The receipts of the Postoffice Department, as published in its annual reports, were $34,317,440.53 greater for the fiscal year 1910-11 than for the year 1908-9.
Both the President and Mr. Hitchcock are eloquently ebullient because of the appearance of a tender shoot or bud of a surplus in a place where nothing but deficits grew before. But neither of them appears to have boiled over in either message or report to show the people what splendid things have been accomplished in two years with that thirty-four millions of increased revenues. I wonder why? Possibly the failure of ebullition at the point indicated is the result of oversight. Of course, it may have resulted from lack of thermic encouragement or inducement. Or, it may be, that some “induced draft” drew the major part of the thirty-four millions up the smoke-stack without leaving a B. T. U. equivalent under the kettle.
“The Postmaster General recommends, as I have done in previous messages, the adoption of a parcels post, and the beginning of this in the organization of such service on rural routes and in the city delivery service first,” says President Taft.
If the President really has recommended in “previous messages” the “beginning” of a parcels post “experiment” in “the City Delivery Service” such recommendation entirely escaped my notice. A “test” of a parcels post service on rural routes—yes. That was much talked of a year or more since. But of an “experimental test” of an improved parcels post in urban carrier service, little or nothing was said or, if said, it did not make sufficient noise for The Man on the Ladder to hear. However, I presume it is as permissible for the conceptions and concepts of a President to broaden, enlarge and improve as it is for those of a Postmaster General to broaden, enlarge and improve. For that matter, a proportional, if not entirely corresponding thought-expansion may be occasionally noticed in the Department of the Interior as conducted and operated by common, ordinary mortals.
As the parcels post is the subject of a later chapter which is already in type, further consideration here is unnecessary. It may be said, however, that extending the proposed test—any “test”—of a parcels post service to city free delivery routes, instead of confining it to a few “selected” rural routes as Mr. Hitchcock proposed it should be confined in his 1910 report, is a step in the right direction—a step in advance. Still, such a step is but dilatory; is but procrastinating. A cheap, efficient, general parcels post service must come and, now that the people are aroused—aroused as to the criminal wrongs inflicted upon them by a Postoffice Department and a Congress that have acted for thirty or more years as if indifferent to or not cognizant of those wrongs—it must come quickly, unless, of course, it should develop that the people are, really and truly, as big fools as railroad, express companies and certain public officials have treated them as being.
“The commission reports that the evidence submitted for its consideration is sufficient to warrant a finding of the approximate cost of handling and transporting the several classes of second-class mail known as paid-at-the-pound-rate, free-in-county, and transient matter, in so far as relates to the services of transportation, postoffice cars, railway distribution, rural delivery, and certain other items of cost, but that it is without adequate data to determine the cost of the general postoffice service and also what portion of the cost of certain other aggregate services is properly assignable to second-class mail matter.… It finds that in the fiscal year 1908 … the cost of handling and transporting second-class mail matter … was about 6 cents a pound for paid-at-the-pound-rate matter, and for free-in-county, and transient matter, each approximately 5 cents a pound, and that upon this basis, as modified by subsequent deductions in the cost of railroad transportation, the cost of paid-at-the-pound rate matter, for the services mentioned” (I have not mentioned all the “services” enumerated by the President, all being covered in the words “handling and transportation”), “is approximately 5½ cents a pound.” …
That is from the President’s Washington Day message. Can you beat it? Well, it will take a smooth road and some going to do it.
First, it is cheerfully admitted that the Commission (the Hughes Commission) had no “adequate data to determine the cost of the general postoffice service and also what portion of the cost of certain other aggregate services is properly assignable to second-class mail matter,” and then our President proceeds—with equal cheerfulness and smiling confidence (or is it indifference?) to assure us that the Commission proceeded to figure 6 cents a pound as the cost of handling and carriage of paid pound-rate second-class matter and 5 cents a pound as the cost of corresponding service for free-in county and so-called “transient” matter!
Again I ask, can you beat it? If you can, please send me your picture—full size and two views, front and profile. I would derive much pleasure from a look at your front and side elevations. Of course, the President has an official right to a “style” of his own. A “style” of expression, however, cannot be protected by copyright, otherwise, as stated at the opening of this interpolated chapter, President Taft would be guilty of infringement. Other presidents have run into verbose verbosity in expressing themselves. It is an official convenience at times to do so, however ludicrously open of intent or “phunny” it may appear to laymen.
The President, in the paragraph of his message above quoted, recalls two of his “arguments” before the Swedish American Republican League, of Chicago, which arguments I had the honor to hear. In one instance he was flourishing about our ideal of popular government and said: “What we are all struggling for, what we all recognize as the highest ideal in society, is equality of opportunity.… Of course perfect equality of opportunity is impossible,” then why it is impossible followed for a paragraph.