The Franking Privilege
“I have said so much, that if I had not a frank I must burn my letter and begin again.”
—Cowper.
It is the abuse of certain privileges, which all governments accord to a portion of its officers, which leads to fraud, crime, and corruption. Among these, that of the franking system may be ranked as a most prominent one. Had it been checked at an earlier period of our postal history, how many evils would have been prevented, and how far more plethoric would have been its treasury!
As early as 1782, even in its incipient state, far-seeing men objected to its exercise. In December (6th), 1782, an ordinance extending the privilege of franking letters to the heads of all the departments was reported and taken up. Various ideas were thrown out on the subject at large,—some contending for the extension proposed, some for a total abolition of the privilege as well in members of Congress as in others, some for a limitation of the privilege to a definite number or weight of letters. Those who contended for a total abolition represented the privilege as productive of abuses, reducing the profits so low as to prevent the extension of the establishment throughout the United States, and throwing the whole burden of the establishment on the mercantile intercourse. On the other side, it was contended that in case of an abolition the delegates or their constituents would be taxed just in proportion to their distance from the seat of Congress,—which was neither just nor politic, considering the many other disadvantages which were inseparable from that distance; that, as the correspondence of the delegates was the principal channel through which a general knowledge of public affairs was diffused, any abridgment of it would in so far confine this advantage to the States within the neighborhood of Congress, and that as the correspondence at present, however voluminous, did not exclude from the mail any private letters which would be subject to postage, and if postage was extended to letters now franked the number and size of them would be essentially reduced, the revenue was not affected in the manner represented. The ordinance was disagreed to, and the subject recommitted with instructions to the committee, giving them ample latitude for such report as they should think fit. Whether the report was ever made we are not advised; but its latitude has increased with the introduction of every new State and Territory. Since the above date, almost every postmaster-general has alluded to the franking privilege. Mr. Blair, in his report of 1863, says,—
“I renew the recommendation made last year, that the franking privilege of postmasters be abolished, except for correspondence between them and other officers of the department upon official business.
“It should be abolished also as to the correspondence of all persons addressed to the several departments and executive officers of government, except upon official correspondence addressed by an officer of the government.
“Both these privileges, as they now exist, have been much abused, and have no proper place in a correct postal system.”
Mr. Blair, however, falls into the same error that many official rulers commit,—that of calculating chances of success, instead of commanding them. In the report alluded to, we find this passage:—that “the postal revenue has nearly equalled the entire expenditures,—the latter amounting to $11,314,206.84, and the former to $11,163,789.59, leaving a deficiency of but $150,417.25. Good reason, therefore, exists for the expectation that within a brief period this important department of the General Government will become self-sustaining.”
We do not think so. The postal department is not, nor can it ever be made, a speculative one. It is based on the increase of trade and commerce throughout an extent of country unparalleled in history, as uniting in one system of rule upwards of thirty millions of people. To keep up the routes over such a vast space, connecting State to State, Territory to Territory, passing over lakes, rivers, mountains, even over the land-route to California, through almost impassable sections, contending with difficulties scarcely to be realized in descriptions, the expense is necessarily great. Previous to 1850 many of the routes bordering the Atlantic were for the most part isolated lines, near to which trade and traffic had not approached. The settlement of California, and the opening of a trade which has ultimately proved a second Peru, as regards gold, may be dated as the commencement of a new era in the physical progress of our country. In connecting a line of posts, establishing post-offices, and furnishing modes of conveyance, the question of dollars and cents is but a secondary consideration. The word profit was repudiated, and the sole purpose of the government was to establish the post, no matter at what cost. The time may come when it shall prove self-sustaining, but never if at the expense of the public interest, nor while the franking system exists.
We contend that every letter, document, or newspaper, no matter by whom mailed, or how high the functionary, should be prepaid; for men in authority are the servants of the people, and have no more claim upon the public treasury than has the lowest worker in any of the departments. The postal department, however, in its official correspondence, should be the only exception to the rule.
Nor is it the mere privilege we complain of, but its abuse. Reduce it to an honest and equitable use, and we venture to say the public will endure the act.
Mr. George Plitt, in his report while a special agent of the post-office department, made February 3, 1841, speaking of the franking privilege, says, “The actual number of franked packages sent from the post-office of Washington City during the week ending on the 7th of July last was 201,534; and the whole number sent during the last session of Congress amounted to the enormous quantity of 4,314,948. All these packages are not only carried by the department into every section of the country free of charge, but it is actually obliged to pay to every postmaster whose commissions do not amount to $2000 per annum, two cents for the delivery of each one! Supposing all the above to have been delivered, the department would lose from its revenue for this one item upwards of $80,000, besides paying for the mail-transportation.”
