Golden Age, January 20, 1932

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The Golden Age

A JOURNAL OF FACT HOPE AND COURAGE

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in this issue

THE POSTS ANCIENT AND MODERN

HIGHROAD TO ASIA

CANADIAN AIR MAIL SERVICE SEEN FROM THE ’PLANE FIRST AND BETTER RESURRECTION

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every other WEDNESDAY

five cents a copy one dollar a year Canada & Foreign 1.25

Vol. XIII. No. 322

January 20, 1932

CONTENTS

LABOR AND ECONOMICS

Pasadena’s Profitable Lighting

Plant

Spain Loses Third of Employees 244 1,000 a Day Sent to Prison . . 245 Discards Machines to Help

Workers

Ellensburg Municipal Plant . . 245

World Increase in Unemployment 246

The Six-Hour Day

Western Electric Will Hire

Cripples

Pleading for Six-Hour Day . . 248

SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL

Seen from the ’Plane .... 244

Everybody to Be Commandeered 244

Americans Small Book-Buyers . 244

Size of the Radio Audience . . 244

Most People Agree with Hughes 245

Real Cause of World War . . 245 222,225 Speakeasies in U. S. . . 246 Southern Commission on

Lynching........247

The Inactive Social Surplus . . 248

German Communist Demands . . 248

How Lords Are Made .... 248

The Foolishness of War . . .'248

Sunday Newspaper a Necessity . 249

FINANCE—COMMERCE—TRANSPORTATION

The Posts—Ancient and Modern 227

Canada—on Highroad to Asia 236

Canadian Air Mail Service . . . 237

What the Shrinkage Amounts To 244

In Less than a Year

Capitalism on Trial for Life . 246

POLITICAL—DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN

Unreasonable Immigration Restrictions

How Tammany Secured Its

Victory

SCIENCE AND INVENTION

Uses of Glass Silk

Kill Van Kull Bridge Completed 245

The Russian Ice Breakers . . 247

The George Washington Bridge . 247

TRAVEL AND MISCELLANY

Kaieteur Fall.......245

Terrible Drought in Zululand . 246

Conditions in Germany .... 246

Peace Soldiers of the Philippines 247

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

What the Preachers Accomplished 244

Honesty, Decency and Veracity 244

King George’s Chaplain . . .

Bombing Plane Dedicated . . .

Theological Hold-up Men . . .

It’s Wrigley Who Pays . . .

First Resurrection and Better Resurrection

The Best Explanation .... 255

Published every other Wednesday at 117 Adams Street, Brooklyn, N. Y., U. S. A., by WOODWORTH, KNORR & MARTIN

Copartners and Proprietors Address: 117 Adams Street, Brooklyn, N. Y., U. 8, A, CLAYTON J. WOODWORTH . . Editor ROBERT J. MARTIN .. Business Manager NATHAN H. KNORR.. Secretary and Treasurer

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. Offices in Other Countries British ............34 Craven Terrace. London, W. 2. England

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Australasian ...... 7 Beresford Rd., Strathfield, N. S. W., Australia South African..........6 Leile Street, Cape Town, South Africa

Entered as second-class matter at Brooklyn, N. Y., under the Act of March 3, 1S79.

(The Golden Age

Volume XIII Brooklyn, N. Y., Wedne»day, January 20, 1932 Number 322

The Posts—Ancient and Modem

the help of these relays one could travel 100 miles a day along the Roman roads.

In the days of the Emperor Theodosius, Cesar-ius, a magistrate of high rank, is known to have traveled from Cappadocia to Constantinople, 665 miles, and to have arrived the sixth day, about noon. In the Theodosian code some mention is made of post horsemen and orders given for their regulation.

It is known that China, in the year 1280 (A.D.) had 300,000 horses and men to carry communications; but all of the services so far mentioned were irregular. This article shows how very recent is regular, efficient, dependable postal service.

Early American Postal History

The records of the first sixty years of American postal history were destroyed by fire in 1836, and there is now no means by which names can be supplied of early postal officials. The first legislation providing for postal service to the Pacific coast was enacted in 1846. It provided for a mail service to Oregon by ship from Charleston, S. C., to the Isthmus of Panama and then by ship to Astoria, Oregon.

The arrival of a mail steamer in those early days was a most important occasion. Month-old eastern newspapers sold readily for a dollar apiece. In a short time local papers, extras, were on the street containing news that had been published on the Atlantic coast a month before.

To obtain letters positions were taken in the line before the delivery window of the post office on the day or night before receipt of the mail. Men and boys who made a business of coming early to hold a place in this line were always able to sell out at a good price.

The first postage rate to the Pacific coast was 40c for a single letter. In 1855 the rate was made 10c a letter. In February, 1858, a record was set of 21 days 2 hours and 13 minutes for dispatch of mail from New York dock to San Francisco wharf.

WHEN Haman wished to put to death Mordecai and all his people “letters were sent by posts into all the king’s provinces, to destroy, to kill, and to cause to perish, all Jews, both young and old, little children and women, in one day, even upon the thirteenth day of the twelfth month. . . . The posts went out, being hastened by the king’s commandment”.—Esther 3:13,15.

When the power passed from Haman into the hands of Mordecai, the latter “sent letters by posts on horseback, and riders on mules, camels, and young dromedaries”. “So the posts that rode upon mules and camels went out, being hastened and pressed on by the king’s commandment.”—Esther 8:10,14.

When Hezekiah sent word to Israel inviting them to come to Jerusalem to keep the passover “the posts went with the letters from the king and his princes throughout all Israel and Judah”. “So the posts passed from city to city, through the country of Ephraim and Manasseh.”—2 Chron. 30: 6,10.

We know that Job was familiar with the posts as they traveled in his day, for he said, “Now my days are swifter than a post: they flee away, they see no good.”—Job 9: 25.

The Prophet Jeremiah also, foreseeing the end of Babylon, prophesied, “One post shall run to meet another, and one messenger to meet another, to shew the king of Babylon that his city is taken at one end.”

