The public mind seems unusually acute on the subject of free mailing facilities, and there is much criticism in the public press of the continuance of the franking privilege and the use of the penalty envelope, the suggestion being often made that the same should be abolished and that this department should receive proper credit in accounting for matter now being carried free. It is therefore suggested that consideration be given to the desirability of eliminating the transportation of mail matter under frank or penalty clause, in order that the Postoffice Department may receive due and proper credit for the tremendous, and in somepart possibly unnecessary, services which it is performing free, to its apparent financial embarrassment.It is probably true that the use of the penalty envelope and the franking privilege is availed of with undue liberality, even if not actually abused, as is often alleged; that is to say, the same care is not taken to confine the mailings of governmental and congressional matter to only that which is necessary as would undoubtedly be the case if there were a strict accountability for their use.
The public mind seems unusually acute on the subject of free mailing facilities, and there is much criticism in the public press of the continuance of the franking privilege and the use of the penalty envelope, the suggestion being often made that the same should be abolished and that this department should receive proper credit in accounting for matter now being carried free. It is therefore suggested that consideration be given to the desirability of eliminating the transportation of mail matter under frank or penalty clause, in order that the Postoffice Department may receive due and proper credit for the tremendous, and in somepart possibly unnecessary, services which it is performing free, to its apparent financial embarrassment.
It is probably true that the use of the penalty envelope and the franking privilege is availed of with undue liberality, even if not actually abused, as is often alleged; that is to say, the same care is not taken to confine the mailings of governmental and congressional matter to only that which is necessary as would undoubtedly be the case if there were a strict accountability for their use.
It will be noted that Mr. Britt in the foregoing covers other than second-class mail matter. Taking the figures of his estimate of the volume of free franked and penalty matter of the second-class (51,000,000 pounds in round numbers, which I believe is so conservative as to be far below the actual tonnage), then the various other departments of the government are raiding the revenues of the Postoffice Department to the extent of $510,000 for the carrying and handling of their second-class mail alone. That is, they are requiring the Postoffice Department to render to them without pay or credit over a half-million dollars’ worth of service a year. That is figured at the 2nd class rate of 1 cent a pound. If Mr. Britt’s own estimate, on another page of the same report, that it cost the Postoffice Department 9 cents a pound to transport and handle second-class mail, is correct, which as previously shown it is not, then other departments of the government would be raiding the postal service revenues—revenues which private individuals, firms, corporations and governments subordinate, now alone pay—to the extent of more than $4,500,000 a year.
It must be borne in mind by the reader, however, that Mr. Britt’s estimate of 51,000,000 pounds (a round figure) of second-class matter carried and handled free by his department for other departments of the federal government does not represent the total of service rendered those other departments for which the Postoffice Department received neither pay nor credit. Far from it.
Hundreds of tons—how many hundreds of tons, I do not know, nor have I been able to find an authority or record to inform myself—of letters and other sealed matter were carried and distributed by the Postoffice Department for other departments. For that service not a cent in pay or credit was received.
It must be remembered that the service rate for carrying and handling the class of matter (first-class) we are here speaking of is 2 cents per ounce or fraction thereof. That is, the rate is not less than32 cents a pound, not 1 cent a pound as is the rate on second class on which Mr. Britt gives his estimate of tonnage carried.
Why should not the Senate and the House, the Judicial, War, Navy, Interior and other departments of the government be required to provide in their annual appropriation bills for paying for the first-class service furnished them by the Postoffice Department?
The postal service of the government is also rendered free to the several departments to handle all their third and fourth class mail matter. What the annual tonnage of these two classes aggregates I have been unable to learn. Whether or not the Postoffice Department keeps any records showing the aggregate mailings by the other departments, I do not know. I do know, however, that it gets neither pay nor credit for transporting and handling the third and fourth class matter put to mail by the other departments of the Federal Government. That the total weight mailed must run into many hundreds of tons yearly for each of the classes named there can be little grounds for doubt or question, records or no records.
The mailing rate on third-class is eight cents a pound. On fourth-class it is sixteen cents a pound. Those are the rates the people have to pay. That both rates are outrageously excessive is well known to every one who has made even a cursory study of the cost of transporting and handling government mails, and the irony of it all is the stock arguments put up by postoffice and other federal officials to justify such outrageous rates.
“The rates are necessary to make the Postoffice Department self-supporting—to avoid a deficit,” or statements of similar washed out force and import. And that in face of the fact that the government permits its departments, bureaus, divisions, “commissions,” etc., to raid the postal revenues by loading upon the postal service the cost of transporting and distributing thousands of tons of mail matter for which it gets not a cent of pay or credit.
Nice business methods or practice that, is it not?
Beautiful “argument,” this prattle about deficits in the postal revenues, is it not?
Why, it is humorous enough to make empty headed fools laugh and sensible men use language which postal regulations bar from the mails.
Think of the tons upon tons of official reports, of the boundvolumes of the Congressional Record, of copies of the Supreme Courts rulings and other printed books and pamphlets distributed by the Departments of War, Navy, Agriculture, Interior and others.
All these fall into the third-class, or 8-cent-a-pound rate.
Think of the tons upon tons of seeds—farm, garden and flower—sent by Congressmen to their constituents—to thousands of constituents who do not need the seeds, in fact, who can make no possible use of them; of the tons upon tons of clothing, suitings, household bric-a-brac, etc., franked by Senators and Congressmen to their homes, to their wives, children, sweethearts or friends.
