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Show MORE RAIDS ON THE MAILS. It will be remembered that in his annual message to Congress. President Taffc bewailed at some length the loss to tho postal revenues of the difference between the charge for transporting newspapers and periodicals and the receipts re-ceipts from such transport. The deficit was largo, and the President condemned tho practice which resulted in that deficit, de-ficit, claiming that' it amounted to an enormous subsidv tp the newspapers. Of course, as The Tribune pointed out at the lime, tho loss was more apparent than real, because the facilities for transportation would have to. be practically prac-tically the same with this class of mail matter large or small in amount, and the cost would bo much grcnter proportionate!" proportion-ate!" on a small amount of matter carried car-ried fhttn on full weights. Tt is strange, however, to see that the President is quite ready to join in an even more indefensible addition to the postal deficit. Ho made a speech at Winona, Minn., in support of "Representative "Represen-tative Tawncy, the only administration member in the Minnesota .delegation. And now that speech is fo be printed, a million copies of it. and circulated all through tho United States as a public pub-lic document. According to the President's Presi-dent's reasoning, this is an ' enormous subsidy to him. At tho same time a million copies of Speaker Cannon's speech at. St. Louis wherein he brauded the insurgent Republicans as "Democrats, "Demo-crats, aro also to be printed as a public document. The New York Commercial has taken tho pains io figure up t ho cost of circulating these two .speeches free th'rough I ho mails to the peoplo of tho United States. Postmaster General' Hitchcock says that it costs tho department depart-ment about nine cents a pound to transport trans-port this class of matter. The combined weight of these two million speeches will be half a million pounds. The total to-tal cost, therefore, will be ir'lo.OOO in round numbers, to send, these speeches broadcast to tho people of the Unitbd States. It is lamentable that tho President Presi-dent should consent to such a base use of the mails, to such subsidies in favor of mere partisan luirangucs. Por it is to bo remembered that, these speeches have no quality of public information in-formation in them. They do not deal with any matter of benefit to tho people; peo-ple; they have nothing to do with pointing point-ing out "hotter social or economic conditions; condi-tions; they warn against no ovils; they arc not in the least helpful to the mass of the pcoplo in any way. Thoy aro mere partisan documents. They aro not even Republican documents, but thoy simply present tho case of the Republican Republi-can majority faction, extreme partisanship partisan-ship without the least public advantage in it, and so far as known a large section sec-tion of the country being directly opposed op-posed to the political partisanship carried car-ried in thoso harangues. To such base uses are the mails prostituted; pros-tituted; and thus is the deficit incrcasod. The inconsistency of this sort of thing when sized up against President Taft's condemnation of it so far as newspapers are concerned, is so glaring that it is a marvel to see tho Cannon and Aldrich partisans in Congress blind themselves to tho fact, and ignore tho bad effect that such partisan invasion of tho mails, postage free, will have upon tho minds of the people at large. |