The letter carrier, in addition to that, is subjected, to a greater extent now than heretofore, to injury. In the annual report of the bureau of the Compensation Commission of two years ago they showed that the letter carrier was receiving in benefits and compensation, due to injuries received while in the performance of duty, more than was any other class of employee. That is due to a great extent to the increased automobile traffic; it is due to the natural dangers arising from traveling on the street where, peculiar to relate, the insurance statistics show that more accidents occur than do in other places.

We do not feel that the question raised by the Postmaster General as to the post-office deficit should be a determining factor in this matter. The last annual report of the Postmaster General showed there was about $88,000,000 deficit. It further showed in the terms enumerated by him to-day while on the witness stand here that a large amount of that was for services that might well be charged to some other source, and those included free and franked mail. And on that I want to say I believe the policy of the Government in giving to Senators and Congressmen the right of free mail is a proper and a just one, and one that should be granted. The air mail, the marine service, the free-in-county mail, and other items which could well be charged, should, we feel, not be charged to the post-office deficit, if it is intended to make this post-office business a profitmaking concern. As has been stated here, the cost of postage has not been increased, and in many instances has been reduced. The Postmaster General has stated he believed the question of employment was based largely upon the needs of the masses; in other words, the number that were applying for a position, and that salaries should, in a measure, be based upon the need. We believe if this post-office concern was conducted as other commercial and business institutions are conducted (because they have to purchase their needs at an increased cost now) that they would raise that which they would have to sell, and we have no opinion to express as regards the raising of rates. That is a matter for Congress to decide; but the general average of wholesale prices from 1914 to 1928 have been raised over 40 per cent, and if the rates of postage had been raised equally, had been allowed to float up to the level of the wholesale increased prices, we would not have a deficit; we would have a surplus of something like $273,000,000.

If we are going to conduct this business on the basis of buying and selling as other commercial institutions are doing why then, in all fairness, at least that phase of the situation should be considered. We do not think it is necessary to enter into any argument as to the desirability of granting a shorter Saturday work day. Eighty-one and five-tenths per cent of the unionized workers of the United States now have the 44-hour week or less.

Gentlemen of the committee, we appeal to you to favorably report this measure. We must come to you. You are the committee that handles the laws of the Postal Service, and we ask you to give consideration to this and, in the exercise of your good judgment, favorably to report the bill to the House.

Mr. SPEARING. Has it been your observation that the Post Office Department, in the various offices throughout the country, adjusts

its deliveries or time of deliveries to the commercial and social conditions of the city in which the post office is located?

Mr. FINNAN. Most largely, Mr. Spearing, to the business conditions of the city. The first delivery of the mail being an essential, if a business man gets his first mail, the rest of the day he does not care so very much. Now, to deliver that mail in the afternoons when there is nobody there subjects the mail to the depredations of persons who might get into the rooms, and it is really dangerous to leave it there. There is no necessity, so far as business is concerned, in many business houses, to make any delivery at all and, as President Gainor has said, we think it can be put into operation, so far as the letter carriers are concerned, without much additional cost.

Mr. SPEARING. As I understand, you have 60,000 letter carriers throughout the country?

Mr. FINNAN. There are in the neighborhood of some 53,000 letter carriers and some 1,000 village carriers. We have a membership, however, of nearly 60,000. However, that is made up of persons who come in for the benefits of the organization and the work of the organization. They have been connected with it for a long time, and our membership is approximately 60,000.

Mr. SPEARING. What is that proportion to the total number of men that would be affected by this bill?

Mr. FINNAN. We have more members than we have men that would be affected by the bill.

Mr. SPEARING. I do not mean just the letter carriers, but I mean all the men, because this bill affects more than the letter carriers.

Mr. FINNAN. Yes; it affects a large number more. As has been stated by the Postmaster General here, in the case of clerks, he found that in the money-order division there was no necessity for many men reporting.

Mr. SPEARING. To put my question another way, do you know how many men would be affected by this bill?

Mr. FINNAN. No; I do not.

Mr. SPEARING. Have you any means of ascertaining?

Mr. FINNAN. No. Of course, the figures on that would be in the Post Office Department and, as Mr. Trotter has just testified on that point, he would have more knowledge of it.

Mr. SPEARING. I do not recall that the number was given. If Mr. Trotter has that information, I would like him to put it in the record. Mr. TROTTER. We will do so.

Mr. ROMJUE. Do you know how much additional expense this bill would put on the country?

