Postal Riders and Raiders

by W. H. Gantz

Mr. Waters is publisher of the Denver Harpoon. He can say things and is generally recognized as a man who makes a practice of gathering the facts to back up what he says before he says it. In his testimony, so far as I know, Mr. Waters made no statement or suggestion that the evaporated million he spoke of would be, or could be, very securely cacheted or “fenced” in this “account of previous years.” It is The Man on the Ladder who points out—who says—that such loose accounting as carries to account of a subsequent year the expenditures made or incurred in a previous year can very readily be made to cloak a steal of one or more millions of dollars.

Then, there are those rural carriers who refused to do as Mr. DeGraw, Fourth Assistant Postmaster General, told them to do. You read the papers of course, and—you believe them, of course, though most of you say, “Of course, I don’t believe ’em.” Well, it was broadly published that the Rural Free Delivery News had the temerity to publish—not merely to insinuate, mind you—that Mr. Hitchcock’s showing of a little $220,000 surplus for the year ended June 30, 1911, was made possible only by the failure of the Postoffice Department to make a plain, valid charge of $7,201,149.64 expenditures for that same fiscal year of 1911!

Those are not the exact words used in giving publicity to the asserted fact by the Rural Free Delivery News, but that is the meat in the nut the publication cracked. It appears that the published statement was closely contiguous to the facts. At any rate, its nestling juxtaposition to the truth was such that it appears to have neither looked nor listened well to the department. There is a presidential campaign on the speedway at this time, with all its usual concomitants of cackle, clack, cluck and other atmospheric disturbances. Such a published truth—if truth it is, and it certainly displays a marked resemblance in both form and feature to that article so extremely rare in campaign clutter—the appearance of such a truth on the speedway has a tendency to “blanket” some candidate or jockey him into the fence. With a view no doubt, to guarding against such possibility, that machine so much used in recent years to smooth down the rough places in administration roadways was turned onto the track. A hostile opposition, always somewhat harsh and careless in its language, calls it “the steam roller.” So the steam roller, with Fourth Assistant Postmaster General DeGraw at the wheel and manipulating the levers, rolled out among the rural carriers.

But it appears that it did not roll over them. There are forty-odd thousand rural carriers and, of course, it would have to be some “steam roller” to mutilate or seriously dent the ranks of so numerous a body of men; especially of men who travel about with the fragrance of the clover blossom and the corn bloom in their nostrils. They just wouldn’t be rolled and, it is reported they so informed Mr. DeGraw in very polite and easily understood language. They would not demand of the publisher of their association organ that he retract and, to date, the Rural Free Delivery News has, so far as I have seen, shown no sign of either intention or inclination to back away from or in any way modify its charge which, in effect, was that the showing of a surplus—of even a little “runabout” surplus of $220,000 for the fiscal year of 1911—is a “faked” showing—a showing made possible only by carrying $7,201,149.64 of 1911 expenditures over to 1912 account.

May the Rural Free Delivery News live long in the land and flourish.

In a letter just received from Mr. W. D. Brown, editor of the R. F. D. News, he says: “When the Postoffice Committee submitted its report on March 6, it contained the statement that instead of a surplus in the postal revenues there was, up to that time, a deficit of more than $600,000.00 and I am satisfied that the amount will be greatly increased before the end of the current fiscal year.”

In the News of January 27, the issue to which Mr. DeGraw took exception, Editor Brown publishes a letter he wrote under date of January 11, 1912, to Mr. Charles A. Kram, Auditor of the Postoffice Department. He also publishes Mr. Kram’s reply. In comment on the reply, Mr. Brown says: “Auditor Kram’s reply throws very little light upon the subject, except to establish the fact that it is impossible to say at any time, whether the Postoffice Department is being conducted at a profit or a loss.”

Next comes Congressman Moon, an admitted authority on postal affairs and Chairman of the House Committee of Postoffices and Post-Roads.

I see by a press notice that Mr. Moon, in speaking to the question before his committee recently, stated that there was a “deficit of $627,845 for the fiscal year of 1911” in the Postoffice Department, instead of a surplus of $219,118.12, as published in its report, and over which Mr. Hitchcock and President Taft display so much luxuriant jubilation.

We have probably presented sufficient testimony to evidence the fact that the figures presented by our Postoffice Department are numerously, if not unanimously, doubted among people who take upon themselves the trouble and the labor of looking into them. True, the three or four witnesses we have introduced do not agree as to the amount or magnitude of the shortages or discrepancies they have found, nor have they said, just where in the loose, bungled accounting they found the discrepancies. However, my purpose here is to show only that publicity of such bungled accounting does not enlighten or inform the public and that the practice of charging the expenditures of one year to account of the next may easily be made to cloak and cover up much wasteful if, indeed, not dishonest expenditure. That being the case, the disagreement of our witnesses as to the amount of dollars and cents they severally have found to be mislaid, or not properly accounted for, can make little difference in the conclusion forced by their testimony on any fair, inquiring mind.