Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 December 1884 — THE POSTAL SERVICE. [ARTICLE]

THE POSTAL SERVICE.

List of States in Which. It Returns a Profit to the Government. [Washington Dispatch.] During the fiscal year ending June 30, 1883, the postal service paid expenses and yielded a surplus in seventeen States and Territories, including, singularly enough, Alaska, where one would expect to find the postal service unrenumerative. The effect of reducing letter postage to 2 cents is that in the year ending June 30, 1884, the postal service paid for itself in only ten States and no Territories. The States in which the postal service paid for itself in 1883 and railed to do so in 1884 are Maine, Vermont, Wisconsin, lowa, Minnesota, Dakota Territory, and the district of Alaska. The following table shows by States where the postal service paid for itself in 1883-4, and where it did not, With the amount or the excess of expenditures of receipts, as the case may be:

Excess of Excess of #x- receipts penses over over exStates and Territories. receipts, p’dit’res. Maine $48,328 $ New Hampshire 18,018 Vermont 33,909 Massachusetts, 916,906 Rhode Island. 124,638 Connecticut 135,643 New York 2,312,695 New Jersey X 143,517 Pennsylvania 660,677 Delaware 8,162 Maryland 125,862 Virginia 408,972 West Virginia.... 76,920 North Carolina 207,191 South Carolina 159,693 Georgia 320,202 Florida 133,291 • Ohio 845,404 Michigan 39,461 Indiana 294,052 Illinois 847,400 Wisconsin 160,835 lowa 871,407 Missouri...... 480,383 Kentucky 171,083 Tennessee : 111,210 Alabama 238,494 Mississippi 186,082 Arkansas 208,602 Louisiana 120,630 ...... Texas 431,334 .....[ California 471,188 Oregon 133,308 Minnesota 239,369 Kansas 362,276 Nebraska 596,411 .....’ Nevada 113,108 Colorado 277,615 Utah 180,996 New Mexico 111,366 .... Washington 110,892 ...... Dakota 39,007 Arizona 149,819 ....!. ‘ldaho 105,356 Wyoming 45,907 Montana. 62,653 Alaska 1,600 . District of Columbia 109,141 Indian Territory 42,086 . .

Total $8,291,942 $4,606,982 The Ohio man appears to have got a good deal more than his share of postal facilities, and he might reasonably be asked to buy more postage stamps or be content with fewer mails. The effect of reducing letter postage one-third was to reduce the gross postal receipts only 5 per cent, in Illinois.