Why, fifteen per cent of the gross receipts for advertising by any of our high-class periodicals scarcely would meet--I doubt if in any such case it does _meet_--the expenditures made for skilled “layout” men and designers. Everyone knows that the advertising pages of any of our standard weekly and monthly periodicals are _art pages_. People _read_ the “ads” in these periodicals. They are largely attracted to them by their artistic arrangement, typographically and in design. It takes _brains_ to make that arrangement, brains of finer fiber or better trained than the cold storage variety. The service of such brains _costs money_. Who pays it? _The publisher._ And the publisher who gets the services of such brains at less than fifteen per cent of the “gross” charge for his advertising must, in these days, be a wonder in business acumen or a “pow’ful ’suadin’ boss,” as Rastus used to say, down on the Yazoo, years ago, when he took a job at twenty-five cents a day less than he had asked. I say the people _read_ these “ads” and, fearing I shall forget it later, I desire to interpolate here another thought: They are led to read them because of the artistic letterpress, the designing, the attractive phrasing, catchy wording, etc. They read them. _You_ and _I_ read them. And--well, that is my point--my thought. The “ads” in periodicals of the class of which we are speaking cover almost every field and domain of life--of human life--of _our_ lives. They tell us of the latest inventions and achievements in the mechanical and industrial world; of the latest improvements in the cultivation of the land; of the latest and best in “hen range” management and “run-way” poultry raising; of the latest achievements of Luther Burbank, or some other wizard in the domain of pomology; of kitchen and flower gardening; of how to cut down our gas bills; to make the ton of coal deliver more “duty”--more thermic B. T. U.’s--of the best new books and of bargain reprint editions of the best old ones; of where to get a cheap home, cheap acres around it and how to build and furnish a comfortable home cheaply; in fact, of an infinity of daily and hourly needs. So what is the use of my enumerating further? Every reader knows what those “ads” in our standard periodicals do for us. They enlighten, they inform, they _educate_ us. And that is why we read them, and that is why we should continue to do so. We will get back now to Mr. Hitchcock and his “wondrous ways” of figuring a publisher’s profits on the advertising he prints. Postmaster General Hitchcock appears to have ignored the fact I have already pointed out--ignored the fact that the publisher’s heaviest loss is on the printing and distribution end of his periodical, and thus is a charge against his advertising receipts.