“The only other accounts of expenditures on the books of the treasury are based on audited settlements, most of which are months in arrears of actual transactions; as between the record of cash advanced to disbursing officers and the accounts showing audited vouchers, there is a current difference of from $400,000,000 to $700,000,000, representing vouchers which have not been audited and settled.”
Of course, I do not know how that may strike the reader. It strikes the writer, however, as being about as near the limit as any individual or corporation could go without falling over the financial edge and nearer the limit than any sensible, well and honestly directed government should go.
Again—No, I will requote no more. Turn back and read the quotation from the President’s message again. Read carefully, and then read it once more. Any citizen, whose mental tires are not punctured will be not only a wiser but a bigger and better citizen for having done so.
It was my intention to close this division of my subject with the excerpts from President Taft’s message. My attention however was called to a move made by Postmaster General Hitchcock, and an interview had with him bearing on said move. It was taken note of and “spaced” by a majority of the newspapers having general circulation in the United States. What I shall here quote is taken from a Chicago paper of date April 1, and the “write-up,” nearly a column, is based, it is probable, on a wire to the journal either from its Washington correspondent or a news agency. As the article appeared in so many newspapers I take it that the information conveyed is entirely dependable.
From the write-up it appears that Postmaster General Hitchcock has made “a round dozen” of changes among the postal officials in the railway mail service. Some of the changes were promotions—on the government’s pay roll—changes of division superintendents from one division to another, shifting of division chief clerks and of division inspectors, etc., etc. Theodore Ingalls, formerly superintendent of “rural mails,” is now superintendent of the “railway mail service,” succeeding Alexander Grant, who, the friendly space writer says, “is one of the most widely known postoffice officials in the service.” Whether favorably or unfavorably known, the write-up sayeth not. At any rate, Mr. Grant goes to the St. Paul division of the railway mail service at $1,000 per year less than he formerly drew from the postoffice department funds. Per contra, Mr. Ingalls steps from “rurals” to railway mails at an increase of $1,000. The other “round dozen” changes are of similar character, though affecting positions subordinate or minor to the ones named. No dismissals, just shifting the official pegs around, possibly for the “good of the service,” as Mr. Hitchcock says; possibly for other reasons. It is to be hoped that Postmaster General Hitchcock stated the entire truth and that these changes are for the good of the service. The railway mail service is certainly in dire need of betterment, as the reader will learn before I finish, if he but has the interest and the patience to follow me to the end.
Why Mr. Hitchcock did not make some twelve hundred changes in the railway mail service instead of a “round dozen,”—and many of them dismissals—I do not know. Perhaps Mr. Hitchcock does know. Let us hope he does and be thankful for small favors. Many people, however, who have watched the Postoffice Department’s maneuverings during the past forty years have seen too many “Sunday Editions” put to mail to be fooled by any of this “shake-up” talk. This shifting of the official shoats from one pen to another, still leaving them with their noses and four feet in the trough, is a too common and well known practice in the police and other public safety departments of our larger cities to fool anybody who has had his eyes open since the first full moon in April, 1868.
Shake-ups which do not retire incompetent or “faulted” public officials and servants, just as a “faulted” casting is rejected at “milling,” is not a “shake-up” that will stand good in any strata of human intelligence above that found in asylums for broken-down cerebral equipment. It is betterments, not “shake-ups,” that are needed.
The reader will please understand that there is no personal animus in what I here—or elsewhere—write. I have not had the pleasure, and possibly the honor, of personal acquaintance with Mr. Ingalls, Mr. Grant and others of the “round dozen” involved in the Postmaster General’s “shake-up.” They are probably all fine gentlemen personally, whom it would be a privilege to meet and to know. But we are writing to a subject infinitely larger than any man or set of men.