National Affairs: Postal Pay

There was several days’ warning that there was a scandal coming in regard to the effort to secure increased pay for postal employes. Last week the nature of the affair was revealed :

An assistant clerk of the Senate Post Office Committee was discharged. The Secretary of the House Postal Committee resigned. Six postal officials—the Acting Superintendent of Mails in New York City, the Acting Postmaster of

Detroit, the Assistant Superintendent of Delivery at Chicago, the Superintendent of Mails at Louisville, the Assistant Postmaster of Springfield, Ohio, the Postal Cashier at Boston—were suspended. A report of two Postal Inspectors who investigated the conduct of these men was made public.

The report declared that the Assistant Clerk of the Senate Committee secured the appointment of four of these men to assist in the preparation of the Postal Pay Increase Bill (passed by Congress and vetoed by the President last spring), that they came to Washington and were approached by the clerk who asked to be paid for securing the passage of the bill, that they refused to give him money outright but, as a blind, arranged to pay him $125 a month as a contributor to the magazine of the National Association of Postal Supervisors (all six were members of the Executive Committee of this organization), that by this and subsequent arrangements the clerk expected to get $10,000 and actually got $2,585, that the same group made a “present” of $1,000 to the Secretary of the House Committee. The accused men maintain the payments were perfectly proper, having been made to secure information and not to influence legislation. Bribery proceedings cannot be instituted since the clerk and the Secretary are technically employed by the committees and are not U. S. officers.

Senator Ashurst described the disclosures as a smoke screen to cover the defeat of the Postal Pay increase bill and pointed out that the suspended men represent only the higher postal officials, some 5,000 in number, not the main body of postal workers.

Meanwhile, the Senate Post Office Committee completed work on the bill which is to provide increased postal rates to balance the cost of higher pay for postal employes. This was to be offered as a substitute for the measure (vetoed by the President), which provided higher pay without corresponding rate increases.