=Rural Free Delivery.=--A brief mention of this agency for better roads should not be omitted. Postmaster-General Wanamaker, in 1890, recommended the extension of free delivery to villages of less than 10,000 population and he inaugurated an experimental “village delivery.” After an existence of about two years this was ordered discontinued. However, free delivery on a broader basis was demanded by State Granges of the Patrons of Husbandry and other farmers. Congress made small appropriations for rural free delivery, but the Postmaster-General, W. S. Bissell, declined to make any use of them. When Hon. W. L. Wilson became Postmaster-General (1895) he agreed with his predecessor in believing the project impractical, but if Congress would make the money available he was willing to try it out. An appropriation of $40,000 was placed at his disposal.[143] The first Rural Free Delivery routes were established on October 1, 1896, at Halltown, Uvilla, and Charlestown, West Virginia. Others immediately followed. President McKinley in a message to Congress December 3, 1900, states that “by the close of the current fiscal year about 4000 routes will have been established, providing for the daily delivery of mails at the scattered homes of about three and a half million of rural population.”[144] So successful did it prove that it soon displaced nearly all the star routes and was well established in practically all rural districts of the United States. In 1919 out of a total expenditure by the Post Office Department of over $362,000,000, a little less than $51,000,000 was distributed to the rural delivery service.[145] The Department having adopted a rule to the effect that the rural delivery service would only be established along reasonably good roads, and that a carrier need not go out unless the roads were in fit condition spurred the inhabitants up to better attention of the roads for after a man once got in the habit of receiving his mail daily he wanted it regularly. “When a heavy snow blocks the way of the rural carrier it is customary for the farmers to turn out and break the roads, and this is done several days earlier than would be the case ordinarily. In this way communication throughout neighborhoods and with the outside world is opened up promptly. In consequence the farmer is able to take advantage of good markets and the townspeople are not cut off from the supply of fresh country produce, as often has happened in severe storms. Also cases of distress in isolated farm homes are sooner reached and relieved.”[146]