" 1880 61,000,000 "
" 1890 204,000,000 "
" 1900 450,000,000 "
" 1913 1,096,000,000 "
At this rate, within less than ten years, if the law is not changed,
this output will have increased to more than _two billion pounds_ per
annum.
Evidently giving to periodical literature this service at one cent
per pound, $20. per ton, the cost being eight or ten times as much,
has been simply a subvention, and a very effective one. Although we
publish few books as compared with other civilized nations, we issue
more periodicals than all other nations put together, and half as much
again: for we publish sixty per cent of the periodical literature of
the entire globe.
The United States, according to the report of the Third Assistant
Postmaster General for January, 1914, handled in the second-class
mail, during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1913, over five thousand
million copies of periodicals--more than fifty for each man, woman and
child in the United States--enough to make more than 2,600 train loads
of ten fully loaded cars per train. And this does not take into
consideration the enormous number of copies of daily newspapers and
other periodicals which are circulated outside of the mails, by
carriers, newsdealers and others.
* * * * *
Underlying this megalosaurus-like development, is the factor that
carriage by the government at the nearly free rate of one cent per
pound, covers not only the literary product but the advertising
material which has been the determining factor in this marvellous
increase. At the time the pound-rate law first became operative,
magazines were few in number, and contained little advertising and
much good literature; but the pound-rate law gave birth to a new kind
of magazine issued at less than cost for the revenue to be derived,
because of the immense circulation possible under the subvention, from
its advertising pages; _and their advertising pages generally weigh
more and cost the government more to transport, than do their literary
pages_.
To increase this revenue, circulations were forced by methods that
directly violated the law, and these methods are still being used.
Premiums were given to an extent that led to an investigation by the
Post Office Department, and it was found (Third Assistant Postmaster
General's report, Dec. 1, 1911, p. 39) that in one case four-fifths of
the subscribers went for the premium, the publication being worth
nothing except as an advertising medium because of its large
circulation--a circulation with which, despite the government
subvention, literature had nothing to do. Another periodical, weekly
and agricultural, forced by premium 122,000 subscriptions out of
143,000; another 41,000 out of 53,000.
There are hundreds of needless growths of this sort. As an instance,
there are published in the United States some eighty-six banking
periodicals. The Secretary of the American Bankers' Association, when
asked how many of these were needed, replied: "From three to six, and
the other eighty are 'leg pullers.' They live in great part by
sandbagging advertising out of financial interests."
* * * * *
Dr. Talcott Williams, at the session of the American Historical
Association at Washington a few years ago, said that one hundred years
earlier, the aggregate weight of one copy of each issue of an ordinary
city daily for a year was about ten pounds; fifty years later it was
twenty-five pounds; twenty-five years later it had become fifty
pounds; and when he spoke it was a hundred and twenty-five pounds;
while in some instances the Sunday editions alone weigh more than
that. How much of it is published to the real advantage of the
community?
Upon careful consideration, it seems evident that at first the law
diverted the patronage of the reading public from books to the
higher-priced and more respectable magazines, those so priced that
their sale at the published rate would be possible even if the
advertising were a minor consideration; that next, the twenty-five
cent issues cut the ground from under these older and higher-priced
ones; that then rapidly appeared the fifteen-cent ones, and next the
ten-cent ones--all so expensive to make that only the great volume of
advertising rendered the low price possible; and that now the
five-cent issues are, in their turn, no less rapidly displacing the
ten-cent ones. Swift's doggerel tells the tale:
So, naturalists observe, a flea
Has smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite 'em;
And so proceed _ad infinitum_.
While this article has primarily to do with the decadence of our
literature, the economic side should not be lost sight of.
For the fiscal year ending June 30, 1913, the expense account of the
Post Office Department amounted to over $260,000,000. The second-class
mail supplied nearly two-thirds of the tonnage, and cost more than
one-third of the total aggregate of expense, but the revenue paid by
its publishers amounted to just under $10,000,000, as against the cost
of over $86,000,000.
To make up for the loss thus incurred, the first-class mail--the
letter mail, which weighed only about one-fifth as many pounds, had to
supply $175,000,000 of revenue from a service costing the government
less than $100,000,000. That is to say, the letter mail paid eighteen
times as much revenue as the second-class mail, and weighed but
one-fifth as much.
