of the United States, as the council may prescribe; that they shall bear interest at not to exceed 8 per cent, payable annually or semiannually, shall be issued under the corporate seal of the city or town, and shall be signed by the mayor and the treasurer thereof; that they shall be payable in 10 years from their date, but may be payable at the option of the city or town at any interest period; but that in the event the city or town should elect to pay off any such bond before maturity it shall pay a prescribed bonus to the holder thereof. Subsequent sections of the code provide for the collection of assessments on the abutting property and separation of the proceeds of such assessments from the other revenues of the city or town, and their application to the payment of the bonds issued on account of that particular improvement; but there is no provision in the law to the effect that the bonds are payable only out of the amount realized from assessments.

On May 4, 1911, the city council of the city of Tuscaloosa passed an ordinance providing for the issuance of bonds to pay for the construction of certain feeder or lateral sewers; that the bonds were to be issued under the provisions of sections 1409 and 1410 of the Code of Alabama of 1907; that the bonds should be payable, both principal and interest, in gold coin of the United States; that they should be signed by the mayor and treasurer of the city of Tuscaloosa and sealed with the corporate seal thereof, and that "the faith and credit and property of the city of Tuscaloosa is hereby pledged to the punctual payment of the said bonds and coupons as the same mature." Section 5 of the ordinance provides that the money derived from the assessments should be kept separate and apart from the other revenues of the city and applied to the payment of the bonds thereby authorized, but there is no provision in the ordinance that the bonds are to be payable solely out of this assessment fund.

The bonds issued under the authority of the aforesaid provisions of the Code of Alabama and of the ordinance of the city of Tuscaloosa, according to the copy submitted by you, purport to bind the city of Tuscaloosa without any reservation, are signed by the mayor and treasurer of said city, and sealed with the corporate seal.

Under these circumstances the case falls directly within the opinion of the Attorney General in the case of the bonds of the city of Portland, Oreg. (29 Op. 335.) I therefore have the honor to advise you that the bonds of the city of Tuscaloosa to which you refer are "public bonds or other securities, supported by the taxing power" within the meaning of section 9 of the act of June 25, 1910. I do not, of course, attempt to pass upon their validity in any other respect whatsoever.

As to the bonds of the city of West End, a different condition of affairs is apparent. While it may be that the city of West End could issue bonds, under the authority of the provisions of the Code of Alabama hereinbefore referred to, the fact is that the bond of which you submit a copy does not purport to bind the city of West End absolutely. It is expressly stated therein that

This bond is issued to anticipate the collection of the deferred installments of a special assessment levied by the city of West End, Alabama, on the 24th day of October, 1907, for the purpose of paying for the construction of sanitary sewers under improvement Ordinance Number Four (4) of said city of West End.

"And this bond and the interest thereon are payable solely out of said installments of said assessments, which have been transferred and assigned for the benefit of the holder hereof, by an ordinance duly passed by the mayor and aldermen of said city of West End on the 3rd day of December, 1907."

These bonds, therefore, are evidently not payable out of the general taxes of the municipality, but merely out of a special fund, and therefore the case is governed by the opinion of the Attorney General on the public-buildingfund bonds of the State of Oklahoma (29 Op. 451); and the bonds are not acceptable as security for postal-savings deposits.

Respectfully,

The POSTMASTER GENERAL.

WILLIAM R. HARR,
Acting Attorney General.

NEWSPAPERS, MAGAZINES, ETC.-FILING STATEMENT OF

OWNERSHIP.

Section 2 of the Post Office appropriation act of August 24, 1912, requiring newspapers, magazines, periodicals, and other publications to file statement of ownership, etc., applies only to such publications as are regularly entered as second-class mail matter.

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE,

October 31, 1912.

SIR: I have the honor to acknowledge your letter of the 23d instant, in which you request an opinion as to whether or not paragraph 2, section 2, of the act of August 24, 1912, making appropriations for the postal service for the fiscal year 1913, which provides that the editor, etc., of every newspaper, magazine, periodical, or other publication, shall file with the Postmaster General, and with the postmaster "at the office at which said publication is entered," a semiannual return showing certain facts, applies only to such publications as are regularly entered as second-class mail matter under the various acts of Congress, or whether it also applies to those periodical publications not admitted to the second class of mail matter, but mailed at the thirdclass rate.

