PAPER SHORTAGE

Hokitika Guardian, 12 June 1920, Page 4

PAPER SHORTAGE

NEW YORK, April 14

The shortage of paper has become so acute in this country that newspapers everywhere are curtailing their size and raising their prices. Beginning to-day, the Los Angelos, California, newspapers will cost 2-Id each, and it is expected that soon their contemporaries in other parts will be obliged to follow suit in a slightly lesser degree. The leading daily of the Middle West is taking a page fro mthe wartime history of the London “ Daily Mail ” in advertising urgent exhortations to its readers “to borrow and not buy the Chicago “Tribune.” The New York “ Times ” announces that it is obliged to throw out 72 columns of advertising to-day.

The alarmist prediction was made in Cleveland, Ohio, yesterday, that American and Canadian supplies of pulp will be exhausted in 10 years. This is considered an exaggerated view in trade circles; nevertheless, American journalism generally is facing a crisis in which survival will he to the fittest and strongest. Wholesale consolidations of smaller newspapers appear inevitable. 1 n the metropolis the situation is such that all evening papers are ratiening their agents and refusing to print beyond a certain number of cop'Tes. Most of their contracts are subject to revision every 90 days and the spot price for paper ranges from 5d to GJd a lb. f The shortage is rendered more acute by the demoralisation of the goods traffic and the lack of railway trucks. ( Nowhere is there more than three days’ ' supply on hand and so it frequently happens that newspapers whose trucks fail to arrive are obliged to frantically bid for outside supplies. By many publishers the future is regarded with deep concern. Others optimistically call attention to the measures adopted for increased production next year, and to the fact that wrapping paper, book, and wallpaper mills are now being devoted to the production of newsprint paper at the lastest and most attractive prices.

Despite the shortage the size of the leading American newspapers remains gigantic according to British standards.