Now I would not have this (class) newspaper and its annexes deprived of the low postage rate, but as the Postoffice Department has within the past ten years denied admission to the mails of 11,563 of other publications, and 32,000 others have been ruled out or died from the hard conditions imposed, I would respectfully request this Commission to ascertain and report to the President for transmission to Congress _why there has never been a single publication of this class shut out or even molested in the slightest degree_? I do not say it is, but _is_ it, because such papers are politically powerful, that they have the ear of the public, that they hold a monopoly of the news, and that they can make or unmake the reputation of public officials at will, and that therefore they are immune from interference?… I have here a copy of the _Police Gazette_, which I take to be a superior paper of its class. It is held to be a newspaper, entitled to transmission through the mails at a cent a pound. It has never been proposed to raise the postage rate on this paper.… _This Commission should endeavor to find out and report to the President for transmission to Congress, why the postage rate on one-half of the periodicals devoted to agriculture should be increased from one cent to three cents, and the postage rate on the Police Gazette should remain at one cent._ HEARINGS BEFORE THE HUGHES POSTAL COMMISSION. I intended to follow the hearings before this commission personally. Ill health prevented my doing so. Under this stress, I asked my friend, Mr. M. H. Madden, quoted on a previous page in connection with other phases of our general subject, to summarize for me the hearings of the commission in August. Mr. Madden kindly consented to do so. Following is what he writes me relating to the commission’s proceedings and hearings: The first meeting of the commission took place on August 1, and it continued its hearings in New York City, with occasional adjournments during the greater part of the month.