"The contract between an express company and a railroad company usually provides that the express company shall have the exclusive right to operate upon the lines named for a definite term of years; that all matter carried on passenger trains, except personal baggage, corpses, milk cans, dogs, and certain other commodities, shall be turned over by the railroad company to the express company; that the railroad company shall transport to and from all points on its lines all matter in charge of the express company; that special or exclusive express trains shall be provided by the railroad company when warranted by the volume of express traffic; that the railroad company shall furnish the necessary cars, keep them in good repair, furnish light and heat and carry the messengers of the express company as well as all necessary equipment; that the railroad company shall furnish such room in all its depots and stations as may be necessary for the loading, unloading, and storing of express matter; that the express company may employ during the pleasure of the railway any of the agents of the latter as express agents and may employ the train baggage-men as its messengers. "The express company, on its part, agrees to pay a fixed per cent of its gross receipts from handling express matter; to charge no rate at less than an agreed per cent of the freight rates on the same commodity--usually one hundred and fifty per cent; to handle, free of charge, money, bonds, valuables, and ordinary express matter of the railway." The railroad mail service is, in many ways, closely analogous to that of the express service. To it also, are devoted whole platoons and brigades of especially equipped cars, and it comes under the direction of the capable traffic officers of a great government department. The Post-office Department is practically as old as the nation itself. For it was away back in November, 1776, that Ebenezer Hazard, who had been appointed Postmaster General to the Continental Congress, filed a memorandum of gentle complaint because of the long distances he was compelled to travel to keep pace with the wanderings of the Continental Army. But it was not until George Washington had become President of the United States, in April, 1789, that the Post-office Department came into any real semblance of organization. Samuel Osgood, of Massachusetts, was the man to whom was given the task of making a real business out of what had once been a haphazard courtesy of the past of stage-drivers and ships' captains. Some men had made individual businesses out of the management of stage-routes--in fact, Benjamin Franklin was an early postman. But the United States Government from the beginning created the mail service as a monopoly for itself--following the rule of other nations.