Now, the Postmaster General’s whole talk—his whole word-splutter—was, it seems, to create an impression that the government was losing millions annually because of the large amount of advertising matter distributed by magazines and other periodicals.

On the other hand, the publishers in their “Exhibit F,” and elsewhere, try to show, and in the writer’s opinion do show quite conclusively and dependably, that the excess of expenditure over receipts in the Postoffice Department would be two to four times greater than it now is were it not for the first, third and fourth class revenues resulting directly from those advertising pages in our periodical literature.

Before giving these publishers a chance to tell the truth, as presented in their “Exhibit F,” I desire to make a few remarks about the point under consideration—the profits to the government from periodical advertising.

The publishers present the evidence of their counting-rooms—the inside testimony. I desire to present some outside testimony.

I may present it in an awkward, raw way, but I have a conceit that the “jury” will give it consideration.

Three months ago, there was a “party at our house.” No, it was not a bridge party. Mrs. M. On The L. has, in my visual range, I can here assure you, many commendable virtues—meritorious qualities and qualifications. Likewise, she has some faults. The latter I cannot, if the dove of peace is to continue perching on our domicile lodge pole, mention here. I may, however, say with entire safety, that “bridge” and alleged similar feminine amusements are not among them.

The party to which I advert was a “tea.” The guests were six,—Mrs. M. On The L. serving. The guests not only had “the run” of the house, but they took possession of it. I stuck to my “den” until it was invaded and then—well, then, my dear trousered reader, I did precisely what you would have done. I backed off—I surrendered.

“What was the result?”

[149]

In this particular case, the chief feature of the result was that these seven women, in less than ten minutes, had appropriated every copy of all the latest, and some a month or more old, of the magazines and weeklies about my work-shop. They also annexed me. I “just had to go downstairs and have a cup of tea with them.” Although I am not entrancingly fond of tea, I did exactly what you would have done. I went. Necessarily, I had to be good. I was good. I said—as near as I knew how—the things that were proper to say and as near the proper time as I could. That is, I said little and listened much.

It is of what I heard—and afterward learned—I wish here to speak. I wish to speak of it because it fits like a glove to the point the publishers make in their “Exhibit F,” which is to follow.

While the hostess was preparing and spreading luncheon—a necessary concomitant of all “teas,” other than mentioned in novels—the six guests scanned the magazines and talked magazines. From their conversation it appeared that five of the six took, either by subscription or news-stand purchase, one or two monthly magazines “regularly.” Whether the ladies read them or not was not made clear to me. One of them did make mention of two “splendid stories”—“The Ne’er do Well,” by Rex Beach, and, at the time of the “tea,” appearing, in serial, in one of the monthlies. The other was a short story entitled “The Quitters,” which, the lady stated, had appeared in one of the magazines some time previous.

Now, so far as I can recall, the reference made by this one of the six ladies was the only mention made of the “literary” features of the magazines they had read or to such features of those they were examining. There was considerable talk and attention given to the body illustrations.

In calling such stories as the lady mentioned “literary” I presume apologies are due the Penrose-Overstreet Commission. While both the stories are “brand-new,” are well written, each teaching a lesson—have, in short, all the essential elements of “currency and periodicity”—yet that commission, in the anxious interest it displayed to secure “a general exclusion act” against fiction in periodicals, would, possibly, see nothing of literary merit in either of the stories the lady mentioned.

I shall, however, offer no apologies to the commission for classing[150] the two stories as literature and of exemplary currency. On a previous page I have given my reasons for differing from the commission on its strictures on current fiction as run in our standard monthlies and weeklies. The lady’s expressed opinion of the two stories is another reason for differing from that expressed by the commission. In my judgment, the lady who spoke has a broader, juster and far more comprehending knowledge of literature—of its merits and demerits, whether fiction, historical, biographical or classic—than has any member of that commission.

