SYNDICATE. Originally the name of a council of syndics, the word syndicate has in modern times come to be used to describe a body of men associated for commercial or financial purposes, especially when the body is temporary and ad hoc. The word has also been used to describe the combined use of news or articles by newspaper proprietors, as when an arrangement is made to circulate an article throughout a series of newspapers, when it is termed a "syndicated article." In the Italian fascist economic structure, the local trade asso ciations are termed syndicates, and all workers have to subscribe to them, whether they become members or not. These syndicates are juridical bodies and integral parts of the new Italian consti tution. (See FASCISM, ECONOMICS OF.) (L. C. M.) Press Syndicates are editorial organizations based on the mod ern business concept of large sales, wide distribution, relatively small cost to each purchaser but large aggregate cost and profits. They supply to numerous newspapers fiction, cartoons, illustrated articles in single or series form often signed by well-known names. They exist partly by virtue of the fact that they are able to supply to any one newspaper material which that newspaper could not afford to collect for itself, and partly because some of the clev erest journalists are engaged in the business. Press syndicates are
highly developed in the United States, where they supply more than 8o% of the reading matter, and in Great Britain, where individuality still counts in the newspaper world, this method of mass production and dissemination of news is making headway.
Major 0. J. Smith is the inventor (1882) of the syndicate which first expressed itself by means of the distribution of stereotyped plates manufactured at central points and served to newspapers in the form of metal castings. In connection with this enterprise the American Press Ass'n. which at one time served as many as 12,000 newspapers, also sent out material in manuscript proof and electrotype shell form, and made hundreds of small country newspapers possible. The distribution by stereotype matrices, to-day so important, came later. The prosperity of press syndi cates since 1900. is instanced by the special foreign service of the Chicago Daily News, and the local and general services of the United Press (1907), the Associated Press (1900), the Interna tional News Service and others.
Two well known syndicate pioneers were S. S. McClure and Edward Marshall. McClure introduced Rdbert Louis Stevenson and Rudyard Kipling to American readers. (W. S. Hi.)