Why has that commission finally arrived at its starting point? Why is it now trying to do--and trying, even yet, to do it in a _loose, dilatory way_--what Sherman intended it to do?
“Why?” Why, simply because the people have finally learned--thanks largely to the enlightenment given them by the independent periodicals of the country--that they have been governmentally treated as fools--that they have been treated as sheep to furnish fleece and mutton for a few who feast and wear fine raiment, _yet earn it not_.
O yes, the people have learned some things and they, recently, have been learning rapidly. It is the people who have _learned_ who have virtually _kicked_ the Interstate Commerce Commission into dutiful action.
No, I positively do not like government by commission, and especially do I not like government of our postal service, or any phase, feature or division of it, by a “Commission of Postal Appeals” or by any other commission, however dignified its title may be. Any suggestion or recommendation of such a commission is, to The Man on the Ladder, but a suggestion and recommendation to further load an already _overloaded_ service.
By that, I mean that the service now rendered by the Federal Postoffice Department is not nearly commensurate with the number of employes carried on its payrolls or with its expenditures, and that the creation of a commission--any postal commission--will only add names to the department payrolls and thousands of dollars to its already excessive expenditures.
In closing my consideration of this Penrose-Overstreet Commission’s report--a report which Mr. Hitchcock appears to have taken some “hunches” from while it also appears he gave very little or no study or consideration to the vast amount of informative data it collected and _filed_--I desire to make a statement or two and then ask a pertinently impertinent question or two.
Among the vast amount of informative data on the subject of transporting and handling second-class mail matter, its cost to the government, etc., there are pages upon pages of testimony by publishers the commission invited to appear before it in person or by representative. Some of that testimony, so newspapers reported during the hearings in both New York and Washington, is supported or re-enforced by the jurats of the publishers testifying. Some of those publishers stated in their testimony that the sample copies they had distributed had, by reason of the correspondence and mail business resulting, amply compensated the government for carrying and handling such sample copies. Several _specific and detailed_ statements were made by the publishers.