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bulk second-class matter from a publisher in New York was destined for distribution in Chicago, would it be practical, in your opinion, for the Government to handle that bulk second-class matter by freight between New York and Chicago, and there receive it in the post-office and distribute it in the usual way?

Mr. HUBBARD. Yes; it would be practicable.

The VICE-CHAIRMAN. Would it, in your judgment, be practical for the Government to fix a rate upon a second-class publication for what we may arbitrarily term the news matter or literary matter and a different rate for the advertising matter contained in the same publication?

Mr. HUBBARD. That could be done.

The VICE-CHAIRMAN. For example, taking a periodical published and entered at any office, containing, say, 100 pages, 50 pages of which would be literary or news matter and 50 pages of which would be clearly advertising matter, would it be practicable for the Government to fix a postal rate upon the 50 pages of literary and news matter and a different rate on the 50 pages of purely advertising matter?

Mr. HUBBARD. It would be possible to differentiate as between the two kinds; especially easy, apparently easy, as I see it at a quick glance, with reference to periodicals. I should say that difficulties might arise in the case of the great newspapers on that score, although it does appear to me that that could be worked out, and quite reasonably. I can see some difficulties. They are perhaps a little conjectural or chimerical. I would want to think that matter over pretty thoroughly in order to make any announcement of opinion on it.

The VICE-CHAIRMAN. In your judgment, based upon your experience and knowledge of the service, is there any practical difference between 50 pages of advertising matter in a periodical publication and 50 pages of advertising matter in a catalogue?

Mr. HUBBARD. Why, no; it is advertising.

The VICE-CHAIRMAN. What justification is there, then, in the Government transporting one of them at 1 cent a pound and the other at 8 cents a pound?

Mr. HUBBARD. I can see none whatever.

The VICE-CHAIRMAN. Speaking exclusively of the advertising.
Mr. HUBBARD. I understand. I see no justification whatever.

Mr. GLASGOW. May I ask one question? As I understand the situation, Mr. Hubbard, the publication of periodicals and the advertisements along with them has very greatly cheapened the cost to the reader of the reading matter which he consumes. That is true, is it not?

Mr. HUBBARD. In other words, the publisher does not care much what he gets for the publication?

Mr. GLASGOW. No; I did not say that.

Mr. HUBBARD. No; that is a wrong idea.

Mr. GLASGOW. No; I did not say that. You may say that if you want to. I do not say that.

Mr. HUBBARD. I am simply trying to get at what is in your mind, which is a hard thing sometimes.

Mr. GLASGOW. I know it is-whether there is anything there at all sometimes. But my suggestion that I am making to you is this: Is it not a fact that by the addition of advertising matter to reading

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matter in the publication of periodicals the cost of the magazine to the reading public has been reduced?

Mr. HUBBARD. Why, of course. And we know why, you and I both.

Mr. GLASGOW. Certainly we do.

Mr. HUBBARD. Certainly.

Mr. GLASGOW. Now, is there no difference between that kind of a magazine, where there is reading matter and advertisements, and a publication containing advertising matter exclusively?

Mr. HUBBARD. Well, on the line of the chairman's suggestion as to the rate that you would put on the advertising matter in the magazine which would make it pay its way, charging one rate for the literary matter and another rate for the purely advertising matter, a lower rate for the information of a public character contained there

in

Mr. GLASGOW. I understand, but there is a difference between a purely advertising publication, what you call a house organ, and a literary magazine in the advertising?

Mr. HUBBARD. Not in the advertising.

Mr. GLASGOW. In that the advertisements cheapen the reading matter to the public. Is not that so?

Mr. HUBBARD. Oh, putting it that way, yes; but there is no difference in the thing itself.

Mr. GLASGOW. I understand there is no difference in the weight.

Mr. HUBBARD. No difference in the weight and no difference in the advertising.

Mr. GLASGOW. Now, there is one other question that I want to ask you. Was it not a few years ago that the Post-Office Department did charge the other Departments of the Government for services rendered?

Mr. HUBBARD. I do not recollect that it did. I recollect that we had official stamps to be put upon all official matter. The various Departments had each their official stamps of different denominations, so the application of those stamps would be in the denominations just as they would be of the regular stamps of the individual who was paying for his mail. Now, it may be that there was some accounting kept of the number of the stamps, of the denominations of those stamps in the various Departments, and some account made of them. What there was I am unable to say. I can not imagine what the use of those stamps was unless it was such a proposition. Mr. GLASGOW. Yes; I just wanted to get at that.

