OCR Text |
Show COST OF PUBLIC PRINTING. Over in England there has been considerable complaint over a report that four of the chief commissions of the government had paid out some $80,000 in publishing maps and reports, the returns re-turns from the sales of which reached only about one-sixth of the cost of production. The economical econom-ical Englishman thinks that is pretty expensive. And it is. But the value of the reports to those who bought them may be very many times greater than the cost of production, and the benefits accruing accru-ing indirectly to the United Kingdom may far eclipse the cost of printing. There would not bo much complaint in our prodigal count rv if turns from sales of public documents r aC'ji(1,j ( sixth of the cost of production. It has been asserted that whol t r;i ; mI public documents, duly printed and Uv,:j, i, becu cart3d direct from the bindi.ris to ',. mills i,o be made into white paper agnin. "; that be true or not, it is certain that j n ;; T . .. ,; sands of copies of public documents ;' a;i i, are annually printed from which - ''' returns are received by the govern rm-i.t, jr, . it is not the policy of the government i, public documents. Most of them are :i- ,; ' tribution to those who will ask for thi'in. ;,; ,; great big public has so little time or ;Ii!t r,v. " the public documents that it saves the ,.:i:.:! transportation and distribution by riot .,. them. However, the newspapers genTa!'v Vl when a document of interest is issued. :... give the public a pretty good idea of th .-0; ..'. in a short resume. It probably is not a:i wa-:.j effort, but the English government has n . :,;.. . be ashamed of in reporting a loss from. tH- r,n';i;; tion of the reports of its Toyal comm!-i |