Our paper in the 1930s
二十世纪三十年代的《经济学人》
Ninety-plus, and still young
年逾耄耋，风采依旧
Roland Bird, now 92, joined The Economist as a journalist in 1933. He retired, as finance director, in 1978. We asked him to recall those far-off days, when the paper, though over 90 years old, was a small London weekly with a circulation not 1% of what it sells today
罗兰•伯德，1933年开始为《经济学人》撰稿，1978年退休，时任财务总监。现年92岁。我们请他回忆了那段遥远的岁月，当时的《经济学人》虽然已有90余岁的刊龄，但仍是伦敦一份无足轻重的小周刊，发行量不及今天的1%。
MONEY was "fairly easy", The Economist proclaimed in the week―see above―that I joined it in 1933. "Comfortable" was another favourite adjective. The seeming importance of this regular non-news, on the cover―front page might be a better description today―presumably contented the minority of money-market boffins among our very few thousand readers in those remote times. The rest had to search inside for the week's wisdom from our editor, Walter Layton, or Arnold Toynbee.
我从1933年开始成为《经济学人》的一员，当周《经济学人》（见上图）的主题是钱是"很好赚的"，"舒适"也是当时的热词之一。在那个遥远的年代，我们的读者尚不足千人，其中有一小部分是金融市场研究员，封面上稀松平常的标题（也许现在应该叫头版更合适一些）似乎是满足了他们的阅读需求，其他的读者就要翻阅里面的文章，看看主编沃尔特•雷顿或历史学家阿诺德•汤因比所写的真知灼句。
Layton, during the first world war a notable public servant, not least under Winston Churchill, had been appointed editor in 1922 by the trust that held The Economist on behalf of the surviving daughters of James Wilson, its founder. Within a few years, he was raising money to buy the paper, only to face a counter-bid from the arriviste Brendan Bracken, who had just bought the Financial News (and who was in his turn to become a close ally of Churchill's, serving him as minister of information in 1941-45). The result was joint ownership, with Layton retaining the editorial chair.
沃尔特•雷顿在温斯顿•丘吉尔的麾下效力，是一战期间声名显赫的官员，他于1922年被以《经济学人》创始人詹姆士•威尔逊的遗孤名义创立的基金会任命为经济学人主编。此后的几年间，他四处筹资购买《经济学人》的股权，但是遭到暴发户布兰登•布兰肯的讨价还价。布兰肯是丘吉尔面前的红人，当时刚刚买下了《金融时事》，于1941-1945年任丘吉尔的信息部长。还价的结果是版权共同所有，由雷顿做主编。
Arnold Toynbee had been recruited as a contributor in the 1920s, and for all the massive "A Study of History" on which he was already at work, he continued to write editorials for The Economist. He could be fastidious, not to say pernickety, about the placing of an inverted comma in some Arabic name. Layton, burdened with the problems of the News Chronicle as well as those of the struggling Economist, would sometimes end his leader on a less than clarion note, such as: "Provided that the ship of state has a firm hand at the tiller, all will be well."
阿诺德•汤因比从上世纪20年代开始加入《经济学人》的创作队伍。虽然当时正忙于创作长篇巨著《历史研究》，但他一直坚持为《经济学人》写社论。汤因比不是挑剔，而是龟毛，连有些阿拉伯人名中的引号位置这样的小细节他都不放过。雷顿当时兼任《新闻纪事报》和《经济学人》的主编，一面要处理《新闻世纪报》出现的种种问题，一面要想方设法扶持《经济学人》。有的时候他会留下这样的字条："大局已定，曙光在前。"
The Economist was then a primitive kind of workshop. A handful of "full-time" editorial people (who were supposed to have time for outside paid work) was swollen to a dozen after lunch of a Monday, when contributors and editorial staff joined to draft the week's programme. The number of editorial pages was partly determined by the number of pages of company meetings. Nearly a century before, Walter Bagehot, writer on the constitution and the paper's most famous editor, had justified the importance of advertising to sustain an independent press. But company meetings were perhaps one of its lower forms, often bought to feed a chairman's vanity or sold with a touch of blackmail. The general advertising that fills today's issues passed us by.
当时的《经济学人》有点简易作坊的性质，只有五六个所谓"全职的"编辑人员，他们工作时间都有限，要以外面的带薪工作的时间为准。只有到周一下午，投稿人和编辑人员都参与周计划的起草，这个数字才会增加到十多个。社论的页数在一定程度上取决于各公司会议的次数。广告收入对维持出版社的独立运营具有十分重要的作用，90多年前，本刊最著名的主编沃尔特•白芝浩论证了这一观点，白芝浩同时也是宪法的作者之一。但是报导公司会议只是广告的一种低级形式，只对想满足老板虚荣心或者想敲诈勒索的人才有效。当时我们没有想到广告会有像今天这么大的作用。
The heirs of Caxton
卡克斯顿的继承人
Across Fleet Street, past Doctor Johnson's house, were the printers, Eyre and Spottiswoode, one of the few non-university printers of the Bible, which perhaps accounted for the dignified, if not quite reverential, proceedings in the plant. We owed much to the composing-room foreman (or "clicker"), the splendid Mr Benney, who quietly took every incompetence and inconsequence from the editorial staff. There were occasional complaints about handwriting (editorial typewriters were unheard of); Douglas Jay was our leading illiterate in this respect (though only in this: by 1947 he was a Labour minister).
