The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-01-16
PENNY Posr IS 7s YEARS OLD.

PENNY POST IS 75 YEARS OLD.
 Great Britain is too busi1y engaged in perfecting her war machine to pay any attention to the commence ration of the triumpas of peace, so
 the 18th anniversary of the fntroduc- ton of the penny post and the first
 use of prepaid postage stamps will in all probability pass unnottced. This Sunday marks the rounding out or three-q quarters of a century of pen ny (two-cent) postage in the British
 isles. as it was on Jan. 10. 1s40 that Rowland Hills epochal innovation was formally inaugurated-
 Before that date postage stamps
 were unknown. and letters were
 transmitted .scolIect on delivery" the
 rate depending upon distance and the
 number of sheets. For instance. a letter from London to Edinburgh, if single sheet or note paper. cost Is. 1 1-2d., or 27 cents; a rwo-sheet let
 CT, 54 cents, and three-sneet let ter, 81 cents The smallest enclosure was treated as an additional sheet.
 The postoff1ce was put to a tre-
 mendous expense, and had to employ large stan. of clerks, in order to examine into each letter as to the. number of sheets or enclosures, and
 mark on each the proper postage to
 be collected from the recipient. When
 the letter reached it's destination
 much trouble and expense was in-
 volved in collecting the amount due
 from the party addressed, and many
 letters were refused, Letters could
 be sent prepaid. but this was seldom
 done.
 Rowland Hill, after a careful in vestigation, discovered that the actual cost of transporting a letter from London to Edinburgh was only the ninth part of a farthing, and he sIr fs f7= enable the postal authorities to pro
 vide cheap postal facilities. One. of his suggestions was that the postage
 be fixed according to weight, instead of by number of sheets, which would do away with one large source of ex- pense in handling letters He also | discovered that the cost of trans pertation was SO small to any pont within the British isles that the cost
 of figuring out rates according to dis l tance and number of sheets was | greater than the difference between transportation cost between any two t points. He therefore suggested a flat rate for all letters, regardless of dis tance carried. In order to obyiate the great cost of collecting postage from the recipients of letters, he sug- gested that pre-payment be made obligatory. and suggested the use Of stamped labels to be used as symbols Of prepayment Lastly, he produc- ed figures to show that penny post age on letters would afford a fair profit to the government, and would enable vastly larger proportion of the public to send and receVe let l ters.
 In other words, he declared that a doub1e-sheet letter from London to Edinburgh for which the postoffice l at a profit for two cents!
 I Naturally, this appeared an im- possible dream to those who had not
 investigated the subject. and HlI's
 project was at first considered joke | Some statesmen urged that uniform l ity of postage would be unjust-that l it was manifestly unfair to charge as much for forwarding letter a few miles as for transporting it from one r end of the islands to the other. But I Hill proved conclusively that even l for the longest possible distance the 1 transportation cost was but the frac- l ton of "a. farthing, and that the cum I brous system in vogue was responsi- l b1e for the high postal charges.
 In time HilPs proposal won wide spread approval, but neither the l government in power nor the oppo- l sition endorsed it. The postofffce au- l thoritfes were its determined oppon- ents-perhaps because it's operation
 would throw so many men out of temp1oyment. Incidentally, 1t did not 1 have that effect, for the immediate lvast increase in postal business nec-
 essitated the employment of addi- tiona1 men.
 I Public sentfmen forced Rowland l Hil1,s measure Into Parliament, and also forced it's passage, and on Jan l 10, 1S4o, ii. went into effect. Row i land Hill was given a treasury ap- I pointment so that he might develop his plan, and a pubic subscription of 1 $45,o0 was raised for his benefit. | Later he became secretary to the l postoffIce, and in that position work ed out the details of the British pos 4l tai money order system.
 1 When the penny post was adopted 1 in Great Britain the number of let
 ters transmitted annually was about 1 77,ooo, 900. Within a. few years this l had increased to 545. 100000.
 At the time of the agitation of penny postage in England, and it's adoption, the United States and Ca nada, and, indeed, all other coun- tries, adhered Co the antiquated sys- tenn of regulating the charge by the | distance. The great success of the Hill system led the United States to adopt, five years later. a modified form of the plan, under which let ters under half-ounce in weight 1 were carried any distance under 300