Page:History of American Journalism.djvu/194



162 HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM'

The postage on newspapers is not a tax. It is no more in the nature of a tax than is the freight paid on merchandise. It is money paid for a fair and full equivalent in service rendered, and paid by the person for whose benefit and by whose venture the service is performed. The law does not require newspapers to be distributed by the mails. It only extends to their proprietors that privilege when it becomes their interest to avail themselves of it in preference to other and more uncertain and expensive modes of conveyance. There does not appear any sufficient reason why the public should pay for transporting printers' articles or merchandise to a distant market any more than the productions of other kinds of industry. In all cases the expense must be defrayed either by a tax or by the person for whom the service is performed; and the committee cannot perceive a more equitable way than for each one to pay for the services actually rendered to himself for his own benefit and by his own order.

Considerable complaint had been made by the papers pub- lished outside of the larger cities that the postal laws discrimi- nated in favor of the metropolitan newspapers.

As newspapers increased in the amount of news printed, they did not add more pages, but simply increased the size of the sheet. The result was the publication of those mammoth news- papers which were commonly called " blanket sheets"; some of them in fact were about the size of a bed quilt. By the postal laws a small folio paper in the country paid the same rate as these larger papers printed in New York.

CONDITIONS AFFECTING PRESS

The "reign of Andrew Jackson" was an important one in the history of American journalism. The population had increased to over twelve millions more than double what it was at the opening of the century. The area was more than twice what it was in Jefferson's day. The chapter on "The Beginnings of Journalism in States and Territories" not numbered among the thirteen original colonies shows how the printing-press had fol- lowed the trail blazed by the settler to his pioneer home. The frontier newspaper was but a repetition of the early journalism on the Atlantic Coast. In spite of migration westward the popu- lation in the cities had increased, due to the development of new industries and to the extension of the merchant marine.