The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-07-13
Perfecting of Wireless
 Telephone Apparatus
By HOLLAND


 New York, luly 12.-(Special) )-If Lee
 De Forest peJfects, as he expects to do
 within the next three or four years, the wireless telephone apparatus so that 1t
 VIII be practicable to carry the human voice across the ocean inteligibly and | without the use of wires, then there un- doubtedly wilt be an Increase in the de- 1 livery of dispatches or business commun- ications between the United States and 1 Great Britain or the continent of Eu-
 rope. The wireless telegraph seems not
 tc have decreased ordinary mail service, but instead has supplemented it. That
 is also true of the method devised by Theodore N Vail, whereby telegraphic 1 messages, or as they are sometimes
 called business letters, containing not more than 90 words, are sent over the wires at night at charge not exceeding the rates for 10-word day messages i Many business houses make use of the i night letter and yet at least, until the 1 Increase of postal rates was made, this
 service has not cut into the ordinary
 mails. They have, in fact, increased. l Therefore, there seems to be established l the soundness of the philosophy first expounded by Rowland Hill in London,
 and afterwards accepted by Thomas l..
 James, when he was postmaster of New York. and later when Postmaster General
 iE the administrations of Presidents Gar field and Arthur, which was that the
 greater the facilities and the more speedy
 the transmission of mails, if supplement- ed by reduced postal charges, the greater ! tho mail service.
 l Three or four years before the death of former Postmaster General James in l 1916, he said that he had not the slight est doubt that within the course of a l few years aerial mail service would be almost as common as railway mail serv-
 ice He based that opinion upon the l improvements in aircraft which came so rapidly after the European war began. 1 At least year ago some Of the postal authorities believed it inevitable that the government would within a few months make use of aircraft in the carrying of
 mails. And, if a thorough test of an aerial mail service proved to be satis- l factory, then it would be but step fur 1 ther towards the establishment of aerial parcel post service, and, ultimately, in business activities of all kinds. excepting those involving the moving of very heavy merchandise in all parts of the country.
 HOW POSTAL SYSTEM GROWS ! The experiments which have been for some two months under way tend to justify the belief that ultimately satis- I factory aerial post service between the larger cities of the country, supplement- | ed by relaying methods, will be adopted I The growth of the mail service, es-
 pecially in the past 50 years, has been one of the characteristic developments of industrial and commercial life in the l United States. Before the government undertook to carry private mails, 1 postal service was reserved ex- ! clusively for official messages.
 After the railways made it pos
 sfb1e conveniently and rapidly to carry l the mails, and especially after Theodore l N Vail, who is now living, perfected the railway postal service. its use of | the mails for private communication in
 creased in a remarkable manner. This l increase has been of educational, politi-
 cal and commercial importance to the I United States which it is impossible to I set forth by any statistics.
 A few figrues, however, may contain | an object lesson respecting the in- crease of mail service which will be at
 least Interesting. Not until 1850 was
 there considerable railway operation in tho United States. The postoffice
 department reprted that in the year 1850 100000 stamps were issued by the department and used for mailing purposes. Sixty-six years later the postoffice department was able to re- bort that in single year 12,000 ,000.o lstamps were sold, indicating that that L IAff sad !, trfr1,
 the mails, and in addition to that there were sold in that year 1000, O00,0 l. cent postal cards.
 Of such slight Importance was the postal service in the first year of IGeorge Washington's administration as
 President, that the proposition was earnestly advocated that the Postmaster General should no longer occupy the little room at the capitol where the mails were received and sent out In the first year of the nineteenth cen tury, the postal revenues were nearly s3O0,000. In the year 1917, the postal
 revenues exceeded $300,000,000. It has
 never been the policy of the govern Iment so to maintain the postoffice de- pertinent as to secure a surplus reve-
 nue. The desire has been to make the
 revenue and the expenditures substan-
 tially alike. But if airplanes, and in
 addition automobiles, are hereafter to
 be employed to supplement the mail ; service, the probabilities are that the
 yearly revenue will increase. or the postal charges will be diminished. So
 successful has been the recent aerial mail
 service between New York and Wash
 ington that other cities have communi- , cated concerning 1t with the postoffice department, notably Cleveland and Pittsburg. Boston speedily sent re- quest to the government for the extcn-
 sion of the aerial mail service to that | city, and the first experimental and on the whole satisfactory tests of serv- } ice of that kind between New York and Boston have been made within 8 few
 days. The chances are that before
 the summer is ended there will bs regularly aerial mail service between Washington, Philadelphia, New York and Boston, and very likely between | Washington and Pittsburg, where, by
 relays, the service may be extended to } Cincinnati.