People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 December 1892 — THE POSTAL SERVICE. [ARTICLE]

THE POSTAL SERVICE.

It* Improvement as Noted by Poetmaatoo General Mon a maker’s Report. Wabhikgtoh, Dea &—Tbe postmaster general mentions at tire beginning of his annual report to the president the chief developments at the year as follows: Five million dollars added to the gross revoaue. The deficit reduced nearly (1,000,000. Money-order offices increased two-thirds or from 10,070 to 18,686, Eighty-two cities supplied with free delivery. Twenty-seven hundred and ninety new offices established. Two hundred and sixty-three offices advanced to the presidential grade Fifteen hundred and ninety new mall routes established, embracing 8,500 miles at new service. Ocean mail service extended. • Pneumatlo-tube service introduced. It appears that in the last four years 5,501 new mail routes have been established, traversing 8,000 miles; that the number of post offices has grown by over 8,000, the number of money order offices over 8,(00 and the number of free delivery offices has almost doubled. The postmaster general adds: “I give you undoubted evidence in the midst Of all this wonderful growth of the steady improvement of the service, and; every postal worker may rightfully feel It to be a personal compliment to himself.” Mr. Wanamaker then mentions the 80 per cent, increase in money order offices, the use of stamp-canceling machines, the establishment of a postal museum, the 50 per cent, increase in free delivery offices, the new Washington post office, a compilation of postal laws and regulations, a saving of 81,000,000 on mail contracts and of (150,000 on stamped paper, the sorting of mails in transit on the cars, the simplicity of book-keeping methods for all the post offices, three new kinds of postal cards and a new series of stamps, safer registry of mails and surer collection of periodical postage. The new ocean mall service applies to eleven lines, comprising, when completed, forty-one ships of 85,500 tonnage. The total outlay up to July 1,1802, for the foreign mail service performed and expedited under the new policy was $120,579, and the cost of the service for the present fiscal year will be greater. On free delivery the postmaster general says: “The experiments have related to villagee, but it has been a daily service, and it has cleared a profit. It is easy enough, therefore, to say that the free delivery can be extended further and further, and it ought to be done whether it pays a profit to the department or not ” In the matter of the collection of mail from letter boxes at house doors, Mr. Wanamaker says: “In Washington city, where the test of one of these boxes was made for one month, an hour or more a day was saved to the carrier, and in St Louis,where the test of another one of these boxes was purposely made as hard as possible, it was found that there was actually no loss of timo, and the postmasters of St Louis and Washington promptly and unqualifiedly declared that the collection of mail from houses could be undertaken by the present carrier force* The work of introducing the house letterbox is now vigorously under way.” Of his proposition to divide the country into postal districts Mr. Wanamaker says: “This, like other great postal reforms, can be only a question of time. The proposedLsystem would accomplish in a practical, way the purpose of the bill to select fourth-class postmasters without political intervention. Wo shall soon grow to 100,000 post offices and to 250,000 or 800,000 postal employee. There must be concentration, consolidation and simplification, and with it all the extension of facilities everywhere will be not only possible, but perfectly easy and natural.” The postal telegraph and postal telephone are, of course, strenuously advocated, as formerly. Of one-cent postage Mr. Wanamaker says: "In my report of a year ago I said, and have now to say, that one-cent letter postage is a near possibility.” The postmaster general also advocates a classification of clerks and submits a bill for the purpose, urges regular pay for substitute carriers and a certain payment to carriers for leave of absence! advocates the abolition ot box rents and private letter offices; urges the reduction of money-oirder fees, the simplification of the postal note, so that it better supplies the need of fractional currency, and suggests how applications for money orders can bo made easier. The report closes with the following: “My ideal for tbe American postal service is a system modeled upon a district plan, with fewer offices, and these grouped around central offices and under thorough supervision. By this a. sans at least 20,000 offices could be abandou_4 th' produce nothing to the department, and in the place of every non-money order and non-regte-ter office abolished might be put an automatic stamp-selling machine and a lettei box to receive mail With the money saved should be instituted a system of collection and delivery by mounted carriers, bicycles and star route and messenger contractors and gradually spread the delivery all over the country. The classes of postage should be reduced to three and the rate of postage the world over to ono cent for each half ounce, for tbe average weight of a letter is now three-eighths of an ounce. I would indemnify to the extent of 110 for every lost registered letter. "The organization of the department should be permanent, except in the case of the postmaster general and tbe fourth assistant, and I would add three new offices: A deputy postmaster general, to be stationed at New York; a deputy postmaster general, to be stationed at San Francisco, and a comptroller, to be stationed at the department in Washington. All postmasters, presidential and fourth class, and all employes in all branches of the department should have a specific term of four years, on good behavior, and their reappointment sbooid be subject to the comptroller of the department, whose judgment should be based upon reooids. 1 would unify tho work, hold it up by a strong controlling hand, reduce the hours of labor at almost all points, equalize and advance the pay, make the promotions in every branch for merit alone, and retire old or disabled clerks, perhaps on a pension fund to be provided by an annual payment of one-half of 1 per cent, out of each month’s salary. “A postal telegraph and telephone service, the postal savings depositories, pneumatic tubes or some electrical device between city sub-stationsand main offices, ferries, railroad stations and central offices in all large cities should be employed without delay. Tbe erection of immense costly buildings for post offices ought to be stopped and the department ought to be allowed to expend a fixed sum of from (1,000,000 to (6,000,000 each year in tbe erection of buildings upon a fixed plan, such as Postmaster General Vilas recommended. I would grant larger discretion to the head of the department to experiment with postal inventions and fix stated perlocs in the order of business of the house and senate post office committees to call upon the postmaster general for information and censure alike, at which time, too, he could have an opportunity, within right limitation, to present postal subjects. I would modify the system of fines and deductions tg>on railroads and establish a system of compensation based upon speed—a 20, 80, 40, 50 and 80-mile an'hour rate. By this means railway compensation would not cost any more and we should soon be running mail trains between New York and Chicago in fifteen and sixteen hours, and between New York and Boston in four hours. Mail trains, may move faster than any other trains, the question of pay is all that is to be considered.”