were taken to ascertain whether the privilege of the publisher included that of mailing coupons which are the equivalent of letter sheets. He held that the privilege of second-class matter did not permit it; but we told him that in administering the law we did not wish to object to the little corner, because it would be enforcing the exclusion of those coupons against periodicals to a degree which it was at least doubtful whether a similar rule could be enforced against newspapers. The ruling is made under the provision which provides for advertisements in periodicals, not in newspapers. We might arbitrarily rule that no coupon can be mailed at second-class rates. The only effective way is to make a clean sweep, prohibit all. Then what would happen? Some publisher would not know it. He would put in a coupon innocently. It would go through. We would not feel like taxing him 16 cents a pound on it, because he put it in innocently. Some other publisher sees it and does the same thing because of that example. Then some other one does it, and the thing is multiplied.

Mr. GLASGOW. But, as I understand, the difficulty is not in enforc ing. The Department could enforce that opinion of the AttorneyGeneral if it saw fit to do so. That is true, is it not?

Mr. MADDEN. My answer to that is the Department can do anything in that line if you give it the power and the force.

Mr. GLASGOW. Let us get to this case. I do not want to discuss them all at once. In the particular instance you state, in which you have the opinion of the Attorney-General, the Department could enforce that opinion if it desired to do so?

Mr. MADDEN. Yes, sir; if we could catch the individual cases promptly as they arise.

Mr. GLASGOW. Now, I want to know this, Mr. Madden: Do you think that any law automatically can be passed without executive construction to cover all cases like these you have shown here to-day?

Mr. MADDEN. Yes, sir. I think that is something we should not have to inquire about. That is my own view of it. We should not have to inquire whether the coupon is a quarter or a half page or a whole page. It ought to be none of our business, in the matter of fixing postage rates.

Mr. GLASGOW. I was asking at this time about all these things. I want to know if you think it possible to pass any law which of itself will be as you speak of it, self-operating, without the construction of the Post-Office Department as each of these several occasions of evasion may arise.

Mr. MADDEN. Yes, sir; I think there is a possibility of such a

statute.

Mr. GLASGOW. Can you tell us how you would get to that? Mr. MADDEN. Yes; a uniform rate for all printed matter. Mr. KRACKOWIZER. So that there is no classification at all. Mr. MADDEN. No classification except letters, printed matter, and merchandise.

Mr. GLASGOW. Then you would eliminate the policy upon which the second class was established?

Mr. MADDEN. We can not carry out the policy. I have made it plain that you can not. The privilege is abused too much.

Mr. GLASGOW. I do not agree with you about that. I am not talking about whether you could carry it out. You would eliminate the

basis upon which second-class matter was established as being beneficial from a literary and educational point of view.

Mr. MADDEN. I say it has come to that stage that we can not operate under such law without an increased force, and such a scrutiny and espionage of every publisher's business as the present laws require is little short of impossible.

Mr. KRACKOWIZER. If this particular question were met, as per instructions of the Attorney-General, and a suit were brought, or you stopped the publication, except on the payment of 16 cents per pound, what do you think would happen? Would not the Attorney-General's ruling probably be knocked out of court? Why is it not brought to an issue? That is the question. It would be very easy to try that by a case that would be so monumentally clear as to show that this publishing business needs construction, or that your construction needs construction; is not that true?

Mr. MADDEN. Possibly.

Mr. KRACKOWIZER. Well, take another case. There are hundreds of cases that might be cited. Take the Sunday Magazine. You know the Sunday Magazine goes out every Sunday with the finest newspapers in the country, and in every issue; you know that perfectly well. Why do you not hold it up and make a test case of it? Just as I said before, you do not want to get a definite decision, because it might knock out all the construction you put on the law. Mr. MADDEN. If you choose to view it that way, I will not dispute with you.

Mr. GLASGOW. If I may be permitted, I want to ask one or two questions.

Mr. MADDEN. Let me answer that question, please.

Mr. GLASGOW. I did not understand it to be a question. I did not want to get between you gentlemen on that point.

Mr. MADDEN. You are talking of all the construction being knocked out.

Mr. KRACKOWIZER. Well, that is what I believe would be done in case you brought a case like that to trial.

Mr. MADDEN. Perhaps, in answer to that, I might say there have been many attempts to knock out the rulings, and we have only lost

in one.

