But let us look at the reasons given by the Administration—given hurriedly and weakly, and almost absurdly easy to disprove.
Why are newspapers exempt and magazines punished to the point of confiscation?
The Administration says (a) magazines carry more advertising than newspapers; (b) they cost the Postoffice Department more than newspapers, because they are hauled farther.
(a) It is not true that magazines carry more advertising than newspapers. By careful measuring the entire superficial area and the advertising contents, respectively, of each of 36 daily newspapers and each of 54 periodicals—the chief advertising mediums of the country—it is found that magazines averaged 34.4 per cent advertising, newspapers averaged 38.08 per cent advertising.
(b) The statement that magazines cost the Postoffice Department more per pound than newspapers is easily susceptible of final disproof from the department’s own figures—the most extreme figures it has been able to bring forward in its attempts to prove a case against the magazines.
The Postoffice Department states that owing to the different average lengths of haul, it costs 5 cents to transport a pound of magazines and 2 cents to transport a pound of newspapers.
Admit that these figures, often repeated in the department’s reports, are correct. Let us see how the final cost of service for a pound of magazines looks beside the final cost of service to a pound of newspapers.
Besides the cost of transporting mail, figured of course by weight and length of haul, there are three huge factors of cost, apportioned according to the number of pieces of mail—rural free delivery, railway-mail service, and postoffice service (Postoffice Department pamphlet, “Cost of transporting and hauling the several classes of mail matter,” 1910).
TRANSPORTATION COST OF MAGAZINES AND NEWSPAPERS.
By weighing carefully the representative magazine, every copy of a year’s issue of 64 leading magazines, and by weighing 60 different classes of newspapers, daily and Sunday, the postal committee of the Periodical Publishers’ Association has found that the magazine weighs, on the average, 12.3 ounces and the newspaper 3.92 ounces.