PRICE OF NEWSPAPERS TO BE INCREASED.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1680, 1 March 1917, Page 2

PRICE OF NEWSPAPERS TO BE INCREASED.

THE Newspaper Proprietors’ Association have decided to increase the selling price of newspapers as from the beginning of April. As the Wellington Post points out, the surprise is that the raising of prices should have been deferred so long. Short supplies of paper, increased prices, and heavy freights have been matters of grave concern for the past two and a-half years, but the owners refrained from passing any of the burden on to the public. In stead of diminishing, however, the cost of all materials connected with the production of a paper has rapidly increased, until at the present day the price of paper alone has advanced to 125 per cent, above pre-war rates, and latest advices emphasise the fact that in America the demand has been growing rapidly and the supplies are becoming so inadequate that still further increases to colonial buyers appear certain. Added to this is the embarrassing uncertainty of regular shipments. Some months ago the gravity of the situation was realised by the English dailies, and drastic action was taken. Not only was the price of the papers doubled, but the si/e of the papers was reduced. The London Times, it was stated at the end of last year, estimated that extra cost of paper to the management of that journal at £710,000 a year, and in degree this has been imposed on every paper published in the United Kingdom. When these facts are fully understood the general public will realise that: the action taken by the newspaper proprietors in New Zealand was inevitable.