Investigations in the past have shown that hundreds of typewriters, office desks, even articles of household furniture, were sent home under frank.
It was also shown in several instances, if I remember rightly, that some of the typewriters, etc., were never franked back to government possession. However that may be, all such mailings are of the fourth class and fall into the 16-cent a pound rate for carriage and handling.
Let us here foot up the amount of the raidings on the postal funds, so far as we have gone.
First,—There is the free-in-county second-class—$600,000 to $800,000.
Second,—There is the free second-class franked and penalty matter. Third Assistant Postmaster General Britt “estimates” it at $510,000, figured at the present one-cent rate. I have shown the weakness of Mr. Britt’sbasisof estimate. In my judgment the tonnage of franked and penalty second-class mail is nearer 75,000,000 pounds than his estimate of 51,000,000 pounds. But to take Mr. Britt’s figures, there is another raid of $510,000 on the service revenues of the Postoffice Department.
Next, we have the freefirst,thirdandfourthclass matter which the postal service handles under franking or penalty regulations.
How much does this raid total? How much has anddoesthis raid contribute toward the creation of that “deficit” which has so long, so continuously and sobrazenlybeen used to bubble the people in politico-postal oratory and writing?
The reader must keep in mind that we are here asking about the thirty-two, the eight and the sixteen cents a pound classes of mail. To what extent have the various departments of the governmentraided the postal funds by taxing the postal service with their over-load of the character indicated? That they have taxed the Postoffice Department’s revenues by demanding of that department its highest class and highest rated service inunlimiteddegree, and that, too, withoutone cent of compensation, pay or credit, is a fact which no informed man will attempt to controvert.
But what did such service (and abuse of service) cost the Postoffice Department? To what extent did anddoesthis “frank and penalty”privilegein first, third and fourth class use of the mails loot or raid the postal revenues?
Is it to the extent of three, two or one million dollars? Is it lower than the lowest or higher than the highest figures just named?
I do not know—do you? Have you, the reader, been able to ascertain from the records of the Postoffice Department, or elsewhere, any figures or data that enables you to make even a “frazzled” guess at theapproximatecost to the postal department of this unjust—this politically and governmentally crookedburden put upon it?
I have hunted and have found nothing but talk, and a few figures scattered here and there and gathered from—well, the Lord may know where. But the Lord has failed to inform me. So I am in ignorance—am benighted, just like our “poor farmers,” both as to the source of the figures I have seen and as to their force and value in reaching a fair conclusion as to the aggregate amount of postal revenues the departmental raiders have been andarecarrying off. If any reader knows or can dig up the facts, he will confer a great favor by handing the information to The Man on the Ladder. Not only that, but I am confident that the people of this country will give such reader a niche, if needed not a conspicuous position, intheirHall of Fame, if he will give them even a dependable approximation of the extent to which the postal service revenues are raided—looted—by federal department abuses—their service and their money, for the departments pay notone dollarfor the thousands of tons of mail matter of the various classes which the Postoffice Department transports and handles for them.
So far or so long has this departmental—bureaucratic, that is what it is—practice of raiding the postal revenues byloading its servicecontinued, that the Postoffice Department has been and islooting itself by the same practice.
This volume is written during what is known as the “weighing period” in the postal service, the weighing being done to establish a basis forfour yearson which the railroads transporting the federal mails shall be paid. In other words, as basis for a “railway-mail-pay” rate, which rate will govern railway contracts for carrying the mails for a period of four years.
During the current weighing period I have, at various times, both during the day and at night, watched the weighing for varying intervals of from an hour to two hours. Among the revenue raids observed during those hours of leisure (?), I shall here mention a few. As the present Postmaster General treats all departmental, or “penalty,” matter as “franked” matter (See page 11 of the Postoffice Department report of 1910), I shall, in the brief mention of personally observed facts at several railway stations in Chicago do likewise.
(1) Three carloads of Senate speeches, franked to Chicago in bulk, the bulk then broken and the speeches remailed, under frank, to individual addresses.
I do not know the tonnage of those three cars. Local newspaper reports stated that there were 3,000,000 copies of one of the speeches. I take it that sixty tons is a low figure for the three carloads. The actual weight was probably nearer ninety tons. But leave it at sixty, the remailing in piece at bulk destination makes the weight 120 tons on which the Post office Department had to pay transportation, on sixty tons of which it also had to stand the expense of piece handling.
(2) Another carload of Senatorial vocal effort passed through Chicago to a destination far west. I do not know, but presume it was in bulk, and on arrival, bulk was broken and the matter returned to mail for piece distribution.
The reader must not overlook the fact that the character of matter carried in those four carloads was third-class—waseight-cent-a-pound matter. There were eighty tons or more of it in bulk and its remailing in piece would make it 160 tons.
If a manufacturer, merchant or other business man put to mail 160 tons of third-class matter he would contribute to the postal service revenue just $25,600.
(3) Three crates of fruit went into a mail car at one time, two cases of canned goods at another and a crate of tomatoes at another,without passing over the weighing scale. A drum of coffee, fifty to eighty pounds in weight, went to mail at another time, and a large sack of sawdust at another.
Both of the last mentionedwent over the weighing scale before they went to the mail car.
