Postal Riders and Raiders

by W. H. Gantz

The evidence in support of my impeachment of the Postoffice Department on account of its almost total lack of business method, its absolute helplessness to tell, even with approximate accuracy, the loss of any division of its service, or the revenues resulting from any given source or class of mail carried, would not be complete without quoting Senator Penrose and former Senator Carter.

Senator Penrose of Pennsylvania is Chairman of the Senate Committee on Postoffices and Postroads, and former Senator Carter was conceded to be one of the well informed men on postal matters in Congress.

The excerpt from Senator Penrose is from an address he made on the floor of the Senate, within the year, when speaking to the subject of second-class mail rates, and that from Mr. Carter is from his address on the same subject made in March, 1910. Both follow:

It is idle to take up such questions as apportioning the cost for carrying second-class mail matter or the proper compensation of railroads for transporting the mails until we shall have established business methods in postoffice affairs by a reorganization of the whole postal system.—Senator Penrose.

I deeply sympathize with the earnest desire of the department officials to get rid of the deficiency they are fated to encounter every year, but I submit that the first real movement toward that end must begin with the substitution of a modern, up-to-date business organization for the existing antiquated system.—Senator Carter.

Comment on the plain, blunt statements of these members of our highest legislative body, each admittedly well informed on the subject to which he speaks, is quite unnecessary.

In closing this division of my subject I desire to quote President Taft; quote from his message to Congress under date of March 3, 1911. It is an illuminating message and forcefully pertinent to the point we are considering. I would like to reprint the entire document, but fear I cannot do so. Of course, President Taft’s strictures and adverse criticisms are general—since they apply to all governmental departments—but every official in Washington knows, and none better than the President himself, that they have both adhesive and cohesive qualities when applied to the postoffice department.

In this message the President asks for an appropriation of $75,000 to continue the work he has already begun, that of revising departmental methods of doing business and of instituting a practical, commonsense system of accounting under which, or from which, it will be possible for administrative and legislative officials to learn, approximately at least, just what departments have done—to any date—and just what it has cost to do it, two items of information as appears from the message of the Chief Executive which neither his nor any previous administration has ever been able to learn, and is not now able to learn with any considerable degree of dependable accuracy.

As yet I have not learned whether the President obtained the $75,000 asked for. I hope he did. If Congress will appropriate $750,000 for the purpose the President names in his message, and sees to it that the money is judiciously and intelligently disbursed, it is the opinion of The Man on the Ladder that not less than $100,000,000 annually would be saved in government expenditures, or one hundred millions more of service, material, equipment, etc., delivered for the money now expended.