In 1834 the “Washington Globe,” speaking upon this subject, used the following language:—
“Particular cases of gross abuse upon the post-office are within our knowledge, and the postmaster-general will be informed of hundreds of others. The opinion of those acquainted with the subject, which we have no doubt is correct, is that the department has lost within the last year, by the extension of the franking privileges of the members of Congress, and by abuses of law, more than one hundred thousand dollars. This revenue would in a short time pay off the debts of the department, and leave the people all the mails they now have. Who loses this sum? Not the department only, but the people,—the honest correspondents by the post, who prefer paying postage on their letters to obtaining franks. In fact, the abuses are growing so rapidly as to justify a fear of their endangering the establishment. The restrictions of the law seem to have been by some men wholly borne down and prostrated, and the franking privilege is rapidly extending itself over, and covering a great part of, the ordinary private correspondence of the country.”
The post-office is an establishment of the greatest utility. The law throws it upon its receipts for postage as its sole support. When these fail, the mails must stop; and every dollar that is taken from them is so much drawn from the service of the public. The duty, therefore, of protecting the department from the loss of its revenue is imposed upon the postmaster-general not only by the general principle of the law, but by the necessity of saving the establishment from annihilation, total or partial. The sentiment of the people, ever against abuse and the improper use of privilege, will sustain the postmaster-general in his course.
The “Globe,” after alluding to the further abuse of the franking privilege, says,—
“If the government had been placed upon the footing of citizens, and had paid during Mr. Barry’s administration one-third even of what these would have paid for the same services, would the department have been in debt? Strike an account with the executive government only, even for the last year, and we find that the balance due to the department, including the losses by abuses, would more than pay its whole debts. To those, then, who charge that the department is ‘insolvent,’ we say that its unrequited labors have justly earned for it a revenue more than sufficient to meet all the demands against it.”
In connection with this subject,—and it is one that, when fully exposed, will astonish the country,—we annex the following from the “American Merchant,” New York, for July, 1859. “There is not the slightest doubt that very extensive frauds may be successfully carried on in the department; but we incline to the opinion, however, that the most aggravated ‘frauds’ perpetrated on the department, and which are the more hard to be borne that there is no remedy for them under the existing law, are those which grow out of the franking privilege. It would astonish the world, could the figures be correctly ascertained, to see to what extent this evil is carried. From a statement made by the postmaster of Washington City to the Post-Office Committee of the House of Representatives, in January, 1854, we gather the following items of ’franked’ matter sent during one month from Washington alone:—
| Pounds weight. | Postage. | |
| Letters from members of Congress | 3,446 | $4,664 |
| Documents ″ ″ | 693,508 | 110,961 |
| Letters from Departments | 7,065 | 6,782 |
| Newspapers (numbering 1,110,020) | 111,002 | 11,100 |
| ———— | ———— | |
| Total for one month | 815,021 | $133,507 |
| For twelve months | 9,780,242 | 1,602,087 |
| Postage for one year, if not prepaid | 3,158,390 |
“Let it be remembered that this amount of $2,500,000, which is a fair average for one year, is actually taken out of the revenues of the department in one city. Is it strange that our postal system should be non-supporting?
“If it be right that the General Government should defray the expenses of sending ‘pub. docs.’ and the public and private correspondence of members of Congress to every part of the country, then a sufficient appropriation should be made for that purpose, and there should be some means of fixing a limit to this system of dead-heading. And if letters, papers, and public documents were the only commodities transported under this talismanic ‘frank,’ it would be less a matter of concernment; but when, as has been the case, members of Congress send home their dirty linen to be washed, at the expense of the post-office department, the subject assumes a more serious aspect, and the sovereign people—very impudently, perhaps—persist in knowing why such things are. From the statements of the department for the ten years ending with 1856, the total expenses were $68,136,197, and the revenue from postages $54,014,652, leaving a deficiency of $14,121,545. The appropriation by government during the same space was $5,626,682,—which reduces the actual deficiency to a little more than $9,000,000.”
Many of the packages thus franked, even when received by the parties, to whom they are sent, are rarely opened, for the simple reason that the newspapers (which also go free) containing the same documents or speeches have already been received, read, and commented upon. For instance: it is well known to every member of Congress, and to every one connected with the post-office, that long after the President’s message has been published in every newspaper throughout the country, thousands upon thousands are sent daily under frank from Washington. This was our written objection to the privilege in 1841. Now the same thing extends to “Annual Reports” of the respective heads of departments, other reports, and speeches of members of Congress, which are never read in pamphlet form by the masses to whom they are sent. Many of these speeches, which attracted no attention in the House and created little or no sensation out of it, are handsomely gotten up, neatly printed, artistically stitched, and mailed by the members at the expense of the government to their constituents, to whose literary merit and classical beauties the words of Virgil would most aptly apply:—
“Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademtum.”
There are two meanings to this terrible passage from the Latin poet. The learned reader will apply the less terrible to the subject in question.