Xenophon relates that about 559 B.C., Cyrus, king of Persia, appointed couriers and places for post-horses, building for the purpose on all the highroads houses for the reception of the couriers where they were to deliver their packages to the next, and so on. This they did day and night, and they are reported as moving with astonishing speed.

The regularity and swiftness of the Roman posts were remarkable. Houses were erected about every five miles. Each of these houses was constantly provided with forty horses, and by

On September 15, 1858, the first over-land mail coaches left St. Louis and San Francisco simultaneously. The trip, which was from St. Louis via Fort Smith, Ark., El Paso, Tex., Tucson, Ariz., Fort Yuma, Ariz., and Los Angeles, Calif., took 23 days and 4 hours. The total distance was nearly 2,800 miles.

The Pony Express

The famous pony express was established in 1860 to carry mail between St. Joseph, Mo., and Sacramento, Calif., a distance of 1400 miles. Between its eastern and western terminals the pony express maintained 190 stations for the exchange of horses, and employed in the service 500 horses, the best to be had, and eighty carefully picked riders, brave, determined young men, selected for their nerve, light weight and general fitness.

Nothing was allowed to interfere with the transport of the mails, and day or night, in sunshine or storm, the packages went on. If a rider was killed, the one next to him did double duty until a substitute could be provided. Buffalo Bill covered one such double stretch when he rode, continuously, 320 miles, in twenty-one hours and forty minutes.

The pony express cut the time of the overland mail to ten and a half days. The quickest trip ever made was the dispatching of President Lincoln’s inaugural address, which was carried across the continent in seven days and seventeen hours.

On October 24,1861, the first transcontinental telegraph line was completed and the pony express service went out of existence. The Union Pacific Railroad was opened in 1869.

The Post Card Innovation

It will be a surprise to many to learn that the inventor of the post card, Emanuel Herman, an official of the Vienna post office, died within the present century. His demand for permission to send printed or written communications through the mails without an envelope was a complete innovation, but as soon as his post card was introduced, its use spread immediately all over the world.

The postal service on land is one of the heaviest users of motor vehicles. The mails constitute one of the chief sources of revenue to the railroads. The mail subsidies constitute an important factor of the merchant marine, and without revenue from the mails it is doubtful if there would be any air transport in the United States even yet.

Most United States mails are carried by rail, and when check-ups have been made it has been found that mails sent by rail in the usual way are often delivered as quickly as when sent by air, and in some instances more quickly.

If the time of transit between the air terminals wyere the only thing to be taken into consideration, the air mail would be an easy victor; but there are fogs and storms to contend with, and the air terminals are of necessity located at considerable distance from the cities which they serve and it takes time to cart these mails back and forth between the termini and the post offices where they must be handled, the same as any other mail.

All kinds of vehicles are used to transport the mails. On the island of Niuaford, in the Fijis, every four weeks a native swam a mile out from shore to meet the mail steamer. He carried the island's mail each way until finally a shark attacked and killed him and the mail he was carrying was lost. Henceforth a large canoe will be sent to meet the ship.

In Edwards, Colo., for thirty-six years past a veteran of the mail service has been transporting the mails from post office to railroad station and back in a buckboard wagon drawn by a mule. This man claims to have the only mule-driven conveyance in the federal mail service.

The Air Mail

It is now twenty years since the first mail was carried by air in the United States. The first mail flight was made September 23, 1911, when a flimsy plane traveling only sixty miles an hour dropped on the Mineola Fair Grounds a packet containing 640 letters and 1,280 post cards.

For a long time America lagged behind some of the European countries, but the subsidizing of air mail transportation, i.e., the carrying of mail by air at less than its actual cost, has had a wonderfully stimulating effect and the service now extends to every part of the nation.

In the year 1930, $19,000,000 was appropriated for air mail, of which amount about $7,000,000 was returned in air mail pay. The difference, $12,000,000, is an investment in the aeronautical industry intended to promote national prosperity and to insure national security. This $12,000,000 is improperly charged to the post office department.

At present there are about a million pieces of

n. GOLDEN AGE

mail traveling every twenty-four hours over the 43,000 miles of air mail lines in the United States. These million pieces weigh a total of 25,000 pounds and bring in about $50,000 a day in the sale of stamps.

In the year 1931, there were numerous extensions of existing air mail routes, including services between New York City and Atlantic City; St. Louis and Memphis; Cheyenne and Denver; Boston and Bangor via Portland; New York and Kansas City; Albany and Boston via Springfield; Albany and New York; Albany and Cleveland; Philadelphia and Atlantic City; Washington and Atlantic City; Cleveland and Nashville.

In the last fiscal year 16,228,453 air mail miles were scheduled by the post office department, and of them, 14,939,468 were flown. The weight of the mail transported by plane was more than 7,770,000 pounds. Of the 15,000,000 miles that is flown annually in the carriage of mails through America’s skies, half the distance is flown at night.

One concern, the United Air Lines, carries about 60 percent of the air mail volume of the nation and is the largest airway operating company in the world. This concern has 120 air transport planes in operation calling at more than 40 major cities. It is claimed that 90 percent of all existing air mail contracts are held by four large organizations and their subsidiaries. There is not now in the United States any government-owned and government-operated air mail service. It is all in the hands of private parties.

It is believed that the development of air mail service has hardly begun. A man can now mail a letter in New York one morning and his correspondent on the Pacific coast can be reading it the next evening. In instances when the winds are right, the air mail planes have traveled 200 miles an hour. Experience has shown that the mails are really safer in the air than anywhere else, and because air mail transportation is so safe large sums of money are often transported in that way.

To encourage the sending of mail by air, one of the air mail lines supplies its customers with gummed stickers bearing the words “Air Mail”, to be attached to the letterhead of every letter dispatched by plane. It is found that letters bearing these stickers receive special attention, and it is claimed that 40,000 firms are now using them.

Aids to Air Mail Service

During the period while the air mail service is in process of development it is inevitable that there would be some loss of life, but, all things considered, it is surprising that there has not been more. Meantime, conditions are steadily improving.

