The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1907-09-23
TARIFF PINcHEs PUBLISHERS.

| HnlFF TlNO7ES FO bEiSHE HS.
In session at New York, the members
of the American Newspaper Publish
ers' association. representing most of
the large daily publications of the
country, are formulating an appeal for
a reduction in the tariff on wood and
wood pulp used in the manufacture of
news print paper.
In the past year the price of paper
used by newspapers has risen to the
point where it means determination for
the smaller publishers and a serious
menace to the larger ones. One New
York publisher has estimated that the
rise viii cost the newspapers of the
metropolis alone close to $500, 000.
What the damage will be to the entire
newspaper business can only be
guessed at. but it will run away up in
the millions
About two years ago the govern
ment prosecuted the trust known as the
General Paper company, with head
quarters in Chicago, and compelled its
dissolution. The result was hailed as a
great victory, and for a brief period the
price of paper returned to something
like a normal level Within the past
year, however, the manufacturers have
established a close communion game
that works like charm-for the manu-
facturer-and which has threatened the
very existence of a good many news
papers.
More recently it has been announced
unOfficially that the mills of the old
combine have passed into the control
Of an eastern company, and that the
new combination is practically in con-
troll of the entire output of news print
excepting only a few small mills in the
far west and one in Maine.
Confronted by this condition, the
publishers have called a special meet
ing to consider the situation, and the
remedy they propose is the abolition of
the tariff on paper. Republican pub
fishers and Democrats think alike on
this one point, and it seems to be some
thing of a joke on the high tariff apos-
ties of the press, albeit the joke is a
painful one.
American manufacturers have ac-
quired possession of the principal for
ests available for paper making, so they
are not afraid of competition; and fol-
lowing the tariff-protected trust sys-
TEN they have boosted prices until the
consumer can no longer stand the pres
sure.
Just how Republican newspaper men
can join consistently in an appeal for
the abolition of the tariff for their ben
eft is not known. A Republican con-
gress, with a Republican committee on
ways and means, has only to quote
their own editorials to the association
publishers to put a quietus on them and
answer their argument. If a tariff
makes prosperity, there is no occasion
to deprive the editors of their share of
prosperity by removing the tariff on
wood; if a tariff hurts the publishers
because it enables a trust to squeeze
them, why doesn't it hurt consumers
of other protected trust commodities?
And if newspaper publishers are en-
titled to relief from trust oppression by
the removal of the tariff, why isn'y the
great consuming public entitled to the
same sort of relief by the same method?
The Republican publishers who join
in this free trade movement in behalf
of wood and wood pulp must surely be
in tight place or they would not con-
TESS by their action what they have
been denying in print ever since the
Dingley tariff was passed for the bene-
fit of the trusts. Also, the publishers
meeting foreshadows a discussion of
the whole tariff question at The ap-
preaching session of congress in spite
of the ADMINISTRATIONS effort to pre-
vent such a thing.