CHAPTER XI. LATEST OFFICIAL STYLES IN POSTAL CONVERSATION.

The President’s message of February 22, 1912, reached me a few hours after the closing chapters of this volume had gone to the printers. With it arrived a copy of the Postmaster General’s report for the year ending June 30, 1911; also notice from a Congressman friend that he will have the Hughes Commission’s report on the way shortly. The Man on the Ladder, like Lucy, when selecting her spring bonnet, desires the “very latest creation.” It may not be essentially necessary in a discussion of Federal postal affairs, but even a hurried reading of the President’s message and the report of Postmaster General Hitchcock will furnish abundant evidence that expressed official opinion is somewhat ephemeral and transitory, like the styles in ladies’ headwear. I have never had the pleasure of retaining a lady’s unanimous friendship for any appreciable length of time after giving her my honest opinion of the style of her most recently acquired bonnet, and readers who have followed me thus far in my consideration of government postal affairs will have discovered that my respect for “style” in official oratory and literature needs coaching.

All that aside, however, the point is that I have persuaded my printers to “break galley” just here and permit the insertion of a chapter, having as subject the “very latest” in official postal affairs.
THE PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE.

In his Washington Day effort our smiling President is profusely loyal to the characteristics of his style in composition—plumage and displacement. Mr. Taft, however, should set up no claims of originality of design in Executive messages. Several of his predecessors presented the people of these United States with numerous displays of verbal plumage and trimmings. So our President had many working-models as guides in building the message upon which we shall proceed to comment.

This message, both in architectural specification and in contour or ensemble, is largely but a re-trim of the “block” furnished by Mr.[230] Hitchcock in his report, under date of December 1, 1911. In considering the President’s message and the report of the Postmaster General, we may, then, shorten our task somewhat by treating the two public documents as one. They, of course, differ in phrasing and wording, but the language of the message is only a sort of Executive “Me-too” approval of what Mr. Hitchcock says in his report, save on one point—the taking over of the telegraph companies by the government. That point we will discuss separately, presenting the argument of the president against the proposition and the facts presented by Postmaster General Hitchcock:

“It gives me pleasure to call attention to the fact that the revenues for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1911, amounted to $237,879,823.60 and that the expenditures amounted to $237,660,705.48, making a surplus of $219,118.12. For the year ending June 30, 1909, the postal service was in arrears to the extent of $17,479,770.47.”

Well, yes, certainly. It gives us all pleasure to see a surplus grow where only deficits grew before—gives us great pleasure. Still, Mr. President, you will permit us humbly to say that it has been a distressful winter and that here, the very last of February, the ground is still frozen hard. You, of course, will recall that our Postmaster General, at intervals during the last fiscal year, as opportunity for “interviews” offered, gave us confident assurances that his department was harvesting a surplus, ranging in amount from one to three million dollars. These assurances beyond our expectations—our hopes—led us to an elevation which makes it a far fall to $219,118.12. Of course, it is our fault. We should not have permitted our hopes and expectations to become so altitudinous. But Mr. Hitchcock has a very persuasive delivery and the public press quoted him so numerously and so prolixly that we climbed on and on up—away above the one and some of us well on towards the three million level and—well, as before said, the ground being frozen, a drop to $220,000 jars us some considerable in alighting. Mr. Hitchcock probably framed up his mid-year interviews to fit observed conditions, the best he knew how. Most of us will soon be out of the hospital and in condition to take an inflation for another flight. Some of the less venturesome among us may be over-careful not to soar too high, but our tank capacity remains about the same. So the Postmaster General may meter nearly the same amount of rhetorical gas to us without fear.[231] The President might, however, if he thinks it would not occasion any unseemly discord in rendering the grand symphony entitled “Administrative Policy,” give us folks some information on the following points—points raised by a reading of the Washington Day message and of the 1911 report of the Postmaster General, both of which are before me, as I write. Of course this is the President’s busy season and he may not be able to devote as much time to our enlightenment as he would like to and otherwise would. In that event, he may turn the subject over to Mr. Hitchcock and request him to separate himself from a few interviews to clear these matters up for us.

In each annual report of the Postoffice Department I have at hand (1907 to 1911 inclusive), there appears an item which reads, “Expenditures on account of previous years.” For the years indicated, the figures on this item of expenditures are as follows:
1907     $  303,045.55
1908     823,664.64
1909     586,404.69
1910     6,786,394.11
1911     7,132,112.23

As figures are always more or less of a serious nature, we will here drop the personal element in discussing these points on which information is desired, and much needed, if public press notices can be at all depended upon as informative. Of course “figures do not lie.” Still, it is generally known that, however truthful they may be in correct calculations, they sometimes appear very peculiar, if not queer, in tabulations. Some persons have even gone so far as to assert that “official figures” have frequently been so arranged and manipulated as to “conceal the facts.” Now, the figures for that item, “Expenditures on account of previous years” may conceal no facts which the public has any right to know. Still, there is something about them which irritates one’s bump of curiosity; that is, if one’s bump is not abnormally dwarfed or stunted. At any rate, it appears from press comment that those figures have sand-papered or otherwise frictioned several bumps of curiosity into a state of irritation. It is the hope of securing some official light that will act as a linitive or demulcent to my own and other bumps that persuaded those figures into evidence here.

