Postal Report

Statistical beyond all others was the annual report of Postmaster General Walter Folger Brown. His most important legislative recommendation sought punishment for blackmailers using the mails as a means of attempted extortion.

Brownian facts:

P: It cost $782,408,753 to carry last year's mails, of which about $560,000,000 went as pay to approximately 274,000 postal employes. For this service the public paid $696,947,577 to the Post Office Department, made up an $85,000,000 deficit indirectly through taxation. "Free mail" carried would have netted, if paid for $31,232,906.

P: Divided into four classes, 49,425 post offices were in operation in the U. S. last year.

P: Into the Dead Letter office went 23,079,619 pieces of mail, out of which dropped $101,811.01 in cash.

P: Airplanes carried 5,635,680 Ibs. of mail 10,212,511 miles at a cost of $11,207,957.*

P: Over 43,840 Rural Free Delivery routes mailmen journeyed 398,444,130 miles to carry postal matter to 24,812,000 persons at a cost of $106,000,000.

P: While traveling 269,831,975 miles in 4,651 postoffice trains per day, 21,229 railway mail clerks handled 17,955,115,373 pieces of mail.

P: Ocean mail increased 5% over last year, amounted to 87,354,737 Ibs.*

*Because the cost of air mail service exceeded the postage revenue by some $7,000,000 last year, thus increasing the department's deficit Postmaster General Brown has called a conference of air mail operators to "readjust" contract rates.

*Last week Postmaster General Brown announced that his department was ready to award ocean mail contracts over 13 approved routes, provided that in return for ten-million-dollar annual contracts, 40 new mail ships, totaling 460,000 tons, be constructed in ten years at a cost of $250,000,000. First objector to this plan was U. S. Lines, Inc., owners of the Leviathan and ten other onetime U. S. Shipping Board vessels, which vould be required to construct eleven new vessels, three of them of the superliner class, at a total cost of $150,000,000 in return for $30,000,000 worth of mail contracts. U. S. Lines officials complained that this was too large an investment for the mail subsidies offered.

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