But to return to our tea party. Those six ladies scanned and thumbed through my magazines. As said, there was comparatively little talk or comment about the body-matter of the periodicals. But those women—all married, five of them mothers, two of them (three, counting the hostess), grandmothers—gave fully three-fourths of their time to the advertising pages.

But that is not all. Their scanning of the advertising pages of those periodicals developed some business action. The business talk started when one lady called attention to the “ad” of a military school in a town in Wisconsin, “where Thomas attends,” Thomas being her son. It developed that the lady seated next to her had a son Charles whom it was desired to start in some preparatory school in the fall. Another matron had a daughter she desired to have take a course at some school for girls. Both of the ladies with candidates for preparatory courses, however, were of the opinion that all the “good schools” appeared to be in the East and each would prefer to send her son or daughter to some school nearer home. To this opinion the mother of the boy attending the Wisconsin school earnestly protested.

“We have just as good preparatory schools, colleges and universities in the West as they have in the East,” she declared. “My boy is doing splendidly at the——, Wisconsin. He has been there two terms now. If you don’t want to send Charles to a military school, there are a score or more of excellent schools for either boys or girls in the West and South—some of them right near us, too. Just look here!”——

And then began a scurrying through the school “ad” pages of three or four of the magazines for the names and locations of preparatory schools. The advertisements of a number were found.

[151]

“Take the names and addresses and write all of them for their catalogues or prospectuses or pamphlets, giving the courses of study that pupils may take, the advantages they offer and other information. That’s what I did before deciding where to send Thomas. I wrote twenty-two different military schools in the country and got a prompt reply from each of them. In fact some of them wrote me four or five times, besides sending their little printed books which gave their courses of study and set forth the special advantages their students enjoyed.”

Of course, it was Thomas’ mother who spoke. Her suggestion, however, gripped the rails at once. The two matrons with children to place in preparatory schools asked for pencil and paper. I relieved them of the immediate labor of writing out their lists, by gallantly inviting them to take home with them such of the magazines as they thought would serve their purpose, and, as they were near neighbors, they could scan them at their leisure and address directly from the advertisements. I lost three of my favorite magazines on my tender.

“This has no bearing on the point!” Eh? Well, let us see about that.

Of course, I do not know what the mothers of that son and daughter who were to be started in preparatory school work did. It is safe to presume however, that they adopted the plan suggested by Thomas’ mother. We know what she did. At any rate we have her own statement of the course she pursued, and there can be advanced no valid reason for doubting her word. Besides, as she is our “next-door” neighbor, I have made, within the month, special inquiry of her as to what she did. I found that she had kept the catalogues of the schools to which she had written and had carefully “filed” in a twined package, as a careful housekeeper usually files things, every letter she had received from the schools.

More than that: She wrote nine of the schools a second letter and three of them, she wrote four times. To the Wisconsin school to which she finally intrusted the training and instruction of her son she wrote six times.

Now let us see what revenue the federal postal fund actually received from this one mother in her efforts to place her boy in a good, safe school.

[152]

First the mother herself wrote forty-five letters. On these the Postoffice Department collected 90 cents.

Second, her “twine file” shows that, all told, she had received from the twenty-two schools written to, a total of 163 letters. On these the government collected $3.26.

Third, the catalogues sent her were of various sizes. Their carriage charge, at third-class rates, I think would range from two to six cents or more. Putting the average at only three cents, which in my judgment is low, the government collected for their carriage 66 cents.

Fourth, thirteen of the schools, either not knowing her boy had been matriculated or thinking she might have other boys “comin’ on” to preparatory school age, sent her their catalogues for the following year—another 39 cents.

Add those four items and you will readily ascertain that the government received $5.21 in revenue from the efforts of Thomas’ mother to select a school for him—a school that would give him military training and discipline, as well as academic instruction in selected studies.

Her course of action was prompted entirely by the school advertisements she saw in two magazines.

