If 4,000,000 workers paid one penny a week (the price of a Sunday paper, or of one glass of cheap beer) they would have £866,000 at the end of a year.
Election expenses of 200 Labour candidates at £500 each would be £100,000.
Pay of 200 Labour members at £200 a year would be £40,000.
Total, £140,000: leaving a balance in hand of £726,000.
Election expenses of 2000 candidates for School Board, Municipal Councils, and Boards of Guardians at £50 per man would be £100,000. Leaving a balance of £626,000.
Now the cause of Labour has very few friends amongst the newspapers. As I have said before, at times of strikes and other industrial crises, the Press goes almost wholly against the workers.
The 4,000,000 men I have supposed to wake up to their own interest could establish weekly and daily papers of their own at a cost of £50,000 for each paper. Say one weekly paper at a penny, one daily paper at a penny, or one morning and one evening paper at a halfpenny each.
These papers would have a ready-made circulation amongst the men who owned them. They could be managed, edited, and written by trained journalists engaged for the work, and could contain all the best features of the political papers now bought by working men.
Say, then, that the weekly paper cost £50,000 to start, and that the morning and evening papers cost the same. That would be £150,000, and the papers would pay in less than a year.