In my last column I spoke of the birth of the NSW Country Press Association in October 1900 and of the role of Thomas Mitchell Shakespeare in helping the new baby survive.
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Herding the fiercely independent country papers into cooperative action was like herding cats.
The papers needed to cooperate to break the hold of the Sydney advertising agents who maximized their returns by playing one paper against another.
They needed to cooperate on common industrial matters and on matters such as training and the use of defamation actions to cripple papers.
But, like cats, each paper would fight the others for a small bowl of food.
The formation of the New South Wales Country Press Cooperative Company Limited was key to the transformation of the Association from a herd of cats into a powerful force.
In 1904 when T M Shakespeare was appointed as Association secretary and head of the Cooperative Company, the Company was struggling to sell the necessary shares to allow formation.
When the Company was formed, its issued capital was only £253.
Yet from that small base and under Shakespeare's leadership it became a significant commercial force in selling advertising and supporting its members.
As one early example, the outbreak of war in 1914 resulted in interruption in newsprint supplies from Canada.
The very survival of country newspapers was threatened.
The very survival of country newspapers was threatened.
The smaller papers could not buy paper or could only do so at exorbitant prices.
The Country Press Cooperative Company stepped into this void, buying in bulk and then supplying paper at reasonable prices to its members.
Initially this was just to NSW papers, but then spread to country papers in other parts of the country.
In 1928, T M Shakespeare finally stood down.
His place as head of the Cooperative Company was taken by Northern pressman Ernest Christian Sommerlad, a significant figure in the history of New England as well as the New England and Australian newspaper press'
E C Sommerlad was born at Tenterfield on 30 January 1886, youngest of twelve children of German immigrant parents John Henry Sommerlad, farmer, and his wife Louisa Wilhelmina, née Marstella.
The Sommerlads are part of another thread in New England's history, the rich contribution made by German immigrants in the Hunter and Clarence Valleys and on the New England.
In my next column I will look at E C Sommerlad's role, in so doing introducing you to the political movements that helped shape New England's in the first decades of the twentieth century.
Jim Belshaw's email is ndarala@optusnet.com. His New England life blog is http://newenglandaustralia.blogspot.com/: his New England history blog http://newenglandhistory.blogspot.com.au/