What do those figures mean? Are they of any real informative value or merely convenient things to have around when building the[232] sub and superstructures of a department annual reports, like the figures of the postal deficits? A glance at the sums named in the table shows a variableness that amounts almost to a waywardness in totaling bills or accounts payable. The federal fiscal year ends June 30th. The annual reports of the Postoffice Department bear date December 1st—full four months after the close of the fiscal year. Surely four months is sufficient time to gather into account the bills payable or carried-over obligations of a previous year, is it not? Of course the business of the department is a large business—over $237,000,000 last year and about $260,000,000 is asked for this year in the appropriation bill recently passed by the House. But that is no reason whatever for failure to account for amounts ranging from $300,000 to $6,200,000 of unpaid bills of the business year in which the obligations were created; especially not, when publication of the accounting is made four months after the close of the year.

This item of “expenditures on account of previous years” becomes no more understandable, if indeed it does not become more suggestive of purposeful manipulation, when one looks over the itemized or segregated expenditures of the year. The items of expenditure are all of the conventional character used in business accounting—operation and maintenance—such as service salaries, transportation of the mails, rents, light, fuel, supplies, repairs, etc. And these are all set down as expenditures of and for the fiscal year’s business covered by the report, there being not even a suggestion that any part or portion of the total is an expenditure of the previous year—of any previous year.

So much for the detail of expenditures as published in the reports. From the summaries of receipts and expenditures one gathers no additional light. In the reports of the Third Assistant Postmaster General (division of accounts), one finds only the bald item, “Expenditures on account of previous years,” down to the report of Third Assistant, James J. Britt, for the year ended June 30, 1910. For that year Mr. Britt segregates the item as follows:
Services for the fiscal year, 1909     $6,721,058.52
Services for the fiscal year, 1908     53,814.12
Services for the fiscal year, 1907     108.97
Claims, fiscal year, 1907 and prior years     11,605.44
Claims, fiscal year, 1906 and prior years     25.00
Total for prior years     $6,786,394.11

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Anyone taking the trouble to add the five amounts given above, will discover an error of $217.94 in the total. While that error is only a trifle, its appearance, however, in the addition of but five items is not highly commendatory of the ability of Mr. Britt’s expert accountants. The making of such an error in totaling only five entries has a tendency to arouse doubt or suspicion as to the reliability or dependability, not only of the footings given for the longer tabulations published in the report, but also of the footings which must necessarily have been made to secure the totals which are entered as items in such tabulations. Be this as it may, very few persons, aside from clerks paid for doing the work (and, possibly, an official or two whose duty it is or should be to see that the work is done accurately), will go to the trouble to verify even the footings of the published tabulations. So the errors, if any have been made, are not likely to become subject matter for much adverse criticism.

My purpose in presenting the showing of the 1910 report on that item of “expenditure on account of previous years” is to make the statement that, so far as I have been able to look up the matter, it is a first weak attempt to make public in the annual report the accounts and claims carried over from a previous year or years and published as expenditures of the year to which they are carried. I desire the reader to note, also, that of the total of “expenditures on account of previous years” ($6,786,612.05 as above corrected), all but $65,553.53 is set down as expenditures for the year immediately prior—for 1909.

Now, the business of the Postoffice Department is a cash business—wholly so in the matter of receipts and nearly so, or should be, in the matter of expenditures. This being the case, that item entered in the published annual reports as “expenditures on account of previous years” must consist largely of payments made on account of the year immediately preceding the year covered by the report. As just shown by the published analysis of the item in the 1910 report, the expenditures on account of prior years other than the one just preceding are so small (only $65,553.53 in a total of $6,786,612.05), that they may be ignored in the attempt I am shortly to make, to show that the item we have been considering—“expenditures on account of previous years”—has such dominance in the department’s method of accounting, as evidenced in its annual reports, as to materially affect the deficit or surplus showing.

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First, however, I desire to call attention to another point or two relating to this item of expenditure.

A glance at the tabulation made of this item shows a huge jump in its amount for the year 1910 of $6,200,000, round figures. Next, it appears that the necessities of business, or the emergency needs of those building the report, forced this item still upward in the showing for 1911 as made December last—upward by $345,718.12, making its total $7,132,112.23. In the report before me, no analysis of that large carried-over payment on account of prior years is given. The Third Assistant Postmaster General may furnish information as to the year or years of its origin. His report has not reached me yet, so I cannot say. The bald statement is there, however, that 1911 paid over seven million dollars on account of 1910 and prior bills. It is also in evidence that no information whatever is published which enlightens the public as to the amount of unpaid 1911 bills that are carried forward to 1912 account.

Whether adverse criticism is justifiable or not, such cloaking of accounts in giving them publicity most certainly warrants it. It is just this cloaking that has subjected Mr. Hitchcock’s little vest-pocket surplus for 1911 to much and merited criticism, doubt and question. Mr. Urban A. Waters, in testifying before the House Committee on Civil Service Reform harpooned the Postoffice Department with an accusation that it had permitted a million dollars to waste, evaporate, be misapplied or stolen, in connection with a deal for sanitary and safety appliances to railway mail cars.

