To give some idea of the upspringing of a provincial paper after the removal of the taxes in knowledge, I may quote the circulation figures of the Scotsman, which have been officially published. Before the abolition of the stamp tax the Scotsman was a bi-weekly with an issue of perhaps 2,500. After 1855 it became a penny daily and reached 6,000 during the Russian War, settling down to 4,000 afterwards. In 1859 its average circulation was 10,000. In 1862 after the repeal of the paper duty it rose to 15,000. In 1865 it was well over 25,000; in 1870, 30,000; in 1877, 50,000 and during the eighties it reached 60,000 daily.
After the Scotsman for power and influence most people would name the Manchester Guardian. But the Manchester Guardian has an even stronger claim to eminence in being perhaps the only paper in the kingdom outside the metropolis, whose editorial conduct has caused it to be not only the leading paper in its district but also a newspaper of universal range and influence. It has been in the hands of one editor, Mr. C. P. Scott, for more than forty years and he has had the courage, besides leading his own community and representing its local interests with faithfulness and efficiency, to look higher still and to raise his standard of effort far beyond the natural demands in culture of a wealthy industrial district. There is no paper in England, which takes so seriously the intellectual side of life. It has become the unfortunate London habit to select here and there enclaves of culture, where the work has to be brilliantly done at the expense of much else neglected or left absolutely out of account, a failing which is no doubt due to the pressure of competing interests in the metropolis. All the painstaking details of culture such as reviewing, musical, dramatic, and artistic criticism are carried out in the Manchester Guardian with something of the thoroughness of the German and with much of the wit and point of the Latin races. Work of this kind is the more praiseworthy, inasmuch as it has been done under a very strict rule of anonymity, a veil which was very seldom lifted.
The Manchester Guardian, founded in 1821, two years after the “massacre of Peterloo,” an event, which ranked in the mind of Manchester radicals almost as July 14 does with a French “red,” has been until the last few years practically in the hands of two men of the same name, John Edward Taylor, father and son. They were both men of independent character, not over-valuing the wealth which came to them. They preserved the traditional opposition of the paper to anything like aristocratic dominance or reactionary foreign policy and this policy is still faithfully carried on. The business history of the paper was very much the same as that of the Scotsman, the price of the two papers being reduced to a penny within one month of each other. One of the most prominent events in its career was the attack made by the paper on the misuse of trade marks in the Eastern trade, leading to a libel action, which, though it was indeed lost, brought the paper more than popularity. It established it as the rightful representative of Manchester interests.
A very important newspaper property and the leading organ of the Midlands is the Birmingham Daily Post, which was developed out of the weekly Journal in the form of a penny daily in 1857. The establishment of this property was the joint work of John Feeney and Sir John Jaffray aided by the editorial work of J. J. Bunce. The late Mr. Feeney, the son of the co-founder, bought back the various papers in the group and they are still administered as part of his estate by Mr. J. R. Smyth. It maintains a high level of editorial excellence under the care of Mr. G. W. Hubbard.
One of the oldest papers in the kingdom, perhaps the oldest still alive, is the Leeds Mercury, founded in 1717, which has gradually grown weaker in a contest with a younger and more vigorous rival and finally subsided to a halfpenny price. The Yorkshire Post was originated by a group of landowners and Conservative manufacturers in opposition to the Mercury, always a Liberal organ. It gradually grew to the position of leading newspaper in Leeds, mainly through the skill and energy of H. Palmer, one of the few men in this country, who could combine in himself the functions of editor and manager. The present editor is Mr. J. R. S. Phillips.
The honour of being the first penny daily newspaper in England appears to belong to the Liverpool Daily Post, which anticipated several others by one or two months in 1855. The Post was always an enterprising Liberal organ, aggressive in business under its able manager, Mr. A. G. Jeans. Its present editor, Sir Edward Russell, has had control since 1869, anticipating Mr. C. P. Scott of the Manchester Guardian by a couple of years. About ten years ago the Post executed a notable stroke in business by effecting an amalgamation with the moderate Liberal paper, the Liverpool Mercury, to the great advantage of both. The Liverpool Courier is still the representative of Conservatism.
Among well-known Northern papers is the Newcastle Chronicle, celebrated through its connection with a noted figure of his time, Joseph Cowen. The Bradford Observer has become after some vicissitudes the Yorkshire Observer. The Sheffield Telegraph with several satellites is a prosperous property held jointly by the Clifford and Lang families. In Manchester besides the Guardian there is the Conservative Courier owned by Lord Northcliffe and a very successful group of papers belonging to Mr. Hulton. These are all of a sporting tendency, with none of them specially remarkable as newspapers. But as a publishing house the Hulton group of papers come near to be commercial rivals on equal terms with the Harmsworth group in London. Their chief publications are the Sporting Chronicle and the Daily Despatch. One of the most successful papers in the kingdom is the Manchester Evening News, under the editorship of Mr. Parkinson which has been the pioneer of rapid production and distribution. In this office were perfected the various devices for printing late news, generally known as the “fudge box,” which were adopted ten years later by London and fifteen years later by New York. It is the property of the Allen family.
Down in the South we have the Bristol Times and Mirror and the Bristol Mercury; at Plymouth, the Western Daily Mercury and the Western Morning News from which the notable journalistic family of the Spenders take their origin. Nearly all these newspapers have also allied evening papers but it is impossible to do justice here to the widespread organization of the provincial evening press; in some respects it is more important by its bulk than the better known morning papers. The evening paper in the provinces is the workman’s daily paper. But there are so many of them that it is very difficult to make distinctions.
Returning North, we find a wealthy property and a newspaper powerful by its able editorial conduct in the Glasgow Herald. Until recently there was some uncertainty as to the real date of the first appearance of this journal under the name of Glasgow Advertiser. The proprietors themselves were under the impression, obtained through counting backwards from early issues that it began in 1782 but the first number was unearthed the other day announcing the conclusion of the Peace of Versailles—concluding the American war—in January, 1783. Twenty years later it became the Herald and Advertiser and in 1805 the Herald only. Distinguished editors have been Samuel Hunter, soldier and surgeon as well, who raised 1000 volunteers with himself as colonel to put down the Radicals in 1819; George Outram, Dr. Russell, Dr. Wallace, and Mr. F. H. Kitchin the present editor. The Herald became a penny paper in 1859. It is held by a joint-stock company. There is also a halfpenny daily, the Glasgow Daily Record. In Aberdeen there are two excellent dailies, which it is very much to the credit of a comparatively small town to keep in comparative prosperity, the Aberdeen Journal (1748—daily 1876) and the Aberdeen Free Press (1853). Dundee is a very energetic newspaper centre, which not only has two dailies the Dundee Advertiser (1801) and the Dundee Courier (1851) but it has developed weekly papers of large circulation of the family type, whose circulation extends far over the borders of Scotland.
In South Wales there are two flourishing dailies, the Western Mail (1869) a Conservative organ allied with the News of the World and the South Daily News (1872) a Liberal paper. Other Welsh papers are evening papers or weeklies.