Part 21

Religious, educational, and agricultural newspapers of small size, issued less frequently than once a week, may be sent in packages to one address at the rate of one cent for each package not exceeding four ounces in weight, and an additional charge of one cent is made for each additional four ounces or fraction thereof, the postage to be paid quarterly or yearly in advance.

NEWSDEALERS may send newspapers and periodicals to regular subscribers at the quarterly rates, in the same manner as publishers, and may also receive them from publishers at subscribers’ rates. In both cases the postage to be prepaid, either at the mailing-or delivery-office.

Publications issued without disclosing the office of publication, or containing a fictitious statement thereof, must not be forwarded by postmasters unless prepaid at the mailing-office at the rates of transient printed matter.

A letter over 500 miles cost thirty-seven and one-half cents in 1815; now it is carried to the extreme portion of our country, traversing mountains, passing deep ravines and rivers, for the small sum of three cents!

Harpers’ Magazine, had it been in existence in 1815, would have cost for each one twenty-seven cents, whereas now they only cost three cents to all parts of the country. What an age for literature! what an era in learning!

In 1779, in consequence of the increased nature of the postal business and the necessity for a more extended ramification of the system, the postmaster-general was to receive $5000 per annum, and the comptroller $4000,—meaning, of course, Continental money. Besides these two offices in the postal department, there was a secretary who acted as clerk to the postmaster-general. The comptroller settled the accounts, and was the book-keeper. There were three surveyors, who were to travel and inspect the conduct of the riders, agents, &c. There was also an inspector of dead letters, at a salary of $100 a year.

What is now called the post-office department was established in 1789 as the “post-office,” and subsequently as the “general post-office,” under the power given to Congress by the Constitution “to establish post-offices and post-roads,” and the exclusive privilege and control of all postal affairs, &c.

_ORGANIZATION OF THE POSTAL DEPARTMENT._

Congress shall have power “to establish post-offices and post-roads.” This short, concise, yet _embracing_ sentence sums up the constitutional basis of this department. It is comprehensive enough to all who fully understand the economical and practical workings of our government. Its conciseness is its very history; and that history becomes a mighty _tome_ in the library of nations.

The direction and management of the post-office department are assigned by the Constitution to the postmaster-general. That its business may be the more conveniently arranged and prepared for its final action, it is distributed among several bureaus, as follows:—the Appointment-Office, in charge of the First Assistant Postmaster-General; the Contract-Office, in charge of the Second Assistant Postmaster-General; the Finance-Office, in charge of the Third Assistant Postmaster-General; and the Inspection-Office, in charge of the Chief Clerk.

The duties of the several departments named above are thus defined:—

The postmaster-general “is further directed to superintend the business of the department in all the duties that are or may be assigned to it, and he is required once in three months to render to the Secretary of the Treasury an account of all the receipts and expenditures in the department, to be adjusted and settled as other accounts.” The postmaster-general may establish post-offices and appoint postmasters on the post-roads which are or may be authorized by law, at all such places as to him may appear expedient. He regulates the number of times the mail shall go from place to place, and he is authorized to contract for carrying the mail, and to establish post-roads.

_APPOINTMENT-OFFICE._

The Appointment-Office not only has supervision of the appointment and regulation of all postmasters, and the establishment and discontinuance of post-offices, but also the distribution of blanks, wrapping-paper, and twine to all post-offices; the supervision of pay of clerks in post-offices; of allowance for furniture of post-offices; of extra allowances to postmasters under the acts of Congress; of the appointment and pay of special agents, route-agents, local agents, and blank-agents, and of baggage-masters in charge of mails; of the foreign mail transportation and foreign correspondence; together with some other miscellaneous duties.

_CONTRACT-OFFICE._

The Contract-Office is charged with the conduct of mail-lettings, and all contracts and allowances for inland mail transportation, with the mail messenger service; the supervision and regulation of mail-contractors, and the routes of mail-transit, including distributing-offices; and with the increase and diminution of service on mail-routes.

_FINANCE-OFFICE._

To this office are assigned the issuing of postage-stamps and stamped envelopes for the prepayment of postage and the accounts thereof; the preparation of warrants and drafts in payment of balances reported by the Auditor to be due to mail-contractors and other persons; and the superintendence of the rendition by postmasters of their quarterly returns of postages. It embraces, also, all the operations of the dead-letter office, and the accounts connected therewith.

_INSPECTION-OFFICE._

The Inspection-Office is charged with the observation of failures and delinquencies in the service of contractors and route-agents; with fines and remissions thereof; with the subject of mail-depredations, and prosecution of violators of postal laws; with the duty of procuring and distributing mail-bags, locks and keys, and some other duties of detail.