How many other mothers and fathers were influenced to similar action by the three or four school “ad” pages in those two magazines I do not know. There must, however, have been many, I take it, otherwise the schools and preparatory colleges would not persist in advertising so extensively, year after year, during the summer months, in our high-class monthly and weekly periodicals.

The two magazines from which Thomas’ mother got her school address weighed a little under a pound each. If they reached her by mail, the government got only about two cents for their carriage and delivery, which was ample pay—$20.00 a ton—for the service. But supposing Mr. Hitchcock’s wild figures were correct—that it cost the government 18 cents to deliver those two magazines to that mother—a rate of $180.00 per ton. Of course, no man could so suppose unless he stood on his head in one corner of a room and figured results as the square of the distance at which things appeared to him, or chanced to be one of those “blessed” mortals prenatally endowed with what may be called mental strabismus. But for the[153] sake of the argument, let us suppose that it did cost the government 18 cents to deliver those two magazines to Thomas’ mother; let us admit that that falsehood is fact, that that foolishness is sense. Then what?

A magazine weighing one pound and printed on the grade of paper used by our high-class periodicals will count 250 or more pages. Four pages of school “ads,” therefore, would count for about one-fourth of one ounce.

Even at Mr. Hitchcock’s absurd figure of nine cents a pound, the cost to the government of carrying those four pages of school advertisements in each of two monthly magazines to the mother of Thomas was less than four-fifths of one cent.

Do you grasp the point?

Remember, Mr. Hitchcock has separated himself from much talk to show to a doubting public that it is the advertising pages of periodicals which over-burden the postal service and are responsible, largely, for the alleged “deficit.”

I say “alleged” deficit. I say so, because it is not, and never was, a deficit de facto. I shall later give my reasons for so saying—shall show that this much talked of deficit in the Postoffice Department’s revenues is quasi only—a mere matter of accounting, and bad accounting at that.

But here we are considering the cost to the government of carrying and delivering advertising pages to the reading public of this Nation. Especially are we considering the transaction between the government and the mother of Thomas—a transaction induced and promoted by eight pages of advertising—four pages in each of two magazines.

As just stated, it cost the government less than four-fifths of one cent, even if we rate the carriage and delivery cost at Postmaster General Hitchcock’s absurd figure of nine cents a pound, to deliver those eight pages of school advertisement to Thomas’ mother. Even the delivery of the complete magazines which printed those advertising pages would, at Mr. Hitchcock’s own figures, cost the government only about 18 cents. Let’s admit it all—the worst of it, and the worst possible construction that the worst will stand. Then how does the government stand in relation to the resultant transaction—the transaction induced by those eight pages of advertising?

[154]

It cost the government 18 cents, according to Mr. Hitchcock’s method of hurdle estimating, to deliver those two magazines to Thomas’ mother. Well, let it go at that. The government is out, then, 16 cents, the publisher having paid in 2 cents at the present pound rate for mail carriage and delivery.

On the other hand, those two magazines each carried four pages of school “ads.” Those “ads” start Thomas’ mother into a canvass of the schools by correspondence. The result of that canvass, as previously shown, turned into the government’s treasury a gross revenue of $5.21 for postage stamps to cover the first and third-class business resulting.

The government, then, is $5.05 ahead so far as gross receipts and gross revenues are concerned, and it is ahead that sum, in the specific transaction under consideration, solely and only because of those eight pages of school advertisements printed in the two magazines.

Is that not a fair—a just—statement?

As Mr. Hitchcock states that there is a large profit to the government for the stamps sold and as that $5.21 was all for stamps, then those eight pages of advertisements and Thomas’ mother must have turned into the postal fund a handsome net profit on the service rendered by the Postoffice Department.

Now, I desire to return to our “tea.” Two other “business” actions developed which serve to prove the statement made on a previous page, namely: It is the advertising pages of our periodicals which yield the largest revenue to the government for the postal service it renders.