It would present a painful picture were we to sum up by number, bulk, and character the public documents which weigh down the mails passing from Washington City to every other in the country,—not cities alone, but towns, villages, hamlets, grog-shops, and places not reputable, either to the sender or the recipient, to name. Documents, such as valuable books, find their way as per direction to ignorant blacks and foreigners, many of whom can neither read nor write. Wholesale and ponderous as are these costly matters, they are few in comparison to the speeches which members of Congress send to their constituents. We refrain from alluding further to these matters, as we feel humiliated as a citizen of the United States when we consider that it is done under the law.
J. Holt, postmaster-general, in his report (1859), speaking of the franking privilege, says,—
“It may be added, if it is proper that the government shall be charged with the expense of conveying the matter now passing free through the mails, justice alike to the public and to the department requires that the amount thus due shall be precisely ascertained,—which can best be done by prepayment at the mailing-offices. There can be no enlightened administration of the postal system without a complete knowledge of its financial resources and liabilities, which can never be attained while the incubus of the franking privilege is hanging over it. Under the stifling pressure, too, of this incubus, the department is forced to continual efforts to ameliorate its condition, which must often result in curtailments to be deplored, because they deprive the public of mail-accommodations for which they have fully paid, and which they are, therefore, entitled to enjoy.
“Another potent reason for the abolition of the franking privilege, as now exercised, is found in the abuses which seem to be inseparable from its existence. These abuses, though constantly exposed and animadverted upon for a series of years, have as constantly increased. It has been often stated by my predecessors, and is a matter of public notoriety, that immense masses of packages are transported under the government frank which neither the letter nor spirit of the statute creating the franking privilege would justify; that a large number of letters, documents, and packages are thus conveyed, covered by the frank of officials, written, in violation of law, not by themselves, but by some real or pretended agent; while whole sacks of similar matter, which have never been handled nor seen even by government functionaries, are transported under franks which have been forged. The extreme difficulty of detecting such forgeries has greatly multiplied this class of offences, whilst their prevalence has so deadened the public sentiment in reference to them that a conviction, however ample the proof, is scarcely possible to be obtained. The statute of 1825, denouncing the counterfeiting of an official frank under a heavy penalty, is practically inoperative.”
The French deputies and peers have no franking privilege; in England it was abolished for members of Parliament since the establishment of the penny post. For an amusing account of an abuse of the franking privilege in England, see page 66.
Having expressed our opinion and given that of others on the abuse of the franking privilege and on the propriety, in a national point of view, of doing away with it entirely, it is by no means implied that a different construction of the right would not do away with our objections, and also those of the many who consider its abuse a growing, if not a dangerous, evil. Whatever may be done to lessen the evil, as well as the heavy expense which it inflicts upon our government, and which will bring about a state of things that will redound to the credit of those who inaugurate a reform in this department of our government, will be cordially endorsed by the people.
Our members of Congress, it is true, stand politically very differently as regards positions from the representatives of other nations; but, still, that is no reason why governmental privilege should be abused to the extent it is.
By an act of Congress passed at the Third Session of the Thirty-Seventh Congress, December 1, 1862, to March 4, 1863, “The postmaster-general may arrange for the delivery by route-agents of newspaper bundles not taken from, or intended for, any post-office. The postmaster-general may regulate the manner of wrapping mail-matter not paying letter postage, so that it may be easily examined; and postmasters are allowed to tear off the wrappers to see if letter postage is evaded. Publishers dealing with the post-office must swear to their statements: there is a fine of $50 for each offence in sending papers to other than subscribers at quarterly rates. The franking privilege is limited as follows: first, the President, by himself or his private secretary; second, the Vice-President; third, the chiefs of the several executive departments; fourth, such principal officers, being heads of bureaus or chief clerks, of each executive department, to be used only for official communications, as the postmaster-general shall prescribe; fifth, Senators and Representatives, including delegates from Territories, the Secretary of the Senate and Clerk of the House, to cover correspondence to and from them, and all printed matter issued by authority of Congress, and all speeches, proceedings, and debates in Congress, and all printed matter sent to them,—their franking privilege to commence with the term for which they are elected, and to expire on the first Monday of December following such term of office; sixth, all official communications addressed to either of the executive departments by an officer responsible to that department: in all such cases the envelope should be marked ‘official,’ with the signature thereto of the officer; seventh, postmasters have the franking privilege for official communications to other postmasters: in such cases the envelope shall be marked ‘official,’ with the signature of the writer, and for any such endorsement of ‘official’ falsely made, the person making the same shall forfeit $300; eighth, petitions to either branch of Congress shall pass free in the mails; ninth, all communications addressed to any of the franking officers above described, and not excepted in the foregoing clauses, must be prepaid by postage-stamps. The franking privilege shall be limited to packages weighing not exceeding four ounces, except petitions to Congress and congressional or executive documents, and publications published, procured, or purchased by order of either house, which shall be considered as public documents and entitled to be franked as such; and except, also, seeds, cuttings, roots, and scions, the weight of the packages of which may be fixed by regulations of the postmaster-general. Publishers of periodicals, magazines, and newspapers which shall not exceed sixteen ounces in weight shall be allowed to interchange their publications reciprocally free of postage, such interchange to be confined to a single copy of each publication.”
