Page:Newspaper writing and editing.djvu/349

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for the longest time. This joint ownership plan Greeley and his assistants hoped would in time result in the "still further application of the general principle that the workman should be his own employer and director, and should receive the full reward of his labor." The amount raised by this stock company, $100,000, was considered at that time a very large sum to be devoted to newspaper publishing. How rapidly the conditions of newspaper making changed is shown by the fact that less than thirty years after the New York Tribune was incorporated with its shares at $100 each, these shares sold for as much as $10,000 each, and in 1869, less than thirty-five years after the New York Herald began with $500 cash capital, Bennett refused an offer of $2,000,000 for his paper. Within the lifetime of these two great editor-publishers newspaper making had become a big business enterprise.

Newspapers Require Large Capital. During the last quarter of a century the amount of capital required for success in newspaper publishing has been further increased by the need for huge presses, expensive linotypes and other type-casting machines, and more elaborate stereotyping apparatus, as well as for better news service, new special features, and more numerous illustrations. Expensive additions to the mechanical equipment and other exigencies often make it necessary for the newspaper company, like other business enterprises, to secure financial assistance by borrowing considerable sums from banks. Such has become the magnitude of the business side of the newspaper that ownership by stock companies is the rule to-day instead of the exception as it was in 1845. Not infrequently the majority of the stock of a newspaper is held by one man or in one family, and one person, often known as the publisher-owner, directs the pub-