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“Ah, In That, Too?”
No caption
From the cartoonist's perspective, Henry C. Payne, the U.S.
postmaster general, is waist-deep in a postal scandal, which has injured
his reputation and ability to carry out his public duties.
Additional reports of Payne's
political use of patronage in Delaware are not too surprising to Uncle
Sam, who might answer his own question, "But of course you
are." Beginning in May 1903, Harper's Weekly urged
Payne's resignation because of his alleged stonewalling in the face of
corruption charges against the Post Office. In reality, Payne had
not mishandled the investigation, but the press. In September, when this cartoon was
published, the journal added the charge that the postmaster general had
violated civil service reform rules in Delaware.
Henry Clay Payne was born in Massachusetts in 1843. As a young
man, he clerked in a dry-goods store before entering the insurance
business, in which he gained financial success. In 1872, he served
as chairman of the Young Men's Republican Club for the reelection
campaign of President Ulysses S. Grant. In 1876, President Grant
gave Payne the patronage job of Milwaukee (Wisconsin) postmaster, a
position he held until Democrats regained the White House under Grover
Cleveland in 1885. The next year, Payne became vice president of
the Wisconsin Telephone Company, and was promoted to president in
1889. He served as a business executive for the Milwaukee Street
Railway Company and other transportation firms during the 1890s.
Payne also continued his involvement in Republican politics, serving on
the party's executive committees at the state and national level from
1872 and 1880, respectively, until his death in 1904. He was a delegate to
the 1888 and 1892 Republican National Conventions, and ran the western
branch of William McKinley's presidential campaign in 1896. Payne
successfully pushed Republican delegates to nominate Theodore Roosevelt
for vice president in 1900. Shortly after Roosevelt
assumed the presidency in September 1901, following the assassination
of William McKinley, the new president named Payne to his
cabinet as postmaster general (January 1902).
Shortly after he took
office, Payne quietly requested Congressional funding for a probe of the
Post Office. Within a few months, numerous incidents of wrongdoing
came to light, which made the federal department appear to be
"honeycombed with dishonesty." In one case, postal
employees in New York accused a cabal within the Division of Salaries
and Allowances of blackmailing postal workers under review for
promotions or raises. Meanwhile, the Office of the Assistant
Attorney General for the Post Office Department allegedly colluded with
lotteries and get-rich-quick enterprises. Other corrupt practices
included bribery, extortion, placing people on the payroll who performed
no work, overcharging for goods and services, accepting defective
mailbags and lockboxes, and disregard of open bidding and other contract
violations.
The story broke in the press in
March 1903. Since President Roosevelt soon left for vacation in
the West and illness kept Payne away from his duties, the administration
issued no official response for some time, even though the investigation
was proceeding. In its May 2 issue, Harper's
Weekly placed the web of corruption charges against the Post Office
on par with the Whiskey Ring
and Star Route
scandals. The journal hoped reports that Postmaster-General Payne
was not taking the revelations seriously were false, but reassured its
reader that President Roosevelt would rigorously pursue the
matter. Two weeks later, the newspaper revealed an allegation that
high-ranking Post Office officials had derailed a fraud investigation
against its Washington, D.C., bureau in 1900. Harper's Weekly
interpreted Payne's silence as procrastination approaching obstruction, and called
for his resignation. It also pleaded with President Roosevelt to give the investigation his attention.
Payne resumed work, but implemented a gag order forbidding
investigators from discussing matters with the press, and he tried to
downplay the situation by calling the charges "hot air."
The postmaster's actions were in line with the president's insistence
that no information be divulged until the inquiry was completed.
With Roosevelt's return in June, it appeared to the public that the pace
of the probe quickened. Joseph Bristow, the chief investigator,
gave the president a preliminary report providing substantial evidence
of wrongdoing. In early July, Attorney General
Philander Knox appointed two special prosecutors to the case, and Payne
purged the Post Office of several of the top offenders. Harper's
Weekly, however, continued its drumbeat against the postmaster
general, who dutifully absorbed press criticism that might otherwise
have been aimed at the president. In September 1903, indictments were returned against
thirty Post Office
officials and private contractors.
The Post Office was the largest source of federal patronage, which
was so important in electoral politics, even as the reformed civil
service system slowly advanced over the years. In January 1902,
Roosevelt had not only appointed Payne postmaster general, but had also
named William Foulke, a longtime
advocate of the merit system of government appointments, to the U.S.
Civil Service Commission. At the time, Harper's Weekly dryly observed,
"Mr. Payne's and Mr. Foulke's views on the relations of patronage
to the public service are not believed to be the same ..."
When this cartoon appeared in September 1903, the newspaper was
editorially criticizing Payne for boosting the political power of one faction of
Delaware Republicans by granting them a monopoly of Post Office
patronage to the detriment of another faction. Although Harper's
Weekly accused Payne of violating civil service rules, nothing came
of it, and the postmaster general remained in office until his death
in October 1904.
Robert C. Kennedy
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