The Economics of the Printing Press

Movable type used in 19th-century printing presses. Photo taken at the Mystic Seaport museum in Connecticut.

We recently held a political education discussion on Manufacturing Consent by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky (slides) which included a section on the economics of the printing press. Herman & Chomsky’s propaganda model of the American media system is a system of five filters. (If you haven’t heard of Herman & Chomsky’s propaganda model before, watch this short video that describes the basic elements.)

• The Size, Ownership, & Profit Orientation of the Mass Media
• The Advertising License to Do Business
• Sourcing
• Flak & Enforcers
• Anti-Communism as a Control Mechanism

In the book’s first chapter while discussing the first filter, Herman and Chomsky note that the national press prior to 1850 was vibrant, radical, and uncontrollable even with punishing insurance requirements, taxes, and vexatious libel lawsuits. They wrote: “Following the repeal of the punitive taxes between 1853 and 1869, a new local daily press sprang into existence, but not one new local working class daily was established throughout the rest of the nineteenth century.”

Cover of the original run of Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Herman and Chomsky (1988).

The reason was the economics of publishing and the industrialization of printing. To produce large numbers of copies, expensive machines are required. As copying scales up, each copy can be sold for less and less as the cost of the paper and ink are not dominant. Cheaper papers flooding into the market displaces more expensive lower volume papers regardless of their content or quality because consumers are price sensitive. It seems reasonable to believe that the widespread availability of a good also increases consumer uptake as it provides a common reference point for discussion, creating network effects: “Did you see the article by so-and-so about XYZ?” Working class publishers are exactly the kinds of people that do not have the money or connections to maintain their position in an unending race for more capital and scale.

By pure chance, a few days after that discussion I happened upon an exhibit at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut that displayed several 1800s printing machines and an attendant demonstrated the operation of one of them. I found this context very helpful for understanding this economic argument. These machines also bring home why the print media are called “the press”.

“The Washington” (1820s to mid-century)

“The Washington” press. A worker inks the movable type on the tray, places a piece of paper on the ink, and rolls the tray under the press, presses it, and removes the page.

“The Washington” was a popular smaller scale press that was designed to be mobile (presumably by horse and buggy). A worker would roll ink onto the movable type. A piece of paper would then be pressed into the type by moving the tray under the stamper on the right side. I was told that a skilled worker could press over 200 sheets per minute, a rate about ten times faster than a cheap laser printer.

Below you can see samples produced by The Washington press. The letters are inset into the page due to the literal pressing of the type into the page. The effect is very beautiful.

Sample job listings for whalemen produced by the Washington Press. Though produced today, the date listed on the advertisements are both July 6th, 1839.

More information on this model can be found at letterpresscommons.com.

“The Liberator”

Not to be confused with the abolitionist newspaper by William Lloyd Garrison, The Liberator was a higher throughput foot-powered model. A worker would place pieces of paper into the press and apply foot power to actuate the wedge and press the paper into the type.

“The Liberator” foot powered press. Note the rollers on the top left and the pedals on the bottom right. The press would open and close on a hinge.

Chandler & Price Co. Broadsheet Printer

This model is much bigger and is capable of churning out newspaper broadsheet. The Chandler & Price Company was founded in 1881, so this printer must date sometime after that.

The Chandler & Price broadsheet printer.

These examples make clear from the increasing bulk and sophistication of the machines is that it would have become increasingly expensive to buy-in to the printing business at a scale that is both national and profitable. Even more sophisticated computerized machines are in use today.

To build on our discussion, it’s worth thinking about some of the following questions:

• How does the internet affect the cost of national distribution of media?
• Can a radical press flourish under these conditions? Can they be profitable?

The answers to these questions are very relevant as a forceful radical movement needs a powerful voice.