If Mr. Waters’ charges are grounded in fact, then is provoked and invited the question: Is it designed or intended to carry that million into the accounting of 1912—or into that of some future year—as an “Expenditure on account of previous years?”

Mr. Waters is publisher of the Denver Harpoon. He can say things and is generally recognized as a man who makes a practice of gathering the facts to back up what he says before he says it. In his testimony, so far as I know, Mr. Waters made no statement or suggestion that the evaporated million he spoke of would be, or could be, very securely cacheted or “fenced” in this “account of previous years.” It is The Man on the Ladder who points out—who says—that such loose accounting as carries to account of a subsequent year the[235] expenditures made or incurred in a previous year can very readily be made to cloak a steal of one or more millions of dollars.

Then, there are those rural carriers who refused to do as Mr. DeGraw, Fourth Assistant Postmaster General, told them to do. You read the papers of course, and—you believe them, of course, though most of you say, “Of course, I don’t believe ’em.” Well, it was broadly published that the Rural Free Delivery News had the temerity to publish—not merely to insinuate, mind you—that Mr. Hitchcock’s showing of a little $220,000 surplus for the year ended June 30, 1911, was made possible only by the failure of the Postoffice Department to make a plain, valid charge of $7,201,149.64 expenditures for that same fiscal year of 1911!

Those are not the exact words used in giving publicity to the asserted fact by the Rural Free Delivery News, but that is the meat in the nut the publication cracked. It appears that the published statement was closely contiguous to the facts. At any rate, its nestling juxtaposition to the truth was such that it appears to have neither looked nor listened well to the department. There is a presidential campaign on the speedway at this time, with all its usual concomitants of cackle, clack, cluck and other atmospheric disturbances. Such a published truth—if truth it is, and it certainly displays a marked resemblance in both form and feature to that article so extremely rare in campaign clutter—the appearance of such a truth on the speedway has a tendency to “blanket” some candidate or jockey him into the fence. With a view no doubt, to guarding against such possibility, that machine so much used in recent years to smooth down the rough places in administration roadways was turned onto the track. A hostile opposition, always somewhat harsh and careless in its language, calls it “the steam roller.” So the steam roller, with Fourth Assistant Postmaster General DeGraw at the wheel and manipulating the levers, rolled out among the rural carriers.

But it appears that it did not roll over them. There are forty-odd thousand rural carriers and, of course, it would have to be some “steam roller” to mutilate or seriously dent the ranks of so numerous a body of men; especially of men who travel about with the fragrance of the clover blossom and the corn bloom in their nostrils. They just wouldn’t be rolled and, it is reported they so informed Mr. DeGraw in very polite and easily understood language. They would[236] not demand of the publisher of their association organ that he retract and, to date, the Rural Free Delivery News has, so far as I have seen, shown no sign of either intention or inclination to back away from or in any way modify its charge which, in effect, was that the showing of a surplus—of even a little “runabout” surplus of $220,000 for the fiscal year of 1911—is a “faked” showing—a showing made possible only by carrying $7,201,149.64 of 1911 expenditures over to 1912 account.

May the Rural Free Delivery News live long in the land and flourish.

In a letter just received from Mr. W. D. Brown, editor of the R. F. D. News, he says: “When the Postoffice Committee submitted its report on March 6, it contained the statement that instead of a surplus in the postal revenues there was, up to that time, a deficit of more than $600,000.00 and I am satisfied that the amount will be greatly increased before the end of the current fiscal year.”

In the News of January 27, the issue to which Mr. DeGraw took exception, Editor Brown publishes a letter he wrote under date of January 11, 1912, to Mr. Charles A. Kram, Auditor of the Postoffice Department. He also publishes Mr. Kram’s reply. In comment on the reply, Mr. Brown says: “Auditor Kram’s reply throws very little light upon the subject, except to establish the fact that it is impossible to say at any time, whether the Postoffice Department is being conducted at a profit or a loss.”

Next comes Congressman Moon, an admitted authority on postal affairs and Chairman of the House Committee of Postoffices and Post-Roads.

I see by a press notice that Mr. Moon, in speaking to the question before his committee recently, stated that there was a “deficit of $627,845 for the fiscal year of 1911” in the Postoffice Department, instead of a surplus of $219,118.12, as published in its report, and over which Mr. Hitchcock and President Taft display so much luxuriant jubilation.

We have probably presented sufficient testimony to evidence the fact that the figures presented by our Postoffice Department are numerously, if not unanimously, doubted among people who take upon themselves the trouble and the labor of looking into them. True, the three or four witnesses we have introduced do not agree[237] as to the amount or magnitude of the shortages or discrepancies they have found, nor have they said, just where in the loose, bungled accounting they found the discrepancies. However, my purpose here is to show only that publicity of such bungled accounting does not enlighten or inform the public and that the practice of charging the expenditures of one year to account of the next may easily be made to cloak and cover up much wasteful if, indeed, not dishonest expenditure. That being the case, the disagreement of our witnesses as to the amount of dollars and cents they severally have found to be mislaid, or not properly accounted for, can make little difference in the conclusion forced by their testimony on any fair, inquiring mind.

