The reason for the situation is not far to seek: though not even its existence, let alone its cause, is as generally known as it should be. Yet the cause seems plainly and definitely determinable. To arrive at it, we must turn from book production to another printing-trade industry that has waxed in the United States as book production has waned. Forty years ago less than ten million copies of periodicals, exclusive of newspapers, were published annually. Today it is estimated that there are published over seven-and-a-half billion, and of this quantity more than one-half gets distribution through the mails. These extra hundreds of millions of periodicals would seem to mean as many tens of millions fewer good books; and that seems to be virtually the sole cause of the disappearance of the books.
On June 23, 1874, there was approved an act of Congress establishing a pound rate of postage on mail matter of the second-class—newspapers and periodicals. At first this rate was three cents a pound for magazines, and two for newspapers. Soon it was lowered to two cents for each, and still later, becoming operative on July 1, 1885, the rate was reduced to only one cent per pound for each. The cost of service rendered then and every year since, is many times that amount: at present it is estimated by various experts and commissions as running from 6-1/2 cents to 12 cents per pound.
The effect of that law is emphatically shown in the following table giving amounts of second-class mail (periodical literature) carried by the Post Office Department at various dates.
| For | 1875 | (first year law was operative) 40,000,000 | pounds |
| " | 1880 | 61,000,000 | " |
| " | 1890 | 204,000,000 | " |
| " | 1900 | 450,000,000 | " |
| " | 1913 | 1,096,000,000 | " |
At this rate, within less than ten years, if the law is not changed, this output will have increased to more than two billion pounds per annum.
Evidently giving to periodical literature this service at one cent per pound, $20. per ton, the cost being eight or ten times as much, has been simply a subvention, and a very effective one. Although we publish few books as compared with other civilized nations, we issue more periodicals than all other nations put together, and half as much again: for we publish sixty per cent of the periodical literature of the entire globe.
The United States, according to the report of the Third Assistant Postmaster General for January, 1914, handled in the second-class mail, during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1913, over five thousand million copies of periodicals—more than fifty for each man, woman and child in the United States—enough to make more than 2,600 train loads of ten fully loaded cars per train. And this does not take into consideration the enormous number of copies of daily newspapers and other periodicals which are circulated outside of the mails, by carriers, newsdealers and others.
Underlying this megalosaurus-like development, is the factor that carriage by the government at the nearly free rate of one cent per pound, covers not only the literary product but the advertising material which has been the determining factor in this marvellous increase. At the time the pound-rate law first became operative, magazines were few in number, and contained little advertising and much good literature; but the pound-rate law gave birth to a new kind of magazine issued at less than cost for the revenue to be derived, because of the immense circulation possible under the subvention, from its advertising pages; and their advertising pages generally weigh more and cost the government more to transport, than do their literary pages.