Note 340 — II THE RATE FOR NEWSPAPERS
Reading edition
"The most urgent need of the postal service is the rectification of the enormous wrongs which have grown up in the perversion and abuse of the privilege accorded by law to second-class matter. This reform is paramount to all others.... For this costly abuse, which drags on the Department and weighs down the service, trammels its power and means of effective advancement in every direction."—Ibid., 1899, pp. 4 and 5.
In 1900 it was stated that the whole cost of the extension of the rural free delivery service could be met from the saving which would result from the elimination of the second-class mail abuses.—Ibid., 1900, p. 13.
In 1901 it was described as "the one great overshadowing evil of the service, because it underlies and overtops all other reform and advance."—Ibid., 1901, p. 4.