Postal Riders and Raiders

by W. H. Gantz

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.