Orders for stamps are received daily from the Office of the Third Assistant Postmaster General and shipped by the Bureau.
Post Office Inspectors
The Division of Post Office Inspectors is in many ways one of the most interesting in the postal service. The duties are varied and of especial importance, as the Post Office Inspector when on duty for the Department is the official representative of the Postmaster General and clothed with all due official authority. The purpose of such officials is to have ready at hand reliable men for confidential work. Unusual capacity is required, tact, judgment, patience and courage. The duties of an inspector are not measured by the ordinary hours of employment, but depend altogether upon the nature of the work he is called upon to perform, day and night in successive order, being synonymous terms when especial service is required. Complaints are generally the basis of inquiry and operation, but the scope of duties takes a wide range, involving special work of any kind and in any direction. Irregularities in the service form the principal basis of complaints, but violations of postal laws, frauds and depredations upon the mails furnish a proportionate share.
The inspectors are assigned to duty in geographical divisions of the country under an inspector-in-charge, with the Chief Inspector at Washington in general control. As a rule inspectors do duty in their divisions, but under the orders of the Postmaster General they may be sent anywhere. They are expected to be familiar with the Postal Laws and Regulations and conduct their inquiries in accordance therewith. The division is directly under the Postmaster General and in the classified civil service, and the selections made for this important service represent men of intelligence and integrity. Volumes could be written of the strategy employed and methods pursued in tracing criminal operations. The more agreeable duties, however, require an equal amount of skill though attended with less danger and difficulty. The force of inspectors has been largely increased in recent years because of postal growth and development in all directions.
The Railway Mail Service
The Railway Mail Service of the United States, the most splendid of all the branches of the postal service, owes its origin to Hon. S. R. Hobbie of New York, First Assistant Postmaster General in the administration of President Jackson. Upon his return from Europe in 1847, he made a report to the Department giving his impression of the traveling post office in England. The Department was then struggling with many difficulties in the distribution and bagging of the mails and one plan after another was tried with but indifferent success. Finally Judge Holt, Postmaster General in 1862, determined to try the English system and the first railway post office was introduced in the postal service of the country. The overland mails were then carried by stage coaches from the west side of the Missouri River to California and the immense accumulation of mail matter at Saint Joseph, Mo., destined for the Pacific Coast and the intermediate States, induced the Postmaster General to establish the first railway post office on the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad (Quincy, Ill., to St. Joseph, Mo), the pioneer road in Railway Mail Service history. The growth of the Railway Mail Service has been marvelous and its achievements unequalled in modern progressive developement. Three thousand five hundred railroad mail routes, aggregating 502,937,359 miles of service and employing nearly 19,000 postal clerks and supervisors with salaries amounting to over $26,000,000 attest the strength and greatness of this magnificent arm of the postal service. Of the 14,369,582,586 pieces of mail matter distributed and re-distributed during the past year, 14,367,325,426 pieces, or 99.984 per cent, were handled correctly—a record which should be a matter of pride to every man who wears the badge of the R. M. S. The fifteen divisions in which the whole service is divided each complete in itself, but responsive to central control and direction in Washington, has brought the system to such a state of perfection that but little remains for further experiment.
The Parcel Post and the Opposition to Its Establishment
The splendid showing made in the recent reports of the Postmaster General touching the growth and development of the Parcel Post in this administration must be of interest to the people of the country for whose benefit this measure has been so successfully conducted. Its admitted usefulness brings forcibly to mind the struggle through which this measure passed before the force of public opinion and the evident advantage it foreshadowed, secured its ultimate adoption.