The drum of coffee and sack of sawdust may have had consignees of similar character. But their shipment as mail matter showed another abuse of the postal service by the Postoffice Department itself, or by employes of that department. _They were weighed into rail transportation at a time when the average weight of mail carried during a period of three or six months would govern the rate of pay the transporting railroad would receive for carrying the mails during a period of four years._ The same might be said of the four carloads of Senatorial eloquence referred to on a previous page. Those cars were franked through _during the weighing period_ in the postal service. There is this difference, however, between those four cars of franked eloquence and the drum of coffee and sack of sawdust. The former was an abuse of the postal service and a raid upon its revenues _by permission, if not by authority, of the postal statutes_. The latter was an abuse of the postal service and raid upon its revenues _by employes of the Postoffice Department itself_. But the point we are after is the extent of federal departmental raid upon the postal revenues. How much is it? I have confessed my ignorance of the sum such raid will total. Our Postmaster General has (see last preceding quotation), confessed his ignorance of the total. He says there can be “no doubt that it annually reaches into many millions.” I have no other evidence or authority at hand save the testimony of William A. Glasgow, Jr., before the Penrose-Overstreet Commission in 1906. Mr. Glasgow represented the Periodical Publishers’ Association. In presenting the case for that association--strong, reputable body, representing vast business and public service (educational, social, fraternal and trade interests)--Mr. Glasgow used the following language: You may take the revenues of the Postoffice Department and give _away $19,000,000 per annum in the franking privilege to other departments of government_ and then give away $28,000,000 per annum in the beneficent advantages of rural free delivery, and then lose millions in unequal and exorbitant transportation charges, certainly $5,000,000, and thus create an apparent and artificial deficit and use that as a basis for further taxation upon those who read magazines, but no one will be deceived by such an excuse and no wise Congress will be moved by considerations so transparent or necessities so unreal.--_Page 544 Penrose-Overstreet Report (Hearings), 1906-7._ If Mr. Glasgow were speaking in 1911, I have no doubt he would have raised his figure of $19,000,000 to _twenty or more millions_ as a nearer approximate of the total of federal departmental raids upon the earnings or revenues of the Postoffice Department. Do not misunderstand me. All legitimate departmental service _should_ be rendered by the Postoffice Department, but that department _should receive credit for such service rendered_.