Postal Riders and Raiders

by W. H. Gantz

(b) By abolishing all premiums, whether of printed matter or merchandise.

(c) By either prohibiting all combination offers, as, for example, a set of books with a magazine, or requiring that in all cases a price shall be set upon both elements of the combination and that the full advertised price of the periodical be paid.

(d) By requiring that the publication shall print conspicuously, not only its regular subscription price, but any reduced price at which it is offered in clubbing arrangements and the like.

(e) By providing that all copies which the postmaster, in the exercise of due diligence shall be unable to deliver, shall be returned with a postage-due stamp for an amount equal to double the third-class rate. In other words, charge the publisher the third-class rate both for the forwarding and the returning of any copy sent otherwise than in response to an actual demand.

To The Man on the Ladder the commission’s talk, advising the enforcement of “the requirements that the periodical may be issued and circulated only in response to a public demand” (page 40 of report), reads much like one of two things—either the inconsidered or ill-considered prattle of persons who want to say something, or the argument of ulterior motive—of a covert purpose to restrict, to cripple, to kill the greatest instrument for the education of its adult citizens which any nation of earth has to date discovered—an instrument that is economically within easy reach of its exchequer.

How much of a “public demand” does the reader think there would have been for the reaper, for the thrashing machine, for the case-hardened, steel shared plow, for the sewing machine, for the triple expansion engine, for the traveling crane, for any brand of breakfast food, of ham, of flour, books—in short, how much of “public demand” would there have been for any of the mechanical inventions, for any of the multitude of betterments in the housing, clothing and subsisting of our people, had not that “public demand” been created? No one wants anything, however excellent it may be, until his attention is called to it and he believes it will aid him or her, as the case may be, that it will lighten the stress of labor or increase its product, or in other lines and directions improve the conditions of their lives, industrially or otherwise. Ninety-nine per cent of “public opinion,” as to whether or not that public wants or does not want this, that or the other thing is influenced—is promoted by what it senses in personal contact with the thing or by what it hears said of it or reads of it.

That statement is as true of the members of the 1906-7 commission and of Postmaster General Hitchcock as it is of Mr. William Mossback of Mossville, Connecticut. The “demand” of each of us—our desire to possess this or that—is prompted—is created—by what we see, hear, feel, taste, smell or read of it. We stand at the head of the nations of earth for progress in the various fields of mechanical improvement, from kitchen utensils to laundry equipment, from the plow to the electric crane. What is true of the progress of our people through the adoption of labor-saving mechanical devices, implements and machinery is correspondingly true in various other fields of progress—a progress largely the result of promoted “demand” for the better things, for the improvements of which our people have read in our newspapers and in our monthly and weekly publications—yes, read of in the advertisements and in descriptive write-ups of such periodicals, if you will have it so.

So this prattle about issuing a periodical “only to public demand” is not only prattle—it is not only unsound and unbusinesslike both in theory and service practice, but it is also a stealthy attempt to garrote the facts, likewise an attempt to subject the great publishing interests of the country to the rankest kind of injustice.

How is the publisher to secure additional subscribers if he be denied mailing privilege to sample copies?

True, the bill recommended by this commission would allow the publisher to mail sample copies to the extent of ten per cent of his subscribed issue. Mr. Hitchcock, however, as I shall shortly show, proposes to exclude all sample copies from the mails.