The first great need of the Railway Mail Service is an adequate appropriation by Congress to extend its usefulness, and to keep it up to the demands and the needs of the public. Where speed is required to make connections, the Department should have the cash on hand to buy what is necessary. The railways are business institutions, managed as such, and when the Department desires extra facilities it should be prepared to pay in coin and not in talk. In this connection it is a pleasant duty for the writer of this very imperfect sketch to say that during his term of service in the post-office at New York, and at the Department, he always found Mr. William H. Vanderbilt, Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Mr. J. H. Rutter, of the New York Central; Mr. John Newell, of the Lake Shore; Mr. George B. Roberts, Mr. A. J. Cassatt, and Mr. Frank Thomson, of the Pennsylvania system; Mr. R. R. Bridgers and Mr. H. B. Plant, of the Atlantic Coast Line, ready to grant any reasonable request for the improvement and extension of the service. Time after time Mr. Roberts has run a special train with the Australian transcontinental mail from Pittsburg to New York, that it might catch an outgoing steamer; and he and Mr. Vanderbilt practically re-established the fast mail, by taking letters on their limited trains. Mr. Roberts gave, in addition, an extra mail train from Philadelphia west at four o'clock in the morning, and Mr. Vanderbilt placed a postal car on the 4 P.M. train from New York, receiving in return—what they had a right to demand—an extra weighing of the mails, and, what was not a matter of surprise to them, unmeasured abuse on the floor of Congress for giving these additional facilities to the people of the country.
The last and greatest need of the postal service is the total and complete elimination of partisan considerations as affecting appointments and removals in the working force. The spoils method invariably brings into the service a lot of do-nothings or a race of experimenters, whose performances never fail to breed disaster and to crush out substantial progress.
There is no position in the Government more exacting than that of a postal clerk, and none that has so many requirements. He must not only be sound "in wind and limb," but possessed of more than ordinary intelligence, and a retentive memory. His work is constant, and his only recreation, study. He must not only be proficient in his own immediate work, but he must have a general knowledge of the entire country, so that the correspondence he handles shall reach its destination at the earliest possible moment. He must know no night and no day. He must be impervious to heat or cold. Rushing along at a rate of forty or fifty miles an hour, in charge of that which is sacred—the correspondence of the people—catching his meals as he may; at home only semi-occasionally, the wonder is that men competent to discharge the duties of so high a calling can be found for so small a compensation, and for so uncertain a tenure of official life. They have not only to take the extra-hazardous risks of their toilsome duties, but they are at the mercy of the practical politicians who believe that "to the victor belong the spoils." There are no public offices which are so emphatically "public trusts" as those whose duties comprise that of handling the correspondence of the people, because upon the proper and skilful performance of that duty depend—to a far greater degree than in the care of any other function accomplished through government agency—the business and social welfare of the entire community. The effects of ignorance, carelessness, and dishonesty in any other branch of the public service, although to be deplored, are not to be compared to those which follow the existence of such evils in the Post-Office. Can there be a more flagrant abuse of a "public trust" than the perversion of a branch of the public service into an agency for furthering the ambitious ends of local politicians and their partisans by allowing them to distribute its "patronage" as rewards for party services among those who, by reason of inexperience—if for no graver cause—are incompetent to replace the skilled workman who must be routed out in order to give them room? This evil should be corrected at once. The Railway Mail Service must no longer be left at the mercy of the local partisans. The reform is not only a present necessity, but it was one in the past and will be in the future, until the force of public sentiment shall compel acquiescence in the reasonable demand that what was so eminently meant for mankind shall not be given up to party; that the non-political business of letter-carrying, which the Government has monopolized, shall be conducted by it solely with a view to prompt and expeditious carrying of mail matter, and not with the object of bolstering up local "statesmen" or carrying elections.
At the coming in of Mr. Cleveland's administration, William B. Thompson was Second Assistant Postmaster-General—in charge of the contract office—and John Jameson was General Railway Mail Superintendent. Both of these gentlemen had worked their way from the ranks by sheer merit. In private business the value of their services would have been so highly appreciated that, no matter who became senior partner of the firm, under no circumstances would they have been permitted to retire. The case of these gentlemen is mentioned now simply to illustrate an idea and not to found a complaint. On the incoming of the new administration, General Thompson, in accordance with precedent, promptly tendered his resignation, and it was as promptly accepted; while General Superintendent Jameson struggled along doing his work until, to relieve his chief from embarrassment, he, too, tendered his resignation. The country was thus deprived of the services of two men who were experts in their profession, simply to give place to others, of high character, no doubt, but with no knowledge and special aptitude for the great trust that was committed to them. And now, in the first year of another administration, the experience that many valuable officials have gained has counted for nothing, and they have been rotated out. In no other civilized country would such an atrocity be possible. An attempt to remove, for similar reasons, such postal authorities as Messrs. Rich, of Liverpool, Johnston, of Manchester, or Hubson, of Glasgow, all of whom, under a sound, logical, just, and economical business system, have reached their present positions by merit and efficiency from more or less inferior places, would hurl an administration in Great Britain from power, and justly too. The possession of the immense patronage of the Government did not save the Republican party from defeat in 1884, or keep the Democratic party in power in 1888. Ideas are stronger than "soap," and principles more potent than spoils. It is due to President Cleveland to state that toward the close of his administration he recognized the importance of permanency in the Railway Mail Service, and that he made a long step in advance by approving a series of rules submitted by the Civil Service Commission having for its object the removal of the service from the influences of politicians. It needs more than this, however; it needs the sanctity of the statute law, declaring that the clerks should not only keep their offices during good behavior, but that after twenty years of faithful and efficient service, or before that time, if injured in the discharge of their duty, they should retire on half-pay. In case of death from accident while on duty, proper provision should be made for the family of the official. Whenever justice is done by Congress in these particulars, the United States will have the best and most efficient Railway Mail Service in the world.
[THE RAILWAY IN ITS BUSINESS RELATIONS.]
By ARTHUR T. HADLEY.
Amount of Capital Invested in Railways—Important Place in the Modern Industrial System—The Duke of Bridgewater's Foresight—The Growth of Half a Century—Early Methods of Business Management—The Tendency toward Consolidation—How the War Developed a National Idea—Its Effect on Railroad Building—Thomson and Scott as Organizers—Vanderbilt's Capacity for Financial Management—Garrett's Development of the Baltimore & Ohio—The Concentration of Immense Power in a Few Men—Making Money out of the Investors—Difficult Positions of Stockholders and Bondholders—How the Finances are Manipulated by the Board of Directors—Temptations to the Misuse of Power—Relations of Railroads to the Public who Use Them—Inequalities in Freight Rates—Undue Advantages for Large Trade Centres—Proposed Remedies—Objections to Government Control—Failure of Grangerism—The Origin of Pools—Their Advantages—Albert Fink's Great Work—Charles Francis Adams and the Massachusetts Commission—Adoption of the Interstate Commerce Law—Important Influence of the Commission—Its Future Functions—Ill-judged State Legislation.