This is because
they are of no use to the man who pays for their insertion if they do
not attract attention, whereas the contributor's interest in his
article after its acceptance is mostly nominal. That is, the advertiser
must win several thousand readers; the contributor has to win but one
editor.

These 39 magazines were found to receive $18,000,000 a year from their
advertisements and $15,000,000 from their sales and subscriptions. This
shows that in monthly magazines the receipts from advertising and
subscriptions are about the same. In weeklies the receipts from
advertising are often four times as much as the receipts from sales and
subscriptions, while in the dailies the proportion is even greater. The
owner of one of the leading evening papers in New York told me that 90
per cent of its total receipts came from advertising. From whatever
standpoint you approach the subject, it is the advertisements that are
becoming the most important factor in publishing. Indeed, some students
in Yale University carried this out to its logical conclusion last
autumn by launching a college daily supported wholly by the revenues
from advertisements. They put a free copy every morning on the door-mat
before each student's room. If it were not for the postal prohibition
many dailies and other periodicals would make money by being given
away.

Thus you see that if there were no advertisements and the publishers
had to rely on their sales and subscriptions for their receipts, the
monthlies would have to double their price, and the weeklies and
dailies multiply theirs from four to ten times. This advantage to the
reading public must certainly be put to the credit of advertising.

The preponderance of advertising over subscription receipts, however,
is of comparatively recent occurrence. Thirty years ago the receipts
from subscriptions and sales of all the American periodicals exceeded
those from advertising by $11,000,000; twenty years ago they were about
equal; and to-day the advertising exceeds the subscriptions and sales
by $35,000,000.

In 1880 the total amount of advertising was equivalent to the
expenditure of 78 cents for every inhabitant in the United States; in
1905 it was $1.79. On the other hand, the per capita value of
subscriptions has increased hardly at all. The reason of this is the
fall of the price of subscriptions. We take more papers but pay less--a
cent a copy. Comparatively few buy the New York "Evening Post