Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 October 1875 — Work of the German Postoffice. [ARTICLE]

Work of the German Postoffice.

The annual report of the German Postofficefor 1874, the third year completed since the establishment of the Empire, is worth notice, not only for the growth of business shown since the whole duty passed under one administration, but the amount of accommodation afforded to the public by certain branches not represented with us. If an increase of the number of postoffice missives be, as is often asserted in our own case, a genuine test of national prosperity, then we may dismiss as idle all tales of the decay of German trade-and commerce, for in 1874 there were more than 962,000,000 letters and parcels sent through the post, as against 878,000,000 in 1873. In other words, the growth of correspondence in a single year, despite alleged>depression, was over 9 per cent. Simple letters account for more than 900,000,000, the other 60,000,000 being of course parcels, of which two-thirds were sent merely as such at a very low tariff, and about another third, being those of more valuable contents, passing at the higher rate which makes the postoffice responsible for their registered value. One purpose which the post specially serves in Germany is the transmission in this way of packages of notes, bullion and coin; and in Y 874 the amount paid on these was £737,000,000 sterling, representing no doubt the greater part of the circulation of money through the Empire beyond that passed from hand to hand. The carriage of persons and baggage on ordinary roads is, as all travelers in Germany are aWare, though. not wholly a Government monopoly, largely conducted by the Postoffice. And in 1874 370,000,000 pounds of personal luggage was so .transported, with very nearly 5,000,000 passengers. Railroads are steadily reducing these two items of the postoffice accounts; and that they are still so large can only be accounted for by the well-known fact that well-to-do burgher families spend in driving about favorite parts of the Fatherland , much of the spare time and cash which with us are devoted to the annual seaside holiday.—Pa# Mail Gazette. —The Liverpool Post is authority for the statement that Carlyle declines with scorn the degree recently conferred on him by Harvard University. He says that to he asked to “join in heading your long line of D.D.’s and LL.D.’a—aline of pompous little fellow-s hobbling down to posterity on the crutches of two or three letters of the alphabet, passing on into the oblivion of all universities and small potatoes”—is more than he can bear. —Donaldson, the lost aeronaut, had ar> ranged to lecture on aerial navigationthia .winter.