Reporter and farmer. [volume] (Webster, Day County, Dakota [S.D.]) 188?-1946, 1910-08-25


FADE, who declared that there was time
when he believed he knew all about
three of our most delightful occupa-
! tions-editing newspaper, writing a
comic opera and running hotel. Mr..
AIDE still believes that he can run a
hotel II
+ venture to say that the profession
of country newspapering contains more
chumps to the square inch than any
other class of our citizenship, unless it
is the BARRIERS who give shave for a
nickel and haircut for Is cents. If
you don't believe this, compare the
prices of job printing and advertising
maintained Is years ago with those of
today. You will find that where the
country editor used to get $3.50 for 500
envelopes, he is now glad 10 beat his
competitor by scaling that price any
where from so cents to a dollar. When
entered newspaper work the prevail
ing price for 500 noteheads was from
81. rs to 1925. Now there is an unseemly
scramble to furnish the job for nearly
one third less. The same idiotic and
ruinous reduction of prices on job work
has affected every bid that comes into
the Office, and this in spite of the fact
that never before was the printer COM
PEELED to pay such salaries as now, while
the quotations on paper stock, machin-
cry, type, ink, ETC., have risen like a
thermometer in laundry. The fiat
rate advertising farce has cut an even
deeper hole in the profits of weekly
publisher. Think of a newspaper with
1000 circulation and fiat rate of ten
cents an inch furnishing a half-page
advertisement for $40. Under the
old-fashioned and much abused scale
system, the use of which built up news
| paper properties that made men indie
pendent years ago, you couldn't buy a
single column in good paper for less
than the. price of a half page today.
But the advertising agencies drove the
weekly papers to adopt the plan of the
big daiies, with their enormous circu-
lations and jump-scale advertising rates
with the result that advertising profits
in many offices have been almost cut in
two, for it must be remembered that in
the majority of communities it is pos
sible to secure only about so much
advertising one year with another. The
effect of all this is that not one-fifth of
the weekly papers return anything like
satisfactory profit to their owners,
who slave their heads off year after
year for the satisfaction of beating the
other fellow out of work which yields
no profit.
These are some of the reasons why
the pig is mightier than the pen.
| Says Farmer Has Best of it.
| am here to say that the man who
owns so acres of good land and who has
brains enough to till it makes the lot of
the average country publisher look like
the last sad remnants of Dutch lunch.
The farmer has the best of all around.
He is as independent as the American
Express company. He doesn't have to
write soulful obituary over the remains
of some peak-headed bloke who caved
his wife's ribs in with grub stake and
kept on display an exhibit of cut-plug
profanity that would make the efforts
of steamboat mate sound like meet
ing of the Epworth league. He doesn't
have to go into raptures over the beauty
of an open-faced bride with cast of
countenance that would blow out the
gas, and he can say what he dunn pleases
about candidate for congress
thing no newspaper man ever dared to
do unless he had just lost the postoffice.
The farmer isn't required to lie until
his back teeth fall out about the ster-
ling manhood of the groom with ears
like cauliflower plant and the brain
power of shoat. He doesn't have to
run piano contest for the most beau
full young lady in the community, make
everybody sore but the winner, and
then print 75-cent half tone of the
beauty that looks like tintype of
grandma atahe age of thirteen. There
is nothing in the farmers curriculum
that obliges him to paint the local soprano
as heaven.sent songster, when in fact
she has voice that would make a
guinea hen weep. He isn't called upon
to paint the virtues of prominent citi-
zen who earned his money by collecting
notes with draw shave and who would
have an attack of heart failure if sud
denly separated from two bits in real
money. The farmer can stand on the
street corner and roar about the small
pox in town until his whiskers curl up
like lean man with the wind collie, and
if the newspaper man runs three-line
item to the same effect his advertisers
will land on him and make him resemble
crushed fruit salad If the printer
opens his head about the presence of
slot machines, penny ante and holes-in-
the-wall every candidate he supports at
the primary election will have about as
To- ra1