The Emancipation of the Post-Office

THE order amending the civil service rules that was signed by the President on November 8, 1895, opens the way to the most important extension of the merit system that has yet been made ; for it is an extension that has a many-sided significance. Without the need of legislation it will bring a large number of postmasters of smaller towns within the classified service by making their offices parts of larger or central offices wherewith they will be consolidated. This change, as shown by the experiments already made, will give the postal service greater efficiency. Quite as important as the increase of efficiency is the change that will be wrought gradually and quietly by the elimination of these consolidated offices from the spoils of politics. Since the application of the merit system to the departmental service at ’Washington, whereby this service was lifted out of scandal and made respectable, the spoils system has had its greatest stronghold in the minor post-offices ; and just as the shameful condition of the departmental service twenty-five years ago now seems to most persons incredible, so, if this new order be carried out, as complete a change will be accomplished in most of the fourth-class post-offices. We shall forget that after every presidential election the struggle for these offices used to send more men to Washington and take more of the time and the attention of members of Congress than any great measure — except possibly the tariff — with which Congress has had to do during this generation. There never has been in our life anything more grotesque or demoralizing than the struggle for minor postal appointments.

The text of the order is this : “ And whenever, by order of the PostmasterGeneral, any post-office shall be consolidated with and made a part of another post-office where free delivery is established, all the employees of the office thus consolidated whose names appear upon the roster of said office approved by the Post-Office Department, and including the postmaster thereof, shall, from the date of said order, be employees of said free delivery office, and the person holding on the date of said order the position of postmaster at the office thus consolidated with said free delivery office may be assigned to any position therein and given any appropriate designation under the classification act which the Postmaster-General may direct.”

The Postmaster-General has absolute power given by law to abolish post-offices, to consolidate post-offices, or to make offices stations of other offices. By order of the President, of January 5, 1893, all free delivery offices were brought under the civil service rules. Since that date, whenever an office has become a free delivery office, or whenever an office has been consolidated with or made a part of a free delivery office, the employees, except the postmaster Himself, have been brought into the classified service, and their successors, with certain very few exceptions, can now be appointed only after competitive examinations. By this last order of the President, therefore, every employee of every office consolidated with a free delivery office comes within the civil service rules, and the postmasters themselves of consolidated offices become clerks-in-charge and must be appointed as other clerks are.

This plan contemplates the selection of certain larger offices as nuclei and the consolidation of surrounding offices with these, the subsidiary offices reporting directly to the central office, and not to the department at Washington, as hitherto. In fact, twenty-eight offices in the cities and towns around Boston have already been consolidated with the Boston office, and this consolidation has been in operation for some time with most satisfactory results. The experience gained there and at Chicago and at Philadelphia, where a like system has been introduced, has satisfied the PostOffice Department that it is susceptible of much wider application. It is not the intention to change the names of offices thus consolidated or made stations of other offices. People who now address letters to Cambridge or to Brookline, Massachusetts, do not know that those offices are parts of the Boston post-office, and that these large places near Boston have not postmasters, but only superintendents-in-charge. If this has been so successfully accomplished about Boston, why may not most of the post-offices of Massachusetts be made parts of three or four central offices, thus cheapening the administration, improving the service, and removing it from the evils of political pressure? It will be necessary, of course, to move with caution at the start, but the extension can be continued with increasing momentum. One great difficulty to be encountered arises from the fact that some postmasters, even at important offices, are not men of administrative ability and of the business qualifications that such service requires. The Post-Office Department will naturally be forced to begin by selecting central offices where the postmasters have proven their capacity to assume increased responsibility.

Some of the fourth-class offices, remote from large centres, or where the location of the office in a certain building owned by the postmaster is the main consideration, cannot yet be brought within the classified service, but some such method of appointment as is contemplated in the bills submitted to the last Congress, and in favor of a tenure during good behavior, will be adopted, it is hoped, so that the entire postal system of the countiy may be put upon a sensible business basis. Bills were introduced in the last Congress providing for modes of appointment which should free postmasters from the spoils system. The bill introduced by Mr. Lodge in the Senate and by Mr. Everett in the House was intended to regulate only the appointment of fourth-class postmasters, and contained excellent provisions which, with some modifications curtailing the powers given to post-office inspectors, would work a needed reform. The bill introduced by Mr. DeForest in the House contained all the provisions of the previous bill with regard to fourth-class postmasters, with an additional important provision abolishing the four-year tenure of all postmasters, and providing that they should hold office during good behavior : “ Provided, however, that the President may at any time remove or suspend a postmaster of the first, second, or third class for cause, communicated in writing to the Senate at the next subsequent session of Congress after such removal, and that the Postmaster-General may at any time remove or suspend a postmaster of the fourth class for cause, communicated in letter of removal.”

The number of appointments that will at once be brought within the classified service by this new order depends upon the rapidity with which the consolidations can be made. But it is interesting and encouraging to note how large the classified list has now come to be.

During the year ended June 30, 1895, by order of the President 8806 places were added to the classified service, and 2812 places were withdrawn from the excepted class and made competitive. Since that, date, 828 additional places have been added to the list, making a total of 12.416 inclusions since June 30, 1894. The whole number of places now subject to competitive examination is more than 55,000. If it be too early yet to say that we are almost within sight of the reformation of the whole federal service from the spoils system, except those higher offices which have to do with policies of administration, it is not too much to say that if this last order of the President be carried to its full application with courage and reasonable promptness, and if the movement for the application of the merit system to the consular service also be carried forward, then we are surely within sight of the complete reform. The new order is of the greater importance because the Postmaster - General, Mr. Wilson, is a civil service reformer of courage and conviction, who will extend the provisions of this rule as far as good and economic administration will admit.

In no department has the adoption of the civil service rules brought better practical results than in the postal service. The application of the rules to the free delivery offices and to the railway postal service has been productive of such marked improvement that no additional arguments are needed as to the advantages to be gained, both as a measure of economy in postal administration and in the improvement of public life, by removing post-offices entirely from politics and placing them on a business basis. In the railway mail service, the mistakes made in the distribution of mail matter prior to the placing of that branch under the civil service rules were so greatly in excess of those made since as to be worthy of special mention. The year before the extension of the rules, there was one error to every 3694 correct distributions of mail. The order went into effect May 1, 1889. For the year ended June 30, 1895, the records show that there was only one error for every 8884 correct distributions of mail. With no other department of the government do the people come into such close and constant contact, and no other department so uniformly increases in volume with the growth of population and the increase of activity. During the past thirty years, the number of post-offices in the United States has increased from 20,000 to over 70,000, while the amount of mail matter handled has increased in a much larger proportion. The expenditures of the department are nearly $90,000,000 a year, and it employs more than 100,000 persons. Of the first-class postoffices there are 149, the salaries of which range from $3000 upwards; the second class includes 665 offices, with salaries from $2000 to $3000 ; the third class includes 2690 offices, with salaries from $1000 to $2000 ; and the fourth class includes 66,560 offices, with salaries less than $1000.

The method of consolidating post-offices has a significance of another kind. The Post-Office Department thus ignores municipal boundaries, not indeed in its service, but as political units; and there could be no better or more logical way devised utterly to dispel from the popular mind the grotesque notion that could have been born only of the spoils system, — that the proper sending or bringing of one’s letters has any logical connection with anybody’s opinion of a high tariff or a low tariff, or of the coinage of the precious metals, or of the proper attitude of our government to foreign nations.

John R. Procter.