I have no doubt that if a proper weighing of the mails was observed, and if the railways were to carry the mails at a reasonable rate, this distribution could be made at a cost approximately _that which I have named_, as illustrated by the cost of distribution in Washington City, which is an undisputed fact.
After presenting the publishers’ “Exhibit A,” in which they refute Mr. Hitchcock’s unfounded assertions of colossal profits in the magazine publishing business--a subject which I treat elsewhere--the Senator presents their “Exhibit B,” which counters the Postmaster General’s claim that the proposed increase in rate would yield a large revenue to the government. “Exhibit B” reads as follows:--
It has been shown from the original books of account of the five most prominent magazines that the proposed measure charging 4 cents a pound postage on all sheets of magazines on which advertising is printed would tax these magazines, the most powerful group, best able to meet such a shock, nearly the whole of their entire net income. This means that the new postal rate could not be paid. There is not money enough in the magazine business to pay it. Magazines would simply be debarred from the United States mails.
But assume, for the sake of argument, that this would not be the case, and that the money could be found to pay the new postage bills, what, theoretically, would be the increased revenue of the Postoffice Department, for the sake of which it is proposed to take more than all the profits of the industry that has been built up since 1879?
The Postmaster General, in his statement given to the Associated Press, and published in the newspapers Tuesday morning, February 14, claims that the proposed postal increase on periodical advertising would amount to less than 1 cent flat on the weight of the whole periodical. This is not the way the ambiguously worded amendment works out literally; but, accepting the Postmaster General’s figures and applying them to the weights, given in his annual report, of the second-class mail classifications affected by the increase, let us pin the Postoffice Department down to what it hopes to gain from a measure that would confiscate the earnings of an industry.