Now, let us look into and over that postoffice “deficit,” to the origin of which the memory of man scarcely runneth back, and which Mr. Hitchcock, by some strenuous effort on right lines readily converted into a surplus—a $6,000,000 deficit into some hundreds of thousands of dollars surplus. The returns are not all in yet. At any rate the Postmaster General has not announced them loud enough for The Man on the Ladder to hear, or he was in his physician’s hands when the announcement was made.
However that may be, Mr. Hitchcock has proved quite conclusively that there is no deficit—or, at least, no valid reason for one under present conditions.
And here, again, I desire to say that our present Postmaster General is deserving the praise or commendation of every American citizen for having demonstrated, by a few economies here and a few betterments there in the operation of his department, that the service can be rendered, and rendered efficiently, with an expenditure safely within the bounds of the department’s receipts or revenues.
Especially is Mr. Hitchcock deserving of commendation for this demonstration, because in making it he has done what so many of his predecessors talked of as desirable, but failed to do.
But with full acknowledgment of the splendid effort Mr. Hitchcock has made in converting a postal deficit of $6,000,000 in 1909-10 into a surplus for the year 1910-11, I desire to discuss, briefly, postal department deficits of the past—or the future—and the origin and cause of them.
In the future pages of this volume little if any reference will be made to our vigorous Postmaster General’s attempt to put onto the Senate course a rider that would run down certain periodicals which were to him and certain of his friends, as it would appear, of obstructive if not offensive character. It is possible, if, indeed, not probable, that I may, in this somewhat hurried discussion of our Postoffice Department deficits and their sources, cause and origin,[206] repeat something, in whole or in part, that I have said elsewhere in this volume.
The discussion of the postal deficits leads us into the Raider factor or feature of our general title—into a consideration of the political, partisan and business influences and interests which have for thirty-five or more years been conspicuously—yes, brazenly—looting the revenues of the department. I shall not be able to advert to all such influences, interests and persons. Especially can I not mention some of the persons. Many of them have gone to “their reward”—or to their punishment—as the Almighty has seen fit to assign them. As a matter of venerable custom and of current conventional courtesy we must leave them to His justice—to our silence. One by one many of the dishonestly enriched from our postal revenues have dropped into “the dead past,” which Christ instructed should be left to “bury its dead.” In our treatment of this subject we shall obey the Master’s instruction—we shall discuss methods, practices, and acts, not men.
In turning to our subject directly, I desire to make a few positive statements or declarations.
1. The Postoffice Department is a public service department—a department intended to serve all the people all the time.
2. The people are paying, have paid, and are willing to pay, for their postal service.
3. The people do not care—never have cared—whether the expenditures exceed the receipts by $6,000,000 or $100,000,000, if they get the service for the money expended.
In comment on the last, I wish here to ask if anyone has heard much loud noise from the people about the army and the navy expenditures—expenditures larger than that of any other nation on earth for similar purposes?
Yet, for twenty or more years, the people have paid the appropriations for—also met the “deficit” bills of—each of those departments without any noticeable “holler.”
But, again, it must be pertinently asked, what have the people received in return for their billions of expenditures for those two departments?
Yes, what? They have had the doubtful “glory” of having their army debauch some island possessions, maneuver for local entertainments and do some society stunts while on “post leave”—which[207] “leave”, for epauletted military officers, appears to have occupied most of their time.
And the people have put up, ungrumblingly, $100,000,000 to $150,000,000 or more (I forget the figures), for a navy—a navy carrying on its payrolls more “shore leave” men and clerks than it has service men. (At any rate that was the showing in a recent year). For this vast expenditure of their money the people got—got what?
Well, for their hundreds of millions expenditure on that navy of ours, the people, to date, have received in return newspaper reports of numerous magazine and gun explosions with, of course, a list of the killed and wounded, and reports of “blow-hole” or otherwise faulted armor plate, turrets, etc., of raising “The Maine,” of shoaling this, that or the other battleship, or of “sparring” or “lightering” off, to the music that is made by a “blow-in” of fifty thousand to two or three hundred thousand more of their money.
Reader, if you read—if you have read—the “news”—the periodical literature—of those past twenty years, you will know that the people have received little or no returns for the vast expenditure of money—of their money—that their representatives (?) have made for the Navy Department.
Oh, yes, I remember that our army and navy fought to a “victorious” conclusion the “Spanish American” war.
No patriotic American citizen alive at the time that war occurred will ever forget it. He will ever remember Siboney, Camp Thomas, Camp Wycoff, and the cattle-ship transports for diseased and dying soldiers. He will also remember the “embalmed beef” and the “decayed tack” and other contracts and contractors.
