Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 April 1884 — POSTOFFICE FIGURES. [ARTICLE]

POSTOFFICE FIGURES.

Some Curious Features of the PMtal Service. The report of the Sixth Auditor for the Postoffice Department for the fiscal year 1888 shows that but fifteen States and two Tterrltortes supported their postal sorvioe and furnished revenue for the Government. The States 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, singularly enough, is Alaska. The other Is Dakota. The following table gives the receipts, expenditures, and excess of reeeUts over expenditures in the States and Territories above named: ' Expend!-Excess of Receipts. tnres. receipts. Maine S63OfMS $585,896 844,618 New Hampshire.. 571.084 308,019 63,065 Vermont 330,708 327,467 12,330 Massachusetts.... 2,999,683 1388.222 1,111,461 Rhode Island 332,643 183,024 149,618 Connecticut 882,662 644,114 238,548 New- York. 8,166,559 5,352329 2,813.729 New Jersey....... 960J86 710,682 249,603 Pennsylvania 4,048,738 3,061367 987,170 Delaware 103,748 81,446 22,301 Michigan .... . .... 1,595,779 1,261.868 333,902 Illinois., 3,834,396 2,982,077 852,319 Wisconsin 1,096,144 979,289 115354 lowa 1,477,336 1,375368 101,468 Minnesota. 875,057 870,663 5,004 Alasa. 407 177 230 Dakota. 313,169 291,993 21,176 An analysis of the table shows that the six States yielding the largest revenue are New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan, and Connecticut. In Ohio, a State With a population greater than Illinois at the last census, the receipts were only $2,900,038, against s3.i-84,3H6 in Illinois—a difference of nearly $1,000,000 In favor of the 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 of $430,160, whereas Illinois yielded a profit to the Government of $862,819. It is not surprising that New York, with its overflowing population and its diversified industrial pursuits, should add a handsome Increase to the revenue of the Poetoffice Department;but who would expect Alaska, instinctively associated’in our minds with all that is bleak, barren, uninhabitable, to furnish a surplus of receipts 6ver ewpenditures? This she did to the amount of s23o—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 Season and- -Dixon’s line, though the following table, covering a period of five years, shows a gradual lessening of this deficit that leads the postoffice 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!- exjSendiBeceipts. tares tares. 1879..........55,331,71157,964,261 $2,633,223 1880 6,066,305 9,059,819 2,993314 1881. . 6,836308 10,163,453 3,327,144 J 682. 7,676,326 9.792,032 2,112,Tu6 1883 8,842,603 19,468372 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 $2,026,288, a practical increase of $1,101,000.