[346] Report of Commission on Second-class Mail Matter. Appendix to Message of President of 22nd February 1912, pp. 137-8.
[347] Ibid., p. 129.
[348] "The historic policy of encouraging by low postal rates the dissemination of current intelligence, and the extent to which it has proved successful, should not be overlooked."—Ibid., p. 143.
[349] "If the Republic of our patriotic love is to live and our people preserve their liberties, the sheet-anchor of their salvation is a free, independent, untrammelled and fearless Press, and we believe that to maintain this happy condition publishers must not be subjected to any arbitrary authority that claims and exercises the power to destroy by closing the mails against them without the right to appeal to the courts, a right that is held sacred by every citizen, however humble, whenever and wherever his opportunity to earn a livelihood in an honourable business is called in question or denied him."—Evidence of Mr. Wilmer Atkinson of Philadelphia, Pa., Report of Commission on Second-class Mail Matter, 1906, p. 412.
[350] "Publishers are now sometimes kept on the anxious seat for months awaiting decisions which may wreck their businesses."—Evidence of Mr. Madden, Third Assistant Postmaster-General.—Ibid., p. 89.
[351] "There is no 'subsidy' at all, as claimed by the foolish, but simply that the lawmakers of the greatest Government on earth have been wise enough to see to it that the people shall have periodical literature within easy reach, and with as little expense as possible."—Evidence of Wilmer Atkinson, ibid., p. 441.
[352] "Who knows but that the onerous restrictions of the department have some connection with the efforts of the express companies to have second-class mail rates increased, and by both means drive the publishers of the country to employing the express companies to carry their publications? Such would not be beyond the craftiness of these skilled farmers in the field of legislation."—Nathan B. Williams, The American Post Office, 1910; Document 542, 61st Congress, 2nd Session, p. 40.
[353] "Yet we publish more periodicals than Germany, France, Russia, Great Britain, Switzerland, Belgium, and Holland aggregated, and you may then add all the other countries of Europe, then Canada and Mexico. Then add all the Central American States, and the South American States, and the African Colonies—North, South, East, and West. You must still add Australia, and Hindoostan, and all other Asiatic countries, including Japan and China, and even then you haven't reached the end or the story. You then have only 40 per cent. of the total against our 60."—C. W. Burrows, One Cent Postage, etc., Cleveland, Ohio, 1911, p. 11.
[354] "The great decrease in all the more serious departments of literature, as well as in some of the lighter ones, is a curious and unexplainable condition of our book production. Scientific and philosophical writings are as conspicuous through their absence as are the simply amusing books."—Publishers' Weekly (New York), 30th January 1904.
[355] Message to Congress, 22nd February 1912.