Truth. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1901-1908, 1906-02-03
Defects In the Postal System.
Continued from page 81

There is enough of complication |
and menace in present postal condi- |
tons, defects hidden to the public but |
fully revealed to experts, to suggest
extreme caution as to venturing on ad |
ditional and still more dangerous fea- |
lures. The postof1ice business, even
on a legitimate basis, has grown so
vast that the personal oversight of the
head of the department Is impossible.
That chief executive and all his prin
cipal assistants being political APP
pointees, are removed at brief inter
walls, and have little opportunity to
become familiar with their duties. The
laws under which the mail service OPP
crates are a mass of Inconsistencies
never Systematically codified, but
growing up year after year by hasty
"provisos" attached to the annual APP
preparation bills, adding new features
modifying existing statutes, repeating
and re-enacting with no intelligent at |
tention to conference or effective OPP |
Grafton.
Above all, the accounting system,
upon which so much depends, is ia |
tally defective. OF financial transac- |
lions aggregating a billion and a quar- |
ter dollars annually in accounts set |
tied less than ten per cent have the |
administrative audit or the review re
CURED by law, owing to inadequate |
clerical force in the auditors office. |
There is not the independence of
scrutiny and report that correct ac-
counting principles require. There is
no Ineligible system, such as pre-
walls in banking and railroad offices
where the complications and RESPONSE
bilities are not a hundredth part as
great Taking the service as it now is,
without any additional branches, its
business and labor are growing so
much more rapidly than any other
element of our social economy that
we may well pause to inquire, whittier
does all this lead-where will it end |?
There is somewhere a limit to safety
in the process of expansion, even on
its present basis. 1t must be manifest
to any careful thinker that this dan
ger line will be reached soon enough
without undue stimulus.
Champions of the doctrine of gov
eminent management of all so-called
public utilities" argue illogically
from a basis of supposed success in
transporting the mails with speel and
accuracy. The argument is illogical,
because it fails to consider the fact
that the government avails itself o.
innumerable private enterprises in &C
complishing these results. The post
office department owns practically
nothing used in transporting the mails
except the bags and the locks. The
railroads, steamships, steamboats,,
stagecoaches, street cars, wagons, and
carts are the private property of in
dividuals or corporations hired for the
public USE If the department owned
all these instrumentalities, and were
obliged to keep them in repair, to in
crease equipment and extend lines in
response to public demand, the mag |
nitude of the enterprise would be more |
clearly seen. Unquestionably a large |
share of the efficiency of our present |
service is due to the vigor and alert |
ness of the corporate and individual |
energies employed therein.
An influential clientele now clamor |
for the parcels-post. These desire to
have the limit of weight on packages
of merchandise transmissible through |
the mails extended from four pounds
as at present, to eleven pounds or
more 1t is further proposed to es
tablish a rate on such packages of six
cents for the first pound and two
cents for each additional pound up to
eleven; thus eleven pounds would cost