Evening star., 1923-08-21
CAPITAL KEYNOTES
BY PAUL Y. COLLINS

One of the brightest days in the
history of the postal service of the
United States is Tuesday, August 2l,
1928. Mark 1t on the calendar 1t
VIII rank with the day when the
Atlantic cable carried it's first mes
sage from America to England
This is the day when for the first
time a letter written in New York
will start on the wings of the morn
ing ui o'clock) and arrive in San
Francisco the following day C
o'clock)-long before the slanting
sun Will gild the Golden Gate.
Sunny America, The sun will
light all the way. except from Chi
cago to Cheyenne. and that night
ride will be the Great White Way of
the. plains, for every three miles there
viii be bright signal: at every
twenty-five miles a great glowing
there Will shine lighthouses of 6O0,-
100000 candlepower
Not the beginning of air mail. Far
from it. The total service of the
air mail of the United States is al
ready equivalent to more than 200
times around the world. And all
that 100000 miles without losing a
single life, In the line of duty. 1t is
equal to sixteen round trips to the
moon Yet the public hardly knows
that we have already established a
regular air mail service.
y X
There is an interesting. map in the
May issue of the Postal Guide, drawn
to scale Shouipfr hour ,ba .ra, - . ~ :
United States has shrunk by reason
Of the improvements in the mail
service within the span of the living
generation. The map does not do
Justice to the shrinking within the
memory of men still living. for it
starts with the pony express"
which. in itself. was a great marvel
OF speed for its day, as the twenty
eight-hour schedule OF this week is
for our generation.
The map showing the pony express
service measures five inches from
New York to San Francisco. Drawn
to the same. scale COT time) the
steam cars reduced the stretch from
New York to San Francisco to five
scale for the airplane brings New
york and San Francisco only one
eighth of an inch apart If that man
had started with scale indicating the
time required before the days of the
pony express. it would have been
In place. of the present one-eighth
of one inch.
Wanted information! Wanted to
know what has become of the mail
Some four weeks since, the mail
actually did arrive. Since then, two
other mails are due. but none have
come"
That was the appeal of the editor of
the Los Angeles Star, in 1853. In
those days 1t took two months for an
Atlantic coast letter to reach San
time. theoretically twenty-five days
via Panama, but the average was two
months.
What did that mean to the argo-
nauts buried in the wilds of the gold
hunt? Two months, And irregular
and undependable at that, The boys
of the y. E. +. know what two months
wait for letters from home meant.
while they were somewhere in
France" The greatest marvel of the
world war was its miraculous accu-
| dSS III It's Ildll service, JneTe was
no such accuracy in previous wars.
The medical records of the Union
Army in the civil war tell the ghast-
lly tale of 10000 deaths directly at
tributed to nostalgia-dead because
of letters that never came, or came
too late
There is no step in the development
of civilization in America so filled
with thrilling romance as the estab-
fshment of the pony express.
Before the end of the fffties. the
population of California had so in
creased that there was an insistent
demand for a better mall service. Va
riouS schemes were considered. The
first was that camels and drome-
daries might be imported from Africa
to carry the mail across the great
American desert" as they were trans
porting It in caravans across the
Arabian and Sahara deserts. Those
beasts of burden and OF swftness
might drink their fill at the Colorado
river. then trot across the sands. and
thereby reduce the mail time from
New York to San Francisco to fifteen
DAYS Camels were imported in 1857
but they were used for freight-never
for mail.
x ** x
In 1865. the Butterfield stage was
established. making the trip from St
Louis and Memphis TO San Francisco
in twenty days-the mail reaching
St. Louis from the east by steam cars
How the Californians celebrated the
first arrival of the stage is told In
I the Star extra of Los Angeles.
There was a wicked Wall street
lobby in those days. In the winter
of 1s59-60 it appeared before Con-
press with A scheme to take a years