In Each Of These Cases The Practice Acts To The Prejudice Of The
Department.
In order to escape the tax on delivery, which varies
from two cents to one cent a letter, all men in trade, and many who
are not in trade, hold office boxes; consequently immense space is
required.
The space given at Chicago, both to the public without
and to the official within, for such delivery, is more than four
times that required at Liverpool for the same purpose. But
Liverpool is three times the size of Chicago. The corps of clerks
required for the window delivery is very great, and the whole affair
is cumbrous in the extreme. The letters at most offices are given
out through little windows, to which the inquirer is obliged to
stoop. There he finds himself opposite to a pane of glass with a
little hole, and when the clerk within shakes his head at him, he
rarely believes but what his letters are there if he could only
reach them. But in the second case, the tax on the delivery, which
is intended simply to pay the wages of the men who take them out, is
paid with a bad grace; it robs the letter of its charm, and forces
it to present itself in the guise of a burden: it makes that
disagreeable which for its own sake the post-office should strive in
every way to make agreeable. This practice, moreover, operates as a
direct prevention to a class of correspondence which furnishes in
England a large proportion of the revenue of the post-office.
Mercantile houses in our large cities send out thousands of trade
circulars, paying postage on them; but such circulars would not be
received, either in England or elsewhere, if a demand for postage
were made on their delivery.
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