Mr. GLASGOW. That is the point I was coming to.

Mr. KRACKOWIZER. That was the crucial one, and since then you have not made any definition.

Mr. MADDEN. No, sir; it was only as to that one question. The publication upon which the ruling was had was the Official Railway Guide (Exhibit 34d). A single copy weighs 4 pounds and over. It is the official guide of railways and steam navigation lines of the United States, Porto Rico, Canada, Mexico, and Cuba.

Mr. KRACKOWIZER. It was about as rank a case as you could get, was it not?

Mr. MADDEN. In the beginning we made a regulation that a publication would not be considered as a newspaper or periodical unless it consisted of current news or miscellaneous literary matter or both. This publisher brought a test case, and the court said that as the statute did not limit a publication to those particular things, news and literary matter, the Department could not. We are now carrying that publication, and I presume there is not 5 per cent of the

type changed from issue to issue. It is substantially the same thing over month after month.

Mr. KRACKOWIZER. In other words, you made an affirmative decision which was knocked out, and you have never made an affirmative decision since, but left the onus on the publisher.

Mr. MADDEN. If we had said this was not a periodical publication or not a newspaper, the court would not have done a thing. It was simply a technical mistake in the ruling.

Mr. GLASGOW. Mr. Madden, I did not mean to start this discussion by the few questions I was going to ask. What I want to know is well illustrated by what you say, that there have been 40 cases which have arisen in which the Department in all but one has been sustained. The point to which I wanted to direct your attention was that as the Department's rulings have been maintained uniformly, why has that not encouraged the Department to continue its rulings to cover these cases which may arise similar to the ones you have exploited?

Mr. MADDEN. I thought I explained that when I said that as fast as we cured the abuse in one way it developed in another. I showed you a book ruled out as a book coming in as a magazine.

Mr. GLASGOW. What is it now?

Mr. MADDEN. It is a magazine now.

Mr. GLASGOW. Then it is properly in. What is the objection to it? Mr. MADDEN. I do not say it is properly in.

Mr. GLASGOW. Why do you let it in?

Mr. MADDEN. It becomes a question of ruling again on it now, and we can not rule it out now without covering a great class of publications.

Mr. GLASGOW. You understand I am not criticising, but I am falling in line with the fact that your rulings, having been uniformly sustained by the courts, if pursued would eventually cure the difficulties which arise.

Mr. MADDEN. Yes; if we live long enough.

Mr. GLASGOW. Of course, if you are going to die before you do it, then you do not do it. That is all. What I mean is under any law that is enacted you have to have executive construction of the act. Why is it you do not go on and construe the act as to these papers now?

me.

Mr. MADDEN. Did you hear what I said in the introduction? Mr. GLASGOW. I listened with a great deal of interest to every word you said, and I can not see why you do not. That is what troubles It is an honest trouble, because you understand my situation. Mr. MADDEN. I believe your question has been answered by what I have said. I would have to go over it again and give you illustrations of the way those things, ruled out in one way, come in in another.

Mr. GLASGOW. One of these papers you had here has a little supplement to it, or something of the kind. You told us what was the fact, that this was presented as second-class matter, and this is a supplement to it. You do not tell us what the Department did about it. What I want to direct your attention to is this: If you think that that is sufficient to bring here as a criticism of the existing conditions, why is it, with the uniform confirmation by the courts of what you have done, you do not rule this out and let them go on?

Mr. MADDEN. Well, we did.

Mr. GLASGOW. Then what is the trouble about it?
Mr. MADDEN. Because it comes up again.

Mr. GLASGOW. You can rule again, can you not?

Mr. MADDEN. Yes; if we catch it.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Madden, in the post-office departments of the leading countries of Europe-England, Germany, and France-is there a question of this character in connection with the carriage of periodicals and other printed matter?

Mr. MADDEN. If I am correctly informed, Senator, there is no provision for newspapers and publications.

Mr. GLASGOW. They go by train freight, do they not?

Mr. MADDEN. There is no provision in the postal laws that they shall have any other rate than printed matter.

Mr. GLASGOW. They have shorter distances there.

The SECRETARY. In the English law provision is made for newspapers, but that is carefully guarded and not accorded to any other form of periodicals, so the question does not arise on periodicals generally.

