To the end of getting our corner stakes properly located in order to run our lot-lines correctly, I desire to quote further from the report of this 1906-7 commission. It says some pertinent things and says them hard. Before quoting, however, I desire to amplify a little on the character of that commission, on the general character of the men composing it as indicated in their official and public action.
The first point of interest for us commoners to note and appreciate is that the photographs of none of them, so far as I have been able to learn, have appeared in the rogues’ gallery. We may therefore presume that they are not only intelligent but “square” men—men worthy of Mr. Hitchcock’s consideration and respect as well as our own.
The second point worthy of note in considering the personnel of that commission is that none of them, so far as public reports show, ever had the advantages and opportunities of acquiring that peculiar and specialized knowledge of federal postal affairs, second-class or other, which may accrue to men from a postgraduate course in national party management.
In this connection, however, it may be said that some members of the commission may have come near to such unusual opportunities as just mentioned for acquiring expert knowledge of the classification, transportation and handling of second-class mail.
It is also fitting for me to say in speaking of the gentlemen composing that 1906-7 commission that, so far as I have been able to look up their biographies in the Congressional Directory and elsewhere, I find nothing to indicate that any of them ever tried to rob a smokehouse nor have any of them ever tried to put over any piece of “frame-up” legislation of the nature of Mr. Hitchcock’s “rider,” printed on a previous page—legislation to hobble, punish or ruin periodicals honest enough and independent enough to tell the truth to a hundred millions of people.
The foregoing are some of the reasons—there are many others—why I think the membership of that Penrose-Overstreet Commission of 1906-7 was possessed of an ability, character and qualification to have commanded Mr. Hitchcock’s careful consideration of the information and data the commission so carefully collated, after thorough investigation, and submitted with its official report.
“Maybe he did make a careful study of that collated data?”
Yes, maybe he did. But if he did, then much of the “student discipline” and of the “study habit,” which graduates of Harvard are presumed to have acquired, must have lapsed in the shuffle of the cards from which recent years have dealt his hands. I say this respectfully as well as candidly.
I cannot think of it as possible for a man of Mr. Hitchcock’s known intellectual gauge to read—studiously read—the facts as presented in the testimony before that 1906-7 commission, or so read even the 63-page official report signed by five of the commissioners (Representative Gardner being ill at the time the report was submitted)—I cannot, I say, think it possible for any man of Mr. Hitchcock’s admitted intelligence to read that testimony, collated data and report, and then proceed to talk or write so wide of known facts as does he in parts of his 1909 and 1910 reports and in his letters to Senator Penrose, printed in previous pages.
It may be—yes, it is most probable—that the commission did not dig out all the facts. But admitting that, the further admission must be made by any fair-minded man that most of the facts it did dig out appear to be the very facts which Postmaster General Hitchcock ignored—ignored with the self-centered nonchalance of a “short story” cowboy when “busting” a broncho before an audience.