THE " TIMES " AND THE PUBLISHERS.
WE had hoped to be able to refrain from commenting on the private trade dispute between the Pub- lishers' Association and the Times newspaper. The Times, however, has chosen to make a direct appeal to the public' by insisting that its action has been taken in their interests, and that it is fighting against a body of selfish monopolists. In these circumstances, and in view of the great amount of attention drawn to the whole matter in the Press, we can hardly refrain from comment.
Before dealing with the merits, we would ask our readers to clear their minds upon two points. In the first place, they must remember that, however much one of the com- batants may speak of its desire to act in the interests of the readers of books, such an expression of altruism is in reality only a move in the business game. The Times, like any other business concern, is thinking of its own interests and its own profits, and is in no sense a corporate knight-. errant of the bookshelves. When its conductors intervened some fifty years ago in the quarrel between the booksellers and the publishers, their position was a very different one. They were not then traders in books, but occupied an impartial position, and had a right to claim that they regarded the matter solely from the point of view of the readers of books. Now, through their own choice, they have become book-vendors, having pecuniary transactions with the publishers on a very large scale, and hence they cannot possibly claim to take a judicial view of the matter without setting up as judges in their own cause. We do not for a moment suggest that the Times has not a perfect right. to fight• its own battle as vigorously as it can ; nor, of course, does the fact that it has large monetary interests involved by any means show that it is in the wrong. This monetary interest, however, of necessity bars the plea that it is the disinterested champion of the public, just as it was in 1852. What we have said as to the Times being engaged in fighting a purely commercial battle applies, of course, with equal force to the publishers ; but we are bound to point out here that, as far as we know, the publishers have made no attempt to represent themselves as acting on any grounds but those of legitimate business. Again, a sense of fairness obliges us to note that there is little justification for the Times in accusing the publishers, as it does in its leader of Thursday, of having lost their tempers and forgotten their manners. The publishers, no doubt, in their general letter to the Press tell some un- pleasant home-truths to the Times; but such plain speaking was provoked, and, in our opinion, justified, by the original attack made upon the publishers in the advertisements issued by the Times during the past fortnight. In those advertisements the publishers were represented as selfish monopolists who gain enormous profits at the expense of the public and the authors. Those who make suggestions of this kind, and especially when they are founded on erroneous data, must expect to be hit back. Again, all who complain of bad manners in a public controversy should be specially careful of their own methods.
We desire to warn our readers of another source of . misconstruction and prejudice in the present controversy. It has been suggested that the Times occupies the Free-trade position, while the publishers take that of the Protectionists, and of Protectionists of a par- ticularly odious kind. Any such analogy from the political arena is entirely false and misleading. The, question of Free-trade or Protection, in the true sense, does not arise. The Free-trader does not in the least desire to interfere with the complicated mechanism of private buying and selling. All he asserts is that the Government is doing a deep injury to commerce, and is impairing the wealth of the nation, if it steps in and by the force of law prevents buyers from choosing their own markets, and compels them, under heavy penalties in the shape of Custom-duties, to purchase in the dearer rather than in the cheaper market. He insists that the Government shall not interfere with prices, but shall keep its hands off and leave private individuals, whether they live in these islands or across the sea, to manage their own commercial transactions in their own way.
When we come to the details of the actual dispute we do not wish to dogmatise as to the absolute right or wrong of the transactions involved ; but we are bound to say that it appears to us that the publishers would have been very foolish men of business if they had allowed the Times to break down the system of selling " net books " which was devised some fifteen or twenty years ago, •and which, on the whole, has worked extremely well. The Times, no doubt, alleges that it has always kept strictly within the letter of the law as to the agreement which it signed in regard to the sale of " net books." A little reflection, however, will show that it kept the letter rather than the spirit of that agreement, or, to put it in another way, that the original agreement was so loosely worded that its spirit could be defeated by the sale of so-called second-hand books at very large reductions. The Times, no doubt, had a perfect legal, and therefore a perfect moral, right to manage its own affairs in its own way, and to sell books bought under the net agreement in any way that did not legally infringe that agreement.
