It was also shown in several instances, if I remember rightly, that some of the typewriters, etc., were never franked back to government possession. However that may be, all such mailings are of the fourth class and fall into the 16-cent a pound rate for carriage and handling.
Let us here foot up the amount of the raidings on the postal funds, so far as we have gone.
First,—There is the free-in-county second-class—$600,000 to $800,000.
Second,—There is the free second-class franked and penalty matter. Third Assistant Postmaster General Britt “estimates” it at $510,000, figured at the present one-cent rate. I have shown the weakness of Mr. Britt’s basis of estimate. In my judgment the tonnage of franked and penalty second-class mail is nearer 75,000,000 pounds than his estimate of 51,000,000 pounds. But to take Mr. Britt’s figures, there is another raid of $510,000 on the service revenues of the Postoffice Department.
Next, we have the free first, third and fourth class matter which the postal service handles under franking or penalty regulations.
How much does this raid total? How much has and does this raid contribute toward the creation of that “deficit” which has so long, so continuously and so brazenly been used to bubble the people in politico-postal oratory and writing?
The reader must keep in mind that we are here asking about the thirty-two, the eight and the sixteen cents a pound classes of mail. To what extent have the various departments of the government raided the postal funds by taxing the postal service with their over-load of the character indicated? That they have taxed the Postoffice Department’s revenues by demanding of that department its highest class and highest rated service in unlimited degree, and that, too, without one cent of compensation, pay or credit, is a fact which no informed man will attempt to controvert.
But what did such service (and abuse of service) cost the Postoffice Department? To what extent did and does this “frank and penalty” privilege in first, third and fourth class use of the mails loot or raid the postal revenues?
Is it to the extent of three, two or one million dollars? Is it lower than the lowest or higher than the highest figures just named?
I do not know—do you? Have you, the reader, been able to ascertain from the records of the Postoffice Department, or elsewhere, any figures or data that enables you to make even a “frazzled” guess at the approximate cost to the postal department of this unjust—this politically and governmentally crooked burden put upon it?