Postmaster

“ Yet so long does it take to root out an old association of ideas in the mind of the British public, that a postmaster is still regarded in the minds of many people as merely a man who sells stamps and perhaps fancy articles. ”

“ In her mind's eye she saw, with such clearness that her actual eye could scarcely add aught to the confirmation, the thin foreign envelope, the green stamps, the familiar superscription. She went cold and she went hot. Her ears burned, and there were strange noises opening inside them like whistles and hummings, as though in protest to the insupportable outer silence, the imperturbable calm of the Post Office. But the postman was watching her, and the postmaster from his high deal stool. ”

“ He is constantly walking backwards and forwards across the single unpaved street from his home to his office, from his office to his home, with two pieces of official paper held between his finger and thumb, his pen in his mouth, his elbow officially squared, and his linen jacket fluttering, all with an air of intense preoccupation. Poor postmaster! It is mean to fire off cheap sarcastic fireworks from a safe distance. ”

“ The need is evidently felt for a public inquiry agent in every town who will supply local information. Many seaside and inland resorts for visitors have now an officer who is advertised to deal with inquiries; but in hundreds of places the man or woman who seeks information can think of nobody to ask except the postmaster. It is a tribute to the way that the Post Office links itself up with the lives of the people, and nobody but a very churlish postmaster would do other than his best to help his correspondents. ”

“ Persons who hold the office of Postmaster abroad are of so great quality that they disdain to correspond with a man of his mean condition. Some satisfaction may be given him, but he has very much enriched himself upon the place. He is said to be worth £800 a year in land. The office of Postmaster-General being now vested in the Secretaries, the carrying of letters is a business of State. If Witherings shall insist upon his patent, His Majesty may sequester the place into the hands of the Secretaries. ”

“ The duties of each of these heads are very clearly defined by Postmaster Morgan, and each head is held to strict responsibility for the faithful and efficient conduct of his division or department. The postmaster himself is ever ready to give advice and counsel, and is the most accessible of executives, not only to his staff, but to employees of all rank and to the public. He in turn requires of all of his aides not only a thorough knowledge of every detail of their work, but also that they shall be as accessible to those under them and to the public as he is himself. ”

“ The Postmaster-General not only enjoys by law an exclusive monopoly of the conveyance of all letters, but he is also entirely protected from all responsibility for any default in the service which the Post Office undertakes to render to the public, and correspondents are left to rely, in the last resort, on the protection of the severe penal laws against the servants of the Post Office. ”

“ The sub-postmaster, on the other hand, has, as it were, a foot in both worlds, the commercial and the official, and he comes to his duties with the training not of the Civil Servant but of the local tradesman. I sometimes think that it is a good thing for the Post Office service that so many of its servants should have this double interest; they are in close touch with the public, they know its peculiarities across the counter, and they are less likely to be strangled by red tape. ”

“ There appeared to be some difficulty in procuring him his mail, and each minute he was kept waiting seemed to increase his impatience almost beyond [5] the bounds of endurance. I saw him lean forward and gasp out a hurried word to the postmaster, and was idly wondering over his anxiety and its probable causes, when I heard a hasty exclamation near me, and looking around, saw the postmaster himself beckoning to me from the door of the enclosure. ”

“ Upon the recommendation of the Postmaster-General, I have included in the classified service all assistant postmasters, and I believe that this giving a secure tenure to those who are the most important subordinates of Postmasters will add much to the efficiency of their offices and an economical administration. A large number of the fourth-class postmasters are now in the classified service. ”

“ To the postmaster of York he writes in a strain advising like conciliatory dealings with the public. "I cannot imagine," says he, "why you should not think yourself sufficiently empowered by my last and former letters to do right to the merchants in all their just demands; nay further, to gratify them sometimes in little disputes (though they be in the mistake) rather than exasperate and disoblige gentlemen that support the office by their correspondence. ”

“ The postmaster, or one of his assistants, in all cases, immediately before the office is swept or otherwise cleared of rubbish, is to collect and examine the waste paper which has accumulated therein, in order to guard against the possibility of loss of letters or other mail-matter which may have fallen on the floor or have been intermingled with such waste paper during the transaction of business. ”

“ We impressed upon the postmaster that what we really would like was one reliable carrier who would go through the country with us as far as Kittila, and engage the other carriers and guides as they were needed along the route—you see our demands by this time were getting simpler. We had quite given up the idea of the combined guide-interpreter person; and the postmaster urged this proposition with fluency and noise. He pointed out the easiness with which such a piece of work could be done. He dwelt upon the wealth which would accrue to the happy man who did it. ”

“ Postmasters are instructed not to receive any letter, &c. which there is good reason to believe contains any thing likely to injure the contents of the mail-bag or the person of any officer of the post-office. If such a packet be posted without the postmaster’s knowledge, or if at any time before its despatch he should discover any such packet, he is directed not to forward it, but to report the case, with the address of the packet, to the secretary. ”

“ After the interpreter comes the postmaster; usually a promoted labourer, who, for good behaviour or valuable services, has been put upon a footing with the gentlemen of the service, in the same manner that a private soldier in the army is sometimes raised to the rank of a commissioned officer. At whatever station a postmaster may happen to be placed, he is generally the most useful and active man there. ”

