BOOKS.
THE INFLUENCE OF THE PRESS.*
Mn. SCOTT-JAMES begins his inquiry into the influence of the Press with a list of instances in which history has been made through the possession or the non-possession by Govern- ments of accurate information. Charles L lost his throne because the Parliament which he resisted knew more about ,the state of the country than he did. If Lord North had been aware of what was going on in the American Colonies, he would n ever "have perpetrated the Stamp Act." Napoleon's disasters in 1813 and 1814 were largely caused by his necessary depen- dence on his generals for information about the condition of his armies, which they were afraid to give him. Abd-ul- Hamid's tenure of the Ottoman throne was prolonged by his command of the post and the telegraph, and by the presence of his spies in every European capital. The Russian Foreign Office is better informed about Persia than the British, and so Russian policy in that country is more effective than ours. The Monroe Doctrine has gained such complete acceptance in the United States because "Americans are interested in all the countries of America and are making it their business to know what is happening there." But as the seat of government in the community has changed the sources and the distribution of information have changed also. So long as England was governed by the great Whig families it was enough that her Ministers should be well acquainted with what was going on, whether at home or abroad. In neither case was information wanting. The members of their own class supplied what was neededin Great Britain—it was not thought necessary to know much about Ireland—because the mass of thepopulation was still inarticulate and could usually be left out of account. The information about foreign countries was furnished by the representatives of the country abroad. But when the power which maintained Governments in office passed to the middle classes, and policies and measures had to be made intelligible to the ten-pound householder, the new rulers felt the same need of information as the oligarchy into whose shoes they had stepped. Fortunately this want had already been supplied by the foresight of the first John Walter ;— "The portentous greatness of the Times grow out of a bank- ruptcy and an ingenious fad. If the first John Walter had never been made bankrupt by the American War, or if he had never conceived the impracticable idea of setting up type by words instead of letters, we might never have had that Daily Universal .Register which became the Times."
The circumstances of the time had greatly helped the new project. As "the war of the Rebellion synchronized with a great ontburst of journalistic energy in America, and . . . the English halfpenny Press came in on the tide of the South African War," so the war with Napoleon created an extraordinary passion for news, in which the Times found its opportunity. It employed the first war correspondent, and published the earliest news of the battle of Waterloo. By degrees it became famous for the accuracy as well as for the amount of its information. The word of the Times became "a kind of semi-official guarantee." And from the first its readers demanded something more than information. The solid element in the middle classes, which had come to have an appreciable share in the government of the country a generation before the Reform Bill, wanted guidance as well as news ; and the Times supplied this in its leading articles. When the old system was overthrown by the first Reform Act the new rulers were in the main a continuation of the middle-class element, which had latterly gained strength under the displaced system, and they continued to be largely guidnd by the Times. Mr. Scott-James has a very low opinion of the middle class which governed England between 1830 and 1870. The utmost he will allow it is "a sort of general goodwill, a disposition to be benevolent when benevolence did not inter- fere either with business or the domestic code—a sentiment of • The Influents of the Press. By B. A. Scott-James. London, SW. Partridge Awl Cia [33. 6c1,, net.) benevolence which could easily be shocked by stories of suffering. Men did not look around them to see how the poor lived, but they were moved by 'a Song of a Shirt.' " Something might be said, perhaps, on the other aide, but it is needless to say it because, whether by its own fault or not, the rule of this middle chum came to an end some forty years ago. The masses became the electorate in 1867. They were taught to read in 1870. The action of these vast changes on journalism was not seen at once. The new voters were catered for, indeed, but not in newspapers. "The literary hack discovered that there was a new public for his effusions, that there were hundreds of thousands of little boys longing for a literary sensation. . . . What an assortment it was! What an outpouring of strange levity and uproarious vulgarity, an exact counterpart to the funny man' of the American Sunday papers I" There were exceptions, however, even in this rubbish. heap. Tit-Bits and Answers at least did no active harm to their readers, and the founders of both came in the end to play great parts in the newspaper world. Meanwhile the new habit of reading was generating a fresh desire for news, and this, in course of time, was met by the halfpenny Press. When war broke out in South Africa the Daily Mail rose to the level of the new opportunity. Its organization became "more alive, more elastic, more adjustable than that of any other paper out of America, and not to be excelled there."