Perhaps no institution in this or any other country requires more enterprise, general knowledge of business, and geography, than does that of the post-office. We have already alluded to the fact of its being considered by many as a “mere workshop” of the general department, and whose operations are simply mechanical; but our readers ere this have been undeceived as regards such a construction, and it must loom up before them a prominent intellectual branch of our government.

That England has a high estimate of her post-office department is evident from the encouragement given to every one connected with it, and sustaining alike its literary character in historic publications. We make the following extract from a recent work entitled “Her Majesty’s Mails”:—

“There is no postal service in the world so well managed as that of Great Britain. It is now not merely a self-supporting but a productive institution; whereas there was a deficiency of half a million in the post-office of America before the rupture between North and South. Though America for ninety years has been, next to England, the most commercial country in the world, yet, compared with the population, five times as many letters pass through the English post as through the American. London and its suburbs alone, with its less than three millions of inhabitants, sends forth a greater number of letters than the whole of America.

“The next best-managed post-office to our own is that of France; but in France, by the law of 1856, there are five different tariffs of postages. Judged by the revenue produced, the English post-office, notwithstanding its low rate of charges, stands first.

“The Austrian post-office produces a revenue of 3,714,200 florins, or £378,000; the Belgian, 2,960,000 francs; the French, 66,452,000 francs; and the English, £3,800,000; being more than a quarter of a million beyond the proceeds of 1862.

“A comparison of the year 1839—the year immediately preceding the penny postage—with the year 1861 gives these results: An increase nearly eightfold in the chargeable letters; a threefold increase in the receptacles for letters; a fortyfold increase in the number of money-orders; a fiftyfold increase in the amount of money-orders; and an increase of the gross revenue in round numbers from £2,390,000 to £3,402,000. The amount of the correspondence of a country will measure, with some approach towards accuracy, as Mr. Matthew Hill says, the height which a people has reached in true civilization. The town of Manchester equals in its number of letters the Empire of all the Russias both in Europe and Asia; and this fact we owe, as many of the marvels we have stated, to Sir Rowland Hill. The poor and the lowly, the domestic servant and the humble artisan, can now correspond with each other from one end of the kingdom to the other at the trifling expense of 1_d._; and for this civilizing, Christianizing, and eminently social good we are indebted to a late post-office secretary, whose merits have been recognized, but who cannot be overpaid in money or money’s worth. As Lord Palmerston said on the 10th of June, Sir R. Hill showed, in relation to the post-office, great genius, sagacity, perseverance, and industry, and he was the first to prove that the department was a public institution for the performance of services, rather than for the collection of revenue. If, as the first minister of the crown stated, and as we believe, the cultivation of the affections raises men in their own estimation, improves their morals, and develops their social qualities, Sir R. Hill has been amongst the greatest benefactors of the human race, and he well deserves the vote that was agreed to on the 10th of June without a dissentient voice.”

_POST-COACHES, POST-HORSES, AND RAILROADS._

Postmaster-generals up to the period when railroads superseded that of post-coaches and post-horses had a much harder time in their “vocation” than have their successors since. The difficulties then were to overcome the opposition of parties interested in contracts. Coaches and post-horses, routes and agents, became important items in such contracts; and the least favoritism on the part of the postmaster-general called forth not only censure from those immediately interested, but not unfrequently from those high in authority. During the postal administration of W. T. Barry, Esq., considerable political feeling was mixed up with these complaints. Mails at that period (1835) were carried on horseback from central points, and by four-horse post-coaches from city to city. Lines of stages were established in several sections of our country. The number of post-offices was 10,693. The line of stages extended to the western boundary of Missouri; to St. Augustine, in Florida; through Indiana, by the seat of government in that State; through the whole Territory of Michigan and State of Illinois; from Detroit to Chicago; and from Chicago to St. Louis, in Missouri; thence to New Orleans, in half the time which it formerly occupied. This facility, however, was afforded by connecting the coaches with steamboats in the mail-transportation. Lines of post-coaches were also established in this year from Nashville to Memphis, on the Mississippi River, in Tennessee; from Tuscumbia in Alabama to Natchez in Mississippi; and to Tuscaloosa, the seat of government in Alabama; and from Tuscaloosa to Montgomery; completing a direct line from Nashville in Tennessee, and all the other Western States, to the city of New Orleans.

A semi-weekly line of two-horse stages was added to a tri-weekly line of four-horse post-coaches from Washington City, through Lynchburg in Virginia, Salisbury, N.C., Yorkville, S.C., and Augusta, to Savannah in Georgia; from thence to the northern part of Georgia, through that State to Tallahassee, and to Pensacola in Florida.

We have given this statement for the purpose of showing the amount of labor essential to the transportation of the mails at that period, compared to what it is now. It is, however, somewhat strange that railroads were not established in many places, which would have obviated the necessity of coaches.

