REFORM OF POSTAL RATES.
[To THE EDITOR OP TEE " SPECTATOR."] have read with much interest and entire approval the excellent article in the Spectator of October 17th entitled " Cash on Delivery." May I take leave to point out that there is another Post Office reform which is urgently required ? I refer to the anomaly which exists with regard to the postal rates charged on publications not registered as newspapers. If you send through the' post a copy of a popular penny, journal—say T.P.'s Weekly, Tit-Bits, or the People's Friend— the postage is one penny, though the weight is only a little over 2 oz. ; but if you send a copy of the Graphic, the /lilts- trated London News, the Sphere, or any other similar publica- tion, weighing from j lb. to 1 lb., the postage is only one half- penny. Indeed, there is one trade publication published in the spring and autumn, and dealing with the current fashions, which weighs nearly 3 lb., and yet goes through the post for one halfpenny because it is a "newspaper." No one will maintain that these sixpenny and shilling publications are newspapers in any sense of the word in which the cheaper publications referred to are not newspapers. The truth is that the Post Office definition of a newspaper was fixed many years ago, before the publications in question came into existence, and it now stands much in need of revision. It is surely grossly unfair that the presumably wealthy person who pays sixper*or a shilling for a weekly publication should get it by post for a halfpenny, while the probably less well-to-do man who subscribes for a penny paper should have to pay twopence for it if it reaches him by post. This injustice has been several times brought under the notice of those fugitive Poptmaster-Generals to whom you refer, but the answer has always been that an alteration such as is desired would reduce the Post Office revenue. But, as you most aptly point out, " the Post Office exists first and foremost as a public servant, not first and foremost as an easy means of raising revenue." The Post Office should not yield a surplus at all, still less should it yield one by means of a gross and obvious injustice.—I am, Sir, Ac., THE EDITOR OP THE "PEOPLE'S FRIEND."
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