He reported his assumed facts to the President in time for Mr. Taft’s message to Congress, sent in in December, 1909. In that message Mr. Taft made the statement that it costs the government 9 cents a pound to transport second-class mail matter, the total cost being more than sixty million dollars a year, and asked that there should be an increase in second-class rates. Mr. Taft instanced this as a subsidy for the magazine and periodical press. Mr. Hitchcock’s report as Postmaster General contained substantially the same statements.
The House Committee on Postoffices and Postroads, where the postoffice appropriation bill originates, took cognizance of these statements by the President and by the Postmaster General, and ordered a hearing on the matter, which was held early in the session. The various publishers of the country, representing not only the Periodical Publishers’ Association but many other organizations of publishers of various classes of periodicals, sent representatives to Washington, and there were full hearings before the committee, extending through several days. The publishers stated their side of the case and the committee took the matter under advisement. The House committee reported out the postoffice bill with no recommendation of any kind in it for an increase in second-class postage; and no separate bill providing for the increase was prepared, introduced or reported.
Then Mr. Blythe, under the subcaption of “Running Down the Nine-Cent Myth,” says:
Some years previously the congress authorized what was known as the Penrose-Overstreet Postal Commission, composed of members of the postoffice committees of the Senate and House, of which Senator Penrose was then the Senate chairman and the late Jesse Overstreet the House chairman. This commission met in various places, had long hearings and made a report and prepared a bill. Before making its report or preparing its bill the commission employed, at a cost of seventy-five thousand dollars, or thereabouts, chartered accountants and business experts to make a thorough examination into the business methods of the postoffice department, its expenditures and its resources. The results of the work of these examiners was incorporated in the report to Congress by the Penrose-Overstreet commission. It is notable that this commission _asked the late Postmaster General, Charles Emory Smith, of Philadelphia, who was responsible for the statement that it cost seven cents a pound to transport second-class mail matter, where he got his figures, and he did not remember, nor would he testify concerning them_.