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Show I I NEWSPAPERS AS FRAUDS i The newspapers of Salt Lake are about the biggest frauds extant. In the first place most of them willfully and deliberately mislead and deceive their readers In nearly everything they publish, particularly In regard to local politics and municipal affairs is that the case. j The Tribune leads In tho art of deception, de-ception, but It has a good second in the Herald. Tho Tribune Is tho per-i per-i sonnl organ of ex-Senator Kearns, and the Herald Is the personal organ of Senator W. A. Clark of Montana. Tli8 j policy of those papers Is directed to the furtherance of the business inter- ests or the political ambitions of their I owners, utterly regardless of their duty to the public. In tho matter of circulation the Salt Lake papers are : most dishonest; In fact, they are lit tle, If anything, better than tho ordi-I ordi-I nary grafter and "sure-thing" man I They regard the merchants and advcr- ' tlsers generally as their legitimate ; prey. Hero is the Tribune with a I daily circulation In this city of less than 2,200, and tho Herald with les3 than 2,000, including street sales and everything else, each representing that It has a circulation in Salt Lake ' City of from 6,000 to 7,000. That is I tho story that is Incessantly poured 1 Into tho ears of advertisers. Tho Dos- ! eret News, although very decep- ! tlve, Isn't quite so blatant In In- j 'f. ventions about Its circulation as the j Tribune or the Herald, but among j them all tho Telegram's circulation prevaricator, in tho language of tho street, takes tho cake. "With a city dally circulation of 1,200 to 1,300, it ! actually makes claims exceeding oven those of tho Herald or tho Tribune Tri-bune The merchants who advertise in tho dally pdpers pay pretty dearly for tho publicity they obtain Any citizen cit-izen who will stop and think and figure fig-ure for.about .a minute can satisfy himself of the utter fallacy of the clr-, clr-, culatlon claims of the four daily papers. pa-pers. The "population, of this city, Including In-cluding the suburbs,..does not exceed 05,000. The official Unltort State3 census cen-sus In 1000 showed 49,800. Putting buncombe aside and getting down io 1 solid foundation of fact, C5.000 at this tlmo Is a fair, liberal estimate. With five persons to a family, and families In Salt Lake average over five, but take It at five, that makes 13,000 families, rich anl poor, learned and unlearned. Few will contend that more than half those families take a paper regularly. Some buy a paper j occasionally and many borrow their neighbor's, and many tike only a Sunday Sun-day or Saturday afternoon paper. That leaves 0,500 families who regularly reg-ularly subscribe for a daily paper. Tho street sales, mostly to transients, of any one of the dailies does not exceed ex-ceed a very few hundred. There Is at the extreme not mora than 7,000 newspaper buyers of all classo3 in the city. To supply this demand there have been four dally papers, and now there are five. Practically no one person per-son takes all five papers a limited number tike two but the vast majority major-ity only one. In order to make good the claims of the Tribune, for Instance, In-stance, every newspaper buyer In the city would have to take the Tribune, which on Its face Is absurd. Not one of the four dallies dare attempt' to prove Its circulation claims, and yet every advertiser should demand abso-luto abso-luto proof of the bona fide circulation of every paper in which ho advertises. adver-tises. In any other lino of business tho merchant sees that he gets full weight and full measure. Why shouldn't ho do so In advertising? Why should he allow himself to be flim-flammed by a newspaper? The Intermountaln Republican, in Its first issue, gave, pretty nearly correct, the city circulation of the other four dallies. dall-ies. Tho Republican's figures were a Httlo lower than thoss given above but not one of the four dallies dared attempt to contravcrt tho Republican's Republi-can's figures. Tho Deseret News made reference to it in a shuffling kind of way, which did not aid Its cause in the least. Tho Merchants and Manufacturers' association Is formulating a scheme to put a quietus on fake advertising schemes. The association ought to begin with the Salt Lake papers. Truth Is prepared to provo its circulation, circu-lation, not alone by affidavit, but also by Its subscription lists, the amoun: of paper used and tho number of copies cop-ies actually printed and circulated Neither the dallies or Todkln's lit-tie lit-tie weekly daro attempt to do so. Tin Intermountaln Republican has started out with a circulation of 2,881 In tho city and 3,037 outside, a total of C.518 If it holds 75 per cent of thoso as permanent per-manent subscribers It will havo a Us which will compare favorably with any of tho dallies in this city. Wo suggest that as Chief of Polio Sheets, according to the Tribune, his driven tho gamblers, sure-thing men and crooks out of town, he now turn his attention to tho nowspape4 fakirs, |