No Branch of the federal government more strikingly illustrates the wonderful growth and extension of Uncle Sam’s business than the Postal Service. Its history is the history of the commercial and industrial development of the nation, for it has kept abreast, so far as supplying the means of quick and reliable communication is concerned, of the onward march of progress. It ought to be the desire and the aim of every man and woman who purposes to take up the postal service as a life career, to know something of its history, its gradual evolution. Only in this way can they form a just estimate of its relative value in the scheme of government, and without such knowledge they will be merely perfunctory human machines, void of that close personal attachment so necessary to success in any undertaking. A review of the history of the postal service in America has all the interest and charm of an old romance dealing with the life and customs of a bygone age, particularly when depicted by one whose heart and soul is wrapped up in the service, by one whose career in itself is the best proof of what studious habits, devotion to duty, and loyalty to the department can do for a man in the postal service. That man is Edward M. Morgan, Postmaster of New York City, who, starting as a letter-carrier in 1873, came up through the ranks, grade by grade, until he was entrusted with the management of one of the two largest post offices in the world. Beginning of the Postal Service. Mr. Morgan in speaking of the history of the postal service says: “The post office played but a minor part in the early affairs of New Amsterdam. For many years after the consummation of the greatest real estate deal on record, which secured from the Indians the whole island of Manhattan for twenty-four dollars, most of the slight correspondence that was carried on was forwarded in the care of chance travelers, or mutual friends of the correspondents. Later the necessity of some sort of receiving place was felt and what was known as the “Coffee House Delivery” came into use. Letters were addressed to some popular coffee house or tavern, where, upon receipt, they were “posted” in a conspicuous place in the public room where they remained until by chance or gossip, the persons for whom they were intended learned of their arrival. New York’s First Post office.