I am speaking only of what casual or chance notice brought to my attention in three railway stations in Chicago. If similar or corresponding abuses were indulged at other stations here, as it is a legitimate inference they were, it is also a legitimate inference that similar abuses were, and are, practiced throughout the country, especially in cities of the first, second and third classes—in cities and towns on which has been conferred the distinguished honor of having their mail handled under the watchful eye and supervising care of a “Presidential Postmaster,” that is, by a postmaster appointed by the Presidentfor partisan reasons and prospective uses.
Again going back to our mutton, I repeat the question, “What is the extent of this ‘franking’ and ‘penalty’ raid upon the revenues of the Postoffice Department?” I have cited three local instances merely to give a “hunch”—to blaze a line along which thoughtful people may safely think, and think to some fairly satisfying conclusion. I do not know the extent of thelootageof postal revenues by the uses and abuses of those “frank” and “penalty” regulations. You do not know, and the present Postmaster Generaladmitshe does not know, nor has he any means or method of ascertaining.
On page 11 of the report of the Postoffice Department for the fiscal year 1909-1910, Mr. Hitchcock very frankly states the fact and gives his personal opinion of the extent of the franking raid upon the service of his department. He also suggests a partial remedy which also I shall quote because it is a good suggestion, on right lines, and for making it Mr. Hitchcock deserves the thanks of a people over-burdened by the abuses his suggestion would, I believe, correct in material degree. At any rate, the suggestion is on right lines. Following is what he says:
The unrestricted manner in which the franking privilege is now being used by the several federal services and by Congress has laid it open toserious abuses—a fact clearly established through investigations recently instituted by the department. While it has been impossible without a better control of franking to determine theexact expense to the governmentof this practice,there can be no doubt that it annually reaches into the millions. It is believed that many abusesof the franking system could be prevented, and consequently a marked economy effected, by supplying through the agencies of the postal service special official envelopes and stamps for the free mail of the government, all such envelopes and stamps to be issued on requisition to the various branches of the federal service requiring them, and such records to be kept of official stamp supplies as will enable the Post office Departmentto maintain a proper postage accountcovering the entire volume of free government mail.
The unrestricted manner in which the franking privilege is now being used by the several federal services and by Congress has laid it open toserious abuses—a fact clearly established through investigations recently instituted by the department. While it has been impossible without a better control of franking to determine theexact expense to the governmentof this practice,there can be no doubt that it annually reaches into the millions. It is believed that many abusesof the franking system could be prevented, and consequently a marked economy effected, by supplying through the agencies of the postal service special official envelopes and stamps for the free mail of the government, all such envelopes and stamps to be issued on requisition to the various branches of the federal service requiring them, and such records to be kept of official stamp supplies as will enable the Post office Departmentto maintain a proper postage accountcovering the entire volume of free government mail.
“There can be no doubt that it annually reaches into the millions,” says Mr. Hitchcock of the cost to his department of transporting and handling the government free mail matter—frank and penalty matter. It should also be noted that he says that “the unrestricted manner in which the franking privilege is now being used by the several federal services and by Congress, has laid it open toserious abuses.”
Not only are the foregoing statements of our Postmaster General true, but with equal truth he could have said that the abuses of the postal service practiced by other federal departments have encouraged—have coached, so to speak,—the Postoffice Department intoabusing itself.
Those crates of fruit and cases of canned goods which I saw loaded into mail cars were probably for some postmaster who conducted a grocery or fruit stand, as a “side” to his official duties. Or they may have gone to some “friend” or “good fellow” along the line, or to some one who stood for a “split” of the express charges on such a shipment.
The drum of coffee and sack of sawdust may have had consignees of similar character. But their shipment as mail matter showed another abuse of the postal service by the Postoffice Department itself, or by employes of that department.They were weighed into rail transportation at a time when the average weight of mail carried during a period of three or six months would govern the rate of pay the transporting railroad would receive for carrying the mails during a period of four years.
The same might be said of the four carloads of Senatorial eloquence referred to on a previous page. Those cars were franked throughduring the weighing periodin the postal service. There is this difference, however, between those four cars of franked eloquence and the drum of coffee and sack of sawdust. The former was an abuse of the postal service and a raid upon its revenuesby permission, if notby authority, of the postal statutes. The latter was an abuse of the postal service and raid upon its revenuesby employes of the Postoffice Department itself.
But the point we are after is the extent of federal departmental raid upon the postal revenues. How much is it? I have confessed my ignorance of the sum such raid will total. Our Postmaster General has (see last preceding quotation), confessed his ignorance of the total. He says there can be “no doubt that it annually reaches into many millions.”
I have no other evidence or authority at hand save the testimony of William A. Glasgow, Jr., before the Penrose-Overstreet Commission in 1906. Mr. Glasgow represented the Periodical Publishers’ Association. In presenting the case for that association—strong, reputable body, representing vast business and public service (educational, social, fraternal and trade interests)—Mr. Glasgow used the following language:
You may take the revenues of the Postoffice Department and giveaway $19,000,000 per annum in the franking privilege to other departments of governmentand then give away $28,000,000 per annum in the beneficent advantages of rural free delivery, and then lose millions in unequal and exorbitant transportation charges, certainly $5,000,000, and thus create an apparent and artificial deficit and use that as a basis for further taxation upon those who read magazines, but no one will be deceived by such an excuse and no wise Congress will be moved by considerations so transparent or necessities so unreal.—Page 544 Penrose-Overstreet Report (Hearings), 1906-7.