The first of the two postal revenue-producers came up as we sat at luncheon. Each of the ladies had a magazine or weekly in hand. There was as much talking as eating in progress, or more. I presume that is the proper procedure or practice at “tea” luncheons. I am not a competent authority on “tea” proprieties.

One of the ladies “had the floor,” so to speak, and expatiated eloquently and at length on the merits of an electrically heated flat-iron or sad-iron, an advertisement of which she had found in the magazine she was scanning—a cloth smoother she had had in use for some three months. Three of the other matrons were wired—that is, their homes were electrically lighted. The others were getting their[155] domiciliary illumination from what is vulgarly designated as the “Chicago Gas Trust,” at 85 cents per.

“Results?” Three of the assembled party desired to write for “full particulars” about that flat-iron at once.

My boss furnished paper, envelopes, pens and ink. My assigned duty in this business transaction was both simple and secondary. The boss ordered me to go over to the drug store, buy the stamps and mail those three letters.

I did so.

The government got six cents postal revenue from me on that sad-iron “ad.” What further revenue was gleaned from the correspondence between the three ladies and the flat-iron manufacturer I know not.

It took me a long time to reach that drug-store—a short block away—buy the stamps, “lick ’em,” stick them on the envelopes and drop those three letters into the mail-box just outside the druggist’s door. At any rate, the ladies so informed me when I got back. They did it politely, kindly, but very plainly. Not wishing to scarify their feelings by admitting that I had purposely loitered because of an inherent or pre-natal dislike of teas, I did what I thought was the proper thing to do under the stress of impinging circumstances—I lied like a gentleman. I told the ladies that the druggist happened to be out of two-cent stamps and had sent out for them—sent to another drug store for them.

“How unfortunate!” exclaimed one of the party. “We want a lot more stamps. We have each written for a sample of these new biscuits. We have to enclose ten cents in stamps and the letters will have to be stamped. That’s eighty-four cents in stamps and we want to get the letters into the mail tonight.”

Then I was shown the advertisement of the desired “biscuits.” In the good old summer time of our earthly residence, “when life and love were young,” we called such mercantile pastry “crackers.” Mother baked all the biscuits we then ate, or somebody else’s mother baked them. Of course, sometimes Mary, Susie, Annie, Jane or another of the dear girls learned the trick and could “bake as good as mother.” Then she baked the biscuits. And they were biscuits. Now, every cracker is a biscuit, and every biscuit one gets smells and tastes of the bakeshop where it was foundried.

[156]

But that is entirely aside from our subject. The “ad”—a full page—set forth the super-excellence of some recently invented or devised cracker—“biscuit,” if you prefer so to call it. It was an attractively designed and well-written “ad.” The advertiser offered to send a regular-size package of the “biscuits” to anyone on receipt of ten cents in stamps—“enough to cover the postage”—and the name of the grocer with whom the sender of the stamps traded. That, in brief, was the “ad” offer, and each of the ladies wanted those biscuits—my boss as anxious to sample them as any of the others. On a corner of the luncheon table in symmetrical, pyramidal array, was 84 cents in miscellaneous change.

Before it came my turn to speak, Mrs. M. On The L. gave me a scrutinizing look—a censorious look—a look that said, “I know where you have been,” and took the floor. She did not rise in taking it either.

“Oh, he can get the stamps. Take that change and these letters. You can go to some other drug store and get the stamps. Put ten cents in stamps in each envelope and then seal and mail the letters.”

That’s the speech the boss made.

I should be ashamed to admit it, but I am not. There are limits to the endurance of even such a temperate-zone nature as that of the writer. The boss’ speech reached the limit. My patriotism was set all awry. Even my earnest desire to reduce the “deficit” in the postal service was, for the moment, forgotten—was submerged.

