The 120,000 WORD WAR HISTORY, which would make an octavo book of 384 pages, contains an analysis and complete cronology of the Great War, with 40 battle diagrams and maps.

40 AUTOMOBILE MAPS, showing the motor roads in every State; both good and fair roads are shown. DIGEST OF MOTOR LAWS of every State, giving regulations regarding licenses, lights, speed, etc.

32 RAILWAY MAPS, showing every important route in the United States and Canada-a wonderful aid to travelers.

ALPHABETICAL RAILROAD GAZETTEER, listing both steam and electric roads. By using this with the railroad maps, and gazetteer of cities, any railroad connection in the U. S. can be found in a few minutes. 29 STREET MAPS of American cities. 30 STREET MAPS of foreign cities. 49 PAGES OF COMMERCIAL and physical analysis of all parts of the globe. 101 PAGES OF INFORMATION about 8,591 cities and towns of the world, alphabetically indexed, giving detailed information about railroad connections, industries, and chief scenic features.

The Publishers' Weekly

FOUNDED BY F. LEYPOLDT

August 30, 1919

"I hold every man a debtor to his profession, from the which, as men of course do seek to receive countenance and profit, so ought they of duty to endeavor themselves, by way of amends, to be a help and ornament thereunto."-BACON.

printing matter: When the printing wages change, the workman, thru his Туроgraphical Union, puts this cost up to the master printer; the master printer faces the problem by distributing this on new bids and passing it to those who have regular contracts with him; the user of printing, in our trade the publisher, has to find the best way possible to get this increased cost to the public. The recent increases in book prices are only the final step in distributing costs that were

T

HE demand of the Typographical Union

No. 6 in New York for an increase in compositors' wages from $36 for a 48 hour week to $50 for a 44 hour week, that is, from 75c. an hour to $1.13 or 50%, is a serious menace to the publishing trade, in books and #periodicals. This advance is demanded for October 1, a year from the previous raise from $30.00 to $36.00 for the 48 hour week and is expected to result in a strike at that time unless the master printers submit to the new scale, or a compromise or arbitration is meanwhile arranged. This will mean a new link forged in the "endless chain," in the phrase of the chief of one of the railroad brotherhoods which causes all alternative links of increase in wages and in prices. As prices depend ultimately on labor costs, doubled wages mean approximately double prices and the workman as producer earning $8 a day is no better off than when he earned $4 a day and got the same amount of clothing, food and other necessaries of life for his day's work. But with the high cost of living the producer naturally struggles from paying in his special field to enable him to come out even, without regard to the effect of convertible economic law which has today put us on two stilts, one leg of wages, the other leg of prices, from which it is indeed difficult to get down to the ordinary level. Unfortunately, a tendency of the high wages, with higher overtime, is that the workman is so much "easier" for the time being that he is apt to be less diligent in work, so that production is actually diminished. And what this means for a nation has been pointed out only too clearly by Lloyd George in his recent candid and daring appeal as to conditions in Great Britain, which are too closely parallel in this and in other countries.

There are three steps in the distribution of the increased costs that accrue to

the publisher must now look forward to facing these new demands this fall. That such demands were to be presented were known two or three months ago in the trade and commented on in these columns. But the time is drawing closer, and it is time for the publisher to be consulting with the master printer as to the conditions that are to be faced.

It is perhaps difficult for anyone in the booktrade to be responsive to the printers in their demands. Booksellers and publishers are folks that are closely thrown in with teachers, who are endeavoring to raise their salaries from $600-$800 up to $1000, professors endeavoring to get up from $1200-$1500 on to $1800, ministers seeking to bring the average salary of the country up to $1200, or perhaps with retail book salesmen working their way up from $25 to $30 a week. In such an atmosphere it is very difficult to feel the biting problems of a printer, whose present wage is about $1900 at the minimum, to which he is likely to add a couple of hundred more for overtime in these busy days. The printers would retort "unionize and get what we get;" but even if this were possible thruout the profession it would only add to the difficulty by levying increased demands upon the public who eventually cover salary costs.

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The demand now is for a wage of $2,600, with a decrease of 10% in hours. This inof 50% in wage cost is likely to affect total printing costs by 40% if not That this situation is serious for book world needs no demonstration. Increases in wage demands may come about from different reasons. When there is an unequal division of profits and risks in business, labor rightly demands a fairer division, and so there is a tendency towards such equalization, and profit sharing or other methods are being worked out. There is per

haps, however, little claim by the workman that the owner of the shop is getting more than his share. It is a more frequent occurrence that the workman prefers to stay on the wage end of the business at the present rates of income. Or, again, wage increase is demanded because the total year's income bears no proper relation to other incomes of similar character in the country. While this argument may well be used by the teachers, as is shown in the figures above, it can hardly be said to hold true in the printing field. The cost of living has gone up most rapidly and, in the vicious circle of raising wages to meet prices and prices because of wages, those who have the strongest grip on the public's purse will come out to the best advantage. This is the simple and selfish fact. It is on this basis that the printer makes his appeal now for a $2,600 (about $1.15 per hour) basis. He points with emphasis to the long items of "Printers Wanted" in the daily papers and says "We are in demand and the public is ready to acknowledge it." But pay increases, demanded because the public is helpless, is not a popular argument today; it is the same argument that is putting the unpopular label of "profiteer" on many dealers in other commodities beside labor. It is the old capitalist cry of "the public be damned" (which is a reporter's version of a less offensive utterance), the bad example followed by one later leader in the equally bad cry of "the public is the carcass and we are the vultures." Both are as unwise in word as they are unAmerican in spirit.

The war took away many young men who would naturally have been trained for the printing profession. There is a scarcity of this labor, and at present there are tremendous demands for printing, these are reasons for the scarcity of printers. The greatest demand comes from commercial sources, as new catalogs must be made, new advertising campaigns launched, and as these must be done in a hurry, or else lose their value, and as the cost can be readily passed to the consumer, there is less need to watch expenses. Next year's printing costs in this field will take care of themselves, or other forms of publishing the product may be found. The book and periodical publishers are not, however, in that situation. The periodical publisher is practically under contract with his subscribers until the end of their subscription and he cannot

raise subscription prices much if any beyond the present high level without danger of lessening his subscription list and further increasing his cost per copy by having to divide increased costs among lessened circulation. His endeavor is naturally to carry his increased costs by the income from advertising, now surging to new high levels, but here he again meets his limitations. The book publisher has quite as much difficulty in passing on increased costs to the consumer. The public is all too conscious of book prices. Publishers are further embarrassed by the fact that many books must be manufactured in quantities that will last from two to five years, and if a 40% printing cost increase is met now, and decreases should come later, there will be much stock on hand at too high a cost. Of all the users of printed matter the publisher faces the most serious problem.

The President's appeal states the question clearly and effectively. The problems in the printing industries are similar to those in the railway systems and indeed thruout the community. It is indeed unfortunate that just as the government and the public are endeavoring to get prices reduced there should come new demands where wages are already high. We have been saved panic, during recent years of stress by the admirable reorganization of our banking system, and panic is even more disastrous to wage earners than to the banks. But a break must come somewhere, and the greater the inflation of prices and wages, the more serious and disastrous will the break be. We can't always walk above solid ground on stilts. That increased prices lessen demand is shown in recent trolley experience in Massachusetts where a raise of 20% in fares is said to have resulted in only 1% increase in revenue. In another trolley system in the same state, where the company had raised prices by shortening the one-fare limit a strike for higher wages entirely threw