Can't "position" subplot

[Thomas Detman]

I've been using subplot to "stack" multiple time-series plots in one figure, but 
I am not satisfied with the default behavior. The documentation seems to imply 
that the following should work:
  ax = gca ()
  set (ax, "position", [X0,Y0,deltaX,deltaY])  #  with [X0,Y0,deltaX,deltaY] 
previously defined.  See 15.2.2.3 Axes Properties.  However, this makes no 
visible change to the plot.  On the other hand it does change the output of:
  get (ax, "position")
It says it did what I asked; but it didn't.  It's either delusional or passive 
resistant ;), or I'm missing something.

Specifically, I want to make both the right and left ends of the axes in two or 
more subplots vertically aligned; I want to reduce or eliminate the vertical gap 
between subplots (suppressing the tick labels on all but the bottom subplot).

Environment:
  GNU Octave, version 3.0.0
  Ubuntu 8.04
  octave:2> gnuplot_binary ()
  ans = gnuplot