穿过舰队街，走过约翰逊博士的府宅，就是各家印刷厂。艾尔&斯普提斯伍德出版社是为数不多的非大学圣经出版社，其出版物在业内就算称不上是令人尊敬的，也是相当有威信的。我们十分感激本尼先生，他是一名出色地排字工头，总会默默地将那些力不胜任的庸庸碌碌之辈剔除编辑队伍。时不时会有人对手写文稿怨声载道，当时我们对编辑打字机还闻所未闻。道格拉斯•杰伊对此更是一窍不通，不过仅是对此而已，1947年他当上了工党内阁大臣。
Somehow, late of a Thursday night, pages would be passed for press covered with Layton's extensive alterations. One such night provoked a clerihew from Graham Hutton, the "foreign editor", ending
周四深夜，手稿会送到出版社出版，这是条不成文的规定。稿子上密密麻麻满是雷顿的修改。格雷厄姆•休顿还特意为此写了一首嵌名打油诗，诗名叫做《异国编者》，结尾是这样写的：
Would to God someone could alter
Sir Walter.
有个人的连上帝写的文章都敢改，这个人就是
沃尔特爵士
Editorial people rarely penetrated to the press room in those well-unionised days, but sometimes the Father of the Chapel was indulgent, and then we were sharply reminded of Caxton. Sixteen pages of type in heavy formes would be laid on a flat bed― hence "flat-bed press"―and inked mechanically. Then a sheet of paper about 4 feet by 3 feet (all right, call it 1.2 metres by 0.9, if you must) was imposed on the inked type by a contraption like a pneumatic octopus; a roller transferred ink to paper and the octopus picked up the printed sheet. The process was repeated on the other side, and 32 pages were ready for binding. A 64-page paper was mercifully the norm, and printing our few thousand copies stretched into Friday. For a time, part of the issue was produced on thin airmail paper, which took even longer.
在那个工党统治的年代，编辑人员是很少能进到印刷间的，但有时候印刷职工会会长会网开一面，让我们进去瞧瞧。印刷间的场景让我们不由得想起卡克斯顿印刷。16块厚重的自动供墨铅字板陈列于一张平板之上，平板印刷由此得名。然后由一个充气章鱼形状的精巧装置把一张4英寸*3英寸（1.2米*0.9米）的纸张平铺在铅字板上，滚筒在纸上滚过，油墨便印到了纸上，再由这个章鱼装置把印好的纸收起，在纸张的另一面重复这个步骤，印好32张就可以装订了，当时报刊的印刷标准是64页。我们这不足千份的报纸要印到周五才能印好。有一段时间，部分报纸要印在薄薄的空邮纸上，那就要花费更长的时间。
当年的罗兰・伯德
It was reckoned that rotary-press printing would begin to pay with a print order of 6,000 or 7,000, and, painfully, the circulation got there. That made possible what were then enormous changes to the paper. The ancient Gothic typeface announcing the title of the paper, and its catalogue of subtitles―Weekly Commercial Times, etc, etc―had already been dropped in January 1934. In 1937, inspired by Hutton, the paper introduced an elegant slate-blue cover carrying The Economist title in brilliant red, and an attractive listing of the contents, in which the money market rarely featured.
据估计轮转印刷机起印额度是六七千份，当时我们的发行量勉强能达到这个数字。这种新的印刷方式给《经济学人》带来了一场巨变。标题采用了古哥特式字体；副标题（如"每周金融时代"等）从1934年1月起不再使用。1937年，受到休顿的启发，《经济学人》开始采用暗蓝色的封面背景，大标题处用白字红底，头版是一串引人注目的文章标题，金融市场也不再是我们关注的焦点。
These changes, together with Eric Gill's Perpetua typeface and a livelier lay-out, were the precursors of all that has since been done by successive managements and editors to widen the content and win the vast readership of today. But they were not well received in high quarters. Our centennial lunch in dreary, wartime 1943 turned into more of a wake than a celebration, with ministers resentful of outspoken editorials and the governor of the Bank of England still aghast at our apostasy over the money market.
