Capitalism as a Necessary Evil: How E.W. Scripps Charted a Cautious Course toward the Left

Abstract

Although E. W. Scripps despised the capitalist economic system that facilitated his publishing empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he succeeded in the newspaper business. The sharp contrast between Scripps' left-leaning views and his capitalist success is an intriguing contradiction in American journalism history. This study, based on an examination of Scripps' 532 philosophical essays known as disquisitions, outlines the publisher's political views over the course of his life. The disquisitions reveal that Scripps' Progressive political views were in place early in life before he became a prominent publisher, and that his perspective did not change significantly over time as he achieved business success. The disquisitions also show that Scripps sympathized with the goals of socialism. Despite those sympathies, Scripps believed that socialism was fundamentally flawed and could not prevail in the America of his era, and he considered capitalism, with all its flaws, a necessary evil. This study shows that Scripps was, if nothing else, a pragmatic businessman rather than a left-wing ideologue, which helps explain the success of his newspaper company.