Message to the House of Representatives Returning Without Approval the Post Office Department Appropriation Bill

To the House of Representatives:

I am taking the liberty of returning H.R. 7237, making appropriations for the service of the Post Office Department for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1919, and for other purposes, without my signature, because the bill contains a provision which I venture to think it would be wisest to omit. I refer to the provision with regard to the rental of pneumatic tubes

I am convinced there is no moral or legal obligation resting on the, Government to continue the use of these tubes by rental. At the time they were installed they may have had some value as a postal facility, but that was before the volume of mail had reached the enormous proportions which it has today and before the development of the use of motor vehicles. These developments have made the tubes practically obsolete, quite unnecessary, and, in fact, a hindrance to the efficient operation of the postal service.

This is illustrated by the fact- that in 1913 it was estimated that 5,373,000 letters were dispatched daily by the tubes, while in 1917 only 2,837,638, or approximately one-half that number, were dispatched by that means. If this ratio of reduction continued, few, if any, letters would be sent in that way. Less than 55 per cent of the letters mailed, or 5 per cent, of the entire volume of mail handled with a station using the pneumatic tube service, is transported by the tubes.

There seems to be an impression that if the tubes were abandoned these letters would be delayed. This is an unfounded assumption, because practically all this mail could be handled at less cost and more expeditiously by other means.

There are many reasons why the present pneumatic tube systems are not efficient devices for the transmission of mail. Among these reasons is their limited capacity, which makes it impossible to use them to meet conditions of emergency. Furthermore, experience has demonstrated that the tubes are unreliable because of breakdowns and stoppages.  During such breakdowns they cease operation for hours and for even days together. And it is often necessary to dig up the streets to obtain this mail clogged in the tubes.

When these breakdowns occur it is necessary immediately to substitute vehicular service, which results in confusion of schedules and disorganization of the transportation and delivery service and delay in forwarding large numbers of letters. Not only are letters delayed in this way, but because of defects in the tubes, carelessness on the part of operators, and accidents of various sorts, the tubes soil or damage many thousand letters and in some instances destroy them.

The Post Office Department has found it necessary because of the unreliability and inefficiency of the tubes to divert a large quantity of mail formerly dispatched by their use to autos, wherever close connections are required. It has been found that late closings of the mail can be accomplished and closer connections assured by this means. I am informed that this Is true even in the congested sections of New York City.

Some of the principal objections to the tubes in addition to those I have already enumerated are their insuitability to carry many special delivery parcels; necessary relaying of containers at way-stations, involving a loss of time and requiring that all intermediate stations be kept open with attendants on duty; their inability to dispatch to intermediate stations during continuous transmission between any two points; their insuitability to the dispatch of mail to the point where it is received by or taken from the railroad companies without additional handling, and the impossibility of preventing dampness and oil in the tubes at certain times, which results in damage to the mail.

It will be noted that the tubes, when i working at their best, perform only one step in the transmission of the mail from the sender to the addressee: the advantage of the use is largely theoretical.

This conclusion was reached by Stone and Webster, among others, a firm of engineers employed by the Congressional Commission which recently investigated this matter. In speaking of the services performed by the tubes, they state:

"But, being only a step in the movement of the mail, and being preceded and succeeded by other steps in which, by the exigencies of economical mail handling, intermittent movement is necessary, the advantage of the tubes is often lost, and at times the tubes become entirely inadequate to handle the bulk of the mail which has been accumulated in some preceding step."

I have been guided in my conclusions by those who have expert postal knowledge and who seem to me the sagest judges as to whether these tubes constitute a desirable postal facility. In the act of April 21, 1902, the Congress, realizing that the Postmaster General could not be expected to be an expert on postal affairs, prohibited him by law from issuing an advertisement for pneumatic mail service until a commission of postal experts had given its approval.

When the last rent contract expired such a commission was appointed in accordance with this law. Its report, as well as subsequent reports by experts on the value of this service, is before me, and no one who reads these reports can help the impression that the conclusions reached by these experts are sound, and that the use of the tubes should be abandoned.

I am informed that during the last ten years many efforts have been made to extend the present system of pneumatic tubes, but that these extensions have been invariably advised against by the departmental commissions of postal experts who investigated the matter, and that the reports of these experts invariably call attention to the development of the automobile as a factor which would have to be considered at the close of the present rental contract. The Postmasters of various cities where tubes have been in use have spoken against them and urged that they be abandoned.

These reasons seeming to me conclusive and compelling, I have not felt the liberty to acquiesce in this feature of the bill, which I herewith return. 

Woodrow Wilson

The White House

29 June 1918