Evening Star Newspaper, December 29, 1929, Page 83

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THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C. DECEMBER 29, 1929. gan to hum with the industry that arises from new markets and new trade sources. RE’I’URNING to the statement that the postal service is entitled to no small share in the credit for the existence of the Nation today, Mr. New, in a contribution to “The Amaszing Benjamin Franklin,” asks these questions: “Would Boston have dared stage its ‘Tea Party’ without the knowledge of that common understanding and friendship with the other colonies that was made possible through Frank- lin's postal service? “Would Massachusetts have peen so ready to hurl deflance at a stubborn English King and a tyrannical Parliament without the conscious- ness of sympathy and support from the other American colonies? “Would the Minute Men have been so im- petuous at Old North Bridge without the abid- ing faith that thousands of other Minute Men were ready and willing to take up the cause? “If Paul Revere—himself, by the way, a post rider in Franklin's service—had staged his now famous ride . before the ‘union’ effected through Franklin's postal service had become an accomplished fact, would not the children of today read of him in their text books, along with others now called patriots, as a traitor to his country?” England, no doubt, would have speedily put down the little “mutiny” in the Colony of Mas- sachusetts and that great commonwealth of to- day would have languished for years under a penance such as only an English King and an English Parliament of those days could have inflicted. The other American colonies, awed at the treatment meted out to Massachusetts, would, perhaps, have reviewed their grievances and found them not to be s0 momentous as they had at first believed. g The anger of England was directed toward only one or two of the colonies, but the others fell in line and made of it a common cause, Benjamin Franklin, “Father of the Postal Service.” thanks to the postal service of Franklin that made the contact between them. After “Lexington and Concord,” it was Franklin’s line of communications that made possible the quick dispatch of the stirring news to the expectant colonies to the north and far to the south. It was Franklin’s post roads that permitted the rapid recruiting of Washington’s Conti- nental Army from far-flung communities and, later, the transportation of artillery from one battle field to another. It would have been virtually impossible for the continental troops to have moved over the Indian trails that existed before Franklin's enterprise converted them into traversible high- ways, while, on the other hand, the British, with their fleets on the ocean highways, could have moved leisurely from one seaport to an- other, bringing the principal coloniel cities into subjection at will. RANKLIN'S service of 21 years as Deputy Postmaster General came to an abrupt close in 1774, when he was summarily discharged from office following & dramatic hearing be- fore the privy Council in London. He was charged with having made public letters pass- ing through the colonial postal service from Gov. Hutchison and Lieut. Gov. Oliver of Mas- sachusetts to friends in England describing the rebellious spirit of the Americans and urging the use of military force to subdue them. For many years the affair of the famous Hutchinson letters was shrouded in mystery, and even today the name of an English lord who figured in the case is not known for cer- tain because of Franklin’s silence. It is known, however, that Franklin did not remove the let- ters from the mails, as charged, but that he obtained them from a friendly English noble- man after they had been delivered. He loaned them to friends in America and in some way they reached the press. Their publication resulted in a furore on both sides of the Atlantic. The incident was just one more of the very many things that added fuel to the flames and hastened the day of open hostilities. Hugh Finlay, Deputy Postmaster General for the comparatively new crown colony of Can- ada, supplanted Franklin. Finlay had just completed a most painstaking survey of the posts under Franklin’s jurisdiction when he was called upon to take charge of them. His service, Rowever, was short lived. The British posts, like everything else English at that time, was in high disfavor among the colonists. They refused to intrust their letters to the post riders and resorted to the employ- ment of stage drivers or chance travelers to transport them. The result was, as might be expected, an al- most complete breakdown of the mail service, Old stage coach with mail compartment and six-horse covered wagon sto from a sketch in the National Museum. a service that had become an important factor in the lives of the colonists, and oné doubly so . with the daily growing prospect of an open break with tlie mother country. When the break came and the Continental Congress