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.
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 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?