Such a showing excuses another question—excuses it because it invites the question:
What amount—how many millions of dollars—of 1910-11 unpaid bills and claims was carried over to become a charge against the fiscal year 1911-12?
Oh, yes, I am fully aware that this may be all readily explained by saying that the claimed improvements as set forth have nothing whatever to do with the practice of carrying forward unpaid bills of one fiscal year and making them a charge against the receipts of the next or some subsequent fiscal year.
Such an explanation is easily understood, because it does not explain. That is, it is an explanation which, to be believably understood, requires more explaining than do the faults and crooks in the method of accounting it attempts to explain.
That the “fumbling” of this carrying-over practice needs correction—needs abolishment—will be seen from a glance at the two following tabulations. That the practice also makes the departments’ annual showing of the results of the business of the year—any year—almost valueless is also made evident—that is, valueless so far as real, dependable information is concerned as to whether the postal service is conducted at a loss or at a profit.
The first tabulation following shows the published figures for the fiscal year’s expenses as given in the departmental reports. It also shows what the expenses of the fiscal years indicated really were, when their unpaid bills (as shown by the next annual report of the department) are charged against them.
The whole charge, “On Account of Previous Years” in each report is treated as a charge against the immediately preceding year. It has been shown that payments on “account of previous years,” as given in the published reports, include for years other than the first or immediately preceding, amounts so small that they may be, for purposes of comparison, ignored.[8]
At any rate, the figures in the following tabulations of expenditures and deficits—accepting the department’s published statements of receipts as correct—are far more enlightening to the general public as to the results of each year’s business, for the five years here covered, than are the statements made in the annual reports of the department for the years named.
The second table shows the “deficits,” or balances for each of the five years as compared with the deficits shown in the annual reports of the department, the corrected figures being subject, of course, to any trifling reduction which may have resulted from the payment of bills carried into the account from some other than the immediately preceding year:
ANNUAL EXPENDITURES OF THE POSTOFFICE DEPARTMENT.