Mr. GLASGOW. In matters of this kind generally, and pretty nearly entirely in some countries, they are carried by freight or some fast process outside of the mails. I think it would be well for Mr. Glassie to state the facts, as he has been engaged in compiling them. The CHAIRMAN. I wish you would, Mr. Glassie.

The SECRETARY. I would not, offhand, be able to state very much about it, but under the English law there is no such disparity between the rate for a newspaper and the rate for any other printed matter, so there is not that great overpowering inducement to put everything in the periodical form.

In the second place, the newspaper rate, so called, is given to newspapers, and the English office has a regulation in regard to newspapers which gives them a wide discretion in determining what is and what is not a newspaper. But it is distinctly limited to the newspaper in the ordinary English sense of that word."

Representative OVERSTREET. How is the rate?

The SECRETARY. The rate, as I recall it-I could not pretend to remember these figures accurately-for a newspaper is a copy rate, not a bulk rate, at one-half penny a copy, with a weight limit for that. initial rate.

In the third place, there is no provision in the English law which permits printed matter in a periodical form other than a newspaper, in the ordinary sense of the word, to have any privilege at all. Printed matter is carried in the parcels post or in the half-penny packet, and it is carried like any other matter, and that printed matter includes all forms of books, whether they are periodical or otherwise, serials, and the ordinary magazine.

Representative OVERSTREET. What is the rate?

The SECRETARY. The rate is rather complicated, because up to a certain limit of weight anything may be sent as a half-penny packet. It is a rate approximately a cent, American, for 2 ounces, and that covers everything practically that is in print. Above the limit of weight then it goes by the parcels post, which is a graduated scale by the pound, beginning with, I think, 11 pounds for 25 cents. The high limit is 11 pounds, and the cost is, I think, 25 cents.

Representative OVERSTREET. Mr. Chairman, I understand Mr. Glassie, the secretary of the Commission, has in process of preparation a compilation which will give the rates of all other countries.

The SECRETARY. Those are the salient points. I do not pretend to give the precise figures, but the system is entirely different from the American system.

Mr. GLASGOW. Mr. Glassie, are not a good many of the publications of that character in England not carried in the mails at all.

The SECRETARY. A great many; yes.

Mr. GLASGOW. They go by train?

The SECRETARY. Exactly.

Mr. GLASGOW. The rates there are the rates of freight established by the railways.

The SECRETARY. Exactly so; they are outside the post.

Senator CARTER. That is substantially true in this country with the large daily papers.

The SECRETARY. Yes; that is true.

The CHAIRMAN. Gentlemen, one of the objects of this Postal Commission meeting in New York was for the convenience of the periodical publishers, it being thought that a very large majority of these publications were issued from this place. The Commission will be in session during this week, more or less, and if any of you desire to make any statements to the Commission, to help them in their inquiry, we will be very glad, indeed, to hear from you.

Representative MooN. General Madden, I want to ask a question. You stated, I believe, that the Government pays 5 cents and gets back 2 cents per pound, second-class matter, did you not?

Mr. MADDEN. No, sir.

Representative MOON. What was your statement in that connec

tion?

Mr. MADDEN. I read from the report of Postmaster-General Smith that the Government paid at least 5 cents a pound for transportation and 2 cents for handling, and got back only 1 cent.

Representative MOON. You have explained to us the trouble in the law. Now, what is your remedy in view of that statement?

Mr. GLASGOW. That is exactly what I want to know.

Representative MooN. In other words, do you recommend an increase of the rate on second-class matter; and if so, to what figure? Mr. MADDEN. I am giving you my individual opinion now. Representative Moox. That is all you can do.

Mr. MADDEN. I speak in this matter for nobody but the Third Assistant Postmaster-General. In the postal service it should not be necessary to inquire in order to establish postal rates whether that paper indicating contains public or private information or whether it is a part of another or independent of another. The sole question at the post-office should be, is it printed matter? The rate of postage should be fixed so as to cover printed matter, irrespective of whether there is for the thing being sent out a list of subscribers, or whether it is sold at nominal rates, or whether it is for free circulation, or whether it is issued for advertising purposes. Those matters should not be the business of the Post-Office Department. They should be left to the publisher. They are his business. I would fix the rate on all printed matter at about a quarter of a cent for each ounce or fraction to one address, or 1 cent for each 4 ounces or fraction to one