The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1922-05-26
ARMY EMPLOYEES
IN POSTAL SERVICE
TOTAL NUMBER SKILLED
WORKERS is $4,000
STATEMENT BY WORK
Postmaster General Addressed
Luncheon Club At Spring
field Last Night.
Associated Press Dispatch.I

Springfield, Ill. May 21.-Instead
of a mere handful of postal en-
ployes in Benjamin Franklin's day.
there are $4,000 skilled workers,
or about one half the governments
civil service employees, engaged in
the service while the annual reve-
nue. derived from the mail has leap
ed from about $4,000 to $464.000,-
600 in the same period, Hubert
Work, postmaster general. told the
Mid Day Luncheon Club here last
night. T..
Mr.. Work who described postal
service as the housemaid of civii-
cation has sketched its history from
the dispatch bearer of Assyrian and
Roman times to airplane service or
the present day, said the American
postal service had doubled in the
last decade, but that the number OF
employees had increased by only
nine percent.
"This indicates that to care for
the extra load an ever increasing
standard of efficiency of the indivi-
dual employee as well as in the
methods of administration and me d..
chanical equipment has to be main
tanned"
The postmaster paid high
tribute to the American postal wor
ker. say that he considered him
as one of the most important I'M
its in the country's business. l do
not believe any other public OF
private employment demands such
high degree of faithfulness, loyalty
and efficiency as we require of
those who handle the mail"
Find Romance OF Mails
AS we turn back the pages o;
history, we find the romance of the
mails running through the story Of
mans progress" said the postmas
ter general. For even in the dawn
| Of history man learned to entrust
his message to others for delivery.
las far back as the sixth century
B. c., ancient Assyrian and Per
sian monarchs could boast of pos
tails stations a days journey apart.
The lncas were able to transmit
lSnotted string messages at the rate
Of $50 miles a day.
I'm England and France organic
ed postal systems are comparative
ly modern. 1t was not until the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
that they were adopted, and not
until 1888 that England had a daily
mtl to Paris.
Turning to Amrica we find that
prior to 1889 there was no estab-
| lished postal service. In that year
Massachusetts decreed that the
thouse of Richard Fairbanks in Bos-
ton was to be a post office for re-
ceipt and dispatch of ships mail.
The first regular mail was es-
tablished in the colonies between
New YorS and Boston in 1872 and
offered monthly service Until
Franklin, in 1887, was appointed
postmaster Of Philadelphia, the
Crown received little financial re-
turn from the colonial postal SER
vice.
| Postage Was High
THE number of postoffices in
1776 was twenty eight, postage was
high. and the average days pro-
gress of letter was something be-
tween thirty and fifty miles. When
the Constitution was adopted in
1883, however, exclusive control of
post offices was placed upon the
federal government"
The postmaster general said IL
was not generally known that Abb
raham Lincoln's first public office
was that of postmaster, in 1893.
under the Jackson administration at
New Salem. Illinois.
During Lincoln's term as Presi-
dent" the postmaster general con-
tinues, two great postal advances
were instituted, the introduction of
the money order system, and
convention with foreign countries
to make arrangements for a more
systematic and equitable handling
OF foreign mail" y y, =