Mr. FINNAN. The Post Office Department just made an estimate it would cost $13,000,000.

Mr. ROMJUE. Do you agree to that?

Mr. FINNAN. No, sir; I do not.

Mr. ROMJUE. What do you estimate it would cost?

Mr. FINNAN. Well, I would have no means of knowing, for the reason the Post Office Department itself is in possession of all those figures and makes deductions from them. We do know, in the short Saturday workday, so far as the letter carriers are concerned, that it is in operation in a great many cities without any cost whatever to the department.

The CHAIRMAN. Your attitude is that the attitude of the postmasters throughout the country in controlling at the present time? Mr. FINNAN. It is controlling at the present time and, for illustration, down in the city of Alton, Ill., the Post Office Department has written a sympathetic letter to the postmaster here for the last three years, suggesting that he put into operation the short Saturday workday and, notwithstanding that suggestion, which almost amounted to a command, the postmaster has refused to put it into operation.

Mr. SPROUL. For what reason?

Mr. FINNAN. He said it would not give a proper feeling of regard for patrons, and, consequently, he did not think he should put it into operation, as near as my memory serves me of what the postmaster said.

Mr. MCMILLAN. That is rather an exception, is it not?

Mr. FINNAN. No; recently, Mr. Sproul, from the third district of Chicago, has stated that in Chicago Heights it is not being granted now, whereas at Blue Island it is being granted; and Chicago is part of his district, largely.

Mr. MCMILLAN. That is what I am trying to bring out, if it was not up to the postmaster himself to arrange the schedule of deliveries of mail in the respective cities.

Mr. FINNAN. Very largely. I think I am correct in that and, if I make a misstatement, they will not correct me.

Mr. KENDALL. Subject to approval of the Post Office Department. Mr. MCMILLAN. Oh, yes; subject to approval of the Post Office Department.

The CHAIRMAN. In other words, where the postmaster is going to have any criticism of his activity, he refuses to put it in?

Mr. FINNAN. That is it, exactly; and in most of the cases, Mr. Chairman, it is apparently the postmaster feels he may in some manner step upon the toes of the department and bring about censure of himself. In New York City, for example, to a very slight extent the Saturday short workday is put into operation there, in a city where it could be put into operation, I am informed, very well, due to the business houses closing. Of course, they have in the suburbs of New York City what might be termed smaller towns.

We have gone, as Mr. Trotter stated, in effect to the saturation point with the letter carrier. That is true, probably, of the postoffice clerk. They are working eight hours a day and they get all of the work out of them that they can of that kind, and the work, so far as the letter carriers are concerned, as illustrated in the morbidity table and the examination made by the United States Bureau of Health, shows the enormous amount of disease and health hazards in the percentages I just gave you.

Mr. ROMJUE. How does that compare with morbidity in industry? Mr. FINNAN. The morbidity rate of the letter carrier is 57.5 greater than that of the industrial worker.

Mr. WOLVERTON. Why is that true; what reason is given for it? Mr. FINNAN. Exposure-working at different heats.

Mr. WOLVERTON. Is that the only reason?

Mr. FINNAN. No; for instance, the letter carrier is required to go into some ill-ventilated rooms, overheated, and to come out in the

cold, sometimes in the wet and often in the snow. The industrial accidents which occur on the streets-the automobile industry now makes it almost a hazard for anybody to go across the street, and the letter carrier has to go and he has to go the shortest way; and then they are subjected to contagious diseases, going in and out of places where contagious diseases may exist.

Mr. MCMILLAN. That is exactly what I was going to say; that they are subject to contagious diseases.

Mr. FINNAN. It must be said, too, that under the practice of getting eight hours' work the letter carrier must of necessity, due to the hours in which he is supposed to make his deliveries, work at a high speed and a high rate of tension, and that naturally brings down his physical and nervous condition.

Mr. WOLVERTON. I was just going to inquire if it is not due to the strenuous work he performs? Is it not true that the fact he is in the open and walks and exercises conducive to health, rather than nonconducive to health?

Mr. FINNAN. That was the statement made at one time by Doctor Grandfield, then First Assistant Postmaster General, who was himself a doctor. He labored under the impression that the work on the outside would be more healthful. More recently Doctor Mayo, a celebrated physician and surgeon, of Rochester, Minn., made the same statement. We have the experience in our national sick benefit association. We showed where that was entirely erroneous and controverted, I think, Doctor Mayo as well as Doctor Grandfield, that that proposition, in so far as it related to the city letter carrier, was

erroneous.

