Chapter X: Section 2: of the at present governing statute, the commission advised

(see recommended bill, page 49 of report), should, in its opening paragraph, read as follows:--

“No newspaper or other periodical shall be admitted to the second class unless it shall be made to appear by evidence, _satisfactory to the Postmaster General or his lawful deputy in that behalf_, that it complies with the following conditions.”

Then follow the “conditions,” several of which I have already shown to be seriously objectionable.

(7) I have already presented, under (5), some objections to the commission’s argument made in this seventh citation. I will, however, again say that the publication of fiction, other than immoral, in periodicals, does not, in my judgment at least, in any way infringe the “purpose of the act” of 1879. I will here go further, and say that the act of ’79 does _not_ comprehend in its “real purpose,” as the commission tries to make it appear at (7), that “the diffusion in the quickest possible way at the smallest possible cost of _timely_ information among the people”--that is, the act does not so purpose if the word “timely,” as here used, is intended to mean “news” or “currence of matter,” etc., as the commission elsewhere in its report argues for. In fact, the commission’s statement at (7) is further alee of the “real purpose” of the act of 1879 than is the publication of _any fiction_ in a periodical, and that too, whether the fiction be a reprint of some old production or the imaginative visualizations of some current writer who moved from periodical publication in 1908 or 1909 to print as a “best-seller” in 1910, or from a best seller in 1908-9 to periodical form in 1911.

In short, the commission’s position regarding the publication of fiction in periodical form contravenes the “real purpose” of the law. So, also, does its position on several points it seeks to bolster in its report contravene the real purpose of that act, as I have previously shown, quoting in one instance the opinion of a Postmaster General’s counsel, which opinion the commission itself quoted to support a _false position_.

I feel constrained to make another point against the stand this commission took against the admissibility to the second class mail rate privilege of periodicals largely devoted to fiction.

It appears to me that these commissioners must have confined their reading in recent years largely to the older and so-called “classic” fiction, to professional tomes, to juridic opinions, attorney’s briefs, and to “booster” stuff for parties and candidates published in our newspapers. Certainly they could not have read much of the periodical fiction published by our high-class monthlies and weeklies. If they had done so, they would not, it seems to me, have written so loosely and _unwarrantedly_ of the “fiction” in their report.

Had they read much of the fiction appearing in the leading periodicals during current and recent years, they would have learned at least two facts about it:

1. Much--yes, most--of the fiction printed during recent years in our standard periodicals (even in those printing only fiction as “body matter”), has been highly didactic or educational in character.

2. The periodical fiction published in our leading magazines and weeklies has taught our people lessons in morals, in politics, in political economy, in social, domestic and industrial life. It has told its readers of the habits and habitat of animals, of birds and bees; of flowers, of fruits and forestry. Nor has there been much of “nature faking” in it. Some of the most informative matter ever printed bearing upon natural history, the geography, topography and hydrography of this earth, has reached us through the periodical fiction of the past ten or twelve years. Not only that, but such fiction has gone to the farm and into the laboratory, into the mine, the factory, the mill, and the lumber camp; into the mercantile establishment, into transportation, both rail and water; into the counting room, into the “sweat-shop” and into the tenement districts, the purlieus and the “submerged tenths” in both the lower and higher “walks” of the world’s various and varying civilizations, and it has _taught us things_ we did not before know.

Then _why_ should new laws be enacted, or old laws be twisted, turned or misconstrued, to exclude “fiction”--_periodical_ fiction--from the second-class mail rate privilege?

One other objection I find to this 1906-7 commission’s report. It recommends the appointment of a “Commission of Postal Appeals.”

The report states that certain publishers favored such a commission. That be as it may, I do not believe that such a commission will return service value at all commensurate with the amount of public money it would cost to keep its wheels “greased” and operating. Next to a bureaucracy, government by commissions is the worst. Can the reader think of a “Commission”--a Government, a State, County or City Commission--that ever discharged, promptly and satisfactorily, the duties assigned to it? One is put to no trouble to think of scores of Civil Service Commissions, Forestry Commissions, Subway Commissions, Canal Commissions, Traction Commissions, Railroad Commissions, Postal Commissions, Inter-State Commerce Commissions and a host of others.

But do you know of one of them that ever did any real serviceable work _for the people_--did it until an aroused and hostile public opinion _kicked_ it into doing the work?