这些变动还有艾瑞克•吉尔独创的perpetua字体及简洁明快的版面编排一直为后来的管理者和主编们沿用，并增添了更为丰富的内容，读者群日益壮大，一直达到今天的规模。1943年正值二战期间，沉闷的气氛让我们的百周年庆宴变成了一次警宴，没有些许喜气。宴上大臣部长们对直言不讳的社论深表不满，英格兰银行行长仍为《经济学人》对金融市场的"背叛"震惊不已。
That the paper was getting out at all was something of a miracle. But Donald Tyerman, the deputy editor (and editor from 1956 to 1965), and Barbara Ward, later to have a vastly distinguished international career as an economist, slaved at the editorial content, put the week's issue to bed―and then went off to do the same at the Sunday Observer.
《经济学人》能得以出版本身就是一个奇迹。副主编唐纳德•泰尔曼（1956-1965年任主编）和芭芭拉•沃德为本刊历尽心血，赶写社论、处理好本周的事宜再去忙《周日观察家》那一摊子事。芭芭拉后来成为了一名享誉全球的经济学家。
By the war's end in 1945, with a bit more paper and Geoffrey Crowther back in the editorial chair, The Economist entered one of its greatest creative periods. Full-time staff were recruited, and a corporate editorial feel emerged―not imposed, as some believed, by Crowther, but a common flow of thought under his lead. He would produce, apparently instantaneously, 800 words in a minuscule but legible script, laying down week after week a range of policy unmatched by any other newspaper, and accompanied often by telling jokes: the economics of Hugh Dalton, a post-war Labour chancellor of the exchequer, he called "wind on the national stomach".
到1945年二战结束之际，《经济学人》的发行量又有所增加，杰弗里•克劳瑟重新回到了主编位置。《经济学人》进入了创作的巅峰时期，并招募了真正意义上的全职编辑。一种公司社论悄然兴起，这是在克劳瑟领导下的一种普遍创作潮流，并不是像某些人所说的迫于大公司的压力而写的。克劳瑟能即兴创作出一篇800余字的手稿，蝇头小楷，字迹隽秀，每周都制定出一系列的政策，为其它各家报纸所不能比。他的文章诙谐幽默，曾称战后英国财政大臣休•多尔顿"倒了全球人的胃口"。
如今的罗兰・伯德
Circulation steadily rose, especially in the United States, and 100,000 began to look achievable. And it was, in 1974. A Rolls-Royce had been promised―or had it only been hinted at?―to the circulation manager. Alas, there was no car. But The Economist had achieved one side ambition, to overtake a once serious rival, the socialist New Statesman.
发行量稳步上升，尤其是在美国，1974年的发行量达到了10万份。当时有人对发行经理承诺（或者只是暗示了一下？），如果达到了这个数字，就送他一辆劳斯莱斯。唉，可惜他食言了。不过《经济学人》打败了一向难缠的左派竞争对手《新政治家》，又向成功迈进了一步。
The communications revolution is perhaps the most significant happening in a lifetime of two wars and vast economic and social change. In the early 1930s, there was no airmail; inland telephones were rudimentary; and overseas services expensive, unreliable or non-existent. The Economist relied on the post to assemble much of its content, and begrudged having to find money for cables. Yet there were some odd bits of magic even in those years. A tricky piece of 700 words went to the printers at 4 o'clock one afternoon in 1937, with a request for a proof to be posted to Highgate, in north London. It arrived by the 9.30pm delivery that night, was corrected, caught the last collection at the Highgate post office at half-past midnight, and the printers had a revised galley on the desk by 9.30am. You could do it by e-mail today, but try asking Royal Mail's letter post to do it...
通信革命也许是继两次世界大战和世界经济政治巨变之后，意义最为深远的事件。在20世纪30年代初期，还没有航空邮件。内陆电话通讯技术尚不成熟，更不用提海外通讯了，就算有，也是极为昂贵极不可靠的。《经济学人》不舍得使用昂贵的电缆通讯，靠邮寄的方式收集题材。不过当时也有些见证奇迹的时刻发生。1937年的一天下午4点钟，印刷厂接到了一份棘手的700字文稿，需要发到伦敦北郊海格特公墓那边校对。这份文稿于当晚9:30送达海格特公墓，修改完毕后赶在海格特邮局最后一次收件（凌晨半点）之前寄出，修订稿于第二天上午9:30重新回到印刷厂的办公桌上。在今天，一封电子邮件就可以解决问题，要是让英国皇家邮政来办的话，可有得等了。。。。。。
For information illiterates, these are hard times. It is too late to learn a new language; this piece is being typed (badly) on paper. That was a commodity strictly controlled in the early 1930s. Webb―Edward Mafeking of that clan on his birth certificate, plain Webb to us journalists―the office manager and custodian of precious items including paper clips, once protested, "You had two sheets of paper yesterday."
