The appointment of Director-General of Posts of Cuba was given to an expert who had been Chief Post-Office Inspector and Assistant Postmaster-General, and who united large experience with administrative capacity.  For the postmastership at Havana the range of skilled and available men was scanned, and the choice fell upon one who had been twenty years in the service as deputy postmaster and postmaster of a large city.  This principle governed and determined the selection of the American officials sent not only to Cuba, but to Puerto Rico and the Philippines, and they were instructed to apply it so far as practicable in the employment of the natives as minor postmasters and clerks.  The postal system in Cuba, though remaining under the general guidance of the Postmaster-General, was made essentially independent.  It was felt that it should not be a burden upon the postal service of the United States, and provision was made that any deficit in the postal revenue should be a charge upon the general revenues of the island.

Though Puerto Rico and the Philippines hold a different relation to the United States, yet, for convenience of administration, the same principle of an autonomous system has been extended to them.  The development of the service in all of the islands has been rapid and successful.  It has moved forward on American lines, with free delivery, money order, and registry systems, and has given the people mail facilities far greater and more reliable than any they have ever before enjoyed.  It is thus not only a vital agency of industrial, social, and business progress, but an important influence in diffusing a just understanding of the true spirit and character of American administration.

The domestic postal service continues to grow with extraordinary rapidity.  The expenditures and the revenues will each exceed $100,000,000 during the current year.  Fortunately, since the revival of prosperous times the revenues have grown much faster than the expenditures, and there is every indication that a short period will witness the obliteration of the annual deficit.  In this connection the report of the Postmaster-General embodies a statement of some evils which have grown up outside of the contemplation of law in the treatment of some classes of mail matter which wrongly exercise the privilege of the pound rate, and shows that if this matter had been properly classified and had paid the rate which it should have paid, instead of a postal deficit for the last fiscal year of $6,610,000, there would have been on one basis a surplus of $17,637,570, and on another of $5,733,836.  The reform thus suggested, in the opinion of the Postmaster-General, would not only put the postal service at once on a self-sustaining basis, but would permit great and valuable improvements, and I commend the subject to the consideration of the Congress.