If Mr. Hitchcock is correctly reported in the above, it would appear that something of a change has taken place in his mental landscape since he put his “rider” on the Senate speedway during the closing hours of the last session of Congress. “The department knows that the advertising matter in magazines produces first-class mail,” he now says. Did the department know that fact when that “rider” was on the speedway? It most certainly did, if it then knew anything--that is anything about the sources of postal revenues. Did Mr. Hitchcock or any of his assistants, at the time referred to, make any vehement declaration of that knowledge--that advertising matter in magazines produces first-class revenue? If he or his assistants did so, no one has reported the fact of having heard such declaration. In March, Mr. Hitchcock battles valiantly to have the advertising pages of magazines taxed _four_ cents a pound for carriage and distribution. At that time he “estimated” that such increase in the mail rate on the advertising “sheets” of magazines would be equivalent to a rate of “about two cents a pound” on the entire magazine. As about one-half the full weight of our leading magazines--the magazines which Mr. Hitchcock, as previously stated, appears to be “after”--is in their advertising pages, his method of “estimating” must have been somewhat baggy at the knees last March. Any seventh or eighth grade grammar school pupil could have told him that a four-cent rate on one-half the weight and a one-cent rate on the other half is equivalent to a flat rate of two and one-half cents on the full weight. However, we may leave that pass. It is past--has washed into the drift of time. If the Call correctly reports him, he is now willing, or was willing on August 25, 1911, to accept a flat rate of two cents a pound on all second-class matter. That shows some improvement over his “estimate” of March last. It would seem that Mr. Hitchcock is getting down nearer the tacks in this second-class mail rate question, and, as he has got rid of that annoying “deficit,” it can be hoped that he may yet see the fact--see that a _one-cent-a-pound-rate_ is ample to cover the cost of carriage and handling of second-class mail matter.