TRANSPORTATION OF THE MAILS

The efficiency of the postal service depends very largely upon the means of transportation, from steamship and railway lines down to the country roads.  Nothing else, perhaps, has stimulated the improvement of roads so much as the rural mail service.  It is the power granted by the Constitution to Congress to establish post-roads that enables the Federal government to aid the states in road improvement.  The development of fast mail trains and the introduction of motor-truck service have been important steps in the improvement of the postal service in city and country.  The latest development is the transportation of mail by airplane.  An aerial mail route between Washington, D. C., and New York City was established May 15, 1918, and a round trip daily is now made over this route, regardless of weather conditions.  The flying time from Washington to New York, with a stop at Philadelphia, averages two hours and thirty minutes, or one half the time of the fastest trains.  The Post-Office Department is planning an extensive airplane mail service from the Atlantic to the Pacific, with various side lines; also to the West Indies, Panama, and South America.  The routes are partially worked out, and trial trips have been made in some cases, as between New York and Chicago.

THE TELEGRAPH

We need only mention the important part played by the telegraph, the submarine cable, and radio-communication, in binding together our nation and the world as a whole.  Without them the modern newspaper, with its daily news from every corner of the globe, would be impossible, our cooperation in the great World War would have been extremely difficult, and the President probably would not have left the United States to participate in the peace negotiations at Paris.  Although the first telegraph line in the United States was owned and operated by the government as a part of the postal service, the telegraph service of the country has since been in the hands of private corporations; except that during the war the Post-Office Department took over the management of the telegraph and the telephone, as the Railroad Administration took over the transportation lines.

THE TELEPHONE

As this chapter is being written, word has come that the Secretary of the Navy has talked by wireless telephone with the President of the United States while the latter was 800 miles out at sea on his return from France.  At the close of the war American aviators were talking with one another from airplane to airplane, and receiving orders from the ground, by wireless telephone.  These instances suggest new possibilities of communication in the near future.  Already the ordinary telephone has practically made over our community life in many particulars.