There were carried the past year very nearly two billions of postal
cards which produced a revenue of nearly $20,000,000. The weight of
these was only about 12,000,000 pounds. _Twelve_ million pounds of
postal cards therefore produced almost exactly twice as much revenue
as _one thousand_ million pounds of publishers' second-class mail.
Averaging all in all, first-class mail costs at most not quite four
times as much per pound as second-class mail, and pays eighty-four
times as much.
In other words, each time that one of the forty or fifty million
users of the first-class mail puts a two-cent stamp on a letter, one
cent pays for the service rendered, and nearly all of the other cent
is taken by the Department to give the "special privilege" of service
at one-eighth of cost, to less than thirty thousand periodical
publishers.
* * * * *
Is it any wonder that new periodicals have begun their career in the
United States at the rate of more than ten a day for every day,
Sundays and holidays included, of the past fifteen years? Fortunately,
however, the death rate is nearly as great as the birth rate; but
since those that persist are the selected growths, there is, as we
have seen, a tremendous annual increase.
One expert estimates that the total number of books published in the
world since the invention of printing is some fifteen millions, and
another, more modest, places the figures at between ten and twelve
millions. Assuming for each book a first edition of one thousand
copies, a somewhat common issue, we should have from ten billion to
fifteen billion copies of _all_. In other words, there are issued in
the United States _each year_ from one-half to three-quarters as many
copies of periodicals as have _ever_ been published in the first
editions of _all_ books ever printed by all the nations of the world.
There can be no deduction made from the general features of the
situation other than that the distribution of this one class of
merchandise at a practically free rate is nearly the sole reason for
this wasteful over-production.
When the pound-rate law was enacted, the distinct purpose was
announced that its effect should be educational. The contrary is
unmistakably the case. The reading of the ten to twenty minute
magazine article or the skimming over of the Sunday paper, seems to
have become too often the limit of the intellectual activity of our
people of average education.
To carry the _Police Gazette_ at a cent a pound while charging eight
times as much for a spelling book or Bible, and then to claim that
the law permitting this discrepancy was enacted in the interests of
education, is at least edifying. Archbishop Hare in his bright little
volume _Guesses at Truth_ once remarked that a very bad reason was in
effect next to a very good one.
Mr. J. N. Larned the very eminent librarian says:
The so-called _news_paper which interests itself and which labors
to interest its readers in the trivialities and ignoble
occurrences of the day--in the prize fights and mean
preliminaries of prize fights, the boxing matches, the ball
games, the races, the teas, the luncheons, the receptions, the
dresses, the goings and comings and private doings of private
persons--making the most in all possible ways of all petty things
and low things, while treating grave matters with levity and
impertinence--with what effect can such a _news_paper be read? I
do not care to say. If I spoke my mind, I might strike harshly at
too many whose reading is confined to such sheets, but I will
venture so much remark as this: That I would prefer absolute
illiteracy for a son or a daughter of mine, total inability to
spell a single printed word, rather than that he or she should be
habitually a reader of the common newspaper of America of today,
and a reader of nothing better.
According to Census Bulletin No. 57 for 1905, there was spent in the
preceding year in the entire country for newspapers the enormous sum
of $280,000,000, and for all textbooks for use in both public and
private schools, sectarian and non-sectarian, and in all colleges,
only some $12,000,000! More than $23 spent for ephemeral literature,
much of which debases the literary taste of the community, for each
dollar spent for literature whose function was technically
educational.
To get a further idea of the literary pabulum that the government
subvention is creating for us, let us consider an average magazine of
the so-called popular sort. Someone defines it as follows:
"A magazine is a small body of literature, entirely surrounded by
advertising. In this respect, it resembles a railroad ham sandwich
with the advertising bread cut very thick and the literary meat in
especially thin slices. The situation is well summarized when Dooley
says: 'Hinnessy, mon, last night on my way home from wurruk I bought
one of them popular magazines expectin' after I had eaten me supper
and put on me slippers, and lighted me pipe, to sit down for a quiet
avenin's enjoyment looking over the advertisements, and do you know,
mon, twinty-five per cent of the dommed thing was just nothing but
"litherachoor."'"
