p. 174 | N. Y. Post Office

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 25, 1868

N. Y. Post Office.

Fifty years ago a single room in a private dwelling was our Post-office, and one man and one boy were considered competent to receive, deliver, distribute, and make up the mails that came into and left this city. To-day, in addition to our General Post-office, there are fourteen stations, one of which, Station D, is said to receive, assort, and deliver more letters than does the Post-office at Albany; and hundreds are employed in carrying out the details of postal affairs.

One or two simple facts—though they are astounding ones—will give some idea of the increase of business in one department of the New York Post-office during the last ten years. In 1859 the average number of letters received nightly in the “box department” was fifteen thousand; now the letters received nightly average ninety thousand. In 1858 the number of letters received at the “drop” from carriers and stations between the hours of six P. M. and half past twelve A. M. amounted to about five thousand. Now the number of letters received between half past six P. M. and half past twelve A. M. from station, drop, and carriers amount to about forty-five thousand. During the twelve months ending with November, 1867, nearly nineteen millions of letters were collected from lamp-post boxes, while over twelve millions of mail letters and more than five millions of city letters were delivered by carriers to our citizens. This statement does not include the letters delivered through the five thousand and eight hundred boxes which are at present rented at the Post-office.

The addition which has this month been made to the number of carriers—the whole body numbering now about three hundred—will insure prompt, frequent, and careful delivery.

It was ascertained by Postmaster James Kelly, on his recent visit to England, that the whole secret of the rapid and accurate postal arrangements of London lay in the number of men employed; that, throughout Great Britain and Ireland, three men on the average were employed to do the work expected of one in the United States. No less than two thousand and six hundred carriers are employed in London. So that, even after making every deduction for difference of population which figures will allow, and after giving Americans all the credit for greater skill, industry, and rapidity in work which national pride might possibly suggest, it still remained evident that more letter carriers were needed to perfect our postal system. It has been very justly remarked that in one respect the British postal system is superior to ours—its servants are appointed for life, or during good behavior; and when unfitted by ill health or age are pensioned. With us respect for service and age is not considered. A man may grow gray and break down his health in our Post offices and then be dismissed at an hour’s notice to make way for some political favorite, who in his turn must give place to another.