Norwich bulletin., 1920-07-23
THE MAIL MAN;
 \ COURIER OF GEOGRAPHY

THE MAIL MAN;
 \ COURIER OF GEOGRAPHY
 /; it ever occur to you that your city letter carrier your village postmaster or your rural route carrier, has past?
 He is the agent by which the long arm of Uncle Sam taps your shoulder one two, maybe three times a day. yet he is so unobtrusive that you probably do not know him half so well as the policeman or the school teacher
 Recently however. he has been in the public eye by the presentation of lls need for increased pay, and, in this con nec.ion the National Geographic Society calls attention to him as an historic hg- ure.
 The history of the postal service and it's employees extends to the days of the Romans when the earliest known means of transmitting a message was by cour- iar.' says a bulletin from the Washing ton, D. C., headquarters of that socie- ty. These admirable organizers. the Ro- mans. marked by a post the place in the road where the relay of one runner by another was effected; thus they named our system long before it was born.
 "The first letter post seems to have ex- isted in the Hanse towns in the thir- teenth century in order to facilitate Tt- lations between the merchants of the va rious members of the Hanseatc League
 The British post office had it's begin ming in the sixteenth century and our own colonial methods of handling mai were inherited from our British foreta- thers Long before the people had any means of exchanging either personal or official letters. the king had established a system for conveying his personal mes sages and official documents by roya messengers. In the reign of King John this petulant monarch paid out large sum for a postal service and charged ii to the household and wardrobe accounts Messengers who were thus entrusted with matters of state had to be above sus- picion. They went the whole distance and were paid according to the lengtf and danger of their journeys.
 When Edward " found the Scots were too hot upon his trail he decided that he needed system of communlca- ton between his own headquarters ano those of his fighting forces so he had horses placed at twenty mile intervals or the road between England and Scotland That was our present post office system in embryo Finally, in 1512 Sir Briar Tuke became the first postmaster-genera of Britain, and personally took charge of all the royal messengers.
 Persons of less importance thar kings had to arrange to send their let ters by their servants, messengers, mer chants, or friends, but there is evidence that by the close of the fifteenth century regular couriers between few main points were employed.
 Tn a privy council proclamation 1T 1903 the duties of mail carriers were made extremely arduous. The postInaT had to have two leather bags lined witf 'bayes' or cotton, for his letters, he hae to toot a horn whenever he saw anyone approaching, or at least four times ir every mile, he might not delay more thar fifteen minutes at any point, and he had to make at least seven miles an hour in summer and five in wineer Besides this, he had to keep a record of the name and address of the sender and recipient of each letter.
 Tn 163S New England proposed to the British sovereign that a post office sys-