The departmental “abuses” of the postal service are _steals_. They should not be tolerated. If extra-departmental service is rendered (as is well known it is), _it should be paid for just the same--and at the same service rates--that Jim Jones, Susie Bowers and Widow Finerty are compelled to pay for similar service_. Now, we have raidings on the postoffice revenues by the government departments themselves, including free in county, and by the Postoffice Department’s looseness of methods in handling its own business, of somewheres around $22,000,000 a year, not counting the _stuffing_ of weights during the “weighing period”, which goes to swell the railway mail pay rates for mail carrying railroads for a period of four years. As to the last, I wish to say that Mr. Hitchcock, the present Postmaster General, has done _more_ to correct such weighing frauds than has any of his predecessors within the range of my study of the question. Yet it lingers--hangs on to an extent which should put some subordinate postoffice officials and railway officials in restraint--put them out of range of opportunity for such looting. In the face of an annual raid of $22,000,000, what is the use of all this prattle--prattle extending over years--about _deficits_ in the postal service? Will some one kindly rise in the front pews of the postal department or in the sanctum of its _beneficiaries_ and tell us? _There is no deficit in the postoffice service revenues. The people pay and have paid for more service than is rendered--for more service than they have received or do receive._ “But what difference to the people does it make whether they pay for carrying the departmental mail out of the postal revenues or have each department pay for its own mail carriage and handling?” is a common answering interrogative argument (?) to my immediately preceding charge that the various government departments _raid_ the postal revenues to the extent of “many millions,” as Mr. Hitchcock has put it. “The people have to pay for it anyway, do they not?” Just so, and what difference does it make? Well, here are a few points of difference which might be seen and comprehended without jarring any fairly normal intellect off its pedestal: 1. To have the departments pay or give credit to the Postoffice Department for the service it renders to them is an honest and approved method in any other business. The present method not only violates sound business principles but is _dishonest_ as well--dishonest because it throws the burden of those “many millions” for mail haulage and handling of franked and penalty matter _upon the postal rate papers_, and not upon all the people of the country as it should.