One other raid into the postal revenues I must notice before passing to a consideration of the parcels post question, in which consideration of other raids and raiders will be mentioned.

Here I desire to refer to that band of raiders—thousands in number—who are carried on the payrolls of the Postoffice Department—carried at salaries ranging into the thousands in many cases—and who do little or nothing of service value for the money paid them.

The Postoffice Department is a large institution and does a big business—a huge business which has much detail and extends over a vast territory. To handle such a business properly, necessarily requires the service of a large force of operatives. Most of the work of the department is of that sort which human brain and muscle alone can do. The machine can touch but a few of the minor details of the vast amount of work our Postoffice Department handles. It may cancel stamps, perforate documents, etc., but it cannot collect, sort, distribute, carry and deliver mail. It requires human muscle and brains to do such work. Much of it requires skill—the trained eye and hand as well as academic knowledge.

Well, the Postoffice Department employs a large force—a vast army of men, and some women, I believe. Counting the employes in its legal, purchasing and inspection divisions with the postmasters, assistant postmasters, railway and office clerks, city and rural carriers, messengers, etc., there must be somewhere around 330,000 people employed in our federal postal service.

Whether that is too large or too small a force for the proper handling of our postal service is beyond my purpose here to discuss. That the business now handled by the department could be far better handled by 330,000 employes than it now is, and that such a service force could, if properly directed and disciplined, handle a business much larger than that now transacted by the department, I do not hesitate to assert. I base that assertion chiefly on the following observed conditions:

First: There are frills and innovations in handling the business[294] which take up the time of employes and which have little or no service value.

Second: There is, not too much “politics,” as Mr. Hitchcock and his immediate predecessors have modestly but wrongfully called it, but too much political partisanship—dirty, grafting, thieving, partisanship—not only in the appointment of people to the service, but also in making partisan, often grafting, crooked use of them after appointment.

Third: There are too many non-producers—non-service producers—among that army of 330,000.

It is the last, or third, condition named that I shall here briefly consider, or such observed phases of it as, in my judgment, so trench into the postal revenues as not only amounts to a raid in itself, but which also encourages others to graft and loot.

First, I desire to say that there are many thousands in that postal service, many who are honest, faithful and competent workers. There are about seventy thousand (69,712 according to the department’s report for 1910) carriers, city and rural, most of whom work industriously and efficiently and who are underpaid for the service they render.

There are about 50,000 clerks employed. Of these, the 1909-10 report says, 16,795 are railway clerks. Quoting the same report, there were 33,047 postoffice clerks in the service. All or nearly all of these are employed in the “Presidential” postoffice—offices of the first, second and third classes. Of the total number of clerks, 31,825, are employed in offices of the first and second classes. There were 424 offices of the first class and 1,828 of the second. That placed the service of 31,825 clerks in 2,252 offices. The report (1909-10), from which these figures are taken states 5,373 as the number of third-class offices. The remainder of the reported number of clerks (1,222) are, it is presumed, distributed among those 5,373 third-class offices. At any rate, in the statement of expenditures for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1910, the Second Assistant Postmaster General, Mr. Stewart, presents the following showing of expenditures as compensation to clerks:
Clerks in first and second-class postoffices (31,825)     $31,583,587.37
Clerks in third-class postoffices, lower grade     540,891.31
Clerks in third-class postoffices, upper grade     663,632.20

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The lower grade of third-class postoffices comprise those which yield the postmasters an annual income ranging from $1,000 to $1,500 and the higher grades are those with a compensation of $1,600 to $1,900 to the postmasters. In this connection, it should be noted that for the fiscal year there was paid, in addition to the amounts above named, the sum of $325,953.44 for what are called “temporary” and “substitute” clerks.

Adding these various sums gives a total of $33,114,064.32 paid for clerk hire for clerks in first, second and third-class offices—in the “Presidential postoffice,” or offices to which the President has, by law or otherwise, been granted or permitted the right to appoint the postmasters.

As previously stated, there is a total of 7,625 Presidential postoffices on the payrolls of which are carried the names of 33,047 clerks. In addition to these are 16,795 railway postal clerks. Beyond saying that the appointment and advancement of these last-mentioned clerks have been in the past—and yet are—largely influenced by assistant postmaster generals, superintendents and other chiefs of division in the Washington or department office and by Senators, Congressmen and postmasters in offices of the first and second-classes, I shall not consider them further here, nor do I include them in the adverse criticisms I shall make of the clerical force and service of the department.

It should, however, be noted in this connection that in addition to the 31,825 clerks employed in the 2,252 offices of the first and second classes, there are 2,237 assistant postmasters. These were paid $2,536,997.24 for the year ended June 30th, 1910. There were in offices of the first and second-classes 2,252 postmasters. To these was paid the sum of $5,814,300. That makes the service personnel of the first and second class offices, not counting carriers, messengers, etc., 36,314, and gives a total of annual expenditures for this service amounting to $40,465,361.56.

The reader will please keep in mind the fact that the foregoing figures apply only to postoffices of the first and second-classes. There may be a few clerks and also assistant postmasters in offices of the third-class. If so, there are so few of them that the department did not deem it worth while to account for them in that position in any of its fiscal statements, so far as I have been able to find. I[296] would ask the reader also to bear in mind that while the following strictures are intended to apply to all three classes of Presidential postoffices, their application is less general and less forceful in offices of the second than in offices of the first class, and less in offices of the third-class than in either of the two higher class offices.

