p. 123 | The Postage Swindle by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 15, 1875

The Postage Swindle.

By Editor

If the members of the Forty-third Congress had deliberately sought to make its memory odious with the people, they could hardly have chosen a more effective method than by perpetrating in the closing hours of the session the outrageous swindle involved in the amendment of the postal laws, by which the rate of postage on books, transient newspapers, magazines, book-manuscripts, proof-sheets, prospectuses and circulars, and other “third-class” mail matter, was doubled. There had been no call from the people for any such change; none had been suggested or recommended by the Postmaster-General. It is said to have been brought about by the lobby influence of the express companies, with the special co-operation of Senator Hamlin, who manipulated the scheme and succeeded in getting the amendment engrafted upon the Sundry Civil Appropriation Bill, to accomplish their purpose. It was sent to the House between two and five o’clock in the morning, and concurred in without debate, we believe, on motion of Mr. Garfield, probably not a dozen members being aware of its real scope and purpose.

The effect of this swindling legislation will be to take thousands of dollars from publishers and the people sending by mail transient papers and other reading-matter, and to enrich to a corresponding extent the express monopoly. Such action is all the more offensive in face of the fact that senators and representatives voted themselves the privilege of sending again free through the mails, at the expense of the public treasury, tons of their own speeches in the Congressional Record and other documents. The Postmaster-General announces that he would gladly suspend the operation of the law till Congress meets again next December, when it will doubtless be changed, but that he has no such option in the matter. The amendment is said to have been prepared by Ex-senator Ramsey, of Minnesota, and by him given to Senator Hamlin to engineer through the Senate. Both merit a rebuke from the whole country commensurate with the flagrant outrage thus perpetrated, as does Congress, as a whole, for recklessly assenting to it.—National Temperance Advocate.