You may take the revenues of the Postoffice Department and giveaway $19,000,000 per annum in the franking privilege to other departments of governmentand then give away $28,000,000 per annum in the beneficent advantages of rural free delivery, and then lose millions in unequal and exorbitant transportation charges, certainly $5,000,000, and thus create an apparent and artificial deficit and use that as a basis for further taxation upon those who read magazines, but no one will be deceived by such an excuse and no wise Congress will be moved by considerations so transparent or necessities so unreal.—Page 544 Penrose-Overstreet Report (Hearings), 1906-7.
If Mr. Glasgow were speaking in 1911, I have no doubt he would have raised his figure of $19,000,000 totwenty or more millionsas a nearer approximate of the total of federal departmental raids upon the earnings or revenues of the Postoffice Department.
Do not misunderstand me.
All legitimate departmental serviceshouldbe rendered by the Postoffice Department, but that departmentshould receive credit for such service rendered.
The departmental “abuses” of the postal service aresteals. They should not be tolerated. If extra-departmental service is rendered (as is well known it is),it should be paid for just the same—and at the same service rates—that Jim Jones, Susie Bowers and Widow Finerty are compelled to pay for similar service.
Now, we have raidings on the postoffice revenues by the governmentdepartments themselves, including free in county, and by the Postoffice Department’s looseness of methods in handling its own business, of somewheres around $22,000,000 a year, not counting thestuffingof weights during the “weighing period”, which goes to swell the railway mail pay rates for mail carrying railroads for a period of four years.
As to the last, I wish to say that Mr. Hitchcock, the present Postmaster General, has donemoreto correct such weighing frauds than has any of his predecessors within the range of my study of the question. Yet it lingers—hangs on to an extent which should put some subordinate postoffice officials and railway officials in restraint—put them out of range of opportunity for such looting.
In the face of an annual raid of $22,000,000, what is the use of all this prattle—prattle extending over years—aboutdeficitsin the postal service? Will some one kindly rise in the front pews of the postal department or in the sanctum of itsbeneficiariesand tell us?
There is no deficit in the postoffice service revenues. The people pay and have paid for more service than is rendered—for more service than they have received or do receive.
“But what difference to the people does it make whether they pay for carrying the departmental mail out of the postal revenues or have each department pay for its own mail carriage and handling?” is a common answering interrogative argument (?) to my immediately preceding charge that the various government departmentsraidthe postal revenues to the extent of “many millions,” as Mr. Hitchcock has put it. “The people have to pay for it anyway, do they not?”
Just so, and what difference does it make? Well, here are a few points of difference which might be seen and comprehended without jarring any fairly normal intellect off its pedestal:
1. To have the departments pay or give credit to the Postoffice Department for the service it renders to them is an honest and approved method in any other business. The present method not only violates sound business principles but isdishonestas well—dishonest because it throws the burden of those “many millions” for mail haulage and handling of franked and penalty matterupon the postal rate papers, and not upon all the people of the country as it should.
2. If the free congressional and departmental matter now costs,say $20,000,000 a year for mail haulage and handling, then the government is practicing a policy which bothoriginates and distributes revenue without appropriation. In other words, the general government in such practice usurps the function of originating revenue which function, under the Constitution, is vested in the Lower House of Congress.
Next, the general government distributes that $20,000,000 (or its equivalent in service, which amounts to the same thing), to the several departments, or lets each department raid that service as it pleases. It does this in flat violation of another section or clause of the Federal Constitution which provides that the cost of maintenance and operation, including any contemplated construction and permanent betterments, shall be provided for in anannual appropriation bill.
3. The recommended method would greatly lessen the “abuses” of the postal service by government departments and officials of which Mr. Hitchcock speaks. On the other hand, the method of the present and the pastinvitessuch abuses. Abuses grow but do not improve with age. Each year the abuses of which Mr. Hitchcock speaks in his 1910 report have grown untilabusesis scarcely a fitting designation for them. These abuses of the postal service have grown, and grown in such a stealthy, porch-climbing way, that they amount to acolossal stealevery year.
4. When they hear so much yodling about “deficits” in the Postoffice Department, millions of our people are led to believe that such deficits are created by an excess of cost over receipts in carrying the letters, postal and postcards, the newspapers, magazines and other periodicals, the books and merchandise, which the people themselves entrust to the mails for delivery. They hear that the postal service “should be self-supporting,” that “each division of the service should be self-sustaining” and then they are called on for higher service rates to meet “deficits.”
Why should this great government of ours permit its officials longer to gold-brick the people with such ping-pong talk? Why not tell the people the truth, or at least give them an open, honest opportunity to learn the truth?
The annual federal appropriation bills informs them at least of the “estimated” expenditures for the year for other departments.Why not give them anhonestestimate of what it costs the Postoffice Department to render a servicewhich should serve them?
Other easily comprehended differences between the present method of loading all governmental mail service upon the Postoffice Department without pay or credit for the vast service rendered and a method which would give that department such credit could readily be mentioned. However, the four points of difference between the two methods above cited, and the advantages which would accrue both to the service and the people by adopting an approved, honest business method instead of the present unfair, foolish anddishonestone, are sufficient, I think, to convince the reader that therearedifferences between these right and wrong ways of handling the nation’s postal service—its governmental mail matter—that are of vital importance—differences which on the one hand invite raidings, waste andlootageof the postoffice revenues and on the other would make for economies in the service and for business care andhonestyin the use and expenditures of those revenues.
