The old-time belief in the necessity of curbing the ambitious designs of those who were striving to open the way to an enlargement of government privilege is strikingly seen in the attitude of Postmaster General Jewell in his annual report to Congress in 1874. In referring to the activity then already seen to widen the scope of the Post Office Department and engage in enterprises held by many at that time and the Postmaster General in particular, as foreign to the sphere of duties and intended purposes and powers of the Department, Mr. Jewell said: “I would suggest that the time has come when a resolute effort should be made to determine how far the Post Office Department can properly go in its efforts to accommodate the public, without trespassing unwarrantably upon the sphere of private enterprise. There must be a limit to governmental interferency and happily it better suits the genius of the American people to help themselves than to depend on the State. To communicate intelligence and disseminate information are the primary functions of this Department. Any divergence from the legitimate sphere of its operations tends to disturb the just rule that, in the ordinary business of life, the recipient of a benefit is the proper party to pay for it, since there is no escape from the universal law that every service must in some way be paid for by some one. Moreover, in a country of vast extent like ours, where most of the operations of the Department are carried on remote from the controlling center, the disposition to engage in lateral enterprises, more or less foreign to the theory of the system, may lead to embarrassments whence extrication would be difficult.” Although the advocates of the privileged rights of private enterprise have ever resisted the entrance of government into the field of national endeavor, the triumphant progress of the Parcel Post under Departmental direction has silenced all captious objection, for its admitted adaptation to the needs of the country and its growing popularity among the people, attests the fact that no limitations can be wisely set in public affairs which bars the progress of an intended benefit.