There has been much talk by Postmaster Generals in recent years about efforts made and making to get the employes of the Postoffice Department into the classified service—getting them under civil service protection. Not only has this been made subject of urgent advocacy in almost every annual department report of recent years, but Postmaster Generals have made prolix and voluble reference to and favorable comment upon the progress that has been made in “taking the department out of politics.” Mr. Hitchcock in the 1909-10 report commends highly the progress made in that direction. See pages 13, 14, 24, 85, 86 and others of the report. The party stump and banquet oratory of the past twelve or more years has sparkled—fairly scintillated it might be said—with rhetorical coruscations about what “the administration has done” to remove the federal service from the “baleful clutch and influence of politics.”

Now do not misunderstand me. I am not saying this because the Republicans have been in control of things. Had Democrats been at the helm of the national craft, they would have done the same. The Democratic politicians might have done more or less than the Republicans have done to get the civil service of the government away from corrupt and corrupting partisan influences. The Republicans have done only what they have been compelled to do—compelled by general public demand. So the Democrats would have done, had they been in power. Politicians do not want a civil service free from party control. The “jobs” have been and are a source both of spoils and of continued power to the so-called “practical” politician of either party—of any political party. That is why the party leaders—“bosses”—fight so persistently and craftily to retain control of the civil jobs. That is why almost every civil service law or “executive order” for placing civil employes under a merit or efficiency classification carries a “joker” somewhere about its clothes. That is true of most all such laws and orders so far enacted or issued, whatever be their field of application—city, county, state or nation.

So I desire the reader to understand that there is no political[297] or party animus in what I may say in adverse criticism of the jokes and jokers which so conspicuously decorate the Republican display of effort to place federal postal employes under classified civil service and which, it is said, “has taken them out of politics and will keep them out.” The Man on the Ladder believes in civil service, but he does not believe in either legislative or executive “jokers” which, under the guise and pretense of establishing a protected merit classification of public servants, makes stealthy crooks and turns to keep their own partisans on the jobs, regardless of either their ability, merit or fitness.

Now let us return to our subject—to the points which make much if not most of the alleged “progress” in the postal department toward the institution of a merit classification of its office employes but little more than a move on lines to keep administration partisans on postal service jobs, and which makes this much-talked of progress toward efficiency conserve party more than service interests.

But some readers may urge that this is mere assertion. Well, let me present a few facts and conditions which support the assertions, or which, to me, seem to make the statements assertions of fact.

Mr. Hitchcock rightly asserts (page 13 of 1909-10 report) “that the highest degree of effectiveness in the conduct of this tremendous business establishment cannot be attained while the thousands of postmasters, on whose faithfulness so much depends, continue to be political appointees. The entire postal service should be taken out of politics.”

Well and good. Following the foregoing, he mentions the fact that all assistant postmasters have been placed in the classified service by order of the President. Mr. Hitchcock, “as a still more important reform,” recommends that “Presidential postmasters of all grades, from the first class to the third, should be placed in the classified service.” He also speaks of efforts made and making to place the fourth-class postmasters under its laws and regulations. He points out some valid difficulties to be surmounted if such desired result is attained without impairment rather than betterment of the service. The First Assistant Postmaster General, C. P. Granfield, states in his report, that, under an executive order dated November 30, 1908, all fourth-class postmasters in fourteen states have been put into the classified service. He also explains briefly the method of procedure in filling vacancies—when they occur.

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That is probably sufficient preliminary. Now for a few of the observed and observable conditions which govern in civil service as thus far applied in the Postoffice Department. Taking the fourth-class postmasters first, it may be said the method of appointing such postmasters by civil service examination scarcely rises to a dignity entitling it to serious consideration. While the method itself reads well, its application, in many instances, is but a joke—a tame joke at that. Postmaster General Hitchcock substantially admits, as previously stated, that conditions are met with which make its application extremely difficult if not quite impossible.

Certain it is that, so far as applied, the results have given a vast majority, if not all, of the certifications to persons of administration party affiliation.

Then, too, it might be asked by a person addicted to the habit of doing his own thinking—a habit very obnoxious to party “leaders” and to politicians of the so-called “practical” breed—it might be asked by any capable, independent thinker, if it was mere chance that selected twelve administration and two “doubtful”—chronically doubtful—states in which first to make application of a civil service method to the selection and appointment of fourth-class postmasters?

While there are, according to the last published department report, about 52,000 fourth-class postmasters in the country, a great majority of them are persons of little or no local political influence. Beyond their own votes, then, they are of little service to the administration party, save as distributing or disbursing agents of the party in power for its campaign literature and other promotion matter. They are used also to keep the county and state “bosses” of the party advised of local political conditions as they view them—flurries in the party atmosphere, as indicated by hitching-post and whittling discussions of party legislation and proposed legislation or of party policies, as set forth by the published utterances of state and national “leaders.”

In such and other minor ways, then, the fourth-class postmaster may be a helpful instrument in the retention of power by the political party in power—the party from which he has received appointment. So it is good “practical” politics to keep such a party agent on the job. To that end, then, the party in power—the administration—places the fourth-class postmaster in the classified civil service, thus[299] making his removal more difficult, if not impossible, in case an opposing party should win out at the polls and take charge of the government.

The foregoing is said, of course, on the presupposition that every reader knows that a vast majority of the postmasters and other personnel of the postal service today is of the political party in power. In saying that the party from which these postmasters and other postal service employes received their appointments has been and is using a civil service classification largely, if not wholly, for partisan ends. I say only—in fact have already said—that the Democratic party or any other party would, if in national control, make similar use of the civil classification. And such partisan manipulation of a merit service classification will continue so long as we fool people will stand for or permit it.

The chief “jokers” woven into most all civil service laws and executive orders are these:

First: The law or “order” directing the application of a classification of a service into certain grades, places those holding positions at th............