But, says another apologist for the loose, wasteful methods of the Postoffice Department in handling both its service and its revenues, “The postal service was originally instituted for handling the government mail only.”
That be as it may, though I doubt the sweeping assertion of the statement made, just as I doubt the integrity and truthfulness of purpose of the person making it. It came to my notice as part of an argument (?) in defense of the outrageous railway mail pay and mail-car rental charges which mail carrying railroads havebeen permittedto collect from the postal revenuespaid by the people. But whether or not the postal service was originally intended to be merely a dispatch service for transmission of government orders, documents, etc., can stand as no valid reason now for the Federal Government’s permitting its several departments to use and abuse the vast system for intercommunication among the people which it has permitted to be built up, and for the building of which it has taxed (by way of postal charges) those who made use of the system—taxed themexcessively, if indeed not somewhat unscrupulously—whether or not, not, I say, the government originally intended the mail service to bean exclusive service for use of the government only has no present bearing. If such was the original intention, the foolishness of it must soon have become apparent, for we find that federal laws were enacted to establish a general postal servicefor all the people. Not only were laws enacted for the establishment and regulation of a mail service, but by the law of 1845 it was clearly intended to make such service agovernmentmonopoly. Section 181 of the federal statutes reads as follows:
Whoever shall establish any private express for the conveyance of letters or packets, or in any manner cause or provide for the conveyance of the same by regular trips or at stated periods over any post route which is or may be established by law, or from any city, town or place between which the mail is regularly carried, or whoever shall aid or assist therein, shall be fined not more than $500, or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.
Whoever shall establish any private express for the conveyance of letters or packets, or in any manner cause or provide for the conveyance of the same by regular trips or at stated periods over any post route which is or may be established by law, or from any city, town or place between which the mail is regularly carried, or whoever shall aid or assist therein, shall be fined not more than $500, or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.
The foregoing makes it quite evident that, as early as 1845 at least, this government of ours did not intend or design the service on mail routes then existing, nor on routes to be established, was to confine itself to the carriage and handling of government matter only. The establishment of rail post routes and the greater facility and speed with which such routes would handle the people’s mails—“the letters, packages and parcels of people residing along such mail routes”—was one of the stock arguments of the Illinois Central Railroad promoters in 1849-50—an argument designed to justify before the people a grant of land to the chartered company so large as to make the grant acolossal steal. The same or similar argument was turned loose and persuasively paraded in the oratorical procession which preceded the vast federal land grants, or land steals, in connection with the building of transcontinental or Pacific rail lines.
Enough has been said to show quite conclusively that whatever may or may not have been the “intention” of the government at the first establishment of a mail service—a service then wholly by water transportation, by runners and by a “Pony Post” and mail coach—a decision was very soon reached to make the postal service a public one—a service for all our people—and to give the governmenta monopoly of that service.
No one reading the section of the Revised Statutes of the United States above quoted will attempt to controvert the statement last made.
Then, it may be asked again, and justly, too, why does thegovernment continue to permit its various departments to over-load and tolootthe postal service, the revenues for maintaining which the people—the mail-using portion of the people—alone contribute?
It also may be justly asked, why does the government permit its postoffice and other officials toscreamat the people about “deficits,” when they have already paid far more than the service—theirservice—costs the government?
Other equally pertinent questions might be asked, but I shall forbear. I have shown, I believe, that the raids upon the postoffice revenues by free-in-county matter and by government itself wouldmore than meetany “deficit” yodled about in recent years.
That is what I started to demonstrate in this chapter. But there are other raids and raiders upon the revenues of the Postoffice Department to which I must advert. I purposed in writing to this phase of our general subject, to make official prattle about postal service “deficits” look and sound foolish.
I believe I have already done that, but in justice to the subject and to the postal ratepayers, at least three other raiders must have their cloaks slit.
The President’s message of February 22, 1912, reached me a few hours after the closing chapters of this volume had gone to the printers. With it arrived a copy of the Postmaster General’s report for the year ending June 30, 1911; also notice from a Congressman friend that he will have the Hughes Commission’s report on the way shortly. The Man on the Ladder, like Lucy, when selecting her spring bonnet, desires the “very latest creation.” It may not be essentially necessary in a discussion of Federal postal affairs, but even a hurried reading of the President’s message and the report of Postmaster General Hitchcock will furnish abundant evidence thatexpressedofficial opinion is somewhat ephemeral and transitory, like the styles in ladies’ headwear. I have never had the pleasure of retaining a lady’s unanimous friendship for any appreciable length of time after giving her my honest opinion of the style of her most recently acquired bonnet, and readers who have followed me thus far in my consideration of government postal affairs will have discovered that my respect for “style” in official oratory and literature needs coaching.
All that aside, however, the point is that I have persuaded my printers to “break galley” just here and permit the insertion of a chapter, having as subject the “very latest” in official postal affairs.
In his Washington Day effort our smiling President is profusely loyal to the characteristics of his style in composition—plumage and displacement. Mr. Taft, however, should set up no claims of originality of design in Executive messages. Several of his predecessors presented the people of these United States with numerous displays of verbal plumage and trimmings. So our President had many working-models as guides in building the message upon which we shall proceed to comment.
