It Makes That
Disagreeable Which For Its Own Sake The Post-Office Should Strive In
Every Way To Make Agreeable.
This practice, moreover, operates as a
direct prevention to a class of correspondence which furnishes in
England a large
Proportion of the revenue of the post-office.
Mercantile houses in our large cities send out thousands of trade
circulars, paying postage on them; but such circulars would not be
received, either in England or elsewhere, if a demand for postage
were made on their delivery. Who does not receive these circulars
in our country by the dozen, consigning them generally to the waste-
paper basket, after a most cursory inspection? As regards the
sender, the transaction seems to us often to be very vain; but the
post-office gets its penny. So also would the American post-office
get its three cents.
But the main objection in my eyes to the American post-office system
is this, that it is not brought nearer to the poorer classes.
Everybody writes or can write in America, and therefore the
correspondence of their millions should be, million for million, at
any rate equal to ours. But it is not so; and this I think comes
from the fact that communication by post-office is not made easy to
the people generally. Such communication is not found to be easy by
a man who has to attend at a post-office window on the chance of
receiving a letter. When no arrangement more comfortable than that
is provided, the post-office will be used for the necessities of
letter writing, but will not be esteemed as a luxury. And thus not
only do the people lose a comfort which they might enjoy, but the
post-office also loses that revenue which it might make.
I have said that the correspondence circulating in the United States
is less than that of the United Kingdom. In making any comparison
between them, I am obliged to arrive at facts, or rather at the
probabilities of facts, in a somewhat circuitous mode, as the
Americans have kept no account of the number of letters which pass
through their post-offices in a year; we can, however, make an
estimate, which, if incorrect, shall not at any rate be incorrect
against them. The gross postal revenue of the United States for the
year ended June 30th, 1861, was in round figures 1,700,000l. This
was the amount actually cashed, exclusive of a sum of 140,000l. paid
to the post-office by the government for the carriage of what is
called in that country free mail matter; otherwise, books, letters,
and parcels franked by members of Congress. The gross postal
revenue of the United Kingdom was in the last year, in round
figures, 3,358,000l., exclusive of a sum of 179,000l. claimed as
earned for carrying official postage, and also exclusive of
127,866l., that being the amount of money order commissions, which
in this country is considered a part of the post-office revenue.
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