Possibly No Newspaper Next Week — High Paper Costs

Maine, 1916

Note: This notice, letter, and editorial concerns high rates for the paper they needed to print newspapers. The publisher of the newspaper, The Fryeburg Post, of Maine, was Libby & Smith. All of this took up a large section of page 1 on Sept. 26, 1916. The letter to their paper warehouse is a reproduction (typewriter face) of what they sent. After the editorial following that is the notice from Libby of returning to a law practice.

Notice from Libby & Smith.

The moral support of our subscribers is earnestly requested at this time. While a final answer to the following letter has not yet been received, there is little encouragement held out. Of course if the answer should prove to be favorable we would be sorry to have troubled our readers with our troubles, but as we are using our last white paper on hand, with no certainty of getting any more, this week's paper may be our last chance to reach our subscribers for the present. The name of the paper warehouse is not printed, as they are innocent in the matter. The mill is the Pejepscot Paper Company.


Sept. 12, 1916.

Messrs.

Gentlemen:

Confirming to-day's interview between your Mr.______ and our Mr. Libby, the only contingency in view to prevent our discharging our crew, shutting down, and merely collect old bills to live on and pay rent until reason resumes sway, is for your mill to furnish our paper at the price named.

That price yields them fabulous profits, yet as conditions are we are willing to pay it.

As for the extortionate price in your last bill, and the fact that they can ship to Egypt the output our Maine papers have printed on during the past twenty-five years, that is for your mill to decide. We cannot submit to it, and must resist by the only course open to us.

If there is a possibility that your mill will break away to this extent from the piratical raid instigated by Mr. Dodge we ought to have this confirmed before making what explanations we can to our subscribers in the last week's papers we have paper for. Also we ought to give our crew notice. Of course if any untoward happening should prevent our reaching our subscribers through our own papers, we must depend on the Portland dailies and one telling another.

With of course many regrets,

Yours very truly,

(Signed) LIBBY & SMITH.


The forgoing letter explains itself. For months every month's paper bill has jumped to a new high level, and no assurance regarding the future. Apparently the only limit on the news paper mills' mad rush for profits is what their customers will pay to avoid suspending publication until prices drop. Congress and the Federal Trade Commission are trying to get the paper mills to do the right thing, and the proposition of the mills is that all white paper for small newspapers shall be pooled into one man's hands, who shall have full charge of distributing it among the papers. This would be a most villainous trust, the very monopoly the International Paper Company has been working for years to bring about. And anybody can imagine the price!

The mills say to publishers, Do not impoverish yourselves, raise your rates to subscribers and advertisers. But we know that our subscribers, at the end of two years' crop failure, are not in position to pay more; also in Maine when the farmers are poor the merchants are poor. Besides, we do not feel inclined to take a hand in this kind of a raid.

The news paper mills have no more right to demand ten years' profits on one year's business than the train crews had to cut off the country's life by suspending transportation, or than the Germans had to sink the Lusitania. Because one has a chance to do a thing does not prove his right to do it.

If this is a year of boom prosperity, it ought to be passed around; not certain ones grab the whole and impoverish the others.

The relations between the news paper mills and the publishers who consume their products are very intimate. Banks in a money scare do not charge their customers the highest panic interest rate merely because they can get it from others; instead of that they protect their customers at a fair rate. And banking is supposed to be the coldest blooded of all kinds of decent business.

If some of our readers are inclined to blame us for this step, we can only urge that the way to overcome a wrong is to resist it, not yield to it. Somebody may get hurt but the wrong will be righted. If one-third of the newspapers of the country would promptly take the course we are taking, instead of impoverishing themselves to enable the paper mill owners to make ten years' dividends in one year, they would be brought to their sense of decency at once, not in a kind way but in the way they deserve.

At any rate, having taken this course, we can only depend on the moral support of our subscribers, whether this altogether wrong situation may possibly be averted, or be over in a fortnight, or last through the war.

LIBBY & SMITH


In the interim until we are able to secure white paper again I shall — resume the practice of law — and will to the best of my ability serve the interests of any client who may employ me for even the smallest business.

Charles Thornton Libby.

—The Fryeburg Post, Fryeburg, Maine, Sept. 26, 1916, p. 1.

Note: A few of the inside pages have an additional notice:

No Paper Next Week?
Do not fail to read the reason on the first page.