2. If the free congressional and departmental matter now costs, say $20,000,000 a year for mail haulage and handling, then the government is practicing a policy which both _originates and distributes revenue without appropriation_. In other words, the general government in such practice usurps the function of originating revenue which function, under the Constitution, is vested in the Lower House of Congress. Next, the general government distributes that $20,000,000 (or its equivalent in service, which amounts to the same thing), to the several departments, or lets each department raid that service as it pleases. It does this in flat violation of another section or clause of the Federal Constitution which provides that the cost of maintenance and operation, including any contemplated construction and permanent betterments, shall be provided for in an _annual appropriation bill_. 3. The recommended method would greatly lessen the “abuses” of the postal service by government departments and officials of which Mr. Hitchcock speaks. On the other hand, the method of the present and the past _invites_ such abuses. Abuses grow but do not improve with age. Each year the abuses of which Mr. Hitchcock speaks in his 1910 report have grown until _abuses_ is scarcely a fitting designation for them. These abuses of the postal service have grown, and grown in such a stealthy, porch-climbing way, that they amount to a _colossal steal_ every year. 4. When they hear so much yodling about “deficits” in the Postoffice Department, millions of our people are led to believe that such deficits are created by an excess of cost over receipts in carrying the letters, postal and postcards, the newspapers, magazines and other periodicals, the books and merchandise, which the people themselves entrust to the mails for delivery. They hear that the postal service “should be self-supporting,” that “each division of the service should be self-sustaining” and then they are called on for higher service rates to meet “deficits.” Why should this great government of ours permit its officials longer to gold-brick the people with such ping-pong talk? Why not tell the people the truth, or at least give them an open, honest opportunity to learn the truth? The annual federal appropriation bills informs them at least of the “estimated” expenditures for the year for other departments. Why not give them an _honest_ estimate of what it costs the Postoffice Department to render a service _which should serve them_?