Paragraph 2, section 2, supra, provides that it shall be the duty of the editor, etc., " of every newspaper, magazine, periodical, or other publication to file with the Postmaster General and the postmaster at the office at which said publication is entered, not later than the 1st day of April and the 1st day of October of each year, on blanks furnished by the Post Office Department, a sworn statement" setting forth certain facts in relation to the ownership of, and financial interest in the newspaper or publication, under a penalty of exclusion from the mails if the above statement be not filed as required. It is obvious that, while said paragraph, in its opening language, applies to every newspaper, etc., the succeeding words qualify this generality and limit the application of the language to such newspapers, etc., as are capable of being "entered." The term entered" has a perfectly distinct and long-established meaning in postal administration, and its applica

tion is limited to second-class mail matter exclusively. Section 442 of the Postal Laws and Regulations of 1902, provides as follows:

"SEC. 442. The Third Assistant Postmaster General will in all cases decide upon the admissibility of publications as second-class matter. He will examine all applications, as soon as practicable, and upon being satisfied that a publication is entitled to admission at such rates will authorize the postmaster at the proper office to issue a certificate of entry therefor.

"2. Upon notice from the Third Assistant Postmaster General the postmaster will issue a certificate on the form furnished by the Post Office Department.

as

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"3. The publisher shall, upon the issue of the certificate, print upon each copy of the publication so entered the words, "Entered at the post office at second-class matter under act of The subject, "entry of publications as second-class matter," is also treated of in many other sections of Title III, ch. V, of the Postal Laws and Regulations.

No provision is made for the "entry " of mail matter of the third class in Title III, ch. 12, of the Postal Laws and Regulations, which contains the provisions applicable to that class of mail matter.

It must be assumed that Congress used the word "entered" in the second paragraph of section 2 of the act of August 24, 1912, in the above established sense, and therefore intended to confine its operation to second-class mail matter only; and this is rendered more certain by the fact that the same act contains an appropriation "for printing, binding, and wrapping a revised edition of the Postal Laws and Regulations," and also has an express provision “that the proviso at the end of section 233 of the Postal Laws and Regulations be, and the same is hereby, amended so as to read as follows: **" It thus appears that in the very act in which Congress used the technical term entered," "it distinctly recognized the force and effect of the Postal Laws and Regulations in which the meaning of that term is given.

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Moreover, section 2 of the act of August 24, 1912 (37 Stat. 553), passed the House in the following form (Cong. Rec., 62d Cong., 2d sess., p. 11499):

"That it shall be unlawful for any person, association, or corporation to enter or deposit or to have entered or deposited into the mails of the United States as secondclass mail matter any newspaper, etc.,

This was amended by the Senate committee to its present form, but the report of the committee shows clearly that there was no intent to change section 2 in so far as the class of mail matter affected thereby was concerned, but only to make the act less onerous and more practicable (S. Rept. No. 955, 62d Cong., 2d sess.). That report, after stating the nature of the act as it passed the House, continued:

"With the purpose of this paragraph the Senate committee is in hearty accord, as also, we believe, are a vast majority of the newspaper and periodical publishers of the country. The extremely low postage rate accorded to second-class matter gives these publications a circulation and a corresponding influence unequaled in history. It is a common belief that many periodicals are secretly owned or controlled, and that in reading such papers the public is deceived through ignorance of the interests the publication represents. We believe that, since the general public bears a large portion of the expense of distribution of second-class matter and since the publications wield a large influence because of their special concessions in the mails, it is not only equitable but highly desirable that the public should know the individuals who own or control them.

"But we believe that the requirements of the paragraph as passed by the House are needlessly burdensome, hence we recommend the substitution of a paragraph requiring that the list of owners, stockholders, or security holders be filed with the local postmaster and the Postmaster General semiannually and as frequently printed in an issue of the publication."

It thus appears that this legislation was passed expressly upon the idea that papers which received the low rate of postage accorded to second-class mail matter owed a duty