在这个信息技术高度发达的时代，不了解信息技术是不行的。"学一门新语言为时已晚"，这句话被歪歪扭扭地印在纸上。在20世纪30年代初，纸张是一种受严格控制的商品。办公室经理韦博掌管着包括曲别针在内的贵重物品，他的出生证明上写他是爱德华•马弗京的后裔，但我们只叫他韦博。有一次韦博不满地对我说："你昨天居然用了两张纸。"
Today, it seems, paper comes into use only when the issue is printed and bound. Editorial keyboards generate trillions of impulses that are somehow brought together as an issue. Then buttons are pressed and seven printing plants around the world receive an identical issue, together with all its sophisticated colour pages. How this is done is quite beyond the comprehension of a quill-pen journalist. By this miracle The Economist has surmounted the old problems of getting there fast by getting there instantly. One hopes that these streams of signals are never hijacked somewhere in the heavens. As for the crudities of hot-metal typesetting and letter-press printing, all these have long been superseded by electronic setting (in which a 1970s managing director, Ian Trafford, was a pioneer, and made The Economist one too), and by the stunning quality of modern offset printing.
如今，仿佛只有出版物印刷和装订的时候才会用到纸张，从编辑到成稿的所有步骤都可以通过键盘来完成。随后再按几个按钮，世界各地的七家印刷厂都会受到配有精美彩页的文稿，内容完全相同。这一切都是手握羽毛笔的撰稿人们无法想象的。《经济学人》不用再为如何尽快送达文稿而发愁了，凭借现在的高端技术，文稿可以转瞬及至。不过有人希望信号在传输过程中，不要在空中被谁劫持了才好。原始的铸字排版和凸版印刷早已被电镀印刷所取代，20世纪70年代时一名叫做伊安•特拉福德的总经理率先使用这种技术，《经济学人》紧随其后。电镀印刷随后又被胶印所取代，现代的胶印技术印刷效果极好。
And the future?
何去何从
The Economist's finances today―all allowance made for inflation―would have been unimaginable to those working on it in the 1930s. When Layton and Bracken called a truce in their late-1920s fight for the paper, they had driven the price up to £100,000―less than £4m in today's money. The paper was said in the 1930s always to have made a profit; that must have been a very small one. More important, its almost metaphysical constitution, with half the voting capital, but not control, held by the Financial News (and now the Financial Times, into which Bracken folded his daily in 1945), has survived ever since, with only one hiccup, mercifully long forgotten.
《经济学人》今天的资产，即通胀准备金，是上世纪30年代为此奋斗的人想象不到的。到20年代末，雷顿和布兰肯的版权之争终于告一段落时，《经济学人》的价格被他们哄抬到10万英镑，当时的10万英镑相当于今天的近400万英镑。当时有人说，《经济学人》一直都有赚头，不过那个数字跟今天相比简直是九牛一毛。更为重要的是，《金融时事》（现《金融时报》，《金融时事》于1945年在布兰肯手中夭折）虽然是《经济学人》的股东，但只有表决权，没有掌控权。这使《经济学人》固有的超然品质一直传承至今，尽管中间有过一次小波折，不过好在人们早已遗忘了此事。
It can be asked whether that long-lasting format will carry The Economist through the new century. This old hand offers only two comments. First, that its editorial independence, which dates back to that truce, is imperative; without it, this would be just another weekly. Second, that anyone seeking to change The Economist's foundations will embark on a labour of Sisyphus.
可能有人会问，《经济学人》是否会在新世纪继续沿用其长久以来的风格。对此我只想说明两点。第一，《经济学人》编纂自主，这是当年雷顿与布兰肯达成的一致。没有这个前提，《经济学人》只不过是一份普通的报纸；第二，想动摇《经济学人》的基石，无异于精卫衔石。
It has been a great joy to have put twopennyworth into the early and middle stages of The Economist's extraordinary growth from a tiddler to a world giant. There are few international newspapers, and why this one should have triumphed out of London rather than some other centre of thought is a question. To one who was there in the 1930s―or indeed the 1970s―it is prosperous beyond belief, but shows not the slightest sign of getting fat and lazy. Here's to sales of a million (with a private jet for the circulation director?), and good health to all the enterprises that now form The Economist Group. In those days, "group" meant just a handful of people.
能为《经济学人》贡献自己的绵薄之力，伴随这份报纸从兴办到兴旺，见证他从学步小儿成长为世界巨人，是我莫大的欢乐。没有几家报纸具有这般的国际影响力，为什么《经济学人》独领风骚？恐怕很多人都想问这个问题。伴《经济学人》从30年代走到70年代，我认为，其成功的秘诀就是，无论取得多么耀眼的成就，从未有过丝毫的懈怠。在这里祝贺《经济学人》的发行量超过100万份，这回发行经理该得到一架私人飞机作奖励了吧。祝《经济学人》集团的全体员工身体健康。在过去，"集团"对我们来说也就意味着十几个人。
(Whose many successors, add the several who handled this article, do not forget that each generation stands on the shoulders of those who came before.)
