Word: second-class
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...process of getting your magazines from the press to you is the fastest operation of its kind in the world, with perhaps the least demand on U.S. postal employees and equipment. Despite high costs we incur for performing services ordinarily handled by the Postal Service, we pay the same second-class rates as publications that must be handled individually at every step. Time Inc. does not want to discontinue these services, from which both the post office and our readers benefit, but we feel that we should not bear any further increases in rates. We believe that continued cooperation...
...March 2 the cost of mailing a first-class letter will go up from 8? to a dime, an increase of 25%. Most Americans will feel that bite of inflation at once, but another may go unnoticed at first. On the same day, a new jump in second-class postal rates, which affect magazines and newspapers, will take effect. This increment is the first installment of a 40% rise to be spread over the next 28 months. It comes on top of a fiveyear, 145% rate hike begun in 1971. The new increase, being imposed on a compound basis, means...
Part of the March 2 increase involves a rising charge for each piece of second-class mail. But the increase is also based on a complicated formula involving a magazine's ratio of ads to editorial content, its weight and size, and the distance it must travel. Thus no two magazines will be affected in precisely the same way, but all that use the mails are hurting. Says National Review Publisher William Rusher: "Journals of opinion traditionally lose money. The National Review is a journal of opinion, so the postal rates won't eat into our profits-they...
Ralph Nicholson, a senior assistant postmaster general, argues that the old U.S. Post Office performed many different roles essential to the developing nation. It was a builder of roads, an employer of last resort. It charged low rates to second-class users to stimulate an infant free press and the flow of ideas throughout the country. Those days are over, Nicholson says, and adds: "Maybe we look like the heavies in this second-class matter, and I guess...
Stymied by the Postal Service and harsh economics, publishers continue to seek help in Congress. But despite criticism of the second-class increases by such remarkable allies as Edward Kennedy and Barry Gold water, Congress has been reluctant to intercede in matters it delegated to the new Postal Service in 1970. Many Congressmen remain unmoved by the magazines' plight. A House bill drafted by Representative James Hanley that did not reduce but merely stretched out the phased increases from five to ten years died last summer. The Senate Post Office Committee will soon vote on a similar bill, authored...