Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1911-01-20
FORM A MACHINE
Railway Postal Clerks Com
plain Bitterly of Conditions
Imposed Upon Them.
ARE ALLOWED NO REDRESS
Protests. Where Source Is Known
Frequently Lead to Dismissals
From Service.

The Argus has repeatedly called
attention to the injustice being met
ed out to railway mail clerks. The
public are entitled to the best there
is in mail service. Men of intelli-
gence and skill should do the work
and these men should be treated well
and should be given the accommo-
dations and the wages necessary to
enable them to do the most efficient
work.
A number Of railway mail clerks
have been spoken to regarding the
treatment they receive These men
have to be careful, however, in pub
lie utterances for under the pres
ent system heads are quickly Topped
off
One of these railway mail clerks
gives the following for publication:
1 would be pleased to have you
publish the following article con-
corning the present unrest or unsat-
isfactOry conditions in the railway
mail service in the United States.
from the viewpoint of the railway
postal clerk. 1 have the honor to
belong to that body of men, and
have spent my best years in the SER
vice of the United States. And, al
though the postal authorities, them
selves, acknowledge that the men OF
the railway mail service constitute
the backbone of the whole American
postal system, and that it is the only
properly organized division of the
whole service, to any young man to-
day who is thinking of this as a fu-
ture employment 1 would most en-
phatically say, keep out of it."
There always have been some rea-
sons for this attitude, but of late
years they have been piling up so
fast that one wonders at himself
why he stays in the service at all.
Why he has allowed himself to be-
come such an autOmaton. Why he
jumps at every crack of the whip of
the great ringmaster. Why he sub
mits to the ever increasing thou
shalt nots' until today he is entire
ly without any of the common rights
of the ordinary American citizen.
Principal among these is what is
known as the gag order" This
order forbids the railway postal clerk
to say anything or do anything for
the betterment of his position or for
the service except directly through
his superior officers, forbids the pub
LEGATION in any way, of information
concerning the conditions in the ser
vice, the poor equipment of cars,
poor lights, filthy water tanks, or
anything he may know concerning
any of the many wrecks which occur
from time to time. The penalty for
violation of this order is dismissal
from the service and we lately have
had an example of it where a clerk
found that he had been drinking
from a tank in his car which con-
tanned the remains of a decomposed
rat. he made the matter public and
was promptly dismissed from the
service.
CANNOT SPEAK OUT.
There would not be so much COM
plant about these things if our SUI
Derior officers were only zealously
willing to try to get them remedied.
but report after report goes in for
years, and still most Of the time con-
ditions are pretty much the same.
If you write to a congressman and
he approaches the department with
your complaint, an immediate de-
mand is made to show why you
should not be dismissed from the