The air mail pilot is lighted on his way by powerful light beacons placed every ten miles. Besides these beacons that by means of intermittent colored signals indicate their identity and the location of landing places, the pilot is assisted by radio beacons that flash signals to him as he speeds along above the clouds.

Before an air mail pilot leaves the ground, he is handed a weather report, for which he signs. These reports are sent in from along the line of the mail routes and from either side of it for several miles. So important are these weather reports that their possession may meaiT life or death to the aviator.

One of the most dreaded spots for flying in the United States is above the mountains in the vicinity of Bellefonte, Penna. For miles in this district, the hills are heavily wooded and there are few places where emergency landings can be made. Nevertheless, the planes, heavily loaded with mail and express, go over this territory constantly day and night and in almost all kinds of weather.

When forced down, air mail pilots have had some terrible experiences. Sometimes they are killed outright, and that is easy; sometimes they jump and the parachute lands them safely, but, even so, the way to civilization may be long and difficult.

Somewhere in the wilds of the Rockies an aviator who thus escaped death died of starvation, and in the spring the notes which he had written narrating his experiences were found tied to the bushes along the route which he took to his death.

In Nevada, another aviator, flying at night, dashed out of the clouds into the tops of some cedar trees. When he came to, he was 8,000 feet up a mountainside, but managed to walk twelve miles in pain and misery through the snow so that a wrecking crew would be sent to recover the mail.

Experiments are still in progress as to how mail packets and other parcels may best be delivered from moving airplanes. A recent invention is a net stretched on uprights. The package to be delivered is suspended from the plane by a rope just strong enough to safely hold it. When the package hits the net the rope is severed by sharp teeth on the top of the crossbar that holds the net in place. This method of delivery is said to have worked successfully.

Air Mail Services Elsewhere

While the air mail services have been expanding in the United States they have not been standing still in countries to the north and south. One of the greatest of Canadian air mail achievements is the service between Edmonton, Alta., and Aklavik, at the mouth of the Mackenzie river, 200 miles above the Arctic Circle. Last year this point on the Arctic ocean (visited by Col. Lindbergh and his wife on their trip to Japan) received eighteen mails and some intermediate points received more than forty mails.

Formerly if this territory received one mail a winter, it was lucky. The dog teams used to get the mails through somehow, but, in the nature of things, could not make many trips in a season. Regular first-class mail rates applicable throughout Canada are used on the route from Edmonton to Aklavik.

There is now air mail service from the United States to both coasts of South America and extending to within 600 miles of Cape Horn. By the extension from the far southern city of Commodor Rivadavia to Buenos Aires a letter takes but ten days to travel between Patagonia and the United States, and, if necessary, could be carried all the way to Aklavik by air. This is nearly half way round the world and, taken collectively, makes the longest air mail route.

On the west coast of Chile one air route covers the length of the country, 2,500 miles of straightline flying. Brazil has an air mail service to the interior state of Matto Grosso, as well as a service the whole length of the eastern coast. The inauguration of the service to this interior state shortens the time for mail delivery by ten days. If not already in operation, it is hoped soon to establish a weekly air mail service between Brazil and the west coast of Africa. Experimental flights have already taken place.

As a general thing, mails from the United States to South America reach their destination a week quicker when carried by air than when carried by ships. It is expected that if and when an air mail service is operated between the west coast of Africa and the Brazilian coast European mail will reach Brazil in two days and a half, Argentina in three days and a half, and Chile in four days and a half.

Miami is the jumping-off place for mails from United States to South America.

Semi-Ocean Air Mail Service

It seems that it was only a few months ago that we first recorded the initial experiments of catapulting mail planes from the decks of the Europa, but all summer long in the year 1931 the planes were catapulted not only from the Europa, but from the Bremen, the Aquitania, and other vessels.

The planes leave the liners from 700 to 1300 miles from port, landing the mails as much as twenty-eight hours ahead of the regular schedule. These catapulted planes are equipped with wireless, and are thus able to keep in touch with vessels that may be near them.

Recently two of the brave men who operate these catapulted planes lost their lives in an explosion of their plane off Nova Scotia after they had already made a safe landing from the vessel and had taken off again during the night on the continuation of their trip to New York.

With the construction of larger and stronger planes, it is seriously planned to inaugurate a trans-Atlantic air mail service with Charleston as the western terminal. Meantime, German scientists are working away at their rocket theories and tell us of their hopes to carry mail from Germany to the United States in something like half an hour; and, frankly, that seems to us just a little bit too fast.

Air Mails in Other Lands

The Germans have been experimenting with the transit of mail bags in the air from one plane to another. The experiments are said to have been successful, the mail being dropped and picked up by means of a hanging cable with a fork-like hook attachment. The cable is designed to break easily, if caught, so as to prevent a crash.

The Swedes have a night air mail route to the European continent which is now in its fifth year. It makes six trips a week. There is also a night air mail service from Reval, the capital of Estonia.

The London-India air route traverses France, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Italian Libya, Egypt, Palestine, Transjordania, Iraq, Persia and Baluchistan. The mail goes through in seven days and nine and three-quarters hours.

The Imperial Airways route from Egypt to Cape Town, when in operation, it is believed, will be one of the most difficult on account of the peculiar weather conditions and difficulties of landing. Nevertheless, a part of this route is already in operation, and one may go from London to Mwanza in Tanganyika territory, 5,114 miles, in nine days, a journey that takes thirty-two days by ship and train.

In certain parts of London and New York and other large cities, separate post boxes for air mail are provided. The British post office issues free adhesive labels marked for air mail.

When the Graf Zeppelin went around the world, it carried a load of mail, but, owing to the number of countries visited and the fact that none of the mail was registered, a large part of it failed to reach its intended destination.

German philatelists complained that most of this mail that went astray seems to have disappeared in Japan, and concluded that somebody in Japan must be as much interested in making stamp collections as they are themselves, and not quite as much interested as he might be in whose stamps he took.

