A
Comparison Of This Kind Might Be Made With The Same Effect Between
Any Of Our Great Internal Mail Routes
And any of theirs.
Consequently the expense of conveyance to them is, per letter, very
much greater than with us,
And the American post-office is, as a
matter of necessity, driven to an economy in the use of railways for
the post-office service which we are not called on to practice.
From New York to Chicago is nearly 1000 miles. From New York to St.
Louis is over 1400. From New York to New Orleans is 1600 miles. I
need not say that in England we know nothing of such distances, and
that therefore our task has been comparatively easy. Nevertheless
the States have followed in our track, and have taken advantage of
Sir Rowland's Hill's wise audacity in the reduction of postage with
greater quickness than any other nation but our own. Through all
the States letters pass for three cents over a distance less than
3000 miles. For distances above 3000 miles the rate is ten cents,
or five pence. This increased rate has special reference to the
mails for California, which are carried daily across the whole
continent at a cost to the States government of two hundred thousand
pounds a year.
With us the chief mail trains are legally under the management of
the Postmaster-General. He fixes the hours at which they shall
start and arrive, being of course bound by certain stipulations as
to pace. He can demand trains to run over any line at any hour, and
can in this way secure the punctuality of mail transportation. Of
course such interference on the part of a government official in the
working of a railway is attended with a very heavy expense to the
government. Though the British post-office can demand the use of
trains at any hour, and as regards those trains can make the
dispatch of mails paramount to all other matters, the British post-
office cannot fix the price to be paid for such work. This is
generally done by arbitration, and of course for such services the
payment is very high. No such practice prevails in the States. The
government has no power of using the mail lines as they are used by
our post-office, nor could the expense of such a practice be borne
or nearly borne by the proceeds of letters in the States.
Consequently the post-office is put on a par with ordinary
customers, and such trains are used for mail matter as the directors
of each line may see fit to use for other matter. Hence it occurs
that no offense against the post-office is committed when the
connection between different mail trains is broken. The post-office
takes the best it can get, paying as other customers pay, and
grumbling as other customers grumble when the service rendered falls
short of that which has been promised.
It may, I think, easily be seen that any system, such as ours,
carried across so large a country, would go on increasing in cost at
an enormous ratio.
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