Postal Riders and Raiders

by W. H. Gantz

I have hunted and have found nothing but talk, and a few figures scattered here and there and gathered from—well, the Lord may know where. But the Lord has failed to inform me. So I am in ignorance—am benighted, just like our “poor farmers,” both as to the source of the figures I have seen and as to their force and value in reaching a fair conclusion as to the aggregate amount of postal revenues the departmental raiders have been and are carrying off. If any reader knows or can dig up the facts, he will confer a great favor by handing the information to The Man on the Ladder. Not only that, but I am confident that the people of this country will give such reader a niche, if needed not a conspicuous position, in their Hall of Fame, if he will give them even a dependable approximation of the extent to which the postal service revenues are raided—looted—by federal department abuses—their service and their money, for the departments pay not one dollar for the thousands of tons of mail matter of the various classes which the Postoffice Department transports and handles for them.

So far or so long has this departmental—bureaucratic, that is what it is—practice of raiding the postal revenues by loading its service continued, that the Postoffice Department has been and is looting itself by the same practice.

This volume is written during what is known as the “weighing period” in the postal service, the weighing being done to establish a basis for four years on which the railroads transporting the federal mails shall be paid. In other words, as basis for a “railway-mail-pay” rate, which rate will govern railway contracts for carrying the mails for a period of four years.

During the current weighing period I have, at various times, both during the day and at night, watched the weighing for varying intervals of from an hour to two hours. Among the revenue raids observed during those hours of leisure (?), I shall here mention a few. As the present Postmaster General treats all departmental, or “penalty,” matter as “franked” matter (See page 11 of the Postoffice Department report of 1910), I shall, in the brief mention of personally observed facts at several railway stations in Chicago do likewise.

(1) Three carloads of Senate speeches, franked to Chicago in bulk, the bulk then broken and the speeches remailed, under frank, to individual addresses.

I do not know the tonnage of those three cars. Local newspaper reports stated that there were 3,000,000 copies of one of the speeches. I take it that sixty tons is a low figure for the three carloads. The actual weight was probably nearer ninety tons. But leave it at sixty, the remailing in piece at bulk destination makes the weight 120 tons on which the Post office Department had to pay transportation, on sixty tons of which it also had to stand the expense of piece handling.

(2) Another carload of Senatorial vocal effort passed through Chicago to a destination far west. I do not know, but presume it was in bulk, and on arrival, bulk was broken and the matter returned to mail for piece distribution.

The reader must not overlook the fact that the character of matter carried in those four carloads was third-class—was eight-cent-a-pound matter. There were eighty tons or more of it in bulk and its remailing in piece would make it 160 tons.

If a manufacturer, merchant or other business man put to mail 160 tons of third-class matter he would contribute to the postal service revenue just $25,600.