The magazine frequently gives great prominence to pictures of
actresses--doubtless by favorable arrangements with their managers.
With these may appear an article with an alliterative title, showing
How Cleveland was Cunningly Conned; How Placid Philadelphia's
Putridity was Purged; Why Denver went to the Devil; etc. Then may
follow an article explaining how our reporter Wily Willie went under
"_Jawn Dee's_" window and, by making a noise like an extra dividend,
secured an interview with him. Then a trifling poem or two, and a long
continued dry-as-dust serial story, which serves in some measure as
the talcum powder to disinfect, so to speak, the rest. Then may follow
a Retraction article, showing that whereas we stated in our latest
issue that an emissary of the Standard Oil Co. was responsible for the
Chicago Conflagration by sneaking up behind Mrs. O'Leary's cow and
sticking a pin into her while she was being milked, we wish to inform
our readers that we are now convinced that this was incorrect. Further
investigation shows that the Standard Oil Co. was entirely innocent.
It was an employee of the Packing House Trust who was guilty of the
dastardly deed. Then perhaps will follow a Passionate Personal Appeal
from the publisher for subscriptions to about $10,000,000 worth of
stock of the Magazine Company. (Send in any sum from $1 up, use the
corner coupon.) All of this will be encased in a gaudy, if not neat,
cover bearing a design showing a girl's face and some of her form. If
you want to see the rest of that, look at the corset advertisements
inside. An old lady lately said that when she read her modern
magazine, she felt that she had been to an undress party where the men
all came in their "_unions_" and the women in their "_nemos_." Then
will follow advertisements of soaps, soups, shoes, massage creams and
a thousand other articles.
As illustrating another abuse that results from the pound-rate
privilege: Let me refer to some periodicals that are light in weight;
certain small magazines, for example, weigh but a fraction of an
ounce, and the government must distribute many of them in order to
secure one cent. We have in our possession a little Farm Journal so
light that it takes forty copies to make a pound. As it is published
monthly, not until the Post Office has served a subscriber with this
journal for three years and four months, will it get as much as a
single cent for the entire service.
And the government carries this kind of literature, advertising and
all, at one cent a pound--$20 per ton, and charges for books eight
cents per pound--$160 per ton, and for the social-letter and business
mail, 84 cents per pound, $1680 per ton!!
* * * * *
Bryan's philosophy was sounder than it sometimes has been, when he
said:
The Supreme Court has described _unjust taxation as larceny in
the form of law_. If one citizen is compelled by law to pay ten
dollars for the support of the government where he ought to only
pay five, and under the same law a neighbor is required to pay
but five where he should pay ten, the law which causes this
inequality simply transfers five dollars from one man's pocket to
another's.
Then a law which is each year taking over seventy-five million dollars
of net profit, above cost of service, from the ninety-three million
people who benefit from letters, in order to give the thirty thousand
periodical publishers service for ten million dollars which costs
_many_ times that sum, is certainly not merely petty larceny or grand
larceny, but larceny that is absolutely grandiose.
To illustrate: One publishing company, it is reported, made last year
a net profit of over two million dollars. Their postage was about
$650,000, and it cost the government over $4,500,000 to handle the
output. Moreover, more than $11,000,000 of advertising was borne on
the pages of those publications, and for it the company also received
virtually free distribution.
* * * * *
Had a special privilege as great as this of the second-class mail rate
been enjoyed at national expense by any class of citizens other than
its publishers, the publishers would not have permitted it to exist a
year. Yet the loss has long been well known to post-office officials
and members of Congress, though for a time it was kept from the
knowledge of the public, because practically the sole means the public
has had of obtaining the knowledge, has been through the columns of
journals that enjoy the privilege. The _North American Review_ for
February, 1908, had a most scathing article by Professor Munroe Smith,
entitled _The Dogma of Journalistic Inerrancy_ that illustrated this
situation forcibly.
No lobby sent to Washington in furtherance of corrupt legislation has
ever been more persistent or dealt less fairly with both legislators
and public than the lobby that has worked for retention of the
second-class mail rate. Some able editors have been accused of hunting
very jealously for other people's pulls while maintaining a pretty
heavy one of their own.
