John Hessin Clarke

“ Failure, within moderate limits, to maintain train schedules, may well have been regarded by the Postmaster General as a necessary evil to be tolerated and not to call for the exercise of his power to impose fines under the statute, when more flagrant neglect to maintain such schedules might very justly require him to exercise such authority in order to prevent intolerable public inconvenience. ”

“ That power to make the disputed deductions must be found, if at all, in the provision of R. S. 3962, that the Postmaster General may 'make deductions from the pay of contractors for failure to perform service according to contract, and impose fines upon them for other delinquencies'; that when the contracts were made long departmental construction had limited the failure to perform service, described in the act, to 24 hours of delay in the arrival of trains ”

“ This action of Congress and of the Department is sufficient answer to the claim, if it were otherwise sound, that failure to exercise the power to impose fines for such a cause amounted to a departmental declaration that no such power existed. ”