The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-12-30

den, the Third Assistant Postmaster General, who has apparently lost a great deal of sleep over the matter. such an extent that he has been driven to devise a remedy for it. Does this remedy cut off the graft of Congress sioDal Dickers and stsalers? Not at a1L Does 1t infringe upon the swollen spotls of the railroads? Not in the least. Mir. Madden proposes to make the people meet the deficit by paying heavier post age on their newspapers and magazines. With true official pigheadedness Mir. Madden can imagine no remedy for the effects of graft except by. opening the way to new graft. He wishes to multi ply the postage on periodicals by four.
 The people who would feel this im- position most heavily are. of course, very much dependent upon newspapers and magazines for knowledge of what is going on in the world and for their
 nssddS ssdSg abbsd m s b2 9 giSa e1pfass ay paflies upon every article which they presume to purchase at 8 distance from thSir bones Mr. Madqehs s schesae w0nid ties and darken their lives. What with bad roads. the tyranny\of the express companies and the constant threat of the withdrawal of the slender postal privileges which they now possess. the lot Of dwellersi In the country. ts by nc
 The plea that the present low rate of cent d pound on periodicals aids many papers of low class to flourish Is true enough; but the evil is compar- atively trifling. It Is not by any means certain that to raise the rates would lnjure the low-class periodicals as much as those of better character. The cheap; the good are necessarily dearer. There are farm journals of exceedingly doubtful chraacter which can be had tai tai rates raj SssS as Mir Msdden proposes, s would not necessarily raise their price to more than 25 cents a year, They would sttlI come much & cheaper than 1oIS 1hs Foed ssn fEsI by at least as much and whose clrcu- iation would be curtailed vastly more. The simple fact is that any rise Tn pos pos advances with discouraging slowness and which yields most hopelesely to adverse circumstances.
 erature Of any sort. They are in general not trained to discriminate between the good and the worthless. The cheapest but their tendency to accept the w0rth- less periodicals would not be tessAned by increasing the cost of the better seem seem prohibitivS to them. 1t is a la la mentable fact that the United States has had very few postal officials who aPprtsca'sSh the m oppoSssnn,ttles or the ,n
 Government which can be so beneficial to the public: none. which can do so much to advance the general intGiIi- gence and contribute so largely to the comfort and happiness of the people It Is extremely regrettable that the postofice should be looked upon as 2 stepping stone to ather positions which seem to the politicians more desirable. or that its. usefulnesgl should be men, anced by the short-sighted official pe- nuriousness. If 1t Is desirable to reduce the postal deficit, and nobody can doubt that 1t is, there are many ways to do so without impairing the services of the department to the public. When the choice is fairly offered between cut ting off the privileTes of the neople for which they oav and those of the graft CTS for which they do not nay, how can an honest official hesitate2