THE ROLL CALL
Our Own "Little Russia". POSTMASTER GENERAL HITCHCOCK is outdoing the "Little Father of all the Russians" in his imposition of a despotism and reign of terror among the thousands of government...
...The Army of Killed and Maimed WOODEN MAIL CARS are still continued in the service...
...To continue to work in them is to assume a tremendous risk of loss of life and limb...
...But the clerks feel that this course is unwise, that it is likely to be followed soon by discovery at Washington that the clerk so complaining is "incompetent" and must be either reduced or removed or otherwise punished...
...To refuse to work in these cars, individually and unorganized, is for most of these clerks to lose that means of livelihood for which they are fitted by years of preparation...
...Why this reign of secrecy...
...In the event of a collision or derailment, the wooden mail car is crushed like an egg-shell...
...POSTMASTER GENERAL HITCHCOCK is outdoing the "Little Father of all the Russians" in his imposition of a despotism and reign of terror among the thousands of government employees over whom his word is law...
...They believe that through organization they can recover their rights and liberties, as men and citizens of the United States...
...Why must government employment be converted into a badge of servitude, depriving thousands of men of the rights of men for the protection of which the government itself was founded and which are guaranteed to every citizen in the fundamental law of the land...
...What more logical field for experiments in political "economy" than the salaries and services of these mail clerks...
...The penalty for violations of this order may be dismissal from the service...
...One Thousand Death-Traps In the United States postal service there are about one thousand wooden mail cars in service—one thousand death-traps...
...No, readers, the Department is not saving any money and is not advocating the saving of any money by reducing the excessive payments to railroads for carrying the mail and the rental of postal cars...
...Frequently, these cars are run in trains between steel cars or between a steel car in the rear and engine and tender in front...
...The railway mail clerks rely upon the fairness and justice of the people...
...What is there to hide...
...In their efforts to secure better conditions, the clerks rely upon publicity...
...Construed in the light of their practical effect, these orders were to require railway mail clerks, many of them already inadequately paid for the services required of them, to extend their runs and take up additional duties, in order that the force might be reduced...
...Membership in any organization designed to improve the condition of government employees shall not be a cause of removal or demotion...
...Under the iron-clad system of the domineering bureaucracy of the Department they are reduced to a condition of helpless, speechless subjugation...
...Gag Rule BY EXECUTIVE ORDER, "All officers and employees of the United States of every description, serving in or under any of the Executive Departments, and whether so serving in or out of Washington, are hereby forbidden, either directly or indirectly, individually or through associations, to solicit an increase of pay or to influence or attempt to influence in their own interest any other legislation whatever, either before Congress or its committees, or in any way save through the heads of the Departments in or under which they serve, on penalty of dismissal from the Government service...
...No voluntary suggestion has emanated from that source for legislation to secure more sanitary conditions or a greater measure of safety for the lives of the government's loyal employees, who perform their work in mail cars on moving trains...
...This economy scheme of the Postmaster General worked so badly that it was shortly necessary to modify the orders...
...The Administration, facing popular repudiation on account of its pro-System legislative and administrative policies in other directions, is bending every effort, wise and otherwise, to show some little balance of apparent economies in administrative expenses before the eve of another national campaign...
...No employee shall be removed or demoted except upon conviction of charges affecting the efficiency of the service...
...Their's is a cause of common justice in behalf of which all men, free of System domination, regardless of party, in public or private life, can unite...
...Not once has a suggestion come from the Department under the present Administration for economy by a reduction of railway mail pay or of the extravagant rentals paid railroads for the use of mail cars...
...Not in the days of the star route scandals, nor in the days of the mail contract scandals, nor even in the days of the supply contract scandals were such means of secrecy and suppression resorted to...
...In the railway mail service the working conditions especially complained of have had reference to the character and condition of cars in which mail is carried—the cars furnished by the railroad companies and approved by obliging gentlemen in the P. 0. D. The clerks ask merely that cars shall be sanitary and safe...
...In the railway mail service, particularly, the employees of the department are ground down under the incompetency and tyranny of an official hierarchy, of which the slick machine politician of the President's Cabinet is the dominating mind...
...By executive law they are prohibited from any active participation in politics...
...Instances have been known...
...A public record of the charges shall be preserved and the accused shall be furnished with a copy of the allegations...
...WHY ALL THESE rigors of oppression and suppression in a departmental service of the people's government...
