FOOTNOTES
[2] Covers are included in the total for pages given.
[3] One cover page included in count for periodicals carrying cover with no advertising matter on title page of same.
[4] Three pages of cover are counted as advertising.
[5] The weight of supplements to Sunday Editions of newspapers (when mentioned as supplements in list), is included in the gross weight of the issue as given.
CHAPTER VI.
THE PUBLISHERS SPEAK.
I quoted from Senator Owen on a previous page when discussing the unconstitutionality of Senate revenue-originating amendments. Under his leave to print Senator Owen embodied in his remarks on February 25, 1911, the arguments presented by some of the publishers in reply to Mr. Hitchcock’s statements. They point out in particular his peculiar method of figuring by which he reaches results so at variance with the facts as, at times, to be far more amusing than informative. I shall here quote some of them.
I have previously adverted to the promptitude of Senators Owen, Bristow, Bourne, Cummings and others in getting onto the firing line. Their combined resistance soon forced Mr. Hitchcock to unmask his guns. He was ready, it would seem, to do or concede almost anything provided, always and of course, he could give a few of those pestiferous, independent magazines a jar that would so agitate their several bank accounts as to influence them to print what they were told to print.
But when the General found that he was flanked, and his position being shot up, he began to display parley and peace signals. “The country newspapers would not be affected”—they would still be carried and distributed free—55,000,000 pounds of them or more each and every calendar year.
The “poor farmer” needs special government aid, you know. Or, if the farmer should not be personally in need of government assistance, as now it frequently and numerously chances, why, well—oh, well, we desire to show our friendly “leanin’s toward him.” He may remember it at the next Presidential election—just when we may be needing a few farmer votes. So, as one evidence of our kindly consideration for the farmer, we will not trench upon his special privilege. He shall still have delivered him—free—fifty-five to seventy million pounds of “patent insides” and other partisan dope sheets, printed in his own county and published and edited by regularly indentured, branded and tagged political fence-builders—guaranteed “safe” under the pure food laws, etc.
Then Postmaster General Hitchcock also let it be generally known that it was remote from his intentions to add a mail-rate penalty to any religious, educational, fraternal or scientific periodical. Some of these—not including the Sunday School leaflets, of course—circulate in vast editions ranging from 500 to 5,000 copies a month. They, too, were such “powerful educational instruments,” he or some of his assistants assured doubting Thomases in both the upper and the lower branches of federal legislation.
Next, he back-stepped a little to assure trade journals that it was not his purpose to hand them any advance over the cent-a-pound mail rate, or so at least, Washington correspondents reported. Finally it is said, a statement generously borne out by the wording of his jockeyed “rider,” that newspapers—all newspapers—would be fanned through the mail service at the old cent-a-pound rate.
It would appear that the anxious interest of our Postmaster General was willing to let almost any old thing in the shape of a “periodical” switch through and along at the old rate, if he could only ham-string a few—a score or less—of monthly and weekly periodicals which persisted in printing the unlaundered truth about looters, both in and out of office.
Now, we will present a few figures and statements of the publishers, presented in answer to Mr. Hitchcock’s voluminous, likewise varied and variegated, utterances, both verbal and in print, to support his lurid guess that it costs the government 9.23 cents a pound to transport and handle second-class mail matter.
Before quoting the publishers, however, I desire to say two things:
1. The periodical publishers must necessarily know, I take it, more about the business of printing and distributing periodicals than Mr. Hitchcock has been able to learn about that business in the two politically swift years he has been on his present job.
2. The publishers in replying—in presenting the facts—are entirely too dignified. Of course, dignity is a fine thing—an elegant decoration for our advanced and super-polished civilization. But when some human animal deliberately and industriously tries to shunt on to your siding a carload or more of “deficits” and other partisan and “vested interest” junk, and tells you its price is so much and that you have to pay the price—well, at about that point in the progress of our splendid civilization, I think it both the part of justice and of thrift to lay dignity on the parlor couch and walk out on your own trackage, making as you loiter along a few plain and easily understood remarks. That is just what I believe these publishers should have done when Mr. Hitchcock covertly tried to deliver to them, charges collect, his several large consignments of talk about “deficits,” “cost of carriage and handling second-class matter,” “publisher’s profits” and other subjects about which he was either equally ill-informed or ill-advised.
Yes, there are occasions when it is quite proper to hang one’s dignity on that nail behind the kitchen door and sally forth in shirt sleeves with top-piece full of rapid-fire conversation.
With these suggestions, from which it is hoped the publishers may take a few hints for future guidance when Presidents and Postmaster Generals undertake to deliver to them a cargo of cold-storage stuff that was “off color” before it left the farm, I will proceed to do what I have several times started to do—quote the publisher on Mr. Hitchcock’s ring-around-a-rosy method of figuring.
In quoting from the publishers’ “exhibits” it is due to Senator Owen that we reprint a few paragraphs from his foreword. In speaking to “the merits of the case,” the Senator said:
Separate and apart from the fact that this proposed amendment violates the Constitution of the United States and the rules of the Senate, I regard such method of legislation as unwise, if not reprehensible, for the reason that, in effect, it is a denial of the right to be heard by those who are deeply interested in it. Over a year ago the periodical publishers affected desired to be heard in this matter, and were not given a proper hearing on this vital question. Indeed, they appear to have been left under the impression that nothing would be done in regard to the matter; or, at all events, they seem to have been under this impression. When the matter came before the House of Representatives and the committee having the matter in charge, no discussion of this matter took place. No report on it was made. No opportunity to be heard was afforded. Neither was the matter discussed on the floor of the House. When the postoffice appropriation bill came to the Senate, no hearing was afforded, but at the last minute, after the committee had practically concluded every item on the appropriation bill, this item was presented, not only giving the periodical publishers no opportunity to be heard, but giving the members of the committee no opportunity to study this matter and to digest it. I regard it as grossly unfair, and at the time in the committee I reserved the right to oppose this amendment on the floor of the Senate.
In the affairs affecting our internal administration I am strongly opposed to any secrecy.
In my judgment, the claim made by the Postoffice Department is erroneous on its face, for the obvious reason that it is conceded that these magazines are brought by express and distributed in Washington, D. C., over 250 miles from New York, at less than 1 cent a pound for cost of transportation and distribution. The Postoffice Department declares that it costs 9 cents a pound. This is a mere juggling of figures.
I have no doubt that if a proper weighing of the mails was observed, and if the railways were to carry the mails at a reasonable rate, this distribution could be made at a cost approximately that which I have named, as illustrated by the cost of distribution in Washington City, which is an undisputed fact.
After presenting the publishers’ “Exhibit A,” in which they refute Mr. Hitchcock’s unfounded assertions of colossal profits in the magazine publishing business—a subject which I treat elsewhere—the Senator presents their “Exhibit B,” which counters the Postmaster General’s claim that the proposed increase in rate would yield a large revenue to the government. “Exhibit B” reads as follows:—
It has been shown from the original books of account of the five most prominent magazines that the proposed measure charging 4 cents a pound postage on all sheets of magazines on which advertising is printed would tax these magazines, the most powerful group, best able to meet such a shock, nearly the whole of their entire net income. This means that the new postal rate could not be paid. There is not money enough in the magazine business to pay it. Magazines would simply be debarred from the United States mails.
But assume, for the sake of argument, that this would not be the case, and that the money could be found to pay the new postage bills, what, theoretically, would be the increased revenue of the Postoffice Department, for the sake of which it is proposed to take more than all the profits of the industry that has been built up since 1879?
The Postmaster General, in his statement given to the Associated Press, and published in the newspapers Tuesday morning, February 14, claims that the proposed postal increase on periodical advertising would amount to less than 1 cent flat on the weight of the whole periodical. This is not the way the ambiguously worded amendment works out literally; but, accepting the Postmaster General’s figures and applying them to the weights, given in his annual report, of the second-class mail classifications affected by the increase, let us pin the Postoffice Department down to what it hopes to gain from a measure that would confiscate the earnings of an industry.
Mr. Hitchcock in his statement gives 800,000,000 pounds as the total weight of second-class matter. In his report for 1909 he gives the percentage of this weight of the classifications that could possibly be affected by this proposed increase as 20.23 per cent for magazines, 6.4 per cent for educational publications, 5.91 per cent for religious periodicals, 4.94 per cent for trade journals, and 5 per cent for agricultural periodicals, making 42.97 per cent altogether of the 800,000,000 pounds that might be affected by the proposed increase, or 343,760,000 pounds. Of course, this includes the periodicals publishing less than 4,000 pounds weight per issue, and exempted by the amendment.
But, making no deduction whatsoever for these exemptions, and none for the great expense of administering this complex measure, with its effect of conferring despotic power, certain to be disputed, the Postmaster General claims that this figures out only 1 cent increased revenue on 343,760,000 pounds, or a gross theoretical gain to the Postoffice Department of $3,437,600. These are the Postmaster General’s figures, not the publishers’.
But from this figure of 343,760,000 pounds the Postmaster General would have to subtract the weight of all the periodicals exempted, and also subtract all the new expense involved for a large force of clerks.
There will also be a great increase of work for inspectors, as the proposed measure puts a premium on dishonesty. There will be constant temptation for unscrupulous people, who try to take the place of the present reputable publishers, to publish advertising in the guise of legitimate reading matter. There will be extra legal expenses for the disputes that arise between publishers and the Postoffice Department over matters in which the publishers may believe the department is using the despotic power given by this measure to confiscate the property of publishers. In the hearings before the Weeks committee, it was frankly admitted by members of the House Committee on Postoffices and Postroads that the government postoffice service could never be run with the economy and efficiency of a private concern.
With all the expense of this new scheme subtracted from such a small possible gain as is claimed by Mr. Hitchcock, what revenue would remain to justify the wiping out of an industry built up in good faith through thirty-two years of an established fundamental postoffice rate?
If the department succeeded in saving $2,000,000, after deducting the exempted publications and all the new expense involved for a great force of clerks, this would amount to less than 1 per cent of its revenues for 1910. It would amount to less than one-eighth of the postoffice deficit in 1909. It would amount to less than one-fourteenth of the loss on rural free delivery alone in that year.
But even this gain would be only theoretical; for, as shown before (Exhibit A), many of the comparatively small groups of periodicals left to be published, after the favored ones were exempted, would find that it required more than all their income to pay their share of the new rate.
You can not take away from a person more than 100 per cent of all that he has—even from a publisher. It is not there.
These figures of increased revenue to the government are based on the department’s own statements. They are mathematically accurate.
They must not be interpreted, however, as measuring the extent of publishers’ losses. They take no account of the increases, certain to follow the enactment of this legislation, in the rates of other lines of distribution from which the government derives no revenue. They take no account of the loss in circulation volume, that is certain to follow an attempt to raise the price of magazines to the public. They take no account of the loss in advertising revenue that is certain to follow a loss in circulation.
Neither are these figures a complete record of the effect on the government revenue. They take no account of the certain destruction of publishing properties, and the consequent destruction of postal revenue on the profitable first-class matter their advertising once created.
“Postscript: Since this calculation was made and a flood of telegrams from agricultural publications has come to Congress, the afternoon newspapers of Tuesday, February 14, reported that at a cabinet meeting on that day it was decided by the Administration and announced by Postmaster General Hitchcock that agricultural periodicals will be exempted from the increased postal rate. The owners and other representatives of agricultural periodicals gathered in Washington to oppose the amendment to the postoffice appropriation bill at once left Washington for their homes. It was reported at the same time that the religious periodicals had also been assured that a paternal Administration would take care of them.
“This leaves the situation in such shape that the Administration has at last got down to the comparatively small group of popular magazines.
“These magazines proper, the Postmaster General says, constitute 20.23 per cent of second-class matter, or only 162,000,000 pounds, out of the 800,000,000 pounds of second-class mail.
“As the Postmaster General says, as explained above, that the proposed increase would only mean 1 cent a pound more on the whole periodical, he could only figure out a theoretical gross gain of $1,620,000. But his figures are, as usual, all wrong.
“From this $1,620,000, that his figures come to, he would have to deduct, of course, the exempted periodicals and also all expenses of administering the proposed new measure.
“The pretense of raising second-class rates to do away with the postoffice deficit therefore disappears.
“A few popular magazines are to be punished.
“The absurdly unjust discrimination involved in the proposed increase of postal rates on certain subclasses of second-class mail, leaving the larger subclasses, more costly to the postoffice, untouched, is shown in Exhibit C.”
But how about this new development, in which the Postmaster General apparently decides from day to day and hour to hour as to whether one class of periodicals or another shall be allowed to live or made to die?
Has there ever before been in America, or in Russia, or in China, a censor with this power? If the institutions of this country are to be so changed as to give this despotic censorship to one man, ought that man to be the official in charge of the political machinery, as patronage broker, of the Administration?
Now, we come to weights, and here the publishers begin to talk back a little. In introducing the publishers’ “Exhibit C” Senator Owen said:
“It is insisted by the Postoffice Department that it is entirely just to increase the cost on advertisements in the magazines. I submit their answer:”
Why should the Administration have gone to a small 20 per cent portion of the second-class mail to increase postal rates? The Postmaster General gives the magazine weight as 20 per cent of the whole second-class mail, and newspapers as 55.73 per cent. Why leave out the largest classification entirely and concentrate all the new tax on a little 20 per cent classification, which in profit-making and tax-bearing capacity is vastly smaller than even the figures of 20 per cent and 55.73 per cent indicate?
The real reason why the Administration concentrated its fire on the magazines is well known.
But let us look at the reasons given by the Administration—given hurriedly and weakly, and almost absurdly easy to disprove.
Why are newspapers exempt and magazines punished to the point of confiscation?
The Administration says (a) magazines carry more advertising than newspapers; (b) they cost the Postoffice Department more than newspapers, because they are hauled farther.
(a) It is not true that magazines carry more advertising than newspapers. By careful measuring the entire superficial area and the advertising contents, respectively, of each of 36 daily newspapers and each of 54 periodicals—the chief advertising mediums of the country—it is found that magazines averaged 34.4 per cent advertising, newspapers averaged 38.08 per cent advertising.
(b) The statement that magazines cost the Postoffice Department more per pound than newspapers is easily susceptible of final disproof from the department’s own figures—the most extreme figures it has been able to bring forward in its attempts to prove a case against the magazines.
The Postoffice Department states that owing to the different average lengths of haul, it costs 5 cents to transport a pound of magazines and 2 cents to transport a pound of newspapers.
Admit that these figures, often repeated in the department’s reports, are correct. Let us see how the final cost of service for a pound of magazines looks beside the final cost of service to a pound of newspapers.
Besides the cost of transporting mail, figured of course by weight and length of haul, there are three huge factors of cost, apportioned according to the number of pieces of mail—rural free delivery, railway-mail service, and postoffice service (Postoffice Department pamphlet, “Cost of transporting and hauling the several classes of mail matter,” 1910).
TRANSPORTATION COST OF MAGAZINES AND NEWSPAPERS.
By weighing carefully the representative magazine, every copy of a year’s issue of 64 leading magazines, and by weighing 60 different classes of newspapers, daily and Sunday, the postal committee of the Periodical Publishers’ Association has found that the magazine weighs, on the average, 12.3 ounces and the newspaper 3.92 ounces.
The Postmaster General’s report for 1909 furnishes the total pounds of second class mail—764,801,370—and the proportion of newspapers and magazines in this weight—55.73 per cent and 20.23 per cent, respectively.
This gives 154,719,317 pounds of magazines in the mails and 426,223,803 pounds of newspapers.
The cost of transporting these, by the Postoffice Department’s figures, is 5 cents a pound for transporting magazines and 2 cents a pound for transporting newspapers, making $7,735,965.85 for hauling magazines and $8,524,476.06 for hauling newspapers.
THE HANDLING COST.
But the department says specifically, in the pamphlet referred to above, that the handling cost it apportions according to the number of pieces, in three classifications of expense—the railway mail service, rural free delivery, and postoffice service. The total cost of these items charged against second-class matter is (Postmaster General’s report, 1909), $39,818,583.86.
