The post office and its story an interesting account of the activities of a great government department

For several centuries the Post Office was simply a carrier of letters, and it is difficult to realise that a larger portion of its effective work depends at the present day on the skill of the engineer. Since 1870 a sum of over £100,000,000 has been expended in the purchase, maintenance, and extension of telegraph and telephone business, and the expenditure on telephone maintenance alone up to the end of 1908 amounted to nearly £8,000,000. The engineers have during recent years provided a large mileage of underground wires, connecting London with Edinburgh, with the west of England, the Midlands and the south-eastern counties. The need for the engineer's work in the postal service is felt more and more every day. All round our coasts he is erecting and maintaining stations for wireless telegraphy, and if the aeroplane becomes the carrier eventually of our letters, the engineer will be the chief official in the postal as well as the telegraph work of the Post Office. Even now there is an increasing demand for mechanical appliances in postal work. There are the conveyors and stamping machines used in sorting office work, and new developments in this direction are probable in the future. The Engineer-in-Chief's staff numbers about 300, but the Department controls a vast army of men, totalling 10,000, engaged in the manual labour connected with telegraph and telephone business. The importance of the Department is scarcely yet recognised even by the Administration of the General Post Office, which is, naturally, still disposed to run the business on non-mechanical lines, and possibly more importance is attached to old-established branches of the service. But the day of the engineer is arriving, and he will enter into his own before many years are over. Some day, perhaps, the Chief Engineer will be ex-officio the Chief Secretary. And when calculating machines become universal, he may easily become the Accountant-General also.