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

The editor of Truth once asked his readers, before desiring to air their grievances against the Post Office in his pages, to consider seriously whether the rule, regulation, or treatment of which they were complaining might not be justifiable. Regulations must exist in every business, and having made rules the Department must enforce them without discrimination. “It would be out of the question to give sorters or Post Office clerks a discretion to wink at some kinds of additions to postcards and surcharge others. Whenever you make rules you create absurdities and hardships. It is absurd that if a letter weighs one ounce to the closest nicety you can send it for one penny, and that if you enclosed the hind leg of a flea in that same letter, the Post Office should insist on your paying an extra halfpenny— 50 per cent. more— just for the hind leg of a flea. Granted that this is absurd, it would be still more absurd if there were no line drawn between the penny and the three-halfpenny rate. The Post Office stands badly in need of criticism, but let the criticism be reasonable.” I think this is common sense, and people should not abuse the Post Office servants merely because they are obviously doing their duty. A lady wrote to the Postmaster-General in the following strain, and it is the type of hundreds of letters received by him: “I should like some other reply than the usual stereatippied reply which I undurstand is usual and I may say that I am writing under legal advice I shall probly put the matter wholly into Solicitorrs hands.” Her intentions might have the desirable effect of improving her orthography, but the law is usually on the side of the Post Office, and the stereotyped reply is in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the only one possible in the circumstances. You can frighten your greengrocer probably by the threat of a solicitor's letter; it does not disturb the equanimity of his Majesty's Postmaster-General.