This plan would secure the department against losses. It would greatly increase the business of the post-office, and its income from newspapers. It would lessen the number of dead newspapers with which our offices are now lumbered. It would aid in inducing and helping the publishers of newspapers to get into the cash system of publication; and thus assist in training the whole community to the habit of prompt payment. All newspapers, weekly or daily, that have or expect any thing like a wide circulation by mail, would soon find it for their interest to fall in with this plan. A weekly paper would pay 26 cents for each yearly subscriber. In what way could he do so much with the same money to extend and consolidate his subscription list? A daily paper would cost $1.55 a year for postage. Most daily papers would find their advantage in paying this, to have their papers go free, even though they might economize or retrench in something else. It would greatly facilitate the circulation of intelligence, the diffusion of knowledge, the settlement and harmonizing of public opinion, and all in a manner to produce no burden in any quarter which would be felt.
It is demonstrable that the post-office, under its present regulations, receives but a small part of the papers which are printed. The Postmaster-general, in his last report, estimates the whole number of newspapers mailed yearly at 55,000,000, and of pamphlets 2,000,000, total 57,000,000, yielding to the department only the sum of $653,160. I have never seen any calculation of the cost of circulating newspapers, to determine whether the business is profitable to the department or not. If it pays to circulate newspapers at a cent apiece, surely two cents apiece is enough to pay on letters, which do not weigh on the average a quarter as much as newspapers. If it does not pay the cost [pg 045] to carry newspapers in the mail, then the loss on newspapers ought to be a tax upon the treasury, and not a tax upon correspondence.
The following table of newspapers and periodicals issued annually from the Boston press, is given in Shattuck's “Census of Boston,” published by the city in the year 1846.
| Class of Publications. | Number. | Square inches. | Value. |
| Daily subscription | 5,075,320 | 4,786,029,240 | $106,076 |
| Daily penny | 11,408,000 | 7,018,617,000 | 110,400 |
| Semi-weekly | 1,460,448 | 1,442,010,336 | 58,748 |
| Weekly | 11,610,040 | 8,738,546,856 | 334,895 |
| Semi-monthly | 458,400 | 216,314,000 | 31,700 |
| Monthly | 2,583,600 | 1,522,477,200 | 127,100 |
| Two months and quarterly | 37,200 | 143,076,800 | 24,500 |
| Annual | 255,500 | 265,045,300 | 31,565 |
| ———— | ———— | ———— | |
| Total | 32,890,508 | 24,132,117,132 | $825,074 |
Here are 32,890,508 publications issued annually, averaging 109,098 daily, and containing 3847 acres of printed sheets, or about twelve acres per day. The newspapers alone, daily, semi-weekly and weekly, are 29,555,808, producing $610,119 per annum. Add the semi-monthly issues, which are mostly newspapers, and you have thirty millions of newspapers issued in Boston alone, being nearly fifty-five per cent. of the whole number mailed throughout the union.
A newspaper of the common size, say 38 by 24 inches, or 912 square inches, will weigh from 1-¼ to 1-⅓ oz. with the wrapper, in the damp state in which it is usually mailed. The New York Journal of Commerce, 28 by 46 inches, that is, 1288 square inches, weighs a little short of 2 oz. as mailed. A lot of 100 papers received in exchange by a publisher, weighed 1.2 oz., that is less than an ounce and a quarter. The average weight of all the newspapers published in the country is believed to be one ounce and a half; which would give 1066 newspapers to every 100 lbs. weight.
The number of newspapers sent by mail was estimated in 1837, by Postmaster Kendall, as follows:
| Newspapers paying postage | 25,000,000 |
| Free and dead papers | 4,000,000 |
| ———— | ———— |
| Total | 29,000,000 |
The report in 1847, by Postmaster Johnson, estimates the paying newspapers at fifty-five millions, dead papers two millions, and the pamphlets two millions, being fifty-nine millions in all; paying postage to the amount of $643,160, being an increase over the preceding year, of $81,018. The increase of newspapers in seven years, from 1837 to 1844, by these estimates, was eighty-nine per cent., or at the rate of about eight and one half per cent. a year. The increase from 1844 to 1847 was about twenty-four per cent. in three years, or eight per cent. a year. This may be considered the natural rate of increase of newspapers, without any increase of facilities. It may be reasonably calculated that the increased facilities offered by this plan will make the increase of numbers much more rapid.
And this increase of numbers will by no means be attended with a corresponding increase of expense to the department. In 1837, when the number of papers was twenty-nine millions, there were 11,767 post-offices, and mails were carried 36,228,962 miles. In 1844, the post-offices were 15,146, an increase of twenty-nine per cent., and the mail transportation was 38,887,899 miles, an increase of seven per cent., while the increase of newspapers was eighty-nine per cent.; and yet the expenditure was $3,380,847 in 1837, and $3,979,570 in 1847; an increase of less than eighteen per cent. Deducting the necessary additional expense of adding twenty-nine per cent. to the number of post-offices, and seven per cent. to the distance of transportation, and it will be fair to conclude that doubling the number of newspapers would not add above ten per cent. to the cost of transportation. Make any reasonable allowance, even fifty per cent. for the labor in the post-offices, and you have still a net profit of forty per cent. on all the newspaper postage that shall be added. And this in addition to the benefits of the diffusion of knowledge, increasing the mutual acquaintance of the people of this wide republic, and thus increasing the stability of our government, the permanence of our union, the happiness of the people, and the perfection of our free institutions.