Alexander Monroe Dockery, Third Assistant Postmaster General, is a native of Missouri, born in Daviess County, educated at Macon Academy; studied medicine, graduated and practiced it for a while but later engaged in the banking business. Served in Congress from March 3, 1883, to March 3, 1899. Member of Committee of Appropriations, twelve years; Committee Post Offices and Post Roads, four years; Governor of Missouri from 1901 to 1905; was author of the bill extending the special delivery system to all post offices; also extending free delivery service to small cities; advocated the first appropriation for rural delivery. Chairman of the commission which bore his name, constituted by Congress for administrative reforms in the conduct of public business, and author of the act creating a new accounting system for the Treasury Department and many other public measures which have made his name familiar to the public and political life of the country. James I. Blakslee, Fourth Assistant Postmaster General, was born at Mauch Chunk, Pa., December 17, 1870. Public school education, supplemented with special courses at Bethlehem Preparatory School, Cheltenham Military Academy and High School, Pottstown, Pa.; was connected with the Lehigh Valley and Pennsylvania railroads as telegraph operator and assistant yardmaster; Lieutenant, Company E, Eighth Regiment, National Guards, 1897; commissioned same rank and regiment, U. S. Volunteers, and appointed quartermaster and commissary, Reserve Hospital Corps, U. S. Army, during the Spanish-American War. Removed to Lehighton in 1899. Chairman Democratic Committee of Carbon County, 1905. Assemblyman, Pennsylvania Legislature, 1907-09 term, and subsequently made Secretary Democratic State Committee, where his organizing ability won him national recognition. PREFACE This little work on postal affairs aims to familiarize postal employes and others with the operations of the Post Office Department in all its varied and numerous details. No attempt was made to cover the wide field of postal activity and inquiry for which a much larger book and much greater space would be required. It is simply meant to be a book of reference, a sort of hand-book on postal subjects for busy people who may not care to read lengthy accounts or stories which a few paragraphs might sufficiently explain, or care to wrestle with columns of figures which are best given in official reports and chiefly valuable to public men for legislative purposes, for comparison and survey.