But, it may be argued by apologists for such misleading practice in accounting or by persons who would plead extenuating conditions for Mr. Hitchcock and others charged with administering federal postoffice affairs, that this loose, fraud-inviting practice is of long standing, that the present administration has not had time to correct and remedy the faulty practice and that the published showing of current years is correct, because it is made on the same basis as was the accounting for many previous years.

All very well said, but it does not answer. Hoary-headed age in loose, falsifying methods of accounting neither commands respect nor can stand as reason or excuse for continuing such methods. It most certainly has no warrant as argument in extenuation for the continuance of such methods by the present administration.

“Why?” Well, there are several reasons. Mr. Hitchcock, it appears, has been aware for some two years or more that the practice we are here discussing was a questionable one, even if he was not fully informed as to the dangers—the waste, the fraud, the crookedness—which that practice might easily be made to cloak. Yet he has not only continued the practice, but, it would appear has further indulged or encouraged its growth. Let us look at the published evidence on this point.

A reduced deficit in the showing of the Postoffice Department for the year 1910 was somewhat evidently desired. To that end, the practice we are criticising charges 1910 with $6,786,394.11 for expenditures “on account of previous years,” all of which, save $65,553.53, as previously shown, were expenditures made on account of the year 1909.

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Now, in a footnote to page 278 of the 1910 report, Third Assistant Postmaster General Britt presents a somewhat confusing, if not confused explanation of his showing of the “Revenues and expenditures” for the year. One statement in the explanation, however, is resonantly loud in its clearness.

“On the other hand,” says Mr. Britt, “expenditures made in the first three months of the fiscal year, 1911 on account of the fiscal year 1910 and prior years are not included in the reported deficit for the year 1910. The amounts are approximately equal.”

I italicize that last statement. Let’s see: 1910 was made to pay (in accounting only, of course), $6,786,394.11 of 1909 and prior expenditures and, in an exchange, as simple as swapping Barlows, $7,132,112.23 of 1910 expenditures are shunted onto the year 1911!

“The amounts are approximately equal,” says Mr. Britt.

Well, the difference is only $345,718.12—a mere trifle, of course, in a shuffle of millions. But if that trifle had been added to the 1910 expenditures, where it rightly belonged, the 1910 deficit would have shown up a trifle over instead of a trifle under six million dollars, as given in the published report—a very important matter along in the closing days of 1910.

Then, too, when our President and his Postmaster General so warm up to a surplus of $220,000, it is possible, if not probable, that a trifle like $345,000 might have been a convenience as a deficit reducer in December, 1910.

On page 19 of Mr. Hitchcock’s report, he presents the following as one of thirty “Improvements in Organization and Methods” accomplished by the Postoffice Department during the year ended June 30, 1911:

A change in the financial system whereby the surplus receipts of postoffices throughout the country are promptly centralized at convenient points for the purpose of meeting other postal expenditures incurred during the period in which the surplus receipts accrued, thus paying the expenses of the service from current receipts and obviating the necessity of applying to the Treasury for a grant to meet an apparent deficiency in postal revenues when, as has happened in many instances, no actual deficiency exists.

Now, that is certainly an “improvement” worthy of all commendation. If, as stated, it provides for “Meeting other postal expenditures incurred during the period in which the surplus receipts accrued”[239] it certainly should prevent “an apparent deficiency … when … no actual deficiency exists.”

But why, then, is it reported that over $7,000,000 of expenditures for the year ended June 30, 1910, are charged to the fiscal year 1911? The report bears date December 1st, 1911—four months after the fiscal year 1911 closed. If the receipts of postoffices throughout the country are “promptly centralized” for the purpose of meeting current expenditures, it would require super, if indeed not supple, expertness in accounting to figure out a surplus of $220,000 for a year’s business which assumes over seven millions in unpaid bills of a previous year without, apparently, knowing what amount of unpaid bills can be shunted onto the next year.

But, it may be argued, there is nothing inconsistent in Mr. Hitchcock’s claim as just quoted, of an improvement in the department’s system or methods of accounting which makes, or should make, unnecessary the carrying over to 1911 so large a sum for expenditures made in or an account of the year 1910. While the improved methods have been introduced, it may be argued that insufficient time has elapsed, even to December 1st, to admit of their application in making up the fiscal report for the year 1911. In short, that the improved methods were introduced so late in the fiscal year 1910 that the resulting betterments in the system of accounting could not be shown in the report for 1910-11.

Yes, that possibly might be of some weight in considering this claimed improvement in the accounting methods of the department. There is, however, one serious objection to its acceptance as evidence in this case—evidence in proof that there was not sufficient time to make the improved methods operative in the showing for the fiscal year 1911:

(5) The adoption of improved methods of accounting by which the surplus or deficiency in the postal revenues is approximately determined within three weeks from the close of each quarter, instead of three months thereafter, on the completion of the audit of postmasters’ accounts.

(6) The adoption of an accounting plan that insures the prompt deposit in the Treasury of postal funds not immediately required for disbursement at postoffices, thus making available for use by the department several millions of dollars that, under the old practice, would be tied up in postoffices.

