Postal Deficit

Report Outline
Pernnial Problem of the Postal Deficit
Questions of Rates and Subsidies
Savings Through Better Management
Special Focus

Pernnial Problem of the Postal Deficit

Current Economy Cuts in Postal Service

The Reduction in postal service now being placed in effect throughout the United States, in an effort to lower the cost of handling the mails, will bring home to every citizen the perennial problem of the postal deficit. In the fiscal year 1951, beginning July 1, expenditures of the Post Office Department are expected to exceed postal revenues by over half a billion dollars. In the fiscal year now drawing to a close, the excess of expenditures will be in the neighborhood of $545 million—representing about one-tenth of the total federal deficit for 1950, as estimated in the President's January budget.

The House Appropriations Committee, in reporting the omnibus appropriation bill for 1951 to the House in March, recommended that efforts be made to reduce the postal deficit by cutting mail deliveries on routes serving purely residential areas. The committee pointed out that persons on rural routes received only one delivery a day, while city dwellers had from one to three deliveries. Under Postmaster General Donaldson's economy order of Apr. 18, deliveries in residential areas are now being cut to one a day and hours of business at post offices are being shortened.

The National Association of Letter Carriers (A.F.L.) denounced the Donaldson order as “a rape of the postal service” and declared that mail would pile up in post offices faster than it could be delivered on a once-a-day basis. Publishers said reduced hours of work at post offices would throw publication schedules into chaos.