DEMOCRACY – And the Paper it's Written On

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 389, 6 December 1946, Page 30

DEMOCRACY – And the Paper it's Written On

IR WALTER LAYTON, a British newspaper proprietor (and chairman of the Newsprint Supply Company), said in England the other day that so long as the United States consumed two-thirds of the world’s supply. of newsprint, there’ could not be frée access to an understanding of international affairs throughout the world. "I tell my American friends," he said, "that if 60lb. of newsprint a head per annum, which is the present consumption of the United States, is necessary to maintain the democratic way of life, there is only sufficient newsprint in the world for 200,000,000 democrats, The other two billions of the world’s population must, presumably be totalitarians." Sirs Walter Layton probably had figures. to go on that are more up to date than anything The Listener has . been able to find locally, but some estimates were published by the Newsprint Association of Canada in 1937, and if anyone chooses to accept 1b.-of-newsprint-a-head-per-year as a yardstick for Demo-

cracy, then these figures speak for the extent of that Way of Life in several countries over the years 1927-36. Boom and Slump The United States, for instance, maintained its Way of Life in 1927 with the, help of 58lb. per head, and two years later needed 62lb., but then there was the ‘Wall Street crash, and by 1932 Americans were using only 45.5lb. each. They weren’t content with this, and increased their consumption steadily until they reached 57lb. in 1936. Sir Walter Layton’s up-to-date figure is 601b., which may be an approximation. It went down a bit during the war, but it looks as if 55-601b. per head is the United States’ normal consumption. Over that same period, 1927-36, the United Kingdom’s per capita consumption ran a different career. It began much lower than America’s (37.5lb. in 1927 as against 58lb.), but it ended higher-nearly 60lb. in 1936. The reaction to the Slump was quite different there too. In America, the Common Man dropped his consumption nearly .onethird between 1929 and 1932. But in the United Kingdom, over the same three years, the average citizen’s consumption of newsprint actually went up-from 41.2lb, to 47.1lb. It went up again in 1934 to 57.5lb., and our table of figures stops at 59.8lb. in 1936. What happened in the war in the U.K. is hard to tell from here, because the only wartime figures we have discovered are for importation of ‘newsprint~ in rolls and Britain’s 1939 imports were only a third of her consumption that year. Democracy in France was an erratic thing between 1927-36, according to Sir Walter Layton’s paper measure. The Common Frenchman used 1ililb. a year in 1927, 19lb. in 1929, a little less in

1932 and 20lb. in 1935. A year later he had dropped again, to 18lb. But Scandinavia spent that same decade Taising its newspaper reading steadily every year-from 13lb. in 1927 to 22Ib. in 1936 by steady increases. So did Argentina, rising from 13lb, to 26lb. We Improved Our Position _"Australasia," as it is called in the estimates, of the Newsprint Association of Canada, went up steadily too, apart from a setback in 1930. We were using 43lb. each in 1927, 48 in 1929, but only 33 in 1932. We weren't satisfied with (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) this, and hastened to increase our reading again, reaching 57lb. in 1936, a far bigger increase than was shown in any other country over those years. And what about Germany? And Russia? And Japan? Well, Germany’s figures over those 10 years appear to have been the steadiest of all. They were never below 10.1lb. and never above 13.9. The hypothetical German newspaper reader used 10.9lb. in 1927, 13.9 in 1929, 10.4 in 1932, 11.6 in 1934, 10.1 in 1935 and 11.4 in 1936. So, it’s all a matter of what you print on it. The Japanese used 7.9 in 1927, and raised that to 12.7Ib. in 1936 by steady gains. Russia had the lowest figure of all1.1lb. in 1927, rising without setbacks to 2.9 in 1936. What do all these figures mean in terms a New Zealander can relate to his own experience? Down to Cases A month’s supply of a metropolitan’ morning daily in New Zealand weighs between 5lb. and 6lb.-say 651b. a year at present size. A subscriber to The Listeher uses about 12lb. a year, at present. So your Listener alone gives you about 11 times as much democracy as the Common Russian used in 1927, and more than four times as much as he used in 1936. But remember that those figures for other countries represent the ration for every man, woman and child in the population. On the same basis, The Listener accounts for about half a Ib. of newsprint to every man, woman and child in New Zealand. Over the 10 years from 1936-45, New Zealand imported enough newsprint to provide 29lb. a head per year, and printed (in 1938) 53 dailies, 21 triweeklies, 17 bi-weeklies (some of which would have been on other paper). In 1944 the dailies were down to 43, and weeklies were down to 58. It may surprise you to know too that there were 11 fortnightlies registered with the Post Office in 1944, and 113 monthlies. These don’t necessarily have anything to do with newsprint consumption, but that doesn’t mean they have nothing to do with democracy either, Sir Walter Layton notwithstanding.