The Postal Business as a Business

Every day that it is in existence the postal business gives the laugh to the people that claim that the Government cannot do anything properly, because there is no other organization on earth comparable to the Post Office Department in the size of its personnel, the miles covered, and the business handled.

It is the government’s largest business establishment. The operation of this business requires regularly more than 370,000 persons. These operate 49,063 post offices and 503,000 miles of post routes. Every year they perform the task of carrying the mails some 720,000,000 miles.

Postal receipts afford a very just barometer of business conditions. For years past, the normal growth of the Brooklyn post office service has been about 6 percent, in direct proportion to the annual increase in the borough’s population. Owing to the current business depression, Brooklyn’s usual normal growth has ceased and an almost stationary condition has come about.

For the past ten years the postal deficit has averaged around $50,000,000; but there are many expenses loaded upon the post office department which properly belong elsewhere. Newspapers are carried around the country for less than cost. The excess cost is not properly chargeable to the post office department.

American ships are given large subsidies for carrying mail. The purpose of these subsidies is to build and maintain an American merchant marine. The excess cost should be properly charged to the navy department. Other large subsidies are given for the carrying of the air mail. The excess cost should be charged to the war department.

The rural free delivery of mails costs every year several million dollars more than is obtained from it. The excess cost should be charged to the department of agriculture.

The post office department handles for members of Congress franked matter at an average annual loss of more than $700,000 in revenue. The cost should be charged to the House of Representatives or the United States Senate, as the case may be; and so we might go down the list, pointing out the costs of franking of mail of others than members of Congress; free delivery for the blind, and differentials in favor of religious, educational, scientific, labor, philanthropic, agricultural and fraternal organizations. There is no just reason why the extra expense involved in the handling of these items should be loaded upon the post office department.

Congress Fixes the Revenue

The post office department is not allowed to fix its own rates of postage; Congress does that, and therefore is responsible for the revenue received. If there is insufficient revenue, Congress is to blame. The post office department does not fix the hours of labor of its employees. Congress recently reduced the hours of labor of post office employees to forty-four hours per week. This reduction alone added $13,000,000 to the annual cost of operation of the mails.

Looking about for ways to increase the receipts of the post office department, the postmaster general, in July last, gained the consent of the Interstate Commerce Commission to increase the limit of weight of a single parcel from fifty to seventy pounds and to increase the combined length and girth from eighty-four to 100 inches.

It was calculated that this decision would mean at least $5,000,000 to the post office department. Naturally, this ruling was fought by the Railway Express Agency on the ground, properly taken, that this increase in the size of packages would seriously divert express business to the postal service.

In the further effort to increase postal revenues, parcel post supervisors have been appointed at sixty of the largest post offices. The duties of these supervisors will be, among other things, to see that classes in civics in the schools and colleges are instructed in the proper manner to wrap, pack and address their packages.

Thus the public will become more parcel-postminded, and it is expected that there will also follow a partial wiping-out of economic loss occasioned every year through the improper wrapping and addressing of fourth-class mail matter.

There has recently been an increase in the rate of postage to foreign countries, but it is seriously to be questioned whether such an increase of rate is a good thing for the country as a whole.

In the search for revenue, governments sometimes do very unwise things. Thus, China has made the postage rate so high as to practically destroy her correspondence with foreign countries. Three years ago a ten-cent stamp would carry a letter from China to the United States. The present rate is twenty-five cents a letter, which is more than the traffic will bear.

In the postal business two busy seasons are recognized: Christmas-time, when it is necessary to take on 40,000 temporary employees, and vacation-time in the summer, when the sweetheart mail is unusually heavy.

Permissibles and Unpermissibles

At a British post office, if one knows his address, but is otherwise lost, he can mail himself home. The British also have a system by which, if one wishes to prove that a letter has been posted, there is no need to register it. For one cent the post office supplies a certificate of posting.

Also, if one loses the last mail collection, and if he has an urgent communication to send, he may ring up the head post office of the district and dictate his letter. It will be written out and sent off with the night’s mail. The charge is six cents for the first thirty words; two cents for every ten additional words, plus the postage and telephone fees.

Queen bees may be sent from one continent to another; but firearms may not be sent. Not infrequently the customers of mail order houses try to return by parcel post firearms which have been sent to them by express, but such shipments are confiscated in the mails.

Some do not know that after a letter has been mailed it ceases to be the property of the one mailing it, but becomes the property of the one to whom it is mailed. Nevertheless, such is the case. Sometimes, but rarely, a postmaster, when the circumstances are explained to him, may return a letter to the sender, provided it has not yet left the mailing office.

New Mailing Devices

The mail bags used in the air mail service are made of asbestos, so as to practically eliminate any loss of air mail through fire. These bags, when subjected to an actual fire test, withstood the heat perfectly.

Germany has been paying much attention of late to the details of handling the mails. A device tested at Leipsic, Germany, does away with postage stamps. Dropping a letter or a post card into a box the sender inserts coins covering postage into a slot and pulls the lever. The fact that the postage is paid is then printed on the face of the envelope. This machine works somewhat like a cash register, automatically recording the total amount of postage paid during a given time.

At a Berlin post office, when the letters posted in a certain slot have reached a specified weight, they are conveyed automatically to the sorting room.

At Munich there is a mechanical post office, circular in shape, with sorting equipment in the center and loading apparatus about the circumference. Packages are stamped and dropped into openings, where they are carried by slides and endless belts to the proper loading platforms.

In England, to frustrate theft of pouches, the bags are strapped to a platform connected to an electrically operated alarm system. An attempt to loosen the straps sets off a siren and lights a red lamp.

New York has a robot railroad mail sorter. The photo electric eye guides the sacks filled with mail for a certain city to the requisite loading platform in front of the proper railroad car.

Houston, Texas, has a mail box so placed that persons desiring to mail letters can drive slowly past and mail their letters without stopping to get out of their cars.

A recent invention signals the housewife immediately if anything is placed in the mail box.

