“It is not a matter of favor, but of approved judgment. It is not for the publishers, but for the people.”
The testimony of Senator Bristow is that, “I am glad we have got a one-cent rate of postage for the legitimate newspapers and magazines of the country, and I would rather decrease it than raise it. The beneficiaries are the poor people themselves, who now get daily papers at from $2 to $4 a year, when they used to pay from $10 to $12. They now get magazines from $1 to $1.50, when they used to pay $4 to $6 per year for magazines of no higher grade.” …
And I would remind the Commission that there are millions of laboring men and women who cannot afford to add to their living expenses the cost of any but the very cheapest reading matter, and many not even that. After buying food and clothing and providing shelter there is scarcely anything left in the home for cultivating the intellect and informing the mind.
When sickness intervenes, then comes the stress of debt, and if death follow, the future has to be drawn upon to give the dead a burial such as love would provide. Are these people, the bone and sinew of the land, those in the humble walks of life, not to be considered when it is proposed to add to the cost of the family reading?
It surely should not be made more difficult for the poor to obtain that which is so essential to their welfare and that of the Republic of which they form an important part.…
“But here I cannot forbear to recommend,” said George Washington, in his message to Congress, on November 6, 1792, “a repeal of the tax on the transportation of public prints. There is no resource so firm for the government of the United States as the affections of the people, guided by an enlightened policy; and to this primary good, nothing can conduce more than a faithful representation of public proceedings diffused without restraint throughout the United States.”
NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS.—THE DIFFERENCE.
An effort was made in the closing hours of the 61st Congress to increase the postage rate on magazines. It is my opinion that the postage rate should remain uniform as it is now upon all classes of publications. There should be no partiality shown, there should be no discrimination. A proposal to increase the rate on magazines alone, is not one that should have the endorsement of this Commission nor the approval of Congress, as I shall endeavor to show.
Under Section 432 of the Postal Laws and Regulations, “A newspaper is held to be a publication regularly issued at stated intervals of not longer than one week; a periodical is held to be a publication regularly issued at stated intervals less frequently than weekly.”