When it comes to covering or cloaking ulterior purpose or intent in legislation, Mr. Hitchcock is an expert, it would appear from the rider he so strenuously tried to put astride the 1911-12 postoffice appropriation bill, and from the foregoing as well as some others of his suggestions to Congress. But the point to which I more especially desire to call to the reader’s attention when I obtruded that last preceding quotation at a point where it interrupted a consideration of the Penrose-Overstreet Commission’s report was this:-- As previously stated, Mr. Hitchcock’s 1910 report bears date, December 1, 1910. On that date, as appears from the last quotation, he desired a law that would bar all sample copies from the mails at the present second-class rate. It also appears that Mr. Hitchcock at the date named--December, 1, 1910--desired that all periodicals issued, except sample copies, _be carried, as now, at the cent-a-pound rate_. Somewhere around February 1, 1911--_barely two months after he makes that cent-a-pound recommendation_--we hear Mr. Hitchcock assertively declaring, and contentiously arguing, that it costs the government _9.23 cents per pound_ to transport and handle second-class matter. What happened to his mental gear in so short a time to induce so _loud_ a change in his mind? Or was it a change of mind? On page 328 of that 1910 departmental report, Mr. Britt, Third Assistant Postmaster General, who has charge of the accounting division of the service, makes the bold statement that it cost the government $62,438,644.70 more to carry and handle the second-class mail last year than was received for the service. Being an “expert” figurer Mr. Britt found no difficulty in arriving at that absurd 9.23 cents a pound as the _actual cost_ to the government of carrying and handling second-class mail. On pages 7 and 8 of the report, Mr. Hitchcock himself gives publicity to a conviction that the cent-a-pound rate should be increased on certain periodicals--_the magazines_--generously suggesting that the increased rate be confined to their “advertising pages” only. In the loosely worded “rider” he carelessly--_or purposely_--uses the word “sheets” in place of the word “pages” as used in his report. Still, in face of his Third Assistant’s lofty figuring, the conclusions of which are announced on page 328 of the report, and of his own statement of the “reasons for an increase of rate” on periodicals of the _magazine class_, for carrying and handling their “advertising pages”--in face of these statements, how did his mental gear so slip, or “jam,” as to induce him to recommend, on page 35 of this _same_ report, the enactment of a law continuing the cent-a-pound rate on _all_ periodicals mailed, except sample copies? Did he intentionally double cross both himself and his Third Assistant or, in his anxiety to curb the circulation growth of periodicals, _did he forget_ what he and Mr. Britt had said? What’s the answer?