Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1922-04-13

Information
(By the Postmaster)

The following is letter from for
mer Postmaster General viii H. Hays
now being sent out to the various of
fees throughout the country:
New York, April 3, 1922.
am delighted with the progress
Postmaster General Work is making
in preparing for Postal Improve
ment Week" 1t is a splendid idea
and | congratulate him.
The men and women in the Postal
Service have always bad the brain
and the hands to their work we'll
and hey now have the heart to do it
and they are doing it well. My earn
est wish now is that the public may
appreciate that service and bring that
cooperation without which there can
not be the maximum quality of good
service.
We know there is something STIR
ring and wonderful about the relation
of that faithful figure in gray to
the daily lives of the great hundred
million. He is part of vast bust
ness which can be tabulated in terms
of annual turnover and curves of oro-
tit and loss like any other business.
but which is nevertheless the strang-
est, most human, and most romantic
business in whine men were ever en-
gagged.
On the New York postoffice is this
inscription:
Neither snow nor rain nor heat
nor gloom of night stays these cour-
iers from the swift completion of their
appointed rounds"
We all know that this is literally
true. Whatever the heat or cold or
the storm, the mail carrier goes out
into it with his bag slung on his
shoulder. 1t is his business, and he
IS paid to do it; but that fact need
not blind us to a greater fact: That
as he goes from house to house on
his "appointed round" he ceases to
be merely cog in a great machine
and becomes in a sense the agent of
inscrutable Providence To one man
he brings news which menas disast-
err; to another a message that opens
the gates of Paradise; to one woman
he brings news which means disast-
Everywhere, men and women and
a IN h II
the most welcome visitor who comes
to the door. Even though he may
have brought bad news dozen times
he is always welcome, for the next
time he comes the news he brings
may be good. He is the children's
Santa Claus at Christmas, and the
grownup's Santa Claus all the year
round. The mail carrier plays a more
important part in the average family
than the family doctor, the family
lawyer, the family preacher, and the
school and the bank and the life in
surance company rolled into one. He
is their main point Of contact with
"iiS "OAio' LIZ ID tIc oIIe greatest
humanizing agent we have.
Behind the partitions of mail rooms
and on mail cars speeding across the
plains, away from the public eye, are
the highly skilled post-office clerks
and railway postal clerks distribut-
ing letters through the great trans
portation artery of the Postal Serv-
ice, concerning which the public
knows far too little. Without the all
important work of these clerks with
highly trained minds, stored with in
credible numbers of names of cities,
towns, villages, hamlets and mail
routes, the letter carrier wound cease
to be the romantic figure he is.
So all the postal employees are in
a high sense the servants Of the Re
public. They make the functioning of
democracy possible. Without the
Postal Service public opinion would
die of dry rot, sectionalism only would
flourish and provincialism thrive.
Let us all try to get the public to
the Postal Service and
then we will have done "what we can
to help improve the Postal Service"