Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/462

446 business, notwithstanding the competition among publishers, is abnormally profitable. This seems to me a remarkable assumption. Embarking in the business of publishing, like embarking in any other business, is determined partly by the relative attractiveness of the occupation and partly by the promised returns of capital. There is no reason to think that the occupation of publishing differs widely from other occupations in attractiveness; and hence we must say that, competing for recruits with many other businesses, it must on the average offer a like return on capital. Were it found that the average return on capital in publishing was larger than in other businesses, there would immediately be more publishers, and competition would lower the returns. If, then, we must infer that, taking the returns of all publishers on the average of books, their profits are not higher than those of other businesses, what would be the effect of such a measure as that proposed, if, as anticipated, it lowered publishers' returns? Simply that it would drive away a certain amount of capital out of the publishing business into more remunerative businesses. Competition among publishers would decrease; and, as competition decreased, their profits would begin to rise again, until, by and by, after a sufficient amount of perturbation and bankruptcy, there would be a return to the ordinary rates of profit on capital, and the proposed benefit to the public at the cost of publishers would disappear.

Q. Then, with a view to the permanent cheapening of books, we may gather that your opinion is that it would not be effected in the way suggested?

A. I think not. The natural cheapening of books is beneficial; the artificial cheapening is mischievous.

Q. May I ask you to explain what you mean by contrasting the natural and the artificial cheapening of books?

A. By natural cheapening I mean that lowering of prices which follows increase of demand. I see no reason, a priori, for supposing that publishers differ from other traders in their readiness to cater for a larger public, if they see their way to making a profit by so doing; and, a posteriori, there is abundant proof that they do this. The various series of cheap books, bringing down even the whole of Shakespeare to a shilling, and all Byron to a shilling, and each of Scott's novels to sixpence, sufficiently prove that prices will be lowered in the publishing trade if the market is adequately extensive, just as in any other trade. If it be said that in this case authors have not to be paid, I would simply refer to such a series as that of Mr. Bohn, who, notwithstanding the payments to translators and others, published numerous valuable books at low rates. Moreover, we have conclusive evidence that with the works of still living authors the same thing happens, when the market becomes sufficiently large to make a low price profitable. Witness not only the cheap editions of many modern novels, but the cheap editions even of Mr. Carlyle's works and Mr. Mill's works. Deductively and