The Postal Inspectors

There is always work for the postal inspectors. There are something over 500 inspectors in the service. They average to investigate about 200 cases a year apiece, and it necessarily follows that many hundreds of arrests occur as a result.

In Bridgeport, Conn., the inspectors arrested a mail clerk who was getting a big kick out of reading the private love letters of a divorcee. When arrested he admitted that he had opened and read about twenty-five letters and found them so interesting he could not refrain from following them up.

The uses of Republican National committee-men in the states of the solid south was revealed when it was discovered that postmasters in Mississippi paid to such putative lords of the realm $2,000, $1,500 and $700 for their respective jobs.

When a mail plane was wrecked near Polk, Pa., it had on board a consignment of diamonds. Before the inspector arrived there was a scramble for the gems, some of which were sold by the villagers for two or three dollars apiece, only to learn later that they were worth thirty or forty times that much.

Some Odd Things

If you see a letter or a post card with numerous x’s on it, you may know that signifies so many kisses, and harks back to the day when the bulk of the people could not write and made their signatures by a cross. After the letter was written by the village clerk it was solemnly kissed, in token of faith; and when education rendered the x no longer necessary as a signature, it was still used as a symbol of a kiss.

Some odd things happen occasionally. Thus, as an express plane was passing over the Caribbean sea the wind blew off a hatch cover and a full bag of ordinary letter mail was dropped into the waters beneath.

All the letters mailed at Darmstadt, Germany, on December 31,1928, were date-stamped “January 32, 1932”. Manifestly, the Volstead Act is not in operation in Germany.

Somebody at St. Thomas, Ont., got the idea that when a two-cent stamp is cut in two in the middle, each half is equal to a one-cent stamp. Everyone of those letters went to the address with postage due on it, as a cut or torn stamp is a mutilated stamp, according to the postal laws, and cannot be accepted for postage.

Immense Real Estate Holdings

The post office department is one of the world’s biggest organizations owning real estate. It holds title to buildings worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The new Chicago post office is the largest in the world. It is 800 feet long, 350 feet wide, and 200 feet high, having about fifty acres of floor space.

The first post office in Boston was established March 12, 1637, in a private home, and there are still in the United States numerous post offices that are located in private dwellings. While the country was developing there were times when the post office was merely a shelf in a blacksmith shop, a box car on a siding, a barroom, or even a hollow tree. When Abraham Lincoln was postmaster at New Salem, Ill., he carried his post office in his hat, so he said.

Discovering that Uncle Sam needs a building in which to do his post office work, sundry and divers statesmen of the Teapot-Dome variety have in recent years made a good living at the expense of the rest of us. One man in Chicago admitted that he had financed fourteen postal substations in that city. In some instances the postal department has paid rentals on buildings that range as high as 60 percent a year on the investment.

Delayed in the Mails

It does not always follow that when you drop a letter in the mails it will be delivered as quickly as you think it will. On April 5,1926, William J. Miller, assistant United States attorney, 34th Street Post Office, New York city, mailed his letter of resignation to his chief. The letter had only to mount one floor in the same building. It was delivered on May 6, 1931, more than five years afterward, meantime having been lodged in a crevice of the sorting cabinet.

In 1919, Mrs. H. LeCluz, Blue Point, N. Y., on Long Island, mailed a letter to Mrs. Wm. Bason, consoling her on the death of her husband. The letter traveled three miles to Sayville and arrived in a little more than ten years, after the woman herself was dead.

A post card mailed at Folkestone, England, took twenty years to reach Birmingham, a distance of seventy miles. The Pathfinder tells us that “Tom Winshull of Birmingham, England, was a bit puzzled when he received a letter addressed to him and signed ‘Lilly’ in which the writer expressed regret for her hasty refusal on the night before and suggested that if Tom would renew his proposal it would be promptly accepted. Winshull hadn’t proposed to anybody, and he set out to solve the mystery. He learned that the letter was mailed in 1909 and was intended for his father.”

In the United States Charities Building, 105 East 22nd Street, New York city, twenty-five letters and post cards dating as far back as 1903 were found in the mail chute twenty-eight years afterward.

In 1929, Gen. Robt. Lee Bullard received a letter mailed to him forty-four years previously by a buddy with whom he had soldiered.

In June, 1931, several business letters mailed sixty-four, sixty-five and sixty-seven years ago were found in an old-fashioned double-paneled front door, in Manchester, England.

In Oberlin, Ohio, in May, 1931, seventy years after it had been mailed, a letter was delivered to the daughter of a man to whom it was addressed.

The Letter Carriers

It was in 1862, at Cleveland, Ohio, that Joseph W. Briggs, postal employee, acting as a window delivery clerk at the post office, conceived a system of mail delivery and collection. In the end, with the cooperation of the Cleveland postmaster, he became the first city delivery letter carrier in Cleveland. Prior to that time letter carriers received no specified salaries. They were paid according to the amount of mail they delivered.

Today we would think it almost impossible to get along without the postman. It is illegal to detain him on his beat. Years ago it was largely a walking job. Today much of his time is spent stuffing letters in apartment house mail boxes. It is probable that great improvements could be made in the delivery of mail from door to door so that it would not be necessary for letter carriers to carry the great bags which weigh some of them down.

An improvement would be to have depots here and there, even if nothing more than locked boxes oil posts, where the mails for certain districts could be delivered in bulk by light delivery wagons, thus keeping the contents of the letter carriers’ sacks down to a minimum at all times.

A New Orleans letter carrier, thirty-five years in the service, estimated that he walked 200,000 miles, equivalent to eight times around the globe, during his mail-carrying jaunts.

The letter carriers know that they are on their feet a great deal, and seem to think the government might do something about it. The National Association of Letter Carriers voted unanimously that “whereas many letter carriers develop foot trouble from excessive walking, such as callouses, corns, bunions, strains and fallen arches, it would be a big help to get free treatment for same”.

