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Show UNCLE SAM IS THE BIGGEST PUBLISHER Also the Most Wasteful One, According Ac-cording to the Editor of The "Publishers' Auxiliary." j Uncle Sam is the world's greatest publisher, says the New York Evening Even-ing Post. His business equals that of any half dozen book publishers in New York or London. He also is : the most wasteful publisher under the jsun. The latest report of tho public printer shows that last year more than 61,000,000 copies of government publications were distributed; the j government mniling lists, containing more than a million, pames, made a jnet growth of 00,000; the employees ireached 3,500, and tho value of the product approached $13,000,000. Our government publishes anything nnd everything, sometimes in reckless j quantities. Last year it issued 12 dailies, 20 weeklies and 58 monthlies and their circulation ranged from 100 to 207,000. Its volumes ran from heavy tomes to small brochures and the list includes monographs on Yucatan Yuc-atan nrcheology, retail prices on dry goods in Walla Walla, and abstruse chemical and geological treatises. The distribution of some items is nmnz-ing. nmnz-ing. A million copies of the "Small Vegetable Garden" have been called for yearly. The official bulletin of the committee on public information started with eight pages and 80,000 copies and in six fnonths reached some issues 48 pages and 123,000 copies. Congress may order printed what it likes. The departments and bureaus are restricted by law, but their powers are wide and are exercised on a lib-oral lib-oral interpretation of what constitutes the public good. By law the "depositary libraries" throughout America are required to accept copies of everything of a public pub-lic nature. They groan for help or as the public printer mildly puts it; I "Their shelves become loaded with publications for which they have no use, and the demand for relief continues." con-tinues." Tho "returns" from them 1 form portentous accumulations, especially es-pecially since the public documents division ceased to act us a clearing I house. In seven years, according to i Senator Fletcher in 191G an average , of a million publications a year had been disposed of as junk without ever .having been unwrapped, though the average document cost 50 cents before be-fore being carted away. In 1909 nearly 1,500,000 accumulated publications, publi-cations, many bound in the best I grndes of cloth or leather weighed 1 950 tons nnd were sold at 8 cents in pound. Last year 2,033,500 pub-, pub-, lications were condemned and sold, but this "gave practically no relief." Publisher's Auxiliary. |