“From this $1,620,000, that his figures come to, he would have to deduct, of course, the exempted periodicals and also all expenses of administering the proposed new measure.
“The pretense of raising second-class rates to do away with the postoffice deficit therefore disappears.
“A few popular magazines are to be punished.
“The absurdly unjust discrimination involved in the proposed increase of postal rates on certain subclasses of second-class mail, leaving the larger subclasses, more costly to the postoffice, untouched, is shown in Exhibit C.”
But how about this new development, in which the Postmaster General apparently decides from day to day and hour to hour as to whether one class of periodicals or another shall be allowed to live or made to die?
Has there ever before been in America, or in Russia, or in China, a censor with this power? If the institutions of this country are to be so changed as to give this despotic censorship to one man, ought that man to be the official in charge of the political machinery, as patronage broker, of the Administration?
Now, we come to weights, and here the publishers begin to talk back a little. In introducing the publishers’ “Exhibit C” Senator Owen said:
“It is insisted by the Postoffice Department that it is entirely just to increase the cost on advertisements in the magazines. I submit their answer:”
Why should the Administration have gone to a small 20 per cent portion of the second-class mail to increase postal rates? The Postmaster General gives the magazine weight as 20 per cent of the whole second-class mail, and newspapers as 55.73 per cent. Why leave out the largest classification entirely and concentrate all the new tax on a little 20 per cent classification, which in profit-making and tax-bearing capacity is vastly smaller than even the figures of 20 per cent and 55.73 per cent indicate?
The real reason why the Administration concentrated its fire on the magazines is well known.