While much more could be said in support of Mr. Hitchcock’s position, he has said sufficient in the above, I think, to “show” even a President. As evidence that the “estimates,” upon which the Hughes Commission so largely base their findings are not entirely dependable, I desire to make two brief quotations from other pages of Mr. Hitchcock’s 1911 report. On page 17, as the first of thirty “Improvements in Organization and Methods,” the Postmasters General sets forth as having been accomplished in the service during the fiscal year 1911, will be found this: The successful completion of an inquiry into the cost to railway companies of carrying the mails and the submission of a report to Congress making recommendations for revising the manner of fixing rates of pay for railway mail transportation. On pages 9 and 10 of the report, in discussing a readjustment of railway mail pay, Mr. Hitchcock uses the following language: The statistics obtained during the course of the investigation, disclosed for the first time _the cost of carrying the mails_ in comparison with the revenues derived by the railways from this service.… The new plan (paying railways on the basis of car space occupied by the mails), if authorized by Congress, will require the railway companies each year to report what it costs them to carry the mails and such other information as _will enable the department to determine the cost of mail transportation_. From the above it would seem that Congress was to be asked to adopt at its present session a “new plan” which “will enable the department to determine the cost of mail transportation;” to determine an important service fact which, according to the preceding quotation and also to the first sentence of the one just made, was determined sometime _prior to June 30, 1911_. Has the Postoffice Department already determined the facts as the report twice claims, or has it merely collected some data upon which to base an “estimate?” Which enables it to make a more or less reasonable _guess_ at the cost of mail transportation? FOOTNOTES [8] I find from reports of the department auditor that the fiscal year of 1909 was made to meet a charge of $128,307.32 which rightly stood against the year 1907; also that the fiscal year 1911 is charged with an expenditure of $148,490.01 belonging to 1909 and another expenditure of $85,195.34, belonging to “1908 and prior years.” CHAPTER XII. RAILWAY AND EXPRESS RAIDERS. I intended to take up here the railway mail-pay and postal car rental steal and then the infringement by express companies on the postal service and its revenues. However, since I have quoted Section 181 of the federal statutes governing, I think it as well, or better, here to take notice of the express companies’ raiding into the postal revenues--raidings into the field of service which the _law specifically reserved for the operation of the nation’s Postoffice Department_.