The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, August 5, 1918, Page 7

s of getting revenue from a most profitable business and one that has not been paying its just share of war costs, there is the very Important matter of public policy toward publications and adver- tisers. Will not a tax on advertising be a step toward restoring the old, free journalism—the journalism that founded in America, the tradition of a “free and fearless press,” and which has diss appeared through the editing of magazines and newspapers in be- half of advertisers rather than readers? ~The Leader considers the new war tax on advertising of interest chiefly because of this con- sideration—a measure that will tend to make publications place more stress on reading matter and less on advertising. NDER present subscription prices, or at most a very slight raise, it is entirely feasible, for instance, to get out a maga- zine containing only 5 per cent or less advertising, and give readers as good as they have been getting in news and opinion, fic- tion and news features, and yet make a fair profit for the publish- ers. Such a publication would not come under the new tax, as devoted to advertising. Its chief . revenue would come from read- ers in subscriptions and not from advertisers with axes to grind. The result could not help but be editing more in the interests of readers and less in the interests of advertisers. Unless there can be some voluntary adjustment of -the publication business similar to this, the big national magazines and newspapers will ultimately disappear anyway, not through the working of this tax but be- ; cause of disgust of the reading public with the editorial and news policy of editors dominated by advertisers. Then will come the return of the era of untrammeled journalism, with magazines and newspapers issued with little or no advertising AND SUPPORTED BY REVENUE FROM READ- ERS IN THE FORM OF SUBSCRIPTIONS. There will be fewer but better publications of national circulation. The publication business will have more honest incentives. It will not be conducted gri;narily to make money, but.to serve the people. Opinion will e free. IN ALL this discussion we have not mentioned the fact that it has been costing the government millions and millions of " dollars to circulate the big magazines, which are devoted most- ly to advertising, over and above the revenue the postoffice depart- ment gets under the second class publication rate. One big pub- lishing house is said to cost the government $3,000,000 a year. That is, this publisher fails by $3,000,000, at the present postage rates, to meet the cost of carrying his papers through the mail, and on this one company alone the postoffice loses a huge sum that must be made up by other patrons of the postoffice department. This $3,000,000 is virtually a subsidy of the government, or.of the people, to this publisher. His publications are practically all taken up by big revenue advertising. His editorial policy is reactionary. He avoids discussing fundamental questions directly, but his vast organization and circulation is used in covert ways to defeat re- form in America. When he does speak out plainly on. economic and political questions, it is from the point of view of his big ad- vertisers. This publisher recently in two of his magazines had bitter attacks on the organized farmers. He pretends to be pub- lishing a “farm paper,” as well as a woman’s magazine and a maga- zine of fiction. The government is paying $3,000,000 a year as a -subsidy to this eoncern, which is kicking like a bay steer over the new war tax on advertising matter. Is it fair? The Leader makes no attack on-advertisers or on the advertis- ing business. We publish such legitimate advertisements as are offered us without strings attached to them, and those advertisers who use our columns do so on the understanding that they buy only the space occupied by their ads, and that their purchase of that space in no way affects the editorial or news policy of the magazine. The liberal patronage of the Leader and other organs of unshackled opinion by advertisers shows that all advertisers do not attempt to dominate editors and publishers and that an ever-increasing number are willing to advertise in liberal publications as a business ~"proposition, without attempting to enslave editors and poison the public. It may be that some details of the new tax on advertisements will have to be revised, es- pecially the zone-charge plan, but we believe the tax as a whole to be right fundamentally and the Leader will make no increase in subscription ‘rates as a result of it. We will pay the tax cheer- fully. We also believe that some permanent tax should be devised along this line, to take the " place during peace times of the present emergency war revenue measure. All