The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-06-12
BIG NEWSPAPER CALCULATIONS.
Some Inside Facts for the Public to
Ponder Over.
Worcester (Mass) Telegram.

Worcester (Mass.) Telegram.
There are publishers who, daily, week
after week, send hundreds of thousands
of papers to newsdealers in Worcester city
and county, and, doubtless, in other cities
and places as well, when they know as well
as they know anything that the dealers can
not sell the papers, do not want them, and
will only dispose of most of them for old
paper, and that the money the rag men
give for the old papers will go into the peck
cts of the neWSmen.
AS an illustration of the wartime lunacy
which has attacked publishers of various
papers, the case of newsdealer in small
town of Worcester county is here cited The
newsdealer in point is located in a small
town where, of a certain Boston publication,
he usually sold twelve copies daily before
the war. He had but one edition of the pa
per, and the publisher of the paper sent the
war was declared the publisher increased
the newsdealers order from fifteen to forty
papers. No more papers We're sold after the
first few days of excitement than had been
before but the publisher kept sending the
forty just the same. and the first thing the
dealer knew his publisher was sending him
three editions a day, and forty papers in
each edition. Forty came in the morning
then forty Of the noon edition and forty in
and the dealer couldn't sell more than
twelve or thirteen of the morning edition
and only two or three of the evening. The
noon edition, after the first two or three
days, he didn't open at all, and so none were
sold. The dealer wrote two or three times
to stop sending the papers, but no attention
Once, a month he RENTS for the twelve or
thirteen papers a day that he does sell, cuts
the heads off OF the nnsoid copies ana SENDS
sells the main body of the papers to the rag
man.
every Worcester county town, and in the
city it is worse yet, and the New York
publishers are crazier even than the Boston
about sending on papers that cannot be sold
There is one newsdealer who handles New
York Journals largely who in one week had
the headings cut from enough unsold papers
to load big truck. He got % cents hun
dred pounds for the old papers, and some
idea of the amount he had to sell to the
rag man may be gained when it is an
nounced that in one week he had enough
unsold papers to bring him in $1460. That
represented fully 10000 papers that were not
sold. He keeps one girl constantly en-
ployed cutting heads off unsold papers, and
toward the end of the month he has three
to five and six girls employed at the same
work. In one month recently he had nearly
$1,000 to sell to the old paper man.
The Journal and the World are in the
same boat with reference to sending papers
that are never sold to worcester, and to
ayers know perfectly we'll that they are
daily shipping to Worcester thousands of
papers that cannot be sold, but they keep
sending them along and swearing up their
"unapproached and unapproachable circu-
lation," for the purpose of bleeding their
other object in it. If one paper sticks I'D
papers at the rate of 5000 week 10 molder
in the cellar of one Worcester newsdealer,
and other publishers do pretty nearly as
bad, it is easy to see where the advertisers
who pay their good money for the great
est circulation" are victims of a bunco
game.
The Boston papers are relatively as crazy
over this circulation matter as are their
larger and yellower New York contempor-
aries. for there are some of them that ship
many as four or five editions a day to
Worcester. and they send many times more
papers than can by any possibility be dis
posed of to any one but the rag man, and
the old paper market has been so over
crowded that the price of paper has fallen
this week to y cents per one hundred
pounds, while a week ago the old paper
men were paying Is cents.