In his 1909-10 report, Mr. Hitchcock sets forth fifty “improvements” in methods of handling and conducting the business of the[240] Postoffice Department—improvements made prior to June 30, 1910, mind you. Well, the foregoing quotation presents numbers 5 and 6 of the enumerated 50 “improvements” that were set up as having already been instituted—instituted prior to June 30, 1910. Beyond saying that the department has certainly had ample time to install and make operative the improvements in methods of handling its business and of accounting, which its published reports claim to have been made, comment is unnecessary. If the improvements, as twice claimed in the two annual reports from which I have quoted have been made, then, it is pertinent to ask: Why was over seven millions of 1909-10 expenditures carried to 1910-11 account?

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[241] 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.
    Expenditures as published.     Expenditures as corrected.
1907     $190,238,288.34     $190,758,907.43
1908     208,351,886.15     208,114,626.20
1909     221,004,102.89     227,204,092.31
1910     229,977,224.50     230,322,942.62
1911     237,648,926.68     230,516,814.45

From the foregoing it will be seen that the corrected figures show a range of variance from the published figures, of over $6,400,000. That is, the corrected figures are some $230,000 below for the year 1908 and more than $6,200,000 above for the year 1910, the showing in the departments published reports.

A similar correction for the year 1911 cannot be made until the department chooses to enlighten the public as to the amount of 1910-11 unpaid bills it has carried forward to become a charge against the receipts of the year 1911-12.

As the account for the year stands above, the surplus for the year[242] 1910-11 is $7,363,009.15—not the comparatively trifling amount of $219,118.12, as published. Of course, if the report shows that 1912 pays $7,363,009.15 of 1911 expenditures, then the paltry surplus for the last-named year may stand as given in the report. But if the 1912 report should show that so much as one dollar more of 1911’s unpaid bills were shunted onto 1912 than 1911 paid on account of 1910’s shunted bills ($7,132,112.23), then Mr. Hitchcock’s joy-producing “surplus” will vanish as an actuality in correct accounting.

Following is the showing of the deficits or balances as published, as compared with the actual deficits or balances, as corrected according to previous explanation:
    Deficits as published.         Deficits as corrected.
1907     $ 6,653,282.77         $ 7,173,901.84
1908     16,873,222.74         16,635,962.79
1909     17,441,719.82         23,641,709.24
1910     5,848,566.88         6,194,285.00
1911     219,118.12     (Surplus)     7,363,009.15

There, again, is shown a range of more than $6,400,000 between the published and the very near actual deficits of the several years, not including 1911, for the showing on which, for reasons stated, I and the rest of the “dear people,” who are just now being “worked” for votes, will have to wait until the 1912 report is published.

Why, nothing but a government treasury—the treasury of our easily “bubbled” people—could survive that sort of bookkeeping for the time covered in the above tabulated statement of published and actual yearly shortages and of one alleged surplus.
AN EXECUTIVE OVERSIGHT—POSSIBLY.

We will now detach ourselves from these wearisome figures and more wearisome figuring, using figures only as a sort of garnishment to chief courses served to us by the President and our Postmaster General.

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[243] 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[244] 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 5? 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.[245] 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.

It was so nicely and redundantly redundant, so resilient in phrasing, so honestly earnest, that one just had to go along with our President, whether or not one could see how “the highest ideal in society” could possibly be found in a chase after the “impossible.”

At another point in his kindly persuasive Come-unto-me discourse, he pointed out to us how liable a “majority of the people” is to “make mistakes by hasty action and lack of deliberation.” Then, after a paragraph of beautiful foliage, the President cited the anti-trust law of 1890 as an evidence of the advantages and beneficent results of ample “deliberation” before taking action in matters of “grave import”. He explained that the decision of the Supreme Court was at first “misunderstood, or if not misunderstood, was improperly expressed, so as to discourage those who were interested in the federal power to restrain and break up these industrial monopolies. After twenty years’ litigation the meaning of the act has been made clear by a decision of the Supreme Court, prosecutions have been brought and many of the most dangerous trusts have been subjected to dissolution.”

It was all so fine, so lulling if not luring! It made one feel as if he were lost or had gone to sleep looking for himself. But when in a comfortable seat, in the owl car, where the jostle of the wicked world was so toned down and gentled as to permit a little analytic thought, that beautiful illustration of the value of making haste slowly and of long, careful “deliberation” when acting on matters of vast import recurred to us—that Anti-trust Act.

[246]

“After twenty years” careful deliberation, the Supreme Court was able to decide what the act meant! Was able, also, to decide what its own prior decisions meant and prosecutions were then brought and “many of the most dangerous trusts have been subjected to dissolution!”

All of it listened very well, but it don’t stand the wash very well. It is matter of common knowledge that during the twenty years the Supreme Court was industriously trying to find out what the Anti-Trust Act and its own decisions meant, the trust organizers and promoters got away with more than eight billions of unearned values—some set the figure above fifteen billions. The Supreme Court made haste slowly in its “deliberation,” while the respectable get-rich-quick Wallingfords were going after the people’s money and going in high-powered cars with the speed levers pulled clear down. No making haste slowly or duly prolonged deliberation with Wallingfords’.

