A glance at the tabulation made of this item shows a huge jump in its amount for the year 1910 of $6,200,000, round figures. Next, it appears that the necessities of business, _or the emergency needs of those building the report_, forced this item still upward in the showing for 1911 as made December last--upward by $345,718.12, making its total $7,132,112.23. In the report before me, no analysis of that large carried-over payment on account of prior years is given. The Third Assistant Postmaster General may furnish information as to the year or years of its origin. His report has not reached me yet, so I cannot say. The bald statement is there, however, that 1911 _paid over seven million dollars_ on account of 1910 and prior bills. It is also in evidence that _no information whatever_ is published which enlightens the public as to the amount of _unpaid 1911 bills that are carried forward to 1912 account_. Whether adverse criticism is justifiable or not, such cloaking of accounts in giving them publicity most certainly warrants it. It is just this cloaking that has subjected Mr. Hitchcock’s little vest-pocket surplus for 1911 to much and merited criticism, doubt and question. Mr. Urban A. Waters, in testifying before the House Committee on Civil Service Reform _harpooned_ the Postoffice Department with an accusation that it had permitted a million dollars to waste, evaporate, be misapplied or stolen, in connection with a deal for sanitary and safety appliances to railway mail cars. If Mr. Waters’ charges are grounded in fact, then is provoked and _invited_ the question: Is it designed or intended to carry that million into the accounting of 1912--or into that of some future year--as an “Expenditure on account of previous years?” Mr. Waters is publisher of the Denver Harpoon. He can say things and is generally recognized as a man who makes a practice of gathering the facts to back up what he says before he says it. In his testimony, so far as I know, Mr. Waters made no statement or suggestion that the evaporated million he spoke of would be, or could be, very securely _cacheted_ or “fenced” in this “account of previous years.” It is The Man on the Ladder who points out--who says--that such loose accounting as carries to account of a subsequent year the expenditures made or incurred in a previous year can _very readily_ be made to cloak a steal of one or more millions of dollars.