free through the mails; but the same shall not be delivered at
letter-carrier offices or distributed by carriers unless postage
is paid thereon as by law provided." An act of March 3, 1879,
fixed the uniform rate of two cents a pound for postage on second-
class matter to which newspapers belonged. All publications now
paid the same rate. The two-cent rate prevailed until March 3,
1885, when it was reduced to one cent a pound.
STATISTICAL R^SUMlS OF PAPERS
Statistics as to the number of newspapers in the United States until after the Census of 1880 were most unreliable, es- pecially as to the number of papers in the newly settled States and Territories. The reports of the census for 1850, 1860, 1870, and 1880 being, however, the most authoritative statements as to the increase in number of newspapers, should be quoted in a comparative table. According to this table, there were in the United States 254 dailies in 1850, 387 in 1860, 574 in 1870, 971 in 1880; 115 tri-weeklies in 1850, 86 in 1860, 107 in 1870, 73 in 1880; 31 semi-weeklies in 1850, 79 in 1860, 115 in 1870, 133 in 1880; 1902 weeklies in 1850, 3173 in 1860, 4295 in 1870, 8633 in 1880. Of all these classes, there were in 1850, 2526; in 1860, 4051; in 1870, 5871; in 1880, 11,314. The accompaning table, on pages 349, 350, shows the distribution of these classes for the various census years:
LOCATION OF DAILY PAPERS
S. N. B. North made for the Government in 1880 a special investigation of the newspaper and periodical press in America. In his report he published an interesting observation about the location of the daily papers. Nine hundred and seventy-one daily newspapers of the census year were published in three hundred and eighty-nine towns or cities an average of two and one-half to each place. The strange anomaly was discovered of towns, with less than four thousand in population, having two and sometimes three daily papers. The smallest town in 1880 which had a daily was Elko, Nevada, with a population of seven hun- dred and fifty-two. The smallest town in which two daily papers were published was Tombstone, Arizona, with a popula-
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