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:”