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room; the counting-room; the advertising department; and the circulation department, with the circulation manager. All of these are important and interesting, for they show how necessary is perfect co-operation. The superintendent of delivery has to know exactly when he must have the first papers in order to catch the first mail; the foreman of the press-room must say how little time he needs to run off the first thousand copies; the foreman of the stereotyping-room times his process to a second; and so on back to the news department, which has to be ready for the night editor's "make-up" in season to "go to press " at the moment determined by the closest reckoning of each chief of staff. And once set, the man who delays is held responsible if a driver misses a train and starts the distant subscribers writing complaints. To go into these departments one by one is impossible in my space, and it will be sufficient, I think, to take up the two, circulation and advertising, which affect more than the others the news and editorial policy of the paper.

The circulation manager of to-day is so new that not much is known about him, and on some papers he is not distinctly differentiated from the superintendent of delivery, out of whom he evolves. He embodies that phase of the spirit of commercialism that is called, "push," for he came into journalism as the solicitor or drummer did into other businesses. As the manager of a high office-building goes forth in search of tenants, and as the bank president, in more dignified mien, invites depositors to patronize his institution, so the circulation man in the newspaper business sends out his agents

to

drum up" readers. It is slow business to let the worth of the paper win readers on its merits. The managing editor might put out a sensation a day without many people being aware of it. A modern circulation has to be worked up by artificial means, and so important is this function that the man who does it is paid the salary of an editor, and one such manager I met had been promoted to his position from the managing editorship. He said his "advancement, though unusual, was natural, for," he explained, "first, you've got to make a paper that

will sell, then you've got to sell it, and, to do that, you have to let people know you're alive." In short, he advertises his

paper.

When the paper is a new one, his work is general. He placards the town with posters, runs out his brightly painted delivery wagons, and offers premiums to the newsdealers to dispose of the paper, even if it has to be given away. Copies are sent free to any address the manager can procure, and sometimes he is able to buy the subscription lists of his rivals. It is not enough, however, to drop free papers at a man's front door. The householder's attention should first be called to it, so a small army of solicitors is despatched to a neighborhood to go from house to house telling people about the features of the paper, which any shrewd man or woman can see will be attractive to the individual addressed. Then when a promise has been exacted to try the paper, it is delivered by the news dealer at the manager's expense for a week. The results of this method are always satisfactory. Circulars sent by mail are not so good, but they are less expensive, and are by no means useless, especially when they are supported by guessing, luck and lottery schemes, mystery stories, chromos and other such devices, described in the announcements distributed and carried on in the columns of the paper. More enterprising are offerings of trips around the world, and a very telling advertisement is a bicycleparade with prizes for the "best lady's costume," the most comical, the best riders of each sex, etc. It is necessary, as in the news department, that new schemes shall be planned, for the old ones lose their effect by repetition. The "chromo with every number" is one that a circulation manager said had been done till people seemed to have lost the taste for such pictures. The mystery story had failed because it required a discrimination in favor of the intelligent few, to guess how the plot would turn out. The art-poster was merely a fad, a manager said who stopped using it as an advertisement, and he preferred something more striking and insistent, like the circus-bill. But all these methods are crude, and are resorted to chiefly to start the paper.

