The evening times. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1895-1902, 1901-04-15
ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT.
a Baltimore Mnn Points Out Defects
in the Postal Service

she Postal service
Postmaster General Smith received a
letter from George B NIcAllister. of Bal
timore, this morning in which the latter
makes some novel suggestions regarding
reform in the postal system Mr.. Nc
Aiiister said in part:
The mails. the telegraph, and the tele-
phone are, or ought to be, rival public
utilities Why after all, should not the
written word. in the present day of quick
communication. be made to travel imme-
diately. if possible. just as do the winged
messages of tel krraph2 If there are wires
for the oral why may there not be rails
everywhere for the written message2
Should this not. after all be a thoroughly
modern expression of the idea of rapid
transit in local communication2 The
crowning point of development and
achievement for the mail service viii be
the establishment of means by which the
letter, leaving the hand of the sender,
will be Immediately forwarded, never
Ceasing in its journey through the mails
until it is delivered by the carrier into the
hand of the person to whom it is address
ed Suppose you miss the mail collector
by single moment only in posting your
letter in a street corner box? What may
happen to it? 1t may miss the next de
livery in the business quarter of the city;
it will thus lose on a round average, some
two hours in transit. 1t may rgiss the
next delivery, say, in some outside neigh
borhood OF suburban district to which it
is addressed. The resultant loss viii be
from two AID a half TO eight hours 1t
may miss the last delivery anywhere in
| the city, thereby losing some sixteen
hours
If it be posted on Saturday it may be
come q Sunday Iay-oyer and miss forty
| hours It may miss q train in so doing,
| it will lose from two TO thirteen hours
until the next one Failing TO coneCt with
| the railroads, it may miss any delivery
| during the day, or the last delivery in an
| other town, additional loss from two to
sixteen hours. or even forty hours, If a
| Saturday arrival. If it's destination be at
| some remote country town or settlement
| in the South or West, as far distant. say,
as San Francisco, or Melbourne, LONDON
OF Cape Town, its loss of time may run
from days into weeks or even months
Imagine the panic it would create were
the telephone companies to announce that
hereafter the public should be restricted
| in use of the telephones to but once every
two, three, four, eight, or forty hours
| The public have grown so accustomed 20
| the idea Of intervals greater OF lesser, IN
the receipt and collection of their let
tecs by the Governmental agency tEat 1t
| IS quite q forgotten incident that by the
very original act creating it the pOstoi-
! flee took upon itself the business of the
private messenger What messenger in
these days is 50 despairingly lazy as to
| tarry between the breakfast hour and
| shutdown in passing over good square
/ mile or So for instance, within the cor
| pOTdte limits Of Kalamazoo?
| There is nothing essentially abnormal
| nor impractical in the suggestion that, II
| the plan was not found difficult Of accom-
plishment to gather up letters en- route
| on the general railroads and then shift
/ them from one road to another by
mail 'tran5fer. the same thing might be
/ done on our street railway lines, thereby
effecting by Ietters-by direct and con-
tinuous 'routing-thc same immediate
| journey across town low provided for the
/ trolley passenger. The chain OF man
transit, so to speak. consisting Of three
EnkS-cOliectiOn, tran SportatioH- delivery
the middle one is being constantly short
ened, while the two end links certa inly
undergo no proportionate diminution in
| their length.
I'm Europe the last delivery is at OF
| g p. m. Here it is at ! or p. m In Eu-
/ rope one may send a letter in the morn
ing TO n city destination, and II VIII ar
rive early that afternoon, surely that day
] In this country the postal officials have
/ provided such seTviE@-
| Imagine the effect On the public mind
| if the local express companies refused
| to deliver goods anywhere after OF
| p. IN Imagine the CONSERVATION of even
| the pOStOffice people were the railroads to
| restrict the oat-0f-tOwu mail dispatches
| to the morning hours, or at all events to
not later that O'Clock in the afternoon.
When it is held to be susceptible of de
mOnStTati0n that TONS OF mail are held Up
! fully fifteen and twenty hours in the
| twenty-fOur by the postal system, the
| night layOver, IL is sufficient expIana-
( postoffieiai officials, is sufficient expIana-
| ton of the greatest anomaly In our mod
| ern system for the conveyance Of CORE
| spOndenCe- This 'postoffice night of
/ which We hear so much, begins TO fall
| in residential sections before the orb of
/ the natural day is at its height; it eff
| feCtually enfOlds the entire business area
( by O'Clock p m at farthest 1t is no
| wonder il so often serves as the pre-
| text for most serious delays, when it
practically affects more than three
fOurthS of all correspondence VIVA tever
| initialiy or il the return mail not exclu-
/ sive. under an organicalIy defective col
| lection and delivery system, at all points
/ OF oUt-Of-town letters
| The postoffice- rental boxes for mer-
4 chants and others are standing iudict-
| ment of our tagging local postal service
| The admitted need Of pneumatic mail
/ tubes or other rapid postal machinery. to
| reTTteve the loss of but a relatively small
/ fraction OF time In the mere transfer or
| transportation, locally. OF the mails. Is
| more deserving of attention as an effect
than as a cause Of the worst conditions
/ at present calling for aneliOration in TIE
| local postal service. The pneumatic sys-