Then, if one will take the trouble to glance at market quotations of the stocks of any of “those dangerous trusts” which “have been subjected to dissolution,” he will find that they have passed through the trying ordeal of “dissolution” without the turn of a feather. All are smiling. Why should they not? Stock quotations show that Standard Oil is over $250,000,000 better off than before its deliberated judicial dissolution. The Tobacco Wallingfords are also many millions ahead of the game since “dissolution” set in. And “Sugar”—well since the Sugar Trust was “busted” and subjected to the “dissolution” process nearly all its controlled saccharine matter appears to be trickling into its bank account. Similar “most dangerous trusts” show similar evidences of “dissolution” since the Supreme Court processed them.

What has this to do with our immediate subject? Nothing whatever. It is a mere interpolation—with a purpose. Its purpose is to evidence what appears to be a practiced habit with our President—a florescence or foliation similar to that displayed in the quotation I have made from his Washington Day Message. In the quoted paragraph, the reader will observe that he first says the Hughes Commission was “without data to determine the cost” of certain very important factors in the aggregate expense of handling and transporting the mails, and then he immediately proceeds to inform us that the Commission finds that the “cost of handling and carriage of paid-at-the-pound[247] rate matter was about 6 cents a pound,” etc.—a virtual impeachment of the Commission’s finding before the finding is stated.
THE HUGHES COMMISSION.

What little space permits me to say of the report of the Hughes Commission may as well be said here.

In their report the commissioners very frankly admit the meagerness, or, on numerous important points, total lack of informative data. But, as the President states, they proceed to put on record a finding of 6 cents a pound as the cost of handling and transporting paid second-class matter and 5 cents a pound as the cost of similar service on free-in-county matter, for the year 1908. They finally recommend, however, that the present “transient” rate (for copies of periodicals mailed by other than publishers) be continued—1 cent for each 4 ounces; also that the present free-in-county privilege be retained, but not extended.

What does that “not extended” mean?

I do not know. Do you? Does it mean that the country newspapers now issued—now entered in Postoffice Department for free haulage and handling—shall continue free and that no new newspapers established, founded and distributed in counties, shall be transported and handled free?

If it does not mean that, what does it mean? If it means that, then why does this Commission recommend a thing that is primarily—elementary—wrong under the organic law of this government?

The Constitution of these United States specifically prohibits “special” legislation. Then why, I ask, should the recommendation of this Commission be complied with? I have been publishing The Hustler, a controlled Republican or Democrat 4 to 8 pager, as the case may be, for four years. Paul Jones comes along and flings in his money to publish and print the Democratic Booster in the same county. Does this Commission mean to recommend that The Hustler be carried and distributed free in the county and that The Booster be required to pay the regular pound rate for the same service?

A flat rate of 2 cents per pound is recommended for all other periodical matter, newspapers and magazines alike.

Well, that recommended rate is of course, better than Mr. Hitchcock’s[248] “rider” recommendation, discussed in a previous page. The Commission’s “finding” that the cost of carriage, handling and delivery of second-class mail “was approximately 6 cents a pound” is also an appreciable step-down (toward the facts), as compared with Mr. Hitchcock’s assured—milled, screened and sifted—finding that said cost was 9.23 cents a pound—a finding as late as March 1, 1911. So if this commendable “merger” of views, opinions and guesses keeps growing, as industrial, rail and other mergers are wont to grow, the postal rate payers of the country may hope yet to find that even their great men may agree.

I have discussed this second-class mail rate—the cent-a-pound rate for periodicals—elsewhere. With private companies (the express companies) carrying and delivering second-class mail matter for the average mail haul, at one-half cent a pound (and standing for a “split” with the railroads for one-half of that), the question as to whether or not the government can carry mail matter without loss at one cent a pound, is not worth debating among men whose brains are not worn in their sub-cellars.

I mean the last statement to apply to third and fourth class matter as well as to second. What it has cost the government, or what it now costs the government, to transport, handle and distribute the mails is another and quite different matter from what such service can be and should be rendered for. Was it not that the people’s money is lavishly wasted by such foolishness and foolery, a dignified commission of three or six men sagely deliberating upon, critically “investigating” and laboredly discussing what it costs the government—what the government in 1908 or any other year paid—to carry and distribute the mails, might be staged as the working model of a joke. If a Commission’s time and the people’s money were spent in making a careful, thorough investigation as to what it should cost to collect, transport, handle and distribute the mails, and as to just where and how the millions of dollars, now annually wasted in an over-unmanned, incompetently managed, raided and raiding service, could be saved, results fully warranting the expenditures made on account of these postal-investigating commissions would readily be obtained.

A summary of the proceedings of the Hughes Commission is presented elsewhere. Here I shall take space for only two or three observations. First, as is evidenced by the Commission’s report, the[249] Postoffice Department was before it in conspicuous volubility and the frequency of a stock ticker during a raid, with call money at 84. Postmaster General Hitchcock and his Second and Third Assistants appear to have been the chief “floor representatives” of the department during the flurry. Of 201 “Exhibits” listed by the Commission, about 100 of them—reports, documents, memoranda and letters—found origin if not paternity in the Postoffice Department, and a considerable portion of them was already on file in government archives. Of the sixteen papers submitted after close of “Hearings,” fourteen or fifteen are letters and memoranda of the department, besides which seven memoranda are mentioned as having been received from “the Postoffice Department and not marked as exhibits.”