I took the 84 cents those friendly ladies had pooled on “biscuits” and the seven unsealed letters, assuring them I would certainly find the stamps. I then went up to my den, unlocked a drawer of my desk, found the stamps, made the enclosures, stamped and sealed the envelopes, and then came down and passed out on my assigned errand. I got back just as the “party” was donning its hat to depart for its several homes, assured it that its orders had been carried out, and, by direction of the boss, escorted home one of its members who had some distance to walk.

Now, I think I did my whole duty to that tea-party, and more than my duty to reduce the postal “deficit.”

I trust the “dear reader” will not have concluded or even thought that I am trying to be funny or humorous, nor even ludicrous. I have been writing of actual occurrences, and writing the facts, too, of[157] those occurrences, as nearly as I can recall them after an interval of less than three months. I introduce the de facto happenings at our “tea party” here because they apply—because they illustrate, they evidence, they prove that the advertising pages of our periodicals are the pages which produce a large part, if indeed, not the larger part of our postal service revenues.

But we must look after our “biscuits” a little further.

The seven women at that tea party spent 84 cents for stamps to get a sample of those crackers. Fourteen cents of these stamps went to cancellation on the letters they mailed. The other 70 cents went to cancellation on the cracker packages which the cracker inventor sent them—cancelled at the fourth-class rate—cancelled at the postal carriage rate of sixteen cents a pound.

Is that all? No it is not all. It is only the first link in a postal revenue producing chain.

The manufacturer of that cracker or biscuit, as you may choose to call it, wrote each of those seven ladies a neat letter of thanks, and neatly giving a further boost to the biscuit. I know this because I have seen the seven letters—all “stock form” letters.

That contributed 14 cents more in postage stamps for cancellation.

Three of the ladies heard from that cracker baker four times. Their grocers probably had not put the cracker in stock. My boss got a second letter from the baker.

That contributed 20 cents more in postage stamps for cancellation.

The advertiser sent by mail to each of the seven grocers the ladies had named a sample package of the “biscuits” and a letter naming the local grocery jobber or jobbers through whom stock could be had, the jobber’s price of it, etc.

That contributed 84 cents more in postage stamps for cancellation.

Nor is that all. My boss’ grocer got three letters from that cracker baker and a visit from a salesman of a local jobber before he “stocked.” If the grocers named by the other six ladies were similarly honored then the builder of those biscuits must have written the seven grocers whom the tea party ladies had named fourteen letters in addition to the first one.

[158]

That contributed 28 cents more in postage stamps for cancellation.

Now let us figure up—or down—how one tea party of seven (I was the working or “worked” member, so am not to be counted in), and a one page “ad” stands in account with the postal revenues.

The magazine carrying the cracker “ad” weighs about a pound. The single “ad” page cannot possibly weigh more than three-fiftieths of one ounce. To carry and deliver that one “ad” page the cost to the government, then, even at Mr. Hitchcock’s extension-ladder rate of 9 cents a pound, would be about one-thirtieth of one cent.

But as we did in the case of the school advertisements previously mentioned, let’s give our Postmaster General the whole “hullin’ uv beans.” Let us credit the government with Mr. Hitchcock’s alleged cost of carrying that magazine to that tea party—nine cents.

Per contra, the government must give that “ad” page credit for producing stamp cancellations to the amount of $2.30.

Figure it out yourself and see if that is not the actual showing of the ledger on this account of the Postoffice Department with that one “ad” page and those seven tea party women.

That, I believe, is fair and sufficient evidence from the outside—from the field—in support of the facts which the publishers present in their “Exhibit F,” and which I shall here reprint:

The astonishing record contained in (Exhibit E), of the absolutely unvarying coincidence of decreases in postoffice deficits with increases in second-class mail is square up against the Postmaster General’s statements that the department loses 8.23 cents on every pound of second-class mail and loses over $60,000,000 a year as a whole, on second-class mail.

What is the explanation? How can the phenomenon of constantly decreasing deficits, coincident with increasing second-class mail, be reconcil............