1. Much--yes, most--of the fiction printed during recent years in our standard periodicals (even in those printing only fiction as “body matter”), has been highly didactic or educational in character. 2. The periodical fiction published in our leading magazines and weeklies has taught our people lessons in morals, in politics, in political economy, in social, domestic and industrial life. It has told its readers of the habits and habitat of animals, of birds and bees; of flowers, of fruits and forestry. Nor has there been much of “nature faking” in it. Some of the most informative matter ever printed bearing upon natural history, the geography, topography and hydrography of this earth, has reached us through the periodical fiction of the past ten or twelve years. Not only that, but such fiction has gone to the farm and into the laboratory, into the mine, the factory, the mill, and the lumber camp; into the mercantile establishment, into transportation, both rail and water; into the counting room, into the “sweat-shop” and into the tenement districts, the purlieus and the “submerged tenths” in both the lower and higher “walks” of the world’s various and varying civilizations, and it has _taught us things_ we did not before know. Then _why_ should new laws be enacted, or old laws be twisted, turned or misconstrued, to exclude “fiction”--_periodical_ fiction--from the second-class mail rate privilege? One other objection I find to this 1906-7 commission’s report. It recommends the appointment of a “Commission of Postal Appeals.” The report states that certain publishers favored such a commission. That be as it may, I do not believe that such a commission will return service value at all commensurate with the amount of public money it would cost to keep its wheels “greased” and operating. Next to a bureaucracy, government by commissions is the worst. Can the reader think of a “Commission”--a Government, a State, County or City Commission--that ever discharged, promptly and satisfactorily, the duties assigned to it? One is put to no trouble to think of scores of Civil Service Commissions, Forestry Commissions, Subway Commissions, Canal Commissions, Traction Commissions, Railroad Commissions, Postal Commissions, Inter-State Commerce Commissions and a host of others. But do you know of one of them that ever did any real serviceable work _for the people_--did it until an aroused and hostile public opinion _kicked_ it into doing the work? You may know of one. The Man on the Ladder knows of _none_, and he has been watching the service value of the “commission” for thirty-five years. As a _governing_ instrument it has largely been a _subversive_ instrument. It always spends its appropriation. It always puts as many of its uncles, brothers and nephews on the pay roll and takes as many junkets as is possible under its appropriation and, if the appropriation is exceeded, it usually asks for more and--_gets it_.