The Railway Mail Service of the United States, the most splendid of all the branches of the postal service, owes its origin to Hon. S. R. Hobbie of New York, First Assistant Postmaster General in the administration of President Jackson. Upon his return from Europe in 1847, he made a report to the Department giving his impression of the traveling post office in England. The Department was then struggling with many difficulties in the distribution and bagging of the mails and one plan after another was tried with but indifferent success. Finally Judge Holt, Postmaster General in 1862, determined to try the English system and the first railway post office was introduced in the postal service of the country. The overland mails were then carried by stage coaches from the west side of the Missouri River to California and the immense accumulation of mail matter at Saint Joseph, Mo., destined for the Pacific Coast and the intermediate States, induced the Postmaster General to establish the first railway post office on the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad (Quincy, Ill., to St. Joseph, Mo), the pioneer road in Railway Mail Service history. The growth of the Railway Mail Service has been marvelous and its achievements unequalled in modern progressive developement. Three thousand five hundred railroad mail routes, aggregating 502,937,359 miles of service and employing nearly 19,000 postal clerks and supervisors with salaries amounting to over $26,000,000 attest the strength and greatness of this magnificent arm of the postal service. Of the 14,369,582,586 pieces of mail matter distributed and re-distributed during the past year, 14,367,325,426 pieces, or 99.984 per cent, were handled correctly--a record which should be a matter of pride to every man who wears the badge of the R. M. S. The fifteen divisions in which the whole service is divided each complete in itself, but responsive to central control and direction in Washington, has brought the system to such a state of perfection that but little remains for further experiment. The Parcel Post and the Opposition to Its Establishment The splendid showing made in the recent reports of the Postmaster General touching the growth and development of the Parcel Post in this administration must be of interest to the people of the country for whose benefit this measure has been so successfully conducted. Its admitted usefulness brings forcibly to mind the struggle through which this measure passed before the force of public opinion and the evident advantage it foreshadowed, secured its ultimate adoption. While in the American Republic history is rapidly made and startling changes are not of infrequent or uncommon occurrence, it is, however, true that subjects which provoke discussion because cherished interests are endangered or settled opinions of public policy liable to be overthrown, require time in which to adjust themselves to changing conditions.