Publishers and the public : reprinted from The Times of 1852.

  • The Times.
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Publishers and the public : reprinted from The Times of 1852. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    3/74
    Fifty-four years ago the publishers attempted, by restrictions on trade, to maintain the high prices then charged for books, and to create for their own profit a firm and permanent monopoly, to be maintained at the expense of the public. To-day the publishers are making a similar attempt, by imposing even harsher restrictions. They are trying to control not only the price of new books, but the price of second-hand books, to dictate not only the prices at which books shall be sold but the time at which they shall be sold. On the last page of this pamphlet we reprint the arrogant decree which the associated publishers have now issued. Fifty-four years ago they tried to do no more than to limit the production of books by preventing their sale at such prices as naturally resulted from healthy competition. Their policy was no more high-handed than would be that of a ring of traders who try to force up the price of corn by storing it instead of selling it. To-day their decree in regard to second-hand books resembles rather the action of traders who burn the stored corn in order to keep up prices. A decree that libraries must burn their second-hand books would be hardly more tyrannical than this decree that the public