The finer work comes with the increase

of circulation, when a fair sale is assured as bad examples to his clients, who say that and the manager is endeavoring to at- if bill-posters and circulars are good for a tract the readers he has missed in the first newspaper they should be good for soap. rush of business. He studies his subscrip- The two departments clash sharply on the tion lists, talks to the delivery superintend- Sunday paper, which has been a strong facent and canvasses among the newsdealers, tor in increasing the circulation. It beto find out where his sales are small. If came possible to publish an edition of one suburb or neighborhood is behind the great bulk when the price of white paper others, he reports to the managing editor, declined under improved processes of manwho sends there a correspondent to write ufacture and the Sunday paper was deit up. When a sensational story is secured veloped as a means of advertising the in the place the circulation manager is no- business. The managing editor was able tified, and he arranges with the delivery to concentrate upon one day's issue the department to have a score of boys go numerous and various features that he had there with great bundles of the paper and not time for during the week, and the cry it about the street, calling especially the circulating manager saw in it an oppor"scare heads" of the local piece of news. tunity to make an entering wedge for inBefore them, if there is time, the solicitors creasing the total number of readers. Το have spread the reports of the "great him it was a medium of advertisement for story," and after them subscriptions are the daily. The manager of the advertising drummed up or the news dealers are in- department rejoiced at first with the rest, duced to make extraordinary efforts to for his clients, the advertising shopkeepers continue the sales. In much the same and professions, saw quickly the value of way the population of a town is analyzed the Sunday paper with its leisurely readin comparison with the subscription list, ers, and their patronage was tremendously to ascertain what classes have been un- profitable. But the circulation grew so touched by the general canvass. If the far beyond that of the daily, and was sporting men have not been buying the so much more effective for business anpaper, the sporting department is improved, nouncements, that the revenue of the daily perhaps reorganized with a new sporting fell off more in many cases than the Suneditor taken from the paper that has the day paper had gained. The advertisers most readers of that class, and the circu- concentrated their resources, in disastrous lation manager has to find a way to let the imitation of the news, circulation, and busichange be known on the race-track. ness managers of the papers, and the curtailment of the Sunday edition is a step very seriously considered in all advertising departments. Competition may preserve it from violent, sudden attack, but if the advertising manager makes up his mind that the Sunday paper is a bad thing it will have to go, since his department is the final court for the settlement of all business questions.

The limit to all these expedients of the circulation manager is in the advertising department. A business manager whose circulation man set out to secure for him the readers of sporting news in New York City, gave a page to the subject which had formerly had only half a page. He succeeded. But when he reckoned the gains he found that he had added not more than 10,000 to his circulation, which was not enough to pay for the increase of space. It was out of proportion to the space allotted to "Woman's Realm," for example, and brought in very little revenue from advertis

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No newspaper can live without the revenue from advertisements. A circulation of 100,000, which in a one-cent paper that is sold to dealers at fifty or sixty cents a hundred, brings in $500 or $600 a day, pays only for the white paper, the press and composing room expenses, and part of the cost of delivery. All the other charges and the profits have to be earned by space-letting to other businesses. Anything that touches this spot, therefore, reaches the quick. And everything touches it. In commercial journalism it is the very soul

of the concern.

So well understood is this by laymen and journalists that the degeneration of the profession is ascribed to it, and it is believed to be an insurmountable obstacle to future improvement. I did not find any reason to despair. On the contrary it was when my inquiry took me into this department that I came first upon business considerations that are bound in time to check the excesses of sensationalism. The character of the circulation begins to be looked to there. The space let to advertisers is charged for on the basis of so much a line for a thousand readers. But the papers with the largest circulation do not receive the highest rate per line, because the merchant knows that the readers of sensationalism are not the best class of customers; that is to say, they are not the people who are able to pay the best prices for goods, or to buy the best and most profitable qualities of his stock. The paper with a small circulation may be the most remunerative to the advertising trades. The manager of the advertising department of a newspaper opposes any features that are likely to keep the paper out of homes, unless he has turned deliberately, as some of them do, to a class of advertising as low as the worst journalism.

