It is possible that they knew what was in the mind of the author of that ’79 statute better than I know it, or than Jim Smith or Reuben Peachtree knows it. It is also possible that they did _not_ know the mind of that lawbuilder any better. While the ’79 statute does not, in many particulars, meet present conditions as they should be met, in defining a publication that should be recognized as a periodical, it requires a supercritical or finicky mind to find much fault with it. A periodical must be “originated and published for the dissemination of _information_ of a public character, devoted to _literature_, the _arts_, sciences or some _special industry_.” Now, when one considers the broad application of the word “literature,” the word “arts,” comprehending as it does not only the mechanical and liberal or polite arts, but also _business_, commercial, mercantile and others, including the science of business management, and the term “special industry” and the broad field covered by it--when one considers the broad application of those words, it is a fairly legitimate inference that it was “in the mind” of the writer when drafting that ’79 statute _to give a broad meaning_ and range of service to the publications he intended should be classed as periodicals. In this connection it is pertinent to ask why periodical publications should not serve, either in their advertising pages or in their “body pages,” devoted to fiction and articles on political conditions, economics, history, the lives and deeds of men, forests and forestry, mills, mines, factory, farm and a vast array of other features, phases and conditions--why, I ask, should our periodicals not give aid by giving space to the great mercantile, manufacturing, financial, agricultural and other interests in this country--_interests which, collectively, have built up a commerce more vast today than that of any other nation of earth_? Why should not this vast commerce of ours--a commerce in which every man, woman and child of our people is directly or indirectly interested--be aided and served in every legitimate way by our periodicals? Will some _politically_ living member of that Penrose-Overstreet Commission rise and answer? Answer, not in hypercritical nothings, but _straightly and bluntly_? Another immediately pertinent thing should be stated and another asked here. Among the instruments which have contributed to build up the great commerce of the nation, the American periodical must be recognized--_is recognized_--as one of the most efficient. Why, then, this recent attempt to cripple, to curb, to lessen, its influence and effort? And why, again, try to curtail its circulation and usefulness by prattle about a postal “deficit” as reason for restrictive departmental rulings and laws when, should such restrictive measures be made effective, a shrinkage of postal revenues and a consequent increase of deficit would, necessarily, result?