When the government installs a parcels post service that accepts, carries and delivers packages weighing from twelve to twenty or more pounds these looting express and railroad raiders will go out of business.
SUBSIDY RAIDERS.
Everybody who has studied the question at all knows that all alleged deficits in the postal service are the malformed progeny of an illegal union between crooked public officials and criminal violators of the law enacted to establish and govern the carriage and delivery of mail matter in these United States. So noticeable has been the closed eyes and “rear view” of government officials while the railroad and express raiders raided and walked off with their loot that petty thieves began to shin up the posts of the Postoffice Department directly or sneak in by way of Congressional legislation.
“What were they after?” Why, they wanted a “subsidy” for carrying foreign or ocean mails, or they wanted a “pork” contract—one of those contracts which renders little service for much money.
Did you ever hear of Tahiti? No. It is not a breakfast food nor a sure cure for cancers. It is an island. “Where?” Ask the Almighty. I don’t know, and I am doubtful whether the Almighty knows or cares. I know it is an island somewhere, because a few years ago the postal department entered into a contract with some “tramp” steamer flying a rag, which close inspection might discover had once been the American flag.
The Postoffice Department paid that tramp $45,000 for carrying our mails to Tahiti—a service that another vessel in the Tahiti trade offered to render for $3,500.
Can there be any legitimate surprise or wonder at a “deficit” resulting from such business methods?
But that, of course, was “a few years ago.” Yet, stay! On page 264 of the 1910 report of the Postoffice Department, I find that the Oceanic Line—a line of United States register—carried to and from Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands 7,622 pounds of letters and 159,483 pounds of prints. This was carried under a “contract” and the Oceanic people were paid $46,398 for the service—for carrying about 88 tons of mail matter.
Looks like a good “deficit” producer, does it not?