The total number of pieces of second-class mail handled was 3,695,594,448 (H. Doc. 910, “Weighing of the Mails.”)
Newspapers, averaging 3.92 ounces each, and weighing in the mails altogether 426,223,803 pounds, furnished 1,740,000,000 pieces to handle (taking round millions, which would not affect the percentages), or 47.17 per cent of all second-class pieces.
The 154,719,317 pounds of magazines, weighing 12.3 ounces each, furnished 201,260,000 pieces to handle, or 5.44 per cent of all second-class pieces.
Figuring these piece percentages on $39,818,583.86, the expense which the department says should be apportioned according to the number of pieces, and which it does so apportion, we have the handling cost on the 154,719,317 pounds of magazines $2,166,139.96, or 1.4 cents per pound.
The newspaper-handling cost would be 55.73 per cent of $39,818,583.86, or $28,782,425.10, which, divided by the total of newspaper pounds, gives us the handling cost of a pound of newspapers 6.75 cents.
THE NET RESULT.
So, using the department’s own figures and methods of figuring, we have the cost of hauling and handling magazines, 5 cents plus 1.4 cents, or 6.4 cents; the cost of hauling and handling newspapers, 2 cents plus 6.75 cents, or 8.75 cents.
This shows that without going into the miscellaneous expenditures at all, which would slightly further increase the cost of newspapers as compared with magazines, the department’s own figures show that it is losing on the fundamental operations of hauling and handling 7.75 cents a pound on 426,223,803 pounds of newspapers, or $33,032,844.73, as against losing 5.4 cents a pound on 154,719,317 pounds of magazines, or $8,354,843.11.
With a loss, according to its own figures, over 400 per cent as great on newspapers as on magazines, the department goes to the magazines, of scarcely one-third the weight of newspapers, and with not one-twentieth the financial ability to pay such a new tax, to meet the whole burden of its futile and confiscatory attempt to reduce the deficit.
Furthermore, the advertising in magazines, which the department proposes to tax out of existence, is the very national mail-order advertising that produces the profitable revenue, as against the local announcements in the newspapers of the class of page department-store advertisements, etc., which do not call for answers through the mails under first-class postage (see Exhibit F).
And, still further, the modern newspaper of large circulation is more of a magazine, as distinguished from a paper chiefly devoted to disseminating news and intelligence and discussion of public affairs, than the modern magazine. Compare the “magazine sections” of the large newspapers (and most of the balance of their Sunday issues), with publications like the Review of Reviews, World’s Work, Current Literature, Literary Digest, Collier’s Weekly, or even with Everybody’s, the American, the Cosmopolitan and McClure’s, to see the obvious truth of this statement.
I have marked the fourth from last paragraph of the publishers’ “Exhibit C” to be set in italics. I did so for fear the hurried reader might gather a wrong impression from its wording. The publishers do not mean to say that it costs the government 7.75 cents a pound to carry and handle newspapers, nor 5.4 cents a pound to carry and handle magazines. It is a known fact that both the newspapers and the magazines can be carried and handled by the government at a profit at $20.00 a ton—at the cent-a-pound rate. Mr. Hitchcock asserted in the official brochure to which the publishers are here making reply, I take it, that second-class mail hauling and handling costs 9.23 cents a pound. In this “Exhibit C,” the publishers are proving that, even if his absurd claim as to cost were true, his method of apportioning that cost between newspapers and other periodicals is grossly unfair, as well as ridiculously wrong mathematically.
Then Mr. Hitchcock, or his department, suggests that the magazines meet the added charge put upon them for haul and handling by increasing their sale price. That is, let the five, ten or fifteen-cent weeklies ring up five cents more per copy on subscribed and news stand prices—make the readers pay it. Let the monthlies do likewise.
That suggestion carries a sort of familiar resonance. “Make the rate (tariff) what the traffic will stand.”
Ever hear of it? If you have not, then you must have arrived as a mission child in the Chinese or Hindoostanese “field of effort,” and have lived there until the week before last.
Ring up the revenues and make the dear people pay it in added purchase price!
The people have a few dollars stored away in savings accounts or stockings, and if they want a thing they will broach their hoardings. They have the money. We want it.
One of the surest and easiest ways to get it is to make them pay more for what they consider essentials to their subsistence, to the comforts and the pleasures of their lives. They have been buying some splendid monthly periodicals at twelve and a half cents to fifteen cents. If they want them, why not make ’em pay twenty or twenty-five cents?
Yes, why not? It’s the people, and—well—
“To hell with the people.”
For four decades or more of our history, that “official” opinion of the “dear people” has delivered the goods. The Congress, or certain “fixed” members of it, told us that we needed, in order to be entirely prosperous and happy, a tariff on “raw” wool, “raw” cotton, “raw” hides, “raw” sugar and several other “raws,” assuring us that such action would greatly inure to our benefit.
They lied, of course. But it took us fool people a generation or more to find out that fact. In that generation, the liars gathered multiplied millions of unearned wealth and passed it into the hands of “innocent holders,” most of whom, if our court news columns are correct, have been spending it to get away from the trousered or the skirted heirs they married.
The point, however, I desire to make here is that while this varied and various “raw” talk was being ladled to us—and most of us ordering a second serving—our patriotic friends in positions of legislative authority, and our commercial and business “friends” who steered the “raw” talk, had “cornered” all the home-grown raw and were selling us the manufactured product at two prices.
But this is aside. I inject it here merely to illustrate how easily and continuously we fool people are fooled.
Postmaster General Hitchcock’s prattle about the publishers recouping themselves by lifting the price on us is of a kind with all the other “raw” talk which has looted us for forty or more years.
We buy a better periodical—say a monthly—for fifteen cents today than we got for fifty cents thirty years ago.
Not only that: The fifteen-center tells us of our wrongs, of how we were and are wronged and of how we may right the wrongs. The fifty-center of thirty years ago told us largely of things which entertained us—things historically, geographically, geologically, astronomically, psychically or similarly informative and instructive. They told us little or nothing of how we were misgoverned—of how misgovernment saps and loots and degenerates a people. That function of periodical education was left largely to the five, ten and fifteen-centers of the present day—periodicals of price within reach of limited means and of a large, rapidly growing desire to know.
See the point? “No”? Well, then don’t go to arguing.
If you do not see the point, just sit up and shake yourself loose a little.
“A little wisdom is a dangerous thing”; “For much wisdom is much grief,” and similar old saws which truth-perverters glossed into sacred or classic texts. The people are gathering “wisdom” from these low-priced, carefully-written, independent periodicals—periodicals which tell the “raw” truth. It is dangerous. They will hurt themselves. We vested-interests people and “innocent holders” must set up some hurdles; must keep the dear, earning people from learning too much—from learning what we know. Their chief source of enlightenment are the cheap, attractive, instructive, independent periodicals. Our first act should be to cut down—or cut out—this source of supply.
Then the dear people will come back and read what we hire written for them, and then—
Well, then the dear earners of dollars for us will not “learn wisdom” enough to hurt them or—us.
But, getting back to Mr. Hitchcock’s reported suggestion, in effect, to advance the subscription or selling price of the magazines and others of the “few” periodicals that would be affected by his proposed “rider” legislation. I shall call attention to but one basic fact which his suggestion covers—intendedly or not, I know not.
To me, it appears better to do this by a few direct statements.
1. An advance of two or five cents a pound on the people’s subsistence supplies—meats, vegetables, etc.—or on a yard of textile fabric they must have to cover or shelter their nakedness, will be met by them as long as they can dig up, or dig out, the funds to buy.
2. A corresponding advance in the price of some desired, or even needed, article which is not absolutely necessary to subsist, clothe or shelter them will induce them to hesitate before purchasing—will often lead to an exercise of self-denial which refuses to make the purchase—refuses, not because they do not want the article, but because they cannot afford it by reason of pressing subsistence needs.
That these rules of domestic economy apply to the sale and circulation of periodicals was quite conclusively shown to Mr. Hitchcock by the publishers. Senator Owens adverts to this point as follows:
“It has been suggested that the magazines could collect the additional cost imposed on them by raising the price of their magazines.”
He then quotes “Exhibit D” of the publishers in reply:
It has been shown (Exhibit A) from the original books of account of the chief magazine properties that the measure providing for a new postal rate of 4 cents a pound on all magazine sheets on which advertising is printed would wipe out the magazine industry—would require more money than the publishers make.
Could not the burden be passed on to advertisers or subscribers, or to both?
WHY ADVERTISERS WOULD NOT TAKE THE BURDEN.
Magazine advertisers buy space at so much a thousand circulation. The magazine is required to state its circulation and show that the rate charged per line is fair. Some advertisers go so far as to insist on contracts which provide that if the circulation during the life of the contract falls below the guaranteed figures they will receive a pro rata rebate from the publisher.
In view of the small net profits of the industry—it is shown in Exhibit A that the combined final profits of the five leading standard magazines of America are less than one-tenth of their total advertising income—it is clear that the publisher must be trying always to get as large a rate as possible for the advertising space he sells, and it is absolutely true that he has already got this rate up to the very maximum the traffic will bear.
Advertisers would not think of paying more than they are now paying for the same service. Some of them would use circulars under the third-class postal rate, which the Postmaster General says is unprofitable to his department. Most advertisers would simply find this market for their wares gone, and the thousands of people—artists, clerks, traveling men—engaged in the business of magazine advertising would lose their means of livelihood.
There is no possible hope that the advertiser will pay the bill.
WOULD THE SUBSCRIBER PAY THE INCREASED POSTAL RATE?
The 4 cents a pound rate on advertising would require an advance of approximately 50 per cent in subscription prices if the publisher is to recoup himself by raising the cost of living to the public in its consumption of magazines.
Would the public pay 50 per cent more for the same article?
The question is answered eloquently and finally by the subscription records of the magazines that were forced to increase their rates on Canadian subscriptions when Canada enforced a 4-cent rate on American periodicals. As the discriminatory rate was later withdrawn in certain cases, we have a complete cycle of record and proof. First, the Canadian subscription list before the increase; second, the Canadian subscription list after the increased postal rate and increased subscription price to the Canadian public; third, the Canadian subscription list after the postal rate and the subscription price to the public had been restored to the original status.
HERE IS THE RECORD OF THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS.
In June, 1907, the Review of Reviews began to pay 4 cents a pound postage on Canadian subscriptions, instead of 1 cent, and was forced to raise its Canadian subscription price from $3 to $3.50 a year.
Its Canadian yearly subscribers in July, 1907, numbered 2,973.
At once the subscription list began to fall off, and continued to do so steadily until in January, 1910, it had come down to 904 names.
Early in 1910 the Review of Reviews was readmitted into the Canadian postoffice at 1 cent a pound, its subscription was reduced to the old figure of $3, and the Canadian list quickly “came back,” having reached already in February, 1911, the figure of 2,690 annual subscribers.
Below follows the detailed record, eloquent of what would happen if the prices of popular American magazines were increased 50 per cent to the public. In this Canadian incident the price of the Review of Reviews was increased only 16⅔ per cent and the circulation fell off 69 per cent.
REVIEW OF REVIEWS—CANADIAN SUBSCRIBERS.
The next exhibit (“Exhibit E”) of the publishers shows quite conclusively “that it would be ruinous to them to raise the rates in the manner proposed,” and Senator Owen presents their plea.
I am going to reprint here their plea as presented in “Exhibit E,” but in doing so The Man on the Ladder desires to remark that the argument, as it has been megaphoned into our ears for the past three or four decades, that an increase of tax rate (whatever the nature of the tax), or a reduction of the tariff or selling rate would be “ruinous,” does not cut much kindling in his intellectual woodshed. It has been entirely a too common yodle either to interest or to instruct any intelligent man who has been watching the play and listening to the concert for forty years. This “ruinous” talk has been out of the cut glass, Louis XVI, Dore, Dolesche and other high-art classes ever since Mrs. Vanderbilt, as was alleged, discovered that Chauncey M. Depew was merely her husband’s servant, just as was her coachman.
If there is a congressional murmur or a legislative growl about cutting down a rail rate, the rail men immediately set the welkin a-ring with a howl about “ruin.” If someone rises with vocal noise enough to be heard in protest against paying 29 cents a pound for Belteschazzar’s “nut-fed,” “sugar-cured,” “embalmed” hams and insists that they should be on the market everywhere at not to exceed 23 cents, Bel. and his cohorts will immediately curdle all the milk in the country with a noise about ruin! ruin! RUIN!
If some statesman rises in his place and offers an amendment reducing the tariff on “K,” or cotton, or sugar; or providing that the government shall build two instead of four “first-class” battleships, the bugles are all turned loose tooting “ruin” for the “wool,” the “cotton,” the “shipbuilding” or other industry affected, as the case may be, and “ruin” will be spread and splattered in printers’ ink all over the country. No, your Man on the Ladder does not have much respect for this “ruin” talk, as it is usually “stumped” and “space-written” for us commoners in the industrial walks of life and in its marts of trade. But when he hears that warning sounded by men engaged in a business industry with which he himself is fairly familiar—a business he himself has several times had to put forth strenuous effort to “lighter” over financial shoals or “spar-off” monetary reefs—when it comes to talk of “ruin” among men engaged in the business of publishing periodical literature in this country, why, then, he gets down off the ladder and listens.
There are two special and specific reasons why every commoner—every earner—should listen to the publishers’ arguments in proof that Mr. Hitchcock’s proposal means ruin to many of them—some of even the strongest and best.
1. An increase of three hundred per cent, as the Postmaster General sought in his “rider” (though somewhat covertly), in the carriage cost and delivery (rail or other) of its product would ruin almost any established business there is in this country, if such increase was forced in the limited time named in that “rider.” A suddenly enforced increase of even one hundred per cent in the haulage and delivery cost of product would put hundreds of our most serviceable industries on the financial rocks.
2. A business man or a business industry that has been giving us thirty cents in manufacturing cost for our fifteen cents in cash is certainly deserving not only of a hearing but of a vigorous, robust, militant support.
That the periodical publishers of this country are doing just that thing—have been doing it for the past twelve to twenty years—no honest periodical reader who is at all familiar with the cost of production will attempt to deny.
That is sufficient reason for presenting here the “Exhibit E” of the publishers:
We point to the history of deficits in the Postoffice Department since 1879, when the pound rate of payment was established for second-class matter. The question at the head of this exhibit is answered by the successive changes in the size of the deficit, compared with coincident changes in the volume of second-class mail.
It will be seen that the largest percentage of deficit in the past 40 years occurred before the pound rate of 2 cents was, in 1879, established for second-class matter; that the percentage of deficit decreased with great rapidity as soon as second-class matter, under the stimulus of the new pound rate, began to increase rapidly; that this decrease in the deficit was accelerated after the second-class rate was lowered, in 1885, to the present rate of 1 cent a pound, and after second-class matter had increased beyond any figure hitherto dreamed of; that the decrease in percentage of deficit continued, coincidently with the increase in volume of second-class mail, until 1902, when large appropriations began for rural free delivery service. Then deficits began to grow as the specified loss on rural free delivery grew. In the last fiscal year, 1910, when the rural free delivery loss remained nearly stationary, as against 1909, the deficit decreased by approximately $11,500,000 to the lowest percentage but one in 27 years, although in this same year second-class matter made the largest absolute gain ever known, amounting to 98,000,000 pounds more than in 1909.
We submit that so many coincidences, taken over a whole generation, and observed in relation to the enormous production of profitable first-class postage through magazine advertising, raise the strongest presumption that the larger the volume of second-class mail becomes the more fully the postoffice plant is worked to its capacity in carrying newspapers and periodicals and the first and third class mail their advertising engenders, and the smaller becomes the deficit, other things being equal.
