e demand for its extension is general and
urgent.

It is just that the great agricultural population should share in the
improvement of the service. The number of rural routes now in operation
is 6,009, practically all established within three years, and there are
6,000 applications awaiting action. It is expected that the number in
operation at the close of the current fiscal year will reach 8,600. The
mail will then be daily carried to the doors of 5,700,000 of our people
who have heretofore been dependent upon distant offices, and one-third
of all that portion of the country which is adapted to it will be
covered by this kind of service.

The full measure of postal progress which might be realized has
long been hampered and obstructed by the heavy burden imposed on the
Government through the intrenched and well-understood abuses which have
grown up in connection with second-class mail matter. The extent of this
burden appears when it is stated that while the second-class matter
makes nearly three-fifths of the weight of all the mail, it paid for
the last fiscal year only $4,294,445 of the aggregate postal revenue of
$111,631,193. If the pound rate of postage, which produces the large
loss thus entailed, and which was fixed by the Congress with the purpose
of encouraging the dissemination of public information, were limited
to the legitimate newspapers and periodicals actually contemplated by
the law, no just exception could be taken. That expense would be the
recognized and accepted cost of a liberal public policy deliberately
adopted for a justifiable end. But much of the matter which enjoys the
privileged rate is wholly outside of the intent of the law, and has
secured admission only through an evasion of its requirements or through
lax construction. The proportion of such wrongly included matter is
estimated by postal experts to be one-half of the whole volume of
second-class mail. If it be only one-third or one-quarter, the magnitude
of the burden is apparent. The Post-Office Department has now undertaken
to remove the abuses so far as is possible by a stricter application of
the law; and it should be sustained in its effort.

Owing to the rapid growth of our power and our interests on the Pacific,
whatever happens in China must be of the keenest national concern to us.

The general terms of the settlement of the questions growing out
of the antiforeign uprisings in China of 1900, having been formulated
in a