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

Let me take the city of Liverpool as an illustration of how the growth of Post Office business has raised the importance of the postmaster. In the year 1775 there was only one postman in the town, and by the year 1900 the numbers had risen to 800. It is true that in 1775 the staff was already considered inadequate. A petition was sent up to London in that year asking for another postman, but it was not granted. The reply, however, did not deal with the necessities of the case, but declined to accede to the petitioners' request on the ground that “not more than one letter carrier has yet been allowed to any one town in England.” So firmly established even then was the power of precedent in the official mind. In the year 1839 the weekly number of letters and newspapers dealt with at Liverpool amounted to 103,201, and in 1900 the number had risen to 4,823,694. Of course, all the other large towns in the Kingdom could show similar increases in proportion to their size, and these figures take no account of the increases in other kinds of Post Office business which have been equally significant.