This act took effect July 1, 1863: all acts inconsistent with it were thereby repealed.
Here is an extensive pull upon the postal department, yet one that if strictly adhered to would not create such an opposition to the system as its abuse has caused. Barrels of flour, dirty clothes, and other family matters certainly are not included in the above. If so, then will the postal department have to connect with its legitimate business that of an express. A “National Franking Privilege Express” would not be a bad title.
Although the idea of the government becoming a common carrier of dirty linen, barrels of flour, immense masses of book-matter and documentary papers, was never entertained, yet the franking privilege is gradually preparing the way for its accomplishment. It is, therefore, evident to us that the system is gradually destroying the whole theory on which the post-office is founded, and if carried out still further will cripple its operations materially. It has been suggested that in lieu of the franking privilege now allowed by law to members of Congress and others, they should be furnished with postage-stamps, to be paid for out of the contingent fund of the House. If the privilege is to be extended in any shape, let it be under that of the franking system; for the moment stamps are substituted, that very moment a rush for “cash representatives” will be most eagerly sought for, and the contingent fund, to use a modern phrase, will “be soon swallowed up.” There would, of course, be less franking of public documents by the use of stamps, but a far more extensive use of them for other purposes. This has been clearly illustrated in some of our States where the stamps have been substituted for franking. If, however, the postage-stamp system should be adopted, let the transmission of books, &c. be forwarded, under the direction of the Secretary of the Senate and Clerk of the House, by the ordinary mode of conveyance. This would be a check on those extravagant members who consider it a duty due their constituents to supply them with books enough to make a library. In one single instance, a member from Utah, in 1858, cost the government over seven thousand dollars by the transmission of books, &c.
As a clear and explicit definition of the limits of the franking privilege of members of Congress, the following letter to certain members of Congress who claimed certain (extended) privileges will be found interesting. The members had asked leave to frank certain documents intended to aid a praiseworthy object not strictly entitled to that privilege, as well as other favors not sanctioned by either the letter or the spirit of postal laws, rules, and regulations:—
“Post-Office Department, 1865.
“Appointment-Office, Washington.
“Gentlemen:—I am instructed by the postmaster-general to acknowledge the receipt of your joint letter of the 15th instant, and to say that while he fully appreciates the importance of furnishing the public with correct information on the subject of the treatment and sufferings of our brave men who, unfortunately, are prisoners in the hands of the rebels, and would willingly lend all proper aid in his power to accomplish this object, he cannot, with his sense of official duty, direct the postmaster of Boston to respect at his office the franks of members of the Senate or House of Representatives while they are sojourning at the seat of government. Nor can he authorize the use of fac-simile stamps for the purpose of franking matter passing through the mails.
“The franking privilege to Senators and members of Congress is a personal one, and travels with the party entitled to it, and cannot be exercised in two or more places at the same time. By the terms of the law, it is ‘to cover correspondence to and from them, and all printed matter issued by authority of Congress, and all speeches, proceedings, debates in Congress, and all printed matter sent to them,’ thus limiting the privilege to the matter herein named. Consequently, if it come to the knowledge of a postmaster that a package bearing a proper frank is composed of matter not named in the law, it becomes his duty to disregard such frank and charge postage thereon.
“The standing regulations of the department provide that ‘no privileged person can authorize his clerk or any other person to write (or stamp) his name for the purpose of franking any letter or packet.’ ‘The personal privilege of franking travels with the person possessing it, and can be exercised in but one place at the same time.’
“‘No privileged person can leave his frank behind him to cover his correspondence in his absence.’ ‘If letters or papers be put into a post-office bearing the frank of a privileged person who notoriously has not been in that vicinity for several days,... it is the duty of the postmaster to treat them as unpaid.’ ‘Postmasters are requested to report to the department all violations of the franking privilege.’
“The use of a fac-simile stamp for franking letters or packets by Senators or members of Congress has never been authorized or approved by this department in any way; but, on the contrary, the postmaster-general has invariably decided against the use of such stamps whenever the question has been brought to his notice, for the reason, among others, that it affords opportunity to perpetrate frauds upon the department and its revenues to an almost unlimited extent.
“From the foregoing you will see that the postmaster-general cannot with consistency or propriety comply with the request contained in your letter.
“I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant.
“A. W. Randall,
“First Assistant Postmaster-General.
“Hon. ——,
“Hon. ——,
}
United States Senate.”