Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 38, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 October 1905 — THINNING OUT THE CITIES. [ARTICLE]

THINNING OUT THE CITIES.

Rural Delivery, Which Is Expensive, Has That Effect. Rural free delivery seems destined to entail a «cost of $60,000,000 a year to the government, writes a Washington correspondent. Legislators are not worried over the necessity of appropriating this enormous sum, however, since they think that rural delivery tends to thin o,ut the population of the cities. Any .scheme that works to this end they believe is worth investing government money in. Senators and Representatives of States having large cities look upon this vast appropriation for rural delivery as an injustice to their constituents. They insist that a reasonable division of postal revenues shall go for pneumatic tubes and other facilities for quickening the mail service for the congested centers. A single building in New York City contains 5,200 persons during the working day, and they are nearly all letter writers. Their average use of the postal service probably equals that of 52,000 people in the rural counties. It is necessary to make -33 collections a day in some of the New York buildings to get the accumulating mail out of the way. An inspector, desirous of establishing a rural route, has to exert himself to the utmost to count in 100 families which could be served in a ride of 24 miles. There are hundreds of routes in operation to-day for the accommodation of a much smaller number of households, and in making rural delivery universal, within limits of practicability, which is now the aim of Congress and of the department, it will be necessary to include a great many routes of considerably less than 100 families. It is generally agreed rural delivery does not “pay,” but this is a consideration over which the American people lose little sleep. They like an efficient postal establishment, and they intend to fight for it. The rural delivery service should be as near complete as, with a constantly Increasing population, it will ever be, by 1910. To-day there are in operation 81,790 rural routes, which cover nearly 700,000 square miles. It is estimated that it will tako about 18,000 additional carriers to cover the available territory not now supplied, which amounts to 1,000,000 square miles. When the service reaches its limit it will cost SOO,000,000 per year.