Postal service -- United States -- Second-class matter
(_d_) By requiring that the publication shall print
conspicuously, not only its regular subscription price, but any
reduced price at which it is offered in clubbing arrangements and
the like.
(_e_) By providing that all copies which the postmaster, in the
exercise of due diligence shall be unable to deliver, shall be
returned with a postage-due stamp for an amount equal to double
the third-class rate. In other words, charge the publisher the
third-class rate both for the forwarding and the returning of any
copy sent otherwise than in response to an actual demand.
To The Man on the Ladder the commission’s talk, advising the enforcement
of “the requirements that the periodical may be issued and circulated
only in _response to a public demand_” (page 40 of report), reads much
like one of two things--either the inconsidered or ill-considered prattle
of persons who want to say _something_, or the argument of _ulterior
motive_--of a covert _purpose_ to restrict, to cripple, to _kill_ the
greatest instrument for the education of its _adult_ citizens which
any nation of earth has to date discovered--an instrument that is
economically within easy reach of its exchequer.
How much of a “public demand” does the reader think there would have been
for the reaper, for the thrashing machine, for the case-hardened, steel
shared plow, for the sewing machine, for the triple expansion engine, for
the traveling crane, for any brand of breakfast food, of ham, of flour,
books--in short, how much of “public demand” would there have been for
any of the mechanical inventions, for any of the multitude of betterments
in the housing, clothing and subsisting of our people, _had not that
“public demand” been created_? No one wants anything, however excellent
it may be, until his attention is called to it and he believes it will
_aid him or her_, as the case may be, that it will lighten the stress of
labor or increase its product, or in other lines and directions improve
the conditions of their lives, industrially or otherwise. Ninety-nine
per cent of “public opinion,” as to whether or not that public wants or
does not want this, that or the other thing is _influenced_--is promoted
by what it _senses_ in personal contact with the thing or by what it
hears said of it or _reads of it_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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