That should make up a pretty fair collection of departmental argument, views, opinions and “estimates,” should it not? It is very doubtful, though—debatable, if not doubtful—if the collection is worth $50,000. Especially does such a valuation appear questionably excessive, when it is observed that much of the collection is made up of public documents, the findings of former postal commissions and committees, and of reports and showings made up by the Postoffice Department at departmental expenditure of time and money, and not at an expense chargeable to the Commission’s appropriation. Of course the Hughes Commission may not have followed the precedent set by most prior postal Commissions, and by commissions in general. The Hughes Commissioners may not have spent all of their $50,000 appropriation. Let us hope they did not. However, a statement of expenditures actually made would be, by some of us at least, an appreciated “exhibit.”

Another feature of the Commission’s 108-page report that deserves special attention is the close adherence of its findings to the findings of present postal officials. Even in cases where the opinions of past officials are quoted commendingly, the opinions usually support and bolster the opinions of Mr. Hitchcock and his assistants. The report presents a number of tabulations, among which are several that are most excellent and informative. However, the tabulations, and the more important conclusions of the text as well, are based upon “estimates,” rather than upon ascertained facts. Then, too, these estimates, as is somewhat annoyingly evident, are all, or nearly all,[250] the departmental estimates of the present Administration. Of course, that should in no way impair their value or dependability and it probably would not, but for two facts: The present Postmaster General has, for two years or more, displayed great activity—at times, a fevered if not frenzied activity—to secure the enactment of laws and issuance of executive orders to accomplish results which, while they may appear most desirable to him, were considered by many thousands of our people as being very objectionable, indeed, inimical to the fundamental right of free speech in this country and a menace to a free press and to popular education. The “estimates” which the Hughes Commission has published as basis for its findings quite uniformly, if not entirely, support the contentions which the Postmaster General has been making—at times, making with little or no warrant of fact to support.

Again, it will be observed by careful readers of the Commission’s report that the “estimates” upon which several of its more important findings are based, are conspicuously lacking in elements essentially necessary in the structure of reliable estimates from which fact or facts may be deduced. To warrant the drawing of conclusions of fact from it, the structural material of an estimate must consist largely, if not wholly, of fact, not of conclusions drawn from other conclusions which, in turn were deduced from estimates based on other estimates that may or may not have been accurate and dependable.

As just stated, the estimates which the Commission appears largely to have accepted, are nearly all productions of the Postoffice Department. Few of them are built directly upon ascertained facts. Most of them are estimates of estimates based on other estimates. It appears that the Postmaster General’s estimates are Assistant Postmaster Generals’ estimates of the estimates made by weighing clerks of the several classes of mail-weights carried by certain railroads during six months in the year 1908. The nearest approach such a method or procedure makes to a fact is an estimate of the fact, you see.
A POSTAL TELEGRAPH.

One more quotation from the President’s message and this chapter may end. This quotation is anent the proposition of having[251] the telegraph service of the country operated by the government—in connection with the postal service. Mr. Hitchcock’s recommendation in the matter of a postal telegraph “is the only one,” says the President, “in which I cannot concur.” I shall first quote President Taft and then quote Mr. Hitchcock as he expressed himself in his 1911 report:

This presents a question of government ownership of public utilities which are now being conducted by private enterprise under franchises from the government I believe that the true principle is that private enterprise should be permitted to carry on such public utilities under due regulation as to rates by proper authority rather than that the government should itself conduct them. This principle I favor because I do not think it in accordance with the best public policy thus greatly to increase the body of public servants. Of course, if it could be shown that telegraph service could be furnished to the public at a less price than it is now furnished to the public by telegraph companies, and with equal efficiency, the argument might be a strong one in favor of the adoption of the proposition. But I am not satisfied from any evidence that if these properties were taken over by the government they could be managed any more economically or any more efficiently or that this would enable the government to furnish service at any smaller rate than the public are now required to pay by private companies.

More than this, it seems to me that the consideration of the question ought to be postponed until after the postal savings banks have come into complete and smooth operation and after a parcels post has been established not only upon the rural routes and the city deliveries, but also throughout the department. It will take some time to perfect these additions to the activities of the Postoffice Department and we may well await their complete and successful adoption before we take on a new burden in this very extended department.

As an exhibition of rhetorical aviation, that is both going and soaring some. How beautifully it “banks” on the curves! How smooth its motor runs! And its transmission! Words fail me.

