The postal service of the government is also rendered free to the several departments to handle all their third and fourth class mail matter. What the annual tonnage of these two classes aggregates I have been unable to learn. Whether or not the Postoffice Department keeps any records showing the aggregate mailings by the other departments, I do not know. I do know, however, that it gets neither pay nor credit for transporting and handling the third and fourth class matter put to mail by the other departments of the Federal Government. That the total weight mailed must run into many hundreds of tons yearly for each of the classes named there can be little grounds for doubt or question, records or no records.
The mailing rate on third-class is eight cents a pound. On fourth-class it is sixteen cents a pound. Those are the rates the people have to pay. That both rates are outrageously excessive is well known to every one who has made even a cursory study of the cost of transporting and handling government mails, and the irony of it all is the stock arguments put up by postoffice and other federal officials to justify such outrageous rates.
“The rates are necessary to make the Postoffice Department self-supporting—to avoid a deficit,” or statements of similar washed out force and import. And that in face of the fact that the government permits its departments, bureaus, divisions, “commissions,” etc., to raid the postal revenues by loading upon the postal service the cost of transporting and distributing thousands of tons of mail matter for which it gets not a cent of pay or credit.
Nice business methods or practice that, is it not?
Beautiful “argument,” this prattle about deficits in the postal revenues, is it not?
Why, it is humorous enough to make empty headed fools laugh and sensible men use language which postal regulations bar from the mails.
Think of the tons upon tons of official reports, of the bound volumes of the Congressional Record, of copies of the Supreme Courts rulings and other printed books and pamphlets distributed by the Departments of War, Navy, Agriculture, Interior and others.
All these fall into the third-class, or 8-cent-a-pound rate.
Think of the tons upon tons of seeds—farm, garden and flower—sent by Congressmen to their constituents—to thousands of constituents who do not need the seeds, in fact, who can make no possible use of them; of the tons upon tons of clothing, suitings, household bric-a-brac, etc., franked by Senators and Congressmen to their homes, to their wives, children, sweethearts or friends.
Investigations in the past have shown that hundreds of typewriters, office desks, even articles of household furniture, were sent home under frank.