“The chief difficulty in securing economy and reform is the lack of accurate information as to what the money of the government is spent for.”
Does not that fully bear out what Judge Moon said in discussing the Senate resolution to appropriate $50,000 more for a second-class mail commission—devote fifty thousand more after the government had already spent several hundred thousands delving into the same subject and got little or nothing of value, by reason of the loose, careless and wasteful methods of the federal postal department?
… “There is no means for determining the relation of current surplus or deficit.”
An inviting business situation that, is it not? Especially “inviting” is it to officials and subordinates who want something they have not earned, who want to find something.
“No operation account is kept, and no statement of operations is rendered showing the expenses incurred—the actual cost of doing business—the actual cost of doing business on the one side and the revenues accrued on the other.”
Now, my dear reader, don’t you know that such a method or system, or lack of method or system, would put a western corn farm in “financial distress” the first season and out of business the second? A cattle ranch, handled on such loose, ignorant methods would be sold out in a year. What, in reduction, does this unqualified statement of our President mean?
It means that the heads of governmental departments do not know; that their subordinates do not know, and, therefore, our President, our Senators and our Congressmen do not know. Nor can they, under existing conditions and methods, find out. They cannot find out even the common—the basic—essentials of business methods and management which Job Fraser, down in “Egypt,” must know in order to keep his hen range out of bankruptcy.
Do you remember a quotation, some pages back, from the joint commission which investigated the postoffice department? The investigation which rummaged into the second-class mail schedule particularly? If you do not remember, turn back and read it again. It fits like the skin of an Alberta peach to what the President has just said (March 3, 1911), in his message from which we have quoted.
While collecting millions of revenue beyond all possible expenditures, under competent, honest management, our federal postoffice department would have gone into bankruptcy save for the backing of the government’s treasury—for the backing of your money.