portion of the wool as their reward for converting the balance into cloth.
Nevertheless, the shopkeeper, the miller, the spinner, and the weaver are
poor, because trade is small. As wealth and population grow, we find the
shopkeeper gradually reducing his charge, until from fifty it falls to
five per cent.; the miller reducing his, until he finds that he can afford
to give all the flour that is yielded by the corn, retaining for himself
the bran alone; and the spinner and weaver contenting himself with a
constantly diminishing proportion of the wool; and now it is that we find
shopkeepers, millers, and manufacturers grow rich, while consumers are
cheaply supplied because of the vast increase of trade. In your case,
however, the course of proceeding has been altogether different. Half a
century since, when our people were but four millions in number, and were
poor and scattered, gentlemen like you were secured in the monopoly of
their works for fourteen years, with a power of renewal for a similar
term. Twenty years since, when the population had almost tripled, and
their wealth had sixfold increased, and when the facilities of
distribution had vastly grown, the term was fixed at twenty-eight years,
with renewal to widow or children for fourteen years more. At the present
moment, you are secured in a monopoly for forty-two years, among a
population of twenty-six millions of people, certain, at the close of
twenty years more, to be fifty millions and likely, at the close of
another half century, to be a hundred millions, and with facilities, for
the disposal of your products, growing at a rate unequaled in the world.
With this vast increase of market, and increase of power over that market,
the consumer should be supplied more cheaply than in former times; yet
such is not the case. The novels of Mrs. Rowson and Charles B. Brown, and
the historical works of Dr. Ramsay, persons who then stood in the first
rank of authors, sold as cheaply as do now the works of Fanny Fern, the
'Reveries' of Ik Marvel, or the history of Mr. Bancroft; and yet, in the
period that has since elapsed, the cost of publication has fallen probably