The newspaper owner and the advertiser, then, were intermixed. But on
the balance the advertising interest being wider spread was the
stronger, and what you got was a sort of imposition, often quite
conscious and direct, of advertising power over the Press; and this
was, as I have said, not only negative (that was long obvious) but, at
last, positive.

Sometimes there is an open battle between the advertiser and the
proprietor, especially when, as is the case with framers of artificial
monopolies, both combatants are of a low, cunning, and unintelligent
type. Minor friction due to the same cause is constantly taking place.
Sometimes the victory falls to the newspaper proprietor, more often to
the advertiser--never to the public.

So far, we see the growth of the Press marked by these
characteristics. (1) It falls into the hands of a very few rich men,
and nearly always of men of base origin and capacities. (2) It is, in
their hands, a mere commercial enterprise. (3) It is economically
supported by advertisers who can in part control it, but these are of
the same Capitalist kind, in motive and manner, with the owners of the
papers. Their power does not, therefore, clash in the main with that
of the owners, but the fact that advertisement makes a paper, has
created a standard of printing and paper such that no one--save at a
disastrous loss--can issue regularly to large numbers news and opinion
which the large Capitalist advertisers disapprove.

There would seem to be for any independent Press no possible economic
basis, because the public has been taught to expect for 1d. what it
costs 3d. to make--the difference being paid by the advertisement