Postal Riders and Raiders

by W. H. Gantz

“If they did not know, then what have they been doing during their five or ten years of service?”

“If they know so much, how many years would it take “Boob” Sikes of Boobtown to learn as little as they appeared to know?”

By the time the questions begin to take on this sort of “How old is Ann” character, you will have reached the conclusion that you have discovered something and have seen things to prove it.

Just here it may be pertinently asked, why those top-notchers in that postoffice should be blanketed by the stipulations of a civil service law which gives them merit credits and grades for the years they have been in the service? If you and I have been loafing on a job for five, ten or more years—been foozling with the duties of that job while heeling and fanning for a political party—why should the law credit those years to us as service “experience?”

In placing any service or a division of any service under a merit classification, the law should require that every position in such service be filled by examination, and such examination should be open alike to the shirt-sleeved employe already holding a position in such service and to outsiders. Such a requirement would show what of service value there really was as a result of the years an employe had been in the service.

Do you ever go to Washington, D. C.? If so, the next time you go, take in one or more of the main divisions of the Postoffice Department. Some guide or clerk will probably be detailed to steer you through. Your pilot will talk considerable and his talk will listen well. You need not, however, hear all nor even much of what he says. As advised in your visit to the Presidential postoffice, keep both your ears and your eyes open to hear and see what the service employes say and do.

You will observe that a considerable number of the clerical force are doing something—are really trying to work. You will also discover before going far that a number of employes are industriously engaged in talking. The smiles and quiet laughter which embellish their conversation may lead you to believe that they are talking about some of the humorous incidents and features of the postal service. Do not, however, be hasty in arriving at such conclusion. If you get near enough to hear an occasional word, you may discover that their conversation is evidently about something which a humoresque writer has described as “the recently distant elsewhere,” and not about the department service at all. It may be about some feature or phase of Washington’s social flux or about some social function which is to stake a temporary claim in the circle in which the talkers circulate. In short, you will discover that the conversation is but commercially pasteurized small-talk and not business.

Moving on, you will observe other little groups in animated conversation. A glance at the anæmic appearance of some of the talkers will lead you to the immediate and sound conclusion that the subject of conversation cannot be weighty. Politics, even party politics, either practical or progressive, you will readily see would be some sizes too large for them. Getting within hearing range, you will learn that these industrious servants of the people are discussing the telling points in some prize fight “pulled off” the night before or of the ball game which some one or more of the coterie had seen the day before. Maybe some one of the group is turning loose his stem-winding, automatic bloviate ejector in telling his interested auditors about what a “ripping time” he had with Rose at some dance or other party last night. What you hear will be sufficient to convince you that these “classified civil service employes” must put in considerable time in mental and physical exertion to work out of their systems the lessons they were taught at mother’s knee, and much more of their time trying to keep several laps behind their jobs. You will also see that some of the service men are workers—real workers—who earn more than the salaries paid them. So, too, are there many of them whose industry should make a more or less conspicuous service trench into four or five dollars a day. But when you get outside or get home, you will remember having seen numerous supervising and directing heads and many clerks who appeared to be actually tiring themselves out in exertions to keep away from work.

Yes, I repeat, the Postoffice Department carries upon its payrolls too many non-producers of service values—too many mere payroll-raiders on the postal revenues. Putting all these into graded classified service and under the protection of a “joker”-ridden law will not improve the actual service—will not stop the raid of which I have been writing.

The civil service of the government and subordinate division of it—city, county and state—should be controlled by law, not by political partisanship. Mr. Hitchcock is forcefully right in what he says on this very important subject. But laws providing rules and regulations for the betterment of a public service should not provide blind alleys and trenches through which dominating party officials and “bosses” may so easily obstruct or balk accomplishment of the purpose, or the alleged purpose, of the law. I have mentioned three objectionable features common to nearly all civil service laws—to all that I have read. There are other objectionable provisions in some of the laws. I am not, however, intending to discuss here the desirability or the objections to civil service, either as it is or as it should be, save in so far as the present federal law has applied, is applied and may be applied, to the postal service.