More significant for the future, however, are the principles that govern advertising in its relation to news space and editorial independence. The advertiser is a shrewd, selfish man, who realizes his power over the press, and he is insatiable in his demands for concessions. When he comes into a newspaper office he wants to stick the name of his bicycle or his patent medicine into the middle of some important news. If he is not permitted to do that, he would like to have it next to reading matter or at the head of a column. That granted, he asks for the most conspicuous place on the first page, covering preferably two or three columns across the top. Then he wishes to insert a 66 reading notice," an article printed without any mark to distinguish it from news. When he runs for office he expects to be "puffed." If he were allowed to have his way he would deflect the editorial page and make the news pages of all papers like those of Boston, which are the worst in appearance in the country. They let out half the first page to the highest bidder, keeping for their

own scare heads only the part that lies uppermost on the news-stand; they break the news articles for advertisements and make the reader follow a story through three and four disorderly pages over shoes and under tooth-powder; they print "reading notices," give "puffs," and permit a firm to make up a page recommending its wares in typographical imitation of the editorial page. It is a curious fact that the other extreme, good taste and high business principles in dealing with advertisers, is in the business offices of the Chicago newspapers.

The temptation to let the advertisers have their way is hard for a business manager to resist, as they are always willing to pay well for an unusual concession. But he does resist it, and the tendency to restrict them is growing with every year of the experience of the business man in journalism, and with every step he takes toward complete control. The progress is more marked in this department than in the others, perhaps because here his experience as the master has been long. He has had time to move past the crudely experimental period in which the circulation manager is struggling. The good has been separated from the bad by the test of profits, and it is acknowledged that the best paying papers are those that are the strictest with their advertisers. The fact that the basis of his right ethical conclusions is commercial is all the better as an assurance of permanency and of their value for the other departments which he will take more and more actively in hand. I met a few business men who were guided in part by other considerations than money-making, and I heard of two or three more I did not have a chance to interview. Vanity, love of power, social ambition, religious prejudices often crossed mercenary motives and, at some risk of error, I should say in general that the weaker of these entered more powerfully into the management of the rich purchasers of newspapers than high principles did or do into the policies of most of the great editors who seem to disregard business considerations altogether. Men reared in the business department, recalling times I could not know, and incidents I could not possibly verify, declared that the editors often fell, that their position proved a pose which broke

down when confronted with hard facts. And the facts were such that a business man, accustomed to their threatening as pect, was better able to dare and beat them down. It is perfectly true that some business men have risked and stood tremendous losses for principles that to them were purely moral. There is a man in Chicago who has bought, and is conducting personally, an influential newspaper, and he is known to have rejected a sum much greater than his valuation of his organ because he knew the purpose of the bidders was to reverse his editorial policy. Another business man refused, at considerable cost, to make to one of the principal advertising agencies in the country a concession that was technical (in his opinion), harmless to the paper, and of no consequence to its readers, and his reply to an inquiry for his reason indicated that it was pride in business principles and a wilful spirit. But the comment with which his contemporaries dismissed my citation of the Chicago man as an example was that his paper did not pay. It is important to know that there are such men and such motives in the business of newspaper-making, but since they are not typical and their example is not influential, except where, as in the case of the man who defied the big advertiser, it happened to pay, I need not say much more about them than I do about the few editors who conduct newspapers for the ideal satisfaction of seeing them powerful forces for the right. It is a surer ground for optimism regarding the future of journalism that the worst examples of the "new journalism" to-day are not so fundamentally bad as were the beginnings of some of the papers that are respectable in their later prosperity. The growth of commercialism pure and simple has been toward improvement, and the betterment, though attributed by a most estimable publisher to skill-to the knowledge and use of a greater variety of methods-is instructive to the more unscrupulous and less expert managers or publishers. Success along lines chosen for business reasons appeal to business men. A hustling proprietor who said he had tried all the "Boston methods," and failed because another fellow came along and started a decent paper which got all the readers away from him, held the attention of his fellow-publish

ers for an hour one night, and when he finished talking they said that he was right, “only just a little ahead of the procession." This man was understood. His motives are common; his ideas will be pondered, and whatever he does will be watched, with a chance of imitation. Should he succeed, his influence would affect newspapers all over the country.

