persistent, and more or less colossal.  Not long ago, within a few days of each other, three men who were simultaneously employed on a certain paper told me their actual circulation, confidentially, too.  One of them put it at 85,000, the second at 110,000, and the third at 130,000, and each of them lied, for their lying was so diversified and entertaining that I felt a real interest in securing the truth, and so I took some trouble to ask the pressman about it.  He told me, very confidentially, that it was 120,000—­and he lied.

By this time my interest was so heightened that I told my personal friend, the publisher, about the inartistic and incoherent mendacity of his subordinates, whereupon he laughingly showed me his circulation book, which clearly, and I have no doubt truthfully, exhibited an average of 88,000.  The wicked partner is nearly always ready to show the actual record of the counting machines on the presses, and “figures never lie” but the truth-telling machines which record actual work of the impression cylinders make no mention of damaged copies thrown aside, of sample copies, files, exchanges, copies kept against possible future need, copies unsold, copies nominally sold but sooner or later returned and finally sold to the junk shop, and all that sort of thing.  One prints a large extra issue on a certain day for some business corporation which has its own purpose to serve by publication of an article in its own interest, whereby many thousands of copies are added to that day’s normal output, and he makes the exceptional number for that day serve as the exponent of his circulation until good fortune brings him a similar and possibly larger order, and his circulation is reported as “still increasing.”  Another struck a “high-water mark” of “190,500” the day after Mr. Cleveland was elected, and that has been the implied measure of circulation for the last six years.  Another, during a heated political campaign, or a great financial crisis, or some other dominant factor in public interest, makes a large and genuine temporary increase, but the highest mark gained does enforced duty in the eyes of the marines until another flood tide sweeps him to a greater transient height.  These are types of the competitions of the circulation liar.  At this very hour there are four daily newspapers each of which has the largest circulation in the United States.  Of the nearly 18,000 American publications only 103 furnish detailed, open, and entirely trustworthy statements of circulation.

As to the general public this is no great matter, but to the vast number of business men who buy the real or fancied publicity afforded by newspaper advertising it is of exceeding importance.  That the large buyers of advertising space are not more and oftener swindled is because they understand the circulation extravaganza and buy space according to their understanding.  The time is coming, and it should come soon, when newspaper circulations shall be open to the same inspection and publicity as is now the case with banks and insurance companies, and when the circulation liar and swindler shall be amenable to the same law and liable to the same penalty as stands against and is visited upon any other perjurer and thief.