The Rural Free Delivery

The first rural free delivery appropriation by Congress was made in 1896. The farmers could not see why they should pay part of the cost of free delivery of mails in the cities and not enjoy some of its advantages in the country.

By 1926 there were 45,000 routes serving onefifth of the people of the United States. Improvement of highways is bringing about a consolidation of rural routes, cutting down their number at the rate of twenty a week. In five years about 2,500 routes have been absorbed by other routes. The standard rural mail delivery service route in the United States is twenty-four miles.

The government is particular about the rural mail boxes, and hence we have 7,000,000 of them all of the same design. Furthermore, they must hereafter be mounted on posts that are painted white, to add to their visibility in the interest of highway safety.

Besides the rural free delivery routes there are 11,788 star routes traveled by contractors carrying the mails back from railroads to villages.

Nixies and Freak Addresses

Nothing will make all the people careful at once or sensible at once, and probably there will always be a certain proportion of postmasters who will get some satisfaction out of trying to decipher cryptic and illegible addresses. Years ago a letter addressed simply

Wood John Mass was correctly delivered to John Underwood, Andover, Mass. In 1927 a letter mailed in Ireland addressed “Al, N. Y.”, went correctly to Al Smith.

The photograph of a man’s dog enabled a postmaster at East Hampton, Conn., to deliver a package to the owner of the dog. The postmaster at Southampton, England, delivered a letter addressed as follows:

“To the Chemical Cleaners who are Dying an Overcoat for Arthur Lewis. Near the bridge same street as the market is in, near top of St. James Road, Southport.”

A letter marked “Personal” addressed to William Shakespeare, Stratford-on-Avon, England, was returned to the sender in Springfield, Mass., marked “Deceased, 23 April 1616”, after three postmen had actually tried to deliver it.

Every year there are many letters addressed to Santa Claus. These all go to the dead letter office, to be disposed of.

The following are the official instructions for the proper addressing and depositing of mail matter:

Before depositing your letter or gift, give it “the onee-over”. Be sure that it is properly addressed. Include the street and number, post office box or rural free delivery route. Give your return address as sender in upper left corner. Make certain that the postage paid is sufficient. If in doubt as to the amount required consult the post office. Affix the stamps carefully and invariably place them in the upper right corner. Write on a slip of paper your name and address as sender and the address the gifts are intended for. Put it inside the package, so that if by any mischance the wrapper or tag should become detached, the post office will have a clue to the owner. Wrap your parcels securely. Use several thicknesses of strong paper, and several turns of good strong twine. Protect all articles from breakage with ample packing. The post office will tell you just how to wrap different things if you will inquire. All fragile articles should be marked fragile. Insure all valuable parcels. Do not leave any parcels on the top of street mail boxes or deposit parcel post packages within such boxes. All parcel post packages must be brought to a post office or station.

Mailing Lists

The mechanical addressing of mail has resulted in the building up of huge mailing lists. The government is prepared to correct such lists for a fee of 65c per hour spent on the job. The New York post office receives and registers 2.500 removal notices daily. This means that mailing lists quickly become obsolete and need to be frequently revised if they are to be of value. Immense quantities of valuable advertising matter are lost through the effort to use inaccurate lists. Advertising matter of this class furnishes more than 50 nercent of all the dead letters handled during the year.

Sometimes one business concern will lend its mailing list to another at fees of from three to eight dollars a thousand names. By resorting to this method one company has sent copies of a single circular to as many as 5,000,000 persons.

Uncle Sam now spends $2,000,000 annually searching city directories and other books of reference for the purpose of correcting and completing improperly and insufficiently addressed mail. There has been talk that the government may eventually make it compulsory to place return addresses on all letters and parcels. But how such a regulation could be enforced is not apparent.

The post office department has denied the request of certain large mail users to use the mails in distributing unaddressed advertising matter by carriers of city delivery offices.

The Dead Letter Office

Every year about 25,000,000 letters reach the dead letter office at Washington. These letters contain remittances of the value of about $5,000,-000. About 70 percent of these remittances are returned to the senders. As the New York city post office alone delivers 17,000,000 letters every day, the dead letter figures for the country as a whole seem very small. The New York city post office daily handles 350,000 pieces of misdirected mail and 80,000 pieces of mail without any street address. It supplies daily 44,000 pieces of mail with correct addresses.

Four times each year, the post office conducts a sale of unclaimed goods, most of which has been misdirected or has improper or illegible addresses. Some of the articles offered for sale in the last post office auction were: straw hats, overcoats, lamp shades, violins, blankets, hair nets, bathing suits, tennis racquets, patchwork quilts, ice cream freezers, pitchforks, keys, a crutch, a set of false teeth, a book of travel written by a Prussian prince more than a century ago, several dolls, dog muzzles, riding boots, auto accessories, and almost every conceivable kind of wearing apparel and household appliance.

The biggest and most foolish dead letter anybody ever tried to deliver is the one that contains the creeds of Christendom. Not a person alive believes their confusing and conflicting testimony that there is one God and at the same time that there are three different Gods who are one in person and equal in power and glory; not a person ever believed or could believe that God is infinite in power and love and yet that He has been so overreached by another’s cunning that the best He can do is that millions roast forever in agony. All the creeds are in the dead letter office.

Canada—on the Highroad to Asia

THE air mails are changing the face of the earth. Every day that goes by takes us farther into the world that is to be, and farther away from the world we knew yesterday. The highroad of the future is through the skies. Canada is on the highroad to Asia and already occupies almost her full measure of it.

If you were at the northeastern tip of the United States, on a summer morning, and had an extra fast plane, you could be in the southwestern corner of the country by nightfall. You would go from the 68th to the 117th meridian of longitude and drop down from the 47th to the 33d parallel of latitude, but you would not be any nearer Asia than when you started.

But suppose now that instead of heading southwest you headed northwest. With the same plane, in the same time, you could reach Aklavik, the northern terminus of the Canadian Air Mail Service, at the mouth of the Mackenzie River. You would go from the 68th to the 135th meridian of longitude and rise from the 47th to the 68th parallel of latitude, but because the meridians of longitude are nearer together, the distance would be about the same.

