Why should the Administration have gone to a small 20 per cent portion of the second-class mail to increase postal rates? The Postmaster General gives the magazine weight as 20 per cent of the whole second-class mail, and newspapers as 55.73 per cent. Why leave out the largest classification entirely and concentrate all the new tax on a little 20 per cent classification, which in profit-making and tax-bearing capacity is vastly smaller than even the figures of 20 per cent and 55.73 per cent indicate? The real reason why the Administration concentrated its fire on the magazines is well known. But let us look at the reasons given by the Administration--_given hurriedly and weakly, and almost absurdly easy to disprove_. Why are newspapers exempt and magazines punished to the point of confiscation? The Administration says (_a_) magazines carry more advertising than newspapers; (_b_) they cost the Postoffice Department more than newspapers, because they are hauled farther. (_a_) It is not true that magazines carry more advertising than newspapers. By careful measuring the entire superficial area and the advertising contents, respectively, of each of 36 daily newspapers and each of 54 periodicals--the chief advertising mediums of the country--it is found that magazines averaged 34.4 per cent advertising, newspapers averaged 38.08 per cent advertising. (_b_) The statement that magazines cost the Postoffice Department more per pound than newspapers is easily susceptible of final disproof from the department’s own figures--the most extreme figures it has been able to bring forward in its attempts to prove a _case against the magazines_. The Postoffice Department states that owing to the different average lengths of haul, it costs 5 cents to transport a pound of magazines and 2 cents to transport a pound of newspapers. Admit that these figures, _often repeated in the department’s reports_, are correct. Let us see how the final cost of service for a pound of magazines looks beside the final cost of service to a pound of newspapers. Besides the cost of transporting mail, figured of course by weight and length of haul, there are three huge factors of cost, apportioned according to the number of pieces of mail--rural free delivery, railway-mail service, and postoffice service (Postoffice Department pamphlet, “Cost of transporting and hauling the several classes of mail matter,” 1910). TRANSPORTATION COST OF MAGAZINES AND NEWSPAPERS.