The other thing that is not equal is the new expenditures, unprofitable in the postoffice balance sheets for rural free delivery. According to the Postmaster General’s report there is in 1910 a surplus of over $23,000,000 outside the specific loss on rural free delivery. A chief reason why the Postoffice Department has this $29,000,000 to lose on rural free delivery is that periodical advertising, and the enormous postal business it generates, has long ago extinguished the deficit and given the huge surplus to spend for a beneficent but financially unprofitable purpose.
But one thing is proved beyond any shadow of doubt by this history of decreasing postoffice deficits and coincident increases in second-class mail, and that is, that the deficit can be reduced with an ever-increasing body of second-class mail, carried at one cent a pound. It can be, because the record shows it was.
Below is a fuller history of postoffice deficits and second-class increases:
THE FACTS AS TO DEFICITS AND SECOND-CLASS MATTER.
The annual reports of the Postmaster General are the authority for the following figures:
In the year 1870 there was a deficit in the operations of the United States Postoffice Department of 21.4 per cent of its turnover.
In 1879 there was passed the act that put second-class matter on a pound-payment basis. An immediate increase in second-class matter began.
In 1880 there was a deficit in the postoffice operations of only 9.6 per cent of its business.
In 1885 was passed the law that made the rate for second-class matter 1 cent a pound, which still further increased second-class mail. It trebled in the decade preceding 1890.
In 1890 the deficit in the operations of the Postoffice Department was 8.8 per cent.
The next decade brought a much larger increase in second-class matter than any previous 10 years—from 174,053,910 pounds in 1890 to 382,538,999 pounds in 1900.
The deficit in the postoffice operations in the year 1900 was 5.2 per cent of its business.
In the prosperous years following 1900 the increase of second-class matter was stupendous; from 382,538,999 pounds in 1900 to 488,246,903 pounds in 1902, only two years. The increase of advertising in the magazines was even greater than the increase in second-class matter. These years brought the great forward movement in the production of low priced but well edited magazines, made possible by large advertising incomes, and also in the increase in circulation by extensive combination book offers, and so-called “clubbing” arrangements, by which the subscriber could purchase three or more magazines together at a lower price than the aggregate of their list prices.
In 1901 there was a deficit in the postoffice operations of only 3.5 per cent of its business.
In 1902 the deficit for the postoffice operations was 2.4 per cent, the smallest percentage of deficit in 18 years and the smallest but two in 40 years.
RURAL FREE DELIVERY STEPS IN.
But in this year is seen for the first time, in important proportions, a new item of expense, $4,000,000 for rural free delivery. Our government had wisely and beneficently extended the service of the postoffice to farmers in isolated communities, regardless of the expense of so doing. The report of the Postmaster General for 1902 says: “It will be seen that had it not been for the large expenditure on account of rural free delivery, the receipts would have exceeded the expenditures by upward of $1,000,000.”
It will be clear, from these figures, which are taken from the reports of the Postmaster General, that beginning with the advent of the second-class pound-rate system, the deficit of the postoffice has steadily declined, the rate of decrease being always coincident with the expansion of circulation and advertising of periodicals, until in 1902 there was a substantial surplus, which the government wisely saw fit to use for a purpose not related to the needs of magazines and periodicals or to their expansion.
A REAL SURPLUS OF OVER $74,000,000 IN NINE YEARS.
Since 1902 there has always been a surplus in the operations of the Postoffice Department, outside of the money the Government has seen fit to expend for rural free delivery, (wisely, and otherwise wastefully.) In the present year, 1910, the report of the Postmaster General shows a surplus of over $23,000,000 outside the loss on the rural free delivery service of $29,000,000. The years 1902 to 1910 have each shown a surplus in the postoffice profit and loss account, the nine years aggregating over $74,000,000, outside the actual loss on the rural free delivery system.
How enormously second-class mail aids the department’s finances by originating profitable first-class postage can be appreciated by referring to the specific examples in Exhibit F.
It should be borne in mind that the turning of large deficits into actual surpluses, which has come coincidently with the expansion of second-class mail, of circulation pushing, and of advertising, has come in spite of an enormous expansion in governmental mail, carried free, and Congressional mail, franked, which has not been credited to the postoffice at all in calculating the actual surplus shown above.
Next the publishers come forward with “Exhibit F.” Their “Exhibit F” is not merely an “exhibit.” It is an exhibition, with a three-ring circus, a menagerie and moving pictures as a “side.” Candidly, I am of the opinion that it was this “Exhibit F” of the publishers which induced our friend, the Postmaster General, to loosen the clutch on his mental gear.
Of course, it is possible Mr. Hitchcock did not, nor has not, read this “F” of the publishers. If such a misfortune has cast its shadow across his promising career, I regret it.
“Why?”
Well, to anyone anxiously interested in dissipating, or removing, the federal postoffice “deficit,” the reading of the publishers’ “F” should be most entertaining.
That F of the publishers most certainly presents some facts which any man, unless he is a fool, as some descriptive artist has appropriately put it, in an “elaborate, broad, beautiful and comprehensive sense,” must appreciate.
Senator Owen introduced “Exhibit F” of the publishers in necessarily, and of course, dignified form—a form in keeping with the exalted position he holds and worthily fills. Your uncle on the ladder, however, is not, as you may possibly have already discovered, restrained by any code de luxe as to his forms of speech or as to their edge.
The publishers in their Exhibit “F” show and, as I have said, show conclusively, that the advertising pages in periodicals (newspapers or other), are the pages which support—which pay the bills—of the Postoffice Department of these United States.
I would ask the reader to keep that last statement in mind, for, in spite of the Postmaster General’s voluminous, cushion-tired conversation and automatic comptometer figuring, the publishers furnish ample evidence in proof that the statement just made is safe and away inside the truth.
Oh, yes, of course, I remember that Solomon or some other wise man of ancient times has said “all men are liars.” That was possibly, even probably, true of the men of his day. It may also be admitted without prejudice, I trust, to either party to this case, that there is a numerous body of trousered liars scattered in and along the various walks of life even at this late date. So, there appears to be no valid reason nor grounds to question the veracity of Solomon, or whoever the ancient witness was, when he testified, to the best of his knowledge and belief, that all men are prevaricators. However, I desire in this connection to have the reader understand that The Man on the Ladder is of the opinion there are a few men on earth now, whatever the condition and proclivities of their remote ancestors may have been, who have an ingrown desire or predisposition to tell the truth.
This view of the genus homo is warranted, if indeed not supported, by the plainly and frequently observed fact that in almost every recorded instance where the truth serves a purpose better than a lie, the truth gets into the testimony.
The Man on the Ladder also believes there are men—bunches of men—in this our day who will tell us the truth whether they can afford to do so or not.
I have given this “aside,” if the reader will kindly so consider it, to the end of calling to his attention two points, namely:
First, There are probably just as many truth tellers, likewise liars, in the world today as there were in olden times.
Second, There is probably just as high a moral code—just as high a standard and practice of veracity—among the periodical publishers of this country as there is among officials of the Federal Postoffice Department.
I am of opinion that few, indeed, among my readers will be found to question the fairness of that statement. Especially will they not question it when they take into consideration the fact that pages of the publishers’ testimony were under oath, or jurat.
CHAPTER VII.
POSTAL REVENUES FROM ADVERTISING.
Now, the Postmaster General’s whole talk—his whole word-splutter—was, it seems, to create an impression that the government was losing millions annually because of the large amount of advertising matter distributed by magazines and other periodicals.
On the other hand, the publishers in their “Exhibit F,” and elsewhere, try to show, and in the writer’s opinion do show quite conclusively and dependably, that the excess of expenditure over receipts in the Postoffice Department would be two to four times greater than it now is were it not for the first, third and fourth class revenues resulting directly from those advertising pages in our periodical literature.
Before giving these publishers a chance to tell the truth, as presented in their “Exhibit F,” I desire to make a few remarks about the point under consideration—the profits to the government from periodical advertising.
The publishers present the evidence of their counting-rooms—the inside testimony. I desire to present some outside testimony.
I may present it in an awkward, raw way, but I have a conceit that the “jury” will give it consideration.
Three months ago, there was a “party at our house.” No, it was not a bridge party. Mrs. M. On The L. has, in my visual range, I can here assure you, many commendable virtues—meritorious qualities and qualifications. Likewise, she has some faults. The latter I cannot, if the dove of peace is to continue perching on our domicile lodge pole, mention here. I may, however, say with entire safety, that “bridge” and alleged similar feminine amusements are not among them.
The party to which I advert was a “tea.” The guests were six,—Mrs. M. On The L. serving. The guests not only had “the run” of the house, but they took possession of it. I stuck to my “den” until it was invaded and then—well, then, my dear trousered reader, I did precisely what you would have done. I backed off—I surrendered.
“What was the result?”
In this particular case, the chief feature of the result was that these seven women, in less than ten minutes, had appropriated every copy of all the latest, and some a month or more old, of the magazines and weeklies about my work-shop. They also annexed me. I “just had to go downstairs and have a cup of tea with them.” Although I am not entrancingly fond of tea, I did exactly what you would have done. I went. Necessarily, I had to be good. I was good. I said—as near as I knew how—the things that were proper to say and as near the proper time as I could. That is, I said little and listened much.
It is of what I heard—and afterward learned—I wish here to speak. I wish to speak of it because it fits like a glove to the point the publishers make in their “Exhibit F,” which is to follow.
While the hostess was preparing and spreading luncheon—a necessary concomitant of all “teas,” other than mentioned in novels—the six guests scanned the magazines and talked magazines. From their conversation it appeared that five of the six took, either by subscription or news-stand purchase, one or two monthly magazines “regularly.” Whether the ladies read them or not was not made clear to me. One of them did make mention of two “splendid stories”—“The Ne’er do Well,” by Rex Beach, and, at the time of the “tea,” appearing, in serial, in one of the monthlies. The other was a short story entitled “The Quitters,” which, the lady stated, had appeared in one of the magazines some time previous.
Now, so far as I can recall, the reference made by this one of the six ladies was the only mention made of the “literary” features of the magazines they had read or to such features of those they were examining. There was considerable talk and attention given to the body illustrations.
In calling such stories as the lady mentioned “literary” I presume apologies are due the Penrose-Overstreet Commission. While both the stories are “brand-new,” are well written, each teaching a lesson—have, in short, all the essential elements of “currency and periodicity”—yet that commission, in the anxious interest it displayed to secure “a general exclusion act” against fiction in periodicals, would, possibly, see nothing of literary merit in either of the stories the lady mentioned.
I shall, however, offer no apologies to the commission for classing the two stories as literature and of exemplary currency. On a previous page I have given my reasons for differing from the commission on its strictures on current fiction as run in our standard monthlies and weeklies. The lady’s expressed opinion of the two stories is another reason for differing from that expressed by the commission. In my judgment, the lady who spoke has a broader, juster and far more comprehending knowledge of literature—of its merits and demerits, whether fiction, historical, biographical or classic—than has any member of that commission.
But to return to our tea party. Those six ladies scanned and thumbed through my magazines. As said, there was comparatively little talk or comment about the body-matter of the periodicals. But those women—all married, five of them mothers, two of them (three, counting the hostess), grandmothers—gave fully three-fourths of their time to the advertising pages.
But that is not all. Their scanning of the advertising pages of those periodicals developed some business action. The business talk started when one lady called attention to the “ad” of a military school in a town in Wisconsin, “where Thomas attends,” Thomas being her son. It developed that the lady seated next to her had a son Charles whom it was desired to start in some preparatory school in the fall. Another matron had a daughter she desired to have take a course at some school for girls. Both of the ladies with candidates for preparatory courses, however, were of the opinion that all the “good schools” appeared to be in the East and each would prefer to send her son or daughter to some school nearer home. To this opinion the mother of the boy attending the Wisconsin school earnestly protested.
“We have just as good preparatory schools, colleges and universities in the West as they have in the East,” she declared. “My boy is doing splendidly at the——, Wisconsin. He has been there two terms now. If you don’t want to send Charles to a military school, there are a score or more of excellent schools for either boys or girls in the West and South—some of them right near us, too. Just look here!”——
And then began a scurrying through the school “ad” pages of three or four of the magazines for the names and locations of preparatory schools. The advertisements of a number were found.
“Take the names and addresses and write all of them for their catalogues or prospectuses or pamphlets, giving the courses of study that pupils may take, the advantages they offer and other information. That’s what I did before deciding where to send Thomas. I wrote twenty-two different military schools in the country and got a prompt reply from each of them. In fact some of them wrote me four or five times, besides sending their little printed books which gave their courses of study and set forth the special advantages their students enjoyed.”
Of course, it was Thomas’ mother who spoke. Her suggestion, however, gripped the rails at once. The two matrons with children to place in preparatory schools asked for pencil and paper. I relieved them of the immediate labor of writing out their lists, by gallantly inviting them to take home with them such of the magazines as they thought would serve their purpose, and, as they were near neighbors, they could scan them at their leisure and address directly from the advertisements. I lost three of my favorite magazines on my tender.
“This has no bearing on the point!” Eh? Well, let us see about that.
Of course, I do not know what the mothers of that son and daughter who were to be started in preparatory school work did. It is safe to presume however, that they adopted the plan suggested by Thomas’ mother. We know what she did. At any rate we have her own statement of the course she pursued, and there can be advanced no valid reason for doubting her word. Besides, as she is our “next-door” neighbor, I have made, within the month, special inquiry of her as to what she did. I found that she had kept the catalogues of the schools to which she had written and had carefully “filed” in a twined package, as a careful housekeeper usually files things, every letter she had received from the schools.
More than that: She wrote nine of the schools a second letter and three of them, she wrote four times. To the Wisconsin school to which she finally intrusted the training and instruction of her son she wrote six times.
Now let us see what revenue the federal postal fund actually received from this one mother in her efforts to place her boy in a good, safe school.
First the mother herself wrote forty-five letters. On these the Postoffice Department collected 90 cents.
Second, her “twine file” shows that, all told, she had received from the twenty-two schools written to, a total of 163 letters. On these the government collected $3.26.
Third, the catalogues sent her were of various sizes. Their carriage charge, at third-class rates, I think would range from two to six cents or more. Putting the average at only three cents, which in my judgment is low, the government collected for their carriage 66 cents.
Fourth, thirteen of the schools, either not knowing her boy had been matriculated or thinking she might have other boys “comin’ on” to preparatory school age, sent her their catalogues for the following year—another 39 cents.
Add those four items and you will readily ascertain that the government received $5.21 in revenue from the efforts of Thomas’ mother to select a school for him—a school that would give him military training and discipline, as well as academic instruction in selected studies.
Her course of action was prompted entirely by the school advertisements she saw in two magazines.
How many other mothers and fathers were influenced to similar action by the three or four school “ad” pages in those two magazines I do not know. There must, however, have been many, I take it, otherwise the schools and preparatory colleges would not persist in advertising so extensively, year after year, during the summer months, in our high-class monthly and weekly periodicals.
The two magazines from which Thomas’ mother got her school address weighed a little under a pound each. If they reached her by mail, the government got only about two cents for their carriage and delivery, which was ample pay—$20.00 a ton—for the service. But supposing Mr. Hitchcock’s wild figures were correct—that it cost the government 18 cents to deliver those two magazines to that mother—a rate of $180.00 per ton. Of course, no man could so suppose unless he stood on his head in one corner of a room and figured results as the square of the distance at which things appeared to him, or chanced to be one of those “blessed” mortals prenatally endowed with what may be called mental strabismus. But for the sake of the argument, let us suppose that it did cost the government 18 cents to deliver those two magazines to Thomas’ mother; let us admit that that falsehood is fact, that that foolishness is sense. Then what?
A magazine weighing one pound and printed on the grade of paper used by our high-class periodicals will count 250 or more pages. Four pages of school “ads,” therefore, would count for about one-fourth of one ounce.
Even at Mr. Hitchcock’s absurd figure of nine cents a pound, the cost to the government of carrying those four pages of school advertisements in each of two monthly magazines to the mother of Thomas was less than four-fifths of one cent.
Do you grasp the point?
Remember, Mr. Hitchcock has separated himself from much talk to show to a doubting public that it is the advertising pages of periodicals which over-burden the postal service and are responsible, largely, for the alleged “deficit.”
