May 8, 1863, American Citizen (Canton, Mississippi)
The Raleigh State Journal, alluding to the high price of newspaper, and the difficulty of procuring it at almost any price, says:
What remedy is there for this state of things? We see but two: either an enormous increase in the price of subscription, or a suspension of the press. With paper at fifty cents per pound a weekly sheet cannot be issued for less than five dollars. This calculation excludes any profit. To preserve the profits of ordinary times, the price would be at least seven dollars. The dailies at that rate must go to fifteen dollars. To pay, outside of the large cities, a daily must go to twenty dollars.
There are a certain class of readers who will take a paper at any price. But these would take papers which were published nearest the sources of news. They would not take country papers at all, at the prices.
We can suggest one measure which might afford relief. The Government we understand has large quantities of cotton on hand, which was bought at a comparatively small price. If the paper mills could buy this cotton from the government at a price to cover all expenses and pay a small advance, they could afford paper at present rates and thus save the press.
But this plan we know would be objected to on the ground of affording Government aid to special private enterprises, a principle which has been repudiated in our politics for years, at least in theory.
This failing, we see nothing before us but the suspension of a large majority of the papers of the Confederacy.
The next question is, can a free Government be sustained without newspapers?–Can this revolution be successfully carried through a term of years of horrors, pillage and suffering, without the warning and encouraging voice of the press? We think a numerous press, and a free one, are synonymous terms. Let the journals of a country be reduced to a very few in number, and by a necessity of human nature they will become merely the advocates of all measures of the rulers of the land. They can, and will, demand place and emolument, or both, as the price of their services, and they will obtain their demands so long as they keep their covenant with power.
The press is not merely a private enterprise; it has become at this age of the world a part of every Government.
Men at this day are not content with the bare declaration of principles, shortly and curtly, expressed by the proclamations of their rulers. They have been accustomed to the analysis of every principle and every measure at the hands of the press, and like jurors, their duty is to sift, to weigh, to reconcile and to reject the argument and apply their conclusions to the facts of their condition.
The press is to the administration of the affairs of State, what the lawyers are to the administration of justice. Take either class away, and the government becomes a blind obedience, and justice an uncertain arbiter.
We say to the people that with the fall of the press they lose their best friend, and the ablest champion of popular rights and national liberty. But we see, in the present state of things no hope that the press can be sustained. We are not speaking specially of the concerns of this office. This paper is probably established as firmly as the majority of papers in the country, and in ordinary times its prospects would be flattering.–But unless we are mistaken in our calculations, the press of the State and of the Confederacy is standing certainly upon a very narrow base.