24
in Congress, charged with the duty and entrusted with the power of taking care of the people's convenience and of the people's money, deliberately put aside a proposition submitted to them by a faithful officer of the Government to promote the people's convenience and to save the people's money—nay, they tell that officer that he shall not go on promoting the people's convenience, improving the people's service and saving the people's money. Is it too much to say that this means robbing the people of that money which might be saved and is now unnecessarily expended, and of the accumulating millions henceforth to be unnecessarily expended? And why all this? The reason is notorious. This was done because the consolidated post offices would pass under the civil service rules and members of Congress would have fewer postmasterships to distribute among their hangers-on. The plan was arrested, because it was good.
This is spoils politics in characteristic efflorescence. But how long will the people tolerate such nefarious sport with their interests? Are they not civilized enough to want the best facilities for the transmission of intelligence offered to them? Are they so reckless as to permit, with eyes open, the squandering of their money at the rate of millions a year merely that their Congressmen may have more post office plunder at their disposal? Is it not time that good citizens should unite to tell the politicians in language vigorous enough to be heeded that this outrageous trifling with the people's service and the people's money must stop? Indeed I trust that the day is not far when the enlightened public opinion of the country will compel what several Postmasters-General have already suggested and what common sense as well as the public interest urgently demand—the complete taking out of politics of the whole postal service, including every position belonging to it. And in your name I express the hope that legislation enabling the Postmaster-General to carry out the admirable consolidation plan to the greatest possible extent, and to bring the smaller post offices which cannot be so consolidated, under effective civil service rules, will be pushed with the utmost energy, and will not cease to be pushed until the post office is what it was intended to be and always should have been: merely an efficient servant of public convenience, and no longer the booty of party warfare and a source of political demoralization.