You may know of one. The Man on the Ladder knows of _none_, and he has been watching the service value of the “commission” for thirty-five years. As a _governing_ instrument it has largely been a _subversive_ instrument. It always spends its appropriation. It always puts as many of its uncles, brothers and nephews on the pay roll and takes as many junkets as is possible under its appropriation and, if the appropriation is exceeded, it usually asks for more and--_gets it_.

We have an Interstate Commerce Commission. It has been on the job ever since John Sherman put it on duty. Sherman knew what he intended--_wanted_--it to do. Did it do what he and the rest of us depended on it to do? Well, not to any noticeable extent. It spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of our money while it _permitted_ the railroads and express companies to rebate, “differential” and “short” and “long” haul us out _of hundreds of millions of easy or stolen dollars_.

O yes! of course the Interstate Commerce Commission is, of late, getting down to business--getting down to the work John Sherman _intended it to do when he drafted the bill which created it_.

Why has that commission finally arrived at its starting point? Why is it now trying to do--and trying, even yet, to do it in a _loose, dilatory way_--what Sherman intended it to do?

“Why?” Why, simply because the people have finally learned--thanks largely to the enlightenment given them by the independent periodicals of the country--that they have been governmentally treated as fools--that they have been treated as sheep to furnish fleece and mutton for a few who feast and wear fine raiment, _yet earn it not_.

O yes, the people have learned some things and they, recently, have been learning rapidly. It is the people who have _learned_ who have virtually _kicked_ the Interstate Commerce Commission into dutiful action.

No, I positively do not like government by commission, and especially do I not like government of our postal service, or any phase, feature or division of it, by a “Commission of Postal Appeals” or by any other commission, however dignified its title may be. Any suggestion or recommendation of such a commission is, to The Man on the Ladder, but a suggestion and recommendation to further load an already _overloaded_ service.

By that, I mean that the service now rendered by the Federal Postoffice Department is not nearly commensurate with the number of employes carried on its payrolls or with its expenditures, and that the creation of a commission--any postal commission--will only add names to the department payrolls and thousands of dollars to its already excessive expenditures.

In closing my consideration of this Penrose-Overstreet Commission’s report--a report which Mr. Hitchcock appears to have taken some “hunches” from while it also appears he gave very little or no study or consideration to the vast amount of informative data it collected and _filed_--I desire to make a statement or two and then ask a pertinently impertinent question or two.

Among the vast amount of informative data on the subject of transporting and handling second-class mail matter, its cost to the government, etc., there are pages upon pages of testimony by publishers the commission invited to appear before it in person or by representative. Some of that testimony, so newspapers reported during the hearings in both New York and Washington, is supported or re-enforced by the jurats of the publishers testifying. Some of those publishers stated in their testimony that the sample copies they had distributed had, by reason of the correspondence and mail business resulting, amply compensated the government for carrying and handling such sample copies. Several _specific and detailed_ statements were made by the publishers.

Again: The publishers furnished voluminous testimony--both in their own statements and in the correspondence of business men who had patronized the columns of their publications--in proof of the fact that (1) the advertising pages of their publications were as generally read, if not more read, than were the body pages, and (2) that the sales of stamps by the government for the correspondence and business resulting from the advertisements printed yielded far more postal revenue than did any other character of second-class matter the mail service handled.

Now, the questions.

When this Penrose-Overstreet Commission sent out its invitations most of them went to publishers and associations of publishers. At any rate so it would appear from statements in the commission’s report.

_Did the commission believe the publishers invited were liars?_

If so, why did it invite them?

After hearing their verbal testimony and looking over their written statements, _did the commission conclude that those publishers were liars_?

If so, why did it spend the people’s money to collate, digest and file the testimony of liars for the information of Mr. Cortelyou, the then Postmaster General, Mr. Meyer and Mr. Hitchcock, his successor, and other Postmaster Generals who will follow Mr. Hitchcock?

Again--If those commissioners of 1906-7 concluded, either before or after hearing them, that the publishers were or are _liars_, why may not, or should not, those publishers conclude (after reading their report) that the commissioners are liars?

FOOTNOTES

[2] Covers are included in the total for pages given.

[3] One cover page included in count for periodicals carrying cover with no advertising matter on title page of same.

[4] Three pages of cover are counted as advertising.

[5] The weight of supplements to Sunday Editions of newspapers (when mentioned as supplements in list), is included in the gross weight of the issue as given.