immigration of foreigners to our shores. The press is the eyes, ears, and tongue of the public. It is fundamental to all scientific and industrial progress.

In the wars against tuberculosis and yellow fever and other contagions, in every effort to secure effective public cooperation, it is indispensable. In times of epidemic the poor and ignorant are usually the first victims and their homes the foci of infection. Such homes are invaded only by the very cheap publication and the sample copy. The cheapest of these abound in current information about hygiene, sanitation, etc., letting the light of modern science into these dark places, dispelling ignorance and prejudice, paving the way for quarantine, allaying panic, and spreading the gospel of cleanliness. What short-sighted folly to curtail and curb the very influence which turns your mobs into organized intelligence! Away with the fads, and give us back the common sense and the avowed love of progress which used to mark our public policies!

It is a mistake to regard publishers as the beneficiaries of the pound-rate postage. It was a costly innovation for them. In the early days the postage was paid by the subscriber to the local postmaster. When the low pound rate came in, the publishers being required to prepay the postage, they did not add it to their subscription price, but paid it out of their own pockets.

To many this was an added expense of thousands of dollars a year; to all it was a considerable expense. When the rate was reduced from 2 cents a pound to 1, the publisher gave the subscriber the benefit of the reduction in postage and continued to give him both this benefit and that of the fall in the price of white paper in the form of lower subscription prices. It was not philanthropy. It was the effect of competition. Daily newspapers went down from 5 cents a copy to 3, 2, and 1; weeklies from $3 or $4 a year to $1 and often to 50, 25, or even 10 cents; monthlies from $4 to $3, $2, or $1, and many good ones to 50, 25, and some to 10 cents. The benefit has all accrued to the public. In Iowa we have had for many years an excellent daily for $1 a year.

The proposed increase in the rate of second-class postage would either fall upon the publisher or be passed on in higher prices to the subscriber. In the first instance it would injure the publisher and cripple the vast industries which depend on him for support. It would fall heavily on the manufacturer of paper, whose output would be curtailed. It would bring idleness to tens of thousands of printers, stereotypers, machinists, electrotypers, engravers, pressmen, editors, reporters, mailing clerks, and the many other trades and professions dependent upon the publishers. I know the publishing business in all its aspects.

I know that the tendency of every publishing business is to absorb in a rapidly growing pay roll and other expenses every dollar which can be squeezed out of both circulation and advertising. A daily paper, with which I was connected for twenty-two years in Iowa, increased its yearly expense account from $30,000 in 1895 to $175,000 in 1902, seven years later; which, I think, is something of an answer to the statement of Mr. Herbert, made this morning, that the publishers' expenses are going down, while the Post-Office Department is having to meet the trouble of increased expense.

The business is, with few exceptions, not largely profitable. An addition of 1 cent a pound to the postage rate, making it 2 cents, would wipe out every dollar of profit of every daily newspaper in Des Moines, where I live, and would be a heavy burden to every other publication there. An addition of 3 cents would wipe out of existence every daily, weekly, and monthly in the city of Des Moines and, I believe, every publication using the mails in Iowa. I submit here a table showing what the proposed tax would mean to the 20 cities comprising the country's principal publishing centers. It will give you a concrete idea of what this monstrous proposal to tax knowledge To publishers it spells financial ruin everywhere.

means.

Now, you see New York pays $1,341,528 at 1 cent. Just to make it 2 cents would tax the publishers of New York twice that vast sum every year. To raise it to 4 cents would increase the payment of New York publishers to $5,366,000, and cost them over $4,000,000 a year.

Chicago now pays $665,000, which would be this increase at 2 cents a pound, and an advance to 4 cents a pound would cost the publishers of Chicago within $3,000 of $2,000,000 a year.

Philadelphia pays $350,000. A 4-cent increase suggested by Mr. Madden would cost the publishers of Philadelphia over $1,000,000 a

year.

St. Louis pays $318,000. It would pay $955,000 more.

