ABSTRACT
The independent wholesaler is a descendant of the news butchers who met the trains in the late 1800s to peddle magazines and national newspapers. According to contemporary accounts, the entrepreneurs were a raffish lot. Territorial rights to a particularly desirable depot or street corner were often established through fistfight's or even more violent expressions of the free enterprise spirit. By 1900, the American News Company had a virtual monopoly on magazine and national newspaper distribution. Through the 1930s and the World War II years, however, the News Company dominated national magazine distribution and was an important factor in the distribution of hardcover books. When the new firm of Pocket Books started the modern mass market paperback "revolution" in 1939, with the intention of putting prime reliance on magazine distribution channels, it sold to both the News Company and the independents and directly to retail stores as well.
