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

I am not denying that the United States Post Office is splendidly organised, nor that in many respects it is in advance of our own system and that of other countries, but we like to discover the advantages ourselves. If, however, the service is excellent, it certainly does not pay: the United States Post Office is carried on at a loss. And this is due, as their own officials admit, to the low rates, and the way the low rates are taken advantage of unfairly by smart Americans. The “mail matter,” as it is called, is classified, and there are different rates for each class. First class, letters and post cards; second class, periodical publications; third class, miscellaneous printed matter; and fourth class, matter not included in other classes. It is the lowness of the charges for the second-class matter which is the despair of the Post Office economist in America, and to this he attributes largely the loss on the business. There is, for instance, a monthly publication in a large eastern city which weighs 4 lbs. It is delivered by the Post Office for two cents in the city in which it is mailed: it is carried free of charge to any post office within the county in which it is published, and is sent to such remote places as San Francisco, Cuba or Hawaii, at the rate of four cents a copy. For what is virtually a volume, this is an absurdly low charge for carriage, and in comparing rates of postage with those in the United Kingdom, it must not be forgotten that letters are conveyed in America over much greater distances than in this country.