I say “alleged” deficit. I say so, because it is not, and never was, a deficit de facto. I shall later give my reasons for so saying—shall show that this much talked of deficit in the Postoffice Department’s revenues is quasi only—a mere matter of accounting, and bad accounting at that.
But here we are considering the cost to the government of carrying and delivering advertising pages to the reading public of this Nation. Especially are we considering the transaction between the government and the mother of Thomas—a transaction induced and promoted by eight pages of advertising—four pages in each of two magazines.
As just stated, it cost the government less than four-fifths of one cent, even if we rate the carriage and delivery cost at Postmaster General Hitchcock’s absurd figure of nine cents a pound, to deliver those eight pages of school advertisement to Thomas’ mother. Even the delivery of the complete magazines which printed those advertising pages would, at Mr. Hitchcock’s own figures, cost the government only about 18 cents. Let’s admit it all—the worst of it, and the worst possible construction that the worst will stand. Then how does the government stand in relation to the resultant transaction—the transaction induced by those eight pages of advertising?
It cost the government 18 cents, according to Mr. Hitchcock’s method of hurdle estimating, to deliver those two magazines to Thomas’ mother. Well, let it go at that. The government is out, then, 16 cents, the publisher having paid in 2 cents at the present pound rate for mail carriage and delivery.
On the other hand, those two magazines each carried four pages of school “ads.” Those “ads” start Thomas’ mother into a canvass of the schools by correspondence. The result of that canvass, as previously shown, turned into the government’s treasury a gross revenue of $5.21 for postage stamps to cover the first and third-class business resulting.
The government, then, is $5.05 ahead so far as gross receipts and gross revenues are concerned, and it is ahead that sum, in the specific transaction under consideration, solely and only because of those eight pages of school advertisements printed in the two magazines.
Is that not a fair—a just—statement?
As Mr. Hitchcock states that there is a large profit to the government for the stamps sold and as that $5.21 was all for stamps, then those eight pages of advertisements and Thomas’ mother must have turned into the postal fund a handsome net profit on the service rendered by the Postoffice Department.
Now, I desire to return to our “tea.” Two other “business” actions developed which serve to prove the statement made on a previous page, namely: It is the advertising pages of our periodicals which yield the largest revenue to the government for the postal service it renders.
The first of the two postal revenue-producers came up as we sat at luncheon. Each of the ladies had a magazine or weekly in hand. There was as much talking as eating in progress, or more. I presume that is the proper procedure or practice at “tea” luncheons. I am not a competent authority on “tea” proprieties.
One of the ladies “had the floor,” so to speak, and expatiated eloquently and at length on the merits of an electrically heated flat-iron or sad-iron, an advertisement of which she had found in the magazine she was scanning—a cloth smoother she had had in use for some three months. Three of the other matrons were wired—that is, their homes were electrically lighted. The others were getting their domiciliary illumination from what is vulgarly designated as the “Chicago Gas Trust,” at 85 cents per.
“Results?” Three of the assembled party desired to write for “full particulars” about that flat-iron at once.
My boss furnished paper, envelopes, pens and ink. My assigned duty in this business transaction was both simple and secondary. The boss ordered me to go over to the drug store, buy the stamps and mail those three letters.
I did so.
The government got six cents postal revenue from me on that sad-iron “ad.” What further revenue was gleaned from the correspondence between the three ladies and the flat-iron manufacturer I know not.
It took me a long time to reach that drug-store—a short block away—buy the stamps, “lick ’em,” stick them on the envelopes and drop those three letters into the mail-box just outside the druggist’s door. At any rate, the ladies so informed me when I got back. They did it politely, kindly, but very plainly. Not wishing to scarify their feelings by admitting that I had purposely loitered because of an inherent or pre-natal dislike of teas, I did what I thought was the proper thing to do under the stress of impinging circumstances—I lied like a gentleman. I told the ladies that the druggist happened to be out of two-cent stamps and had sent out for them—sent to another drug store for them.
“How unfortunate!” exclaimed one of the party. “We want a lot more stamps. We have each written for a sample of these new biscuits. We have to enclose ten cents in stamps and the letters will have to be stamped. That’s eighty-four cents in stamps and we want to get the letters into the mail tonight.”
Then I was shown the advertisement of the desired “biscuits.” In the good old summer time of our earthly residence, “when life and love were young,” we called such mercantile pastry “crackers.” Mother baked all the biscuits we then ate, or somebody else’s mother baked them. Of course, sometimes Mary, Susie, Annie, Jane or another of the dear girls learned the trick and could “bake as good as mother.” Then she baked the biscuits. And they were biscuits. Now, every cracker is a biscuit, and every biscuit one gets smells and tastes of the bakeshop where it was foundried.
But that is entirely aside from our subject. The “ad”—a full page—set forth the super-excellence of some recently invented or devised cracker—“biscuit,” if you prefer so to call it. It was an attractively designed and well-written “ad.” The advertiser offered to send a regular-size package of the “biscuits” to anyone on receipt of ten cents in stamps—“enough to cover the postage”—and the name of the grocer with whom the sender of the stamps traded. That, in brief, was the “ad” offer, and each of the ladies wanted those biscuits—my boss as anxious to sample them as any of the others. On a corner of the luncheon table in symmetrical, pyramidal array, was 84 cents in miscellaneous change.
Before it came my turn to speak, Mrs. M. On The L. gave me a scrutinizing look—a censorious look—a look that said, “I know where you have been,” and took the floor. She did not rise in taking it either.
“Oh, he can get the stamps. Take that change and these letters. You can go to some other drug store and get the stamps. Put ten cents in stamps in each envelope and then seal and mail the letters.”
That’s the speech the boss made.
I should be ashamed to admit it, but I am not. There are limits to the endurance of even such a temperate-zone nature as that of the writer. The boss’ speech reached the limit. My patriotism was set all awry. Even my earnest desire to reduce the “deficit” in the postal service was, for the moment, forgotten—was submerged.
I took the 84 cents those friendly ladies had pooled on “biscuits” and the seven unsealed letters, assuring them I would certainly find the stamps. I then went up to my den, unlocked a drawer of my desk, found the stamps, made the enclosures, stamped and sealed the envelopes, and then came down and passed out on my assigned errand. I got back just as the “party” was donning its hat to depart for its several homes, assured it that its orders had been carried out, and, by direction of the boss, escorted home one of its members who had some distance to walk.
Now, I think I did my whole duty to that tea-party, and more than my duty to reduce the postal “deficit.”
I trust the “dear reader” will not have concluded or even thought that I am trying to be funny or humorous, nor even ludicrous. I have been writing of actual occurrences, and writing the facts, too, of those occurrences, as nearly as I can recall them after an interval of less than three months. I introduce the de facto happenings at our “tea party” here because they apply—because they illustrate, they evidence, they prove that the advertising pages of our periodicals are the pages which produce a large part, if indeed, not the larger part of our postal service revenues.
But we must look after our “biscuits” a little further.
The seven women at that tea party spent 84 cents for stamps to get a sample of those crackers. Fourteen cents of these stamps went to cancellation on the letters they mailed. The other 70 cents went to cancellation on the cracker packages which the cracker inventor sent them—cancelled at the fourth-class rate—cancelled at the postal carriage rate of sixteen cents a pound.
Is that all? No it is not all. It is only the first link in a postal revenue producing chain.
The manufacturer of that cracker or biscuit, as you may choose to call it, wrote each of those seven ladies a neat letter of thanks, and neatly giving a further boost to the biscuit. I know this because I have seen the seven letters—all “stock form” letters.
That contributed 14 cents more in postage stamps for cancellation.
Three of the ladies heard from that cracker baker four times. Their grocers probably had not put the cracker in stock. My boss got a second letter from the baker.
That contributed 20 cents more in postage stamps for cancellation.
The advertiser sent by mail to each of the seven grocers the ladies had named a sample package of the “biscuits” and a letter naming the local grocery jobber or jobbers through whom stock could be had, the jobber’s price of it, etc.
That contributed 84 cents more in postage stamps for cancellation.
Nor is that all. My boss’ grocer got three letters from that cracker baker and a visit from a salesman of a local jobber before he “stocked.” If the grocers named by the other six ladies were similarly honored then the builder of those biscuits must have written the seven grocers whom the tea party ladies had named fourteen letters in addition to the first one.
That contributed 28 cents more in postage stamps for cancellation.
Now let us figure up—or down—how one tea party of seven (I was the working or “worked” member, so am not to be counted in), and a one page “ad” stands in account with the postal revenues.
The magazine carrying the cracker “ad” weighs about a pound. The single “ad” page cannot possibly weigh more than three-fiftieths of one ounce. To carry and deliver that one “ad” page the cost to the government, then, even at Mr. Hitchcock’s extension-ladder rate of 9 cents a pound, would be about one-thirtieth of one cent.
But as we did in the case of the school advertisements previously mentioned, let’s give our Postmaster General the whole “hullin’ uv beans.” Let us credit the government with Mr. Hitchcock’s alleged cost of carrying that magazine to that tea party—nine cents.
Per contra, the government must give that “ad” page credit for producing stamp cancellations to the amount of $2.30.
Figure it out yourself and see if that is not the actual showing of the ledger on this account of the Postoffice Department with that one “ad” page and those seven tea party women.
That, I believe, is fair and sufficient evidence from the outside—from the field—in support of the facts which the publishers present in their “Exhibit F,” and which I shall here reprint:
The astonishing record contained in (Exhibit E), of the absolutely unvarying coincidence of decreases in postoffice deficits with increases in second-class mail is square up against the Postmaster General’s statements that the department loses 8.23 cents on every pound of second-class mail and loses over $60,000,000 a year as a whole, on second-class mail.
What is the explanation? How can the phenomenon of constantly decreasing deficits, coincident with increasing second-class mail, be reconciled? To be sure, the Postmaster General has been trying for two years to make out a case against the magazines, and nothing is better understood than that, under orders, he is using all the figures and the infinite opportunities of such a complex mass of figures as those of the postoffice, to make the case for the magazines as bad as possible. Of course, it does not cost the department 9.23 cents a pound for second-class matter; but also, of course, in all probability, the cost must be more than one-ninth Postmaster General Hitchcock’s figures. Then why is it that the more second-class matter there is mailed the more money the Postoffice Department has?
The answer is that the advertising in the periodicals, the very advertising the Administration is trying to drive out of existence, is far and away the most important creator of profitable first-class postage that exists. That, furthermore, the varied and constant efforts of publishers to extend the circulation of their periodicals by sending out tens of millions of circulars, each making for a 2-cent reply, and the great and complex business that has been built up around the originating and handling of advertising have made this national market for reputable wares—a market where the purchasing is done by mail with 2-cent stamps—the stamps that pay the Postoffice Department’s bills and give it $23,000,000 a year to spend over and above receipts from rural free delivery, in advancing that splendid service for the country dweller.
There were published in 1909 in fifty American magazines 12,859,138 lines of advertising, for over 5,000 advertisers, who used over 25,000 different advertisements, and it is obviously impossible physically to tabulate complete results. But let us nail down certain specific examples of advertisements inserted in magazines, and follow the record right through, of the work they did for the postoffice, the expense they put the postoffice to, and the profit they brought it.
These score or more of specific instances tell the whole story. Read, especially, the first instance—the complete bookkeeping transaction of one magazine advertisement in account with the United States postoffice:
A MAGAZINE ADVERTISEMENT IN ACCOUNT WITH THE UNITED STATES POST OFFICE.
In the Saturday Evening Post of November 26, 1910, was published a 224-line advertisement of the Review of Reviews.
Three thousand seven hundred replies were received, 1,776 of them inclosing each 10 cents in first-class postage.
The paper on which this advertisement was printed weighed 0.132815 ounce. The half of it printed with the advertisement weighed 0.06640625 ounce.
One million seventy thousand copies of the Saturday Evening Post were sent through the United States mails, so that the postoffice transported 4,440.9 pounds of this advertisement. At 9.23 cents per pound—the pound cost of transporting and handling second-class matter given by the Postoffice Department—the total cost of giving the postoffice services to this advertisement was $409.90; postage paid at 1 cent a pound, $44.41; loss to postoffice, $365.49.
THE POSTOFFICE’S GROSS AND NET GAIN FROM FIRST-CLASS POSTAGE CREATED.
MORE SPECIFIC EXAMPLES OF PROFITABLE POSTAGE ORIGINATED BY MAGAZINE ADVERTISING.
Names of concerns are withheld here. The original documents on which these statements rest are in the possession of the postal committee of the Periodical Publishers’ Association, 156 Fifth Avenue, New York City. These are only a few samples of hundreds that have come, and are printed to suggest the details of the methods by which national magazine advertising far more than pays its way when sent out through America at 1 cent a pound second-class postal rate.
“Mr. E. W. Hazen, Advertising Director.
“Dear Mr. Hazen: During the year 1910 we paid the Postoffice Department for carrying our first, third and fourth class mail matter the sum of $496,749.88. We shipped during the year 1910, 1,717,514 packages. Of these 809,781 were sent by mail and 907,733 by express. All of these would have been sent by parcels post if the postal rates and regulations permitted. We paid the express companies for the transportation of the packages referred to above $347,392.30.”
The above statement covers only mail matter sent out of this house. The figures given are accurate. Any statement of the number of pieces of mail matter which we receive would be approximate, but we can safely state that it was in excess of 4,500,000 pieces of first-class mail matter. This estimate is entirely conservative.
Here is another postal bill of one of the many great “mail order” magazine advertisers—a company which sells excellent clothing to women who can not come to the great cities and their department stores. The president of the company writes:
“As we are a mail-order concern, our business is derived entirely, either directly or indirectly, from our magazine advertising. During the year 1909 we paid the Postoffice Department for carrying our first, third and fourth class mail matter the sum of $433,242.”
What an advertisement in one issue of one magazine did for another women’s “wearing apparel” house is recorded in their books as follows:
The postage required to answer the 15,000 replies from the one-column insertion in the magazine, also to send the merchandise required by 2,000 of the inquirers, also to “follow up” other inquirers, etc., amounted to $5,460.
The government charge for carrying this advertisement through the second-class mails was $38.83.
That $5,460, by the way, did not include the several hundred dollars spent on postage by the inquirers themselves.
The president of a concern which publishes encyclopedias, natural histories, classics, etc., investigated the relations with the postoffice of a recent page of his advertising inserted in a single magazine, and the correspondence which resulted.
The stamps and money orders bought by the inquirers and by the publishing company, as the result of the 4,000 answers to this one advertisement, amounted to $884.
The publishers paid the postoffice to carry that page, at second-class rate, $12.
Thus, even if it had not already been disproved that the second-class rate is insufficient, it would still have been mightily unfortunate for the department’s business if that page advertisement had not appeared. A good business man would be willing to lose several times $12 in order to do $884 worth of business as profitable to himself as first-class mail is to the government.
Scores of apparently small advertisers are found in any issue of any popular magazine. They are just as good customers to the postoffice, in proportion, as the big concerns using columns or pages.
ONE INCH—$5,492 STAMPS A YEAR.
A modest 1-inch magazine advertisement is printed by a company, which reports that its yearly postage account from that cause is $5,132. Adding the approximate postage on the 1,500 letters a month sent to the company, the yearly total of postage created by this inconspicuous concern through the magazine is found to be $5,492.
ONE-HALF INCH—$590 A MONTH.
