Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 February 1910 — GROWING POSTOFFICE DEFICIT. [ARTICLE]

GROWING POSTOFFICE DEFICIT.

Habit* of Vwn of tho a«W« Wfcleh Helped to Make It. Apropos of the $2D,000,000 deficit in the Postofflce Department last year—which was $4,000,000 worse than the one of two years ago—the Silent Partner remarks that, after all, it is ths people's own department, and It seems to be their delight to abuse its priv lieges. “They may persist," says the article referred to, “in using stationery of gray, yellow, green, red, blue and every other color that makes addresses almost impossible to read at night, when most mall is handled. ‘‘lt is the people’s department, so they have a right to deposit every year 11,000,000 pieces of mail to go to the dead letter office after carriers, clerks and experts have spent hours .trying to decipher each address or hunting an address that did not exist. “Since the postofflce belongs to the people they have a right as 'business men to save up all their hundreds of letera to mail at the close of the day, so that an extra nlglffl force Is needed In every big postofflce, and so that nine-tenths of the mall may be sorted and handled at the very t/me when It is twice as hard to work it. “As business men the people have a right to tie packages so they will come Unwrapped, to send all sorts of mail with insufficient postage, to send huge cards that will not fit the carrier’s bag or the * pigeonholes in the mail cars, or squeeze into the sacks. "The people have a right to demand that mail be carried on fast trains from which the sacks must be kicked \t high speed, but it is not incumbent npon the people to use heavy covdrs for catalogues or booklets so that they will stand the jar. “But If the people have all these 1 rights and take advantage of them the people must not kick If the departtnent is costly or if some who believe In individualism think that the people’s government makes about the poorest showing as the administrator of a big business that can be made.”—New YWk Sun.