I have no grudge against these people, but it seems to me that running a Post Office exclusively for them as Mr. Burleson does, is a mistake. Even if they constitute ninety-eight per cent of the people, they only mail one-tenth of one per cent of the letters. They may not care whether or not their letters arrive as a matter of course, the way they used to in our Post Office until a little while ago, as accurately as telegrams in their first mail in the morning, but probably they would not feel hurt if they did. But millions of people in business who write scores or hundreds of letters a day, who find themselves being put off with a Post Office that is run apparently for people who write two letters a month, are hurt.
In Northampton, Massachusetts, the letter from New York one used to receive at breakfast, hangs around a junction somewhere now, waits for a letter three hundred miles away—a letter from Pittsburgh to catch up to it, and they both come together sweetly and with Mr. Burleson's smile on after luncheon at half past two in the afternoon.
I do not deny that from the narrower business point of view of running a Post Office the way some women would run—or rather used to run a parlor store—with a bell on the door, there is something to be said for Mr. Burleson's philosophy. Nor do I deny that a store can be run and run successfully and rightly on how much of its customer's money it can save on each purchase.
But the point is that if I go into a store in Northampton and cannot get the things I want there I go into some other store.
I cannot go out from our Post Office in Northampton and go over and get what I want at some other Post Office a little further down the street.
When I and people in fifty-three thousand Post Offices, say Aouch! Mr. Burleson says Pooh!
Business correspondence between Washington and New York which used to be a twenty-four hour affair is now half a week.
Letters thousands of men in New York used to receive in their offices in the early morning before interviews began and when they had time to read letters and to jot an answer to them at the foot of the page, are not received and placed before them for their answers until the late morning or early afternoon when they have other things to do and cannot even read them.
So one's letters wait over a day—a night and a day, or until one gets back from Chicago.
Why is it Mr. Burleson takes millions of dollars' worth a day out of the convenience, out of the profit and out of the efficiency of business in America and then with a huge national swoop of compliment to himself points out to people how he has saved them fifty cents?