14 , 4 : 3 – 24.
is the question of the distribution of the newspaper itself. The
crude beginnings of distribution go back more than a hundred years . The great difficulty of getting trustworthy news from the continent during the latter part of the Napoleonic wars led John Walter, Jr., of The Times to write, May 9, 1811, to J . W . Croker, then Secretary to the Admiralty , to the effect that no
French journals whatsoever could be procured except through smugglers. He therefore proposed a plan by which a French officer, then engaged in this contraband traffic , should exchange it for that of supplying French papers only to the English ; he could then be granted Admiralty protection to his vessel, upon
the sole condition that no smuggled goods should be transported by him .51 The request was apparently granted by Croker.
The problem has been definitely met and best met by a central distributing agency. In England the repeal of the stamp duties
led to a reduction in the price of newspapers and an enormous increase in the demand for them . The somewhat primitive
methods that had been used to distribute newspapers were no longer adequate to these demands and it was not long before
the control of newspaper distribution was in the hands of the
firm of W . H .Smith and Son that has supplied railway stations and the sub-distributing companies all over the country.52 A similar
distribution is made in America by the American News Company. The question of the distribution of newspapers may not seem to concern the historian , yet how vitally it does concern him is
evident from the controversy precipitated when the news com panies in New York City , due to the insistence and threats of the city dailies, refused to deliver the New York Tribune to any newsdealer who on patriotic grounds, or for any other reason , refused to handle and sell the Hearst papers. The Tribune there
fore installed its own delivery system and, through supplying the newsdealers directly , enabled citizens to understand both the
Tribune, and the Hearst side of a great public question . 61 L . J. Jennings, ed ., The Correspondence and Diaries of John Wilson Croker , I, 32 – 33 . 52 H . Maxwell gives an important account of newspaper distribution ,
especially of the distribution of The Times. - Life and Times of William Henry Smith , I, chap. III. W . J. Couper gives an account of “ The Distribution of Edinburgh Periodicals ” in The Edinburgh Periodical Press, I, 124- 130 .