had placed its approval on the Dec- laration of Independence, the first matter to receive attention after provision had been made for armed opposition to England was that of an American mail service. Franklin, of course, was named chairman of a committee to draw up plans for such a service. His report was adopted by the Congress on July 26, 1775, and on the same day Franklin was named as the first Colonial Postmaster General. He established a line of posts from Massachusetts to Georgia and served until No- vember 7 of the following year, when he re- signed to assume the more important duty of inducing France to lend aild and substance to his fightinig countrymen. His son-in-law, Richard Bache, became the second Colonial Postmaster General. Tl-m first 60 years of American postal his- tory is almost a complete blank because of the great fire of 1836, which destroyed the Post Office Building at Washington and with it al- most every vestige of postal records. Years later a Postmaster General was forced to admit to Congress that he was unable to sup- ply the names of Assistant Postmasters General who had served from the beginning of the ~ system. One volume alone was saved from the flames by a youtlaful messenger in the office of the auditer of the Treasury for the Post Office Department. This book, still in existence and now under control of the chief clerk of the Post Office Department, is a ledger of postal revenues for the years 1776, 1737 and 1778. So far as is known, no other postal records of the early years are in existence. The book contains 124 pages of flat cap paper, every entry beinig as distinct, perhaps, as the day on which it was written. The ac- counts were kept in pounds, shillings and pence. In these days of decimal currency it is difficult to conceive how the colonial book- keeper kept his accounts straight, particularly when each colony had its own currency, with varied and constantly changing values. Eighty colonial post offices are listed in the ledger. The index is divided into five sections, with the vowels A, E, I, O and U used as headings. Conspicuous by its absence in the colonial ledger is the name of the Boston post office, although Charles Town, Woreester, Springfield and other Massachysetts towns appear in their regular places. To the layman the failure to find one of the most important early cities is mystifying, but the historian will readily re- call that durinig the period covered by the ledger Boston was in the hands of the British, where they were penned in by Washington's raw recruits. Washington and the District of Columbia were, of course, not then in existence. They were represented, however, by “George Town,” Bladensburg, Upper Marlboro and Alexandria. The arrival of “ye” post was not then the prosaic and matter-of-fact matter of removing a letter from the mail box as it is today. On the contrary, it was a gala occasion, when men dropped their work in the fields, women left their spinning wheels, and children abandoned childhood sports to rush to the post office where the mail was distributed, eager for the least and the last crumb of news or gossip from the outside world that might be dropped by those fortunate enough to be the recipients of letters. The postmaster was a man of no little im- portance, yet his responsibilities often lay heavily upon him. We read of one who de- sired ardently to be relieved of his post be- cause his home had lost its privacy and people came at all hours of the day and night seek- ing mail whether “’twas post day or no.” Our mental picture visions the post rider, with an air of importance, threading his way through the throng with his bag of mail eon- taining tidings of good and bad, and then the mind wanders back over the route by which he came. There were the many streams, sometimes swollen by sudden freshets, which he must have forded, the devious paths he threaded, dodging tree branches and briars and, above all, the woeful condition of the roads. To the modern motorist, whose principal irritation comes from traffic lights of the wrong color or the neces- sity for stopping to refuel, the very thought of riding horseback or traveling by stagecoach over one of the early colonial roads would be one so appalling as to be dismissed from the mind instantly. Perhaps the best conception of traveling con- ditions and the primitive lives of our colonial ancestors can be gained from the one other document relating to early postal history that is still in existence. This document was not subjected to the great fire because it was in the archives of the British, having been writ- ten in 1773 and 1774, the last years of English control over the postal service in America. It is the diary of Hugh Finlay, written dur- ing his inspection trip of Franklin's post routes. With it is a map, crude and weirdly propor- tioned, but, withal, the earliest post route map of the United States. What a contrast it pre- sents when compared with a modern road map showing the vast network of