The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1873-01-29

and the gentleman from Louisiana, who
charged his mileage for the distance travelled
by way of Chicago. were looked upon by their
fellows as no great sinners. considering the
beggarly pay for their public services And
here lies the evil of much, if not most, of our
Congressional decentralization. Even FIVE
thousand year TO Congressman who has
nothing else to depend upon is an inadequate
compensation for his time and labor devoted
to the public interests and if he is driven to
questionable or disreputable expedients to
make both ends meet or to share in some
golden speculation, in many cases he can at
at least plead. with the poor apothecary. that
it is poverty. and not his will, consents.
The addition of thousand-yea, Of Ave
thousand-a year to the pay of members of
Congress would be but small item from the
savings of this act abolishing the franking
privilege, and it would doubtless be q
gain to the public service and the
public Treasury in every way. We
are, however. dealing with the savings to the
national Treasury which will result from this
repeal of the franking privilege. The savings
speeches, newspapers, letters and mail matter
of all descriptions now sent free, but they will
extend to great reductions of the extra and
superauous jobs Of printing, (which have
increased, are increasing and ought to be d.
minished'' in the government printing Office.
The Ave, ten or twenty thousand extra copies
SO frequently ordered to be printed Of the
Presidents Message and accompanying docu-
ments, of the Patent Office Report. reports of
surveys for railroads and all sorts of reports,
will now be suspended, as these extras can no
longer be sent free through. the mails. Our
public documents for general circulation, at
all events, will be cut down to the really useful
matter which they contain, and the masses Of
rubbish with which they have for many years
been filed, apparently for no other purpose
than the enriching Of contractors for ink,
paper and other materials, will be excluded
How many hundreds of tons of "pub. doc.'
sent free through the mails could now be gath
cred from the farm houses of the Union, with
their leaves uncut, and how many hundreds Of
tong heye gone 70 TIE grocer we can hardly
conjecture; but we are sure that our sturdy
yeomanry will lose nothing Of any consequence
from great retrenchment in such intellectual
supplies.
This abolition of the franking privilege,
then, is great practical measure of reform
actually achieved, and when least expected by
the country. But still, with all these magnif-
cent projects pending, in the shape of Trans
Allegheny horse-boat canals and seaboard and
Niagara ship canals, and steamship subsidies
and grand monopolizing public land and i'm
migration companies and railway jobs and
Indian land and territorial schemes, we fear
that we shall henceforth only secure from
Congress that sort of retrenchment and reform
which saves at the spigot while wasting from
the bunghole However, as this abolition of
the franking privilege is positive gain to the
Treasury of some millions of money so far
wasted in the transportation of franks
there is still ground for the hope that the
government will not be sacrificed even to the
tempting dividends in any shape or form, of
the Credit Mobilier