1.3 Urbanization: Cities That Never Sleep

Prior to the early 1700s, the world was a collection of agrarian kingdoms, mostly ruled by the rich and powerful. Small villages were the norm, and the few big cities that did exist were supported by legions of peasant farm workers. Not exactly the ideal economic or cultural conditions needed to support any form of mass media. But slowly (first in Europe and then later in the West and Far East), agricultural societies began to adopt the first glimmers of industrialization. Machines were being invented that could do the work of multiple workers (weaving, harvesting, manufacturing). Factories were being built that could produce hundreds of household items in a single day.

And all these new machines, work systems, and factories needed workers. Workers that lived close enough to those jobs that they could walk to work every day. Bring a bunch of people together in close proximity, and just like that, BAM—cities were born, and masses of illiterate peasants began to have two things they had never before: a little money and lots of new places to spend that money.

Town criers of previous centuries may have been able to shout the “official business” of a small village, but the printed word was growing to serve the needs of business and commerce. This explosion of workforce specialization of all kinds gave rise to the need to advertise and communicate these goods and services now available in these brand new cities. Of course, it didn’t happen overnight, and further advances in transportation (trains, canals, shipping) and technology (electricity, plumbing, and so on) slowly brought millions of people in from the farmland and put them together in ways that practically demanded new channels of communication. Enter the newspaper and advertising.