XVII
THE MAN FIFTY-THREE THOUSAND POST OFFICES FAILED ON
There is one thing I find when I am writing in a national magazine, trying to express myself on an idea I would like to believe but do not want to be fooled about, to four or five million people. I can not help feeling that out of all these four or five million people, at the very least anyway there really must be three million and five hundred thousand who are being very much less fooled about me and about my idea than I am.
Every day as I sit down to write one more chapter I try to catch up to them. Of course anybody can see I am not equal to it, but it does give one a chance, and it gives the book a chance before I am through, to have some sense in it.
I cannot help thinking what Albert Sidney Burleson, who has a hundred million people to choose from, who has millions of people who are less fooled about him than he is, to catch up to every day, after all these seven long years they have put on him, ought to amount to.
And what his Post Office ought to amount to.
Of course we are all human and know how it is, in a way. We know that the first thought that would come to Mr. Burleson as to any man when he finds he is being criticized--that people in fifty-three thousand Post Offices are criticizing him and acting with him as if he were fooled about himself, is the automatic thought of self-defense. The second thought, which is what one would hope for from a General, even a Postmaster General, is that one resents it in oneself, that in an important opening for a man like being called foolish, one stops all one"s thinking-works, and slumps ingloriously, automatically and without a quaver into self-defense.
One would think a man who could get to be a Postmaster General would have the presence of mind when he says "Ouch!" to a nation that steps on his toes, to fix his face quick, smile and say, "Thank you! Thank you! I will see what there is in this!"
Why should a man when G.o.d is blessing him as he does Mr. Burleson, even out of the mouths of his enemies, b.u.t.t in in the way he does and interrupt truths with enough juice in them to make one Burleson, even one Burleson into twenty great men before a nation"s eyes?
A whole Cabinet--at least a whole Democratic Cabinet--could have been made time and time again out of the great-man-juice, the truth-pepsin great men are made out of, this country has wasted on Burleson in the past seven years.
XVIII
CAUSES OF BEING FOOLED ABOUT ONESELF
I would like to give a diagnosis of this quite common disease, touch on the causes and see how they can be removed.
There seem to be, speaking roughly and as far as my own observation of psychology goes, six main ways in which the average man is fooled about himself and needs to change his mind about himself.
He is possessed with loco-mindedness or spotty-mindedness, sees things as they look to one kind or group of people--sees things in spotlights of personality, of place or time--all the rest black.
Or he suffers from what one might call Lost-Mindedness--is always getting lost in anything he does, somewhere between the end and the means. He either loses the means in contemplating with unholy contemplation the end, like an idealist, or he loses the end in contemplating the means.
The Habit of Flat-Thinking--of not thinking things out in four dimensions.
The Habit of Evaporated Thinking. If I were to generalize in what I have to say about men who are fooled by themselves instead of rounding my idea out with some particular man everybody knows, like Mr. Burleson for instance, it would be evaporated thinking.
The Habit of Not Having any Habits--leaving out standardized elements in things and not being machine-minded enough.
Automatism, or Machine-Mindedness.
These six forms of being fooled by oneself all boil down in the end--in their final cause, I suspect to the last one, to automatism or lack of conscious control of the mind.
XIX
LOCO-MINDEDNESS
Loco-mindedness in a Post Office consists in Mr. Burleson"s running the Post Office for one kind of people--the kind of people he has noticed.
There are supposed to be various kinds of people who use a Post Office.
There are the people who write hundreds of letters a day--letters that are being waited for accurately and by a particular mail--like telegrams.
There are people who sit down with a pen and a piece of paper, stick out their tongues and chewing on one end of the pen, and slaving away and sweating ink on the other, scrooge out a letter once in three weeks that they have put off six months.
I have no grudge against these people, but it seems to me that running a Post Office exclusively for them as Mr. Burleson does, is a mistake. Even if they const.i.tute ninety-eight per cent of the people, they only mail one-tenth of one per cent of the letters. They may not care whether or not their letters arrive as a matter of course, the way they used to in our Post Office until a little while ago, as accurately as telegrams in their first mail in the morning, but probably they would not feel hurt if they did. But millions of people in business who write scores or hundreds of letters a day, who find themselves being put off with a Post Office that is run apparently for people who write two letters a month, are hurt.
In Northampton, Ma.s.sachusetts, the letter from New York one used to receive at breakfast, hangs around a junction somewhere now, waits for a letter three hundred miles away--a letter from Pittsburgh to catch up to it, and they both come together sweetly and with Mr. Burleson"s smile on after luncheon at half past two in the afternoon.
I do not deny that from the narrower business point of view of running a Post Office the way some women would run--or rather used to run a parlor store--with a bell on the door, there is something to be said for Mr.
Burleson"s philosophy. Nor do I deny that a store can be run and run successfully and rightly on how much of its customer"s money it can save on each purchase.
But the point is that if I go into a store in Northampton and cannot get the things I want there I go into some other store.
I cannot go out from our Post Office in Northampton and go over and get what I want at some other Post Office a little further down the street.
When I and people in fifty-three thousand Post Offices, say Aouch! Mr.
Burleson says Pooh!
Business correspondence between Washington and New York which used to be a twenty-four hour affair is now half a week.
Letters thousands of men in New York used to receive in their offices in the early morning before interviews began and when they had time to read letters and to jot an answer to them at the foot of the page, are not received and placed before them for their answers until the late morning or early afternoon when they have other things to do and cannot even read them.
So one"s letters wait over a day--a night and a day, or until one gets back from Chicago.
Why is it Mr. Burleson takes millions of dollars" worth a day out of the convenience, out of the profit and out of the efficiency of business in America and then with a huge national swoop of compliment to himself points out to people how he has saved them fifty cents?
Why is it that Mr. Burleson charges us a thousand dollars apiece, in our own private business, to save us fifty cents apiece in public?
Who asked him to?
It is true that there are people in America who really prefer to do business at a puttering kind of a store no matter how much time it costs them. They take naturally to a cash and carry store or to a store that lovingly saves one forty cents" worth of money by taking four dollars"
worth of one"s time.
It is probably true that some people want a cash and carry freight-car Post Office and want Mr. Burleson to save their money for them. Millions of people would make more money by not having their Post Office save money for them. Mr. Burleson insists his business is to save people"s money for them whether they can afford to have him save it or not.
The first cause of Mr. Burleson"s being fooled about himself is that he is spotty-minded about people, the fact that he has been running the Post Office with reference to one special slow ca.n.a.l-minded kind of America.
His mind is jet black about all the rest.