A half-inch magazine space is used each month by a certain electric manufacturing company in the Middle West, but its postage records show stamp purchases for a single month (November, 1909), resulting from that half-inch advertisement of $590.
| Two quarter-column announcements of a dress fabric, appealing to women, in a single magazine, brought 7,000 replies, involving postage stamps worth | $230.00 |
| Pretty good business getters for the department? These “ads” cost the publishers to mail, at second-class rates | 19.40 |
| Even better, in proportion, was a one-fifth-column appeal to mothers in one issue of the same magazine. It produced postage to the amount of | 240.00 |
| To carry the little advertisement at second-class rates the government charged | 7.76 |
| A single-column magazine “ad” of a Chicago clothing firm, with a number of retail stores over the country, brought 4,000 inquiries which, with the following up, etc., caused postage of | 380.00 |
| That column cost the publisher to mail, at second-class rates | 38.67 |
| The Woman’s Home Companion sent a letter to the advertisers in its November issue, asking for a memorandum of the letter postage on the inquiries from their November advertising and the answers to these inquiries. Seventy-five advertisers reported, with definite figures, an aggregate letter-postage expenditure of | $3,385.90 |
The Woman’s Home Companion paid the government just $583 for carrying that portion of the magazine on which these 75 advertisements were printed.
Any advertising man can point to hundreds of “mail-order firms” like the above. These firms can trace directly to their magazine advertising, every year, purchases of millions of dollars’ worth of the stamps that make big profits for the postoffice.
It is even more surprising to learn the enormous postage bills caused by an entirely different class of magazine advertisers—the “general publicity,” or “national” advertisers—who wish the reader to ask for their fine soaps, or mattresses, or silks, or stationery at his local store. These firms do not depend on direct replies, yet they receive so many that thousands of dollars are spent for stamps per year in scores of cases—even per month in many.
EVEN THE “GENERAL” OR “PUBLICITY” MAGAZINE ADVERTISING CREATES ENORMOUS STAMP SALES.
A moderate-priced shoe is sold through a number of retail stores in different cities. The manufacturers advertise in magazines for national “publicity,” to bring buyers into these stores. Incidentally they mention their department to fill orders by mail. Thus an enormous correspondence has been built up, of which the average annual increase alone during the last three years has involved 264,000 first-class letters—a minimum postage of $5,280. This is simply one yearly addition to the company’s already first-class business, of which it writes that “all but a nominal percentage” has been “induced by our magazine advertisements.”
More than $15,000 was spent for postage by a mattress manufacturer last year, “following up” inquiries received from his magazine advertising, though it is designed to create a demand for the mattress at local furniture stores.
This $15,000 is over and above his steady correspondence with dealers, etc., which was built up in the first place by magazine advertising.
One of the many recent “contests” conducted by magazine advertisers was that of a stationery company. Theirs is also “publicity,” not mail-order advertising. It is designed to create a demand for their paper over the stationery store counters. But their “contest” awhile ago, announced exclusively in the magazines, brought 59,000 replies, which, with follow-up, etc., averaged 12 cents first-class postage—a total of $7,080 in one month.
Here is still another “publicity” experience. In the course of familiarizing women with a new trade-mark for silk by means of magazine advertising, the manufacturers incurred postage bills, during the first 11 months of 1909, amounting to $7,979.75. About $2,000 more ought to be added to represent the stamps purchased by the prospective silk-dress wearers themselves.
Magazine advertisements of a popular cold cream brought 170,000 letters to the manufacturers last year, though the controlling purpose of the campaign was to get the public to ask for that kind of cold cream at the drug stores.
Not including postal orders, special-delivery stamps, etc., the stamp revenue to the government from these letters was $8,500. And, of course, that does not include the profuse correspondence between the manufacturers, the jobbers, the drug stores all over the country, and so on.
| For another toilet preparation a single advertisement in a leading weekly magazine brought more than 13,000 replies. The stamps involved here add up to | $990.00 |
| The publishers paid the postoffice to carry this advertisement, at the second-class rate | 48.83 |
| A household remedy, seen in most drug stores, was mentioned to the extent of one-quarter page in a single issue of one magazine. The requests for samples numbered 1,685. The postage involved was | 202.20 |
Another “drug store” preparation frequently brings the manufacturer 2,000 to 6,000 letters each month from their magazine advertising of it, though that is, of course, for “publicity,” first of all. A single insertion last fall brought 12,000 inquiries, which created, first and last, the purchase of $750 in stamps.
A system of physical culture for women put quarter pages in several magazines during the month of November, from which 3,905 letters were received. In this case, the total postage, including follow-up and correspondence back and forth, was $1,104.09 for that month of November alone.
Narrow limits would be expected in the demand for expensive silverage. Yet a silversmith’s two advertisements in the November and December magazines brought 45,000 requests for catalogues. These had already involved by January 13, with the following up, etc., a postage bill of $5,510.
Another big postage bill was also incurred, incidentally, by a company which uses magazine advertising to bring buyers into drug stores, etc., asking for certain shaving soaps and the like. Still their postage bill during 1909, as a result of inquiries from their advertising, was $3,656.08. This does not include the stamps bought by the inquirers—probably $1,000 more.
| A similar soap was described in a page advertisement which, printed in one magazine one time, brought more than 30,000 letters. First-class postage on them and the answers to them aggregated more than | $900.00 |
| The charge for carrying that page, at the second-class rate, was about | 120.00 |
THE LARGE STAMP PURCHASES OF ENTIRE BUSINESSES DEPEND ON MAGAZINE ADVERTISING.
All the above examples are of postage sales caused by magazine advertising directly, in point of time. Just as directly caused are the sales for correspondence between manufacturer, jobber, retailer, agent, etc., in the many businesses that have been built up by magazine advertising.
A camera company writes: “There is a magnificent revenue to the government through our correspondence with these dealers, through their correspondence with their customers, and through their sending our printed matter, furnished by us, at a postage cost of $100, and such dealer could not afford to go to this expense were it not for the fact that this local advertising which he does is backed up by our general magazine publicity.”
This one result of magazine work is figured by the company at tens of thousands of dollars every year in postage.
The postage-stamp revenue created by magazine advertising keeps on for months, and years even, between the advertiser and the consumer, in cases like correspondence schools, for instance.
One prominent company writes that it not only spends $429 per month in postage, answering inquiries which themselves account for about $100 more, but that it enrolls per month more than 2,200 new scholars—and every scholar, by the time he has received all his numerous “lessons,” etc., costs the school about $3.50 more in postage. Thus each month creates about $7,700 more in postage bills for this school, not counting nearly as much again which the scholars must spend.
“Our advertising,” writes a leading investment banker, “by reason of names being placed on our mailing list for circulation, etc., costs us several thousand dollars a year for postage, which would not be the case if we were not doing and had done advertising.”
In fact, there would be little left of the department’s profitable postage stamp sales were the big magazine houses crippled. The publishers are the largest buyers of lists of names used for circulation. To circularize these lists many millions of 2-cent stamps are bought every year.
“Our entire mail order book business,” writes a Western firm, “has been built up through magazine advertising. Last year our postal bill amounted to $12,298.57. This was used on circular matter and letters. If the circulation of the magazines should be reduced, and it is our opinion that it would be if the postage rate should be increased, our postage bill would be reduced proportionately.”
There is much more to be said in support of my contention that the advertising pages of our periodicals are their revenue-producing pages, but it cannot now here be said, as I must pass to another division of our general subject.
We have devoted most of our previous space to Mr. Hitchcock’s “rider,” to the influences and influencers that originated it and tried to push it—by methods adroit and scrupulously unscrupulous—into federal enactment—into operative law. At this point of our presentation of the general subject of Postal Riders and Raiders, it was my original intention to take up generally the raider features or elements as planned for discussion in this volume. I intended to start just here to discuss the Postoffice Department “deficit,” of which Mr. Hitchcock has had so much to say—and of which he made voluminous and eloquent use during his efforts to bring his “rider” a safe winner under the wire. I intended, as just said, to begin to write about the postal “deficit” just here—a deficit which never had real existence, since the days of the “pony post” and “mail coach,” save in quasi form—in methods covering political lootage and looters.
Well, I have changed my original plan a little. I’ll run a few lines through that “deficit”—twaddle-talk, a little further on. Here I will merely repeat what I have already said, in substance at least.
There never has been a postal deficit since the period I have indicated, save deficits created by official crooks and crookedness, by “interests” which hired the official crooks and bought the crookedness, and by department accounting methods which would put Standard Oil or a Western cow ranch on the financial blink inside of thirty-six months, or even in twelve.
We will discuss this artistic “deficit” later. Here I now desire to advert to, and animadvert on, another point which has been brought forcibly to my attention recently—weeks, some two months, after I climbed up here to take a look over the general situation, and then chanced, through the aid of a Congressman friend, to get my distance glasses focused on this postoffice foolery.
Foolery, I have written. I was wrong. There was no foolery about it. It was a calculated, a studied, a cold-blooded partisan stab at one of the greatest and most helpful—most up-building—industries in this country.
But we will let that point and the “deficit” rest for the present. It appears that one of Mr. Hitchcock’s much-worked arguments to harvest or glean votes for his rider amendment was that the amendment would “affect only a few magazine publishers,” or that “only a few magazine publishers, at most, would be affected by the amendment and that they had enriched themselves by the special privilege granted by the second-class mail rate statute of 1885,” etc., etc.
Various newspapers quoted Mr. Hitchcock variously on the same point or to the same end, and two Congressmen acquaintances reported that he had personally talked to them along the same lines.
Only a “few magazine publishers” would be affected by legislation of the character recommended in the rider amendment? That is the point I desire here and now to consider. I hope the reader will go carefully and thoughtfully through the consideration with me.
First it may be said, and safely admitted, that no such legislation as that recommended in the “rider” previously discussed, would be sustained by any court in this country, unless its wording was so modified as to make its requirements and restrictions apply to all periodicals, or at least to all monthly and weekly periodicals. Even then, it is doubtful if any court could be found to sustain such a piece of class or special legislation unless its terms were broadened to cover newspapers, so numerously and so aggressively are the latter trenching upon what is generally recognized as the weekly and monthly periodical field of effort, influence and usefulness.
I think that any informed, fair-minded reader will agree that that statement is a fair statement of governing facts, unless we question the honesty of our courts in the discharge of their judicial duties or question the juridic honesty of some member or members of the ruling court.
That may read like a blunt or offensive way of putting it. But we are not writing of a Palm Beach twilight party nor of a Newport frolic. We are writing of and to a serious subject—a subject which vitally touches and trenches into the vital interests of ninety millions of people—the ninety millions who are the blood and bone and sinew of this nation of ours. It is a subject of such grave import as to make it necessary that we call a spade a spade, a thief a thief, a scoundrel a scoundrel, and judicial weakness, judicial treachery.
That is why I put, plain and strong, the point that no court could be found in this country to sustain legislation of the character covered in Mr. Hitchcock’s “rider” amendment to the 1911 postoffice appropriation bill, and that every informed, fair-minded man must concur in the statements that I have made in the three or four preceding paragraphs.
That “rider” amendment would “affect only a few magazine publishers,” says Mr. Hitchcock, or as he is reported to have said.
Now, let us look over the field a little. Let us make an honest, intelligent effort—an effort not warped by political hopes and aspirations nor by personal prejudices and interests—to see who or whom would be affected by such special or class legislation.
First, the reader must get a mental hip-lock or strangle-hold on the fact that the second-class mail business of this country—the output of periodical publishers—in marketed values, is somewhere around one billion dollars a year.
As has previously been stated, and I believe well sustained by the facts, no business, however well established, can stand an increase of 300 per cent in the haulage and delivery cost of its output without sustaining great financial loss. The fair-minded reader will, I believe, agree that the publishers in presenting their case to Mr. Hitchcock, to the Penrose-Overstreet and other commissions, proved the truth of that statement quite conclusively.
Well, if that be true, legislation of the sort proposed in the Hitchcock “rider” must necessarily, after adjudication, put all the lesser weeklies and monthlies (those not financially strong) out of business. Likewise hundreds of the smaller newspapers must discontinue issue. Of course, Mr. Hitchcock prattled about the newspapers not being affected by his proposed amendment. But, as previously stated, no court of justice in this country would sustain such a biased, prejudiced piece of class legislation as that proposed in the “rider.”
CHAPTER VIII.
WHO ARE AFFECTED.
Let us see who really would be affected.
As just cited there necessarily would be thousands of periodical publishers affected—virtually ruined. But, let us go down to things elemental in this question—down to the stumpage.
The great educational white way of our periodical literature is builded upon wood pulp.
In an opening paragraph of this volume I adverted to that fact. The chief pulp woods are spruce of the North—even of the distant North—and the Northwest. Then come cottonwood, basswood and soft maple, of the South, Southeast and New England. Of course, there are several other kinds of pulpwoods, but they are not used extensively for the manufacture of white paper, unless chemically treated, and such treatment makes them expensive. Of the pulpwoods I have named, spruce is far and away the most extensively used. From spruce is produced the best pulp. In “milling,” it shows body, fiber, strength—it gives toughness to the milled sheet or the Web roll.
But that is enough. I am not an expert in pulp-wood stocks. The point I am trying to call to the reader’s attention is that any legislation which cuts down the consumption of wood pulp must necessarily “affect” some other folks besides “a few magazine publishers.”
First, a just adjudication of such a piece of legislation as that proposed in Mr. Hitchcock’s rider amendment would put from thirty to fifty per cent of our weaker (but excellent) periodicals on the financial rocks—put them out of business. They consume thousands of tons yearly of pulp-wood paper.
It will, I think, be freely admitted that such periodicals would be out of—forced out of—the pulp-wood market—I mean out of the wood-pulp paper market, which amounts to the same thing.
But that is not all. The strong weeklies and monthlies are not going to be put out of business by legislation of that rider character. They will continue in business. They will meet its unjust exactions by readjustments. They are printing on sixty to eighty pound stock. Some parts of their periodicals are printed on even heavier stock. They will go to the paper mills and demand lighter stock, of special finish—and their demands will be met—and fifty to sixty pound stock will be used. The special finish will give the reader just as presentable a magazine, typographically, as he now receives.
But you observe that the publisher will be saving from twenty to fifty per cent in stock weight.
You will also observe that the paper mills will be using twenty to fifty per cent less wood pulp than they are now using.
You will also observe that the railroads will haul twenty to fifty per cent less of pulp timber and less wood-pulp paper than they now haul.
“Only a few magazine publishers will be affected,” eh?
Let us “recast” as far as we have gone.
The owners of pulp wood acres or stumpage would be affected, would they not? There are probably three to five hundred of them in the country, taken at a low estimate.
They are not of the “few magazine publishers” are they?
Pulp mill and other investors in pulp-wood stumpage seldom buy until they have an estimate by some skilled judge as to the probable “cut” the acreage will yield. For this purpose the prospective purchasers usually employ one or more “timber cruisers.” A timber cruiser is a man so skilled and experienced that he can look at a standing tree and tell you within a hundred feet or so how much lumber it will saw or how many cords of pulp or other wood it will cut. He “steps off” an acre, sizes up the available trees growing on the acre, averaging up the large trees with the small ones, and then estimates or calculates the average wood or lumber growth on that acre. He then goes off to some other acre. The latter may be only a few hundred yards or it may be a mile or two from the acres last measured, the estimate on which the “cruiser” has carefully noted in his “field book.”
The second acre he “works” as he did the first, and so the “cruiser” goes on with acre after acre through a forest of ten, fifty, a hundred, or it may be a million or more acres of “stumpage,” always careful to note the “light” and the “heavy” timbered sections, and marks with a sharp, shrewd and experienced eye an estimate of the number of acres covered by the light and the heavy growth of timber. When he has covered the acreage his employer contemplates buying, he comes back to civilization, turns in his field book and makes a report to the boss. On that showing the boss buys or declines.
Sometimes, of course, the careful, prudent boss may have two, three or a dozen cruisers, covering different fields of a vast forest section and, sometimes, virtually trailing each other. In the latter case, the buyer seeks to use one cruiser’s estimate as a check on the other. In any event, however, the purchase or investment is usually made on the showing the cruisers have made.