If the patriotic citizen has been an “old soldier,” or is familiar with the history of wars, he will also know that, if the whole land fighting of that Spanish American war was corralled into one action that action would be infinitely less sanguine than was the action at a number of “skirmishes” in our civil war—that, if the several naval actions of that war were merged into one, it would not equal, in either gore or naval glory, Farragut’s capture of Mobile, the action in Hampton Roads, nor even Perry’s scrimmage on Lake Erie in 1813.
What has all this to do with the postal department deficit, some one may ask? It has just this to do with it:
If a people stand unmurmuringly for the expenditure of billions[208] for a service that yields them no return, save a protection they have not needed and of doubtful security if needed, that people is not going to raise any noisy hubbub over a dinky deficit of a few millions a year for a service which should serve them every day of every year.
I have expanded a little, not disgressed, in writing to my statement numbered 3. I will now proceed with my premeditated statements. Some of them may be a little frigid, but none of them are cold-storage. Some one may have told it all to you before, but that is his fault, not mine. He merely beat me to the facts.
4. As stated in a forward page of this volume, the people of this nation want and demand service of its Postoffice Department. They care not to the extent of a halloween pea-shooter whether the service is rendered at a deficit of six million or at a surplus of ten million, if service is rendered for the money expended.
5. The people of this country will object more strenuously against a surplus in their postal revenues—their service tax—than they ever have or will object to a deficit in the revenues of that service, if they get the service.
6. The Postoffice Department is not understood—is not even thought of by intelligent citizens—as a revenue-producing department. It is understood to be a service department, and the citizen—His Majesty, the American Citizen—is always willing to pay for services rendered.
7. The Postoffice Department has not in the period named—no, not for thirty or thirty-five years—rendered the citizen the service for which he paid.
I mean by that, of course, that the citizen has been compelled to pay far more for a postal service than he should have paid for that service.
8. Had that service been honestly, faithfully and efficiently rendered, the price the citizen has paid for it would have left no deficit for any year within the past thirty.
9. The only deficits in those thirty or thirty-five years have been the result of manipulated bookkeeping, of political trenching into the revenues of the department, of loose methods in its management, of disinterest in the enforcement of even loose methods, and of downright lootage and stealings.
“Rather harsh that, is it not?” asks one.
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“Mere assertion,” says another
To the first I need only say that this is an age not congenial to milk-poultice talk. I have previously expressed my opinion on that point. If you have a thing to say, say it hard. The majority of people will then understand you. Those who do not understand you can continue their milk poultices—or believe and talk as they are told or are paid to believe and talk.
The latter—the reader who yodles that my preceding nine statements appear to be assertions only—can make a courteous and, possibly, a profitable use of an hour’s leisure in reading a few following pages, before he rusts into the belief that those nine “assertions” are groundless assertions.
In showing that there is no “deficit”—a shortage of receipts in the Postoffice Department over its legitimate expenditures—I shall not take my nine statements up seriatim, but present my reasons in a general way for having made such blunt declarations. I may go about that, too, in an awkward way, but the reader who follows me will get my reasons for making those nine declarations.
NO CREDIT ALLOWED FOR SERVICES RENDERED OTHER DEPARTMENTS.
If the department of public works in Chicago does a piece of bricklaying, concrete or other construction work for the police, fire, health or other department of the city government, or if it carts or hauls away some excavated material or razed debris for any of those other departments, the service rendered is made a charge by the department of public works against the department for which the service is rendered.
What is true in this instance in Chicago’s municipal government is true of every other city or incorporated town in this country that has its service departmentized.
If the County Commissioners of McCrackin county build a bridge or culvert for Ridgepole township in the county the cost of constructing that bridge or culvert (or a proportional share of it, if on a general highway), is made a charge against Ridgepole township.
If the transportation department of the United States Steel Corporation delivers the services of three steam tugs (services rated at $30.00 per day) to the corporation’s smelting or rail departments[210] there is a credit of $90.00 given to the transportation department, and a corresponding charge made against the department for which the service is rendered, for each day’s service rendered.
That states a recognized business rule and practice among both private and public corporations. Its valid and just purpose is to prevent the loading upon one department (any one department) the expenses created or incurred by another.
Is it not a valid, fair and just method of business?
If it is not, then the largest merchants, the most productive and profitable manufacturing establishments, transportation companies, banking and other mercantile, industrial and financial institutions have not discovered the fact.
If the owner of an Egyptian hen ranch had a shrinkage in his castor bean crop, he would not think of charging the cost or loss on those castor beans up to his hens, would he? Hens do not eat castor beans. That is useless—well—yes, of course. Well, hens do not eat castor beans, anyway. So my ill-chosen illustration, though may stand—stand anyway until someone finds a breed of hens which likes castor beans.
