp[307] brought a decline in price from 8½ cents a pound in 1875 to 1½ cents in 1897. Pulpwood, chiefly spruce, was ground into small fibres by pressure against a rapidly revolving stone to produce mechanical pulp which was mixed with pulp produced by the use of chemicals in the ratio of 75 to 80 per cent, and 25 to 20 per cent. The industry implied access to large spruce forests, cheap abundance of water power,[308] and cheap transportation for raw material and finished product. Plants were located near large hydro-electric power sites. Large paper companies emerged to supply the necessary capital and to exercise an influence on prices. Attempts to raise prices were met by determined opposition from newspapers. Proprietors attempted to enhance their prestige and to increase circulation of their papers by taking an active part in politics. W. R. Hearst, like Horace Greeley, aimed at the mayoralty of New York, the governorship of New York state, and the presidency of the United States. American presidents, notably Theodore Roosevelt, made effective use of newspapers and favoured means of lowering the price of newsprint. The Taft administration succeeded in lowering tariffs on newsprint from Canada and the low tariff policy of the Democratic party under Woodrow Wilson reflected newspaper demands even more effectively.[309] Pressure from Canadian governmental authorities compelling the establishment of newsprint plants in Canada involved a lumpy type of development determined largely by the capacity of power sites. Increased production of newsprint led to the growth in size of newspapers, an emphasis on Sunday newspapers, and to new devices for the increase of circulation. The tabloids in which photographs became a central feature exploited the possibilities of lower levels of sensationalism. The effects paralleled the boom period of the twenties with its emphasis on advertising, on types of marketing organization designed to provide rapid and wide distribution of goods of the type adapted to advertising, and on types of news favourable to wide circulation of newspapers.
The highly sensitive economy built up in relation to newsprint and its monopoly position in relation to advertising hastened an emphasis on a new medium, notably the radio, which in turn contributed to a large-scale depression. The radio was accompanied by political change in the return of the Democratic party to power and the election of F. D. Roosevelt who claimed that ‘nothing would help him more than to have the newspapers against him’. Localization of metropolitan newspapers in the United States was accompanied by weeklies and digests which provided a common denominator from a national rather than a metropolitan point of view. Illustrated papers and the radio responded to the demands of advertising for national coverage. The radio emphasized a lowest common denominator with profound effects on music. The significance of mechanization in print, photographs including the cinema, phonographs including the talkies, and radio has been evident in literature, art, and music. The pressure of mechanization on words[310] has been reflected in simplified spelling and an interest in semantics. The limitations of words have led to resort to architecture and the rise of skyscrapers as an advertising medium. In North America, in contrast with Great Britain and Europe, the book was subordinated to the newspaper. Mechanization involved an emphasis on bes
t-sellers and the creation of a gap of unintelligibility of more artistic literary works.[311] Literature and other fields of scholarship have become feudalized in a modern manorial system. Monopolies of knowledge have been built up by publishing firms to some extent in co-operation with universities and exploited in text-books. A large text-book subject to revision at suitable intervals can be profitably exploited at the expense of works of scholarship. Monopolies are subject to competition from new media, but these in turn reflect the conditions under which they appear. Department stores which concentrate on sales of the Bible[312] and orthodox literature leave open a wide field to publishers exploiting ‘untouchable’ subjects in small cheap booklets.[313] If civilization may be measured by the tolerance of unintelligibility, its capacities are weakened by monopolies of knowledge built up in the same political area using the same language.
The impact of large-scale mechanization in communication in North America on Great Britain and Europe became significant with the new journalism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The intense rivalry between Hearst and Pulitzer in New York during the Spanish-American war was paralleled by the marked increase in circulation of the Daily Mail and the Daily Express during the Boer War. American influence penetrated through the establishment of editions of American papers and the migration of journalists such as Blumenfeld and Lord Beaverbrook to Great Britain. Technique developed in the United States was imported and adapted in Great Britain and Europe. The effects of the new journalism were conspicuous in the acquisition of The Times in 1908 by Lord Northcliffe. Political journalism such as that of the Westminster Gazette was weakened. The prestige of the new journalism was shown in the creation of a newspaper peerage. The instability of foreign policy which characterized the dominance of the newspaper in the United States was introduced in Great Britain with the new journalism.[314] The effects became apparent in the lack of stability in foreign policy leading to war in 1914. After the sensational telegram sent by the Kaiser to Kruger during the Boer War, opinion was turned from Germany towards France.[315] The power of the press during the war was shown in drastic reorganizations of the Cabinet. After the war, the death of Northcliffe, and new arrangements for control of The Times, the Daily Express under Lord Beaverbrook turned from an emphasis on continental politics to imperial preference with significant implications to the traditional free-trade policy of Great Britain. In Great Britain the influence of newspapers favoured government ownership of radio as a means of checking encroachments on advertising revenue. As in the United States radio as a new medium enabled politicians, notably Baldwin, to resist the pressure of newspapers. But the increasing importance of advertising to newspapers in the period from 1919 to 1939 was accompanied by a decline of intelligent interest in domestic and foreign affairs.[316]
