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.