Here let us note Mr. Hitchcock’s recommended legislation. In the report before me he makes thirty-six recommendations. In each of these which grants added powers or authority touching any matter, the wording of the suggested legislation gives such added powers and authority to the _Postmaster General_. In certain minor matters, especially such as relate only to departmental methods of handling its service accounts, etc., such grant of power is entirely proper. Among Mr. Hitchcock’s recommendations are several of such character, and, so far as I have studied them, they appear sound, and consequently their passage by Congress and their application to the department would, in my judgment, effect material savings or betterments in the service. In a number of other instances, however, Mr. Hitchcock asks legislation that will grant him (or any succeeding head of the federal Postoffice Department), powers and authority which _should be granted to no bureau or departmental division of our government service_. I mean that the acquirement of such legislative powers and authority by bureaus (cabinet service divisions), is inimical to the basic principles of our government; in fact, it is a _stealthy_ move to establish in this country the bureaucratic form of government which has proved a curse in every existing monarchical government, causing their peoples to rebel against them, or constantly a condition of unrest under the system--a condition which indicates either _enforced_ submission to governmental wrongs and impositions or a dwarfed and submerged manhood, “begging for leave to live” and devoting most of its thought to a few questions, such as: “Why did I arrive? What am I here for? I work, why does the government take most of my earnings? Why does the government and its bureau heads live, live in luxury, while I and my wife and children merely exist,--barely subsist? _Why are hundreds of millions taken every year from people who need it to secure the common comforts of life, and given, unearned, to those who need it not at all?_” It would require pages even to print the inquiries which the victims of bureaucratic governments ask themselves daily, ask themselves daily so long as they _exist above the level of the clod_, above the level which Edward Markham so forcefully and eloquently depicts in his “Man with the Hoe.” The point I desire to emphasize is that when the great body of people in any country--its “citizens”--begin to ask themselves such questions, _their patriotism begins to dry-rot and die_, and when the patriotism of a nation’s people begins to die, that nation is on the farther slope of its existence; it has started on the decline, more or less sharp, _which ends in rebellion_, dissolution, extinction. This is the uniform lesson of history. He who reads it not so reads either not carefully or not comprehendingly.