The Farmington times. (Farmington, St. Francois County, Mo.) 1905-1926, 1907-10-04
THE PAPER TRUST.

] 4.
papers, is not the most profitable
one in the world for the amOnnt
Of capital and work that are pu
| into it, and newspaper publishers
little and big, all over the country
are beginning to feel the pressure
of the paper trust. Some Of the
country papers are suggesting the
plan of increasing the subscription
price to try to save themselves the
loss Incurred by the advance in the
price Of print paper. But that
would be n hard thing to successfully
accomplish; the people have be-
come accustomed to the low sub.
scription price of their home
papers, and any effort to increase
it would result in a falling of
in the subscription list.
To add to the trouble of the
county paper in securing sub
scribers the publisher is met with
the argument that the twice-a-week
this or the thrice.a week that Of
some metropolitan publication may
be had for ~ 90, the subscription
price Of most county papers. Then
there are the many agricultural
papers, with subscription prices
running from 10 cents to 30 cents
a year, not sufficient to pay for
the blank paper, besides the thous.
dnds of magazines and story papers
at from % cents to 81 90, which
will not begin to pay for the blank
paper used by them. The pub
shers don't care for that, so long
as they can secure big circulations
of from 100, 600 to 800, 900, and
get second.clasS postage rates, for
such a circulation means to them
big prices for advertising and they
are rnu principally as advertising
concerns. Their field is the whole
country.
The county paper, however, is
confined to the locality in which it
is published. 1t has to do prin-
cipally with local affairs, and
people outside of the county in
which it is published have no in
terest in it, ueless it be few for
mer residents of the county living
in other localities, so that no mat
ter how cheap its subscription it
cannot build up a circulation that
will command advertising prices
upon which alone it may depend
for an existence and a profit to its
publisher. Its field is circum-
scrlbed, and it must depend in part
upon its subscription for support g..
But the cheap subscription of the
class of publications mentioned
have the effect of keeping down
even its subscription price below
the actual cost of publication. So
we don't see how it can advance
its subscription price and hold on
to the average subscriber who can
not understand why it cannot be
published and sold just as cheap
as these agricultural and story pa
pers, which are really nothing but
advertising mediums, although
they contain a good deal of valu'
able reading matter.
The best remedy for the high
priced print paper is non partisan
crusade on the part of every count!
paper in the United States agains
the paper trust, and every othe>
monopoly in the country that il
preying upon the people. TIL,
way to destroy the paper trust is t
abolish the tariff on wood pulp, o
which paper is made. Years az,
an effort was made to secure {
monopoly of paper-making by buy
ing up all the paper mills; bu
this wouldn't work, for as fast a
they were bought up other mill
would be started. So the trus
builders conceived the idea of buy
ing up all the spruce forests ad