At any rate, he came to his present official job, it appears from most dependable information, with a “deficit”--the postal service deficit, of course--in his mind, and he immediately began in his vigorous, though somewhat peculiar, way to work it off. Whether his dominating intent was to work that deficit off the department books or merely work it off his mind, has not thus far appeared, save, of course, to the coterie in the circle of Mr. Hitchcock’s intimates and a somewhat numerous body of periodical and newspaper reporters on the job in Washington. The latter, of course, know everything. And what they don’t know they go to all extremes to find out. It was, therefore, a hopeless attempt of Mr. Hitchcock’s (though he yet seems scarcely able to understand how so much information got to the public), to keep his _scheme_ to remove the Postoffice Department’s deficit by shunting the _whole of it onto some twenty or thirty periodicals_--it was, I say, a hopeless task for him to keep that scheme safely within the periphery of the corral where herded the “influenced” and the “influencing.” But why go on? Mr. Blythe in his article tells some things I want to say and he says them so much better than I can tell them that I will give the reader the benefit of that difference and quote him on a number of points. As showing the studied attempt at snap legislation in the very closing hours of Congress, Mr. Blythe says: The Sixty-first Congress expired by constitutional limitation at noon on March 4th, last. On Friday afternoon, March 3, the postoffice appropriation bill was up for consideration in the Senate. It was being read for committee amendments. At half past 4 page 21 of the bill was reached, and with it the amendment proposed by the Senate Committee on Postoffices and Postroads to increase the rate of second-class postage in certain specified cases and in certain contingencies. Second-class postage is the postage paid by newspapers, magazines and periodicals. There had been several speeches. Senator Carter spoke for the amendment, and Senators Bristow, Cummins and Owen against it. Senator Jones, of Washington, had a few observations in favor of the amendment also. At 5 o’clock Senator Boies Penrose, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Postoffices and Postroads and in charge of the bill, rose in his place, withdrew the amendment increasing second-class postage, and submitted in its stead an amendment providing for a commission to investigate the question of fact concerning the cost to the Postoffice Department for transportation of second-class mail matter. This amendment was unanimously adopted and the Senate proceeded to the consideration of other sections of the bill.