Under existing conditions newspapers of any importance, in the smaller cities, use one and sometimes two presses, capable of producing from 7,000 to 9,000 complete eight page papers each hour, each machine costing from $10,000 to $15,000. Papers of the second class in the large cities use treble or quadruple this press capacity, while the great papers, in the four or five leading cities, have machinery plants of from four to ten presses of greatest capacity, costing from $32,000 to $50,000 each, and able to produce papers of the different numbers of pages required, at a speed of from 24,000 to 90,000 four page sheets, or of from 24,000 to 48,000 eight, ten, or twelve page sheets per hour, each paper complete as you receive it at your breakfast table - printed, pasted, cut and folded, and the entire product for the day accurately counted in lots of tens, fifties, hundreds or thousands, as may be required for instantaneous delivery, while, as if to illustrate and emphasize the ever upward trend of public demand for the day's news, quick and inclusive, Hoe & Co. are now building machines capable of producing in all completeness 150,000 four page papers each hour.

All this tremendous combination of brain, nerve, muscle, material, machinery and capital depends for its movement and remuneration upon but two sources of income - circulation and advertisements - the unit measurements of which are infinitesimal - for the most part represented by wholesale prices; from one-half a cent to two cents per copy for the daily newspaper, and in like proportion for the weeklies and monthlies; and by from one-tenth of a cent to one cent per line per thousand of circulation for advertising space. Verily, in a certain and large sense, the vast publishing interests rest upon drops of water and grains of sand. Under right conditions no kind of business or property is more valuable, and yet no basis of values is more intangible. Nothing in all trade or commerce is so difficult to establish or more environed by competitions, and yet, once established, almost nothing save interior dry rot can pull it down. It depends upon the judgment and favor of the million, yet instances are few where any external force has seriously and permanently impaired it.

About two hundred years have gone since the publication of the first number of the first American newspaper. It was a monthly, called Publick Occurrences, both Foreign and Domestic, first printed September 25, 1690, by Richard Pierce, and founded by Benjamin Harris. At that time public favor did seem to control newspaper interests, for that first paper aroused antagonism, and it was almost immediately suppressed by the authorities. Only one copy of it is now in existence, and that is in London. The first newspaper to live, in this country, was the Boston News Letter, first issued in 1704 and continued until 1776. New York's first newspaper, the New York Gazette, appeared October 16, 1725. At the outbreak of the revolution there were 37 newspapers, and in 1800 there were 200, of which several were dailies. In 1890 there were 17,760, of which there were 13,164 weeklies, 2,191 monthlies, 1,626 dailies, 280 semi-monthlies, 217 semi-weeklies, 126 quarterlies, 82 bi-weeklies, 38 bi-monthlies, and 36 tri-weeklies.

The circulations belong largely to the weeklies, monthlies and dailies, the weeklies having 23,228,750, the monthlies 9,245,750, the dailies 6,653,250, leaving only 2,400,000 for all the others.

The largest definitely ascertainable daily average circulation for one year, in this country, has been 222,745. Only one other daily paper in the world has had more - Le Petit Journal, in Paris, which really, as we understand it, is not a newspaper, but which regularly prints and sells for one sou more than 750,000 copies. The largest American weekly is the Youth's Companion, Boston, 461,470. The largest monthly is the Ladies' Home Journal, Philadelphia, 542,000. The largest among the better known magazines is the Century, 200,000. Of the daily papers which directly interest us - those of the city of New York - the actual or approximate daily averages of the morning papers are given by "Dauchy's Newspaper Catalogue" for 1891, as follows: Tribune, daily, 80,000; Sunday, 85,000. Times, daily, 40,000; Sunday, 55,000. Herald, daily, 100,000; Sunday, 120,000. Morning Journal, 200,000. Press, daily, 85,000; Sunday, 45,000. Sun, daily, 90,000; Sunday, 120,000. World, daily, 182,000; Sunday, 275,000. Of the afternoon papers, Commercial Advertiser, 15,000; Evening Post, 18,000; Telegram, 25,000; Graphic (not the old, but a new one), 10,000; Mail and Express, 40,000; News, 173,000; Evening Sun, 50,000; Evening World, 168,000. The entire circulation of New York dailies, including with those named others of minor importance, and the German, French, Italian, Bohemian, Hebrew and Spanish daily newspapers, is 1,540,200 copies.

Obviously, there is and must be ceaseless, incisive and merciless competition in securing and holding circulations, as well as in the outward statements made of individual circulations to those who purchase advertising space. In this, as in all other forms of enterprise, there are honest, clean-cut and business-like methods, and there are the methods of the time-server, the trickster and the liar.

The vastly greater number of publications secure and hold their clientage by making the best possible goods, pushing them upon public patronage by aggressive and business-like means, and selling at the lowest price consistent with excellence of product and fairness alike to producer and consumer. But of the baser sort there are always enough to make rugged paths for those who walk uprightly, and to contribute to instability of values on the one hand, and on the other to flooding the country with publications which the home and the world would be better without. Every great city has more of the rightly made and rightly sold papers than of the other sort, and the business man, the working man, the professional man, the family, no matter of what taste, or political faith, or economic bias, or social status, or financial plenty or paucity, can have the daily visits of newspapers which are able, brilliant, comprehensive, clean and honest. But all the time, these men and families will have pressed upon their attention and patronage, by every device and artifice of the energetic and more or less unscrupulous publisher, other papers equally able and brilliant and comprehensive, but bringing also their burden of needless sensationalism and mendacity, undue expansion of all manner of scandal, amplification of every detail and kind of crime, and every phase of covert innuendo or open attack upon official doing and private character - the whole infernal mass procured, and stimulated and broadcast among the people by the "business end of it," with the one and only intent of securing and holding circulation.