Boston now pays $240,000, and its additional tax would be $720,000. To go down to some of the smaller cities, Indianapolis pays $85,600 a year, and the publishers would be obliged to pay $256,000 a year more, which I am confident would wipe out the profits of one or two of the largest and notably prosperous dailies of that city.

Des Moines now pays $61,000 a year, and the additional tax would be $183,000, which is far more than the present profits of all the publications in the city-so much more as to justify my statement that such an addition would wipe out of existence every publication in the city.

Legitimate publications are not asking the Government to protect them from unfair competition. They do not complain of the use of premiums or the circulation of free papers or sample copies or adver

tising copies by other publishers. They know that such evils are forms of competition and correct themselves, and that success comes, and comes only from good management, based on merit. All they ask is to be undisturbed as long as they obey the laws. They want their rights defined by law and not by administrative regulations. They want the protection of the courts. Let violators of the law suffer, but stop once and forever administrative interference with legitimate private business under the guise of collecting correct postage rates.

I emphasize the importance of the right of court review for the reason that that right, justly accorded to the railways by the new interstate commerce legislation, is now denied the publisher. When the post-office authorities throw out of the mails either a publication or a part of its editions as not being legitimate circulation, the publisher is promptly informed by his attorneys that no action for mandamus or injunction will lie against the local postmaster, and that it is necessary to proceed against the Postmaster-General. This necessitates proceedings in the courts of the District of Columbia.

Yet I am informed that there is practically a rule or agreement among the judges of the District that they will not take jurisdiction of any case involving the overruling of an administrative order of any Department of the Government. This rule is made simply to protect the judges from being overwhelmed with work and, in part, to protect the Departments in the ordinary administration of their affairs; but it operates to deprive the publisher of a vital right and to make the Postmaster-General's office an autocracy. I have had practical and not altogether pleasant knowledge of one case in which a publisher, while assured by the chief justice of the supreme court of the District of Columbia that the subscriptions in question were legitimate, he believed he must refuse to review the action of the Post-Office Department even if illegal. I presume that this was one of the 40 cases in which the rulings of the Department have been upheld, but, if it is a fair sample, it seems that they may be upheld when in direct violation of the statute.

There are certain ancient and well-established practices of the publishing business which it would be idle for the Post-Office Department to try to wipe out and which it never will be able to do away with entirely, and therefore has no business to interfere with in a few cases. They are rooted in the habits of both publishers and subscribers all over the country. They exist at 10,000 small post-offices, in every little hamlet in the land, and will always exist there and will always be tolerated by the postal authorities in these local spheres. Some of these are the following:

First. The practice of cutting rates to whatever extent is necessary to secure circulation.

Second. The practice of offering premiums to both subscribers and club agents.

Third. The practice of making low clubbing rates in combination. with other publications.

Fourth. The practice of giving away subscriptions to friends, relatives, and others by the publishers and other persons.

Fifth. The practice of selling subscriptions in small or large numbers to subscription agents and others at reduced rates.

Sixth. The practice of continuing to send papers to subscribers after the time paid for has expired.

These practices can not be uprooted without revolutionizing the whole local newspaper business. When laws are proposed at Washington to prohibit them it is common to quote the Post-Office Department as promising that they will not be enforced against the small county paper, urging that they are intended for other and larger publications. It is thus tacitly admitted that it is not intended to enforce such laws uniformly; in plain English, that it is proposed to make fish of one and fowl of another. I wish, however, here to commend what Mr. Madden says about treating all alike in future. That is the true principle.

Partiality is the essential vice of all bureaucratic government. Never since our Post-Office Department began to interfere in such matters has it been able to treat all alike. Never will it be able to enforce such a policy uniformly. The only remedy is to stop the experiment; let the publishing business regulate itself; give publishers the liberty they used to have, and have never done anything to forfeit; let them alone until they disobey the law, and then let the courts enforce the laws, as they enforce other laws.

