Postal service -- United States -- Second-class matter
I give it up. However it may appear to the reader, to The Man on the
Ladder it appears that Mr. Hitchcock in his 1910 report has written,
figured and “recommended” himself into a situation that is far more
humoresque than it is consistent or informative.
Returning to the report of the 1906-7 commission, I will mention a few
more of its objectionable recommendations.
As previously stated, the Penrose-Overstreet Commission recommended the
enactment of a law requiring that newspapers and other periodicals devote
not more than one-half their space to advertising matter (Section 3 of
recommended bill, page 50 of report). Thus, in pressing an ill-conceived
purpose to restrain the growth of circulation and increase of weight of
monthly and weekly periodicals, they would, it appears, cut into that
division of their published matter _which produces the greatest revenue
to the government for carriage and handling_.
The truth of the last clause preceding has been so frequently and
conclusively shown as to require no argument to convince the veriest
tyro in knowledge of federal postoffice affairs and the sources of its
revenues that the statement made is true. Elsewhere in this volume,
however, the truth of the statement will be found fully established.
I confine the application of the statement to monthly and weekly
periodicals, to such as are of general circulation. It of course applies,
but in lesser degree, to newspapers. The advertising matter published
in the newspapers is largely of local character, while that published
in our high class monthly magazines and weeklies, in trade journals,
etc., is largely general in character. The advertisements published by
the former are chiefly those of local merchants and manufacturers and of
local, commercial, financial and other interests. On the other hand the
advertisements carried by the class of monthly and weekly periodicals
indicated represent persons, companies and interests widely scattered
throughout the country. Because of this phase in the character of the
advertisements carried, the newspapers advertising space is not nearly so
large a contributor to the government’s revenues from first, third and
fourth class mail carriage and handling as is the advertising space of
our high-class monthly and weekly periodicals.
It is true that this 1906-7 commission makes a somewhat _strained_ effort
to assign two chief reasons for its recommendation to curtail the space
which publishers of periodicals of all kinds may devote to advertising
matter.
1. The commissioners appear to have been carrying around with them
a stern purpose to suppress what they designate as the “mail order”
publications, devoted largely to advertising the wares carried in stock
by one or, at most, a few firms that individually or jointly pay for
publishing the “weekly” or “monthly”, as the case may be.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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