THE AMERICAN POST OFFICE BY W. L. WILSON EX-POSTMASTER-GENERAL N the office of the Postmaster-General IN hangs a little chart giving the postal statistics of the United States for each year since the beginning of the government. From this chart it appears that in 1790, the first full year of Washington's administration, there were seventy-five post offices and eighteen hundred and seventy-five miles of post routes. The gross revenue was thirty-five thousand nine hundred and thirty-three dollars, In and gross expenditure, thirty-two thousand one hundred and forty dollars. 1895 there were seventy thousand and sixty-four post offices, nearly half a million miles of post routes, a gross revenue, in round numbers, of seventyseven million dollars, and a gross expenditure — not including the earnings of the subsidized Pacific railroads of nearly eighty-seven millions. As an example of the salaries, it may be stated that for the year ending with October, 1791, the receipts of the post office at Worcester, Mass., were fiftyeight dollars, of which one dollar was allowed for incidental expenses, thirteen dollars for the compensation of the postmaster, and forty-four dollars were turned in as surplus revenue. In 1895 the amount paid to postmasters was over sixteen million dollars. Between these two dates there is a development whose recital forms the most marvelous and romantic chapter of our history. For while the population of the country has increased less than twentyfold, the number of post offices has increased nearly a thousand fold, and receipts and expenditures have increased more than two thousand fold. The gross revenues of the post office at Pueblo, Col., or Battle Creek, Mich., or Fitchburg, Mass., are now larger than the postal revenues of the entire country in the first year of the administration of Washington. In that year five hundred thousand pieces of mail matter were handled; now over five billion pieces, or an increase of ten thousand fold. But there was an American postal system prior to the year 1790. True, there was no general post office in England for half a century after the first settlers came to Jamestown, and for nearly a half-century after that was established the few post offices in America were under the patronage of their respective colonies. But on the "seaventeenth of ffebruary, |