The Post Office Scandal of 1878

There is no place or position under the Government in which the public interests and convenience so imperatively demand reform as in the Post Office in this city. The office, under its present management, is held in a narrow, dark, and inconvenient room, with a passage to the boxes and delivery window only the width of a doorway, where two persons cannot pass without crowding. The floor is covered with dirt, making it an unfit place for a lady to enter at any time, especially when there is a crowd waiting for the mail.

These inconveniences could be tolerated if the public could depend upon prompt delivery, but daily mails arriving from the south and east at 10 o'clock in the evening are rarely distributed before eleven o'clock the following day. This disregard for public convenience is the result of allowing one man to hold an office while farming it out to another. After the resignation of Mr. Gilliam, Delegate Jacobs procured the appointment of Mr. Pumphrey, who soon found he could not do justice to the office without neglecting his own private business, and like an honorable man, he resigned. Whereupon, Capt. E. A. Starr, subcontractor for carrying the mails, procured the appointment of T. W. Prosch, a newspaper publisher who had recently moved to town. Prosch has used the office as a source of revenue, farming it out to another who does all the work and takes all the profits, while ensuring his own newspaper receives favorable treatment.