_SOMETHING ABOUT RAILROADS._

Railroads, although evidently of ancient origin, were first used near Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in 1650. Wooden rails four to eight inches square, resting upon transverse sleepers two feet apart, were in use for many years, when railroads of the same description covered with thin plates of iron were substituted.

In another part of this work we speak of the lost arts. Proofs of their existence are found in the excavated cities, and even in those vestiges which establish the belief of an antediluvian state of society equal to any that has existed since. Egypt abounds with antiquities. Where are the ramparts of Nineveh, the walls of Babylon, the palaces of Persepolis, the temples of Baalbec and Jerusalem? Where are the fleets of Tyre, the docks of Arad, the looms of Sidon, and the multitude of sailors, pilots, merchants, and soldiers? Where are those laborers, those harvests, those flocks, and that crowd of living beings which then covered the face of the earth?[48]

The temples are crumbled down, the palaces are overthrown, the ports are filled up, the cities are destroyed,—all,—all. Earth itself is only a desolate place of tombs. Yet specimens of high art remain, and also indications of a classic taste far superior to that which boasts of refinement since. We have every reason to believe that railroads were known to the Asiatics long, long before these cities fell in their ruins, carrying along with them the charts by which we could have traced their cause of greatness. The cities of the desert—that of Palmyra, for instance—could never have been built so far away from “marble-quarries” if railroad facilities had not been known and afforded the means of conveying those vast blocks of marble which formed its pillars.

The cities of Palmyra and the spot which marks the site of Tadmor present an imposing spectacle in rising from the sands of the desert. It looks like a forest of columns. The great avenue of pillars leading to the Temple of the Sun, and terminated by a grand arch, is 1200 feet in length. The temple itself is a magnificent object. The city is a vast collection of ruins, all of white marble. How were these huge columns of marble conveyed to this city of the desert?

The sculptures of the Memphite Necropolis say that Memphis once held a palace called the “Abode of Shoopho.” Shoopho was the owner of vast copper-mines: he was termed “pure king and sacred priest.” Historians doubted the power he exercised over Egypt, and also the amount of labor performed in erecting pyramids and monuments,—as, for instance, it is maintained that he employed 100,000 men for twenty years in erecting a monument for which ten preceding years were requisite in preparing the materials and the _causeway_ whereon the stone was to be carried. The monument, as described by historians, was of immense proportions, the base of which was 764 feet each face, the original height 480 feet, containing 89,028,000 cubic feet of solid masonry and 6,848,000 tons of stone. The distance these materials were carried was twenty miles from the quarries on the eastern side of the Nile. What sort of a _causeway_ was that which could transport these huge masses of stone a distance of twenty miles? Again, this great pyramid is lined with the most beautiful and massive blocks of sienite, of red granite, not one particle of which exists twenty-five miles below the first cataract of the Nile, at Aswan, distant six hundred and forty miles up the river from the pyramid. Blocks of this sienite are found in this pyramid’s chambers and passages of such dimensions, and built in such portions of the masonry that they must evidently have been placed there before the upper limestone masonry was laid above the granite. There not being in its native state a speck of granite within six hundred and forty miles from the pyramid, is a proof that Shoopho did rule from Memphis to Aswan, and from Migdol to the tower of Syene. How he conveyed the material that distance involves the question of the origin of _railroads_.

Let us pass on to Alexandria. Pompey’s Pillar stands upon a pedestal twelve feet high. The shaft is round, and, with the Corinthian capital, one hundred feet in height; the diameter is nine feet. Cleopatra’s Needle is of one shaft of granite, covered with hieroglyphics: it is sixty-four feet high, and eight feet square at the base. There are a great number of pyramids scattered over Egypt, but the most remarkable are those of Djizeh, Sakhara, and Dashour. When seven leagues distant from the spectator they seem near at hand, and it is not till after having travelled several miles that he is fully sensible of the size. The largest is ascribed to Cheops. They are on a platform of rock situated one hundred and fifty feet above the level of the desert. Ten years were consumed in preparing a _road_ whereon to draw the immense blocks of stone, and the labors of 100,000 men were employed, who were relieved once in three months.—_Herodotus._

What sort of a road and the manner these blocks were carried are matters of conjecture. _We incline to the opinion of railroads._

_HOW THE PYRAMIDS WERE BUILT._

The stones used in building the pyramids of Egypt, it is supposed, were raised to their places by piling up immense inclined planes of sand, up which the blocks were pushed with rollers. If inclined planes were used to raise large blocks to a great height, is it to be supposed that a similar mode, or _railroads_, were not used to convey them on a level plane?