（编者寄语：请《经济学人》的每一代接班人谨记，你们是站在前辈的肩膀上。）
注：
空邮纸：轻身高级书写用纸，多用破布造成，质地结实。常用作航空邮柬
二十世纪三十年代的《经济学人》
Ninety-plus, and still young
年逾耄耋，风采依旧
Roland Bird, now 92, joined The Economist as a journalist in 1933. He retired, as finance director, in 1978. We asked him to recall those far-off days, when the paper, though over 90 years old, was a small London weekly with a circulation not 1% of what it sells today
罗兰•伯德，1933年开始为《经济学人》撰稿，1978年退休，时任财务总监。现年92岁。我们请他回忆了那段遥远的岁月，当时的《经济学人》虽然已有90余岁的刊龄，但仍是伦敦一份无足轻重的小周刊，发行量不及今天的1%。
MONEY was "fairly easy", The Economist proclaimed in the week―see above―that I joined it in 1933. "Comfortable" was another favourite adjective. The seeming importance of this regular non-news, on the cover―front page might be a better description today―presumably contented the minority of money-market boffins among our very few thousand readers in those remote times. The rest had to search inside for the week's wisdom from our editor, Walter Layton, or Arnold Toynbee.
我从1933年开始成为《经济学人》的一员，当周《经济学人》（见上图）的主题是钱是"很好赚的"，"舒适"也是当时的热词之一。在那个遥远的年代，我们的读者尚不足千人，其中有一小部分是金融市场研究员，封面上稀松平常的标题（也许现在应该叫头版更合适一些）似乎是满足了他们的阅读需求，其他的读者就要翻阅里面的文章，看看主编沃尔特•雷顿或历史学家阿诺德•汤因比所写的真知灼句。
Layton, during the first world war a notable public servant, not least under Winston Churchill, had been appointed editor in 1922 by the trust that held The Economist on behalf of the surviving daughters of James Wilson, its founder. Within a few years, he was raising money to buy the paper, only to face a counter-bid from the arriviste Brendan Bracken, who had just bought the Financial News (and who was in his turn to become a close ally of Churchill's, serving him as minister of information in 1941-45). The result was joint ownership, with Layton retaining the editorial chair.
沃尔特•雷顿在温斯顿•丘吉尔的麾下效力，是一战期间声名显赫的官员，他于1922年被以《经济学人》创始人詹姆士•威尔逊的遗孤名义创立的基金会任命为经济学人主编。此后的几年间，他四处筹资购买《经济学人》的股权，但是遭到暴发户布兰登•布兰肯的讨价还价。布兰肯是丘吉尔面前的红人，当时刚刚买下了《金融时事》，于1941-1945年任丘吉尔的信息部长。还价的结果是版权共同所有，由雷顿做主编。
Arnold Toynbee had been recruited as a contributor in the 1920s, and for all the massive "A Study of History" on which he was already at work, he continued to write editorials for The Economist. He could be fastidious, not to say pernickety, about the placing of an inverted comma in some Arabic name. Layton, burdened with the problems of the News Chronicle as well as those of the struggling Economist, would sometimes end his leader on a less than clarion note, such as: "Provided that the ship of state has a firm hand at the tiller, all will be well."
阿诺德•汤因比从上世纪20年代开始加入《经济学人》的创作队伍。虽然当时正忙于创作长篇巨著《历史研究》，但他一直坚持为《经济学人》写社论。汤因比不是挑剔，而是龟毛，连有些阿拉伯人名中的引号位置这样的小细节他都不放过。雷顿当时兼任《新闻纪事报》和《经济学人》的主编，一面要处理《新闻世纪报》出现的种种问题，一面要想方设法扶持《经济学人》。有的时候他会留下这样的字条："大局已定，曙光在前。"
The Economist was then a primitive kind of workshop. A handful of "full-time" editorial people (who were supposed to have time for outside paid work) was swollen to a dozen after lunch of a Monday, when contributors and editorial staff joined to draft the week's programme. The number of editorial pages was partly determined by the number of pages of company meetings. Nearly a century before, Walter Bagehot, writer on the constitution and the paper's most famous editor, had justified the importance of advertising to sustain an independent press. But company meetings were perhaps one of its lower forms, often bought to feed a chairman's vanity or sold with a touch of blackmail. The general advertising that fills today's issues passed us by.
当时的《经济学人》有点简易作坊的性质，只有五六个所谓"全职的"编辑人员，他们工作时间都有限，要以外面的带薪工作的时间为准。只有到周一下午，投稿人和编辑人员都参与周计划的起草，这个数字才会增加到十多个。社论的页数在一定程度上取决于各公司会议的次数。广告收入对维持出版社的独立运营具有十分重要的作用，90多年前，本刊最著名的主编沃尔特•白芝浩论证了这一观点，白芝浩同时也是宪法的作者之一。但是报导公司会议只是广告的一种低级形式，只对想满足老板虚荣心或者想敲诈勒索的人才有效。当时我们没有想到广告会有像今天这么大的作用。
The heirs of Caxton
卡克斯顿的继承人
Across Fleet Street, past Doctor Johnson's house, were the printers, Eyre and Spottiswoode, one of the few non-university printers of the Bible, which perhaps accounted for the dignified, if not quite reverential, proceedings in the plant. We owed much to the composing-room foreman (or "clicker"), the splendid Mr Benney, who quietly took every incompetence and inconsequence from the editorial staff. There were occasional complaints about handwriting (editorial typewriters were unheard of); Douglas Jay was our leading illiterate in this respect (though only in this: by 1947 he was a Labour minister).
