The daily Nome industrial worker., 1916-09-23
THE THANKING PRIVILEGE.

Treasury Department for the past fiscal year. It was quite a handsome surplus and led to an exchange of compliments between the Secretary of the Treasury and the Postmaster General that, being given due publi- city, has also had, it is to be suppo- sed, reasonable political effect.
 Why the Post Office Department should try to make money out of public service is not very clear, un- less for political purposes. It would be more reasonable to imagine that the postal employees who are more often than not, especially those who do the actual work, over worked, would receive an increase in pay or have their working conditions gen. orally improved. Or failing that which, we can understand, is the last thing occurs to administrative officials, we suppose it might not be an unreasonable hope that the de- partment would use some of that surplus towards affording those who get no sort of a mail service, some adequate service, and the balance would thus be not wholly unavail- able in some portion of Alaska.
 Why a defective postal or mail service should swagger around about the money it made, while at the time the territory of Alaska is getting no service at all worth the name, is not entirely beside the question.
 The mail service is full of wond erful mysteries that cannot at all be explained by the operations of the ordinary functions of human intelligence. Not the least wonder full of these is the franking privilege whereby members of both houses of Congress carry on their political campaigns through mails, free and without any cost for stamps to them.
 It is noticeable that if any labor or other radical paper makes even a technical mis-step the whole Post al Department sits up and takes mo- tice, often not hesitating to penalize or to prosecute the radical press which offends the senses of the offii- cials.
 And, also, not content with this zealous search for radical delln- quents, they are perpetually. con stantly and officiously seeking new means of increasing their arbitary power.
 But they never for one minute turn an unsteady eye upon the great abuse of the franking privilege. That is all right; because it comes from Congressmen and Congress can make things very unpleasant if Con- gress so will, for the post office de- partment. As result, we find that many of the Honorable gent lemen' representing variety of congressional districts make use of the franking privilege to reach the voters, and to carry on their politl- cal campaigns at the government expense.
 In point of fact all this political matter that is sent through the mails is a decided abuse of the franking privilege. It has nothing to do with official business what ever. It is directly the personal po- litical business of the sender who is soliciting votes for his candidacy by reason of the matter which he distributes free throughout the country.
 Nor are the majority of such do- cuments records of the doingst or the sayings in Congress. They never were for the most part uttered in Congress, not Congressman has ever read them often enough, and the utterances or more strictly the alleged utterances are campaign speeches, fraudulently made part of the record of Congressional actions, and fraudulently sent through the mails under the frank of the Con- gresmen as official business.
 This sum amounts to millions an nually, millions abstracted from the government to forward the political campaigns of the members of Con-