Publishing

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Growing out of the long continued period
of reduced railroad earnings, the Interstate
Commerce Commission, in March 1938,
granted rate increases on certain railroad
freight classifications designed to bring about
an increase of yearly income to extent of
some $270,000,000. The Commission also
granted the railroads privilege to advance
passenger fares to extent of one half cent
per mile, but this proved unsatisfactory to
the railroads and they soon of their own
volition re-established the former rate of
two cents per mile in order to try to regain
as much business as possible lost by them
to busses and to other means of transporta-
tion. A committee of the Interstate Com-
merce Commission considering the difficult
position of the railroads, recommended ex-
tensive loans by the Reconstruction Finance
Corporation to the railroads and the estab-
lishment of an Authority to compel railroads
to enter into arrangements to pool traffic
and earnings. There was a report on Dec.
28, 1938 by a committee of three railroad
executives and three labor leaders who had
been appointed by Pres. Roosevelt to make
a study of the plight of the railroads. This
report favored the bringing of all modes of
transportation under uniform regulations,
and fixing bus rates so high as to include
interest on the cost of public roads, and
barge rates to include cost of waterways.

The Roosevelt administration has given
special attention to public regulation of util-
ities. It has also gone forward with the
great Tennessee Valley project and its sub-
sidiary activities reaching into agriculture,
animal husbandry, reforestation and the de-
velopment of new uses for electricity. Grants
and appropriations for this project, 1933 to
1940 inclusive, amount to upward of $309,-
000,000. The Tennessee Valley Authority is
a government agency and makes electricity
available for sale to municipalities, power
companies and industrial concerns. In 1940,
electric current generated by it was being
supplied to some 335,000 domestic consumers.
The administration dubbed the project a
yard stick for measurement of rates charged
by utility corporations, but thoughtful citi-
zens were none the less aware that public
utility corporations are not financed by taxes
levied on the general public, as is this ex-
perimental project.

Publishing and Bookselling- Modern
publishing is a specialized development of
bookselling. In the height of its intellectua"
activity, Athens had an organized book trade

Publishing

which is said tu have taken its ri?e from the
practice of Plato's- followers who reported
the lectures of the master, and either lent out
the manuscripts for hire or <old them out-
right. After the conquest of Greece by Rome
the Athenian book trade grew considerably,
owing to the demand for Greek books by the
Romans. The great book mart of ancient
days, however, was at Alexandria, where the
production and sale of books were carried on
in connection with Ptolemy's museum. For
more than two centuries after B.C. 250 Alex-
andria was the center of book production for
the whole world.

A new impulse to book production and
selling was imparted by the demand for
copies of the Gospels arising out of the spread
of Christianity. As a result, the bookselling
industry passed to the scriptoria of the mon-
asteries. By the middle of the thirteenth cen-
tury we find the universities supplanting the
monasteries in the production and sale of
books.

The introduction of printing is the great
outstanding event in the history of publish-
ing. In the United States it is not unusual to
find the two trades combined, as in New
York City, where a large retail business in
the books of other houses, as well as in their
own, is done by some publishers.

The settlement of the American Colonies
involved too strenuous labor on the part of
the colonists for them to spend much time in
reading; and up to the establishment of
Stephen Daye's press at Cambridge, Mass., in
1639, and for many years after, there was
little demand for printed matter. The first
regular bookseller of whem there is any ac-
count was Hezekiah Usher of Boston, known
to have been in the business as early as 1652.
The manufacture of printing presses was not
well established in this country until 1775,
and Franklin's type foundry, started in the
same year, was but the third in America.

With these hampering conditions, and with
Indian wars and the manual work necessary
for the development of the country, it is not
surprising that out of nearly 8,000 extant
titles of publications issued previous to the
Revolution, nine-tenths should be tracts or
pamphlets. Many of the latter were almanacs
—that of Franklin being a notable example.
Mathew Carey began business as a printer in
Philadelphia in 1785, and as a bookseller in
1791, soon afterward issuing publications of
his own. He published the first American
'best seller,' Charlotte Temple, by Mrs. Row-
son. The Methodist Book Concern was es-