Statesmanship should contribute to the harmonious development of a country's interests. It should do good, not evil. It should work for peace and prosperity, not discord. To press the demand for higher rates of postage from publishers and to continue to permit their proper business methods to be interfered with will have the inevitable effect, if it goes sufficiently far, of embroiling the press of the country and the railways of the country in a conflict which will injure both, hinder the industrial and intellectual development of the nation, and produce evils of which there can be no adequate estimate in advance. And the worst of it is that there is no occasion of any kind for it at all.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Hamilton, you have stated that there is partiality in enforcing the law. On what authority do you make that statement?

Mr. HAMILTON. Well, from personal knowledge, Mr. Chairman. The CHAIRMAN. Do you have specific cases?

Mr. HAMILTON. Well, I could name one or two.

The CHAIRMAN. Will you state to the Commission, Mr. Hamilton, the cases you have in mind where the law has been enforced against some and not against others?

Mr. HAMILTON. Well, I will give an illustration that has been reported to me by letter.

Representative OVERSTREET. Mr. Chairman, I think a statement of that kind should be limited to Mr. Hamilton's personal knowledge, as he said he had some personal knowledge, and should not include information in letters from other people.

The CHAIRMAN. That is right.

Mr. HAMILTON. I have personal knowledge of this case. A publisher of a live-stock daily-a daily devoted to the distribution of market reports to the farmers-located at Buffalo, was under some circumstances, I think resulting from a complaint by a competitor probably, called upon by the Post-Office Department for a showing of its circulation. He was able only to show that its circulation was

largely made up of subscribers, ordered in bulk by commission merchants. The Department ruled that the paper would have to go out of the mails, and required and has required for a number of years, that publisher to restrict his editions to subscriptions paid for by the subscribers. The publisher has, after exhausting all the efforts he could afford to make in a futile attempt to get justice in the District of Columbia, submitted to that regulation, and has to this day run his paper in competition with a dozen other papers which have that privilege. He has lost most of his property in the effort.

Another case of the same kind and in the same class was a live-stock daily at Dallas, Tex., which, while it was permitted to transmit its subscriptions to the individual merchant or banker who paid for them, was required by the Department to send them to him to distribute, so that the subscriber or recipient of the gift was obliged to go to that bank instead of to the post-office in order to get the paper. Now, this publisher has had to do that in competition with a dozen papers that all this time, as is known to every citizen of the Middle West, and as unquestionably can not but be known to the Post-Office Department, have been publishing papers subsisting very largely on the same class of subscriptions, and have been permitted to deliver at the pound rate all those subscriptions ordered by commission merchants, and distributed by the post-office direct to the subscribers.

I did not use the word "partiality" in regard to the Administration. I say that is characteristic of bureaucratic government. The words which I used, Mr. Chairman, were that it has not been able to treat all alike. I think that is a fairer statement than to say that the Department has been partial. My experience with the Post-Office Department is that it intends and tries to be fair. I do not want anything I have said to reflect in any way upon the honesty of purpose of any post-office official.

Representative OVERSTREET. Mr. Hamilton, I want to ask you some questions. You made a statement that there was an agreement among the judges in the District of Columbia not to take jurisdiction in the case where the Department had made a ruling. What is your source of information about that?

Mr. HAMILTON. Senator Thurston, our attorney, so informed us. It was virtually established as a rule of court.

Representative OVERSTREET. As a rule of court?

Mr. HAMILTON. Yes, sir.

Representative OVERSTREET. You said a while ago that the publishers routed all of their second-class matter. You made the statement cover the entire amount. Do you mean just what you said? Mr. HAMILTON. As far as I know, it is done.

Representative OVERSTREET. You said the publishers. I want to know whether you are including them all or not?

Mr. HAMILTON. I never meet publishers who do not do that.

Representative OVERSTREET. The percentage would probably be lower in smaller offices, would it not?

Mr. HAMILTON. In the very small ones, but not interior points of the size of Des Moines or Indianapolis, I think.

Representative OVERSTREET. You made quite a comparison of the service the Government rendered at the cent a pound rate on second

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