穿过舰队街，走过约翰逊博士的府宅，就是各家印刷厂。艾尔&斯普提斯伍德出版社是为数不多的非大学圣经出版社，其出版物在业内就算称不上是令人尊敬的，也是相当有威信的。我们十分感激本尼先生，他是一名出色地排字工头，总会默默地将那些力不胜任的庸庸碌碌之辈剔除编辑队伍。时不时会有人对手写文稿怨声载道，当时我们对编辑打字机还闻所未闻。道格拉斯•杰伊对此更是一窍不通，不过仅是对此而已，1947年他当上了工党内阁大臣。
Somehow, late of a Thursday night, pages would be passed for press covered with Layton's extensive alterations. One such night provoked a clerihew from Graham Hutton, the "foreign editor", ending
周四深夜，手稿会送到出版社出版，这是条不成文的规定。稿子上密密麻麻满是雷顿的修改。格雷厄姆•休顿还特意为此写了一首嵌名打油诗，诗名叫做《异国编者》，结尾是这样写的：
Would to God someone could alter
Sir Walter.
有个人的连上帝写的文章都敢改，这个人就是
沃尔特爵士
Editorial people rarely penetrated to the press room in those well-unionised days, but sometimes the Father of the Chapel was indulgent, and then we were sharply reminded of Caxton. Sixteen pages of type in heavy formes would be laid on a flat bed― hence "flat-bed press"―and inked mechanically. Then a sheet of paper about 4 feet by 3 feet (all right, call it 1.2 metres by 0.9, if you must) was imposed on the inked type by a contraption like a pneumatic octopus; a roller transferred ink to paper and the octopus picked up the printed sheet. The process was repeated on the other side, and 32 pages were ready for binding. A 64-page paper was mercifully the norm, and printing our few thousand copies stretched into Friday. For a time, part of the issue was produced on thin airmail paper, which took even longer.
在那个工党统治的年代，编辑人员是很少能进到印刷间的，但有时候印刷职工会会长会网开一面，让我们进去瞧瞧。印刷间的场景让我们不由得想起卡克斯顿印刷。16块厚重的自动供墨铅字板陈列于一张平板之上，平板印刷由此得名。然后由一个充气章鱼形状的精巧装置把一张4英寸*3英寸（1.2米*0.9米）的纸张平铺在铅字板上，滚筒在纸上滚过，油墨便印到了纸上，再由这个章鱼装置把印好的纸收起，在纸张的另一面重复这个步骤，印好32张就可以装订了，当时报刊的印刷标准是64页。我们这不足千份的报纸要印到周五才能印好。有一段时间，部分报纸要印在薄薄的空邮纸上，那就要花费更长的时间。
当年的罗兰・伯德
It was reckoned that rotary-press printing would begin to pay with a print order of 6,000 or 7,000, and, painfully, the circulation got there. That made possible what were then enormous changes to the paper. The ancient Gothic typeface announcing the title of the paper, and its catalogue of subtitles―Weekly Commercial Times, etc, etc―had already been dropped in January 1934. In 1937, inspired by Hutton, the paper introduced an elegant slate-blue cover carrying The Economist title in brilliant red, and an attractive listing of the contents, in which the money market rarely featured.
据估计轮转印刷机起印额度是六七千份，当时我们的发行量勉强能达到这个数字。这种新的印刷方式给《经济学人》带来了一场巨变。标题采用了古哥特式字体；副标题（如"每周金融时代"等）从1934年1月起不再使用。1937年，受到休顿的启发，《经济学人》开始采用暗蓝色的封面背景，大标题处用白字红底，头版是一串引人注目的文章标题，金融市场也不再是我们关注的焦点。
These changes, together with Eric Gill's Perpetua typeface and a livelier lay-out, were the precursors of all that has since been done by successive managements and editors to widen the content and win the vast readership of today. But they were not well received in high quarters. Our centennial lunch in dreary, wartime 1943 turned into more of a wake than a celebration, with ministers resentful of outspoken editorials and the governor of the Bank of England still aghast at our apostasy over the money market.
