When Frank H. Hitchcock, after being chairman of the Republican National Committee in the campaign of 1908, was made Postmaster General as a reward for his political services, he inherited, in his department, a deficit, an antiquated, cumbersome and unbusinesslike organization, and several sets of figures. _Hitchcock is young and ambitious._ He has been in the government service, in various capacities, most of his life since leaving college. He was anxious to make a record. As Postmaster General _he was political paymaster_ for the administration, to a great degree, as there are more postmasters than any one other kind of public officials, and postmasterships are perquisites of the faithful politicians in the Senate and House of Representatives. This kept Hitchcock in politics, in a way, for he knew what the obligations of the administration were, having made most of them as national chairman, and he paid them off as circumstances permitted. He thought, too, that if he could put the Postoffice Department on a self-sustaining basis--where it had not been for years, if ever--he would do a great stroke for himself; and he began work along those lines. There need be no discussion here of the methods by which he made apparent reductions in the expenses of the department. Whether by bookkeeping or otherwise, he did make some apparent reductions, mostly by not spending appropriated moneys, by reductions in force, by elimination of substitute carriers and by other similar means. Mr. Hitchcock, it would seem, was a peculiarly active public servant. Mr. Blythe also speaks of how Mr. Hitchcock got a cue from a predecessor, Charles Emory Smith. Mr. Smith in the _industrious activities of his official duties_, signing of reports which subordinates wrote, vouchers for contracts and other payments, and drawing his salary--Mr. Smith had laboriously (?) figured it out that the second-class mail rate ought to be 7 cents a pound. Mr. Hitchcock goes Smith two cents better. This statement of Mr Smith’s grew on Mr. Hitchcock. “It opened the way to two things,” as Mr. Blythe ably points out as follows:-- First he could increase the revenue of the department if he could increase the second-class rate; and second, he could get a whip hand over the magazine press. He reported his assumed facts to the President in time for Mr. Taft’s message to Congress, sent in in December, 1909. In that message Mr. Taft made the statement that it costs the government 9 cents a pound to transport second-class mail matter, the total cost being more than sixty million dollars a year, and asked that there should be an increase in second-class rates. Mr. Taft instanced this as a subsidy for the magazine and periodical press. Mr. Hitchcock’s report as Postmaster General contained substantially the same statements.