“For the present,” said he, “_an increase of only one cent a pound is recommended_, thus making a flat rate of 2 cents a pound, which should be regarded as merely tentative, however, leaving for future determination such _additional increase as may be found necessary to meet the cost_.” The Postmaster General served notice on the commission that if by any chance it should see fit to recommend the continuance of the present rate--a “merely nominal postage rate,” he called it--his department could not consistently do otherwise than renew _its recommendation for a higher rate of postage on the advertising portions of magazines_. I need make no comment on that address beyond the comment implied in the phrases and wording I have marked for italics. That Mr. Hitchcock still purposes to “put over” the injustices covered in his Senate rider amendment to the postoffice appropriation bill is made baldly clear. That he still is working that “deficit” as a sort of “come-on” to his purpose is equally clear. And the ridiculous, if not ludicrous, feature of this talk before the commission is that it comes _after_ he has demonstrated and publicly announced that _there is no deficit in the Postoffice Department for the fiscal year, 1910-11_. As Mr. M. H. Madden states in a letter to me, printed on a previous page, Mr. Hitchcock reports a profit of _one to three million dollars_ for the fiscal year named. Later, if I remember rightly, he discovered a stealage--pardon me, I mean he discovered an “excess”--of from $9,000,000 to $14,000,000 in railway mail pay. Just in this connection I wish to say that Mr. Hitchcock is deserving of the praise and commendation of every one of us American citizens for the aggressive way in which he has cut down expenditures in his department _without impairing its service_. Also is he deserving of equal praise and commendation from us for his vigorous and fairly successful methods of going after that railway mail haulage steal, which has been going on for a time to which the younger generation of our citizens wots not of. Although I may adversely criticise a man, as in this volume I have criticised Mr. Hitchcock, I like the man who puts up a stiff fight for a cause, even though I believe his cause is wrong. Candidly I can see no reason why Mr. Hitchcock and his predecessor postmaster generals should so worry themselves over a “deficit” in the Postoffice Department--_a department in which a surplus should never be expected and never allowed to become permanent_. But our present Postmaster General has, by his aggressive action and close scrutiny of the loose, wasteful methods under which the vast business of his department is carried on, disposed of the “deficit” and found a _surplus_. _In this he has done what his predecessors failed to do._