Postal Riders and Raiders. W. H. Gantz
same rate—one-fourth of a cent per pound—is exactly the rate charged by the Canadian Government for carrying magazines by mail through its postoffice department and for distributing them over a thinly populated territory even greater than the United States.
How absurd, then, to assert that the government cannot distribute the magazines profitably at this present rate when it handles the magazines along with all other mail distributed and without any particular extra expense because of them.
Even if, as I said, the government were handling the magazines at a loss, it would be doing a creditable thing. But it is not handling the magazines at a loss. It is carrying them at a profit, and if it taxes the magazines out of existence it will compel the postal department to be conducted at a greater loss than the loss at which it is now conducted.
What inconsistency, too, for the administration to advocate a government subsidy to restore a United States merchant marine and at the same time advocate a measure to put out of existence a much more important American institution.
If it is a Republican policy to promote business and encourage industry, and a proper Republican and American policy to take money out of the United States Treasury to subsidize a private business in order to create an industry, why is it not a proper Republican and American policy to continue to provide a cheap mail rate in order to maintain a great American industry and perpetuate a mighty educational influence already existent?
The evidence in support of my impeachment of the Postoffice Department on account of its almost total lack of business method, its absolute helplessness to tell, even with approximate accuracy, the loss of any division of its service, or the revenues resulting from any given source or class of mail carried, would not be complete without quoting Senator Penrose and former Senator Carter.
Senator Penrose of Pennsylvania is Chairman of the Senate Committee on Postoffices and Postroads, and former Senator Carter was conceded to be one of the well informed men on postal matters in Congress.
The excerpt from Senator Penrose is from an address he made on the floor of the Senate, within the year, when speaking to the subject of second-class mail rates, and that from Mr. Carter is from his address on the same subject made in March, 1910. Both follow:
It is idle to take up such questions as apportioning the cost for carrying second-class mail matter or the proper compensation of railroads for transporting the mails until we shall have established business methods in postoffice affairs by a reorganization of the whole postal system.—Senator Penrose.
I deeply sympathize with the earnest desire of the department officials to get rid of the deficiency they are fated to encounter every year, but I submit that the first real movement toward that end must begin with the substitution of a modern, up-to-date business organization for the existing antiquated system.—Senator Carter.
Comment on the plain, blunt statements of these members of our highest legislative body, each admittedly well informed on the subject to which he speaks, is quite unnecessary.
In closing this division of my subject I desire to quote President Taft; quote from his message to Congress under date of March 3, 1911. It is an illuminating message and forcefully pertinent to the point we are considering. I would like to reprint the entire document, but fear I cannot do so. Of course, President Taft’s strictures and adverse criticisms are general—since they apply to all governmental departments—but every official in Washington knows, and none better than the President himself, that they have both adhesive and cohesive qualities when applied to the postoffice department.
In this message the President asks for an appropriation of $75,000 to continue the work he has already begun, that of revising departmental methods of doing business and of instituting a practical, commonsense system of accounting under which, or from which, it will be possible for administrative and legislative officials to learn, approximately at least, just what departments have done—to any date—and just what it has cost to do it, two items of information as appears from the message of the Chief Executive which neither his nor any previous administration has ever been able to learn, and is not now able to learn with any considerable degree of dependable accuracy.
As yet I have not learned whether the President obtained the $75,000 asked for. I hope he did. If Congress will appropriate $750,000 for the purpose the President names in his message, and sees to it that the money is judiciously and intelligently disbursed, it is the opinion of The Man on the Ladder that not less than $100,000,000 annually would be saved in government expenditures, or one hundred millions more of service, material, equipment, etc., delivered for the money now expended.
Following is the essential part of the President’s message. The italics are the writer’s:
To the Senate and House of Representatives:
I ask that you include in the sundry civil bill an appropriation for $75,000 and a reappropriation of the unexpended balance of the existing appropriation to enable me to continue my investigation by members of the departments and by experts of the business methods now employed by the government, with a view to securing greater economy and efficiency in the dispatch of government business.
The chief difficulty in securing economy and reform is the lack of accurate information as to what the money of the government is now spent for. Take the combined statement of the receipts and disbursements of the government for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1910—a report required by law, and the only one purporting to give an analytical separation of the expenditures of the government. This shows that the expenditures for salaries for the year 1910 were $132,000,000 out of $950,000,000. As a matter of fact, the expenditures for personal services during that year were more nearly $400,000,000, as we have just learned by the inquiry now in progress under the authority given me by the last congress.
The only balance sheet provided to the administrator or to the legislator as a basis for judgment is one which leaves out of consideration all assets other than cash, and all liabilities other than warrants outstanding, a part of the trust liabilities and the public debt. In the liabilities no mention is made of about $70,000,000 special and trust funds so held. No mention is made of outstanding contracts and orders issued as incumbrances on appropriations; of invoices which have not been vouchered; of vouchers which have not been audited. It is, therefore, impossible for the administrator to have in mind the maturing obligations to meet which cash must be provided; there is no means for determining the relation of current surplus or deficit. No operation account is kept, and no statement of operations is rendered showing the expenses incurred—the actual cost of doing business—on the one side, and the revenues accrued on the other. There are no records showing the cost of land, structures, equipment, or the balance of stores on hand available for future use; there is no information coming regularly to the administrative head of the government or his advisers advising them as to whether sinking-fund requirements have been met, or of the condition of trust funds or special funds.
It has been urged that such information as is above indicated could not be obtained, for the reason that the accounts were on a cash basis; that they provide for reports of receipts and disbursements only. But even the accounts and reports of receipts and disbursements are on a basis which makes a true statement of facts impossible. For example: All of the trust receipts and disbursements of the government, other than those relating to currency trusts, are reported as “ordinary receipts and disbursements.” The daily, as well as the monthly and annual statements of disbursements, are mainly made up from advances to disbursing officers—that is to say, when cash is transferred from one officer to another it is considered as spent, and the disbursement accounts and reports of the government so show them. The only other accounts of expenditures on the books of the Treasury are based on audited settlements most of which are months in arrears of actual transactions; as between the record of cash advanced to disbursing officers and the accounts showing audited vouchers, there is a current difference of from $400,000,000 to $700,000,000, representing vouchers which have not been audited and settled.
Without going into greater detail, the conditions under which legislators