It is, I think, undoubtedly true that the amount of accommodation given by the Post-office of the States is small,—as compared with that afforded in some other countries, and that that accommodation is lessened by delays and uncertainty. The point which first struck me was the inconvenient hours at which mails were brought in and despatched. Here, in England, it is the object of our Post-office to carry the bulk of our letters at night; to deliver them as early as possible in the morning, and to collect them and take them away for despatch as late as may be in the day;—so that the merchant may receive his letters before the beginning of his day's business, and despatch them after its close. The bulk of our letters is handled in this manner, and the advantage of such an arrangement is manifest. But it seemed that in the States no such practice prevailed. Letters arrived at any hour in the day miscellaneously, and were despatched at any hour, and I found that the postmaster at one town could never tell me with certainty when letters would arrive at another. If the towns were distant, I would be told that the conveyance might take about two or three days; if they were near, that my letter would get to hand "some time to-morrow." I ascertained, moreover, by painful experience that the whole of a mail would not always go forward by the first despatch. As regarded myself this had reference chiefly to English letters and newspapers.—"Only a part of the mail has come," the clerk would tell me. With us the owners of that part which did not "come," would consider themselves greatly aggrieved and make loud complaint. But, in the States, complaints made against official departments are held to be of little moment.
Letters also in the States are subject to great delays by irregularities on railways. One train does not hit the town of its destination before another train, to which it is nominally fitted, has been started on its journey. The mail trains are not bound to wait; and thus, in the large cities, far distant from New York, great irregularity prevails. It is, I think, owing to this,—at any rate partly to this,—that the system of telegraphing has become so prevalent. It is natural that this should be so between towns which are in the due course of post perhaps forty-eight hours asunder; but the uncertainty of the post increases the habit, to the profit, of course, of the companies which own the wires,—but to the manifest loss of the Post-office.
But the deficiency which struck me most forcibly in the American Post-office, was the absence of any recognized official delivery of letters. The United States Post-office does not assume to itself the duty of taking letters to the houses of those for whom they are intended, but holds itself as having completed the work for which the original postage has been paid, when it has brought them to the window of the Post-office of the town to which they are addressed. It is true that in most large towns,—though by no means in all,—a separate arrangement is made by which a delivery is afforded to those who are willing to pay a further sum for that further service; but the recognized official mode of delivery is from the office window. The merchants and persons in trade have boxes at the windows, for which they pay. Other old-established inhabitants in towns, and persons in receipt of a considerable correspondence, receive their letters by the subsidiary carriers and pay for them separately. But the poorer classes of the community, those persons among which it is of such paramount importance to increase the blessing of letter writing, obtain their letters from the Post-office windows.
In each of these cases the practice acts to the prejudice of the department. In order to escape the tax on delivery, which varies from two cents to one cent a letter, all men in trade, and many who are not in trade, hold office boxes; consequently immense space is required. The space given at Chicago, both to the public without and to the officials within, for such delivery, is more than four times that required at Liverpool for the same purpose. But Liverpool is three times the size of Chicago. The corps of clerks required for the window delivery is very great, and the whole affair is cumbrous in the extreme. The letters at most offices are given out through little windows, to which the inquirer is obliged to stoop. There he finds himself opposite to a pane of glass with a little hole; and when the clerk within shakes his head at him, he rarely believes but what his letters are there if he could only reach them. But in the second case, the tax on the delivery, which is intended simply to pay the wages of the men who take them out, is paid with a bad grace; it robs the letter of its charm, and forces it to present itself in the guise of a burden. It makes that disagreeable which for its own sake the Post-office should strive in every way to make agreeable. This practice, moreover, operates as a direct prevention to a class of correspondence, which furnishes in England a large proportion of the revenue of the Post-office. Mercantile houses in our large cities send out thousands of trade circulars, paying postage on them; but such circulars would not be received, either in England or elsewhere, if a demand for postage were made on their delivery. Who does not receive these circulars in our country by the dozen, consigning them generally to the waste-paper basket, after a most cursory inspection? As regards the sender, the transaction seems to us often to be very vain; but the Post-office gets its penny. So also would the American Post-office get its three cents.
But the main objection in my eyes to the American Post-office system is this,—that it is not brought nearer to the poorer classes. Everybody writes or can write in America, and therefore the correspondence of their millions should be, million for million, at any rate equal to ours. But it is not so: and this, I think, comes from the fact that communication by Post-office is not made easy to the people generally. Such communication is not found to be easy by a man who has to attend at a Post-office window on the chance of receiving a letter. When no arrangement more comfortable than that is provided, the Post-office will be used for the necessities of letter-writing, but will not be esteemed as a luxury. And thus not only do the people lose a comfort which they might enjoy, but the Post-office also loses that revenue which it might make.
I have said that the correspondence circulating in the United States is less than that of the United Kingdom. In making any comparison between them I am obliged to arrive at facts, or rather at the probabilities of facts, in a somewhat circuitous mode, as the Americans have kept no account of the number of letters which pass through their post-offices in a year. We can, however, make an estimate which, if incorrect, shall not at any rate be incorrect against them. The gross postal revenue of the United States, for the year ended 30th June, 1861, was in round figures £1,700,000. This was the amount actually earned, exclusive of a sum of £140,000 paid to the Post-office by the government for the carriage of what is called in that country free mail matter; otherwise, books, letters, and parcels franked by members of Congress. The gross postal revenue of the United Kingdom was in the last year, in round figures, £3,358,000, exclusive of a sum of £179,000 claimed as earned for carrying official postage, and also exclusive of £127,866, that being the amount of money order commission which in this country is considered a part of the Post-office revenue. In the United States there is at present no money order office. In the United Kingdom the sum of £3,358,000 was earned by the conveyance and delivery of
| 593 | millions of letters, |
| 73 | millions of newspapers, |
| 12 | millions of books. |
What number of each was conveyed through the post in the United States we have no means of knowing; but presuming the average rate of postage on each letter in the States to be the same as it is in England, and presuming also that letters, newspapers, and books circulated in the same proportion there as they do with us, the sum above named of £1,700,000 will have been earned by carrying about 300 millions of letters. But the average rate of postage in the States is, in fact, higher than it is in England. The ordinary single rate of postage there is three cents or three half-pence, whereas with us it is a penny; and if three half-pence might be taken as the average rate in the United States, the number of letters would be reduced from 300 to 200 millions a year. There is however a class of letters which in the States are passed through the Post-office at the rate of one halfpenny a letter, whereas there is no rate of postage with us less than a penny. Taking these halfpenny letters into consideration, I am disposed to regard the average rate of American postage at about five farthings, which would give the number of letters at 250 millions. We shall at any rate be safe in saying that the number is considerably less than 300 millions, and that it does not amount to half the number circulated with us. But the difference between our population and their population is not great. The population of the States during the year in question was about 27 millions, exclusive of slaves, and that of the British isles was about 29 millions. No doubt, in the year named, the correspondence of the States had been somewhat disturbed by the rebellion; but that disturbance, up to the end of June, 1861, had been very trifling. The division of the southern from the northern States, as far as the Post-office was concerned, did not take place till the end of May, 1861; and therefore but one month in the year was affected by the actual secession of the South. The gross postal revenue of the States which have seceded was, for the year prior to secession, twelve hundred thousand five hundred dollars, and for that one month of June it would therefore have been a little over one hundred thousand dollars, or £20,000. That sum may therefore be presumed to have been abstracted by secession from the gross annual revenue of the Post-office. Trade, also, was no doubt injured by the disturbance in the country, and the circulation of letters was, as a matter of course, to some degree affected by this injury; but it seems that the gross revenue of 1861 was less than that of 1860 by only one thirty-sixth. I think, therefore, that we may say, making all allowance that can be fairly made, that the number of letters circulating in the United Kingdom is more than double that which circulates, or ever has circulated, in the United States.
That this is so, I attribute not to any difference in the people of the two countries,—not to an aptitude for letter writing among us which is wanting with the Americans,—but to the greater convenience and wider accommodation of our own Post-office. As I have before stated, and will presently endeavour to show, this wider accommodation is not altogether the result of better management on our part. Our circumstances as regards the Post-office have had in them less of difficulties than theirs. But it has arisen in great part from better management; and in nothing is their deficiency so conspicuous as in the absence of a free delivery for their letters.
In order that the advantages of the Post-office should reach all persons, the delivery of letters should extend not only to towns, but to the country also. In France all letters are delivered free. However remote may be the position of a house or cottage, it is not too remote for the postman. With us all letters are not delivered; but the exceptions refer to distant solitary houses and to localities which are almost without correspondence. But in the United States there is no free delivery, and there is no delivery at all except in the large cities. In small towns, in villages, even in the suburbs of the largest cities, no such accommodation is given. Whatever may be the distance, people expecting letters must send for them to the Post-office;—and they who do not expect them, leave their letters uncalled for. Brother Jonathan goes out to fish in these especial waters with a very large net. The little fish, which are profitable, slip through; but the big fish, which are by no means profitable, are caught,—often at an expense greater than their value.