Some paragraphing wit has said, “Foolishness is as plentiful as wisdom isn’t.” Our President appears to know that we fools can take in a lot of foolishness without our tanks sloshing over as we stumble along the old, well-worn way—the way that leadeth the earned dollar into somebody’s unearned bank account. But I do not intend to comment. The italics I have taken the liberty to mix into the President’s verbal flight is all the comment needed. Mr. Taft makes it quite clear that all we fools need to do is wait—make haste slowly, take time for due deliberation. Of course, some of us fools think we know, or presume to think we know, that the telegraph companies are charging us two or three prices for the service they render—frequently,[252] do not render for twenty-four or more hours after it ceases to be a service. But think of the good other folks derive from the pocket change they extract from us! The Western union is, or was, a “Gould property.” It paid interest or dividends on eighty or more millions of quasi and aqua pura in stocks and bonds. But think of the fun sons George and Howard had! Think of the former maintaining the beautiful Lakewood place, leasing English hunting preserves, playing polo and “busting” into, through and around Knickerbocker society circles! How could Howard have built a replica of Kilkenny Castle on Long Island Sound, where he and “Wild West Katie,” it is said, spent millions and had a realistic Kilkenny-Cat time of it? Or how could Frank, the fourth and last son of Jay Gould, have given to the world such a lurid, if not illuminating, picture of the “Married Rue” as was exhibited at his divorce hearings? And there is “Sister Anna”—Well, it is sufficient to say that Anna Gould could not have blown away ten millions in settling “Powder-Puff” Boni’s debts and turning him loose in the straight and broad way which leadeth unto the life that is somewhat too “fast” for even unearned money.

Well, none of the before-mentioned “life lessons” could have been set for the world’s enlightenment—likewise, disgust—had the people of this country not waited, not made haste slowly, in “due deliberation,” while the Western union and other “Gould properties,” were used to separate them from many millions of dollars which no Gould or Gould property ever earned.

But this is digressing. The President advises us to wait, to delay action a little longer—until the “postal savings banks have come into complete and smooth operation,” until “after a parcels post has been established … throughout the department.” Just wait and keep on paying twenty-five cents for a ten-word wire to your mother or friend ten miles out, even though the veriest fool knows that a postal telegraph service would carry a twenty-five word message to any postoffice in the United States for ten cents. Just keep on waiting—until the big telegraph interests have sheared a few millions more fleece.

But, says President Taft, “If it could be shown that telegraph service could be furnished to the public at a less price,” etc., etc.

Well, maybe there is a sort of visual aphasia which makes a[253] quarter look like ten cents to some men. If not, I am at a loss to understand how it yet remains for anyone to be “shown” that telegraph service could be furnished to “the public at a less price than it is now furnished by the telegraph companies.” Postmaster General Hitchcock furnished sufficient information, it seems to me, to show the President, or anyone else for that matter, that telegraph service “could be furnished the public” at rates much below those the telegraph companies collect. Mr. Hitchcock speaks in part, as follows—page 14, 1911 report:

The telegraph lines in the United States should be made a part of the postal system and operated in conjunction with the mail service. Such a consolidation would unquestionably result in important economies and permit the adoption of lower telegraph rates. Postoffices are maintained in numerous places not reached by the telegraph systems and the proposed consolidation would therefore afford a favorable opportunity for the wide extension of telegraph facilities. In many small towns where the telegraph companies have offices, the telegraph and mail business could be readily handled by the same employees. The separate maintenance of the two services under present conditions results in a needless expense. In practically all the European countries, including Great Britain, Germany, France, Russia, Austria, and Italy, the telegraph is being operated under government control as a part of the postal system. As a matter of fact, the first telegraph in the United States was also operated for several years, from 1844 to 1847, by the government under authority from Congress, and there seems to be good ground why the government control should be resumed.

While much more could be said in support of Mr. Hitchcock’s position, he has said sufficient in the above, I think, to “show” even a President.

As evidence that the “estimates,” upon which the Hughes Commission so largely base their findings are not entirely dependable, I desire to make two brief quotations from other pages of Mr. Hitchcock’s 1911 report. On page 17, as the first of thirty “Improvements in Organization and Methods,” the Postmasters General sets forth as having been accomplished in the service during the fiscal year 1911, will be found this:

The successful completion of an inquiry into the cost to railway companies of carrying the mails and the submission of a report to Congress making recommendations for revising the manner of fixing rates of pay for railway mail transportation.

On pages 9 and 10 of the report, in discussing a readjustment of railway mail pay, Mr. Hitchcock uses the following language:

[254]

The statistics obtained during the course of the investigation, disclosed for the first time the cost of carrying the mails in comparison with the revenues derived by the railways from this service.… The new plan (paying railways on the basis of car space occupied by the mails), if authorized by Congress, will require the railway companies each year to report what it costs them to carry the mails and such other information as will enable the department to determine the cost of mail transportation.

From the above it would seem that Congress was to be asked to adopt at its present session a “new plan” which “will enable the department to determine the cost of mail transportation;” to determine an important service fact which, according to the preceding quotation and also to the first sentence of the one just made, was determined sometime prior to June 30, 1911.

Has the Postoffice Department already determined the facts as the report twice claims, or has it merely collected some data upon which to base an “estimate?” Which enables it to make a more or less reasonable guess at the cost of mail transportation?
FOOTNOTES

[8] I find from reports of the department auditor that the fiscal year of 1909 was made to meet a charge of $128,307.32 which rightly stood against the year 1907; also that the fiscal year 1911 is charged with an expenditure of $148,490.01 belonging to 1909 and another expenditure of $85,195.34, belonging to “1908 and prior years.”