But, if the hens of that hen-rancher invaded his vegetable garden, scratched up his set onions and seeded radishes, pecked holes in three hundred heads of his “early” cabbage and otherwise damaged the fruits of his labor, care and hopes—likewise disarranged his figures on prospective profits—if the hens did that, that hen-rancher would most certainly charge his loss to the hens, would he not?
That is, he would do so, if the hens had attended to their legitimate business as industriously as they looked after his vegetable garden and, by reason of that legitimate effort, showed a “profit balance.” The preceding is based, of course, on the assumption that the rancher has acumen enough to distinguish a hen from a rooster and a sunflower from a cauliflower. If he is so wised up, whether by experience and observation or by academic training, he will most certainly charge his loss on vegetables against those hens.
“What is the application of all this to the Postoffice Department deficits?” some one is justified in asking.
Well, my intended application of it is, first, to show a generally recognized and practical business method—a business method practiced by both public and private corporations and by individuals and[211] firms, from the hen-rancher to the department store. My second purpose is to show that this almost universally recognized business method has been and is totally ignored in conducting the vast service affairs of the Federal Postoffice Department.
FREE-IN-COUNTY MATTER.
The 1910 report of the Postoffice Department states that 55,639,177 pounds of second-class mail was carried and distributed free in the counties of these United States.
Of course, this 1910 gift to country publishers is the result of a moss-grown custom—a custom born of an ingrown desire common to crooked politicians—a desire to trade the general public service for private service. All the second, third and fourth class cities in the country, as well as a majority of our towns and larger incorporated villages, have their party newspaper or newspapers.
Comparatively speaking, few of them have any extensive telegraphic service, if any at all, in the gathering of news. Those which have not, capture the early morning editions—or the late evening editions of the day before—of two or more metropolitan papers, “crib” their “news” and deliberately run it, in many instances, as special wires to their own sheets. In some cases, which I have personally noticed, that practice was indulged when their own “newspaper” consisted of but two to four locally printed pages reinforced by a “patent inside.” Why should such newspapers (?) be given “free distribution” in the county of publication?
They contain little if any real news and less matter of any real informative or educational value. True, the most of them do publish a “local” column or half column of “news” for each or for several of the outlying villages in the county of publication. These “local news” columns inform the reader that “Mr. Benjamin Peewee circulated in Boneville on Wednesday last;” that “Mrs. Cornstalk and her daughter Lizzie are spending the week at the old homestead, just south of town,” that “Mr. Frank Suds shipped a fine load of hogs from Bensonville on Friday of this week,” etc., etc.
Most edifying “news” that, is it not? So didactic and brain-building, is it not?
Now, why should the Postoffice Department carry those millions of pounds of Reubenville sheets free?
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The department report says it carried about 56,000,000 pounds of such “periodicals” free last year. The figures for this year (1910-11) will probably be around 60,000,000 pounds.
Why should the department give away $600,000 in revenues?
Besides that, the department does not know how much of this “free in county” matter it does carry and distribute. Of course, it may be able to make a more dependable guess at the total tonnage of such second-class matter than can I. However, any one who has been around the “county seat” or the “metropolis” of any of the “hill” or “back” counties during a county, state or national canvass for votes will know that the postmaster’s scales are often sadly out of balance when he weighs into circulation the local newspaper. In fact, it frequently happens that he does not weigh it at all—especially not, if it be an extra or extra large edition issued “for the good of the party”—and more especially not, if the edition is issued to serve his party.
“It goes free anyway, so what is the difference?” the postmaster may argue, and with fairly valid grounds for such argument. The department, acting, pursuant of law, says “carry and distribute your local papers free inside your county.” So what difference does a few hundred or a few thousand pounds, more or less, make to the department?
Why, certainly, what difference can it make? It is all done for “the good of the party,” is it not?
This condition, governing, as I personally know it does govern, furnishes my chief reason for saying that the Postoffice Department does not know—does not know even approximately—the tonnage of the “free in county” matter it handles. It never has known and does not now know, within millions of pounds, the weight of such matter it carries and distributes.
Again, I ask, why is this vast burden thrown onto the department and the department getting not a cent of either pay or credit for carrying it? Is it because of a paternal feeling our federal government has for the poor, benighted farmers of the country? I can scarcely believe it is. The farmers of this country are neither poor nor are they benighted. If they were, free carriage and distribution to them of these local sheets has not enriched them to any appreciable extent, however much such free carriage and delivery may have added[213] to the bank accounts of the publishers of such periodical literature. Besides, ninety-five in every hundred farmers whose names are on the publishers’ subscription books pay their subscriptions. They usually pay, too, a pretty stiff rate—$1.50 or $2.00 for a “weekly,” which gives them mostly borrowed news and much of it decidedly stale at that. If a beneficent government grants its “free in county” postal regulation with a view to dissipating the gloom which clogs the garrets of our “benighted farmers,” that government misses its purpose on two essential points. Our farmers, as previously intimated, are no more benighted than are the residents of our villages, towns and cities, and even if their ignorance was as dense as a “practical” politician’s conscience, the medium which the Government delivers to them, carriage free, seldom contributes much enlightenment.
