In weavers' bags, especially near Glasgow. These were bags containing work for the weavers, sent by and returned to the manufacturers.[789]
By "family-boxes." Students at college in Glasgow and Edinburgh were accustomed to receive boxes of provisions, etc., from home. The neighbours made use of them to carry letters.[790]
By coachmen, guards, travellers and private individuals.[791]
By vans, railways, stage-coaches, steamboats, and every conceivable means.[792]
By writing in newspapers, sometimes with invisible ink or by enclosing accounts or letters in them.[793]
About half of the letters and parcels sent to the seaports for transmission to foreign parts by private ships did not go through the Post Office,[794] and this practice was more or less winked at by the authorities.[795] The letters from Liverpool for the United States numbered 122,000 a year, but only 69,000 of these passed through the Post Office.[796]
Since the Post Office has adopted the policy of charging low uniform rates of postage there has been no concerted attempt to infringe upon its monopoly. The dissatisfied do not now attempt to establish competing posts nor to evade the payment of the legal rates. Any pressure which may be brought to remedy real or supposed grievances takes the form of an attempt to influence the department itself. It is true that a private messenger service was established for the delivery of letters, but the promoters of that service seem to have been unaware of the fact that they were acting in violation of the law, and a satisfactory agreement with the department was soon concluded. As a matter of fact, it is a question whether succeeding governments have not been too subservient in granting the demands of certain sections of the people, notably in connection with the telegraph and telephone systems and the question of guarantees. The position of a government which has abandoned the principle that any extension of services or change in postal policy shall be based upon present or anticipated financial success must necessarily be a difficult one.
CHAPTER X
THE TELEGRAPH SYSTEM AS A BRANCH OF THE POSTAL DEPARTMENT