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PENALIZING PATRIOTISM During the past year over 1300 newspapers and periodicals were forced out of existence by the high cost of paper ana production On top of this comes au increase in postal rates ranging from fifty td nine hundred per cent according to distance Why did Congress revive the antiquated soctioual izing zone system abolished by Abraham Lincoln in 1803 and denounced by President Wilson when Governor of Xew Jersey and by the Postal Investi ¬ gating Commission under the leadership of Charles K Hughes in 1Jllv 1JllvThe The claim was that it was to assure the Postotlice Department cost of service The filial result will be to decrease revenue just as the doubling of the price of postal cards has reduced the income from that source The incompetcncy of those who drafted the rider to the war revenue act of 1917 which provided the zone system is shown iu the following anomalous condition A ijuantity of newspapers or magazines made up and billed through by the pub ¬ lisher to a point west of the Mississippi will under the new law cost approximately eight cents per copy A single copy of the same periodical dropped in a street box collected and worked through the postoliice and delivered to the addressee will cost but four cents centsIt It is a curious situation when wholesale mailing by publications costs double that of a single copy mailing by a private citizen particularly when the argument for the passage of the one law was simply to secure cost of service serviceThus Thus is the patriotism of the press paralyzed by the shortsighted legislators Leslies
