Strange Sound

A strange and unexpected noise was heard in Washington last week. It was the sound of a Government department preparing to economize even before it had to.

Postmaster General Jesse M. Donaldson ordered drastic cuts in mail service, and the probable furloughing or firing of an estimated 10,000 postal workers, to offset the department's growing deficit ($551 million for fiscal 1949) and the $25 million cut made by the House Appropriations Committee in postal appropriations for the coming fiscal year.

By July 1, Donaldson announced, delivery of mail in all U.S. city residential areas will be cut to once a day; Saturday deliveries in business districts will be sliced by one; pickup of mail from street boxes will stop before 8:30 at night. The decree also meant that most Americans would get their mail later in the day, since most night sorting would be eliminated.

Congressmen, still getting their mail on the old schedule, began to find in it protests from constituents. The A.F.L.'s National Association of Letter Carriers cried mournfully that Donaldson's order was "a rape of the postal service," and an "illadvised" rape at that. He had committed it, if rape it was, before the Senate had a chance to act on the House's budget cut; the Senate, hearing the angry rustle of citizens stuffing protests into their mailboxes, might give back the $25 millions.

Burly, round-faced Jesse Donaldson, the first career Postmaster General in history, a man who climbed to the Cabinet via mail sorter, letter carrier and pistol-packing post-office inspector, had been regarded around the capital as a man who lacked political experience. Members of Congress were beginning to wonder.

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