smooth, hard- surfaced roads that now links virtually every hamlet and settlement on the Eastern sea- board! His diary, too, is replete with information concerning the postal system, the life of the times, the country through which he journeyed, and the spirit of revolt which he found in the ascendancy. Finlay left Quebec on September 18, 1773, with his party of two other white men and 4 post rider of 1800. pping at a typical inn of the early days. Reproduced eight Indians in five birch bark canoes om Journey that was to take him as far south Savannah, Ga. His first objective was to a post route through the wilds of Maine Boston town in the “Province of Massach setts.” That not until recently has there been a road worthy of the name along that route is a tribute to the spirit of those early advem= turers bound on the King’s business, Surveyor Finlay’s route lay along the only real highway in the American colonies. After reaching the outlying settlements in Maine, he made his way to Falmouth, from where he followed the post route to Boston and thence to New York. He arrived in Philadelphia on December 9, from where he shipped by salling vessel to Charleston, 8. C. From that city he rode to Savannah, Ga., and then made his way over boggy trails northward to Norfolk, Va. Early on his journey Finlay found conditions that gave him great concern. These things he chronicled faithfully in his diary. The colonists took particular delight, he wrote, in forwarding their letters by the stage driver, ignoring g’ m“‘""f post rider completely, notwithstanding monopoly claimed by King George for the royal post. “Edward Norice, postmaster at Salem,” Fine lay wrote, “reports that every other day the °* stagecoach goes for Boston, the drivers take many letters, so that but few are forwarded by post to or from his office. If an information were lodged (but an informer would get tarred and feathered) no jury would find the fact; it is deemed necessary to hinder all acts of Parliament from taking effect in America. ‘They are, they say, to be governed by laws of their own framing iand no other. “It is the same in Boston, both Mumford and the rider of the upper stages (Hyde) re- ceive much postage for which they do not ace count. It is common for people who expect letters by the post, finding none at the Post Office, to say ‘Well, there must be letters; well find them at Mumford's.’ It is next to impos- sible to stop this practice in the present uni- versal opposition to everything connected with Great Britain, Were any Deputy Post Master to do his duty, and make a stir in the matter, he would draw on himself the odium of his neighbours and be marked as the friend of Slavery and oppression and declar'd enemy to America.” Under a New York date line he wrote: “Many people asked me if I had not met the post driving some oxen; it seems he had agreed to bring some along with him.” ‘When Surveyor Finlay reached the SOutherlw eolonies he found the terrible roads only allevie ated by the traditional Southern hospitality. “To travel with comfort through this part of the world, a stranger shou'd be furnished with letters of recommendation to the Gentlemen and Planters living on the road, but to a man Wwho has business to mind this method of trave eling would be attended with inconveniences, for the hospitable Americans kill you with kind- ness,” Finlay said. While Finlay was enduring the double jeop- ardy of kindly Americans and wicked highways in the Carolinas the Bostonians were mixing tea-and salt water. The news of Lexington reached New York shortly after Finlay's arrivaf there and he narrowly escaped capture by the provincials on his hurried flight to Quebec. And that was the last of the British postal system in America, although both the British and the French maintained an office in New York even for some time after the peace treaty was signed. The American postal service was born soon afterward and, although its existence was a preearious one for many years, it survived the vicissitudes of war and peace until foday, 154 years later, it is by far the greatest of any similar service in the world. Hundreds of comparisons might be drawn to picture the tremendous growth of that service in the century and a half and more that has intervened, but comparisons call for figures and figures sometimes are boresome. One illustration, however, should not amiss. At the time of the beginning of o Revolution it required 28 days to carry the mail from Charles Town, 8. C., to Norfolk, Va., and 10 weeks, or two months and a half, from Charles Town to New York. Today the air mail plane flits out of New York at 9 o'clock one night and is in Atlanta, Ga, in time to greet the rising sun on the fol- lowing morning. From Atlanta another plane leaves at 9 o'clock each night with mail from the Bouthland and salutes the American metrop- olis may hours before the morning fogs have Ten weeks for the one and 10 hours for the other—what a difference!

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