Note 309 — II THE RATE FOR NEWSPAPERS

"There is no reason whatever why the Post Office should charge a man threepence or fourpence for a book and a halfpenny for these vast trade circulars, and it would be the simplest, as well as the wisest and most beneficial of reforms, to bring the book post down to the newspaper level."—H. G. Wells, Mankind in the Making. London, 1914, chap. ix.

The following further suggestions by Mr. Wells are reprinted here for the consideration of postal reformers. Their adoption involves merely an extension of the principle of State benefit.

"Now, in the first place, the post office as one finds it in Great Britain might very well be converted into a much more efficient distributing agency by a few simple modifications in its method. At present, in a large number of country places in Great Britain, a penny paper costs three-halfpence including the necessary halfpenny for postage, and the poorer people can afford no paper at all, because the excellent system in practice abroad of subscribing to any registered periodical at the post office and having it delivered with the letters has not been adopted. Government publications and Government maps, which ought also to be obtainable at a day's notice, through the Post Office and post free, have to be purchased at present in the most devious way through a remote agent in London. There is no public reason whatever why a more intimate connection should not be established between the Stationery Office and the Post Office."—Ibid.

"It would be the simplest thing in the world to have a complete, business-like catalogue of Government publications, kept standing in type and reissued and reprinted quarterly, distributed to every post office, and by its means one ought to be able to order whatever one wanted at once, pay for it on the spot, and get it delivered to any address in Great Britain in the next twenty-four hours."—Ibid.