Representative Moon. Is it not the law now, and has it not been the law all the time, that the other Departments of the Government must pay for what they send through the Post-Office Department, and is not the passage of those things through the Department without the payment of postage simply a violation of law on the part of the Department?

Mr. HUBBARD. Not as I understand it.

Representative MOON. Well, there is a law.

Mr. HUBBARD. Not as I understand it.

The VICE-CHAIRMAN. You do not refer to first-class postage? Representative MOON. No; I do not refer to first-class postage at all. I am talking about merchandise going through the Post-Office Department.

The VICE-CHAIRMAN. I am sure you are mistaken, because there is a clear statute which permits the Departments to transport through the mail any packages or other matter

Representative Moon. Matter that is mailable.

The VICE-CHAIRMAN. No; I am speaking of the old law. That has been modified by the statute of the last Congress, which put a limit upon that of 4 pounds; but the old statute did not state a limit

at all.

Representative MOON. I have always understood the law to be, and I insist it is so yet, that all mailable matter may go through; but the Department has no right to take anything that is not mailable, either from another Department or from anybody else. There are things that go through the Department now-are said to go through-that are not mailable matter.

The VICE-CHAIRMAN. Without discussing it or taking up time, I will in a few minutes quote in the record the law itself.

Representative MOON. I understand that statute has received different constructions. The difference between us is on the question of mailable and unmailable matter.

The VICE-CHAIRMAN. I do not think the word "mailable" is a part of the old statute.

Mr. GLASGOW. Mr. Chairman, the statute you referred to a few minutes ago as to the preventing of furniture, etc., going through the mail was a recent enactment, was it not?

The VICE-CHAIRMAN. Yes; at the last session of Congress.

Mr. GLASGOW. That is what I thought.

The VICE-CHAIRMAN. And also this statute which I just referred to, which limits matter other than first-class mail transported by any Department to matter which would be mailable in the hands of a private individual.

Representative Moon. You do not seem to understand my position exactly. I do not think an iron safe, for instance, is mailable matter. I do not think it could go through the mail under the law. The VICE-CHAIRMAN. It could have gone through the mail prior to this last statute.

Representative MooN. As merchandise?

The VICE-CHAIRMAN. Under a law that applied exclusively to the Government.

Senator CARTER. I understand Mr. Moon's contention to be that the statute limiting the weight of mail applies generally to Government matter as well as other matter, and that the statute permitting other matter to go through does not extend it.

Representative Moon. Yes; that is the idea.

Mr. HERBERT. I should like to ask Mr. Hubbard a few questions. I understood you to say that the cost of newspaper making had decreased in everything excepting wages?

Mr. HUBBARD. Labor.

Mr. HERBERT. Do you think you have informed yourself on that? I know that papers are paying a hundred times as much for reporting and correspondence as was paid thirty-five years ago. The size of is enlarged. I think if you would go to any newspaper paper man and talk about it you would find that his paper actually costs him more. He gets more for his advertising, but the production of the paper costs more than it did.

Mr. HUBBARD. The item of reporters would be labor, would it not? Mr. HERBERT. Yes; but there are more of them. The telegraph bills are many times as large. Papers that took no telegraph at all are now paying out hundreds of dollars every week for it. The necessities of newspaper making to-day, the demands on the newspapers, their excellence, which has increased so much, all make it a fact that instead of costing less to produce a paper it costs more in the actual product.

Mr. HUBBARD. I may be wrong in items, but as a general proposition I think I am right.

Mr. HERBERT. More than that, we pay our linotype operators just as much as we paid to hand compositors, and I think every publisher does. It costs just as much to set by linotype, only it is more speedy and more convenient. I think if you will ask any publisher here you will find that is a fact.

Mr. KRACKOWIZER. With the chairman's permission I should like to ask only one question, and that is as to the distinction between the advertising matter in a periodical and the advertising matter, as such, in a catalogue or house organ. You said, so far as the matter itself was concerned, there was no difference?

Mr. HUBBARD. I can see none.

