IMPORTANCE OF ACCURACY.
After giving "outsiders" the share of blame which rightly belongs to
them for the delay, miscarrying, and loss of valuable mail matter, a
balance remains due to the post masters and post-office clerks.
We have elsewhere expressed our views respecting dishonesty in these
officials, and shall consequently confine our present remarks
principally to carelessness and other similar faults, which can hardly
be called crimes, but which often produce effects as disastrous as
those which are the result of evil intention. These faults, indeed,
differ only in degree from what are termed crimes; for neglect of
duty, is on a small scale, a species of dishonesty.
There is, perhaps, no situation in which a lack of promptness and
accuracy in the transaction of business may be productive of so great
evil, as in that of a post-office employé. Those engaged in ordinary
branches of business have some idea of the relative consequence of the
matters about which they are occupied from day to day. They can
generally know what is the actual importance of any given transaction,
so that, if they are disposed to be negligent, they may, if they
choose, avoid incurring the guilt and blame which would follow
unfaithfulness in great things.
But the post-office clerk seldom has the power of making such a
discrimination. The letter which is carelessly left over to-day, may
go to-morrow, but too late to save the credit of a tottering house, or
to render the instructions it may contain, of any avail. In the rapid
course of commercial transactions, what is wisdom one day, may be
folly the next, and thus it not unfrequently happens that the best
contrived plans may be ruined by the delay or non-arrival of a letter.
The following instance will illustrate this.
Before the passage of the late Postal Treaty with Great Britain, a
clerk in one of our large cities was sent to the post-office to mail a
letter, containing an order for goods on an English house. The clerk
pocketed the twenty-four cents which he had been intrusted with for
the purpose of pre-paying the letter; therefore agreeably to the
postal arrangements then existing, it could not go by steamer, but was
sent by a sailing vessel.
Consequently the order was delayed, and therefore was not executed as
promptly as the firm sending it had expected; and when the goods
arrived they had fallen in value to such an extent, that the firm in
question incurred by the operation a loss estimated at at least ten
thousand dollars.