There can be no question that there is a large number of such alleged periodicals which have been issued and distributed through the mails for the _plainly_ manifest purpose of advertising the merchandise of those who pay for publishing them. I believe, however, that there are fewer of such fake periodicals enjoying the mail service at second-class rates today than there were ten or fifteen years ago. The Postoffice Department, it must be said to its credit, has “disciplined” a large number of them out of existence or, at any rate, out of the second-class mail rate privilege. But even if there are more of such fraud and fake periodicals today than formerly, any fair-minded man must agree that it is a very rank injustice to punish--to penalize by harsh restrictions and increased mailing rates--the thousands of legitimate and highly serviceable periodicals for the sins of a comparatively few alleged publications which have abused or are abusing the second-class mail rate privilege. The department, with its large force of inspectors and investigators, should be able to weed out and exclude such “fixed” periodicals. If it cannot do so it appears to The Man on the Ladder that it would not require a very large amount of industrious, strenuous thinking on the part of six robust, competent legislators to frame a law that would reach the _guilty_ without punishing or crippling the innocent. 2. This commission was also, it would appear, a stickler over _compliance_ with the postal statutes--statutes (those now largely governing) enacted in 1879 and 1885, therefore so antiquated in their wording in several particulars as to be a misfit when attempt is made to apply them to the vast business and varied character of periodicals today. The statute of March 3, 1879, in its definition of what the law would recognize as a periodical says, among other things, that a periodical must be “_originated and published for the dissemination of information of a public character, or devoted to literature, the arts, sciences, or to some industry_.” This portion of the statutory definition the Commission seems to have entertained a special grudge against. At any rate it expatiated at considerable length in its report, against the inadequacy, lack of definiteness, etc., of the definition as given. The commission’s chief objection seems to center around the fact that space in periodicals should not be devoted to “commercial ends.” On page 35 of the report the commission says: “What was in the mind of the author (of the 1879 statute), is clear enough. He wished to prohibit the misuse of the privileges for _commercial ends_ as distinguished from the devotion to literature, science, and the rest.”