On the Continent the impact of American journalism was less direct because of a more strongly entrenched position of the book and differences in language and legal systems. Throughout the nineteenth century the French press,[317] with less dependence on advertising than Anglo-Saxon countries, was continually exposed to suppression or threats of suppression. After an escape from the rigid control of Napoleon journalists began a long struggle for freedom of the press. They exercised a decisive influence in the revolution of 1830 but later came under the repressive policy of Louis Napoleon. Under the censorship of the second empire French journalism became ‘the only considerable journalism in history in which form has prevailed over matter’ and France was again exposed to competition from the Netherlands. In answer to complaints of the emperor of attacks by French refugees it was held that the ‘constitution of Belgium was made by journalists and the unrestrained liberty of the press is so interwoven with the constitution that the legislature itself has no power to deal with the case, nor any power short of a constituent assembly’.[318] Partly as a result of the intensity of the struggle journalism in France avoided anonymity and journalists became active politicians.[319] A large number of small political newspapers left the press exposed to manipulation by direct subsidy from external and internal groups.[320]
In Germany political censorship in small principalities had a powerful influence with the result that talent was turned to literature, to the universities, and to music. After the Napoleonic period and the increasing influence of Prussia censorship was replaced by manipulation. The traditions of manipulation developed by Bismarck continued in the twentieth century under Goebbels.[321] Discrepancy in the rate of expansion of influence of the newspaper from the United States and England and Germany contributed inevitably to misunderstanding. The political press of a bureaucratic Roman law state differed sharply from that of a common law state. The interview of the Kaiser with the Daily Telegraph in 1909 was incomprehensible to English readers since an interview by King Edward VII in a German paper would have been unthinkable. The clash between traditions based on the book and the newspaper contributed to the outbreak of war. The Treaty of Versailles emphasized self-determination as a governing principle and recognized the significance of language[322] in the printing press. Consequently, it rapidly became outdated with the mechanization of the spoken word in the radio. Governmental influence over the press was extended to the radio. The loud speaker had decisive significance for the election of the Nazis. Regions dominated by the German language responded to the appeal of the spoken word inviting them to join a larger German Reich. The Second World War became to an important extent the result of a clash between the newspaper and the radio. In the conduct of the war the power of the mechanized spoken word was capitalized in the English-speaking world, notably by Churchill and Roosevelt. Russia had an enormous advantage in the difficulties of language and its impermeability to German propaganda. The sudden extension of communication precipitated an outbreak of savagery paralleling that of printing and the religious wars of the seventeenth century, and again devastating the regions of Germany.
In the Near East mechanized communication has been less effective as a basis of nationality. In the East Greek civilization successfully resisted encroachments from Latin. After the fall of the Byzantine empire in 1453 the dominance of the Turk was not accompanied by a uniform language. In areas dominated by Mohammedanism abhorrence of images delayed the introduction of printing. Nationality failed to correspond with language largely because of religion. National feeling based on language was registered in protests against political arrangements.[323] Organization of the Russian empire checked the devastations of nomads which had threatened Western civilization over two millennia.[324] Byzantine influence persisted in Russia in the relations of the Greek Orthodox Church to the state. Developments in communication were restricted. Russia had no Renaissance and no eighteenth century. The late development of a vernacular literature was reflected in the works of great Russian realist writers in the nineteenth century. A fusion of Church and state resisted Western influence until the effects of the revolutionary tradition in England, the United States, and France were crystallized in communism and communist literature.[325] The defeat of revolutionary tendencies in Germany, notably in 1848, the growth of nationalism, especially in Italy, and the increasing centralization of the Church evident in the doctrine of the infallibility of the papacy were followed by the systematic organization of communism by Karl Marx and others. Resistance of the West made communism attractive to Russia as a weapon against caesaropapism. The Russian revolution supported by an interest in communism eventually contributed to the breakdown of the state which had given birth to printing and had survived its influence without revolution.
Monopolies of knowledge had developed and declined partly in relation to the medium of communication on which they were built and tended to alternate as they emphasized religion, decentralization, and time, and force, centralization, and space. Sumerian culture based on the medium of clay was fused with Semitic culture based on the medium of stone to produce the Babylonian empires. Egyptian civilization based on a fusion of dependence on stone and of dependence on pap
yrus produced an unstable empire which eventually succumbed to religion. The Assyrian and Persian empires attempted to combine Egyptian and Babylonian civilization and the latter succeeded with its appeal to toleration. Hebrew civilization emphasized the sacred character of writing in opposition to political organizations which emphasized the graven image. Greek civilization based on the oral tradition produced the powerful leaven which destroyed political empires. Rome assumed control over the medium on which Egyptian civilization had been based and built up an extensive bureaucracy, but the latter survived in a fusion in the Byzantine empire with Christianity based on the parchment codex. In the West the weapons of Christianity included the arguments of St. Augustine emphasizing original sin and the weakness of political rulers. Political power became more important with the introduction of another medium, namely, paper, and in turn Locke and Rousseau developed arguments against original sin in the psychological tabula rasa and the emphasis on experience as a basis of learning. ‘Men always seek for a general theory to justify their efforts and they almost invariably choose one that is intellectually untenable’ (Randall). The monopolies of knowledge based on language reinforced by mechanized communication led in turn to nationalism and the growth of communism. ‘If he desires that all should look up to him, let him permit himself to be known but not to be understood’ (Hallam).
Empire and Communications Page 21