This message, both in architectural specification and in contour orensemble, is largely but a re-trim of the “block” furnished by Mr.Hitchcock in his report, under date of December 1, 1911. In considering the President’s message and the report of the Postmaster General, we may, then, shorten our task somewhat by treating the two public documents as one. They, of course, differ in phrasing and wording, but the language of the message is only a sort of Executive “Me-too” approval of what Mr. Hitchcock says in his report, save on one point—the taking over of the telegraph companies by the government. That point we will discuss separately, presenting the argument of the president against the proposition and thefactspresented by Postmaster General Hitchcock:
“It gives me pleasure to call attention to the fact that the revenues for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1911, amounted to $237,879,823.60 and that the expenditures amounted to $237,660,705.48, making a surplus of $219,118.12. For the year ending June 30, 1909, the postal service was in arrears to the extent of $17,479,770.47.”
Well, yes, certainly. It gives us all pleasure to see a surplus grow where only deficits grew before—gives us great pleasure. Still, Mr. President, you will permit us humbly to say that it has been a distressful winter and that here, the very last of February, the ground is still frozen hard. You, of course, will recall that our Postmaster General, at intervals during the last fiscal year, as opportunity for “interviews” offered, gave us confident assurances that his department was harvesting a surplus, ranging in amount from one to three million dollars. These assurances beyond our expectations—our hopes—led us to an elevation which makes it a far fall to $219,118.12. Of course, it is our fault. We should not have permitted our hopes and expectations to become so altitudinous. But Mr. Hitchcock has a very persuasive delivery and the public press quoted him so numerously and so prolixly that we climbed on and on up—away above the one and some of us well on towards the three million level and—well, as before said, the ground being frozen, a drop to $220,000 jars us some considerable in alighting. Mr. Hitchcock probably framed up his mid-year interviews to fit observed conditions, the best he knew how. Most of us will soon be out of the hospital and in condition to take an inflation for another flight. Some of the less venturesome among us may be over-careful not to soar too high, but our tank capacity remains about the same. So the Postmaster General may meter nearly the same amount of rhetorical gas to us without fear.The President might, however, if he thinks it would not occasion any unseemly discord in rendering the grand symphony entitled “Administrative Policy,” give us folks some information on the following points—points raised by a reading of the Washington Day message and of the 1911 report of the Postmaster General, both of which are before me, as I write. Of course this is the President’s busy season and he may not be able to devote as much time to our enlightenment as he would like to and otherwise would. In that event, he may turn the subject over to Mr. Hitchcock and request him to separate himself from a few interviews to clear these matters up for us.
In each annual report of the Postoffice Department I have at hand (1907 to 1911 inclusive), there appears an item which reads, “Expenditures on account of previous years.” For the years indicated, the figures on this item of expenditures are as follows:
As figures are always more or less of a serious nature, we will here drop the personal element in discussing these points on which information is desired, and muchneeded, if public press notices can be at all depended upon as informative. Of course “figures do not lie.” Still, it is generally known that, however truthful they may be in correct calculations, they sometimes appear very peculiar, if not queer, in tabulations. Some persons have even gone so far as to assert that “official figures” have frequently been so arranged and manipulated as to “conceal the facts.” Now, the figures for that item, “Expenditures on account of previous years” may conceal no facts which the public has any right to know. Still, there is something about them which irritates one’s bump of curiosity; that is, if one’s bump is not abnormally dwarfed or stunted. At any rate, it appears from press comment that those figures have sand-papered or otherwise frictioned several bumps of curiosity into a state of irritation. It is the hope of securing some official light that will act as a linitive or demulcent to my own and other bumps that persuaded those figures into evidence here.
What do those figures mean? Are they of any real informative value or merely convenient things to have around when building thesub and superstructures of a department annual reports, like the figures of the postal deficits? A glance at the sums named in the table shows a variableness that amounts almost to a waywardness in totaling bills or accounts payable. The federal fiscal year ends June 30th. The annual reports of the Postoffice Department bear date December 1st—full four months after the close of the fiscal year. Surely four months is sufficient time to gather into account the bills payable or carried-over obligations of a previous year, is it not? Of course the business of the department is a large business—over $237,000,000 last year and about $260,000,000 is asked for this year in the appropriation bill recently passed by the House. But that is no reason whatever for failure to account for amounts ranging from $300,000 to $6,200,000 of unpaid bills of the business year in which the obligations were created; especially not, when publication of the accounting is made four months after the close of the year.
This item of “expenditures on account of previous years” becomes no more understandable, if indeed it does not become more suggestive of purposeful manipulation, when one looks over the itemized or segregated expenditures of the year. The items of expenditure are all of the conventional character used in business accounting—operation and maintenance—such as service salaries, transportation of the mails, rents, light, fuel, supplies, repairs, etc. And these are all set down as expenditures of and for the fiscal year’s business covered by the report, there being not even a suggestion that any part or portion of the total is an expenditure of the previous year—of any previous year.
So much for the detail of expenditures as published in the reports. From the summaries of receipts and expenditures one gathers no additional light. In the reports of the Third Assistant Postmaster General (division of accounts), one finds only the bald item, “Expenditures on account of previous years,” down to the report of Third Assistant, James J. Britt, for the year ended June 30, 1910. For that year Mr. Britt segregates the item as follows:
Anyone taking the trouble to add the five amounts given above, will discover an error of $217.94 in the total. While that error is only a trifle, its appearance, however, in the addition of but five items is not highly commendatory of the ability of Mr. Britt’s expert accountants. The making of such an error in totaling only five entries has a tendency to arouse doubt or suspicion as to the reliability or dependability, not only of the footings given for the longer tabulations published in the report, but also of the footings which must necessarily have been made to secure the totals which are entered as items in such tabulations. Be this as it may, very few persons, aside from clerks paid for doing the work (and, possibly, an official or two whose duty it is or should be to see that the work is done accurately), will go to the trouble to verify even the footings of the published tabulations. So the errors, if any have been made, are not likely to become subject matter for much adverse criticism.
