Postal Riders and Raiders. W. H. Gantz
drawn as to give him the greatest powers of discretion in the application of the increase in second-class postage. He had the regulation of the magazine and periodical press of this country in his own hands, he thought; and he was preparing to regulate it according to his ideas—when he met with a sudden check. It was a good scheme, a far-reaching scheme, but it didn’t go through. The Postmaster General, being a small-bore politician, took a small-bore view of the situation. He underestimated the force of public opinion.
It is my purpose to tell here the full story of Mr. Hitchcock’s attempt to put through this legislation. Before starting, however, there is this to be said: There never has been a minute, since this contention began, considerably more than a year ago, when the publishers of the country have not been willing to submit the disputed question of fact to a proper tribunal, to determine exactly what it should cost the government to transport second-class mail. There never has been a minute when the publishers of the country have not been willing to pay exactly what, under a businesslike administration of the department, it should cost to transport their publications. They do not desire any subsidy from the government, and never have. The publishers have held that the statement of Hitchcock that it costs 9 cents a pound to carry second-class matter is absurd; and they have further held that if the postoffice department were run on proper business principles, instead of being run as a political machine, there would be no deficit.
Notwithstanding, Mr. Hitchcock fought the idea of a commission to the last gasp. He spent day after day at the capitol, for three weeks before the session closed, in the corridors, in committee rooms, on the floor of the Senate, working for his plan to increase second-class postage, granting concessions here, putting out explanations there, assuring certain publishers they would not be taxed, writing letters to Senators and Representatives showing how their districts or states would not be affected, utilizing every resource of his department, of his political connections as former chairman of the Republican National Committee, to get support. He had the votes in the Senate, too, if he could have brought the matter to a vote. That was where he failed. A united opposition was organized, an opposition composed of men who think and act for themselves and who were prepared to fight until noon on March 4.
When Frank H. Hitchcock, after being chairman of the Republican National Committee in the campaign of 1908, was made Postmaster General as a reward for his political services, he inherited, in his department, a deficit, an antiquated, cumbersome and unbusinesslike organization, and several sets of figures. Hitchcock is young and ambitious. He has been in the government service, in various capacities, most of his life since leaving college. He was anxious to make a record. As Postmaster General he was political paymaster for the administration, to a great degree, as there are more postmasters than any one other kind of public officials, and postmasterships are perquisites of the faithful politicians in the Senate and House of Representatives. This kept Hitchcock in politics, in a way, for he knew what the obligations of the administration were, having made most of them as national chairman, and he paid them off as circumstances permitted.
He thought, too, that if he could put the Postoffice Department on a self-sustaining basis—where it had not been for years, if ever—he would do a great stroke for himself; and he began work along those lines. There need be no discussion here of the methods by which he made apparent reductions in the expenses of the department. Whether by bookkeeping or otherwise, he did make some apparent reductions, mostly by not spending appropriated moneys, by reductions in force, by elimination of substitute carriers and by other similar means.
Mr. Hitchcock, it would seem, was a peculiarly active public servant. Mr. Blythe also speaks of how Mr. Hitchcock got a cue from a predecessor, Charles Emory Smith. Mr. Smith in the industrious activities of his official duties, signing of reports which subordinates wrote, vouchers for contracts and other payments, and drawing his salary—Mr. Smith had laboriously (?) figured it out that the second-class mail rate ought to be 7 cents a pound. Mr. Hitchcock goes Smith two cents better. This statement of Mr. Smith’s grew on Mr. Hitchcock. “It opened the way to two things,” as Mr. Blythe ably points out as follows:—
First he could increase the revenue of the department if he could increase the second-class rate; and second, he could get a whip hand over the magazine press.
He reported his assumed facts to the President in time for Mr. Taft’s message to Congress, sent in in December, 1909. In that message Mr. Taft made the statement that it costs the government 9 cents a pound to transport second-class mail matter, the total cost being more than sixty million dollars a year, and asked that there should be an increase in second-class rates. Mr. Taft instanced this as a subsidy for the magazine and periodical press. Mr. Hitchcock’s report as Postmaster General contained substantially the same statements.
The House Committee on Postoffices and Postroads, where the postoffice appropriation bill originates, took cognizance of these statements by the President and by the Postmaster General, and ordered a hearing on the matter, which was held early in the session. The various publishers of the country, representing not only the Periodical Publishers’ Association but many other organizations of publishers of various classes of periodicals, sent representatives to Washington, and there were full hearings before the committee, extending through several days. The publishers stated their side of the case and the committee took the matter under advisement. The House committee reported out the postoffice bill with no recommendation of any kind in it for an increase in second-class postage; and no separate bill providing for the increase was prepared, introduced or reported.
Then Mr. Blythe, under the subcaption of “Running Down the Nine-Cent Myth,” says:
Some years previously the congress authorized what was known as the Penrose-Overstreet Postal Commission, composed of members of the postoffice committees of the Senate and House, of which Senator Penrose was then the Senate chairman and the late Jesse Overstreet the House chairman. This commission met in various places, had long hearings and made a report and prepared a bill. Before making its report or preparing its bill the commission employed, at a cost of seventy-five thousand dollars, or thereabouts, chartered accountants and business experts to make a thorough examination into the business methods of the postoffice department, its expenditures and its resources. The results of the work of these examiners was incorporated in the report to Congress by the Penrose-Overstreet commission. It is notable that this commission asked the late Postmaster General, Charles Emory Smith, of Philadelphia, who was responsible for the statement that it cost seven cents a pound to transport second-class mail matter, where he got his figures, and he did not remember, nor would he testify concerning them.
At any rate, when the Penrose-Overstreet bill, providing for the reorganization of the Postoffice Department and the placing of that great institution on a business instead of a political basis, was introduced in the Senate and the House, it contained no recommendation for the increase in second-class postage, because the commission had been unable to find any figures of cost of second-class transportation on which such an increase could justifiably be demanded, even after expert examination of the books of the department by unprejudiced men.
Of course, I may be mistaken—I may be. But how, in the name of Jehosaphat, Pan and all the other ghostly deities of antiquity, does it happen that men like Samuel G. Blythe and hundreds of others—men in position to learn and know the facts, likewise, who have both the ability and the courage to tell what they know—agree with me? Why, I ask, if I am mistaken in what I have said and am trying to say, do so many other men who have studied this question, all of them probably of greater ability, most of them certainly of far greater opportunity than have I, why, I inquire again, do they so unanimously concur in the judgment I am trying to pass on Mr. Hitchcock and his department?
I shall probably take the liberty, later, further to use the data given in Mr. Blythe’s timely and informative contribution, quoting or otherwise, for which I confidently feel he will excuse me. Just here, however, it is fitting that the reader be given a reprint of that night “rider” to which I have made so frequent reference.
House bill No. 31,539 brought the postoffice appropriation bill to the Senate. In the Senate it was read twice and then on February 9, 1911, it was referred to the Senate Committee on Postoffices and Postroads from which