the clamor of the big - ddily. press and magazine press has not interested -the people generally, and there has been no pro- test about the tax from the public. = - - WAY TO it would not be over 5 per cent’ KE BiG BIZ LOOK WHY 0 YOU ALWA GRreee! | WA 15 -THERE )\sc R picuLovs (N ANY oTHeR! [YOUR cARTOONS T oRAW ‘IM°? i ) Nonpartisén Teader Official Magazine of the National Nonpartisan League—Every Week D e il sxneis A S scpiedenia il oo st sl S e G DA U . Entered as second-class matter September 3, 1915, at the postoffice at St. Paul, Minnesota, under the Act of March 3, 1879. OLIVER S. MORRIS, EDITOR Advertising rates on application. Subscription, one year, in advance, $2.50; six months, $1.50. Please do not make checks, drafts nor money orders payable to indi- viduals. Address all letters and make all remittances to The Nonpartisan Leader, Box 575, St. Paul, Minn. MEMBER OF AUDIT BUREAU OF CIRCULATIONS THE S. C. BECKWITH SPECIAL AGENCY, Advertising Representatives, New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, Kansas City. Quack, fraudulent and irresponsible firms are not knowingly advertised, and we will take it as a favor if any readers will advise us promptly should they have occasion to doubt or question the reliability of any firm which patronizes our advertising columns. CONFUSING HOPE WITH FACTS N EDITORIAL in the New York Post, widely copied by anti- League papers throughout the country, predicts the early breaking up and dissolution of the League. The argument is based on the alleged fact that the League vote in North Dakota showed a big falling oT in the recent primaries. The facts are that - Governor Frazier’s majority in the 1916 primary was about 4,000. His majority in the recent primary was close to 20,000. This is some “falling off” all right! In stating that the League was on the down-grade, the New York Post merely expressed its hope; it did not report the FACTS. STIRRING CLASS HATRED NE of the many heavily subsidized big business “publicity O bureaus” that are flooding the country with vicious, hate- filled reports about the organized farmers is the Industrial News Bureau of the Manufacturer, 600 Club building, Denver, Col. These agencies, which the big interests adversely affected by the League program are financing, are doing their best to stir up- a class war, and even bloodshed, in America. The purpose is clearly to inflame mobs and cre- ate a reign of terror, wherever possible, against League mem- bers and workers. This can be proved by gquoting the “litera- ture” these bureaus send out. For instance, the Denver hirelings referred to, in a recent bulletin, refer in glee to the fact that -hoodlums drove the state Grange out of Walla Walla, Wash., because the Grange re- fused to repudiate its state mas- ter, who asked a fair hearing for the League. “From Colo- a7 22z WA rado come press reports that League organizers are run out of different townms,” says the bulletin joyfully. This approval is an open incentive to others to “go and do likewise.” Accompanied as it is by the grossest untruths about the League and dished up with sensational and bitter invective, it constitutes a propaganda that is undermining respect for law in America. Should the farmers stoop to the use of such fanatical appeals and forget decency and good taste by indulging in billingsgate and the language of the gutter to further their cause they would be lost. These are the weapons of the enemies of the farmers and they can not prevail in the long run. - Consider the low plane to which the enemies of the League have fallen, that permits them, without a blush, to give circulation to matter like the following: But when any son of a gun of a politician- like Townley thinks he can buy the editors of the country like so much merchandise they are off their trolley and Townley knows it. He tried to scare the editors of Idaho; he tried to soft-soap them into publishing his dope; - he tried to buy them with vague promises of increased business, and howled because the newspaper boys of Idaho told him plainly to go to hell. : This is from the subsidized bureau at Den- ver, previously referred to. Very convincing “ar- gument” against the organized farmers, isn’t it? NO POLITICS FOR FARMERS! THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW of Spokane quotes with approval a statement of a Grange local “deprecating the bringing of *any political question for discussion in the Grange meetings.” Many will rejoice with the Spokes- man-Review over this. For instance, the poli- ticians, the big interests, the war profiteers and others- who have been arguing, lo! these many years, that “the rubes” have no business in' elect- ing men to office and making laws. They should -raise crops, instead of ‘“hell”’—should slop the -hogs, and let their betters run’'the government! Neris \