What rural delivery has done in other directions may be summed up as follows: It has broadened the field of industrial opportunity, touched as if with magic power the possibilities of human endeavor, and transformed conditions to a degree almost marvelous. It has brought special delivery almost to the door; secured good roads and maintains them by official interest and concern; has attracted the attention of the various States to this question and obtained results; it has made farm lands more valuable and contributed to increased production; it has abridged time by rapid communication; brightened all environment, and made ordinary dull routine interesting and attractive; it has lessened toil by the instructive suggestions which Government experiment and inquiry affords, and has made the home a center of influence and crowns domestic life with all that makes for peace and contentment.
Rural Delivery as Viewed by President McKinley
The favorable opinion entertained of the advantages of the rural free delivery service when it was yet in the experimental stage and doubts were expressed as to its practical benefit, cost considered, is well set forth by President McKinley in his annual message to Congress, December 3, 1900.
“This service ameliorates the isolation of farm life, conduces to good roads and quickens and extends the dissemination of general information. Experience thus far has tended to allay the apprehension that it would be so expensive as to forbid its general adoption or make it a serious burden. Its actual application has shown that it increases postal receipts, and can be accompanied by reductions in other branches of the service, so that augmented revenues and the accomplished savings together materially reduce the net cost.”
The First County Rural Service
The first full county service was inaugurated in Carroll County, Maryland, and at a time when weather conditions made it something of an undertaking. December 20, 1899, was the date selected and winter with its storms and snow had put the roads in the worst possible condition. Sixty-three post offices and thirty-five services by star route contractors, were discontinued in one day and rural free delivery service substituted. Westminster, then a third-class office, was made the distributing center but postal stations were established in villages where post offices had formerly been located.
Service started with four two-horse postal wagons and with a postal clerk in each to issue money orders, register letters and cancel stamps on the letter mail collected. These wagons supplied mail to twenty rural carriers at designated points and brought all the territory within easy and convenient reach. This initial service first covered 387 square miles of the 453 in the county, but soon afterward embraced it all.
The inauguration of so great a change in postal service created antagonism and a strong delegation came to Washington to enter protest. But the manifest advantages which soon began to appear, silenced all opposition, and the great majority of the protesting citizens withdrew their opposition and bore convincing testimony to the efficiency and value of the service. The cost of the service in the first three months was $4,543, saving by service superseded, $2,805. Increase of postal receipts was $1,501.75 leaving net cost of the whole county service for three months at only $236.
This successful county experiment attracted wide attention and full county service was thereafter rapidly established in many directions.
Country-wide Extension, Rural Delivery