In the first place, if advertisement had come to be the stand-by of a newspaper, the Capitalist owning the sheet would necessarily consider his revenue from advertisement before anything else.  He was indeed compelled to do so unless he had enormous revenues from other sources, and ran his paper as a luxury costing a vast fortune a year.  For in this industry the rule is either very great profits or very great and rapid losses—­losses at the rate of L100,000 at least in a year where a great daily paper is concerned.

He was compelled then to respect his advertisers as his paymasters.  To that extent, therefore, his power of giving true news and of printing sound opinion was limited, even though his own inclinations should lean towards such news and such opinion.

An individual newspaper owner might, for instance, have the greatest possible dislike for the trade in patent medicines.  He might object to the swindling of the poor which is the soul of that trade.  He might himself have suffered acute physical pain through the imprudent absorption of one of those quack drugs.  But he certainly could not print an article against them, nor even an article describing how they were made, without losing a great part of his income, directly; and, perhaps, indirectly, the whole of it, from the annoyance caused to other advertisers, who would note his independence and fear friction in their own case.  He would prefer to retain his income, persuade his readers to buy poison, and remain free (personally) from touching the stuff he recommended for pay.

As with patent medicines so with any other matter whatsoever that was advertised.  However bad, shoddy, harmful, or even treasonable the matter might be, the proprietor was always at the choice of publishing matter which did not affect him, and saving his fortune, or refusing it and jeopardizing his fortune.  He chose the former course.

In the second place, there was an even more serious development.  Advertisement having become the stand-by of the newspaper the large advertiser (as Capitalism developed and the controls became fewer and more in touch one with the other) could not but regard his “giving” of an advertisement as something of a favour.

There is always this psychological, or, if you will, artistic element in exchange.

In pure Economics exchange is exactly balanced by the respective advantages of the exchangers; just as in pure dynamics you have the parallelogram of forces.  In the immense complexity of the real world material, friction, and a million other things affect the ideal parallelogram of forces; and in economics other conscious passions besides those of mere avarice affect exchange:  there are a million half-conscious and sub-conscious motives at work as well.