Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 April 1884 — POSTOFFICE FIGURES. [ARTICLE]

POSTOFFICE FIGURES.

Some Curious Features of the Postal Service. The report of the Sixth Auditor for the Postoffice Department for tho fiscal year 1883 sbdws that but fifteen States and two Territories supported their postal service and furnished revenue for the Government. The State* are Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware. Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, lowa, aud Minnesota. One of the Territories, singufarly enough, la Alaska. The other is Dakota. The following table gives the receipts, expenditures, and excess of receipts over expenditures in the States and Territories above namedExpendl- Exocss of Receipts. tures. receipts. Maine..... * $630,515 $585,894 $44,818 New Hampshire.. 871,084 808,019 63,065 •Vermont 339,798 827,407 12,830 Massachusetts.... 2,999,683 1,888,222 1,111,461 Rhode Island 332,643 183,024 149,618 Connecticut 88'2,662 644,114 238,548 New Y0rk8,166,559 5,352,829 2,813,729 New Jersey 960,186 710,582 249,603 Pennsylvania 4,048,738 3,061,567 987,170 Delawaie 103,748 81,446 22,301 Michigan 1,595,770 1,261,868 333,902 lllincis 3,834,396 2,982,077 852,319 Wisconsin 1,0'96,144 979,289 115,854 lowa 1,477,386 1,375,868 101,468 Minnesota 875,657 870,653 5,004 Alasa 407 177 230 Dakota. 313,169 291,993 21,175 An analysis of the table shows that the six States yielding the largest revenue are New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan, aud Connecticut. In Ohio, a State with a population greater than Illinois at the last census, the receipts were only $2,900,088, against $3,634,396 in Illinois—a difference of nearly $1,000,000 in favor of tho latter. The expenditures in the two States were $3,330,198, against $2,982,077. The result is that the postal service in Ohio failed to support itself by a deficit or $430,180, whereas Illinois yielded a profit to the Government of $853,819. It is not surprising that New York, with Its overflowing population and its diversified industrial pursuits, should add a handsome increase to the revenue es the Postoflice Department; but who would expect Alaska, instinctively associated in our minds with all that is bleak, barren, uninhabitable, to furnish a surplus of receipts over expenditures? This she did to tho amount of s33o—an increase relatively as great as that of the Empire State. The postal service in the Southern States has been a dead loss from the creation of the Government. Not a dollar of revenue has ever been received from a State south of Mason and Dixon's line, though the following table, covering a period of five years, shows a gradual lessening of this deficit that leads the postoffloe officials to predict that, a few years hence, when the country shall become more thickly settled, it will, as a section, be self-support-ing: Excess of Expend!- eapendiReceipts. tures tures. 187955,331,711 $7,964,261 $2,633,223 1880 6,066,305 9,059,819 2,993,514 1881 6,836,308 10,163,453 3,327,144 1882 7,676,326 9.792,032 2,112,706 1883 8,842,603 10,468,872 2,026,268 It will be seen that the excess of expenditures over receipts in the South reached its highest point in 1881—53,327,144. Two years later it bad fallen to $2,026,268, a practical increase of $1,101,000.