As soon as any aeroplanes are turned over to the Post Office Department, aeroplane mail routes will be established in the country, as they now are in Italy and France.
Italy has an aerial mail route from her coast to Sardinia, and is able to deliver 500 pounds of mail in two hours. France has a similar aerial route between her coast and Corsica.
The motor trucks procured from the War Department at this time or at the close of the war will be available for the parcel post truck service. In the view of the Postmaster General, the operation of these motor-truck routes would add 100 per cent to the value of the parcel post service in the vicinity of the cities where established.
The cost of living will be reduced, it is stated, by eliminating useless and expensive operation in the postal means of communication between producer and consumer; will permit the producer to continue production and the labor incident thereto, instead of suspending production or labor while conveying produce to consumers, and will extend the postal zone of collection-and-delivery service in the vicinity of large cities to the point where the actual farmer-producer is domiciled rather than where only suburban residents and nonproducers live.
Care Required in Preparing Contracts
Among the most important duties which a postmaster is called upon to perform is seeing that contracts for star-route service are properly filled out before being sent to the department. These contracts are of a legal nature and while the necessary provisions are plainly stated and simple enough to be easily understood, extreme care must be exercised to see that the instructions are complied with. Spaces for the signatures of the contractor, the sureties and witnesses properly filled out, dates given, names plainly written wherever required and the contractor should personally examine the contract to see that all this is carefully done. Failure to note these necessary details causes the return of the contract for correction, delaying its acceptance and imposing extra and unnecessary work upon the contract clerk. It may also be stated that as failure to perform service on the part of the contractor is liable to bring these contracts into courts of law for judicial determination, it becomes of the highest importance that nothing required to be done is omitted in preparation and the contract be correct in form and in every particular.
Birthday of the American Postal Service
On the twenty-sixth of July, 1917, the postal service of the United States can celebrate the one hundred and forty-third anniversary of its establishment. It was on July 26, 1775, nearly a year before the independence of the colonies was proclaimed, that the freedom of postal affairs was made an accomplished fact. The British control had existed for eighty-three years, from 1692 to 1775. There was only one line then in existence along the coast with but few branches and those far between. This service was first managed by private interests under a patent from William and Mary, but afterwards directly by the English crown. The fullness of time had at length arrived, had brought the auspicious day, and postal independence was born!
Patriotic sentiment is not wanting in this country of ours, and the flag is ever the object of sincere and heartfelt devotion. The great strides in postal development from that day to this should make the pulse of every citizen, particularly every postal employe, great or small, quicken with civic pride as each successive anniversary of our great postal establishment brings the date to mind. Postmasters might well signalize the day by conspicious display of the flag under which such tremendous progress has been made not only in postal affairs but in national greatness and glory.