AN EMBARRASSING QUESTION TO THE DEPARTMENT

whether the railway-mail service should be reduced so as to correspond with the appropriation, or whether it should be continued as it then was until Congress should meet and the question might be referred to it for its judgment and decision. It was believed by the department that it would not do to withdraw the service from such a number of railroads as would reduce the cost of transportation within the amount appropriated. The only other method of reducing the expenses of this service would have been to discontinue the service as carried on and conducted by our postal-car system entirely, or to such an extent as would bring the expenditure within the appropriation. To have adopted this course would have led to great confusion and delay, and to great dissatisfaction and complaint on the part of the public. It would have carried us back to the system in vogue before postal cars were used. Separation offices would have been required on the lines of railways, at which the mail would have been stopped and deposited for separation and distribution, instead of having this separation and distribution made without detention or delay on the moving trains as is now done.

ANOTHER DIFFICULTY

in pursuing such a course is that it would necessarily lead to a large increase of force in such of the post-offices as might be made offices for separation of the mails, and no appropriation by Congress had been made, or considered, so far as I am aware, for such a purpose. Hence I have delayed making such radical changes in the service as would be required by reason of the sum appropriated to this branch of the postal service until Congress could be consulted upon the subject. Should no additional appropriation be made for this service, I shall feel it my duty under the laws so to curtail the service as to fall within the appropriation, however much I might consider the public interests injured thereby. I am satisfied it would lead justly to much complaint.

MAILS WOULD BE DELAYED

at the offices of separation hardly ever less than twelve hours, and most generally twenty-four hours. Letters, papers, and packages passing over great distances or circuitous routes would be detained at more than one such office in very many cases, and there would be delay in the immense number of transactions which are initiated, conducted, and completed by communications through the mails.

For this cause, business men would send their messages by telegraph instead of the mails, to a great extent, and the delay in the transmission of the remittances of business men would add largely to sums they pay by way of interest and exchange. In my opinion, it would cause a shock to our postal system from which it would not soon recover. Railway companies, which have been at the expense of furnishing postal cars,

might be slow to furnish us such conveniences a second time, and there is no law to compel them to do so.

REGISTRATION OF THIRD-CLASS MATTER.

Numerous complaints of the loss of valuable packages of third-class mail matter have for a long time been made to the department. Much matter of this class finds its way to the dead-letter office, because incorrectly or illegally directed, or through the destruction of imperfect wrappers, or because the addressee cannot be found, or for some other cause. The difficulty of detecting the theft of such matter in passing through the mails has furnished temptation and opportunity for its appropriation by persons of weak consciences through whose hands it ought to pass, sometimes agents of the senders or addressees, sometimes of the department. To give security from loss to the sender or addressee, and to save the department from scandal, it was deemed proper to do something to insure a more safe and certain passage of such matter through the mails. The efficiency and security of the registry system of first-class mail matter suggested the propriety of extending its provisions to valuable matter of the third class, and on the 1st of October last I ordered that valuable matter of the third class be registered upon the same terms and under the same provisions as matter of the first class, under authority of section 3926 of the Revised Statutes of the United States. This will add to the work of the department and make some increase of force in the more important post-offices and on the more important railways necessary, but the fees of registration will add a sufficient sum to the postal revenues to pay this additional force. This revenue, however, will go into the Treasury with the other postal revenues, and cannot be specially used under existing law to pay such additional force.

SUGGESTED MODIFICATION OF THE LAW REGULATING REGISTRATION.

Section 3928 of the Revised Statutes is as follows: "A receipt shall be taken upon delivery of any registered mail matter, showing to whom and when the same was delivered, which shall be returned to the sender and be received in the courts as prima-facie evidence of such delivery." This provision adds materially to the labor and expense of the registry system. Most senders have no desire or use for such a receipt. I therefore suggest that this section of the law be so changed as to make it the duty of the department to take and send such a receipt only when requested to do so by the sender.

THE DEPARTMENT NOT EXPECTED TO BE SELF-SUSTAINING.

If the revenues of the postal service were equal to its expenditures, no severe system of economy would be so necessary for its administration. Many of my predecessors have urged the establishment of higher rates of postage or the exclusion from the mails of such matter as did not pay

the expenses of its transportation, in order to make the department selfsustaining. Time and again it has been shown that matter of the second and third class does not pay its way through the mails, and Congress has been urged to increase the rates of postage thereon. The question has been considered time and again by the appropriate committees and discussed by both branches of Congress, and the results have shown that it was not expected that the department should be self-sustaining, but that the deficiencies in its revenues should be met by appropriations from the general Treasury.

DEFICIENCIES MUST INCREASE WITH BUSINESS.

If this be true and if this policy shall be continued, it necessarily follows that the deficiencies must increase in proportion to the increase of mail-matter of these classes, and if sums inadequate to meet these deficiencies be appropriated by Congress, the efficiency of the service must be crippled. The amount of matter sent through the mails free is very large, adding greatly to our expenditures and giving us no revenue.

THE FRANKING PRIVILEGE

has been restored to the members and chief officers of Congress, so as to allow them to send free almost everything which they were ever allowed to transmit through the mails free, except letters. Tons upon tons of books, documents, seeds, shrubs, and the like are placed in our mails, free of cost, on this score. The official letters of the executive departments of the general government, their documents, &c., go free through the mails. Newspapers sent to subscribers residing in the county in which the newspapers are printed and published go free through the mails. It costs the department just as much per pound to send this free matter through the mails as it does that on which postage is paid. A pound of seeds or public documents, or of speeches of members of Congress, or of reports of departments costs just as much as a pound of letters on which three cents for every half ounce has been paid.

HOW TO PREVENT DEFICIENCIES.

Now, I most respectfully but earnestly suggest that it would be better policy to reduce the deficiencies of the revenues of the department by curtailing or abolishing the list of free matter, and by increasing the rates of postage on merchandise, than by appropriating sums inadequate to an efficient, prompt, and fast transmission of the mails.

NECESSITY FOR NEW POST-OFFICE BUILDINGS.

The building used in San Francisco for post-office purposes I found from personal inspection to be entirely inadequate to the necessities of the service. San Francisco is the great commercial city of the Pacific coast. Its business and population are constantly increasing, thus add

ing to the embarrassments inflicted upon the postal service by its present insufficient accommodations. As several years are usually required for the erection of such buildings, and the necessity in this case is urgent, I feel constrained to call the attention of Congress to the subject for such inquiry and action as it may deem proper.

I also respectfully urge that some suitable building be provided for the Washington City office. It now occupies so large a portion of the departmental building as to leave insufficient room for the clerks of the department, and renders the space available for files and records entirely inadequate. For want of other suitable room many tons of valuable records are now stored in the attic of the building, adding greatly to the danger from fire, in the event of which their destruction would be inevitable.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

D. M. KEY, Postmaster-General.

The PRESIDENT.