Journalist who polemicized with Karl Marx: Who is James Wilson and what is the story of The Economist?

James Wilson was born in Hawick, Scotland, in July 1805. His parents, who adopted the Quaker sect, had 15 children, but 10 reached adulthood. His father had a hat workshop. James received his education at home. He was disciplined, curious, and successful. Considering the conditions at that time, it seemed inevitable that he would become a teacher. James said, "I would rather be a worker," and started working as an apprentice in a hat workshop belonging to a friend of his father. A few years later, his father bought the workshop where James worked and gifted it to James and his older brother.

James Wilson (3 June 1805 – 11 August 1860) was a Scottish businessman, economist, and Liberal politician who founded The Economist weekly and the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China, which merged with Standard Bank in 1969 to form Standard Chartered. He was the first Finance Member of the Viceroy's Executive Council from December 1859 until his death in August 1860. Sent there to put order into the chaos that followed the "Sepoy Mutiny" of 1857, he presented India's first budget, and was responsible for the government accounting system, Pay Office, and audit, apart from government paper currency, Indian Police, a Military Finance Commission, and a Civil Finance Commission.

The two brothers immigrated to London in 1831 and established a new workshop. His business was going well, and in 1837 he had a fortune of 25 thousand pounds. (Equivalent to today's £2.5 million) During the great economic crisis that year, he sold everything and escaped bankruptcy. He had exhausted zero. He was very interested in the economy and the market. He opposed the privileges of the Church of England, the newly discussed secret ballot system, and the corn law imposed by England. He managed to have these ideas published in some newspapers, especially the Manchester Guardian—headlines like “What should the Minister of Finance do” attracted a lot of attention.

He founded The Economist in August 1843 to announce his ideas, which were quite radical-liberal for that period, to a wider audience. The preliminary issue dated August 5, 1843, was in the format of a 16-page large-sized newspaper. Wilson published a 13-item prospectus on which topics would be included in the newspaper in this issue. Just below the list was the following paragraph:

“Extra monthly statistics issue: Each month we will publish an extra issue devoted solely to statistics and the statistical parts of documents placed before parliament. Most of this information is currently available to the public very limited. There is no doubt that statistics should form the most important basis for the opinions and actions of economists, legislators, merchants, and all reasoners. We should also point out that, no matter how powerful and useful statistics are, they cannot be used safely without sufficient knowledge. We will try to help with this with explanatory notes and observations during editing. Our plan is to split this monthly issue into two parts. First, we will start and put together our income and trade statistics in alphabetical order, including exports and imports, shipping, agriculture, and currency. In the other one, we will compare our trade, imports, exports, consumption, stocks, and leading trade goods between the current year and the relevant period of the previous year.”

It was understood that The Economist would keep the promise made in the prospectus in the first issue published on September 2, 1843, a month after the preparatory issue. There were statistical tables on 7 pages of the first 16-page issue. From the comparison of England's trade with various countries over the years to the number of animals used in agriculture, from companies' dividend dates to new patent registrations...

A graph published by the magazine about who transmitted cholera to whom in the town of Knottingley near Leeds in 1849 is among the first examples of data journalism, which started to be talked about in the 2000s.

Let's go back to the life of James Wilson... After founding The Economist, the first important issue that Wilson pursued was the grain import ban. These discussions were given extensive coverage in the first issue dated September 2, 1843. The ban, which ensured that the prices of products obtained by rich landowners remained high, caused the poor to starve. The ban, which was lifted in 1846, is considered the beginning of England's transition to a free trade regime. According to a 2021 study, the lifting of the ban reduced the income level of the richest 10 percent, while the living standards of the remaining 90 percent increased.

While directing The Economist, Wilson twice engaged in polemics with Karl Marx. The first was about the draft law that prohibits women and children under the age of 13-18 from working more than 10 hours a day in the country. Wilson opposed the change. The second one arose from the debates that arose in December 1851 when the then-French President, Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, realized that the constitutional change required to be elected for the second time would not be made, so he staged a coup and declared himself Emperor of France as Napoleon III. The Economist praised the end of terrorism in France and the turning of the wheels of the economy. In both cases, Marx accused the magazine of being “the organ of the European financial aristocracy.”

Some of Wilson's ideas, which did not compromise on the "laissez-faire" principle, were truly unthinkable. British Rail, which invested to provide more comfortable travel for workers traveling in freight wagons, said: “The best service to the public is the system where the most profit is made. “If you limit profit, you also limit creativity,” he criticized. He also opposed free public education, saying, "Ordinary people should be directed to provide education just as they can provide food for themselves."

Wilson, who was at the center of much controversy, entered the House of Commons as a Liberal Party MP in 1847. He took important positions in the economic bureaucracy. He directed the unit that supervised the East India Company, the symbol of British colonialism, on behalf of the government for five years. In 1859, he was appointed by Queen Victoria to reform the Indian tax system. During the sweltering heat the following year, he refused to leave Calcutta and return to London and died of dysentery at the age of 55. Although he was a famous and powerful person, the location of his grave was unknown. In 2017, a researcher working on Indian tax history found the location of Wilson's grave in Calcutta in the documents he examined.

In its 180th year, The Economist, managed by only 17 editors, is one of the global publications that best preserves its editorial independence today. For many years, the company was under the control of Pearson, which also owns the Financial Times. A month after Pearson sold the Financial Times to Japan's Nikkei in July 2015, it divested its 50 percent stake in The Economist Group. Exor, owned by Fiat's founder Agnelli Family, currently owns 43.4 percent of the company. The second largest shareholder is the Rothschild Family, with 25 percent. Cadbury, Layton, and Schroder families also have small shares.

Conspiracy theorists who see the Rothschild Family will be happy, but that is not the case. According to The Economist Ltd's articles of association, shareholders' voting power is limited to 20 percent, regardless of their shareholding percentage.

At The Economist Group, the board of trustees, consisting of four independent members, is more influential than the board of directors consisting of shareholders. The delegation currently consists of Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone, Dame Alison Carnwath, Tim Clark, and Lord O'Donnell. The powers of these four are as follows:

• To elect the editor-in-chief of The Economist and the Chairman of the Board of Directors of The Economist Group

• To approve or reject the new shareholder if there is a sale of Class A and B company shares (shares belonging to Agnelli and other families above).

• Approve or reject proposed changes to the company's articles of association

• To elect a new member if one of the members of the board of trustees resigns, becomes incapacitated, or dies.