Postal Riders and Raiders. W. H. Gantz
boy, may be pardoned even when a little profuse or over-confident in speaking of what his townsmen can do, but Congressman Jim is a live-wire Congressman, and has been able to do several things himself while on his legislative job, even against stacked-up opposition.
While reporting on Congressman Jim’s message from Washington, I phoned the leading features to the office and have just received peremptory orders to write up not only this attempt but other attempts to raid the postal revenues of the country by means of crooked riders and otherwise. So there is nothing to do but go to it.
Incidentally, my editor, knowing my tendency to write with a club, cautions me to adopt the dignified style of composition while writing upon this subject. I assure my readers that I shall be as dignified as the heritage of my nature will allow and the subject warrants. If I occasionally fall from the expected dignified altitude I trust the reader will be indulgent, will charge the fault, in part at least, to my remote Alsatian ancestor. He fought with a club. I have therefore an inherited tendency to write (fight), with a club. So here goes.
In opening on this important subject, for vastly important it is from whatever angle one views it, I wish first to speak of the governmental postoffice department and then of Postmaster Generals.
First I will say that this government has not had, at least within the range of my mature recollection, any business management of its postoffice department above the level of that given to Reuben’s country store of Reubenville, Arkansas.
The second fact I desire to put forward is that since the days of Benjamin Franklin there have been but few, a possible three or four, Postmaster Generals who had any qualifications whatsoever, business or other, to direct the management of so large a business as that comprehended in the federal postal service. Not only are the chiefs, the Postmaster Generals, largely or wholly lacking in business and executive ability to manage so large an industrial and public service, but their chosen assistants (Second, Third and on up to the Fourth or Fifth “Assistant Postmaster Generals”), have been and are likewise lacking in most or all of the essential qualifications fundamentally necessary to the management and direction of large industrial or service business enterprises. I venture to say that none of them have read, and few of them even heard of, the splendid book written by Mr. Frederick W. Taylor explaining, really giving the A, B, C of the “Science of Business Management,” which for several years has been so beneficial in the business and industrial methods in this country as almost to have worked an economic revolution. I equally doubt if they have even read the series of articles in one of the monthly periodicals, which Postmaster General Hitchcock and his coterie of conspirators tried to stab in the back with that Senate “rider” on the postoffice appropriation bill. Yet Mr. Taylor wrote these articles, and Mr. Taylor must know a great deal about economic, scientific business management. He must know, otherwise the Steel Corporation, the great packing concerns, several railroads, the Yale and Towne Manufacturing Company, the Link Belt Company and a number of other large concerns, as well as the trained editors of several engineering and industrial journals, would not have so generally, likewise profitably, adopted and approved his recommendations and directions.
Yet while most of these “Assistant Postmaster Generals” and their subassistants have been glaringly—yes, discouragingly—incompetent to manage and direct the work of their divisions, some of them have shown an elegance of aptitude, a finished adroitness in using their official positions to misappropriate, likewise to appropriate to their own coffers, the funds and revenues of the Postoffice Department. Reference needs only to be made to the grace and deftness displayed by August W. Machen, George W. Beavers and their copartners. The one was Superintendent of Free Delivery, the other Superintendent of Salaries and Allowances, and the way they, for several years, made the postoffice funds and revenues “come across” beat any get-rich-quick concern about forty rods in any mile heat that was reported in the sporting columns of the daily press.
General Leonard Wood, Congressman Loud and a few other reputable officials induced President Roosevelt to institute an investigation. The investigation was made under the direction of Joseph L. Bristow. Then things were uncovered; that is, some things were uncovered. In speaking of the nastiness disclosed William Allen White in 1904 wrote, in part, as follows:
“Most of the Congressmen knew there was something wrong in Beaver’s department; and Beaver knew of their suspicions; so Congressmen generally got from him what they went after, and the crookedness thrived.
“When it was stopped by President Roosevelt, this crookedness was so far-reaching that when a citizen went to the postoffice to buy a stamp the cash register which gave him his change was full of graft, the ink used in canceling the stamp was full of graft, the pad which furnished the ink was full of graft, the clock which kept the clerk’s time was full of graft, the carrier’s satchel tie-straps, his shoulder straps, and his badge were subject to illegal taxation, the money order blanks were full of graft, the letter boxes on the street were fraudulently painted, fraudulently fastened to the posts, fraudulently made, and equipped—many of them with fraudulent time-indicators. Often the salaries of the clerks were full of graft. And in the case of hundreds of thousands of swindling letters and advertisements that were dropped in the box—they were full of graft.”
We will now get down to the present Postmaster General, Mr. Frank H. Hitchcock. I have read, and shall later print in this volume the Senate “rider” to the postoffice department appropriation bill, which, so far as The Man on the Ladder has been able to learn, Mr. Hitchcock either wrote or “steered” in its writing. I have also read his series of letters to Senator Penrose, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Postoffices and Postroads; also his 1910 report. At this point I shall make my comment on Postmaster General Hitchcock brief but, mayhap, somewhat pointed.
Most Postmaster Generals for the past thirty or more years have been incompetent. There have been a few notable and worthy exceptions, but their worthiness was almost completely lost in the department by reason of previously planted corruption and political interference. Most Postmaster Generals, as has been stated, have had little or no qualification for the management and administration of so large a service industry as that covered by the federal postoffice department.
Mr. Hitchcock, in his administration of the department, in his reports and recent letters to the Senate and the House, has shown himself scarcely up to the average of his incompetent predecessors.
Mr. Hitchcock’s “rider” to the 1911 postoffice appropriation bill and his recent letters to Senator Penrose and others will convince any fair-minded, informed reader that he is either an “influenced” man or is densely ignorant. I wish to make this point emphatic: The careless, loose, hurried—yes, even silly—wording of that “rider” and the false and foolish statements in his letters to Senator Penrose, relating to his demand for an increase of three cents a pound on certain periodicals now carried in the mails as second-class matter at one cent a pound, he to be given authority to pick out and designate the periodicals which should be subject to the increased rate—his false and foolish statements in that “rider,” and in his recent letters, I say, must show to any intelligent mind that Mr. Hitchcock is either an “influenced” man or a six-cylinder, chain-tired, hill-climber of an ignoramus in matters relating to periodical publication, and also in many essential matters relating to his department.
My previous statements regarding the government’s postoffice department, about Postmaster Generals in general and about Mr. Hitchcock in particular, may not be up to the broadcloth of dignity, but they do carry the dignity of fact and truth, as I shall proceed to demonstrate to my readers.
Let us consider first the government postoffice department and then Mr. Hitchcock’s recent actions and utterances.
Most of the Postmaster Generals, including Mr. Hitchcock, appear to have been greatly exercised about “deficits,” yet persist in pursuing methods of business management and direction that must, almost necessarily, make expenditures of the department exceed its receipts.
Also I may ask, in this connection, why so much agony, or “front,” whichever it may be, about a “deficit” in the Postoffice Department? The postal service of the country is a public service, a service of all the people.