The CHAIRMAN. That is as compared with the inside workers generally?

Mr. FINNAN. As compared with the general workers in industry. The CHAIRMAN. Have you any comparison between inside workers in relation to the letter carriers?

Mr. FINNAN. No; not in this morbidity table. As illustrative of the strain that the men are under, I recently called the attention of the Post Office Department to the assessing of 25 demerits against a man in New York City who had worked one minute overtime. Now, a man going out in the streets to deliver mail has a large amount of mail; you can realize that if he can come back within one minute of the time he is making a pretty good calculation; but this man was over one minute and was demerited.

Mr. SPEARING. Have you any statistics which would show the average age of letter carriers, as compared with the average age of the industrial worker?

Mr. FINNAN. No. The Labor Bureau has prepared some statistics upon that point and I think the average age of the letter carrier would be slightly higher than that of the industrial worker.

Mr. HOGG. Mr. Finnan, is it not a fact that as regards the delivery of the mail itself, on Saturday afternoon, or Sunday, for that matter, many business men, who are overzealous in having mail delivered at a certain hour, rent a box at the post office and employ their own messenger on special occasions to get the mail?

Mr. FINNAN. That is the fact, and another fact which has grown largely into this equation and has resulted in a considerable item to

the Post Office Department is the knowledge that Saturday afternoon off is growing, particularly in the delivery of the city carrier, and they send their mail by special delivery whenever they feel a delivery should be made on Saturday or Sunday of that particular letter or piece of mail.

Mr. Foss. Have you any figures showing the percentage of carriers who arrive at the age of retirement, as compared with other workers clerks and inside workers?

Mr. FINNAN. No; other than it is shown by the tables prepared by the United States Civil Service Commission that of the number arriving at retirement age (which is 65 for letter carriers and 70 for the general class of Government clerks of the city of Washington), a lower number apply for retention than do the other grade of clerks. It is shown in those tables that some 60 per cent of those who have arrived at retirement age have been granted extensions and, of course, that means that more have asked for it, because some have been denied it.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Finnan.

Mr. FINNAN. I thank the committee very much for their courtesy. EXCERPTS FROM BRIEF SUBMITTED BY M. T. FINNAN, SECRETARY NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF LETTER CARRIERS

INCREASED PRODUCTIVITY OF LETTER CARRIERS

Because the productivity of modern industry has rapidly increased, say the authorities, the worker should have not only higher wages but shorter hours. Industry can produce all it needs to produce in the shorter time. The worker needs the leisure, both to enjoy the higher standard of living which larger productivity makes possible, and to recuperate from the strain of his working life, which efficient modern methods entail.

What is the case with the letter carriers? Here increases in productivity are not aided by complex automatic machinery. It is a job dependent almost entirely on the brain, nerves, and sinew of the individuals doing the work. Letter carriers should share in the general growth of production and leisure made possible by machinery, entirely aside from their own contribution.

But if they have themselves become more productive, there is redoubled compulsion to grant them shorter hours.

Productivity of letter carriers may be measured by comparing the growth of the volume of mail with the growth of their numbers. The total volume of mail has undoubtedly grown less rapidly than the mail handled by the letter carriers, who work in the cities and larger towns, because of the increasing concentration of the population in cities and the reduction of the numbers of people on farms. To compare the growth in the total volume of mail with the increase in number of carriers therefore will underestimate the advance of their productivity rather than otherwise.

The increase in volume of mail may be conservatively estimated by the increase in the postal receipts. Domestic letter postage is the same as before the war. Foreign letter postage has been decreased by the extension of domestic rates to most foreign nations. Second-class rates were somewhat increased, in effect, by the zoning law. But this could not much affect the total, since second-class mail receipts, according to the last report of the Postmaster General, make up but 4.4 per cent of postal revenues. Parcel post, which accounts for over 60 per cent of the total volume of mail and over 20 per cent of total receipts, is now being carried at lower revenue per pound than before the war, since the charge for the first pound is larger than that for additional pounds, and the weight and girth limits have been enlarged.

Further reductions in rates were made effective in the fiscal year ending June 30, 1929.

From the accompanying table we see that postal receipts increased 141 per cent between 1914 and 1928, while the number of letter carriers increased only 59 per cent. The receipts per letter carrier increased 52 per cent in the same