The facts are, of course, that to get this higher advertising rate, the “great periodical” had to publish enough more copies and additional reading matter in those copies to justify the increased rate; and that to manufacture and supply these additional subscriptions it costs magazines more than twice as much as they get from subscribers. Furthermore, the Postmaster General takes gross advertising income as net profit, apparently thinking that advertising flows into periodical offices without the asking, where, as a matter of fact, it is necessary to spend enormous sums for high-priced men to solicit advertising, for other men to lay out plans and make designs for advertisers, and for a large clerical force to handle the advertising department. The calm way in which the Postmaster General ignores the cost of presswork and paper on which the advertising is printed, exhibits his ignorance of the fact that there is in business an expense side of the ledger as well as an income side.
If a magazine has 100,000 circulation and a fair corresponding rate for advertising and if the circulation is then increased to 200,000, the publisher has the same right and the same necessity to charge more for the doubled circulation that a grocer has to charge more for two pounds of tea than for one pound. But what possible relation has this to the fact that postage rates have remained stationary? _The postoffice gives no more service than it did before magazine circulations and advertising increased_--in fact it gives less, as it now requires the big magazines to separate and tag for distribution, and, in many cases, deliver to the trains, _a vast quantity of magazine mail, formerly handled entirely by the postoffice_.
I wonder if Mr. Hitchcock ever read “Job Jobson, Nos. 1, 2 and 3.” If he has not there is something due him which he ought to take immediate steps to collect. “Job Jobson” in three little pamphlets tells _more_ than either Mr. Hitchcock or myself will ever be able to learn about second-class mail carriage and handling--unless, of course, we read those three booklets of Job Jobson.
Why are Job Jobson’s three booklets so important? A very pertinent question, indeed, at this stage of our consideration. Job Jobson’s three booklets are toweringly important inasmuch as they were written by Wilmer Atkinson, publisher of the Farm Journal of Philadelphia, one of the most successful as well as the most _useful_ farm periodicals the world has ever produced.