The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1891-12-06
POSTAL rELRPHoNE SERVICE.

Postmaster General Wannamaker's
annual report is a meaty affair, brim
full of business from one end to the
other, in which many innovations are
urged and practical ways suggested for
carrying them out. He is in favor of
the English parcel" or small package
system, for free delivery in the more
thickly settled farming districts, etc. He
proposes to extend the money order sys-
tenn everywhere. The extension of
postal facilities, past, present and con-
templated, forms in itself an interesting
chapter. During the year nearly 5000
miles of additional railway postoffice
service have been established, 1900
miles in the Pacific coast states, 3, 800 in
other western states, 2.400 in the south
ern states, and about l 900 in the north
eastern states. Chicago, of course,
leads in western postal fa-
cilities. The number of mail
trains arriving and departing daily at four
leading western points is as follows:
Chicago. 145 and al; Cincinnati, 30 and
70; ST. Louis, 60 and 70; st. Paul, as
and IA
MIR. Wanamaker pronounces the rural
free-deliyery experiment success. He
figures net profit for the system wher-
ever judiciously tried. He recommends
the passage of bill to entitle towns of
population between 5000 and 10000 to
the free delivery. He recommends street
letter boxes at the door of every house
holder to save time of carriers.
Among other things he recommends
the adoption of the telephone as well as
the telegraph to the postal system,
showing that it is not only the constitu
tional privilege but the duty of congress
to utilize all the means of modern science
for quickening the transmission of in
telligence. He says upon these two
points:
a year from next March the telephone
patent expires, and unless congress acts
promptly to authorize its adoption for
communication among the people it re-
quires no stretch of the imagination to
believe that in the next two years one
immense syndicate will unite and control
all the hundreds of telephone plants of
the country as the telegraph is now con-
trolled, or the two will be united, and
then for the next twenty years the most
astute attorneys will be legitimately
earning large salaries in indignantly OPP
posing the so-called attacks of future
postmasters-general upon defenseless
vested rights.
One-cent letter postage, Scent tele- |
phone messages and 10-cent telegraph |
messages are all near possibilities under |
an enlightened and compact postal sys- |
tenn using the newest Geographic in |
ventions. The advantage of tying the |
rural postoffice by telephone wire
requiring no operator to the rail-
road station must be obvious The |
benefits arising from telephone con-
nectionS with the postoffices will
easily suggest themselves in
a hundred ways to those who want the
entire people to share in common privi-
leges. The rural population would be
the greatest gamer. a telephone message
from the postoffice to the railroad sta
ton miles away to ascertain if expected
freight had come would save the farmer
many a needless wagon trip over bad
roads; news of approaching frosts could
be promptly spread over country dis
.ricts and fruit-growers regions, and
many valuable crop saved.
The days market prices for cattle and
grain and wool and produce may be OBJ
aimed by the farmers direct by inquiry
rom others than the buyer who drives
Up to the farm in his buggy. All these
may seem homely purposes TO dwell
ers in cities, but country life would lose
some of its drawbacks by the extension
# such facilities to those who bear
heir full share of the burdens of the
government and receive, in postal re-
pects at least, less than their share of its
benefits.