“ A Postmaster-General, whilst he of necessity is deeply engaged in day-to-day problems connected with his work, is sometimes rewarded by association with new ideas, discoveries, and inventions remarkable in themselves, and potent for good or for evil. Happily, my tenure of office' as Postmaster-General was marked by close contact with a development of scientific knowledge, and the practical application of it that has brought and will continuo to bring, great happiness into a vast number of British homes. ”

“ The New York Evening Post of March 4 contains a letter which Postmaster-general Granger, in accordance with the Jeffersonian penchant for explaining the motives of the administration, wrote to a postmaster to be removed. “From repeated complaints from the country, and from opinions which are entertained by persons who have been long in office, together with the reasons upon which those opinions are founded, I was soon convinced that as a general rule the printers of newspapers ought not to be employed as postmasters, because they have a special interest.” ”

“ The Postmaster-General may allow to the postmasters respectively, a commission of fifty per cent. on the monies arising from the postage of newspapers, magazines and pamphlets; and to the postmasters, two cents for every free letter delivered out of the office, excepting such as are for the postmaster himself; and each postmaster who shall be required to keep a register of the arrival and departure of the mails, shall be allowed ten cents for each monthly return which he makes thereof to the general post-office. ”

“ Gouverneur asked the Postmaster General for instructions. The Postmaster General, Amos Kendall, late of the Kitchen Cabinet, answered that the law had not vested any power in his department to exclude any species of newspapers or pamphlets from the mail, for such a power would be “fearfully dangerous;” but if any postmaster took the responsibility of stopping those “inflammatory papers,” he would “stand justified in that step before the country and all mankind.” His instructions to the postmaster at Charleston were of the same tenor. ”

“ The Postmaster-General has to defend the policy and conduct of his Department in Parliament, 262and he has to pilot through the House in which he may be sitting all measures relating to the Post Office. He has magnificent opportunities, and as he is the largest employer of labour in the country, his policy on all industrial and working-class questions is a matter of national concern.
We often hear the question asked, “Does a change of Postmaster-General make any difference to the Post Office?” A change certainly makes sometimes a great difference to the staff. ”

“ If Edward Nicholas may prevent the postmaster's knavery, prays him to do so." From an enclosure with this letter, it appears that, in issuing his warrant to the constables to send in on the 9th May "six able horses, with furniture, for His Majesty's service for two days and two nights, at the charge of the owners," the postmaster relied upon and recited a warrant from Secretaries Coke and Windebank, dated 13th February, "for sending to the postmaster ten or twelve horses from New Sarum, a six-miles' compass." ”

“ For the Postmaster General by no means intend to depart from the principle which they have been ordered to adopt, of considering it to be the duty of the Packets to outsail the enemy whenever they can, and by no means to fight when it can possibly be avoided. ”

“ By the recital of a patent bearing date the 30th April of the seventeenth year of James I., we learn that the king "appointed that there should be an office or place called Postmaster of England for Foreign Parts, being out of the king's dominions; that the office should be a sole office by itself, and not member or part of any other office or place of Postmaster whatsoever ”

“ While Ratan was awaiting her call, the postmaster was awaiting a reply to his application. ”

“ At the recent State convention of third and fourth-class postmasters, held at Sunbury, Pa., the question was brought up and a reform urged in the matter. There is much to be said in favor of a more equitable adjustment, and the subject can be approached without detriment to the carrier by a wider and more comprehensive view of the duties of the postmaster and a corresponding improvement in the method of payment. ”

“ But though the effect of the substitution of the weight system for that based on enclosures was not great, so far as concerned the amount of postage required on a letter, much was gained in the direction of simplicity and propriety, when there was no longer the constant appeal to the postmaster's curiosity, and, at times, cupidity, which was made by the regulation requiring him to hold up every letter between him and a lighted candle, in order to satisfy himself as to the number of its contents. ”

“ The Postmaster General is not a mere executive officer with a single aim: the efficient administration of his Department. He is first of all an important Minister, that is, one of the aids of the Prime Minister in keeping intact the party following. He must know to a nicety how any given administrative act in the Post Office will affect his party’s standing, first in Parliament, and then among the constituents of the Members of Parliament. It is true that no British Postmaster General would convert the Post Office into a political engine for promoting the interests of his party ”

“ The duties of the postmaster general were “to superintend and direct the postoffice in all its various departments and services ... agreeably to the rules and regulations” of the ordinance. He was given the power to appoint an assistant and deputies, for whom he should be responsible; to station them, and to fix their commissions, with a maximum limit of 20 per cent. on money “to arise from postage in their respective departments.” He was given the further power of appointing postriders, messengers and expresses. ”

“ A former postmaster of Newcastle-on-Tyne, Thomas Swan, claims restoration to the place of postmaster because the "pretenders [Pg 256] who oppose him have not the least interest"; that his family had been loyal almost to their extirpation and banishment from the town; and that £674, 13s. is still due to his late father as postmaster, Burlamachi not having allowed him to pay himself out of the letter office, etc. ”

“ Early in 1633, an attempt was made to set up another foreign-post service, as appears by a petition from eighty-nine London merchants, addressed to the king, as follows:—"They [Pg 25] are informed that some strangers living here have made choice of a postmaster by whom they have sent their letters, whilst His Majesty has chosen William Frizell and Thomas Witherings for his Postmaster for Foreign Services, who have hitherto carried themselves carefully. ”

“ It must always be remembered, too, in considering what is expected of a Postmaster-General, that he usually comes to his duties without any experience of the technical work and routine of the Department, and if he takes his work very seriously he is perpetually being obliged to acquire knowledge at very short notice. ”