Now, this talk about timber, cruisers, etc., may be uninteresting to the reader. I sincerely hope, though, he will read it and follow me along the same lines a little further. My object is to show how wide of the truth—how unjustly or ignorantly wide of the truth—Mr. Hitchcock was when making the statement, which it has been repeatedly and reputably asserted he did make, to the effect that the legislation he sought would “affect only a few magazine publishers.” I have stated, and have given what I believe to be sound, valid reasons in support of the statement, that legislation of the nature, covered by his rider amendment ultimately—and necessarily—must be either annulled by the courts or be so broadened as to remove its special or class features. Of course, Mr. Hitchcock wanted—and he still wants—legislation of the nature indicated in that rider to become operative law. It is my belief he entertained such hope and desire when he asserted that an enactment of the character of his rider would “affect only a few magazine publishers.” At any rate, it was with such belief I introduced this division of our general subject.
As previously stated, legislation of the character sought by Mr. Hitchcock cannot be enacted into operative law without cutting down the consumption of wood pulp from thirty to fifty per cent.
Such a cut in consumption, I am here trying to show, cannot be made without affecting the earnings and lives of men—many thousands of men and families—who cannot even be imagined as of those “few magazine publishers.”
When the stumpage owner decides to cut five, ten, fifty, a hundred or more thousand acres for milling, another gang of men—“road blazers”—is sent into the forest. If the transportation is to be by water, some river or smaller stream, these latter men select suitable roll-ways and boom yardages along the stream. From each of these they “blaze” or mark the trees and smaller growths to be felled and the obstructions to be removed in order to provide a haulage roadway—usually providing for both wagons and snow sleds or sledges. If the transportation is to be by rail, corresponding work is done, the roadways branching in from the forest to the rail sidings where the loading is to be done. Not infrequently “spur tracks” are blazed which sometimes run for miles into the forest away from the main line of the railway.
Following these men who mark out the “haulways,” come a far more numerous body of men with axes, saws, hooks, oxen, mules and other equipment, including cooks, “grub” and other things necessary to feed and shelter them. These, also, are factors—elemental or primal factors—in the production of wood-pulp from which most of our white paper is made. Numerically they, in the aggregate, number thousands.
Most certainly they cannot be counted among the “few magazine publishers” referred to by Mr. Hitchcock.
With equal certainty it can be said that each of these thousands would be materially affected in his industrial occupation by any legislation or other influence which caused a shrinkage in the demand for wood-pulp.
In the fall and winter of the year (sometimes in other seasons as well), an army of men—not thousands, but tens of thousands in number—swarm into the pulp wood forests. They are axemen, “fiddlers” (cross-cut sawyers,) foremen, gang foremen, ox drivers, mule drivers, horse drivers. Here also is again found the cook, the “pot cleaner,” the “grub slinger” and other servers of subsistence to the “timber jackies” of the various camps.
Any material reduction in the consumption of wood-pulp would affect them, would it not?
None of them publish magazines, do they?
This brings us down to the pulp mill. Of course each mill has a hundred or more men employed getting its wood floated down the rivers or streams during the spring floods, or “freshets,” if their transportation is by water. They are log “berlers”, “jam” breakers, shore “canters,” “boomers,” etc. If their working stock comes by rail, there are “loaders,” “unloaders,” “yarders,” etc. Then come in the thousands of mill men, engaged on the work of reducing the wood to pulp. If the pulp mill has not a paper mill in immediate connection, as often happens, then the railroad is immediately interested in the reduced tonnage haul, and likewise every man who works for the railroad becomes interested industrially.
Even a triple-expansion brained man could not figure these thousands of industrial workers into the ranks of those “few magazine publishers” whom Mr. Hitchcock, it is asserted, repeatedly asserted, would alone be affected by his urgently urged amendment.
Next, we reach the paper mill. How many thousands of men are employed by them, I do not know. Of the many other thousands—wives and children who are dependent upon those workers for clothing, shelter and subsistence—I cannot make even a worthy guess. The reader can make as dependable an estimate as I, probably a more dependable one. But readers will unitedly agree that all these thousands of workmen, wives and children would be affected by any reduction in the consumption of wood-pulp paper.
All readers will also agree that no one of these is a magazine publisher.
Thus far we have seen, in considering the “reach” of Mr. Hitchcock’s recommended legislation, that it would have affected the earnings and the lives of many thousands of our people—people who cannot, in even perfervid imagination, be classed among his “few magazine publishers.” In this connection, however, should be noted the fact that when the paper leaves the paper mills, with the thousands dependent upon their operation and success, the paper proper passes into the custody of the transportation companies—railroad and water—chiefly the former—and of the thousands of operatives they employ. Next comes the thousands engaged in the cartage interests in cities throughout the country, wherever printing is done. In cities of the first and second classes there is usually found a division of the cartage interest which confines its service almost exclusively to the work of carting paper from car, depot, dock or warehouse to the printing plant which consumes it.
Here, then, in the last two classes named, must be found several thousands more workmen who would necessarily be adversely affected by a shrinkage of thirty to fifty per cent in the pulp wood cut. Those thousands, mark you, do not include the thousands of women and children dependent upon the earnings of those workmen. Yet they would necessarily be affected by any shrinkage in wood-pulp consumption.
And again it must be admitted by every man—and will be admitted by any man with as much brains as directs the activities of any lively angleworm—that none of the thousands here mentioned are magazine publishers. None of them could possibly be of the “few magazine publishers” referred to by Mr. Hitchcock.
So far we have touched upon only the elements of production. While the people employed in the several divisions of the pulp-wood industry may run, numerically, into many tens of thousands, in the great division of the printing trades, they run into the hundreds of thousands. I refer to the great printing and publishing trades—the trades which turn the pulp paper into periodicals and books—the trades whose work directly educates us.
Before attempting to designate the various divisions of this class, or to indicate the vast multitude—both men and women—to whom they give employment, I desire to present a few quotations, showing that these trades and these hundreds of thousands of employes are, in the slang language of the street, “onto” not only the controlling—the ulterior—motives of Mr. Hitchcock but also that they know and understand and feel something of the far-reaching wreck and ruin to homes and to lives which legislation of the nature he proposed must bring to this industrial division of our general citizenship.
Under date of May 20, 1911, Mr. M. H. Madden wrote me the following letter. While Mr. Madden may not be as widely known as is Postmaster General Hitchcock, he not having had the advantage of a federal cabinet position to broadcast his fame, there are few men better known among the personnel of the printing trades than is Mr. Madden, and equally few men there are who are better informed on the cost of carriage, handling and distribution of second-class mail.
In this letter Mr. Madden speaks particularly of the alleged Postoffice Department “deficit.” While this much-talked of “deficit” is made the subject of a short subsequent chapter, Mr. Madden’s letter presents several other points trenchantly pertinent to the subject we are now considering, to-wit: that the printing trades—all branches and classes of it, from the pressfeeder and bindery girl to the shop superintendent and publisher—are alive to the dangers with which legislation of the “rider” character is fraught:
Chicago, May 20, 1911.
My Dear Mr. Gantz—For a considerable time President Taft has directed attention to a supposed deficit in the Postoffice Department revenues, he accepting the figures of his Postmaster General that the amount of the shortage for 1909 was above $17,000,000, while that for 1910 was cut down to less than $6,000,000.
An authorized statement by Mr. Hitchcock, sent out on May 27, 1911, declares that for the six months of 1911 there is a surplus in postal receipts ranging from $1,000,000 to $3,000,000. With the fact kept in view that there have been increases in expenses in many directions and the further fact that second-class mail tonnage, on which great losses occur—according to the Hitchcock plan of keeping books—has increased, the manifest inconsistency involved in Mr. Hitchcock’s discovery is too transparent to permit of discussion.
Factors which have been left out of the reckoning, among others might be mentioned the progressive increased amount of business of the postal department, with but slight advance in the percentage of cost for transacting the same; a general agitation for better service on the part of the public which awakened the authorities to a fuller responsibility of their duty, and the important circumstance that there has been a new alignment of the House and Senate Committees on Postoffices and Postroads, has caused a moving-up process, we might say shaking-up process, in methods that sadly needed furbishing and of ideas that required practical demonstration. The effect of improving the system of transmitting the postal funds promptly to the national treasury instead of leaving the same to accumulate in the common centers, where they were earned, is seen by the immediate wiping out of the need for a balance of $10,000,000 with which to do business. Such an ancient method of conducting postal business would probably do in the period when the pyramids were built, but that system had finally to surrender, it being too archaic for even the Postoffice Department to adopt.
In a communication to me under date of August 9th, 1911, Mr. Madden gives expression to the following very informative statements:
In connection with the Hughes postal inquiry I would like to inform you of the total addition to the expense of conducting the Postoffice Department which became effective July 1, 1911. You may avail yourself of these facts in your argument, as they are official, orders having been issued by Postmaster General Hitchcock for these additional expenditures.
The sum of $1,200,000 is to be devoted to increases in the salaries of postoffice clerks during the current year, while $600,000 of an increase will go to city letter carriers. The railway mail clerks will get an increase of only $175,000, making an addition to the salaries of the three groups of $1,975,000. When the rural route carriers get their increase of $4,000,000 it will mean an addition to the four groups of the stupendous sum of $5,975,000 to the annual total. The figures are calculated to startle the ordinary observer, especially when there has been so much music about deficits.
On August 15th, 1911, Mr. M. H. Madden, as Secretary of the Independent Postal League, wrote the Hon. Daniel A. Campbell, Postmaster of Chicago, a lengthy and strong letter, in response to the latter’s request for copies of former issues of the league’s bulletins. I have a copy of that letter before me and shall take the liberty to quote a few of its relevant paragraphs.
After explaining the reasons why it was impossible for him to furnish Postmaster Campbell a file of the league’s bulletins, Mr. Madden continues:
“For myself I have given second-class postage problems some study, have written articles concerning the subject, and have addressed many organizations interested, in various portions of the country. In this connection I appeared before President Taft as a representative of the printing trades with President George L. Berry of the International Printing Pressmen’s Union on Feb. 23 last. We protested against the raise to 4 cents a pound on advertising pages in the magazines. As a result of our work, more than 10,000 telegrams of protest were sent to Senators and members of the House from organized labor men. Two weeks later a certain ‘rider’ was thrown in the Senate. The Hughes commission of inquiry into the cost of handling second-class matter was then created. In one way and another this movement has been kept somewhat active.
“Some weeks ago the editors of union labor publications of the country met in Chicago and formed an association to continue this work, the Independent Postal League being thereby relieved of the task of instructing working people concerning the subject, the League turning over to the editors, the data it had, consisting of documents, official reports, etc.
“President Gompers of the American Federation of Labor and President Woll of the International Photo-Engravers’ Union were furnished with material to present before the sessions of the Hughes Commission. The National Typothetæ to convene in Denver will also use data supplied by the League, as will the International Typographical Union at San Francisco; also the American Federation of Labor at its annual meeting at Atlanta, Ga.
“In this country there are 2,000,000 organized workingmen affiliated with the American Federation of Labor and 500,000 who are unaffiliated. These are opposed to a raise in postage and have so declared. In the printing trades there are more than 400,000 of the best paid artisans in the world and these are working in opposition to a raise, and since they produce almost a billion dollars’ worth of printing each year their protest is worth listening to.
“As workingmen we cannot approve of the inconsistency shown by having a pressman produce a periodical in Canada and sending it through the mails at ¼ cent a pound, while his brother pressman in the United States would be forced to pay four cents a pound for the same service. And the “Canuck” can certainly do it at a profit. Here is where a little ‘reciprocity’ juice would taste nectar-like for the Uncle Sam pressman. For several years our big postoffice officials have been telling the American people it cost more than 9 cents a pound to haul second-class mail. In Canada there is a population of 8,000,000 served by 25,000 miles of railway, while in our country we have 90,000,000 people and 246,000 miles of railroads. In the United States we print 500 periodicals to one printed in the Dominion. The merits of the question are so obvious that there is no chance for a controversy; in fact there can be no dispute on a matter so plain.”
Now, see here, I do not want to burden you—you, the reader—with quotations. I have not done so save when the quotations covered the point—our point—better than I could cover it myself. I write up to a point to the best of my ability, and then, if I have at hand some authority—some more conclusive and better told statement than I can make myself, I hand it to you.
So please do not skip the quotations in this book. The meat of it is in the quoted matter, not in what I have said or may say. That is why I desire to quote further just here.
Under date of May 16, 1911, Mr. Hitchcock wrote over the signature of his Second Assistant, Joseph Stewart, the following letter, addressed “To Publishers.” Whether or not it was sent to publishers in general or only to “certain monthly and semi-monthly periodicals,” I do not know. I reprint it here as evidence for the reader in proof of the tendency, or policy, of Mr. Hitchcock to exercise bureaucratic powers in administering the official service of his office—powers not given him by law.
I reprint also for the purpose of showing, by two or three following quotations, how closely Mr. Hitchcock’s official acts are being scanned by the printing trades and how clearly and how justly they estimate the results and the trade and industrial effects of such action.
The letter signed by Mr. Stewart follows:
POSTOFFICE DEPARTMENT,
Second Assistant Postmaster General,
Washington, D. C., May 16, 1911
Publisher, Practical Engineer, Chicago, Ill.:
Sir:—Arrangements are being made by the Postoffice Department to transport, after June 30, 1911, certain monthly and semi-monthly periodical second-class mail matter for certain states by fast freight to a number of central distributing points, from which points distribution and delivery will be made by mail as at present.
This method of transportation necessarily being somewhat slower than the present method of carriage of mail throughout, it becomes necessary for publishers to rearrange their mailing schedules to allow an earlier delivery to the postoffice of mail for the states to be so transported, in order that delivery to subscribers may be made at approximately the same time as at present.
It is believed that an advance in mailing dates of from three to six days will provide the necessary margin to offset the slower movement, and your co-operation to that extent is solicited.
Specific information relative to the states affected and the time of advance mailing will be furnished at an early date. Any further information desired relative to this matter will be given and any assistance in completing arrangements gladly supplied.
The favor of an early reply is requested.
Very respectfully,
Joseph Stewart,
Second Assistant Postmaster General.
The foregoing letter brought a flood of protests in reply. Why should it not? Why does Mr. Hitchcock, as is evidenced by the letter of his Second Assistant, seek to make such an unjust discrimination among periodicals—a discrimination directly contravening the basic principle of our government?
Among the replies Mr. Stewart received was one, a copy of which follows:
Chicago, May 22, 1911.
Hon. Joseph Stewart, Second Assistant Postmaster General, Washington, D. C.
Dear Sir.—We acknowledge receipt of your favor of the 16th, and regret that an early reply, as requested, is but partially possible at present.
You tell us unequivocally, if we interpret your letter correctly, that our Postoffice Department in rendering service to subscribers will discriminate against monthly and semi-monthly periodicals after June 30th; that certain publications of a class, issued weekly, will be favored with through mail service, and that other publications of the same character and class, issued semi-monthly or monthly, shall be rendered freight service, and no differential rate provided.
It is unfortunate that a distinction directly affecting the majority of the people could not have been arbitrated, and thereby avoided a period of distress.
Yours, very truly,
CHICAGO TRADE PRESS ASS’N,
E. R. Shaw,
President.
Another reply follows. It is from the Chicago Printing Trades, an organization which Mr. Madden, previously quoted, represented at Washington in his conference with President Taft and senators and members of the House.
To Postmaster General Hitchcock:—
The various branches of labor engaged in the production of printing in Chicago number more than 50,000 highly skilled artisans and their annual output is more than $100,000,000. These well-paid working people declare—they knowing it to be a statement based on truth—that the contemplated change in the method of distributing their product will interfere disadvantageously with their opportunity for employment, and they respectfully appeal to the postal authorities to pause in installing a system that is calculated to work great harm to their industry. Their united, emphatic protest is entered against what they feel to be an unwise and unnecessary hampering of their industry and they ask that their appeal be heard on the justice of their claim.
In distributing regular publications through the mails the factor of time is most valuable, and to inaugurate a slower schedule would greatly reduce the current value of periodicals and curtail the influence which these publications now wield. We respectfully direct attention to the injury which the owners of publications would sustain through curtailment of their earning power, as this would at once operate adversely to labor. In fact the severest effect would reach the toiler.
