THE POWERLESSNESS OF THE PRESS.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR:1 Siu,—Have you not done less than justice to your ouin side of the house in your somewhat sweeping generalisations on "the powerlessness of the Press" in last week's Spectator, more especially where you say : "In truth, the daily Press has lost, with the gradual reduction of the franchise, much of its political influence " ? I would suggest that, if you carry your investigations a little further than the Daily Mail, the Times, and the Daily lelegraph, you will find good reason for a considerable qualification of first impressions, and that you will hasten to express. your regret for an apparent lack of appreciation of the valuable spade-work which has been done by at least a section of the Liberal daily Press. You remark that the "largest circulations" of the papers of Protectionist tendencies have obviously not affected London, since, outside the City, it "has decided for Free-trade and Liberalism." With all respect, may this not be traceable to the comparative feebleness of the fiscal teachings of the papers you name when contrasted with the admirably efficient education in the elementary principles and broad conclusions of political economy supplied by the Daily Chronicle, Morning Leader, Westminster Gazette, and Daily News,—which together boast a London circulation that, to say the least, falls little short of the combined circulation in the same area of the journals specially cited in the Spectator ? That this is the more likely reason seems to me much more clearly and conclusively demonstrated by striking electoral facts which have already been used to prove the fatality of Mr. Chamberlain's fiscal fluency to the cause which he overweighted with disas- trous facts and fallacies. It is an interesting—and, to a working journalist, a very gratifying—circumstance that wherever the cataclysms of this General Election have occurred there one has found a journal, not necessarily of the same political colour, which has been engaged in extensive educational propaganda on the subject before the country. If I may say so, the Spectators of the great provincial Press have plainly had a direct effect upon the issue. Who will say that the Manchester Guardian had little or nothing to do with the Free-trade triumph in Manchester, Lancashire, Cheshire, Staffordshire, and Wales ? Was it of none effect that, from the night of Mr. Chamber- lain's speech at Glasgow, that sound teacher and preacher of political economy, the occupant of the editorial chair of the Glasgow Herald, applied the corrosive acid of his sane irony to the " case " of the Tariff Reform League ? Did it count for naught in Yorkshire, think you, that the Yorkshire Post consistently declined to support Mr. Chamberlain in his capture of the Conservative machine for Protection? Finally —not to weary you with examples, of which there are many more in store—what but the engagement of the whole daily Press of Birmingham and the " zone " in Mr. Chamberlain's behalf during the electoral campaign carried the " ark " on to "Mount Ararat" ? If it were necessary, I think I could prove to your satisfaction that, "smart" as some of the journals which have supported Mr. Chamberlain may be, and attractive though their general contents certainly are, they conspicuously fail when it cornea to the task of educating their public, for
the sufficient reason that education is distinctly not their tnetier,—is, indeed, the phase of old journalism which they have abandoned of set purpose.. But my purpose here is simply to give you reason for a reconsideration of a sweeping condemnation which seems to me to be inadvertently ingrate, in that it totally ignores the splendidly successful educational work done by the Liberal daily Press in connection with this [We deeply regret if we have seemed to do less than justice to the organs of the Liberal Press named by our corre- spondent, and to those unnamed, including his own able and powerful journal. The able advocacy of Free-trade by the Liberal newspapers—not forgetting the Glasgow Herald— has been a source of pride to all Free-traders. We crave leave, then, to amend our plea. It should have been described as "the powerlessness of the Press when it has a bad cause."— En. Spectator.]
Previous page