And the ceaselessly increasing monthlies of mammoth circulation that
so nobly, though with somewhat of iteration, harp upon the graft of
our plutocrats, our patent medicine manufacturers, our frenzied
financiers, our food trusts, our fraudulent insurance officials--is it
possible that none of their diatribes, worthy though they may be, are
never to be directed against themselves? Let us hope that some of
these public-spirited citizens so patriotically intent upon ridding a
much-suffering land of its various forms of organized rapacity, may be
led to see a great light in connection with the one industry of this
country that is by law largely relieved from subjection to those
competitive forces to which producers and distributors of all other
articles are keenly alive.
* * * * *
We may in time realize the truth of Emerson's remark that "though no
checks to a new evil appear, the checks exist and will appear." For it
is fast becoming notorious that that advertising which is as the
breath of life to all those low-priced periodicals, has passed beyond
the line of marginal utility, and will not compensate the farther sale
of the magazines at less than cost of production.
A generation ago an English-born resident of Australia was homesick.
He thought how charming it would be to see gamboling about his place
an English rabbit. He imported a pair. The soil and climate proved
congenial. They multiplied with enormous rapidity, and recently the
Australian government had a standing offer of £25,000 for anybody who
would devise some practical method of exterminating the rabbit pest.
Another settler, this time a New Zealander of Caledonian birth,
recalling to mind the rugged beauty of the Scotch thistle, imported
that, and planted it at his doorway. The resultant development was
similar. There are hundreds and hundreds of square miles of Scotch
thistles in New Zealand. A few years ago, a scientist imported for
experimental purposes, the gypsy moth, and caged it in his back yard
in one of the suburbs of Boston. A storm of wind and rain wrecked the
cage, and some of the moths escaped, with the result that the state of
Massachusetts has spent over three million dollars in an effort to
exterminate this pest that is devastating its forests and bids fair to
extend over the entire United States with a resultant loss of
countless millions of dollars.
In legislation as in biology, it sometimes seems easier, even with
good motives, to spread noxious things than useful ones. Our postal
legislation has bred a swarm of periodicals of which the vast majority
are but a swarm of pests.
In attacking them "at the source"--the cheap postage by which we
ourselves superficially seem to benefit, we are entitled to no credit.
On the contrary, while we think our action is in favor of the good
literature which we try to serve, we still must own up to selfish
motives. The rank growth of worthless periodical literature tends to
smother the kind which we and a few of our colleagues are trying to
make. We think some of those colleagues are standing in their own
light when they advocate the policy which breeds their worthless
competitors. Periodicals are like currency: the bad always drives out
the good.
* * * * *
The publishers of this REVIEW hope that, without having their motives
misconstrued, they can add, from their own experience, a very
suggestive illustration of the main contention of the foregoing
article. Most of the readers of the REVIEW are familiar with the Home
University Library, and some of them have praised it highly. In
England it has had a phenomenal success, in America but a very
moderate one. The American publishers are constantly being told that
in England it is on every railway news stand, and asked why it is not
here. The answer is that here the flood of cheap periodicals leaves no
room for anything more substantial. The Home University Library
appeals to a popular constituency, and there is a tremendous popular
demand for it in England, while in America there is none: its
circulation here is virtually restricted to the highly educated. The
rank and file of American readers have their tastes formed and
supplied by the Sunday newspapers and the cheap periodicals. The idea
of gathering a library of cheap books on substantial subjects is
virtually unknown among them.
The worst feature of the whole case is that the enormous demand for
inferior stuff limits the field for writers who can produce valuable
matter, and consequently checks the development of such writers. It
would be as difficult to produce a Home University Library in America
as it is to sell it. We have men of the requisite knowledge, but our
conditions do not attract them to cultivate the literary art. Few of
our scientific men and scholars are writers, many more of those in
England are. And as for imaginative literature!
The cheap carriage of our periodicals was avowedly enacted as a
government subvention to literature. Why was it not extended to books?
In a year's shipments they do not bulk nearly as large as periodicals.
Are we forced to the conclusion that at the present stage of
evolution, a helpful subvention to literature is beyond the power of a
pure democracy? If so, that is one reason for working all the harder
to raise the character of that democracy. Would the withdrawal of the
subvention be a good beginning?