But at Aklavik you would be not a great way due east of the mainland of Asia, and with quite level land underneath you all the way, except for the 36 miles across Bering Strait. Another jump across the same type of country would take you to Yakutsk, well down into eastern Siberia. Manchuria, the key to Asia, lies 1,000 miles straight south of Yakutsk. Japan and Australia are in the same line.

The inset on the large map in the center of the magazine shows that Yakutsk is the natural air center of the world. This Siberian city is about midway between New York and London over a route that, all governments cooperating, would be as safe as the route across the United States, traveled by airplanes night and day, almost every day in the year.

The Highroad to Asia is almost certain to be via Aklavik, Nome and Yakutsk, and we confidently hope to see an all-the-year service connecting the Eastern and Western hemispheres by this route. The Canadians seem to have seen it coming, and are to be congratulated on their foresight and enterprise.

This is in part the route taken by Colonel Lindbergh on his recent vacation trip, and is a natural route for flying, as the mountains and oceans, with their exceptional perils to aviators, are avoided. The cost of one battleship would probably provide beacons to light the whole route.

Poor though she is, Japan can pour out money and blood like watei' in the effort to keep the Chinese from profiting from the competitive railroads the latter country has built in Manchuria. The nations can always find the means to fly at one another's throats, but when it comes to cooperation in the effort to make this a better world in which to live they are far from doing it, at least in Manchuria.

However, it is a real pleasure to witness the splendid cooperation between Canada and the United States in the development of air mail service on both sides of the line. The through air mail service from Toronto to Winnipeg is via Detroit and Chicago, which is its natural route.

Mails leaving Toronto at six o’clock at night are in Chicago at 11:00 p.m., and in Winnipeg at one o’clock the next afternoon. Returning, the mails leave Winnipeg at 12: 40 p.m.; they are in Chicago at 11:15 p.m., and in Toronto the next morning at 7: 30. Who shall say that this is not a huge convenience to the business men of Toronto, Winnipeg, and the intervening cities of Hamilton, Windsor, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Fargo, Grand Forks and Pembina, served on the way?

Despite the financial depression that has covered the whole earth with a blanket of pessimism the Canadian air mail service has in the past two years experienced a startling growth. The following are the official figures:

CANADIAN AIR MAIL SERVICE

Trips Miles Pounds Scheduled Flown Carried 1928 1,000 199,604 245,060

1929 2,335 490,641 430,636

1930 4,779 1,608,687 527,212

Our attention having been drawn to the extra

ordinary enterprise of the Canadians in opening up and maintaining a through all-the-year air mail service to Aklavik, on the edge of the Arctic Ocean, we wrote to the department, asking for some further information about what they are doing to the north of us.

The response which follows was gratifying in the extreme. Every one of our readers will peruse it with keen interest, we feel sure.

Canadian Air Mail Service By G. Herring, Chief Superintendent (Ottawa)

THE aeroplane has developed in a quarter of a century from the unlovely kite of 1903 to a streamlined thing of swiftness and beauty; and in that brief span of years it has added untold richness and color to life, giving a new meaning to heroism and adventure, and, above all, proving itself of prime usefulness in modern business. Not the least of its contributions is the great advance it has worked in the postal communications of the world, and many of the most brilliant and valuable achievements of aviation have been in connection with air mail service.

No one who has felt the lift and pull of a speeding mail plane traveling at one hundred and twenty-five miles an hour, with a load of mail on board and with the earth far below, and has divined the singleness of purpose with which the throbbing machine seems to seek the shortest possible route to its destination, can have any doubt as to the efficacy, value, and reality of air mail service. This experience has not been shared by many, yet there are countless thousands who regard the air mail service as an accomplished fact and the most striking development of modern postal service. But it is the business man whose enthusiastic support is needed if air mail service is to be a complete success.

The most ardent booster for air mail would scarcely argue that aviation is yet entirely independent of weather conditions. Fog, blinding snowstorms and smoke from forest fires are some of the hazards which even the most daring pilot hesitates to face. Yet experience has shown that in Canada an efficiency percentage of at least 85 in winter, and nearly 100 in summer, can be depended upon, and it is upon the basis of an 85 or 90 percent efficiency record that the air mail service appeals to the business man and the mailing public for steady, consistent patronage. Spasmodic use of the air mail is of little or no use. If the business man or banker makes a regular practice of sending his more important correspondence by air mail, and eighty-five percent of it (an exceedingly modest estimate) gets through according to schedule, the plan is well worth while. Banking and financial houses can save much of the interest on funds in transit; insurance companies, manufacturers, wholesalers, branch houses, all these and many others will find that the air mail service can be of real value and assistance to them if they will give it a trial over an adequate period.

It is not only between the larger centers of population that air mail service is of great value to this country. In fact, few countries are in a position to derive more positive and immediate benefits from internal air post services than the Dominion of Canada. Her vast areas and comparatively attenuated population; the great distances which separate her principal urban centers, and the various widely scattered settlements and mining and fur-trading areas to which access by other means, especially during the winter months, is difficult and sometimes scarcely possible, combine to render postal communications by air peculiarly valuable and well-nigh indispensable in Canada. In addition, under a reciprocal arrangement with the post office department at Washington, Canada is able, by establishing with ease numerous points of contact with the extensive network of air mail service in the United States of America, to take full advantage of the remarkable facilities which now exist not only in that country but from there to Mexico, the West Indies, and Central and South America.

The establishment of Canada’s official air post services is of comparatively recent date, but the conveyance of mail matter by air within this country has been an actual fact for over ten years. The advent of the modern aeroplane accelerated the development of Canadian gold mining regions beyond all precedent, enabling prospectors and miners to work on a scale formerly impossible; and the postal requirements of these men, whose work was carried on in remote and otherwise almost inaccessible districts, were ministered to, almost of necessity, by aeroplane. As a temporary measure, permission was given by the post office department to the operating aviation companies to carry letters, entirely at the senders’ risk and subject to a small fee ranging from five to twenty-five cents per letter, in addition to the regular postage. This fee, which was retained in its entirety by the operating company, was covered by a cachet or “sticker”, analogous to a postage stamp, affixed, for the prevention of any possible confusion with the office stamps, to the reverse side of the envelope.

