Again, it will be observed by careful readers of the Commission’s report that the “estimates” upon which several of its more important findings are based, are conspicuously lacking in elements essentially necessary in the structure of reliable estimates from which fact or facts may be deduced. To warrant the drawing of conclusions of fact from it, the structural material of an estimate must consist largely, if not wholly, of fact, not of conclusions drawn from other conclusions which, in turn were deduced from estimates based on other estimates that may or may not have been accurate and dependable. As just stated, the estimates which the Commission appears largely to have accepted, are nearly all productions of the Postoffice Department. Few of them are built directly upon ascertained facts. Most of them are estimates of estimates based on other estimates. It appears that the Postmaster General’s estimates are Assistant Postmaster Generals’ estimates of the estimates made by weighing clerks of the several classes of mail-weights carried by certain railroads during six months in the year 1908. The nearest approach such a method or procedure makes to a fact is an estimate of the fact, you see. A POSTAL TELEGRAPH. One more quotation from the President’s message and this chapter may end. This quotation is anent the proposition of having the telegraph service of the country operated by the government--in connection with the postal service. Mr. Hitchcock’s recommendation in the matter of a postal telegraph “is the only one,” says the President, “in which I cannot concur.” I shall first quote President Taft and then quote Mr. Hitchcock as he expressed himself in his 1911 report: This presents a question of government ownership of public utilities which are now being conducted by private enterprise under franchises from the government I believe that the true principle is that private enterprise should be permitted to carry on such public utilities under _due regulation as to rates by proper authority_ rather than that the government should itself conduct them. This principle I favor because I do not think it in accordance with the best public policy thus greatly to increase the body of public servants. _Of course, if it could be shown that telegraph service could be furnished to the public at a less price than it is now furnished to the public by telegraph companies_, and with equal efficiency, the argument might be a strong one in favor of the adoption of the proposition. But I am not satisfied from any evidence that if these properties were taken over by the government they could be managed any more economically or any more efficiently or that this would enable the government to furnish service at any smaller rate than the public are now required to pay by private companies.