Iron County news. [volume] (Hurley, Wis.) 1913-1950, 1924-07-26
UNCLE SANS POSTAL SERVICE
IMMENSE BUSINESS
Number Of Articles Handled in Mails
Increasing Every Year; Reaches
All Parts of World.

livery year the united oIdles
Postal Service handles 23,000,000,-
900 articles Every year the in
crease in number of articles in the
mails is more than a million. OF
the total mail submitted, 12,000,0 00,-
900 pieces are letters.
Every year the Postal Service, on
an average delivers 112 letters to
every man, woman, and child in the
United States.
Atlas would have had a tough time
indeed lifting the annual load of
letters alone that the Postal Service
moves. II is estimated to total 1885,
$50 tons.
Every second of the twenty-four
hours of every day there are 389
letters dropped into letter boxes
every minute, 1884, and every
hour 100000.
Nearly $4,000 postmen, members
of the greatest single business, daily
deliver mail to millions of homes
and business houses in American
cities.
The farmer is not neglected by the
postal service. Today Al, 552 rural
routes supply mail to 6,504, 500 fam
lilies, or 29,921,123 individuals.
Out West the Postal Service has
established a veritable automobile
railroad 1875 miles long to the fruit
full Uintah (Utah) Valley to which
no private rail line has penetrated.
On February rs, 1924, the Post
Office Department had more than
351 900 in its employ. Besides the
1857 letter carriers, there are 62,-
400 clerks, 44,417 rural carriers,
1898 postmasters, and 21,316 rail
way postal clerks.
The 51,393 postmasters run as
many offices. There is one post
office for every So square miles of
territory.
The 35l 900 full and part time
postal employees are paid approx
mately $441,622,517 annually for
their services.
Americas most cherished quality
is the pioneer spirit of its people.
The u. S. postal system, in the
spirit of America, has been a pioneer
in the 18th, 18th, and 10th centuries,
and now, with the opening of the
goth century, it is abreast of the fore
most in progressive ingenuity and
invention and service.
1t was a mail courier who blazed
the first trail between New York
and Boston.
1t was the mail coach which
brought into existence the ole
Boston-New Philadelphia alti
more turnpike-the first great
American highway.
Benjamin Franklin, as deputy
postmaster general, made this post
road serving the scattered colonial
settlements show a greater income
than the principal post road between
England and Scotland.
Richard Fairbanks, who conducted
an office in a Boston tavern in 1888
to receive letters from ships, was the
first colonial postmaster.
Benjamin Franklin in 1875 became
the 1lfSt postmaster Gehefai OF the
United States.
Railroads were patronized by the
Postal Service from the time the
first few miles of track were laid
Subsidies through the Postal Service
made possible the maintenance OF
many of the early railroads.
The railway post office was ad
opted in the United States in 1864
The Postal Service has always
been on the heels Of the pioneer set
tiers as they advanced westward
Service today to Point Barrow OF
the northermost tip of Alaska, anC
to the isolated miners in the fast
nesses of the mountains, bears out
the motto, where American
citizens go, the mails GO"