He maintained that it paid in the long run to conduct every part of the paper for the readers. The advertising columns must be a directory. No announcement should have a "preferred position" of any sort. The dry-goods advertisements should be together by themselves; the boots and shoes should be grouped; and so on with each trade and want. This classified arrangement was right not because it was orderly and a protection of the reading-matter from distasteful foreign subjects, but, as this manager said, to make his paper an effective advertising medium, a paper in which a man who sought something could find the address of the shop that sold it.. That this was good business he illustrated by recounting how he inserted for a dealer one day a special sale of a particular kind of chair and then on his way home stopped himself to buy one. They were sold out. The announcement had been put simply and briefly in its class, yet 1,700 of the chairs had been bought by readers who had seen that one notice. If he had allowed his advertisers to break up his pages in their eagerness for conspicuousness, more unwilling eyes would have caught sight of the advertisement, but not so many readers would run over his business directory every day. The same principle has been followed by a small one-cent evening newspaper in Chicago which makes a profit of half a million dollars a year, and, though the plant of this paper cost half a million, it was all paid for out of profits; the original investment was only a few hundred dollars. The most profitable newspaper in the country is a three-cent daily that has made itself so effective as an advertising medium that thousands of people who do not read it use no other paper for that purpose.

When a newspaper has reached this point it is past the stage where it is a mere business. It is spoken of as a property by the rivals who are striving to establish themselves on a similarly firm footing, and

the word is full of meaning to them and to everybody interested in journalism. It contains the commercial ideal of a newspaper.

The basis of this ideal is, strange to say, the old newspapers built up by the editors of earlier days, who, by their forceful personalities, gained a hold on their readers that death cannot shake off. The children of the readers cling to the paper of the children of the founder. This makes the old organ a property. Its earning power may be comparatively small, but it is sure, the expenses are low, and the "good name" can be sold at a moment's notice. Many men would bid for the honor of owning it, whereas very few would seek the proprietorship of a sensational newspaper. Few businesses are quite so precarious as journalism, for there is nothing tangible about it. The plant of a newspaper that is earning a good dividend on ten million dollars, is actually worth not half a million, and its value may be reduced to this by the competition of a younger, more energetic rival.

But what the new journalist covets in this old property is its field, the foundation of an intelligent class of readers upon which to build a still greater newspaper. The old editors neglected the news and the business departments. Their foot

ing was in opinion and prejudice, which, though solid, is not broad enough. The new journalist has no prejudices that interfere with his business ends. The founder of his school was the first man to make an absolutely non-partisan paper, and the successful men I talked with declared that the best way commercially to make an editorial page was to turn it over to some man with mind and character who would direct its policy independently and in good faith in the interests of the community as a whole, regardless of parties, cliques, advertisers, or any other interests, however powerful. But while this is being done the business man who proposes to conduct the enterprise would have an equally independent news department and, having the most intelligent readers to begin with, he would broaden the news policy from their point of view, spending as much as sensationalism costs for more important, better written news. In short, the commercial ideal contains distinct appreciation of the power of opinion, but it prizes just as highly the value of the authoritative statement of all the

news.

"There's not room for many such newspapers, but that's the kind that would live and pay forever," said my new, commercial journalist.

THE MAN WITH THE BACON RIND
By William Henry Shelton

T was plain to every officer on the staff that young Highchester would take care of himself in this world, and secure some of the choicest billets in the next, without any fatiguing exertion on his part beyond the exercise of an overpowering politeness and a tact which was absolutely unique in its originality. It was the General himself who said that if "Babe " (that was the name they gave him in playful recognition of his bulk and of his guileless ways), were shipwrecked on a desert island, he would find some way to make the sand fleas spin for him.

It was not that Highchester was given to idleness or that he shirked his duty; but just a sort of compelling influence that surrounded him and surprised other people into doing things for him. Babe was a sort of mild giant at twenty-three, standing six feet two in his boots and charmingly deliberate of speech. It took a good horse to carry him, but in the long raid after Morgan Babe was always in the van and easily the most popular man in the mess, for the luxuries of the country seemed to find him out and hide themselves in his saddle pockets.

The morning after the cavalry corps went into camp in the outskirts of Cov

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