As well-paid, organized workingmen we respectfully call attention to the policy of protection which has enabled our country to flourish almost uninterruptedly for a half-century, and in behalf of this wise system we ask that no unnecessary interference with our trade be inaugurated by those to whom we look with expectation to forward our welfare as industrious citizens.
In common with other industries, business in the publishing lines is far from flourishing, and, while our rate of wages is conceded, we recognize that anything which interferes with the profits and success of employers will immediately react upon our opportunity for employment. It is upon this basis that we plead, and we ask you, as head of the Postoffice Department, that you forego instituting the system of distributing the semi-monthly and monthly publications by freight, and continue the present method of rapid-mail service.
Labor’s voice is raised in earnest plea for what it considers itself competent to speak upon, and with the hope that you will aid in maintaining for us our present conditions, which we esteem necessary for our welfare and the welfare of those depending upon us, we leave the question in your hands.
Michael H. Madden,
Secretary Independent Postal League.
I am presenting just here, only local protests—Chicago protests. Similar objections were heard from all parts of the country. The Chicago protest, however, would not be complete unless we presented the resolutions adopted by Typographical Union No. 16, at a regular meeting held July 30, 1911. It applies both to the proposed increase in second-class postage rates and to Mr. Hitchcock’s unjust discrimination in distributing periodicals:
Whereas, It is a fundamental economic truth that anything which tends to unduly and unjustly raise the cost of distributing the product of labor reduces the opportunity for employment of those concerned in the industry thus affected, and indirectly becomes a menace to all industry, Chicago Typographical Union No. 16, embracing a membership of more than 4,000 skilled craftsmen, takes this method of entering its emphatic protest against any increase in the rate for second-class mail matter; and,
Whereas, The proposed routing of semi-monthly and monthly publications by fast freight instead of by the regular fast mail service is manifestly unjust and is a flagrant discrimination against our product, this organization further condemns those who contemplate this pernicious innovation, and we submit that the installation of this system by the Postoffice Department is not only inimical to our welfare as workingmen but will work incalculable injury to the publishing interests of the entire country; and,
Whereas, These propositions of the Postoffice Department deserve only the strongest condemnation, and as a means of making this protest effective, we hereby invite the working people of the United States to unite with us in a movement having for its purpose the overhauling and readjustment of the postal affairs of this country, to the end that the service may become one of greater convenience to our people and be an instrument of promotion to the industries of our country instead of a leaden handicap on our industrial progress and the educational improvement of all the people; therefore, be it,
Resolved, That for the protection of the printing industry we hereby instruct our delegates to the next annual convention of the International Typographical Union to propose the following for the consideration of that body, and they are hereby instructed to support the indorsement of the same by the said International Typographical Union convention:
Resolved, That the International Typographical Union emphatically opposes any advance in the rate of postage on second-class mail matter, and that it condemns the proposed method of distributing semi-monthly and monthly periodicals by fast freight instead of by the regular fast mail, to the facilities of which they are entitled under the law, because they pay for the same.
The foregoing quotations are sufficient to show that the printing trades of the nation are awake to the industrial significance of legislation of the Hitchcock “rider” nature, likewise that they are equally wideawake to the purpose of Mr. Hitchcock—ulterior or other—in his attempt to stealth such legislation into operative law.
How many people are employed in the printing trades in this country? I do not know.
In Chicago alone there are, at a safe estimate, not less than 40,000. A representative of the organized pressmen of New York before the Postal Commission testified that there were 12,000 pressmen in New York City and that six thousand of these were employed on presses which print monthly and weekly magazines.
I have no later statistics by me than a 1905 report touching the number of men and women employed in the printing trades in this country. From the figures given for 1905, however, it may be conservatively stated that the number of persons in this nation who today are earning their shelter, apparel and subsistence (not counting the office or clerical forces) in our great printing and publishing industries is somewheres around 400,000. If the counting-room and general office forces are included the total number—not counting owners or publishers—will reach at least 450,000.
Now, if we total the people who would be affected by legislation which must force a shrinkage of from 30 to 50 per cent in the consumption of wood pulp paper, counting from the timber cruisers to the publication counting-rooms, we shall find that total to be not less than 700,000—probably 800,000. And, mark you, you fair-minded, conscientious reader, that total does not include the wives and children dependent upon the vast army of men employed in our printing industries—dependent for shelter, clothing and food. If they are counted, the figures I have just given must be doubled—probably tripled.
So, there must be not less than two, probably two and a half, millions of people,—men, women, wives and children—who would be affected by legislation of the Hitchcock “rider” character.
It is needless, but I must still point out that not one of these millions of industrial earners nor their dependents who would be injuriously, if indeed not disastrously affected, by legislation of the nature Mr. Hitchcock is so persistently, if not unscrupulously, pressing to force into operative law, is a magazine publisher.
Most certain is it that none of this vast multitude of our industrial citizens and their dependents can be thought of, nor even imagined, as being counted among those “few magazine publishers” who, Mr. Hitchcock is reported to have repeatedly asserted, would alone be affected by his proposed harsh, discriminating and, therefore, unjust legislation.
CHAPTER IX.
MR. HITCHCOCK STILL AFTER THE MAGAZINES.
I have previously intimated that Mr. Hitchcock is still devoting himself to forcing his ulterior motive into operation, either as law or department ruling. In evidence of this I shall here quote from his address or addresses before the Hughes Commission. This Commission was created in the closing hours of the last session of Congress—created as a sort of cushion or pad in order that his unconstitutional “rider” might take its cropper without breaking any bones or painfully lacerating the official feelings of Mr. Hitchcock. This Hughes Commission convened in New York City, August 1, 1911. Following is Mr. Hitchcock’s opening address before it, as reported by the New York Times, August 2. The italics are the writers:—
Postmaster General Hitchcock opened for the department. He said his study of the postage rate problem had led him to believe that certain fundamental principles of administration, almost new to the Postoffice Department at present, should be closely adhered to. These included the operation of the service on a self-supporting basis, maintained by imposing such charges as would yield an income equal to the expenses. They included, also, he said, such an adjustment of the postage charges as would make each class of mail matter pay for its own handling, and no more. He would further have the levying of postage rates made on the basis of the average cost of handling and carriage for the country as a whole, and, finally, postal laws should be enacted so definite in character as to be easy of interpretation and susceptible of uniform enforcement.
Mr. Hitchcock stated in this connection that when the books for the fiscal year of 1911 are closed they will show for the first time in many years a surplus of postal funds, and he hoped that this condition would become permanent. Mr. Hitchcock opposed any new classification of mail matter at this time, saying the present classification could be made to include all matter now admissible, and he doubted the expediency of attempting a revision. He then sought to set forth the large share second-class matter has in the burdens of the department, and the small percentage it pays of the total cost or even of its own cost.
“During 1910,” he said, “there were carried in the mail 8,310,164,623 pieces of first-class mail, consisting of letters, other sealed matter, and postal cards. This mail averaged in weight 0.35 of an ounce a piece, making 45.1 pieces to the pound. The cost of handling and carriage for this mail was $86,792,511.35, an average of 47 cents a pound, while the postage charge was $154,796,668.08, leaving a clear profit of $68,004,156.73.
“During the same year there were carried 4,336,259,864 pieces of second-class matter, newspapers and other periodical publications, averaging 3.33 ounces a piece, or 4.8 pieces to the pound. The cost of handling and carriage was $80,791,615.03, or a little less than 9 cents a pound, while the postage return was only $10,607,271.02, leaving a total loss of $70,184,344.01.
“From a review of the rates provided for the several classes of mail, it will be observed that in comparison with the cent-a-pound charge for second-class matter the rate on third-class matter is 700 per cent. higher; that on fourth-class matter 1,500 per cent. higher, and that on letter and other first-class matter 3,100 per cent. higher. While it is true that the expense of handling and carrying second-class mail is less than for any other class, due to the size and weight of single pieces, to relief from the cancellation of stamps, and to the fact that a considerable part of the bagging, sorting, and labeling in the offices of origin is done by the publishers, nevertheless a charge of 1 cent a pound covers but a small fraction of the actual cost.[6]
“The present self-supporting condition of the service is made possible only by the fact that other classes of mail, particularly the first-class, are excessively taxed to make up the loss caused by the inadequate charge on the second-class. This will be better understood when it is noted that although first-class matter comprised during the fiscal year 1910 only 13.4 per cent. of all the revenue-producing domestic mail, it yielded a net profit of $68,004,156.73, while second-class matter, comprising 65.6 per cent. of all the revenue-producing domestic mail, yielded but $10,607,271.02, leaving the tremendous loss of $70,184,344.01. Thus the deficit caused by the heavy loss on the handling and carriage of second-class matter was greater than the profit obtained from first-class matter.”
Mr. Hitchcock here made a plea for equalization of the rate on second-class matter on the ground that it would at once make possible the reduction of letter postage from 2 cents to 1 cent an ounce. This reduction would come about from the fact, he said, that the present profit in handling first-class matter was approximately equal to the loss sustained in the transportation of second-class mail.
Mr. Hitchcock said, however, that he did not believe that the rate for second-class mail should be at once advanced to where it would cover the cost of handling and carriage, although that should be the ultimate end in view.
“For the present,” said he, “an increase of only one cent a pound is recommended, thus making a flat rate of 2 cents a pound, which should be regarded as merely tentative, however, leaving for future determination such additional increase as may be found necessary to meet the cost.”
The Postmaster General served notice on the commission that if by any chance it should see fit to recommend the continuance of the present rate—a “merely nominal postage rate,” he called it—his department could not consistently do otherwise than renew its recommendation for a higher rate of postage on the advertising portions of magazines.
I need make no comment on that address beyond the comment implied in the phrases and wording I have marked for italics. That Mr. Hitchcock still purposes to “put over” the injustices covered in his Senate rider amendment to the postoffice appropriation bill is made baldly clear. That he still is working that “deficit” as a sort of “come-on” to his purpose is equally clear. And the ridiculous, if not ludicrous, feature of this talk before the commission is that it comes after he has demonstrated and publicly announced that there is no deficit in the Postoffice Department for the fiscal year, 1910-11.
As Mr. M. H. Madden states in a letter to me, printed on a previous page, Mr. Hitchcock reports a profit of one to three million dollars for the fiscal year named.
Later, if I remember rightly, he discovered a stealage—pardon me, I mean he discovered an “excess”—of from $9,000,000 to $14,000,000 in railway mail pay.
Just in this connection I wish to say that Mr. Hitchcock is deserving of the praise and commendation of every one of us American citizens for the aggressive way in which he has cut down expenditures in his department without impairing its service. Also is he deserving of equal praise and commendation from us for his vigorous and fairly successful methods of going after that railway mail haulage steal, which has been going on for a time to which the younger generation of our citizens wots not of. Although I may adversely criticise a man, as in this volume I have criticised Mr. Hitchcock, I like the man who puts up a stiff fight for a cause, even though I believe his cause is wrong. Candidly I can see no reason why Mr. Hitchcock and his predecessor postmaster generals should so worry themselves over a “deficit” in the Postoffice Department—a department in which a surplus should never be expected and never allowed to become permanent.
But our present Postmaster General has, by his aggressive action and close scrutiny of the loose, wasteful methods under which the vast business of his department is carried on, disposed of the “deficit” and found a surplus.
In this he has done what his predecessors failed to do.
For this he merits our highest praise and commendation. Personally I yield it to him, untrammeled and in full meed. I object only to his attempt to saddle upon second-class mail—the one-cent-a-pound-matter—the burden of recouping the government for the losses on rural route and star route service and the railway mail pay stealage. I object because I not only believe, but I know as comprehendingly and as comprehensively as does he, that the second-class matter carried in the mails today at one cent a pound should be carried and handled at a profit at that rate.
I also know that just as second-class mail (periodicals), is cut down in distribution in just about the same proportion will the revenue from first, third and fourth class mail be cut down.
It is because of this firm belief, that I oppose Mr. Hitchcock’s, to me, absurd purpose and attempt to make “each division or class of mail pay for its carriage and handling.”
I am also opposing his manifest attempt to “play favorites” in legislation and to secure bureaucratic powers for his department—in contravention of my constitutional rights—to your constitutional rights.
I take the following from the New York Call of August 26. The Call captions it as “Hitchcock’s Sum Up.” It evidences the fact that he still follows his folly—that he is still after those “few magazine publishers” and after them, too, on his “rider” lines.
The Call reports as follows:
“The attorneys for the magazines,” said Postmaster Hitchcock in summing up the government’s case, “have presented this matter of advertising in magazines in such a way as to leave the impression that there is a controversy over it. There is none. The department knows that the advertising matter in magazines produces first-class mail and that the postoffice is benefited in that way. The important question is: What effect will a whole increase of 1 cent a pound have on the advertising? Will it be the means of stopping it?
“We feel that advertising would not be diminished by such an increase and if such is the case, all this information which we have heard today, interesting as it may be, is not to the point. Repeatedly we have heard the general argument against an increase in rates as though our recommendation is for a general increase. We don’t want that at all. What we are driving at is a readjustment. We are not trying to economize or save money. We have done that to the best of our ability already and want simply to increase the second-class rate so that the first will pay for itself, believing that in this way the greater number of people will be served.”
If Mr. Hitchcock is correctly reported in the above, it would appear that something of a change has taken place in his mental landscape since he put his “rider” on the Senate speedway during the closing hours of the last session of Congress. “The department knows that the advertising matter in magazines produces first-class mail,” he now says.
Did the department know that fact when that “rider” was on the speedway? It most certainly did, if it then knew anything—that is anything about the sources of postal revenues. Did Mr. Hitchcock or any of his assistants, at the time referred to, make any vehement declaration of that knowledge—that advertising matter in magazines produces first-class revenue? If he or his assistants did so, no one has reported the fact of having heard such declaration.
In March, Mr. Hitchcock battles valiantly to have the advertising pages of magazines taxed four cents a pound for carriage and distribution. At that time he “estimated” that such increase in the mail rate on the advertising “sheets” of magazines would be equivalent to a rate of “about two cents a pound” on the entire magazine. As about one-half the full weight of our leading magazines—the magazines which Mr. Hitchcock, as previously stated, appears to be “after”—is in their advertising pages, his method of “estimating” must have been somewhat baggy at the knees last March. Any seventh or eighth grade grammar school pupil could have told him that a four-cent rate on one-half the weight and a one-cent rate on the other half is equivalent to a flat rate of two and one-half cents on the full weight.
However, we may leave that pass. It is past—has washed into the drift of time. If the Call correctly reports him, he is now willing, or was willing on August 25, 1911, to accept a flat rate of two cents a pound on all second-class matter. That shows some improvement over his “estimate” of March last. It would seem that Mr. Hitchcock is getting down nearer the tacks in this second-class mail rate question, and, as he has got rid of that annoying “deficit,” it can be hoped that he may yet see the fact—see that a one-cent-a-pound-rate is ample to cover the cost of carriage and handling of second-class mail matter.
Still, we must not be over-confident about what Mr. Hitchcock may or may not do. Regardless of what he said or may have said before the Hughes Commission at its recent session, it would appear that he is still gunning for those independent magazines which have been guilty of telling the truth about both official and private corruptionists and corruption and also guilty of turning the sandblast of publicity on the veneer and varnish under which has been hiding much nastiness—political, financial and other—in this country. I say it appears that Mr. Hitchcock is still after those magazines. If such is not the fact, then why does he and the orators and exhorters of his department go junketing about the country lecturing and hectoring postmasters, instead of staying at home and attending to department affairs? If he is not on the same trail he “caught up” last March, why are he and his assistants trying so hard to work up sentiment favorable to an increase in second-class mail rates and a decrease of fifty per cent in first-class rates? Has any considerable number of our people been complaining about the first-class or letter postage rate? If there has been such complaints The Man on the Ladder has not heard of them. On the other hand, it is a known fact that millions of our people have protested and are still protesting against any raise in the second-class mail rate. Why, then, in face of these facts, is Mr. Hitchcock working so hard, so industriously and so adroitly, if not, indeed, craftily, to get the vast personnel of his department,—carriers, rural routers, star routers, railway mail clerks and postmasters—postmasters, from Hiram Hairpin at Crackerville, Ga., all the way up—fourth, third, second class postmasters to the first-class postmasters in our larger cities—why, I ask, is Mr. Hitchcock working so strenuously to get the vast political machine of his department lined up against the protest of millions of our people, unless he is still after those pestiferous, independent magazines?
