Postal Riders and Raiders

by W. H. Gantz

Now, whatever their wit or wisdom, their eloquence or adroitness of speech, their beauty of shape and apparel, or their loftiness of position, that “recommendation” should recommend the personnel of that commission, it seems to me, to some “wronghouse” for a long rest. Their conclusion, their lex recommendation and their “argument” in support, taken collectively, are as thrilling, likewise amusing, as the point in a story “where the woman is turned on and begins to short circuit the hero,” putting it as near as I can remember in the language of Sewell Ford, Bowers, or some other “enlivening writer.”

Lest the reader think my adverse criticism of the commissioners too harsh, or not in keeping with the dignity of the gentlemen composing that 1906-7 commission, I shall here quote a few of the paragraphs it presents as basis for its recommendation. The reader will oblige by carefully noting the italics. They are mine, and, following the quotation, I shall comment on some of those italicized phrasings and statements:

“Not only does the element of fiction constitute the (1) propulsive force behind the expansion of second-class matter, but it serves at the same time (2) to undermine the main statutory check upon the commercial exploitation of the second class. Being free to make up a periodical which contains nothing but fiction, publishers find ready at hand the very thing with which to interlard and disguise the advertising matter, for the sake of which the publication is really issued. This they could not do if the advertisement carrying text was required to be news matter or critical matter of a current nature. (3) Deprive the mail-order journals of the right to cloak their advertising with fiction and require them to publish something in the nature of a newspaper or review with expensive news-gathering apparatus and an editorial staff and (4) the mail-order advertising journal will completely disappear. It lives only by reason of two things, the cheapness of its fiction, with which it cloaks its advertising, and the cheapness of the postal rate which that fiction cloak enables it to obtain.

“The distinction between the fiction-carrying periodical and the nonfiction-carrying periodical (5) is precisely the distinction between a periodical fulfilling the purposes of the act and the publication which, although periodical in its form, has no true periodicity in its essence.

“Another consequence of the expansive power of fiction is found in the confusion of the newspaper and magazine types and the unhealthy exaggeration of the modern newspaper, as shown especially in its Sunday editions.

“The newspaper is rapidly being extended into the magazine field at the sacrifice both of the postal revenue and the (6) true mission of the newspaper. The miscellaneous matter contained in the Sunday issue of a newspaper must of necessity lack the quality to make it socially and educationally valuable.” (Page 37.)

“No fiction necessarily involves the element of periodicity or time publication which is involved in the very idea of a newspaper or periodical. It follows, then, (7) that the real purpose of the act of March 3, 1879, namely, the diffusion in the quickest possible way at the smallest possible cost of timely information among the people, is perverted when the right to that quick and inexpensive diffusion is extended to the form of fiction. But the periodical form devoted to fiction, or in which fiction constitutes the predominant feature, is the very form of periodical which serves to swell the second class. The popular demand for fiction seems to be practically unlimited. The temptation offered by the low postal rate to supply that demand through the periodical form is a temptation impossible to resist.” (Page 39.)

I shall make my comment on the foregoing in the order that its italicized assertions are numbered.

(1) The “element of fiction” has not and does not constitute “the propulsive force” stated. Was it “fiction” that propulsed the circulation of Everybody’s? of Pearson’s? of The Cosmopolitan? of The American? of McClure’s? of The Saturday Evening Post? of The Inland Printer? of The Progressive Printer? or of scores of other monthly and weekly periodicals whose publishers are independent enough to do their own thinking and courageous enough to publish what they and their representatives found to be the truth?

Was “Frenzied Finance” fiction?