the rule, did the editor have sufficient wealth or its equivalent in credit at the bank to buy or to start a daily in any one of the larger cities. The dividing line between the A and the B of Manton Marble's claims grew very distinct: the former became the downstairs office devoted to the business; the latter, the up- stairs office devoted to the profession. Here and there, more fre- quently in the West than in the East, arose a man who was both a good business executive and an able editor.
The metropolitan daily represented too heavy a financial in- vestment to be organized on any save a sound business basis. The telegraph and the cable made news a most perishable com- modity because of the rapidity with which it could be placed be- fore the public. Shop-worn goods the merchant can sell at a special sale to bring at least the cost of production, but stale news the publisher cannot market at any price. The franchise in a press association became harder to get and at the same time carried with it a constantly increasing charge for better service. Presses jumped from hundreds to tens of thousands in cost of manufacture. Extra ones were purchased for emergency cases so that if one press broke down the plates of the paper could be shifted to another without danger of missing the mails. Typo- graphical unions kept pushing the wages of printers and press- men higher and higher up the scale. Competition reduced the selling price, but increased the cost of distribution. The return privilege by which newsdealers did not pay for unsold papers kept the "profit and loss" entry on the ledger first in red and then in black ink according to sales. Additions to the editorial staff increased the number of employees while " bids " from rivals raised the salaries of other members. More and more the revenue came from advertising and less and less from circulation. Such conditions demanded a business pilot at the wheel to steer the newspaper craft sailing over seas uncharted by editors of previ- ous periods.
VIEWS OF CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER
Charles Dudley Warner, long associated with The Courarit, of Hartford, Connecticut, thus explained clearly and succinctly journalism conditions obtaining at the beginning of the Period