Why, again, it may be asked, are he and his assistants coaching the 220,000 clerks of his department and the 60,000 postmasters, assistant postmasters, etc., on his “staff” to put up a promotion talk for a one-cent rate on first-class (letter or sealed) matter? It should be a one-cent rate. Nobody at all informed as to mail service rates and revenues will question that. But it is equally true that, up to a recent date, there have been, comparatively speaking (the comparison being with the millions protesting against an increase in the second-class rate) but few complaints and complainants against the present rate of two cents for carrying and handling a letter.
Why, then, I ask, is Mr. Hitchcock so actively cranking up his departmental political machine to make neighborhood runs and do some hill climbing in advocacy of that one-cent rate for first-class matter? Yes, why?
Is it a legitimate assumption to say that the present agitation for a lowered rate on first-class matter found origin in Mr. Hitchcock? If it is, then what is he after?
To The Man on the Ladder it looks as if he was still after those magazines which have exposed—yes, even displayed—a weakness for telling the truth about men and conditions. Otherwise, why should he be arguing the postal “deficit” in March as cause and reason for his urgent efforts to make operative law out of that unconstitutional “rider” and now asking for a flat rate of two cents on second-class, and advocating a cut of fifty per cent in first-class, or letter, postage rates?
In his January-February-March talk, the “deficit” was the substructure of it all. By attending strictly to what the people understand as a Postmaster General’s business, Mr. Hitchcock faded the then $6,000,000 deficit into a few hundred thousand surplus, for the fiscal year recently ended. For this he deserves our highest commendation. He has mine. Why?
Because Mr. Hitchcock in converting that deficit into a surplus has done just what any one of his predecessors could have done in any year during the past thirty-five, if they had tried, and not been interfered with by dirty politics and dirty politicians.
Still, from the ladder top, it looks as if Mr. Hitchcock is after some one or ones. If my surmise is correct, who is it he is after, if not those publishers of magazines who are educating us as to the wrong and right of things in this government of ours?
That is for you to say, reader. That you may not think that the opinion just expressed is far fetched or an “individual” to bolster an opinion of the writer, I shall here quote a few paragraphs from an October issue of the Farm Journal of Philadelphia. The paragraphs are from an article written by Mr. Wilmer Atkinson, the Farm Journal editor and publisher.
I have on a previous page referred to and quoted Mr. Atkinson, and here I wish to emphasize, if my earlier reference did not do so, that Mr. Wilmer Atkinson is one of the best, if not the best, informed men in this country on cost of second-class mail carriage, handling and distribution. Mr. Atkinson must also be credited with an acumen in watching and divining—sizing up—the purpose and intent of our Postoffice Department that is equaled by few, if any, other men in this country, Postmaster Generals not excepted. I have been studying this question for years. Mr. Atkinson has studied it for more years, and he has studied it, too, from a business man’s—a publisher’s—viewpoint, as he has been compelled to do, being the directing head of one of the most widely circulated and read farm journals in this country.
That aside, my purpose here is to reprint a few paragraph excerpts from a recent (October, 1911) issue of the Farm Journal—an editorial written by Mr. Atkinson himself and which shows that this astute student of the present federal postal affairs corroborates the position The Man on the Ladder has taken—which supports the statement previously made that Mr. Hitchcock is still gunning for those, to him, objectionable magazines.
The following is from the October issue of the Farm Journal, under the heading of “Our Monthly Talk:”
In response to invitation a number of gentlemen interested in postal questions came together for informal conference at North View, the summer residence of the undersigned, on September 20 and 21.
Those who met are the official representatives of the following associations:
The National Fraternal Press Association.
The Federation of Trades Press Association.
The Ohio Buckeye Press Association, and the Weekly Country Press of other states.
The National Catholic Editors’ Association.
The United Typothetæ of America.
These gentlemen constitute a portion of the Publishers’ Commission now in process of formation. The representative of the American Medical Editors’ Association was unable to be present on account of a pressing engagement, and the member representing The Associated Advertising Clubs of America was absent in Europe.
This was the initial effort of the commission to bring the entire publishing fraternity of the country into such unity of spirit and purpose that something effective may be accomplished toward establishing not only just and honorable, but amicable and pleasant, relations with the Postoffice Department; to bring publishers of the different classes into harmony, in order that they may stand and act together for the protection and furtherance of their common interests, and for the cultivation of fraternal feelings among themselves.
There were three meetings held, two on the 20th and another on the morning of the 21st. After much earnest and harmonious discussion, it was decided that the great need of publishers at this time is to have the light turned upon postal affairs, so that they may know where they are at. To best accomplish this purpose it was thought that there should be a Publishers’ bureau established at Washington, in charge of a first-class man, who would be the collector and distributor of information regarding postoffice doings, rulings, hearings and proposed postal legislation; this bureau also to publish a paper for circulation among publishers of all classes throughout the United States, which would keep them thoroughly informed as to postoffice rules, regulations, proceedings and acts of every description.
Much of the information publishers get now is fragmentary, uncertain, often considerably warped and belated cold-storage news, void of substantial life-sustaining qualities. The annual reports of the department in which publishers are most vitally interested are less complete than formerly. Many important facts do not appear in them. For instance, no statement is ever made as to the amount of first-class matter originated by the second-class, none, or very little, account is made of it. No attempt has ever been made to gather, much less publish, statistics on the subject.
Formerly a list was accessible of publications annually thrown out of the mails at second-class rates, but not in recent years.
The report of the Third Assistant Postmaster-General in 1897 comprises 97 pages of compact statements and postal information in small type; that for 1901, 133 pages; while those for 1909 and 1910 contain only 60 and 65 pages in larger type, respectively. I am not censuring Mr. Britt in this matter, but simply stating facts.
Then as to the rulings, laws and regulations, there is not a publisher living who knows what they are, or can definitely ascertain what they are, from month to month. They are liable to change without the publishers being informed directly of the change. What purported to be “The Postal Laws and Regulations Relating to the Second-class of Mail Matter” was issued in 1910, but in it the law, rulings and regulations are so jumbled up together that it is difficult for a publisher to know which is which; instead of being illuminating and helpful, this compendium is confusing and involved in obscurity. It is a well recognized legal maxim, that “where the law is uncertain there is no law.”
Publishers have not known that an active propaganda in favor of a higher rate has been in progress ever since Congress adjourned, but such is the fact. The Postmaster General went before the Hughes Commission and advocated it.
The Third Assistant Postmaster General, in the early summer, made an address before some publishers in Chicago, wherein he stated that it was the purpose of the Postmaster General “to adjust postage rates based upon the principle of the payment on each class of mail matter of a rate of postage equal to the cost of handling and carriage, and no more, and that one class of mail matter shall not be taxed to meet deficiencies caused by an inadequate rate on another class,” meaning by this that the rate must be raised on second-class matter and lowered on the first class.
General DeGraw, Fourth Assistant Postmaster General, in an address before the West Virginia Association of Postmasters, stated the purpose of the Postmaster General to be exactly what Mr. Britt declared it to be; and he had the postmasters pass a resolution indorsing the Postmaster General, and even as late as September 22, at Milwaukee, he advocated “the crystalization of the proposed increase in second-class mail rates into law.”
Jesse L. Suter, representing the Postoffice Department, brought greetings from the Postmaster General, to a round-up of postmasters in Michigan in August last, and said that “the great subsidy extended the publishers in the form of a ridiculously small rate of postage is unreasonable. Were the publishers required to pay more in proportion to what it actually costs the government to transport their products, the people of the United States would be benefited. Every man, woman and child in the United States is taxed seventy-three cents by way of his letter postage over and above the cost of carrying his own letters in order to meet the deficiency of underpaid second-class matter.”[7] And then, of course, the postmasters passed a resolution thanking Mr. Suter for his “timely hints relative to second-class matter and commending the Postmaster General.”
On August 22 and 23, there was a postmasters’ convention at Toledo, Ohio, at which a resolution was proposed complimenting the Postmaster General “for his efforts to bring about a fair compensation from those enjoying the benefits of second-class rates.”
James B. Cook, Superintendent of the Division of Postoffice Supplies, Washington, D. C., also addressed a postmasters’ convention in the West, in which he said: “There is one thing I am going to ask you to do—it is a simple thing and one that should be near to your hearts. Certain publishers have attempted to create public sentiment against an increase of postage on advertising matter in magazines.… Many of us believe that the postage rate is class legislation of the rankest kind in favor of the few at the expense of the masses. Talk to your business men about it; the Postmaster General is going to win this fight because he is in the right. Tell the business men that the Postmaster General feels that he is entitled not only to their moral but their active support.”
At how many other state conventions the postmasters have been prompted to pass resolutions and have been addressed by Washington officials endorsing “the great fight” the Postmaster General is making for a higher postage rate, deponent sayeth not.
Thus it is that an energetic campaign has been carried on by the Postmaster General during the summer, postmasters being urged to pass resolutions and “talk to business men” in favor of an increase of postage rate on second-class matter in order, no doubt, to be ready when Congress meets to put the measure through.
In confirmation of the above, word comes from Washington to the effect that “there has been no cessation in the activities of the department to make preparations to renew vigorously at the forthcoming Congress the fight for an increased rate. If the publishers feel that they have won their fight and are resting easily, they will have an awakening ere the year is over.”
While it would not be possible or advisable under the circumstances to circumscribe the activities of our energetic Postmaster General, certainly it would be a prudent and wise step for publishers to place themselves in position to know what is going on injurious to their own interests and that of the people of the whole country.
Now, Mr. Hitchcock is a brave and persistent fighter and as such will respect and honor those who will stand up like men and defend their cause, and can have only contempt for those who will meekly sit still while being pummeled to death.
If publishers are ever to establish honorable and just and amicable and pleasant relations with the Postoffice Department they must show that they are men with red blood in their veins.
The essential thing will be to get the right man to represent us at Washington but this ought not to be difficult.
Among his duties will be to make inquiry into postal matters of every description that in any way relate to the publishing business and to publish them; publish orders of the department; rulings and proposed rulings; attend hearings and publish the proceedings; keep abreast of measures introduced in Congress and proposed by the Postoffice Department bearing upon the publishing business; keep subscribers fully posted on everything that occurs at Washington or elsewhere that concerns them; to advocate such reforms in the postal service as the people ask for and need, and finally to rally the whole fraternity to resist any threatened or actual encroachment upon the freedom and independence of the press.
Here are some of the qualifications necessary for the person fit to take charge of the Washington office: Some experience as editor and publisher; he must be honest and just; patriotic; discreet; firm; tactful; must have power as a writer; character as a gentleman; vision, courage, one who cannot be either frightened or cajoled; and finally, one who recognizes the fact that liberty of the press is a principle that lies at the foundation of republican institutions, and must not be encroached upon, or placed in jeopardy.
I have made the above quotation from Mr. Atkinson to evidence the fact that he and others support my view of Mr. Hitchcock’s attitude now, in relation to this second-class mail rate question. Mr. Atkinson shows quite conclusively that our Postmaster General is still, and stealthily, running the trail which the Penrose-Overstreet Commission scented for him and urges publishers and the printing trades to be on their guard.
Some pages back I adverted to the fact that the deficit of $6,000,000 for the fiscal year 1909-10 was the ground-plan of Mr. Hitchcock for an increase in second-class postage rates. That deficit he himself has converted into a surplus of several thousands of dollars.
Why, then, is he still trailing those independent periodicals?
Why, too, it is relevant to ask, did he so suddenly hear that the people of this country were crying for a cut of fifty per cent in first-class, or sealed, postage rates, much as the advertiser declares the children cry for Castoria? To the Man on the Ladder it appears that what Mr. Hitchcock heard must have been a “far cry”—very far. So far, indeed, that no one who did not have his ear to an ulterior motive could hear it.
You will observe that he worries a couple of years over a “deficit”—a little runabout, five H. P. deficit of $6,000,000. Then by doing a few things which common business sense imperatively dictates should be done, and which, it is well known among competents, any one of a dozen of Mr. Hitchcock’s predecessors should have done, or could have done had not dirty politics blocked them—by doing just a few of the business things which every student of the question knows could have been done and should have been done years ago, Mr. Hitchcock lost his “deficit”—his ground-plan for attack on second-class rates—and found a surplus instead.
The Man on the Ladder does not desire to appear impertinent nor even finicky in his type conversation on this point, but in simple justice to the magnitude of the question he is constrained to ask: Is a “deficit” so essentially necessary to Mr. Hitchcock in a fight to put certain independent periodicals on the financial skids that he must, losing one deficit, immediately set about creating another?
That is just what his move to cut the mail rate on first-class, or sealed, matter must lead to—lead to temporarily of course. In the end a one-cent rate per ounce or fraction thereof will win to a paying basis. That rate will mean a cut of sixteen cents a pound from thirty-two cents a pound for carriage and handling letters and other sealed matter of the first-class. Certainly the postoffice can haul and distribute such matter at a profit at that rate. However, it is equally certain that the department will not handle such matter at a profit for two, three or more years—not so handle it until numerous causes of waste, inhering in the department for years, are sloughed and the department put under strict business management, and not left under partisan political management as now and as it has been for thirty-five or forty years.
With the postal and post card facilities now furnished at the one-cent rate, no considerable number of our people are complaining about the two-cent rate for letters and other sealed matter. But all will welcome a flat rate of one cent on such matter at the present weights. If they get it, either with or without Mr. Hitchcock’s assistance, the people will be getting only what they are entitled to, deficit or no deficit. However, if Mr. Hitchcock thinks a “deficit” necessary armament in his fight to increase second-class mail rates—to increase such rates, as it would appear, on a certain few periodicals which print and publish what the people want to hear and read and not what a few federal officeholders tell them to print and publish, then a cut of 50 per cent in the present first-class postage rates will most certainly create that deficit for him.
In a few years, of course, after business has adjusted itself to the lower rate and the fathers, mothers and sweethearts of the country have learned that they can write a letter to John, Mary, Thomas or Lucy and have it delivered for one cent, whereas it now costs two cents, then Mr. Hitchcock’s created deficit will fade away—will again fade into a surplus.
In the meantime, however, Mr. Hitchcock and associate coterie who apparently are gunning for periodicals which dare tell the truth, will have a “deficit” to use as wadding in their verbal, oratorical and franked ordnance.
The 1910 report of the Postoffice Department sets up something over $202,000,000 as receipts from cancellation of stamps, or stamp sales. Of course, millions of dollars’ worth of those stamps were bought for and canceled in third and fourth class service, catalogues, books, etc.—in third-class carriage and handling, and merchandise parcels in fourth class. One has no data—nor can he obtain such data from the Postoffice Department records—to show what sum or portion of that $202,000,000 worth of stamps was canceled in the transmission of letters and other sealed matter of the first-class. But it may be conservatively stated that if Mr. Hitchcock succeeds in cutting down or curtailing the circulation of weekly and monthly periodicals—especially their advertising pages—he will have no trouble in finding, for two or three years at least, a shrinkage of from $50,000,000 to $75,000,000 in that stamp account.
That, with the falling away in paid second-class matter, will provide him a “deficit” which should make him jubilant—should furnish wadding for his embrasured guns for two or three years in his attack on those recalcitrant periodicals which attend to their own business in a clean, truthful way and expect nothing of a Postmaster General other than that he attend strictly and efficiently to his business, to the business of the Postoffice Department—to the business of collecting, transporting and distributing the federal mails.
I have probably discussed Mr. Hitchcock, his faults and his excellencies sufficiently. I will therefore, pass to another phase of our general subject.