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

CHAPTER XXI THE VILLAGE POST OFFICE All post offices other than a Head Office are called sub-offices. The definition embraces busy town offices as well as the village post office. The sub-office is usually managed by a man or woman who has other visible means of support. In the vast majority of cases the sub-office is a shop. And comprising as the ranks of sub-postmasters do all sorts and conditions of men, it is not surprising if we find more variety among this class of official than among the Head Postmasters. The Head Postmaster is a Civil Servant; he has a tradition to keep up, and he looks at official matters with a sort of professional eye. The sub-postmaster, on the other hand, has, as it were, a foot in both worlds, the commercial and the official, and he comes to his duties with the training not of the Civil Servant but of the local tradesman. I sometimes think that it is a good thing for the Post Office service that so many of its servants should have this double interest; they are in close touch with the public, they know its peculiarities across the counter, and they are less likely to be strangled by red tape. The sub-postmaster is often, of course, a highly educated man, and can take a high place among any society of business men in his district; on the other hand, in a small district or village he may be a man of slight education who is only a degree above the working classes. A sub-postmaster is often very human and unsophisticated; he is not trained by the Civil Service Commissioners to write reports in proper official style, and he often shocks the staid officials at headquarters by the directness of his style. And considering the stock from which sub-postmasters are often drawn, it is sometimes astonishing how well the work of the Department is performed. For most of the duties proper to a Head Office belong also to a sub-office. The responsibility is perhaps less, but the sub-postmaster has frequently to be efficient in all classes of Post Office work, to be an accountant, experienced in banking business, and to know a good deal about telegraphy.