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Culture and Commerce: Gordon and Gotch Ltd in Australia 1890-1940
Denis Cryle
In his neglected economic history of the Australian press written in
1951, W. Corden emphasises the role played by Gordon and Gotch in Australian
cultural history. After a century of operations in 1953, Gordon and Gotch
remained a highly profitable enterprise, with capital reserves of £650,000
and dividends of 20%. Yet Corden's suggestion (p.125) that 'the history
and economics of Gordon and Gotch would make an interesting study' has
yet to be taken up by historians, preoccupied in the main with individual
authors and titles, or indeed by media writers on advertising and electronic
media. Yet in view of current concerns with the nexus of culture and commerce,
or cultural industries as they are now called, such an investigation appears
timely, not least because it anticipates the integration of cultural industries
and confirms the importance of distribution for national and global cultural
economies. In fostering imperial culture, Gordon and Gotch also exhibit
some of the modern characteristics of multinationals like News Corporation,
the conglomerate which acquired it in the 1980s and retains a 49% ownership
stake. Among these characteristics are decentralised operations and a highly
developed public relations machine bent on technological and business innovation.
Essentially, this paper attempts an historical account of the company's
operations through the period in question - its working capital and profits,
managerial structures, markets and competitors. Much relevant information
is scattered through the company's own histories, while primary source
material is available in archives, company records and newspapers. The
range of activities undertaken by the company - from importing (books and
magazines, newsprint, stationery and machinery) to distribution and advertising
- combines the ubiquity of a sophisticated marketing operation with the
'all-round' appeal of a colonial emporium. Importantly, the study of Gordon
and Gotch's demonstrates that the history of the book from a materialist
perspective, is bound up with those of the handbook, map, historical treatise
or photographic album - indeed the entire spectrum of print, then the dominant
cultural industry. To a descriptive historical account, however, must be
appended more difficult and speculative questions concerned with changing
patterns of cultural consumption. To what extent, for example, did Gordon
and Gotch cater to the lower end of the market and to popular culture as
we know it? In what ways did it perpetuate and prolong the dominant imperial
culture? Did it accommodate, at any point, Australian readers and tastes?
Such issues of identity are fundamental to cultural history and frame the
HOBA project.
By 1890, the beginning of the period under examination, Gordon and Gotch
had developed the diversity of networks and publishing traditions which
it inherited from former competitors into a consolidated national market.
Examples of this were not only the Australian Newspaper Directories which
appear triennially from 1886 (1889, 1892) but also its annual Australian
Handbook which grew to a monumental 1,000 pages by the turn of the
century (1903, Preface). Gordon and Gotch's enduring commercial advantage
lay in its superior distribution network. Yet, despite this commanding
position, the company did not entirely escape the effects of the turbulent
nineties. The Sydney premises were damaged by fire, and the Brisbane house
in Queen Street suffered stock damage in the great 1893 flood. When the
banks collapsed in March of the same year, the Melbourne Board of Directors
agreed to bear two-thirds of the losses so that the company could continue
to pay dividends (1953:30). With John Speechly Gotch still at the helm
until his death in 1901, the Melbourne head office remained a lucrative
if modest operation with working capital of £30,000. After structural
changes to its capital city branches, Gordon and Gotch Proprietary Limited
as it became known in 1897, remained an exclusive enterprise controlled
by a small group of family relatives and accountants. The London and colonial
houses were able to operate in a situation of relative administrative autonomy,
secure in their social connections and in a shared London background. At
this time, the London office, purchased outright by Gotch's brother-in-law,
continued to act as agent for the colonial houses, sending an estimated
four shipments per month to Australia (1903). Nevertheless each of the
Australian houses retained responsibility for their own financial affairs
and appointed their own Boards of Directors. As an emerging 'multinational'
at the turn of the century, the company dubbed itself the 'fraternal federation'
and prided itself on flexibility and decentralisation.
Economic recovery and the rise of second generation management after
Federation saw Gordon and Gotch rapidly consolidate its influence, both
nationally and internationally. Under W.J. and A.E. Berrill, Gotch's immediate
relatives, the London house increased its output fourfold in ten years
(1957:34) to include countries like South Africa. The same expansionist
zeal characterised its Australian offices. The Melbourne house set up in
Tasmania and New Zealand, while the Queensland cousin moved offshore to
New Guinea. West Australian offices, opened during the gold rushes of the
1890s, continued to act as a clearing house for eastern stock. The fortunes
of the three-storey Melbourne office, which remained the nominal centre
of Australian operations, provide a useful index of its resurgent national
growth. In 1906, Gordon and Gotch moved closer to a distribution monopoly
with the acquisition of major local competitor, R.A. Thompson. Throughout
the decade, the enterprise averaged profits of 12.5% annually and paid
share dividends of 7%. Equally impressive was its capitalisation at this
period - from £30,000 in 1907 to £80,000 by 1913 (VPRS 26 June
1899, 14 May 1913).
