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NEW ZONE RATE A HARDSHIP Congress gives with one hand and takes away with the other when it grants the farmers rural free delivery of mails and imposes heavy postal rates on the newspapers and periodicals they wisl to have delivered promptly by the mail carriers Postal zone rates will nullify the benefits of rural free delivery but the cost of the service will not be reduced Fanners asked for rural free delivery localise they wished to keep in touch with the world by receiving periodical literature promptly ami cheaply Congress assumed the enormous expense of the service for the purpose of improving the con ¬ dition of country dwellers arid of making America more homogeneous and its citizens less provincial Postal zone rates put an end to that thatIn In time of war the public craves the fullest in ¬ formation regarding events that are changing tin destinies of the human race Throughout the Brit ¬ ish Empire postal rates on newspapers and periodi ¬ cals are kept down to the minimum The Canadiai government carries them at nominal rates and it addition subsidizes the press telegraph service se that every paper in the Dominion may obtain nnc print the news at trifling expense expenseTo To the mind and the soul of every citizen the news of the war and of our part in it is just as necessary as food for his body Statesmen recog ¬ nize this fact Some peanut politicians arc trying to punish the press for throwing light on dark places Do American farmers wish to be kept in the dark by having the cost of important periodical literature raised to prohibitive prices by postal zone rates Will they be content to get periodicals by freight weeks after publication New York Commercial
