142 Edivard Livingston Youmans, 



later], but I will attempt it; the fact is, you ought to come 

 here and spend six months and then you could judge for 

 yourself. The difficulties are, first, that the labour and ma- 

 terials are enormously advanced in price; composition and 

 stereotyping are doubled, and paper is trebled. Govern- 

 ment has levied a tax of five per cent directly upon all 

 sales, while all business transactions and advertising are 

 also heavily taxed. In your letter you comment on this 

 state of things, and observe, '' If the cost of labour and ma- 

 terials has risen, I do not see why the cost of manufac- 

 tured articles does not rise in something like the same 

 proportion." Well, such is the case generally, and the price 

 of books in some instances is doubled. Your Essays, which 

 five years ago would have been a dollar, now sell for two 

 dollars. 



But there is this trouble — books are luxuries, to be 

 bought only after other wants are supplied, or not bought 

 at all if there is not plenty of money. People finding them- 

 selves pressed on all sides by exorbitant prices retrench 

 when they can. 



Butter has gone up from ten to fifty cents per pound, 

 and a considerable portion of the community are now 

 abstaining from its use. 



Moreover, it is the chief book-buying class — people 

 formerly in easy circumstances, with fixed incomes — that 

 now suffer. The rate of interest is the same, and their 

 former income of gold is now an income of greenbacks 

 only nominally equal. The consequence is, that as the 

 price of books rises the sales diminish in a greater ratio 

 than in any other business. But though sales diminish, the 

 publisher must still keep up his stock. 



Mr. Appleton remarked : ** Should materials fall to their 

 former prices, I should lose a hund*''"^ <^housand dollars on 

 paper alone — printed stock." Again, if a house is wealthy, 

 like Appletons' or Harper's, it matters little how things go; 



