The American Postal Service / History of the Postal Service from the Earliest Times

by Louis Melius

Cost Accounting

By means of an accurate cost-keeping system devised for the equipment shops, but which can be adapted to any form of clerical expense, great improvements have been made and savings effected. All mail equipment is now supplied at a greatly reduced cost and in improved form. Supplies for post offices are judiciously and economically handled under the system now in operation, all discoverable waste checked and the service greatly benefited. The direct, the indirect and the overhead charges can now be clearly ascertained in any form of manufacturing enterprise and the cost in any direction definitely known. It was a long felt need in economical administration and its introduction in the Post Office Department has been of decided advantage.

Cleansing Mail Bags

The life of a mail bag is about six years and after being dragged about on railroad platforms and other places they accumulate an amount of dust and dirt which renders them unfit for handling when returned to the bag shop for repair. The old practice was to shake them out by hand, but in the hurry and haste of business this was but imperfectly done and there was constant complaint among the operators and clamor for a better system. After many experiments and various tests a method was at length devised which cleans them thoroughly and does away with the discomfort under which the work was done. The method finally adopted consists of large tumbling barrels or cages made of wood with slats and fashioned in the shape of a star, holding several hundred bags each. Driven rapidly by electric power the bags are thoroughly shaken, the escaping dust confined in a tightly constructed room and carried off by blowers into an immense canvas bag resembling a dirigible balloon when inflated. At stated intervals the end of this bag is opened and the dirt and dust removed. Four thousand bags a day are now successfully treated by this process.

The Farm-to-Table Movement

As the farm-to-table movement is now attracting a great deal of public attention and is directly connected with the postal service by its afforded means of communication, some observations upon the subject may be worthy of mention.

There are four fundamental facts connected with the subject, viz., the points of production, places of consumption, methods of operation and means of communication. Production is upon the farm, consumption in the cities and towns, methods, to be determined by experience, and the mode and means of conveyance, a government function.

Regarding the first of these divisions, certain facts are apparent. The balance of trade, eight to one is against the farmer at the point of production; he receives very much more than he sends. Why this disproportion? It is caused either by lack of interest in the subject, or because of lack of practical experience in the successful management of such business enterprise. The remedy in either case is in his hands. If interest is wanting he should cultivate it; if he has made experiments and they have failed of proper results, he should not become discouraged but try again. High prices in the cities lead the residents there to seek relief by direct dealings with the producer. The consumer will reach him if he puts himself in touch with the man who is seeking, and the desire to sell his goods and do business, should lead the producer to inquire how best it can be done.[ The postmaster can help him by advice and counsel and it should be a pleasurable duty for the postmaster to advise and confer with, and put the producer (who is his patron), in the way of profitable business intercourse with the man in the city who needs him and is only too anxious to find who he is, where he lives, and what he has to sell.

While the country postmaster at the point of production has a duty to perform in advising with the producer (for the postmaster is to all intents and purposes the “middleman” in this connection) the city postmaster has also a duty to perform in assisting the resident there to find the most convenient places of production and how such places can be easily reached and what can be procured there that the city resident wants and needs. Many postmasters are now paying especial attention to this matter on account of the urgent necessity which the high prices, and diminished quantities of provision that come to the cities, render so necessary, but conditions require that many more should be engaged in that direction to afford all the benefit this great measure of the Government was intended to give.