That, at any rate, I read as the point and purpose of the commission’s somewhat labored, if not strained, argument. They quote (pages 37-38) this counsel in support of that argument. I shall here reprint that quotation as evidence that the publisher of “the universally recognized, commonly accepted, and perfectly well understood periodical of everyday speech” (see fifth paragraph of quotation) have not violated the law nor sought to do so.
The quoted opinion presents some italicized words, phrases and clauses as it appears in the report. I have taken the liberty to further italicize in reprinting it:
“The next words only strengthen the same idea—originated and published for the dissemination of information of a public character. Not, it will be observed, that it shall contain information of a public character, but shall be published for the dissemination of such public information. Each of these words is significant, and each gathers significance from its neighbors. Dissemination is here a word of strong color and tinges all the rest. It indicates a dynamic process, an agency at work carrying out a purpose for which it was originated and set in motion. But strong as the word dissemination is, it is fortified by the use of the word information. An agency for the dissemination of knowledge for example, might better consist with the idea of a library of books. But the word is not knowledge, but information. The distinction is obvious. One has the sense of accumulated stores; the other of imparting the idea of things for current needs. One is, as it were, human experience at rest; the other, human experience in action. One may be as stale as you please; the other must be new, fresh, vital. A book, a volume, is the medium of one; a journal the medium of the other.
“Information,” says the Century Dictionary, “is timely or specific knowledge respecting some matter of interest or inquiry.” It is, as it were, vitalized knowledge; knowledge imbued with life and activity. Nor when we come to the next phase do we find any change in the idea—or devoted to literature, the sciences, arts, or some special industry. Devoted to literature. Mark you, not that the publication shall be literature or contain literature, but that it shall be devoted to literature. What is meant by devoted? The Century Dictionary puts it thus: To direct or apply chiefly or wholly to some purpose, work, or use; to give or surrender completely, as to some person or end, as to devote oneself to art, literature, or philanthropy. There again we have the idea of a permanent continuing entity, a thing existing for a given purpose, appearing regularly at such intervals (not greater than three months), as may most effectually meet its needs, in the interest of art, of science, or literature.
Do we say that a book—a novel, a history, a drama—is devoted to literature? It is not devoted to literature; it is literature, and it would be an absurdity to speak of it as devoted to itself. Such a locution would be merely a willful perversion of language.
On the other hand, a review or a magazine may be said to be devoted to literature with perfect naturalness and propriety. For we rightly conceive of the review or magazine as one definite recognizable entity—a continuing whole, originated for a given purpose, and made up of similar parts having a common object—literature, for example, or art, or science, or whatever else it is to which the whole is devoted.
Taking these words, originated and published for, dissemination, information, devoted to, they all point to one conclusion. They are, we repeat, strong and pregnant words. There is but one concept consistent with them all. We confidently submit that an attentive reading of the statute will leave no doubt that what Congress constantly had in mind in the creating of this privileged class of publications was the universally recognized, commonly accepted, and perfectly well understood periodical of everyday speech.
In establishing the rate for newspapers and other periodical publications Congress was not seeking to discriminate between good literature and bad literature or to establish a censorship of the press with prizes for merit. The thing it had in mind was not the goodness or badness of the information disseminated, but the instrumentalities by which that dissemination might be accomplished. It was not thinking of all the accumulated stores of sound and pure literature in the vast libraries of the world, but it was thinking of how the mind of an inquiring and progressive people might be kept abreast of the times in all departments of human thought and activity. Congress did not stand hesitating between a good book and a bad newspaper.
Another position taken by the Penrose-Overstreet Commission, and one which The Man on the Ladder strongly opposes, is that a periodical may not or “must not consist wholly or substantially of fiction.”
The words just quoted are exactly the words used in the sixth paragraph of Section 2 of the bill the enactment of which this commission recommended.