CHAPTER XVIII
PERIOD OF FINANCIAL READJUSTMENT
1880—1900
Manton Marble, one of the ablest of the early editors of The New York World, claimed in a published lecture on journalism two things for the maker of newspapers:—
- That he is a merchant of news. He buys it everywhere—he sells it in any market not stocked with his commodity. Enterprise and industry get him, and other merchants, success and honor, and of like kind. Probity has the same reward in public confidence. Shrewd and far-sighted combinations bring to the merchant of news—or of flour, or of pork—profit and credit.
- That he has it in trust and stewardship to be the organ and mould of public opinion, to express and guide it, and to seek, through all conflicting private interests, solely the public general good. Herein his work is allied to the statesman's, the politician's, and takes rank as it takes tribute of letters, science and the law.
COMMERCIAL JOURNALISM
The financial readjustment under which the larger daily newspaper went during the last two decades of the nineteenth century brought many changes in journalism. There was a time when the subscriber paid his money primarily to see what Horace Greeley had to say in The New York Tribune or to read what Joseph Medill wrote for The Chicago Tribune: even after Greeley's death the upstate farmer renewed his subscription for The New York Tribune because he thought Horace still prepared its contents. But the impersonal and commercial journalism changed completely conditions and customs. Formerly, the editor was practically supreme in control: he was the employer of the publisher, of the advertising manager, of the circulation agent, etc. After he ceased to have the controlling interest, it passed into other hands represented at official councils by the business manager: only occasionally, the exception which proved
