The Bluff That Wasn't

Persimmony, parsimonious Missouri Democrat Clarence Cannon was at his pinch-mouthed, pinch-pursed best. "I have never known of a previous instance," snapped House Appropriations Committee Chairman Cannon, "in which a Government employee came up to the Capitol and issued an ultimatum to the House and Senate." Against that ultimatum, the "United States Congress, the greatest legislative body in the world, that stood up to Hitler, that stood up to Mussolini, that stood up to Stalin, stampeded like a regiment dissolving at Waterloo--before a Postmaster General."

Cannon was still sure that Postmaster General Arthur E. Summerfield was bluffing in his threat to curtail mail services if Congress did not vote him a $47 million supplemental appropriation for the current fiscal year (TIME, April 15). Cannon was wrong: Summerfield was not bluffing.

No Postman's Ring. To Businessman Summerfield., the reports that landed on his Post Office desk were as plain (but by no means as satisfying) as the sales figures had been at his prosperous Chevrolet agency back in Flint, Mich. The Post Office books simply showed that the department was about to run out of money--with three months still to go in the fiscal year. Thus, while the House was still listening to Clarence Cannon's cries of bluff, Summerfield issued the orders that 1) eliminated, effective last week, all regular deliveries on Saturdays, 2) closed all Post Office windows on Saturdays, 3) drastically cut Post Office window hours on Mondays through Fridays, 4) limited downtown business-mail deliveries to two a day, 5) placed embargoes on nearly all third-class mail beginning next week.

Across the U.S. the effect was instantaneous and anguished. Wailed the New Rochelle (N.Y.) Standard Star: CITY MAILMEN WON'T RING EVEN ONCE. Some 1,000 of New York City's 35,000 postal workers were threatened with being laid off this week, and there were grim predictions of an unholy traffic tangle, as 6,000,000 pieces of Saturday mail piled up in New York City post offices alone. Growled the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer: "Mr. Summerfield's sitdown strike has become unbecoming and disrespectful." Some political critics were unkind enough to recall the 1952 Republican platform, which indicated a return to twice-a-day home deliveries. The absence of the Saturday mailman was felt in every U.S. home--and no one knew better than the Congressmen that their constituents live in those homes.

No Simple Thing. Alarmed at the reaction and convinced that Summerfield was not bluffing, the House Appropriations Committee rushed through an approval of $41 million, and privately urged Summerfield to postpone his decrees on the promise that the House itself would virtually meet his demands before Easter recess this week. But Summerfield stood fast. Sniffed Clarence Cannon: "He's been breaking the law all along.* I don't see why he suddenly has become so pious that he can't keep essential service going.'' Mailman Summerfield refused to budge until he got cash on the barrelhead. And he took the opportunity to remind the U.S. of one of the freaks of Government accounting: no matter how much money the Post Office takes in by selling stamps and money orders, the Post Office cannot use a cent of it. Reason: the receipts go into the general fund of the Treasury, while the Post Office lives strictly on appropriations from Congress. So, said Summerfield, "if Americans decide to send more mail than the department estimated they would in its budget, then the postal service must deliver that extra amount of mail. This costs extra money."

* U.S. Comptroller-General Joseph Campbell, Congress' fiscal watchdog, declared that Summerfield's Post Office Department had violated the spirit of the law. The law: spending must be apportioned over the full year in such a way that neither large-scale supplemental appropriations nor curtailment of services is necessary.

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