The leading article—the part of a newspaper which aims at the expression or guidance of opinion, as distinct from the provision of news—has had a more uniform history. In form, at all events, the " leader " of to-day, alike in the London dailies and in those of the great provincial cities, is still very much what it has been from the first. Mr. Scott-James very well describes the position of the English middle class at the opening of the nineteenth century. It "afforded the sub- stratum of a sufficiently solid 'public opinion,' " and it needed a journalism which should give expression to that opinion. The Times supplied precisely what was wanted. Its con- ductors "were dignified, solemn, and critical ":— "They did not hesitate to attack with vigour, but their criticism was never convulsive. They did not indulge in new, unheard-of, original comment, but they said those severe things which men were saying already. . . . Before the end of George fire reign the paper was recognized as a great power in the land. . . Later, under the great Delano, sources of information opened themselves to the Times as to no other paper. Its foreign correspondence was organized much as the diplomatic service is organized."
It was owing to this intimate association between the depart- ments of news and of commentary—the completeness and accuracy of the former ministering to the excellence of the latter —that "what the Times said on any important matter was lia- tened to all over Europe." It is this, we may add, that makes the announcement, or even the rumour, of any impending change in the Times a matter of such anxious interest to all educated men. To what extent the leading article will retain its importance in the halfpenny daily papers which have of late years come to fill so large a place in English journalism it is hard to say. In this as in other things the supply will in the long run keep pace with the demand. This, however, is but poor comfort so long as we are ignorant what the amount of the demand will he. As yet a halfpenny daily paper is far more valued for its news than for its comments; indeed, of the news to which it mainly owes its circulation, but a small part lends itself to a leading article. Crime, sport, and exciting incidents of all kinds form the chief subjects of the descriptive sketches which fill so large a place in the modern newspaper. It may be that this is but a passing phase in the evolution of popular education. Two generations since the men and women of whose tastes we now speak so hesitatingly hardly read anything. The records of the cheap series of which there are now so many show unmistakably that what some of them have come to read may well put the better-educated classes to shame. Such publishers as the Oxford University Press and Mesara Dent would not have gone on with "The World's Classics" and "Everyman's Library" if the volumes had remained in their warehouses and even if they had risen to this height of self-sacrifice their example would not have been followed, as it has been, by other publishers working on an equally extensive scale. The tastes to which these reprints minister have not, it is true, yet become manifest in the halfpenny newspaper. But a time may come when a public which buys Burke in shilling volumes may look for some reproduction, however
rale, of his wisdom in the "leaders" which it glances at in the tube or the motor-'bus.
Unfortunately this change will not be left to work itself out unhindered. In two very interesting chapters—" The Frankly Commercial Press" and " The Secretly Commercial Press "- Mr. Scott-James describes the contrast between the past and the present of newspapers, and the causes to which it is to be attributed. Among the older journalists,
"men who have been in Fleet Street for twenty, thirty, or forty years, what praising of past times, what denunciations of the present! What memories of days when managers spent money freely, and old retainers were at last pensioned into a comfortable senility ! And to-day P The old retainers 'sacked,' the middle- aged men put upon their honour to sell their souls, or to go, the younger men trained according to the smart habit of the pro- fession1" Capital, be tells us, "controls the doling out of knowledge to the masses almost as completely as the Roman Church controlled it seven hundred years ago." The first condition of starting a great London newspaper is the provision of at least a quarter of a million sterling, and even when this has been obtained success is by no means assured. It is from money gained in other ways that the newspaper owner derives in the first instance his power of forming public opinion. The strictly commercial element comes in a little later. The owner may have to choose between making opinion and making profits; between running a paper which will find many buyers and one which will have many advertisements. Formerly the second element of profit depended on the first. The advertiser was anxious to get his wares described in the papers with the largest circulation. Now he asks for more than this. He is not contented with describing his own wares; he insists on their being described editorially. In America the concession of this demand is carried to far greater lengths than in this country. Mr. Scott-James speaks of a murder of which three newspaper men had promised to give an account, only to find, when the newspaper appeared, that their reports had been suppressed. Certain "big merchants bad used their ' influence.' " In England the big merchant would be contented with using his influence to get paragraphs which are really advertisements made to look like the words of the editor.
Necessities of space have compelled us to deal only with Mr. Scott-James's account of the English Press. But the history of the Press in the United States is traced in chapters of similar interest, and as a whole the book fills a place till now left empty in social history.
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