I look forward to the day when printing paper will sell far below its present price; and I rest this faith on the simple supposition that a manufactured article, the process of manufacture of which is easy and comparatively cheap, cannot long be continuing to be sold at six cents a pound, when the bulk of the raw material entering into it grows in the forests on every hillside and can be bought at two dollars a cord. The disproportion between the cost of the raw material and the cost of the manufactured article is too great to be permanently maintained. It is true enough that paper-makers have only the narrowest margin of profit now; but better processes for making wood pulp and unproved machinery for converting into paper must surely come.
It did come. During the decade between 1880 and 1890 the price of wood-pulp paper dropped from six cents to four cents. During the next decade it touched the remarkable low price of one and six tenths cents per pound for the larger cities, where it was purchased in rolls. From that time it gradually advanced fraction by fraction until the problem of white paper became most acute, during the great European War.
POSTAL REGULATIONS OF PERIOD
After years of unsuccessful agitation, the Postal Department finally secured from Congress an act, approved June 23, 1874, by which postage on newspapers was paid by weight and with- out reference to distance carried. The rate provided by this act was two cents per pound for papers issued weekly or of tener and three cents per pound for those published less frequently than once a week. Newspapers for subscribers living outside of the county of publication were made up in bulk, carted to the post- office, where they were weighed. The postage for the proper amount was given to the postmaster in stamps instead of being adjusted to the papers or packages sent through the mail. The newspaper stamps, now a rarity, ranged in denomination from two cents to sixty dollars. The new system of collecting postage at the office of publication, rather than at the offices of destina- tions, returned the Postal Department additional revenue, for postmasters had been most lax in collecting postage due. The act of June 23, 1874, provided this exception : " That newspapers, one copy to each actual subscriber residing within the county where the same are printed, in whole or in part, and published, shall go
