New National Era

What It Costs,

If the New National Era is willing to take the word of the Postmaster General as to the fact, it cannot avoid the conclusion that the franking privilege costs the nation a great deal more than a quarter of a million of dollars. It is not what is paid to the Baltimore and Ohio and other roads for taking the matter out of this city that taxes the nation so severely, but what is paid to the railroad and stage lines all over the country in extra charges because of extra weight imposed upon the mails. Contracts for carrying mail matter are generally by weight. Thus it happens that a very heavy tax falls upon the Post Office Department through this privilege. The Chronicle supposes that the Philadelphia Convention committed the Republican Administration to the repeal of the franking law.—Daily Chronicle.

We have the highest possible respect for the Postmaster General, and are willing to take his word as to any statement he may make in regard to matters he has carefully investigated. But we are not willing to take his word that the franking privilege costs the Government, or Post Office Department, which we take to mean the same thing, $5,000,000 annually, and is therefore a great burden, because we are confident he does not make it upon his own knowledge, or as the result of personal examination. We believe the statement is made in perfect good faith and from a conscientious desire to promote the public interest.

Still, we are satisfied that it is a very great error, and that the franking privilege imposes a hardly perceptible tax upon the Government or Department. Our reason for entertaining this belief is the fact that if every public document printed by the Government were made into a bound volume and sent free through the mails, and if each member of Congress, and thirty-five other persons possessing the franking privilege, were to send and receive 10,000 letters each, yearly, the legal postage on the whole would not amount to more than $360,000. But not more than half the documents printed are made into bound volumes, on which the postage is a cent a pound. Nor does each member of Congress send and receive more than 5,000 letters on an average, which would be a very high estimate. And, besides, not more than half the documents printed are sent from here under frank.

We will admit, however, that seven hundred and fifty tons of paper are annually printed in documents and put into bound volumes, on which the legal postage is one cent a pound, and that each member of Congress and other persons entitled to the privilege sends and receives 5,000 letters yearly, making $240,000 annually for the former and $60,000 annually for the latter. This would make an aggregate of $300,000, the precise amount we stated in the article to which the Chronicle refers in the paragraph quoted above. And in our calculations of the bound volumes sent away under frank we include the Congressional Globe.

At most, then, there is an average of not more than two tons of franked matter daily sent through the mails, free, yearly. Nine-tenths of this matter originally leaves Washington, and by the time it is an hundred miles or so from the city, has begun to branch off in different directions, and is finally distributed through a thousand channels all over the Union, each railroad, and stage, and steamboat line carrying so small a portion of the original bulk as to be almost literally imperceptible. To none of them is this free matter of the slightest consequence, as it does not cost one of them, out of an hundred, an extra dollar; and there is good reason to doubt whether the mail contracts are let any higher than they would if the franking privilege were abolished.

For these reasons, based on incontrovertible facts, or on estimates that go to the very outside of facts, we think the Postmaster General is greatly mistaken in his statement of the cost of transporting free matter. If he will ascertain at the Government Printing Office the quantity of paper printed into public documents, at the Globe office the weight of Congressional Globes printed and bound, and at other sources, the number of free letters sent and received, he will ascertain that we are right and he is wrong. Of course, we have not referred to the correspondence of other branches of the Government which is carried free by the Post Office Department. If that were paid for it would be simply robbing Peter to pay Paul, as it must still come out of the Treasury, and its only object would be to enable the Post Office Department to make a better financial showing at the expense of other departments. So that is a matter of no consequence to the people, since it is not expected that heads of Departments and Bureaus, chief clerks, &c., shall pay the postage on their official correspondence.

But the consideration that the franking privilege is really a source of very little expense to the Post Office Department, or the Government, is not our only reason for opposing its abolition. We believe it is of great public advantage, and worth infinitely more to the people than all it costs. This is especially true of the colored population of the country. It is the only means by which the public documents printed at the expense of the Government will ever reach them. They are not able to pay the postage on them and it would bankrupt their representatives to pre-pay the postage on them and their correspondence. We have time, now, only briefly to suggest this objection to the repeal of the franking law. Every one will see its force, without a labored argument and so we leave it.

Construing the action of the Philadelphia Convention upon the franking privilege in the light of the facts we have stated, will show how much importance should be attached to it. To us it has always seemed only a harmless piece of bunkum, injected into the platform in deference to the clamor of a few papers which had never taken the trouble to calculate the cost of the franking privilege. Perhaps Congress will feel, or the Republican portion of it, that it is bound by the action of the convention to abolish the privilege. We don't know but they are, though we are sure the people will not hold them to a very rigid account for looking upon it in a different light. At any rate, it is of far more importance to them than to members of Congress.