Deficits Deficits as published. as corrected. 1907 $ 6,653,282.77 $ 7,173,901.84 1908 16,873,222.74 16,635,962.79 1909 17,441,719.82 23,641,709.24 1910 5,848,566.88 6,194,285.00 1911 219,118.12 (Surplus) 7,363,009.15 There, again, is shown a range of more than $6,400,000 between the published and the _very near_ actual deficits of the several years, not including 1911, for the showing on which, for reasons stated, I and the rest of the “dear people,” who are just now being “worked” for votes, will have to wait until the 1912 report is published. Why, nothing but a government treasury--the treasury of our easily “bubbled” people--could survive that sort of bookkeeping for the time covered in the above tabulated statement of published and _actual_ yearly shortages and of _one_ alleged surplus. AN EXECUTIVE OVERSIGHT--POSSIBLY. We will now detach ourselves from these wearisome figures and more wearisome figuring, using figures only as a sort of garnishment to chief courses served to us by the President and our Postmaster General. The receipts of the Postoffice Department, as published in its annual reports, were $34,317,440.53 greater for the fiscal year 1910-11 than for the year 1908-9. Both the President and Mr. Hitchcock are eloquently ebullient because of the appearance of a tender shoot or bud of a surplus in a place where nothing but deficits grew before. But neither of them appears to have boiled over in either message or report to show the people what splendid things have been accomplished in two years with that thirty-four millions of increased revenues. I wonder why? Possibly the failure of ebullition at the point indicated is the result of oversight. Of course, it may have resulted from lack of thermic encouragement or inducement. Or, it may be, that some “induced draft” drew the major part of the thirty-four millions up the smoke-stack without leaving a B. T. U. equivalent under the kettle. “The Postmaster General recommends, _as I have done in previous messages_, the adoption of a parcels post, and the beginning of this in the organization of such service on rural routes and _in the city delivery service first_,” says President Taft.