Postal Riders and Raiders

by W. H. Gantz

This Document No. 820 is all good, so good that I believe I will reprint from it further and at this point:

Postmaster General Hitchcock proceeds in the first and second paragraphs on page four to cite a recent increase of advertising rates of a certain magazine, and to consider, and use in figuring, as net profits the total amount of advertising it carries for the year.

(It is of incidental interest, in showing the partisan attitude of the Postmaster General, that in calculating the total amount of advertising received by this publication, he takes the number of lines actually printed in this weekly’s richest advertising season, ignoring the fact that in the summer this periodical is sometimes published at a loss, and makes an estimate of its advertising patronage for the whole year on the basis of what it received in the months when advertising is at its height).

But the gigantic error of the Postmaster General is in calculating the additional income from advertising for this weekly resulting from its increased advertising rate, and assuming that this increased income is all profit. This error arises from the Postmaster General’s total ignorance of the publishing business in general; and in particular, of the fact proved above, that the magazines save only a small fraction of their aggregate advertising income as net profits after paying the expenses of production and administration.

Then the Postmaster General finds out how much money the increased rate brought the periodical and observes with an air of finality that this income was more than sufficient to meet the higher postal charges.

The facts are, of course, that to get this higher advertising rate, the “great periodical” had to publish enough more copies and additional reading matter in those copies to justify the increased rate; and that to manufacture and supply these additional subscriptions it costs magazines more than twice as much as they get from subscribers. Furthermore, the Postmaster General takes gross advertising income as net profit, apparently thinking that advertising flows into periodical offices without the asking, where, as a matter of fact, it is necessary to spend enormous sums for high-priced men to solicit advertising, for other men to lay out plans and make designs for advertisers, and for a large clerical force to handle the advertising department. The calm way in which the Postmaster General ignores the cost of presswork and paper on which the advertising is printed, exhibits his ignorance of the fact that there is in business an expense side of the ledger as well as an income side.

If a magazine has 100,000 circulation and a fair corresponding rate for advertising and if the circulation is then increased to 200,000, the publisher has the same right and the same necessity to charge more for the doubled circulation that a grocer has to charge more for two pounds of tea than for one pound. But what possible relation has this to the fact that postage rates have remained stationary? The postoffice gives no more service than it did before magazine circulations and advertising increased—in fact it gives less, as it now requires the big magazines to separate and tag for distribution, and, in many cases, deliver to the trains, a vast quantity of magazine mail, formerly handled entirely by the postoffice.

I wonder if Mr. Hitchcock ever read “Job Jobson, Nos. 1, 2 and 3.” If he has not there is something due him which he ought to take immediate steps to collect. “Job Jobson” in three little pamphlets tells more than either Mr. Hitchcock or myself will ever be able to learn about second-class mail carriage and handling—unless, of course, we read those three booklets of Job Jobson.

Why are Job Jobson’s three booklets so important? A very pertinent question, indeed, at this stage of our consideration. Job Jobson’s three booklets are toweringly important inasmuch as they were written by Wilmer Atkinson, publisher of the Farm Journal of Philadelphia, one of the most successful as well as the most useful farm periodicals the world has ever produced.

More than that, Mr. Atkinson has so long and so thoroughly studied this second-class mail rate question that both Mr. Hitchcock and myself would have to take our places in the kindergarten class where he is tutor.