IV


Meanwhile, there had appeared in connection with this new institution,
"The Press," a certain factor of the utmost importance: Capitalist
also in origin, and, therefore, inevitably exhibiting all the
poisonous vices of Capitalism as its effect flourished from more to
more. This factor was _subsidy through advertisement_.

At first the advertisement was not a subsidy. A man desiring to let a
thing be known could let it be known much more widely and immediately
through a newspaper than in any other fashion. He paid the newspaper
to publish the thing that he wanted known, as that he had a house to
let, or wine to sell.

But it was clear that this was bound to lead to the paradoxical state
of affairs from which we began to suffer in the later nineteenth
century. A paper had for its revenue not only what people paid in
order to obtain it, but also what people paid in order to get their
wares or needs known through it. It, therefore, could be profitably
produced at a cost greater than its selling price. Advertisement
revenue made it possible for a man to print a paper at a cost of 2d.
and sell it at 1d.

In the simple and earlier form of advertisement the extent and nature
of the circulation was the only thing considered by the advertiser,
and the man who printed the newspaper got more and more profit as he
extended that circulation by giving more reading matter for a