THE ERA OF AMALGAMATIONS The great change from the private proprietorial system to limited liability companies was initiated by Lord Northcliffe in promoting limited liability companies to take over Harmsworth Bros., the most successful periodical business, and afterwards The Evening News. Amalgamations and groupings of papers followed. Referring to this phase of newspaper development Sir Robert Donald, in an address at York, as president of the Institute of Journalists, in 1913, said: "Combination has been the chief char acteristic of industry all over the world, and the press could not remain outside this tendency. One company sometimes owns or controls a series of newspapers. There have been absorptions, amalgamations and alliances, with the result that vast aggrega tions of capital have been built up in which thousands of share holders are interested. These agglomerations, piling up power and wealth, are controlled by the same forces which operate in other fields of industrial activity." He also predicted that the future would see combinations increase ; there would be fewer newspapers, and "colossal circulations would continue to grow." The newspaper run as a luxury and for a mission, and not as a business enterprise, would be squeezed out of existence. There would therefore be fewer newspapers, but the total circulations would be greater.
These predictions, made a year before the World War, have been fulfilled, but no one foresaw that the press combinations would reach such gigantic proportions, or become so immensely profitable. The war facilitated and expedited the rise of the press syndicates. One has only to look at the Stock Exchange quotations to realise the influence of finance on the Press and the power of the press in finance.
There has however been a decrease in the number of news papers. In 1928 there were in Great Britain, Northern Ireland, and the Irish Free State, 2,150 newspapers, distributed as follows: London 992, of which 21 were morning, including specialist papers (Jewish Express, in Hebrew, Jewish Times, Lloyd's List, and Lloyd's Daily Index), and 3 evening dailies (and the Jewish Evening News, published in Whitechapel). The newspapers in
the English provinces and Wales, including localised issues, num bered 1,363, of which 35 were morning and 8o evening dailies: Scotland, 228, including 6 morning and Io evening dailies; Ireland, 161, including 8 morning and 5 evening dailies; the British Isles, 16, of which 5 were dailies.
Twenty years previously there were nearly 200 more newspapers than in 1928, although the population greatly increased during these two decades.
The rise of the newspaper combination has dethroned all the old newspaper dynasties. The Walters of The Times are no longer in control of that great national newspaper. The Borthwicks of The Morning Post, the Lloyds of the Daily Chronicle and Lloyds News, the Hultons of the Manchester Daily Dispatch, etc. ; the Ingrams of the Illustrated London News; Cox of the Field; and, in the provinces, Byles of the Bradford Observer, Baynes of the Leeds Mercury, Cowen of the Newcastle Chronicle, and others have been displaced. The last of the monarchs of Fleet Street to give up their splendid isolation were the Lawsons of the Daily Telegraph. It was a shock to the newspaper world when, in December 1927, the second Lord Burnham sold the paper which his grandfather founded and his father—a newspaper genius— installed in the first place in British journalism.