The American Postal Service: History of the Postal Service from the Earliest Times

This little work on postal affairs aims to familiarize postal employees and others with the operations of the Post Office Department in all its varied and numerous details. No attempt was made to cover the wide field of postal activity and inquiry for which a much larger book and much greater space would be required. It is simply meant to be a book of reference, a sort of hand-book on postal subjects for busy people who may not care to read lengthy accounts or stories which a few paragraphs might sufficiently explain, or care to wrestle with columns of figures which are best given in official reports and chiefly valuable to public men for legislative purposes, for comparison and survey.

All necessary postal knowledge of immediate public interest is herein set forth in such compact shape as to acquaint the reader with what he might want to know, or direct his inquiry to sources of wider information if the desire was not satisfied with the reference thereto which this work might afford. In general it will be found amply sufficient for all ordinary purpose as the scope of subjects is as wide as the active operations of the Department at present include.

The special articles referring to subjects of general postal interest cover a considerable range of inquiry and deal more fully with those matters which are but briefly mentioned in that portion devoted to the purely business details of the Department. Much of this material is new and all of it treated so as to interest the reader. These articles on general postal topics in connection with the other matter herewith given, relating to the service, may please some one here and there and perhaps justify the publication of this little contribution to the literature of the time.