这些变动还有艾瑞克•吉尔独创的perpetua字体及简洁明快的版面编排一直为后来的管理者和主编们沿用，并增添了更为丰富的内容，读者群日益壮大，一直达到今天的规模。1943年正值二战期间，沉闷的气氛让我们的百周年庆宴变成了一次警宴，没有些许喜气。宴上大臣部长们对直言不讳的社论深表不满，英格兰银行行长仍为《经济学人》对金融市场的"背叛"震惊不已。
That the paper was getting out at all was something of a miracle. But Donald Tyerman, the deputy editor (and editor from 1956 to 1965), and Barbara Ward, later to have a vastly distinguished international career as an economist, slaved at the editorial content, put the week's issue to bed―and then went off to do the same at the Sunday Observer.
《经济学人》能得以出版本身就是一个奇迹。副主编唐纳德•泰尔曼（1956-1965年任主编）和芭芭拉•沃德为本刊历尽心血，赶写社论、处理好本周的事宜再去忙《周日观察家》那一摊子事。芭芭拉后来成为了一名享誉全球的经济学家。
By the war's end in 1945, with a bit more paper and Geoffrey Crowther back in the editorial chair, The Economist entered one of its greatest creative periods. Full-time staff were recruited, and a corporate editorial feel emerged―not imposed, as some believed, by Crowther, but a common flow of thought under his lead. He would produce, apparently instantaneously, 800 words in a minuscule but legible script, laying down week after week a range of policy unmatched by any other newspaper, and accompanied often by telling jokes: the economics of Hugh Dalton, a post-war Labour chancellor of the exchequer, he called "wind on the national stomach".
到1945年二战结束之际，《经济学人》的发行量又有所增加，杰弗里•克劳瑟重新回到了主编位置。《经济学人》进入了创作的巅峰时期，并招募了真正意义上的全职编辑。一种公司社论悄然兴起，这是在克劳瑟领导下的一种普遍创作潮流，并不是像某些人所说的迫于大公司的压力而写的。克劳瑟能即兴创作出一篇800余字的手稿，蝇头小楷，字迹隽秀，每周都制定出一系列的政策，为其它各家报纸所不能比。他的文章诙谐幽默，曾称战后英国财政大臣休•多尔顿"倒了全球人的胃口"。
如今的罗兰・伯德
Circulation steadily rose, especially in the United States, and 100,000 began to look achievable. And it was, in 1974. A Rolls-Royce had been promised―or had it only been hinted at?―to the circulation manager. Alas, there was no car. But The Economist had achieved one side ambition, to overtake a once serious rival, the socialist New Statesman.
发行量稳步上升，尤其是在美国，1974年的发行量达到了10万份。当时有人对发行经理承诺（或者只是暗示了一下？），如果达到了这个数字，就送他一辆劳斯莱斯。唉，可惜他食言了。不过《经济学人》打败了一向难缠的左派竞争对手《新政治家》，又向成功迈进了一步。
The communications revolution is perhaps the most significant happening in a lifetime of two wars and vast economic and social change. In the early 1930s, there was no airmail; inland telephones were rudimentary; and overseas services expensive, unreliable or non-existent. The Economist relied on the post to assemble much of its content, and begrudged having to find money for cables. Yet there were some odd bits of magic even in those years. A tricky piece of 700 words went to the printers at 4 o'clock one afternoon in 1937, with a request for a proof to be posted to Highgate, in north London. It arrived by the 9.30pm delivery that night, was corrected, caught the last collection at the Highgate post office at half-past midnight, and the printers had a revised galley on the desk by 9.30am. You could do it by e-mail today, but try asking Royal Mail's letter post to do it...
通信革命也许是继两次世界大战和世界经济政治巨变之后，意义最为深远的事件。在20世纪30年代初期，还没有航空邮件。内陆电话通讯技术尚不成熟，更不用提海外通讯了，就算有，也是极为昂贵极不可靠的。《经济学人》不舍得使用昂贵的电缆通讯，靠邮寄的方式收集题材。不过当时也有些见证奇迹的时刻发生。1937年的一天下午4点钟，印刷厂接到了一份棘手的700字文稿，需要发到伦敦北郊海格特公墓那边校对。这份文稿于当晚9:30送达海格特公墓，修改完毕后赶在海格特邮局最后一次收件（凌晨半点）之前寄出，修订稿于第二天上午9:30重新回到印刷厂的办公桌上。在今天，一封电子邮件就可以解决问题，要是让英国皇家邮政来办的话，可有得等了。。。。。。
For information illiterates, these are hard times. It is too late to learn a new language; this piece is being typed (badly) on paper. That was a commodity strictly controlled in the early 1930s. Webb―Edward Mafeking of that clan on his birth certificate, plain Webb to us journalists―the office manager and custodian of precious items including paper clips, once protested, "You had two sheets of paper yesterday."