Mr. KRACKOWIZER. The question I am trying to put to you is this (it has already been partly put by Mr. Glasgow): Is there not a difference to the reader between something that is directly the product of the advertiser and something that is primarily a product aimed at pleasing the reader? If you make no distinction between the advertising carried in a periodical and the advertising carried in a house organ, who will pay the freight? Will it or will it not be the reader? Can you expect the publisher, either as a publisher of advertisements or as a publisher of pure news and literary matter, to bear the burden? In other words, where are your $30,000,000 coming from? Are they coming from the consumer or from the publisher?

Mr. HUBBARD. I suppose the general rule will apply as it does everywhere else. The consumer is the man who pays for it as a rule. Mr. KRACKOWIZER. In other words, the privilege or the subsidy is not granted to the publisher, but to the reading public?

Mr. HUBBARD. It looks to me as though it was the publisher that is getting the subsidy just now.

Mr. KRACKOWIZER. He is the distributor, just as in the case of the tariff, but the consumer pays the tax. Is that your idea?

Mr. HUBBARD. You and I will get into a long-winded affair here if we do not look out.

Mr. KRACKOWIZER. Not if I can help it. Is the subsidy going to the public or to the publisher?

Mr. HUBBARD. That is a ground I am not going over just now. I take that ground and stop there.

Mr. KRACKOWIZER. And if he is to be deprived of it, then who will be the loser by it-the publisher or the consumer?

Mr. HUBBARD. Well, the publisher must work out his own salvation under the law.

It

The VICE-CHAIRMAN. I want to put into the record, at this point, the law to which Judge Moon and I referred a little while ago. is section 512 of the Postal Laws and Regulations, and reads as follows:

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SEC. 512. It shall be lawful for all officers of the United States Government (not including Members of Congress, and the Smithsonian Institution, the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, and the Bureau of American Republics, established in Washington) to transmit through the mail free of postage any letters, packages, or other matter relating exclusively to the business of the Government of the United States (or of such Institution, Home, or Bureau): Provided, That every such letter or package to entitle it to pass free shall bear over the words official business" an indorsement showing also the name of the Department, and, if from a bureau or office (or officer) the name of the Department and Bureau or office (or officer), as the case may be, whence transmitted (with a statement of the penalty for their misuse). And if any person shall make use of any such official envelope to avoid the payment of postage on his private letter, package, or other matter in the mail the person so offending shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and subject to a fine of three hundred dollars, to be prosecuted in any court of competent jurisdiction.

A statute was passed at the last session of Congress which modified this. I have not the statute before me, but in substance it provides that no Department of the Government, or independent governmental establishment, is privileged to send through the mail under an official envelope any matter that would not be mailable if offered by any person paying postage upon it, which brings the limitation of official matter of all kinds entitled to be entered to the mail under penalty envelopes by any Department of the Government to the same limitation of weights as that which applies to an individual when he offers a package for mailing.

Representative MOON. Now, Mr. Chairman, that statute is one that I am aware of, but there is also a statute limiting the weight, and that statute in its terms limiting the weight heretofore is not confined to individuals, but is equally applicable to the Government of the United States. Taking the two statutes together, I have insisted (and you will recollect the debate in the House along those lines) that the Government has never had the right to do any more than the individual could do in these matters, so far as the weight limit is concerned, and that the sending of an iron safe or furniture or things of that sort through the mail, was a violation of the law of the land, and in order to avoid any further trouble along that line Congress gave expression to its views, which is the interpretation of the law through the statute passed at the last session.

The VICE-CHAIRMAN. Mr. Hubbard will be excused, and the secretary will call the next.

The SECRETARY. The next is a statement from the committee of the National Editorial Association, represented by a committee consisting of Mr. Benjamin B. Herbert, of the National Printer Journalist, Chicago, Ill.; Thomas P. Peters, Brooklyn Times, and George T. Fairbanks, of the Bulletin, Natick, Mass.

STATEMENT OF BENJAMIN B. HERBERT, REPRESENTING THE NATIONAL EDITORIAL ASSOCIATION.

Mr. HERBERT. Mr. Chairman, the other members of the committee have delegated to me the saying of what we would present at this time.

I do not know whether you are familiar with the National Editorial Association or not, and so it may be well to remark briefly on the character of the association. It is a body made up of delegates from all the States and Territories of the United States. It was organized

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