lf, it will be the multiplication of
newspapers, as it is well known that a great reduction of cost of
individual articles is produced by the great number required. What
fortunes are made by manufacturing cotton cloth, to be sold at six or
eight cents per yard; and by making pins and needles, which pass through
so many processes, and yet are sold at such a low rate. Each yard of
cloth, each needle, each pin, is subjected to all those several steps, and
yet the greatness of the demand creates a vast revenue from profits which
are so small upon each individual article as to be incapable of being
stated in money; the cheapness of production extending the sale, and the
extent of sale favoring the cheapness of production. An establishment like
the post-office requires a certain amount of expenditure and labor, to
keep the machinery in operation, though the work be but little, not half
equal to its capacity, and it can often enlarge its labors and its
productiveness, without requiring, by any means, a corresponding increase
of expense; and enlarged to a considerable extent, perhaps, without any
increase at all. Thus the cost of the British post-office, which was
L686,768 in 1839, when the number of letters was only 86,000,000, was
increased only to L702,310, but little more than 10 per cent. in the
following year, when the number of letters was increased to 170,000,000.
That is, the quantity of business was doubled, while the expense was only
increased one-tenth. And in 1846, when the letters were 322,000,000, or
nearly fourfold the former number, the expense was only L1,138,745, an
increase of but 65 per cent., and the greater part of this--almost the
whole--was for increased facilities given, and not owing to the increased
number of letters. Had the cost kept pace with the increase of business,
it would have been, in 1847, nearly L3,000,000 sterling.

There is one difficulty, however, in the case of newspapers, arising from
their weight. The Postmaster-General says, in his last report: "The weight
and bulk of the mails, which add so greatly to the cost of transportation,
and impede the progress of the mail, are attributable to the mass of
printed matter daily forwarded from the principal cities of the Union to
every part of the country." Some of these newspapers, he says, weigh over
two and a half ounces each. For more than twenty years, the weight of
newspapers has been a cause of complaint in the department, for which no
r