The booksellers, on the other hand, had an equally good right, when the old agreement expired, to make a new form of agreement as to uet books. No man who stands on his strict legal rights has a right to complain if others follow his example. The only important mistake which it appears to us that the publishers committed was that of originally allowing the Times better terms than any other library or bookseller. They, or at any rate a large number of them, appear to have promised the Times an extra 15 per cent.,—paid in kind, if not in cash. We do not profess to speak as business experts, but it seems to us that this policy of giving special prices to favoured individuals is extremely likely to end in difficulties and perplexities. There is nothing morally wrong in such favouritism, but it is almost always bad business. It was on such special terms that the greatest monopoly in the world, the Standard Oil Trust, was built up.
One curious incident of the quarrel has been a discussion as to whether the publisher is necessary to the author. Why should he not, it has been asked, deal directly with the printer and the bookseller, and, in fact, produce and sell his books himself, and so gain the middleman's profit ? The answer, we believe, is that, except for a few very great and popular authors who might employ an exclusive agent —that is, a private publisher—the attempt would be sure to prove disastrous. The publisher, who is in effect a speculator and dealer in intellectual talent, is necessary to the pecuniary welfare of the author. Without his enter- prise and energy in discovering new writers, and speculating in their abilities in prose or verse, the author who desired to come before the public would find himself in hopeless difficulties. Again, we are convinced that the publisher, though he may often conduct his business on unenlightened lines, does not make an exorbitant profit. Of the large number of publishers in the United Kingdom, only a very few make anything that can fairly be called large profits, and even those profits are only obtained by the use of a very large amount of capital and by the exercise of great business ability. The proof that the profits in the publishing trade are not inordinate or illegitimate is to be found in the fact that a very large number of publishers only contrive to make a bare living. If the publishing trade were the gold-mine it has been represented, we may be quite sure that there would be hundreds of men pressing in to share in the 800 per cent. profits that have been talked about. As long as publishing remains the absolutely open trade that it is at present, and as long as publishers compete freely for the wares which authors produce, we need have no anxiety that the publishers, as a whole, will be able to deprive the authors of their profits. If publishing were really the simple and lucrative business which the Times has represented it, and if publishing on the lines advocated by the Times would benefit the public and the authors so immensely, while at the same time leaVing a fair share of profit to the publisher, why does not the Times embark on the publishing business itself, and delight readers with cheap books and authors with huge honorariums ?
Before we leave the subject of our present article we feel bound to say a word of deep regret that the greatest of British—nay, of all—newspapers should have become involved in a business controversy so little calculated to add to its dignity or prestige. Although . we differ in so many respects from the political views of the Times, we desire to express our unabated respect for the way in which it is conducted on its journalistic side, and for the magnificent service it renders daily to the nation by its foreign news, by the fullness and accuracy of its Parliamentary and platform reporting, and by the admirably high literary standard which it invariably maintains. In every department the Times as a news- paper is not only up-to-date, but shows good taste and ability. We can best express what we mean by saying that English public life, and even English literature, would be infinitely the poorer if the Times—which heaven forbid h—were to cease to exist. The Times, as a newspaper, has never stood higher than it stands to-day, both as regards news and literature, nor has it ever been more what, to borrow a useful Americanism, we may describe as " a live paper." It is, therefore, with no little regret that the friends of the Times, amongst whom we desire to rank ourselves, have followed the undignified quarrel over the development of the Times Book Club. We do not desire to be censorious, but we cannot resist expressing what we are sure is in the minds of thousands of Englishmen to-day,—namely, that the Times had much better stick to its last, and be the best newspaper in the world, rather than turn itself into a cheap newspaper library and a bookseller at cutthroat prices.
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