This question of contacts is as decisive for the newspaper business as it is for intelligence work. And it provides an interesting link with the secret history of the world news cartel. For just such contacts were the foundation of the global news monopoly. And the cartel was, from the start, unmistakably at the service of commercial and state interests! News Since Feudal Days Near the middle of the past century, governments, bankers, rich merchants, kept private couriers who travelled to all important European capitals. By carrier pigeon--and in America also by pony express--they sent specific information on prices and market conditions, plus general political information required for their long-range business planning. The couriers built up extremely valuable contacts that would have made them very valuable to newspapers. But newspapers couldn’t afford their costly services and the couriers couldn’t afford to lose their rich clients by publishing their information. Newspapers had the right to print news but no way to get it. The telegraph broke that situation wide open. It made the relative isolation of the newspapers impossible; it spelled the doom of the private news systems.[A] It ended feudalism in the information field. But not everyone saw that immediately. Paul Julius Reuter, Prussian government courier with many business clients and topnotch European contacts, understood it at once. He determined to switch to newspapers, offering a telegraphic news service to several papers at once. Germany was no place for a progressive idea in 1851, and Britain was the nation with the most extensive world interests, so Reuter set up shop in London. His idea was a smashing success. Reuters soon was the all-powerful government-backed British Empire news monopoly. Charles Havas, a Hungarian, established a similar monopoly for the French Empire and France’s sphere of interest, and Dr. Bernhard Wolff did as much for Germany. In the United States, Associated Press grew out of the same conditions, except that the agency, like the nation itself, was almost wholly absorbed in internal development, almost entirely disinterested in the rest of the world. Toward the close of the century, however, there were signs that the tremendous productive forces developed under American capitalism would ultimately seek _an_ empire if not world empire. The country began to show more interest in _world_ news. Associated Press, to improve its monopoly position and bar the possibility of successful competition at home, sought exclusive rights to a supply of world news. It made a deal with the European agencies.