在这个信息技术高度发达的时代，不了解信息技术是不行的。"学一门新语言为时已晚"，这句话被歪歪扭扭地印在纸上。在20世纪30年代初，纸张是一种受严格控制的商品。办公室经理韦博掌管着包括曲别针在内的贵重物品，他的出生证明上写他是爱德华•马弗京的后裔，但我们只叫他韦博。有一次韦博不满地对我说："你昨天居然用了两张纸。"
Today, it seems, paper comes into use only when the issue is printed and bound. Editorial keyboards generate trillions of impulses that are somehow brought together as an issue. Then buttons are pressed and seven printing plants around the world receive an identical issue, together with all its sophisticated colour pages. How this is done is quite beyond the comprehension of a quill-pen journalist. By this miracle The Economist has surmounted the old problems of getting there fast by getting there instantly. One hopes that these streams of signals are never hijacked somewhere in the heavens. As for the crudities of hot-metal typesetting and letter-press printing, all these have long been superseded by electronic setting (in which a 1970s managing director, Ian Trafford, was a pioneer, and made The Economist one too), and by the stunning quality of modern offset printing.
如今，仿佛只有出版物印刷和装订的时候才会用到纸张，从编辑到成稿的所有步骤都可以通过键盘来完成。随后再按几个按钮，世界各地的七家印刷厂都会受到配有精美彩页的文稿，内容完全相同。这一切都是手握羽毛笔的撰稿人们无法想象的。《经济学人》不用再为如何尽快送达文稿而发愁了，凭借现在的高端技术，文稿可以转瞬及至。不过有人希望信号在传输过程中，不要在空中被谁劫持了才好。原始的铸字排版和凸版印刷早已被电镀印刷所取代，20世纪70年代时一名叫做伊安•特拉福德的总经理率先使用这种技术，《经济学人》紧随其后。电镀印刷随后又被胶印所取代，现代的胶印技术印刷效果极好。
And the future?
何去何从
The Economist's finances today―all allowance made for inflation―would have been unimaginable to those working on it in the 1930s. When Layton and Bracken called a truce in their late-1920s fight for the paper, they had driven the price up to £100,000―less than £4m in today's money. The paper was said in the 1930s always to have made a profit; that must have been a very small one. More important, its almost metaphysical constitution, with half the voting capital, but not control, held by the Financial News (and now the Financial Times, into which Bracken folded his daily in 1945), has survived ever since, with only one hiccup, mercifully long forgotten.
《经济学人》今天的资产，即通胀准备金，是上世纪30年代为此奋斗的人想象不到的。到20年代末，雷顿和布兰肯的版权之争终于告一段落时，《经济学人》的价格被他们哄抬到10万英镑，当时的10万英镑相当于今天的近400万英镑。当时有人说，《经济学人》一直都有赚头，不过那个数字跟今天相比简直是九牛一毛。更为重要的是，《金融时事》（现《金融时报》，《金融时事》于1945年在布兰肯手中夭折）虽然是《经济学人》的股东，但只有表决权，没有掌控权。这使《经济学人》固有的超然品质一直传承至今，尽管中间有过一次小波折，不过好在人们早已遗忘了此事。
It can be asked whether that long-lasting format will carry The Economist through the new century. This old hand offers only two comments. First, that its editorial independence, which dates back to that truce, is imperative; without it, this would be just another weekly. Second, that anyone seeking to change The Economist's foundations will embark on a labour of Sisyphus.
可能有人会问，《经济学人》是否会在新世纪继续沿用其长久以来的风格。对此我只想说明两点。第一，《经济学人》编纂自主，这是当年雷顿与布兰肯达成的一致。没有这个前提，《经济学人》只不过是一份普通的报纸；第二，想动摇《经济学人》的基石，无异于精卫衔石。
It has been a great joy to have put twopennyworth into the early and middle stages of The Economist's extraordinary growth from a tiddler to a world giant. There are few international newspapers, and why this one should have triumphed out of London rather than some other centre of thought is a question. To one who was there in the 1930s―or indeed the 1970s―it is prosperous beyond belief, but shows not the slightest sign of getting fat and lazy. Here's to sales of a million (with a private jet for the circulation director?), and good health to all the enterprises that now form The Economist Group. In those days, "group" meant just a handful of people.
能为《经济学人》贡献自己的绵薄之力，伴随这份报纸从兴办到兴旺，见证他从学步小儿成长为世界巨人，是我莫大的欢乐。没有几家报纸具有这般的国际影响力，为什么《经济学人》独领风骚？恐怕很多人都想问这个问题。伴《经济学人》从30年代走到70年代，我认为，其成功的秘诀就是，无论取得多么耀眼的成就，从未有过丝毫的懈怠。在这里祝贺《经济学人》的发行量超过100万份，这回发行经理该得到一架私人飞机作奖励了吧。祝《经济学人》集团的全体员工身体健康。在过去，"集团"对我们来说也就意味着十几个人。
(Whose many successors, add the several who handled this article, do not forget that each generation stands on the shoulders of those who came before.)
（编者寄语：请《经济学人》的每一代接班人谨记，你们是站在前辈的肩膀上。）
注：
空邮纸：轻身高级书写用纸，多用破布造成，质地结实。常用作航空邮柬
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