Now, I shall briefly state my objections to some points in the above quotation--those points I have italicized.
The reader, however, must bear in mind that the scale of increase in mail rates above reprinted applies _only to single copies_--to copies mailed to individual addresses. For copies mailed in _bulk_, in packages weighing not less than ten pounds, to some agent of the publisher or other individual, to be taken up by the agent or individual at train or at central postoffice, the commission recommended the cent-a-pound rate.
In adverse criticism of the commission’s argument for penalizing _weight_, because all foreign countries do so, I need but say:
1. There are more high-class newspapers--papers which, necessarily, have weight--published in this country _than is published in all the rest of the world_.
2. There are four times as many of what the 1906-7 commission--also Postmaster General Hitchcock--would class as “periodicals” published in this country _as are published in all the rest of the world_.
Sounds “loud,” does it? Well, look into the matter. Maybe I am mistaken. If so, it is a mistake made after thirty years of study of the conditions controlling in my country--in _your_ country--and of the prices paid in other countries for _efficient, satisfactory service_.
3. Those “other countries”--the stronger ones, at any rate--either _own_ or _absolutely control_ the railroads which transport their mails. In some of them, rail transportation of mails--also of government officials, the service personnel of the army and the navy, and of other government “weight”--are _carried free of charge_.
4. Those “other countries,” of which so much is said and written ostensibly for our enlightenment, have gone through the mill--their peoples have been _ground fine_ in mills of sophistry and special pleadings, to which, _for fifty years_, we have been carrying our grists.
5. Those “other countries” are making their mail service a source of _governmental revenue_.
The people of this country, today, no more expect a revenue from the government’s postal service than they expect it from the War, the Navy, the Interior, the Judicial or other service department.
The people want _service_, not revenues, from any federal service department.