Postal Riders and Raiders

by W. H. Gantz

At the suggestion of this commission, the Postoffice Department prepared and delivered to it “an elaborate statement with exhibits” to show the “defects of the existing statute as developed in actual operation.” Also, the then Postmaster General, Mr. George B. Cortelyou, his Second Assistant, Mr. W. S. Shallenberger, and his Third Assistant, Mr. Edwin C. Madden, prepared and presented personal statements to the commission.

Now some readers may wonder why I so particularly present the work done by this commission for their consideration at this point in my discussion of the general subject we have under consideration. In view of my previous statement, to the effect that I do not agree with some of the conclusions of this “Penrose-Overstreet Commission” some reader may wonder why I make reference to it at all. Well, there are several reasons why I do so and do it just at this point in the consideration of our general subject. Among those reasons are, briefly stated, the following:

The inquiry and investigation of this commission were broad, comprehensive and thorough.

Its report presents many arguments, recommendations and conclusions which must appeal to any man who is fairly well informed as to our federal postal service, as sound and sensible, however widely he may differ from the commission’s conclusions on some other points covered in its report.

Some readers who have seen and read the Penrose-Overstreet Commission’s report may possibly have concluded that it presents all the information collected and collated by the commission. The reader so concluding would, almost necessarily, think the information it presents insufficient, both in subject matter and in detail, to be as helpful to the Postmaster General as, on a previous page, I have asserted the work of this commission would be to Mr. Hitchcock, or would have been had he taken the trouble to consult the voluminous but carefully collated data gathered by the 1906-7 commission and on file in his department.

I will here quote a few lines from the report of the Penrose-Overstreet Commission in proof of the fact that its inquiry, investigations and work provided Postmaster General Hitchcock, had he but taken the time to consult it, a store of information vastly greater than that presented in its brief official report of sixty-three pages.

Read the following and you will readily understand why Representative Moon, on March 3, 1911, so strenuously objected to the appointment of another second-class mail commission and to spending $50,000 more of the people’s money to investigate a matter already thoroughly and comprehensively investigated and to collect and collate data which is already on file in the Postoffice Department. The quotation is from page 6 of the commission’s report. The italics are the writer’s:

In accordance with this plan, (outlined in immediately preceding paragraphs), which operated to economize the time as well of the commission as of those appearing before it, a great volume of evidence was presented upon all aspects of the question from the standpoint both of the postal service and of the publications involved

…

The testimony taken by the commission at these hearings, with statements submitted in writing by publishers not orally heard, boards of trade, and the like, and other data collected by the commission in the course of its investigations, together with a complete digest of such testimony, are embodied in the record of its proceedings submitted with this report.