Is that, Mr. Hitchcock, a reason, one of the reasons, why you who have so energetically, likewise offensively, tried to shut us out from our main source of information, from our mental commissary?
There are still other remarks which I must make about Mr. Hitchcock’s peculiar _recent_ action and talk. It may not be at all pleasant to him. Yet the statements I shall make, I am ready to support by a “cloud of witnesses.”
As before stated, this attempt to muzzle the press of the country, for that appears to be the ultimate, likewise the _ulterior_, purpose of Mr. Hitchcock and his coterie of senatorial and other abettors in their recent attempt to outrage the _constitutional_ rights of our people, the _constitutional_ rights of the Lower House and the rules of both Senate and House, as Senator Robert L. Owen, in brief but pertinent remarks in the recent closing days of the late session (February 25, 1911), pointed out,--remarks rife with the cogency of truth.
In a previous paragraph I stated, in effect, that Postmaster General Hitchcock is an “influenced” man or a densely ignorant one. That he _is_ densely ignorant on matters pertaining to periodical publications has been amply evidenced by subsequent quotations from his own reports and letters. That he at least shares the prevailing ignorance as to the methods, and the _result_ of methods, for handling the vast business of the federal Postoffice Department, I have already pointed out.
Possibly I am in error here, but when Senators and Congressmen who have studied for years the methods of handling business in the Postoffice Department were--and are--convinced that it is impossible for the most expert accountants to collect and collate _dependable_ information, relating either to any of its divisions of service or to the department in general; when old and tried students of the loose, wasteful methods of this department, of its utter lack of business system, yes, of its _crooks_ and _crookedness_--when, I say, such experienced students frankly and bluntly state their complete inability to gather any dependable data as to the business done by Mr. Hitchcock’s department, I am in doubt as to the correctness, or lack of correctness, in my previous intimation that Mr. Hitchcock is ignorant of his departmental affairs and practices, as well as of matters pertaining to periodical publication and distribution.