“No fiction necessarily involves the element of periodicity or time publication which is involved in the very idea of a newspaper or periodical. It follows, then, (7) _that the real purpose of the act of March 3, 1879, namely, the diffusion in the quickest possible way at the smallest possible cost of timely information among the people, is perverted when the right to that quick and inexpensive diffusion is extended to the form of fiction_. But the periodical form devoted to fiction, or in which fiction constitutes the predominant feature, is the very form of periodical which serves to swell the second class. The popular demand for fiction seems to be practically unlimited. The temptation offered by the low postal rate to supply that demand through the periodical form is a temptation impossible to resist.” (Page 39.) I shall make my comment on the foregoing in the order that its italicized _assertions_ are numbered. (1) The “element of fiction” has not and does _not_ constitute “the propulsive force” stated. Was it “fiction” that propulsed the circulation of _Everybody’s_? of _Pearson’s_? of _The Cosmopolitan_? of _The American_? of _McClure’s_? of _The Saturday Evening Post_? of _The Inland Printer_? of _The Progressive Printer_? or of scores of other monthly and weekly periodicals whose publishers are independent enough to do their own thinking and courageous enough to publish what they and their representatives found to be the truth? Was “Frenzied Finance” fiction? Was Anna M. Tarbell’s exposures of Standard Oil fiction? Was the exposure of the Waters-Pierce Oil Company’s connection with the great Senatorial “I” of Texas fiction? Was the shake-up of the “Big Three” life insurance companies fiction? Were the hundreds of other trenchant write-ups and exposures of wrong practices, of impositions, of crookedness and _crooks_ in official, corporation and private life, “fiction?” The man who reads and will attempt to answer any of those questions affirmatively needs to have his brain dusted up--that is, of course, on the presumption that he is not _paid for vocal gyrations_. And yet it was the telling write-ups and exposures of these independents which greatly increased their circulation and, consequently, increased second-class tonnage. (2) There is no such “main statutory check.” Moreover, the “commercial exploitation” given in the advertising pages of our standard periodicals to merchants, manufacturers, etc., is, as previously shown, not only just and due to the vast commercial interests of the country, but it is safely within both the letter and the intent of the statute.