And that was written only a few years ago--written _true to the facts_. I desire here to quote a couple more paragraphs. They have been published generally throughout the country and universally indorsed. They are written by the Hon. Woodrow Wilson, Governor of New Jersey: A tax upon the business of the more widely circulated magazines and periodicals would be a tax upon their means of living and performing their functions. They obtain their circulation by their direct appeal to the popular thought. Their circulation attracts advertisers. Their advertisements enable them to pay their writers and to enlarge their enterprise and influence. This proposed new postal rate would be a direct tax, and a very serious one, upon the formation and expression of opinion--its most deliberate formation and expression--just at a time when opinion is concerning itself most actively and effectively with the deepest problems of our politics and our social life. To make such a change, whatever its intentions in the minds of those who proposed it, would be to attack and embarrass the free processes of opinion. CHAPTER IV. BUREAUCRATIC POWERS SOUGHT. I have before me the Postmaster General’s report for 1910. It presents a large amount of information both in statistical tabulation and in “straight matter.” A portion of the former, however, leaves the average lay mind rambling around in circles, wondering what in the name of all that is lofty it was compiled for, what service value it can possibly have and what was the ailment from which the fellow who compiled it suffered; that is, was his a case merely of bad liver or indigestion, or a serious case of ingrown intellect, struggling to help his fellowmen know how real dizzy and foolish tabulated figures can be made to appear? Mr. Hitchcock in this 1910 report has separated himself from some striking oddities, about as serviceably valuable as a smoking compartment would be to a laundry wagon. Of course, it may be that Mr. Hitchcock did not write the division of this report signed by him. Some talented secretary, clerk or assistant may have cranked it up. However that may be, do not let what I here say deter you from looking through this 1910 report should it come your way. It contains a variety of excellent things, some valuable information, well collated and intelligibly presented. The foolishness and fooleries in it are--well, they are of the kind common to all, or at least most, departmental reports, federal, state, county and city. Much of the tabulated “statistics” in each can have no possible service value either in this world or the next--even assuming that statistics and statisticians will be recognized at all in that division of the “next” to which we all aspire.