Ocean mail post offices have been established upon the steamers of the North German Lloyd and Hamburg lines, saving by the distribution on shipboard from two to fourteen hours’ time in the delivery of mail at the port of entry and often much more than this in the delivery at interior places.  So thoroughly has this system, initiated by Germany and the United States, evidenced its usefulness that it can not be long before it is installed upon all the great ocean mail-carrying steamships.

Eight thousand miles of new postal service has been established upon railroads, the car distribution to substations in the great cities has been increased about 12 per cent, while the percentage of errors in distribution has during the past year been reduced over one-half.  An appropriation was given by the last Congress for the purpose of making some experiments in free delivery in the smaller cities and towns.  The results of these experiments have been so satisfactory that the Postmaster-General recommends, and I concur in the recommendation, that the free-delivery system be at once extended to towns of 5,000 population.  His discussion of the inadequate facilities extended under our present system to rural communities and his suggestions with a view to give these communities a fuller participation in the benefits of the postal service are worthy of your careful consideration.  It is not just that the farmer, who receives his mail at a neighboring town, should not only be compelled to send to the post-office for it, but to pay a considerable rent for a box in which to place it or to wait his turn at a general-delivery window, while the city resident has his mail brought to his door.  It is stated that over 54,000 neighborhoods are under the present system receiving mail at post-offices where money orders and postal notes are not issued.  The extension of this system to these communities is especially desirable, as the patrons of such offices are not possessed of the other facilities offered in more populous communities for the transmission of small sums of money.

I have in a message to the preceding Congress expressed my views as to a modified use of the telegraph in connection with the postal service.[23] In pursuance of the ocean mail law of March 3, 1891, and after a most careful study of the whole subject and frequent conferences with shipowners, boards of trade, and others, advertisements were issued by the Postmaster-General for 53 lines of ocean mail service—­10 to Great Britain and the Continent, 27 to South America, 3 to China and Japan, 4 to Australia and the Pacific islands, 7 to the West Indies, and 2 to Mexico.  It was not, of course, expected that bids for all these lines would be received or that service upon them all would be contracted for.  It was intended, in furtherance of the act, to secure as many new lines as possible, while including in the list most or all of the foreign lines now occupied by American ships.  It was hoped that a line to England and perhaps one to the Continent would be secured; but the outlay required to equip such lines wholly with new ships of the first class and the difficulty of establishing new lines in competition with those already established deterred bidders whose interest had been enlisted.  It is hoped that a way may yet be found of overcoming these difficulties.