Throughout the colonial and Federation decades, Gordon and Gotch's publications
reflected shifts in cultural identity. One significant publication, apart
from the Handbook was Glimpses of Australia. Published in
1897, this two volume album of 384 photos, undertaken in co-operation with
colonial governments, offered Australian professional and amateur photographers
the opportunity to capture 'the splendid resources and scenery of their
country' and confirm 'great strides in Pictorial Art' (vi). For at least
a decade, Gordon and Gotch had endorsed impending union across the Tasman.
Through the late nineteenth century, its press directories promoted the
broader concept of Australasia. The 1892 Directory, for example, supplied
its Australian readers with details of New Zealand newspapers along with
a New Zealand map (1886, 94-95; 1892, 232ff). The reality of Federation
however brought an end to this imperial notion and limited trade across
the Tasman, but the New Zealand connection resurfaced later in the century.
As recently as 1990, New Zealand-based Independent Newspapers Limited purchased
Gordon and Gotch from News Corporation for $150 million after News restructured
its operations. As a condition of purchase, INL agreed to distribute News'
magazine stable in Australia (SC Print Media, 176).
By negotiating special pricing and delivery arrangements with major
British publishing houses, Gordon and Gotch captured as much as two-thirds
of the print import market. It dominated supply, not only of reading matter,
but also of related items like stationery and equipment to the detriment
of local manufacturers. Before the turn of the century, illustrated manuals
and comic books, handled by the company, were popular in Australia, along
with weeklies like the European Mail, Family Herald and Home
News. While it is tempting to characterise Gordon and Gotch's extensive
distribution network as cultural imperialism at its most blatant, historians
have begun to refigure this model around the issues of readership and consumption.
What available historical evidence exists to offset the thesis of a one-way
flow implicit in the cultural imperialism model? As early as the 1870s,
Gordon and Gotch agents, in addition to offering mining communities a choice
of Irish and Scottish papers, were advertising 'the Principal New York
Papers on File and Sale' (Gulgong Argus, 2 March 1874:1). Among
these titles were popular papers like Bennett's penny Herald. So
in overseas terms, at least, Gordon and Gotch was able to cater for diverse
reading tastes.
How consistently did Gordon an Gotch respond to popular demand before
and after the turn of the century? By no means regularly it would seem,
for censorship was not uncommon, especially in the area of fiction. As
its Press Directory observed:
The people are sufficiently educated to patronise that class of literature
which is profitable for good. Immoral or prurient prints have but a poor
show and soon die of atrophy. (1886:13)
Such sentiments obviated the need for strict censorship laws, at least
in the prewar period and may explain why the popular press, in its British
form, did not take firm hold in Australia until after this era. Moreover,
Gordon and Gotch did not gain a foothold in the American market until after
World War One when it acquired the Australasian and New Zealand News Company.
Even this was not guarantee of its receptiveness to popular demand. John
Docker, for example, refers to the company's censorship of American comics
as late as the 1950s (Curthoys and Merritt, 1984: 198). In the field of
book publishing, the entrenched Territorial Agreement between British and
American publishers worked largely to Gordon and Gotch's favour, for Australia
remained the province of British publishers. Without major national competitors
post-war, Gordon and Gotch perpetuated the Old World views of Menzies conservatism.
The flow of cultural goods continued unabated at this period as an analysis
of periodical distribution demonstrates. In 1953, British and European
magazines distributed locally by the company still outnumbered American
titles by as much as 18:1. Yet it is interesting to note that, by this
time, Australian titles including the popular Women's Weekly and
Women's Day were now almost as numerous as British titles at 1.5
to 1 (1953:58ff).
During World War One, Gordon and Gotch underwent further structural
and managerial change in response to war-time restrictions. In 1919, the
three houses in eastern Australia amalgamated to form Gordon and Gotch
Australasia Limited, with capital of £500,000. In the 1920s, Gordon
and Gotch did more than return to the prosperity of the 1880s and 1900s.
By the middle of the decade, the company was employing 500 people and distributing
1.75 million publications on a weekly basis through 6,000 Australian outlets
(1924). Its principal Board of Directors met quarterly, while individual
Boards, comprising original proprietors of the old Companies were retained.
Since its rise in the late nineteenth century, Gordon and Gotch had become
a pacesetter for office and building design. The six storey Brisbane premises
in Queen Street was a good example of the new urban architecture. Not only
were extensive warehouses required but modern showrooms were developed
for magazine display and specialised offices for the advertising and subscription
departments. While this innovative use of commercial space featured strongly
in its sales discourse, it also absorbed substantial amounts of working
capital during expansion periods, with additional premises centrally located
in the expensive CBDs.
That Gordon and Gotch not merely served as a distributor but actively
shaped Australian commerce and culture was apparent from the late nineteenth
century when it advocated the 'American system of having the circulation
of newspapers and magazines certified' (1886:13). As Spierings (1989) notes
in a perceptive study of inter-war advertising, the establishment of the
Australian Newspaper Conference (1924) and the Audit Bureau of Circulations
(1932) were significant developments in the restructuring of the press-advertiser
relationship, one in which Gordon and Gotch had long played a mediating
role. By the 1920s, the marketing skills of the company were also being
directed at newsagents. As one of its many publications explained:
These developments concern themselves solely with the development of
the circulation of publications. Specially trained officers are continually
interviewing newsagents, bringing under their notice publications of which
they are either not receiving or are receiving inadequate quantities, instructing
them in making window displays, improving the appearance of their premises,
and to 'sell' periodicals not merely distribute them (1924).