...There is something suggestive of the faithful servant at his master's heels in the loyalty and subservience with which the Postoffice Department has safeguarded the interests of the mail carrying railroads...
...They are not paid enough so that they can become the source of any considerable political campaign fund...
...Under conditions which they fully understand, petition or protest to their superiors in the Department is futile—or worse...
...How can they come back...
...But there are in the service, among others, several thousand railway mail clerks, who are inviting subjects for Administration "economy...
...Some Political "Economy" IN THE POSTOFFICE DEPARTMENT particularly the "reign of economy" flourishes...
...The rotten wooden mail car is one of the most grievous complaints of the railway mail clerks...
...Denied the right of petition, gagged into silent submission and prevented by intimidation from organizing for mutual support and to secure better conditions through publicity, their every defensive movement reported to the departmental Romanoffs by departmental spies, the condition of the railway mail clerks is one which a body of loyal, intelligent, American-spirited men can not be long expected to endure...
...The great sixty-ton steel coach or baggage car grinds down upon the little wooden mail caT, grinding it to fragments or telescoping it from end to end, destroying tons of mail matter and killing or maiming for life the clerks working the mail inside...
...On the other hand, the Administration and the Postmaster General have used all the power at their command to secure the passage in Congress of legislation to increase, by millions of dollars annually, ocean mail subsidies to favored Interests...
...Why Suppression...
...Railway postal clerks must not engage in controversy with or criticism of railroad officials, involving the administration of the postal service, by furnishing information to the newspapers or publicly discussing or denouncing the acts of omissions of such officials as affecting the postal service...
...The La Follette Bill THESE ARE AMONG the reasons why Senator La Follette, after extended inquiry and investigation, has introduced in the senate a bill which provides: Every employee charged with misconduct shall be entitled to a hearing upon the ae.usation if he desires a trial...
...Organization among railway mail clerks has had from its beginning as its primary object, reasonable improvement in the working condition of the employees...
...They believe that a public informed of these conditions will force the railroads and a System-serving Postmaster General to give them a square deal...
...Is there something "rotten in Denmark...
...Under the present Postmaster General, the amounts of penalties deducted from railway mail pay for delays in carrying the mail decreased, compared with previous years, and finally Congress, at the instance of the Postmaster General and upon his appearance before the Postoffice Committee in that behalf, eliminated from the postal law the penalty feature and now it is reported that the railroads "expedite the mails"—when convenient to their own operations...
...Clerks Attempt to Organize MEANWHILE, the postal clerks, in the face of the increasing burdens and the added impositions of tyranny and incompetency, have been flocking in increasing numbers into the labor organizations and have been affiliating their organizations with the American Federation of Labor...
...Of course, railway mail clerks may complain to their division superintendents of the "acts or omissions" of the railroads...
...What, for instance, are the "acts or omissions" of the railroads, to protect which from publicity, the Postmaster General must resort to these extreme measures...
...In many cases it is reported that the "slack orders" imposed upon the clerks impossible tasks, resulting of necessity in their inability to work all of the mail on their runs, requiring that some of it be carried through to the end of the run without being distributed, delaying the mail and crippling the service...
...The Postoffice Department gag order advises postal employees that, "It is deemed essential to the proper administration of public business that officers and employees of this office shall maintain respectful official relations with railroad companies and other carrying companies, as well as with their superior officers...
...The accompanying illustrations from phstographs of actual wrecks tell the story...
...The railroads and the shipping combines are safe...
...Placing their confidence in the fairness of the people, they look to an informed public opinion to compel better working conditions...
...The clerks who go to work in these cars are forbidden by departmental gag rule to criticize their condition or even disclose it to the public or to petition congress for relief...
...This move on the part of the railway mail clerks, according to well-authenticated reports (which have leaked out, notwithstanding the Department's gag rules), the Department has met with more intimidations and new violations of the Constitutional rights of the employees...
...In pursuit of alleged "economy," some time ago departmental orders were issued "to take up the slack" in the railway mail service...
...While the law has given the Postoffice Department ample authority to require that cars be sanitary and provided with a sanitary supply of drinking water, there are enough complaints made by clerks at the risk of losing their employment to indicate that the provisions of the law are not scrupulously observed by the railroads, nor do the railroads seem to be terrorized with the fear that the Department will penalize them on their car rentals for these omissions...
Vol. 3 • May 1911 • No. 18
