[6] Mr. Hitchcock, it should be noted, is careful in giving the higher per cent. of rate which the third and fourth classes show above the second class rate. Beyond the bare statement that the expense of handling second class matter “is less” than for other classes, he says nothing of cost of carriage and handling. His own figures show (see preceding paragraph), that the cost of carriage and handling first-class matter is 422 per cent. higher than his own absurd cost-figure of 9 cents a pound (cost) for carriage and handling second-class and 4600 per cent. higher than the present second class rate.
[7] Mr. Suter must certainly have been wind-jamming a little. “Every man, woman and child” pays at a maximum rate of 2 cents an ounce or fraction thereof. That is at the rate of 32 cents a pound. Mr. Hitchcock’s figures assert, that it costs “47 cents a pound” to carry and handle the letters for “every man, woman and child”—that is, presuming they all write letters. The letter writers, it appears then, pay only 2 cents for a service which costs nearly 3 cents.
CHAPTER X.
POSTAL DEFICITS.
Now, let us look into and over that postoffice “deficit,” to the origin of which the memory of man scarcely runneth back, and which Mr. Hitchcock, by some strenuous effort on right lines readily converted into a surplus—a $6,000,000 deficit into some hundreds of thousands of dollars surplus. The returns are not all in yet. At any rate the Postmaster General has not announced them loud enough for The Man on the Ladder to hear, or he was in his physician’s hands when the announcement was made.
However that may be, Mr. Hitchcock has proved quite conclusively that there is no deficit—or, at least, no valid reason for one under present conditions.
And here, again, I desire to say that our present Postmaster General is deserving the praise or commendation of every American citizen for having demonstrated, by a few economies here and a few betterments there in the operation of his department, that the service can be rendered, and rendered efficiently, with an expenditure safely within the bounds of the department’s receipts or revenues.
Especially is Mr. Hitchcock deserving of commendation for this demonstration, because in making it he has done what so many of his predecessors talked of as desirable, but failed to do.
But with full acknowledgment of the splendid effort Mr. Hitchcock has made in converting a postal deficit of $6,000,000 in 1909-10 into a surplus for the year 1910-11, I desire to discuss, briefly, postal department deficits of the past—or the future—and the origin and cause of them.