The successful operation of numerous “sticker” services demonstrated beyond all cavil the essential practicability of air mail transport in Canada, for these services were conducted in many cases under considerable operating difficulties, although not on hard and fast schedules.

Canadian civil aviation assumed proportions

in 1927 which justified the post office department in utilizing the facilities available for the fast transport of mails, not only to remote areas, but between the larger centers of population. Services of the latter type, of course, had to be arranged on definite time schedules, and this involved a much greater problem. As a beginning a service of daily frequency between Montreal and Toronto was established on October 1,1928.

On the same date an international air mail route between Canada and the United States was established, from Montreal to Albany, the capital of New York state. The Canadian post office department pays for the transmission of mail on the southbound trips between those points only, but the United States postal administration operates a service from New York city to Montreal, via Albany. The train connections are such that on the southbound journey there is no advantage gained by flying the mail between Albany and New York.

This service, which is of daily except Sunday frequency, has functioned with remarkable regularity, maintaining an average operating efficiency of very nearly one hundred percent.

On July 15,1929, the Montreal-Toronto route was extended westward to Detroit, via Hamilton, London and Windsor, Ontario, and thus a point of contact with the United States air mail routes westward was established, in addition to providing the most densely inhabited portion of Ontario with speedy air mail service.

On August 16 of this year that portion of the service between Montreal and Toronto was eliminated at least for the present. The superlative excellence of the train service had always made this part of the route difficult to operate successfully from an aviation standpoint. It is hoped that as conditions improve it will be possible to restore the service between Canada’s two largest cities, as this will always be an indispensable link in any Canadian transcontinental air mail route.

There are formidable difficulties in the way of transcontinental all-Canadian air mail service. The tremendous barriers represented by the Rocky Mountains and the Great Lakes are problems which will be no easy conquest on any regular scheduled service.

The very difficult flying country in New Brunswick constitutes another serious problem: the scarcity of suitable emergency landing fields, the densely w’ooded areas and the broken nature of the country present difficulties hardly less than the more spectacular Great Lakes and the Rockies.

Notwithstanding the difficulties of operation in the Maritime Provinces (fog, perhaps the airman’s greatest enemy, is one of the commonest on the Atlantic Coast Line), it was decided early in December, 1929, to conduct an experimental service between Montreal, Quebec, Moncton and Saint John. The route originally followed was over all-Canadian territory, but the experimental flights indicated that this was not giving the best results. On January 27 the service was divided into separate parts, one plane operating between Montreal and Quebec and another flying from Montreal across the state of Maine to Saint John and thence to Moncton. These services have been withdrawn for the present.

On March 3, 1930, the most ambitious step towards a trans-Canadian air mail route was taken when a night service of daily frequency W’as established between Winnipeg and Calgary, via Regina, Moose Jaw and Medicine Hat, with a northern link to Saskatoon, North Battleford and Edmonton. This service effects a saving of twenty-four hours in the through movement of mails and gives fast inter-city service between the principal centers of population in the Prairie Provinces. On August 16 this trans-Prairie service was rearranged by linking Calgary direct to Edmonton and eliminating service between Moose Jaw, Saskatoon and North Battleford.

A further international link was provided on February 2, 1931, when a service between Winnipeg and Pembina, N.Dak., w’as established. This route connects with United States services to Saint Paul and Chicago, etc.

Further links in the coast-to-coast chain are those from Winnipeg east across Ontario, and between the Rocky Mountains and Vancouver. The former will require considerable ground work before advantageous flying can be done, as, in order to make the necessary connections, night flying will probably be essential.

It is in the outlying portions of Canada, however, that the most valuable work of the air mail service has so far been carried on. Until recently the remote settlements along the iron-bound north shore of the Saint Lawrrence River, on Anticosti and the Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of Saint Law’rence, and along the sub-arctic reaches of the Mackenzie River, have been almost cut off from civilization during the winter months. Communication was necessarily by dog-team and other primitive methods until the recent dramatic change to swift aeroplanes reduced the duration of mail trips from weeks to hours. A journey along the north shore of the Saint Lawrence River, which formerly occupied about three weeks, is now made in as many hours. The enormous boon conferred upon the inhabitants of such districts is difficult to estimate. It is in this respect, undoubtedly, that Canada has most to gain at present by air mail service.

The establishment of contract air mail service in the Mackenzie River district, the most northerly of all air mail services, in December, 1929, attracted world wide attention and was a remarkable achievement in every way. The long route of nearly seventeen hundred miles from Fort McMurray, down the Athabaska River, along the south shore of Great Slave Lake and down the whole of the mighty Mackenzie River, is a historic highway and it entered into an entirely new phase of its existence when the first mail planes took off from McMurray on December 10, 1929. Hitherto, in the winter months, dog-teams had been the sole means of conveyance; and the volume of mail was correspondingly small and limited to letters and a few newspapers. Contrast this with the remarkable conditions obtaining on the advent of air mail facilities : five tons of mail carried on the first flights; over a thousand pounds for Aklavik alone, as compared with less than two hundred pounds for the whole of the previous winter, laboriously and slowly carried in by dog-team; and all this done with speed, precision and comparative ease. This is undoubtedly the most brilliant achievement of the Canadian air mail service so far.

A similar service in the Peace River area was established on January 31, 1931.

The chief remaining routes are those which penetrate the rich mining areas of Ontario and Manitoba. Red Lake, Siscoe and Chibougamau are names well known to mining men. They are the principal mineral areas served by air mail in Canada. Aeroplanes convey swiftly and regularly mails that would otherwise have to be transported across lakes and rough country unprovided with roads, and deliver in a few hours letters that would by any other means be days in transit.

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