No, it was not for either the enrichment or the enlightenment of the dear farmer that the present “free in county” postal regulation was made operative. It was to give some local party henchman a fairly profitable job as publisher of a county newspaper—a party newspaper—and to have, in him, a county “heeler” who would divide his time between building the party fences and telling the dear farmer how to vote.
It is due to the publishers of country newspapers to say, that hundreds of them have grown away from rigid party ties—have grown independent. It is also but just to say that as these publishers have grown independent of party domination, their newspapers have improved. We have now many most excellent country papers published in our “down state” cities and larger towns.
The points I desire to make, however, are, first, the “free in county” mail delivery regulation was originally adopted for partisan political purposes, not to serve the farmer residents of the counties, and, second, that such regulation is unjustly discriminating and is raiding the service earnings of the Postoffice Department to the extent of at least six hundred thousand dollars annually. In my opinion such raiding will reach seven or eight hundred thousands a year.
FRANKED AND PENALTY MATTER.
Going back now to that generally recognized and practical business method referred to and which the government persistently[214] refuses or neglects to adopt in handling and directing the fiscal affairs of its Postoffice Department, we find another raid on that department’s revenues.
Third Assistant Postmaster General, James J. Britt, makes a sort of estimate of the amount of free second-class matter of Government origin the Postoffice Department transported and distributed during the fiscal year ended, June 30, 1910. Mr. Britt places the figure at 50,120,884 pounds.
Mr. Britt’s estimate is based on a six months’ weighing period in 1907 (the last half of that year.) It is reported as a “special weighing” and showed 26,578,047 pounds of “free in county” second-class matter and 23,941,782 pounds of free franked and penalty matter of the second-class. Mr. Britt then proceeds (page 335 of the department report for 1910), to arrive at his estimated tonnage of franked and penalty matter by assuming that the weight ratio of such second-class matter to “free in county” matter would be about the same for 1910. He says: “If, as it seems reasonable to believe, the relative proportions of this character of matter have remained the same,” there would result for the fiscal year 1909-10 the figures he gives for the franked and penalty tonnage, or 50,120,884 pounds.
Well, to The Man on the Ladder it does not seem “reasonable to believe” that such method of estimating is sound nor the tonnage result attained by it dependable. The year 1907 was a decidedly off-year in franked matter of the second-class. The then President kept most of the Senators and Congressmen guessing as to just what he intended to do in the matter of the presidential nomination of his party. In fact, he kept a goodly number of federal legislators guessing on that point until well along in 1908. The result of this condition of doubt was greatly to lessen the franked mailings and also reduced in material degree the mailing of departmental, or “penalty” matter of the second-class.
For this and several other reasons, the tonnage of franked and penalty matter reported as carried in the last half of 1907—even if the “special weighing” Mr. Britt mentions was accurate and dependable, which it was not and could not be, either then or now, under the lax methods by which such weighings were and are made—the reported weight of such franked and penalty matter carried in the last[215] half of 1907 furnishes no fair or safe basis upon which to predicate 1910 totals or to base a dependable estimate of them.
Another defective factor is used in Mr. Britt’s estimate—the reported total weight of “free in county” second-class matter as ascertained by special weighing in the last half of 1907. As previously stated in discussing the raid of six to eight hundred thousand dollars a year made upon the postal service revenues by this “free in county” matter, the department’s reported figures for it are little more than a robust guess at its tonnage, even now, and the figures given for 1907 are much less trustworthy than are the department’s estimates and guesses for the fiscal year ended in 1910. Whatever may be said of its faults and faulty purposes, it is but simple justice to say the present departmental administration has shown more judgment and activity and has put forth more strenuous effort to get to the bottom of things and at dependable facts in mail weights than has been shown by any of its recent predecessors.
Still, I repeat that its reported figures for the total tonnage of “free in county” for carriage and delivery of second-class mail matter are not sufficiently reliable to warrant their use as a basis for making a dependable estimate of the tonnage of another free division of second class mail. Especially unreliable are the figures reported as total tonnage of free-in-county-matter as a basis for estimating the tonnage of a division of the service so far removed from “free in county” as is that of free franked and penalty matter.
All that aside, however, the fact is the Postoffice Department should receive credit for every pound of franked or penalty matter it handles for the legislative and other departments of the government service.
Mr. Britt himself appears to recognize the force of that fact. On page 335 of the department report for 1910, he speaks as follows:
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 some[216] part 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—o............