The departments of war and the navy produce no revenue save the comparatively speaking trifling sums received from the sale of junk, abandoned equipment, accoutrements, etc. These departments render personal or direct service to but a small fraction of the vast number of people served by the postoffice department. Almost the entire appropriation for war and the navy in the past forty-five years might be called a “deficit” so far as any service they have rendered to the great body of the Nation’s citizenship is concerned. Yet in the face of all this, so loosely, carelessly and _crookedly_ have the departments of war and of the navy been managed that there is scarcely a session of Congress which is not appealed to for huge sums of money to cover “deficits,” to meet extravagant, wasteful and, not infrequently, fraudulent expenditures in excess of the vast sums set aside for them in their annual appropriation bills. _A few years since it was found that the navy department was employing more clerks than it employed service men._ As to these strictures on the Postoffice Department, I will here quote for the benefit of readers who may not have studied this postal service question, a few authorities on the subject under consideration. A few years ago the methods and abuses of the federal Postoffice Department were investigated by a joint commission of Congress. One paragraph of the commission’s report reads as follows and must be regarded as officially significant: “It appears too obvious to require argument that the most efficient service can never be expected as long as the direction of the business is, as at present, intrusted to a Postmaster General and certain assistants selected without special reference to experience and qualifications and subject to frequent change. Under such a system a large railroad, commercial or industrial business would inevitably go into bankruptcy and the postoffice department has averted that fate only because the United States Treasury has been able to meet deficiencies.” Pretty plain, straight talk that, is it not?