My purpose in presenting the showing of the 1910 report on that item of “expenditure on account of previous years” is to make the statement that, so far as I have been able to look up the matter, it is a first weak attempt to make public in the annual report the accounts and claims carried over from a previous year or years and published as expenditures of the year to which they are carried. I desire the reader to note, also, that of the total of “expenditures on account of previous years” ($6,786,612.05 as above corrected), all but $65,553.53 is set down as expenditures for the yearimmediately prior—for 1909.
Now, the business of the Postoffice Department is a cash business—wholly so in the matter of receipts and nearly so, or should be, in the matter of expenditures. This being the case, that item entered in the published annual reports as “expenditures on account of previous years” must consist largely of payments made on account of the yearimmediately precedingthe year covered by the report. As just shown by the published analysis of the item in the 1910 report, the expenditures on account of prior years other than the one just preceding are so small (only $65,553.53 in a total of $6,786,612.05), that they may be ignored in the attempt I am shortly to make, to show that the item we have been considering—“expenditures on account of previous years”—has such dominance in the department’s method of accounting, as evidenced in its annual reports, as to materially affect the deficit or surplus showing.
First, however, I desire to call attention to another point or two relating to this item of expenditure.
A glance at the tabulation made of this item shows a huge jump in its amount for the year 1910 of $6,200,000, round figures. Next, it appears that the necessities of business,or the emergency needs of those building the report, forced this item still upward in the showing for 1911 as made December last—upward by $345,718.12, making its total $7,132,112.23. In the report before me, no analysis of that large carried-over payment on account of prior years is given. The Third Assistant Postmaster General may furnish information as to the year or years of its origin. His report has not reached me yet, so I cannot say. The bald statement is there, however, that 1911paid over seven million dollarson account of 1910 and prior bills. It is also in evidence thatno information whateveris published which enlightens the public as to the amount ofunpaid 1911 bills that are carried forward to 1912 account.
Whether adverse criticism is justifiable or not, such cloaking of accounts in giving them publicity most certainly warrants it. It is just this cloaking that has subjected Mr. Hitchcock’s little vest-pocket surplus for 1911 to much and merited criticism, doubt and question. Mr. Urban A. Waters, in testifying before the House Committee on Civil Service Reformharpoonedthe Postoffice Department with an accusation that it had permitted a million dollars to waste, evaporate, be misapplied or stolen, in connection with a deal for sanitary and safety appliances to railway mail cars.
If Mr. Waters’ charges are grounded in fact, then is provoked andinvitedthe question: Is it designed or intended to carry that million into the accounting of 1912—or into that of some future year—as an “Expenditure on account of previous years?”
Mr. Waters is publisher of the Denver Harpoon. He can say things and is generally recognized as a man who makes a practice of gathering the facts to back up what he says before he says it. In his testimony, so far as I know, Mr. Waters made no statement or suggestion that the evaporated million he spoke of would be, or could be, very securelycachetedor “fenced” in this “account of previous years.” It is The Man on the Ladder who points out—who says—that such loose accounting as carries to account of a subsequent year theexpenditures made or incurred in a previous year canvery readilybe made to cloak a steal of one or more millions of dollars.
Then, there are those rural carriers who refused to do as Mr. DeGraw, Fourth Assistant Postmaster General, told them to do. You read the papers of course, and—you believe them, of course, though most of you say, “Of course, I don’t believe ’em.” Well, it was broadly published that theRural Free Delivery Newshad the temerity to publish—not merely to insinuate, mind you—that Mr. Hitchcock’s showing of a little $220,000 surplus for the year ended June 30, 1911, was made possible onlyby the failure of the Postoffice Department to make a plain, valid charge of $7,201,149.64 expenditures for that same fiscal year of 1911!
Those arenotthe exact words used in giving publicity to the asserted fact by theRural Free Delivery News, but that is the meat in the nut the publication cracked. It appears that the published statement was closely contiguous to the facts. At any rate, its nestling juxtaposition to the truth was such that it appears to have neither looked nor listened well to the department. There is a presidential campaign on the speedway at this time, with all its usual concomitants of cackle, clack, cluck and other atmospheric disturbances. Such a published truth—if truth it is, and it certainly displays a marked resemblance in both form and feature to that article so extremely rare in campaign clutter—the appearance of such a truth on the speedway has a tendency to “blanket” some candidate or jockey him into the fence. With a view no doubt, to guarding against such possibility, that machine so much used in recent years to smooth down the rough places in administration roadways was turned onto the track. A hostile opposition, always somewhat harsh and careless in its language, calls it “the steam roller.” So the steam roller, with Fourth Assistant Postmaster General DeGraw at the wheel and manipulating the levers, rolled out among the rural carriers.
