Postal Embarrassment

First class mail for Europe from the Atlantic coast was suspended during the last three days of June and no parcel post was shipped over the same routes for the last week of the month. The reason for the cessation of mail service was that the Post Office Department does business according to rules that do not appertain in private business; all its income goes into the public treasury; all its expenditures come from specific appropriations by Congress.

For example, Congress may appropriate such a sum of money as seems necessary for the expenses of the Post Office. Business may suddenly increase so that the Post Office has to handle much more mail than was anticipated. The income of the Post Office increases proportionately, but the amount of money it may expend in handling the increased business remains exactly the same--the amount which Congress had appropriated.

This is exactly what happened in the case of foreign mails. Congress appropriated $6,500,000 for this purpose, and adjourned on March 4. Soon after that time the Post Office Department discovered that its foreign mails had taken a great increase. But Congress was not in session and there was no means of securing a deficiency appropriation. To meet the situation the Department twice lowered the rates paid to steamship companies for carrying mail--once in March and again in June. The appropriation was nevertheless exhausted before the end of the fiscal year, on June 30. On July 1 the appropriation for the next year became available and shipments were resumed.

Post Office officials estimated that about 50,000 parcel post packages, 500,000 pieces of first class mail were detained by the shortage of funds. The Aquitania scheduled to sail on July 1, and the Leviathan on July 4 were expected to take care of the accumulation.