p. 11 | The Magazine Trust by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Aug 1, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 30.

The Magazine Trust

By Editor

It is now declared that many of the magazines that have been so hot against the trusts and have posed as reformers, dedicating their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to incessant war against all trusts, are themselves members of a trust, and conducting their business under transgression of the Sherman anti-trust law. The Government has brought suit against what is alleged to be an unlawful combination and conspiracy to restrain interstate trade and foreign commerce in magazines and other periodicals. The defendants are the Periodical Clearing House, Doubleday, Page & Co., Crowell Publishing Co., S. S. McClure Co., Current Literature Co., Phillips Publishing Co., Harper Brothers, Leslie Judge Co., Review of Reviews Co., International Magazine Co., New Publication Co., Butterick Publishing Co., Standard Fashion Co., New Idea Publishing Co., Ridgway Co., American Home Magazine Co., Short Stories Co. Ltd. The petition declares that the clearing-house destroys competition with the clubbing business by coercing all the principal subscription agencies in the country into making contracts with it, and to enforce this a system of fines was worked, and recalcitrant agents have been in peril of losing all the business of the associated magazines. But the president of the magazine clearing-house, it is only fair to say, declares that it is merely an association of periodical publishers formed "for the purpose of maintaining fair and equitable conditions among the subscription agencies, never having sought to increase prices, but has pursued the directly opposite policy to avoid reductions from the regular subscription to the point of demoralization." He declares that they have done everything that law-abiding citizens could do, first to find out what the law was, and secondly to follow it carefully. By some it is thought that the Government has been stirred up to prosecute these magazines because of their war against the Government position on the postal rates.