The progress of the world can be inferred from facts like the following:
In 1798 the entire business of the Post-office Department was
conducted by the Postmaster-General, one assistant, and one
clerk. In 1833 it required forty-eight hours to convey news from
Washington to Philadelphia. In 1834 New York Saturday papers
were not received in Washington until the following Tuesday
afternoon. In 1835 the mails were carried between Philadelphia
and Pittsburg daily in four-horse coaches, two lines daily, one
to go through in a little more than two days, the other in three
and a half days. In 1833 a contractor named Reeside carried
the mail between Philadelphia and New York, ninety miles, in
six hours, making fifteen miles an hour. The railroad, as a
factor in the mail service, did not have a beginning before
1835. August 25 of this year the formal opening of the road
between Washington and Baltimore took place. Amos Kendall,
then Postmaster-General, at first objected to having the mails
carried by rail over this road, since it would, as he feared,
disarrange connections with existing lines of stages. In
October, 1834, a writer in the Boston _Atlas_ says: “We
left Philadelphia on the morning of the sixth in a railroad car,
and reached Columbia, on the Susquehanna, at dusk--a distance
of eighty-two miles.”--JOHN M. BISHOP, _Magazine of
American History_.
(488)
=Communication of Disease=--See CONTAMINATION.