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

At the Head Office in London every official has to specialise more or less, but a Head Postmaster cannot afford to do this. In addition to the various duties I have mentioned, he has to manage a large staff of men, to preserve discipline, and to see that the sub-postmasters of his district are performing their duties properly. Undoubtedly the status of the postmaster has risen considerably, and in large towns he occupies a high and influential position among the men of business. His immediate superior as a rule is the surveyor of his district, but the postmasters of the largest towns in the United Kingdom are their own surveyors. These postmasterships are the prizes of the professions, and they include Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, Bristol, Leeds, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Belfast, Cardiff, Nottingham, Sheffield, and Hull. The salaries attached to these posts vary from £725 to £1000, and the postmasters are frequently Civil Servants who have passed the highest examinations on entering the Service, and they are invariably men of superior education, ability, and experience. Yet so long does it take to root out an old association of ideas in the mind of the British public, that a postmaster is still regarded in the minds of many people as merely a man who sells stamps and perhaps fancy articles.