Omaha daily bee., 1890-04-06
FROM WRITER TO READER.
The True Aim of Good Postal Service
Fully Explained.
HOW THEY DO IN ENGLAND.
The Wide Extent and Admirable
Method of the Free Delivery
System Therc-An Example
for This Country.
HOW THEY DO IN ENGLAN

The ideal of the American postal service
seems to be to carry the mail from postoffice
to pOstoffice; that of Europe to take it from
writer to reader, writes Hon. John M. Greg
ory of Washington, d. G.. Here, except in
the large cities, letters are taken from one
town to another and each man is left to seek
at the nearest Office, often miles distant, the
letters which may lie there days awaiting his
coming, he being in the meantime ignorant of
their arrival. The European service, on the
contrary aims to do for the whole country
what our free delivery system does only for
the chief cities. Take England, for example,
where the modern postal system was born,
throughout its rural districts and villages as
well as its great towns, the poStman goes
daily at least, from door to door, carrying
and receiving the mail matter and hurrying il
to its destination The completeness of such
n service and the ncompleteness of our own
are readily understood by those who have re-
sided in the rural districts of England or
Germany and who have also had occasion to
depend on our own village postoffices and
have seen at these offices the little crowds of
eXpectant correspondents which gather there
around the postmaster's desk on window, two
or three times a day, when mail is due-the
business man or his clerk, looking for letters
from business correspondents; the farmer or
his boy, who has come in mile or two from
the farm TO get possible letters or papers
the anxious mother, wearied with her long
walk to get news from an absent son or
daughter; and people of all classes, from
miles around, who have left their labors to
see if the mail has brought aught for them,
and anXiously wondering if their letters sent
To country friends had reached their destina-
ton, +I3
Contrast this picture with that of similar
English village or rural community, whose
members never think of going to the post
Office, but remain quietly at their homes and
business, sure of the pOstmans coming, and
certain that If any mail matter is ON its way
to them it will not pause until it has reached
their door So, also, the sender of mail mat
ter knows for certainty that what he sends
will be delivered without delay, and he can
count the hour when his correspondent win
receive it, From writer to reader, with due
speed and safety-surely this is the true ideal
of good postal services and nothing less than
this will meet modern wants and business.
True the denser populations of Europe
render this ideal easier of accomplishment
there than it would be in many of the newer
communities of our own country; but the
chief difficulties in cur way lie not in our
more scattered populations; they are found
rather, in the inferior theory of the service
which forbds the attempt and in the rates
of wages for carriers, which renders the SER
vice too costly 10 be easily extended over the
whole country.
Our postal system was established at a
time when the pioneer settlements We're re-
mote from each other, and the natural con-
ception of the work was TO get the mail trans
ported from one settlement to another, leay-
ing each person 10 look out for and fetch his
own letters To and from the Office In the
larger cities we have accepted the European
ideal, and carry letters from door TO door; but
no postmaster general has yet been found
bold enough 10 think of extending the free
carrier service 10 the whole country The
present head Of the postoffiCe department is a
man OF energy and business capacity and in
recent resolution OF congress
to ascertain the cost OF extending
the free delivery service TO cities Of 5000 in