The Metropolitan Newspaper (New York City)

ed on a liberal basis. Thus, while a poor country paper may receive the same combination report that a strong and influential paper in a great city receives, it is not charged more than ten per cent. of the amount assessed upon the latter — assessed not arbitrarily, but with the consent of all. The aim of the association is, first, to get news, and second, to get in return the highest amount the paper using it can afford to pay; but equal use of the news by papers competing with each other in one place involves equal charges to all of the competitors. Some of the poorer papers in the South receive the combination report of the whole world's news — all charges paid — for fifteen dollars a week, while the charges for the same matter to a metropolitan paper often amount to over five hundred dollars a week, and occasionally fifteen hundred dollars a week. The Western, New England, and New York State associations pay the parent institution fixed sums per month for the use of news delivered to their reporters at desks in the New York office, and make their own contracts with the telegraph companies. All others have direct accounts with the New York office or its local agents. At the end of each week the cashier makes a statement of all disbursements and receipts of that week. The deduction of the receipts from the expenditures invariably shows a large deficit, which, divided by seven, gives the amount or share to be paid by each of the seven New York papers forming the association.

The American Press Association is an organization similar to the Associated Press, and supplies news to a large number of papers, including the New York Evening Mail; but it is not as extensive in its resources or its business as the older concern, the success of which is owing principally to the remarkable executive ability of its superintendent, Mr. Simonton.

We know from experience what drudgery and exhausting labor befall the man who is bound down to the desk of a metropolitan newspaper — the exacting discipline, the unremitted application, and the unsatisfactory results, which break the hearts and rack the brains of many promising writers. But beyond the compensation which exists for all who have ambitions, in sharing the anonymous power of the press — a power which all