Neither are these figures a complete record of the effect on the government revenue. They take no account of the certain destruction of publishing properties, and the consequent destruction of postal revenue on the profitable first-class matter their advertising once created. “_Postscript_: Since this calculation was made and a flood of telegrams from agricultural publications has come to Congress, the afternoon newspapers of Tuesday, February 14, reported that at a cabinet meeting on that day it was decided by the Administration and announced by Postmaster General Hitchcock that agricultural periodicals will be exempted from the increased postal rate. The owners and other representatives of agricultural periodicals gathered in Washington to oppose the amendment to the postoffice appropriation bill at once left Washington for their homes. It was reported at the same time that the religious periodicals had also been assured that a paternal Administration would take care of them. “This leaves the situation in such shape that the Administration has at last got down to the comparatively small group of popular magazines. “These magazines proper, the Postmaster General says, constitute 20.23 per cent of second-class matter, or only 162,000,000 pounds, out of the 800,000,000 pounds of second-class mail. “As the Postmaster General says, as explained above, that the proposed increase would only mean 1 cent a pound more on the whole periodical, he could only figure out a theoretical gross gain of $1,620,000. But his figures are, as usual, all wrong. “From this $1,620,000, that his figures come to, he would have to deduct, of course, the exempted periodicals and also all expenses of administering the proposed new measure. “The pretense of raising second-class rates to do away with the postoffice deficit therefore disappears. “A few popular magazines are to be punished. “The absurdly unjust discrimination involved in the proposed increase of postal rates on certain subclasses of second-class mail, _leaving the larger subclasses, more costly to the postoffice, untouched_, is shown in Exhibit C.” But how about this new development, in which the Postmaster General apparently decides from day to day and hour to hour as to whether one class of periodicals or another shall be allowed to live or made to die? Has there ever before been in America, or in Russia, or in China, a censor with this power? If the institutions of this country are to be so changed as to give this despotic censorship to one man, _ought that man to be the official in charge of the political machinery, as patronage broker, of the Administration_? Now, we come to _weights_, and here the publishers begin to talk back a little. In introducing the publishers’ “Exhibit C” Senator Owen said: “It is insisted by the Postoffice Department that it is entirely just to increase the cost on advertisements in the magazines. I submit their answer:”