An historical example of this influence on Australian culture and commerce
was the takeover of Rigby's distribution business during the depression.
After seventy years of trading, the South Australian company was no longer
able to compete with an established rival which allegedly threatened or
'froze out' newsagents if they did not accept its overseas product. According
to Richard Nile (1990:88), the inter-war years in particular were a time
of heavy pressure on local agencies to accept imports in preference to
Australian titles. The limited statistics available confirm that Gordon
and Gotch was achieving unprecedented success in this regard. During the
1920s, some 3.5 million books were imported, largely from the United Kingdom
(Nile, 1990:78-79), of which Gordon and Gotch probably handled 50%. In
cultural terms, a similar imbalance was emerging in the Australian film
industry with American domination of distribution and of the talkies.
Protesting in 1936, P.R. Stephensen characterised the dumping of British
reading matter in Australia as cultural 'manna' (1986:104) and characterised
the national public as passive and dependent (110). Anticipating contemporary
arguments about reader demand, Stephensen coined the phrase 'books evoke
readers, readers do not evoke books' to encapsulate the active role played
by distributors like Gordon and Gotch whose prices were prohibitive for
publishers and authors. Stephensen had his own reasons for taking up the
distribution issue after his failure to establish a national book publishing
company in the 1930s. Yet his Foundations of Culture in Australia
did not endorse the conspiracy theories of fellow cultural nationalists,
observing that:
I detect nothing more sinister than a superior salesmanship,
a superior marketing and distributing technique, on the part of the ubiquitous
overseas culture-stuff (105).
There is something of the economic rationalist in this statement, for
it omits the consideration and disparity of resources. The ability to promote
itself tirelessly, as Gordon and Gotch continued to do, was a function
of its size, for smaller local competitors simply lacked staff and resources
to develop a marketing arm. The mobility of its management also gave Gordon
and Gotch a strategic advantage in business innovation. What Australian
publishing conspicuously lacked, in Stephensen's view, was the 'gambler's
instinct' (109), even in the distinguished case of George Robinson. While
dubbing him 'one of the greatest booksellers' (108), Stephensen distinguished
between bookselling as a cautious trade and the worthy irrationality of
Australian publishing.
Tensions between culture and commerce were profound for cultural nationalists during the inter-war years. By 1940, the end of the period covered in this paper, Gordon and Gotch was poised to enter a new and less certain phase of its history with the steady rise of new patterns of cultural consumption, more American than Anglophile. With the death of Berrill, its London office faced the dislocation of the blitz and warfare. The ensuing void in the Australian markets did not immediately advantage its competitors or American popular culture until 1947 when the company's licence to import American publications was withdrawn. It is beyond the scope of this paper to map the swing, albeit gradual, towards Americanisation, yet it is clear that Gordon and Gotch did not acquire the monopolistic control over American cultural imports it had enjoyed in the case of British goods. The hegemony of the British book and magazine post-war was still due in no small measure to Gordon and Gotch. Its 1953 history, commemorating one hundred years, was largely content to reproduce material from earlier periods and publications. If the realities of specialisation and Asian export were briefly acknowledged, the company's historical discourse, constructed around statistics and dates, remained unchanged, perpetuating an 'accountancy' view of culture, which bears comparison with contemporary 'rationalist' definitions and the steady integration of the cultural industries.
REFERENCES
W. Corden (1951) Economics of the Australian Press, MA thesis, Melbourne University
John Docker (1984) 'Culture, Society and the Communist Party', in Ann Curthoys and John Merritt (eds), Australia's First Cold War, 1945-1953, Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 183-212
Gordon and Gotch Limited (1885-1919) Company Files, VPRS 932/901
_________ (1886) Australasian Newspaper Directory, Melbourne, 1st ed.
_________ (1892) Australasian Newspaper Directory, Melbourne, 2nd ed.
_________ (1897) Glimpses of Australia. An Album of Photographic Gems, Melbourne, 2vol
_________ (1903) A Brief Description of Fifty Years' Progress. A Retrospect 1853-1903, Brisbane
_________ (1924) Gordon and Gotch Australasia Limited. 1853-1924, Melbourne
_________ (1953) Gordon and Gotch Centenary 1853-1953, London
Richard Nile (1990) 'Cartels, capitalism and the Australian book trade', Continuum, 4 (1), 71-91
Select Committee of Inquiry on the Print Media (1992) News and Fair Facts: the Australian Print Media Industry, Canberra, AGPS
J. Spierings (1989) Magic and Science, Melbourne, Ph.D thesis
P.R. Stephensen (1986) The Foundations of Culture in Australia. An Essay Towards National Self-Respect, Sydney, Allen and Unwin
Denis Cryle
email: D.Cryle@cqu.edu.au
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Last Updated : 29 September 1998