But it appears that it did not roll over them. There are forty-odd thousand rural carriers and, of course, it would have to be some “steam roller” to mutilate or seriously dent the ranks of so numerous a body of men; especially of men who travel about with the fragrance of the clover blossom and the corn bloom in their nostrils. They just wouldn’t be rolled and, it is reported they so informed Mr. DeGraw in very polite and easily understood language. They wouldnot demand of the publisher of their association organ that he retract and, to date, theRural Free Delivery Newshas, so far as I have seen, shown no sign of either intention or inclination to back away from or in any way modify its charge which, in effect, was that the showing of a surplus—of even a little “runabout” surplus of $220,000 for the fiscal year of 1911—is a “faked” showing—a showing made possible only by carrying $7,201,149.64 of 1911 expenditures over to 1912 account.
May theRural Free Delivery Newslive long in the land and flourish.
In a letter just received from Mr. W. D. Brown, editor of theR. F. D. News, he says: “When the Postoffice Committee submitted its report on March 6, it contained the statement that instead of a surplus in the postal revenues there was, up to that time, a deficit of more than $600,000.00 and I am satisfied that the amount will be greatly increased before the end of the current fiscal year.”
In theNewsof January 27, the issue to which Mr. DeGraw took exception, Editor Brown publishes a letter he wrote under date of January 11, 1912, to Mr. Charles A. Kram, Auditor of the Postoffice Department. He also publishes Mr. Kram’s reply. In comment on the reply, Mr. Brown says: “Auditor Kram’s reply throws very little light upon the subject, except to establish the fact that it is impossible to say at any time, whether the Postoffice Department is being conducted at a profit or a loss.”
Next comes Congressman Moon, an admitted authority on postal affairs and Chairman of the House Committee of Postoffices and Post-Roads.
I see by a press notice that Mr. Moon, in speaking to the question before his committee recently, stated that there was a “deficit of $627,845 for the fiscal year of 1911” in the Postoffice Department, instead of a surplus of $219,118.12, as published in its report, and over which Mr. Hitchcock and President Taft display so much luxuriant jubilation.
We have probably presented sufficient testimony to evidence the fact that the figures presented by our Postoffice Department are numerously, if not unanimously, doubted among people who take upon themselves the trouble and the labor of looking into them. True, the three or four witnesses we have introduced do not agreeas to the amount or magnitude of the shortages or discrepancies they have found, nor have they said, just where in the loose, bungled accounting they found the discrepancies. However, my purpose here is to show only that publicity of such bungled accounting does not enlighten or inform the public and that the practice ofcharging the expenditures of one year to account of the nextmay easily be made to cloak and cover up much wasteful if, indeed, not dishonest expenditure. That being the case, the disagreement of our witnesses as to the amount of dollars and cents they severally have found to be mislaid, or not properly accounted for, can make little difference in the conclusionforcedby their testimony on any fair, inquiring mind.
But, it may be argued by apologists for such misleading practice in accounting or by persons who would plead extenuating conditions for Mr. Hitchcock and others charged with administering federal postoffice affairs, that this loose, fraud-inviting practice is of long standing, that the present administration has not had time to correct and remedy the faulty practice and that the published showing of current years is correct, because it is made on the same basis as was the accounting for many previous years.
All very well said, but it does not answer. Hoary-headed age in loose, falsifying methods of accounting neither commands respect nor can stand as reason or excuse for continuing such methods. It most certainly has no warrant as argument in extenuation for the continuance of such methods by the present administration.
“Why?” Well, there are several reasons. Mr. Hitchcock, it appears, has been aware for some two years or more that the practice we are here discussing was a questionable one, even if he was not fully informed as to the dangers—the waste, the fraud, the crookedness—which that practice might easily be made to cloak. Yet he has not only continued the practice, but, it would appear has further indulged or encouraged its growth. Let us look at the published evidence on this point.
Areduceddeficit in the showing of the Postoffice Department for the year 1910 was somewhatevidentlydesired. To that end, the practice we are criticising charges 1910 with $6,786,394.11 for expenditures “on account of previous years,” all of which, save $65,553.53, as previously shown, were expenditures made on account of the year 1909.
Now, in a footnote to page 278 of the 1910 report, Third Assistant Postmaster General Britt presents a somewhat confusing, if not confused explanation of his showing of the “Revenues and expenditures” for the year. One statement in the explanation, however, is resonantly loud in its clearness.
“On the other hand,” says Mr. Britt, “expenditures made in the first three months of the fiscal year, 1911 on account of the fiscal year 1910 and prior years are not included in the reported deficit for the year 1910.The amounts are approximately equal.”
I italicize that last statement. Let’s see: 1910 was made to pay (in accounting only, of course), $6,786,394.11 of 1909 and prior expenditures and, in an exchange, as simple as swapping Barlows, $7,132,112.23 of 1910 expenditures are shunted onto the year 1911!
“The amounts are approximately equal,” says Mr. Britt.
Well, the difference is only $345,718.12—a mere trifle, of course, in a shuffle of millions. But if that trifle had been added to the 1910 expenditures, where it rightly belonged, the 1910 deficit would have shown up a trifleoverinstead of a trifleundersix million dollars, as given in the published report—a very important matter along in the closing days of 1910.
Then, too, when our President and his Postmaster General so warm up to a surplus of $220,000, it is possible, if not probable, that a trifle like $345,000 might have been a convenience as a deficitreducerin December, 1910.
On page 19 of Mr. Hitchcock’s report, he presents the following as one of thirty “Improvements in Organization and Methods” accomplished by the Postoffice Department during the year ended June 30, 1911: