Certain of the public service corporations, Dru insisted, should be taken over bodily by the National Government and accordingly the Postmaster General was instructed to negotiate with the telegraph and telephone companies for their properties at a fair valuation. They were to be under the absolute control of the Postoffice Department, and the people were to have the transmission of all messages at cost, just as they had their written ones. A parcel post was also inaugurated, so that as much as twelve pounds could be sent at cost.
Chapter XXXIV
Selwyn’s Story
The further Administrator Dru carried his progress of reform, the more helpful he found Selwyn. Dru’s generous treatment of him had brought in return a grateful loyalty.
One stormy night, after Selwyn had dined with Dru, he sat contentedly smoking by a great log fire in the library of the small cottage which Dru occupied in the barracks.
“This reminds me,” he said, “of my early boyhood, and of the fireplace in the old tavern where I was born.”
General Dru had long wanted to know of Selwyn, and, though they had arranged to discuss some important business, Dru urged the former Senator to tell him something of his early life.
Selwyn consented, but asked that the lights be turned off so that there would be only the glow from the fire, in order that it might seem more like the old days at home when his father’s political cronies gathered about the hearth for their confidential talks.
And this was Selwyn’s story:--