The resolution to appoint a commission of three members and appropriate $50,000 for the commission’s use was tacked onto the postoffice appropriation bill after the Senate “rider” was ditched. That resolution was under discussion in the House March 3rd (1911)--the usual swan-song day for those who failed to “arrive” at the November election. Mr. Weeks, chairman of the House Committee on Postoffices and Postroads, led the discussion. The discussion was participated in by several Congressmen, among whom was Congressman Moon of Tennessee. Judge Moon is recognized as one of the best informed men in Congress on postal matters, and particularly informed as to present methods of transporting and handling second-class mail. Mr. Moon, though a member of the conference committee which had just agreed to the bill, Senate resolution and all, as amended in conference, quite vigorously opposed the appropriation of $50,000 of the people’s money for a “Commission” to investigate the cost of transporting and handling second-class mail matter. He based his opposition largely on the fact that two or three previous commissions had been appointed to investigate the same question or matter; that these previous commissions had gone into the subject thoroughly, had collected every scrap of information that, under the present methods, or lack of method, in the postoffice department, it was or is possible to collect; that these commissions had spent hundreds of thousands of the people’s money; that they had made complete and exhaustive reports covering all the information obtained or obtainable; that these reports are on file and easily accessible, and that _the postal committees of neither Senate nor House had given any attention or consideration to those reports_. From the many trenchant things said by Mr. Moon I take the following: “If the gentleman will excuse me a minute, I am trying to get to another reason which I want to present to the House as to why I deem it inappropriate and unwise to pass this legislation. Now, when the experts undertake to determine just exactly what ought to be paid for the carrying of the magazines, how the government ought to be remunerated for the carrying and handling of these magazines, or other second-class matter, they are bound to take as the basis of the investigation the manner in which the second-class matter is now handled and the manner in which it is paid for. In other words, the basis of weighing and the computation of paying are the basic facts upon which they must rely in order to determine the question. I undertake to say to this House deliberately, that in view of our method of weighing and of the computation of railway mail pay, that no expert on the face of this earth can today come within fifteen or twenty millions of dollars of what the compensation ought to be for the transportation of second-class mail.