David Syme

David Syme, 1907

David Syme (born October 2, 1827 in North Berwick , Scotland , † February 14, 1908 in Kew , Australia ) was a Scottish-Australian owner of the newspaper The Age and is often referred to as the "father of protectionism in Australia".

Early life

Syme was born in Scotland in 1827, the youngest of seven children of George Alexander Syme, a school principal, and Jean Mitchell. While his older brothers were attending university, he was raised and tutored by his father. When his father died at the age of 17, he was initially undecided where his professional training should go. After two years of training as a priest, like his two brothers George and Ebenezer , he broke it off, studied for some time in Heidelberg and worked as a proofreader for a newspaper in Glasgow . In 1851 he left England and went to California as a prospector .

Australia

After David Syme had little success in the California gold fields, he traveled on to Australia in 1852. The badly organized crossing almost cost him his life, but barely arriving in Sydney he took the next ship to Melbourne . For the next three years he looked for gold in Bendigo , Wangaratta , Ballarat and Beechworth with some success and lost a fortune in 1855 when a claim, which was in retrospect very valuable, was stolen from him. Syme then worked in road construction for some time when his brother Ebenezer bought the bankrupt newspaper The Age for £ 2,000 and also invited David to take over part of it. He participated halfway and helped run the newspaper, but at the end of 1857 he returned to his old job as a road builder. It was only after Ebenezer retired in 1859 that David reluctantly returned to the newspaper business. With the death of his brother the following year, he began his 50-year career as publisher and editor-in-chief of "The Age".

The Age

Under David Syme, The Age's political commitment to the underprivileged changed little. As before, he campaigned for land reforms, free suffrage and reasonable working conditions. However, with the necessary development of industry, he came to believe that it had to be protected from the forces of the free markets and became an advocate of protectionism. Under his leadership, the newspaper's circulation grew continuously from 2,000 copies in 1860, 15,000 copies in 1868, 38,000 copies in 1880 to 100,000 and 120,000 copies in 1890 and 1899, respectively. With the circulation, its influence on political life in Victoria also grew . David Syme was known as the Kingmaker and The Age as the Thunderer (English Thunderer ). When he died in 1908, his two sons Herbert and Geoffrey took over the management of the newspaper.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Syme, David (1827-1908). The University of Melbourne, p. 3 , accessed February 24, 2010 .  
2. ↑ ^{a b c} CE Sayers: David Syme . In: Douglas Pike (Ed.): Australian Dictionary of Biography . Melbourne University Press, Carlton (Victoria) 1966–2012 (English).
3. ^ The Story of The Age . (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on January 13, 2010 ; accessed on February 23, 2010 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.