The American Postal Service: History of the Postal Service from the Earliest TimesMelius, Louis
History
The American Postal Service: History of the Postal Service from the Earliest Times
Melius, Louis
Postal service -- United States -- History
It is wonderful how the blind, those who have been denied by nature
or accident of the most priceless of all human faculties, can adapt
themselves to conditions whereby the means of support may be obtained.
All communities and great centers of population have doubtless
such cases, especially where opportunities are afforded by private
munificence or public appropriation, but there are perhaps few cases
where, in Government service, it is possible for a blind person to find
an opportunity to earn a living. The Mail Bag Repair Shop at Washington
furnishes such a case and it is worthy of notice.
Twenty-six years ago a blind girl, Miss Hattie Maddox, called to see
Postmaster General Wanamaker and asked for a place in the bag shop. She
said, “You give seeing people a two months’ trial at the work, will
you give me that much time to prove that I can do it?” She then went
to Colonel Whitfield, Second Assistant Postmaster General, who had
charge of such work, and showed him some crocheting she had done and
the opportunity she sought was given her. She is there today busy with
a pile of mail bags, stringing them with new cords, finding weak spots
and repairing them with needle and thread and does the work as well as
any of those around her. An attendant from her home brings her to her
daily task and calls for her, and she is one of the most contented and
happy women on Uncle Sam’s pay roll.
Mr. Wanamaker’s Four Great Postal Reforms
Marshall Cushing, private secretary to Postmaster General Wanamaker,
says in his book “The Story of Our Post Office,” published some
years ago, that Mr. Wanamaker had in mind and frequently discussed
with public men, four great postal propositions, one of which this
administration is now vigorously pushing forward, while the other
three are still in abeyance. These propositions were the postal
telegraph, the postal telephone, rural free delivery and house-to-house
collections of mail. He regarded them as simple and easy business
propositions.
The first proposed that the thousands of letter carriers of the
Department should help the telegraph companies collect and deliver
messages, and that a few clerks in a central bureau at Washington could
manage the stamp department and do the book-keeping for this part of
the business of the companies. Telegrams were to be written on stamped
paper, sold by the Department, or upon any sort of paper provided with
stamps sold by the Department, and be deposited as in the case of
letters whether on the streets or attached for collection and delivery
purposes at house doors. These postal telegrams were to be collected by
carriers on their regular tours of collection and telegraphed to the
destinations and taken out and delivered in the first delivery. Answer
to be sent off exactly in the same way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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