Coulee City dispatch. [volume] (Coulee City, Wash.) 19??-19??, 1937-04-22

| Representative Taber of New
York called attention to the condi-
ton respecting government publ
cations recently when the house ap-
preparations committee was holding
hearings on a bill appropriating
funds for several government de-
| partments.
Mr.. Taber estimated that gov
eminent publications were costing
in the neighborhood of twentymil-
lion-dollars year. He called them
administration propaganda.
"Every organization in the gov
ernment," Mr.. Taber declared, lis
sending out all sorts of propagan-
da, propaganda in fancy colors,
pamphlets with pictures of resettle-
ment projects, pictures of WPA
propositions and all that sort of
| thing"
| It was the first estimate I had
been able to obtain of the cost of
government publications for it is
not easy to ascertain how much
these beautifully done magazines
cost each department or agency.
| Nor is it easy to determine how
much is paid for the distribution of
the countless thousands of state
ments issued for the press or mailed
in millions of copies to voters. The
whole thing constitutes maze that
is so complex that it is staggering.
The government printing Office lists
| 70 periodicals of the magazine type
| for which it will take subscriptions
or sell individual copies. These, of
course, are printed documents. They
do not include the many pamphlets
that are nimeographed or published
otherwise by ernm ent a !
| agencies.
I mentioned the distribution of Of
| fetal statements for the press and
-, -. to voters through
Weighing out the country.
the Cost There is no way,
as far as I can
see, to calculate the total, but one
Washington correspondent recently
took occasion to weigh the output
of press statements from the De-
partment of Agriculture for one
week. His curiosity had been
aroused by the tremendous volume
that had been delivered to his Of
fice-both by mail and by special
messenger-and so he weighed the
weeks grist. 1t totaled more than
three and one-haf pounds. This, as
I said, was from only one depart
ment and the weight was the weight
of the paper alone.
One need not employ great deal
of imagination to think of the cost
involved. First there was the pa
per itself. In the second place there
was the cost of tipping the material
and then of mimeographing it. But
before it reached either one of these
stages, it was necessary that a vast
amount of work be done by well
paid men and women writer's and
research workers who prepared the
material that was used whether in
mimeographing or in printing.
There are two publications that
come to my desk regularly that
strike me as being extraordi-
narily expensive. The Consumers
Guide" a product of the Agricul-
ture Adjustment administration and
the liberalization News" pub
lished by the Rural Electrification
administration, are the two most ex-
pensive and most elaborate periodi-
Gals that regularly see. They are
sent out free not only to the Wash
ington correspondents but to thou
sands upon ~thousands of voters
to any voter whose name either
agency obtains. And they are paid
for out of taxpayers money.
geographically, each of these pc
riodicals is exceptionally well done
from magazine standpoint. They
are replete with pictures, and cop
per engraving is expensive.
And so it is throughout the gov
eminent. Everywhere correspond
ent goes among government offices
he meets federal workers." among
the government personnel, engaged
in preparing and distributing the
government stories for public
reading.
Now, let me touch on another
phase of the cost of government
=. publications. I re-
FrdnRtng fer to the use of
| AL,,c~ tho froplipo y,rixyi
lege. AS everyone
knows, government mail goes
through the United States mails
without the payment of postage.
That does not mean, however, that
the railroads or the airplanes or
the steamships haul that mail free
The only difference between that
mail and the letters you write or
receive is that the government pays
the transportation lines on a pound
basis and no stamps are used. 1t is
bulk transportation whereas when
you and I mail letters we pay the
cost of transportation on those let
tiers to the government by means
of a postage stamp.
1t is entirely proper and reason
able that government mail should