The statement, often repeated on high authority, that the pyramids were built before the Egyptians acquired the art of writing hieroglyphics, however, which they do contain, do not convey that full knowledge of the state of the arts among them, at the time the pyramids were constructed, which is to be learned from the writings and pictures in their tombs and temples, in regard to the state of their arts at a subsequent period. But we have the less valuable authority of Herodotus that the blocks of stones were lifted from one course to the other up the steps of the pyramid. Remains of Cheops’ grand causeway, for transporting the blocks quarried from the rocks on the east bank, are still seen leading up the great pyramid from the plain, a shapeless ridge of ruinous masonry and sand. According to Herodotus, it was one thousand yards long, sixty feet wide, and forty-eight feet high, was adorned with figures of animals, and was a work of ten years. Some of the stone used for the coping over the passages are seven feet thick and more than seventeen feet long. Lifting these stones up the side of a pyramid four hundred and fifty feet high was certainly a work of great labor; but as a feat of engineering it was mere child’s play compared with some of the triumphs of modern science and skill,—for instance, lifting the Menai bridge on to its piers, or raising on end and placing on its pedestal the monstrous monolith which adorns the city of St. Petersburg.

_RAILROADS FROM 1760—ENGLAND._

In 1760, wooden railroads were in pretty general use to facilitate mining operations. Tram-roads, with rails of cast iron, first introduced at the Colebrookdale Works, at the instance of Mr. Reynolds in 1767; at the Sheffield colliery in 1776. Stone props for the support of the rails substituted for timber in 1797, at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Edge rails were brought into use by Mr. Jessop in 1789, at Loughborough. Malleable iron edge rails adopted at Newcastle in 1805, and at Tinsdale Fell in 1808. The improved malleable edge rail now in use was invented by Mr. Birkinsaw in 1820. A locomotive engine propelled by steam was employed for the first time on the Merthyr-Tydvil Railroad in Wales in 1804. Blenkinsop’s locomotive engine, which operated by means of cog-wheels and rack rails, was invented and applied on the Leeds Railroad in 1811. But the locomotive engine that has obtained the greatest reputation and been most generally adopted was that invented by Mr. George Stevenson in 1814. This engine has undergone a variety of improvements up to 1829, and was deemed at that period more efficient than any of its predecessors.

_RAILROADS IN THE UNITED STATES._

(Abstract of the Seventh Census.)

In no other particular can the prosperity of a country be more strikingly manifested than by the perfection of its roads and other means of internal communication. The system of railroads, canals, turnpikes, post-routes, river navigation, and telegraphs possessed by the United States presents an indication of its advancement in power and civilization more wonderful than any other feature of its progress. In truth, our country in this respect occupies the first place among the nations of the world.

From returns received at this office in reply to special circulars, and other sources of information, it is ascertained that there were, at the commencement of the year 1852, 10,814 miles of railroads completed and in use, and that 10,898 miles were then in course of construction, with a prospect of being speedily brought into use. While the whole of these 10,898 miles will, beyond reasonable doubt, have been finished within five years, such is the activity with which projects for works of this character are brought forward and carried into effect, that it is not extravagant to assume that there will be completed within the limits of the United States before the year 1860 at least 35,000 miles of railroads.

The Quincy Railroad, for the transportation of granite from the quarries at Quincy to Neponset River, and the Mauch Chunk Railroad, from the coal-mines to the Lehigh River, in Pennsylvania, were the first attempts to introduce that mode of transportation in this country; and their construction and opening, in the years 1826 and 1827, are properly considered the commencement of the American railroad system. From this period until about the year 1848, the progress of the improvements thus begun was interrupted only by the financial revulsion which followed the events of 1836 and 1837. Up to 1848, it is stated that about 6000 miles had been finished. Since that date an addition of 5000 miles has been made to the completed roads, and, including the present year, new lines, comprising about 14,000 miles, have been undertaken, surveyed, and mostly placed under contract.

The usefulness and comparative economy of railroads as channels of commerce and travel have become so evident that they have in some measure superseded canals, and are likely to detract seriously from the importance of navigable rivers for like purposes. In a new country like ours many items of expense which go to swell the cost of railroads in England and on the continent are avoided. Material is cheap, the right of way usually freely granted, and heavy land damages seldom interpose to retard the progress of an important work. It is difficult to arrive at a clear approximation to the average cost of railroad construction in the United States. Probably the first important work of this class undertaken and carried through in the Union was the cheapest, as it has proved one of the most profitable, ever built. This was the road from Charleston, in South Carolina, to Augusta, on the Savannah River. It was finished and opened for traffic in 1833. The entire expense of building the road and equipping it with engines and cars for passengers and freight was, at the date of its completion, only $6700 per mile; and all expenditures for repairs and improvements, during the eighteen years that the road has been in operation, have raised the aggregate cost of the whole work to only $1,336,615, or less than $10,000 per mile.