The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-09-21
THE WEEKLY JOURNAL. Issued Thursday. One Dollar a Year.
THE PRICE OF PAPER.

The proposed advance in the price of paper is of concern to the great public as well as to the makers of newspa- pers. There can no longer be any qies- tion of the service performed by news papers, from the great metropolitan daily to the small country weekly, in fighting wrongs, anticipating the greed and animoslty of man and protecting society against itself in its more pas sionate moments. This being so the proposed advance in the price of the paper upon which they are printed, un- less justified by actual necessity, strikes at the very well-being of the country.
 The proposal bears none of the fam iliar marks of a rational and logical business movement. It has not been proved, nor do we believe it can be proved, that an advance must be made in order to protect the business in it's right to earn a fair interest on its in- vestment and its employees in ther right to earn livelihood. Some of the reasons given for the proposed ad- vance are childish in their understand ing of the trade and in their measure of the judgment which controls news paper makers An advance, for exam pie, in the wages paid wood-choppers, which is a reason assigned, could be met with an advance covering a frac- tion of one per cent. The scarcity of wood can be met in other ways than the one proposed. The real reason, how ever, for the advance is simple to un- dersfand The makers of paper, who have been successfully operating with the principle of combination and con centration, have gotten rid of the small makers and are now in position where they can talk prices over at the smaller of the tables provided in any of the fashionable hotels of the city of New York.
 In other words the makers of paper have foregathered amid comfortable surroundings and have agreed to an artificial scale of prices which will if enforced practically revolutionize the newspaper business. No one newspaper will escape the blighting effect Many of the smaller and weaker ones will inevitably go to the wall or continue their existence in manner to put a premium upon ineff1ciency, of itself a serious thing for the morals of their communities. An inefficient free press is thing to be guarded against. The big newspapers will find their expens- es increased thousands of dollars a month and it is conceivable that more than one of them, now doing an excel- lent service, will be so hopelessly crip" pied as to pass out of the major infiu- ence in newspaper life. Tn the small CT States the blow cannot but make for inferiority in many instances and even among the stronger of the local news- papers in the large centers of popula- tion new and serious problems of ad- ministration will have to be considered.
 No one of these inevitable embar- rassments ought to impress the out side world unpleasantly if there were good business reasons why the advance should be made. The newspaper busi- ness like every other investment must take it's chances in the whirl of fife, but like every other business it has a right to demand protection against a selfish combination which is powerful not because it obeys the laws of trade and by respecting them has become like a giant, but because by taking ad- vantage of the newly enforced princi- pies of consolidation 1t is in a po- sition to hold up the trade by the throat. If this is not scheme in restraint of trade we do not know what it is and it deserves the attention of the department of justice, on the one hand, while congress, on the other hand, should take up for quick treat ment the removal of the duty on wood pulp.