Dennis Marek: Are we going to lose our mail delivery?

With all the changes we are experiencing in our country, be it with our immigrants or our own federal employees, what will we lose next? I read a headline last week in a newspaper that said “Post office department threatens to cut off rural delivery.”

Now, that is a bit shocking for rural America. Thank heavens I was reading a page from the Clifton Advocate. Each week, the publisher adds one page that is a reprint of an earlier front page. Thankfully, that reproduced page was first printed July 2, 1908. The reason given was that the states and the counties that oversaw roads back then were not maintaining them sufficiently.

If we think about the U.S. Postal Service, we can go back a long way, as this past month it celebrated its 250th anniversary. That means it was formed a year before the Declaration of Independence was signed!

Our country was ready to fight the British for our freedom, but the British ran the postal service for the country. In 1775, the Second Continental Congress appointed George Washington as the commander-in-chief of the Continental Army. But how could the forces communicate? The British-established postal channels would have been a quick way to uncover the enemy’s plans. So, Washington was charged with that task as well. Washington picked Benjamin Franklin to head up this new service.

Franklin had been the postmaster of Philadelphia for 40 years. He cleverly devised a system in which military correspondence was delivered by messengers on foot and riders on horseback. This became a huge advantage for the American forces, as British correspondence from London would often take two months.

The thinkers of that day, such as Washington, Adams and Jefferson, believed that a regulated postal system was vital to the new nation, and it is no surprise that in the Declaration of Independence, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 7 officially recognized this creation. It was included to facilitate communication as well as a revenue source. Known as the Postal Clause, it authorized the establishment of “post offices and post roads by the country’s legislature, the Congress,” not the executive branch. And the roads became the responsibility in most parts of state and local government groups such as cities, townships and counties.

None of this was delegated to the executive branch by our Constitution.

The reason I added the last part was because of a recent statement by President Donald Trump earlier this year, when he proposed a merger between the Postal Service and the Department of Commerce or that the postal system be privatized. He was quoted as calling the USPS “a tremendous loser for this country.” It is true that the system has lost about $100 billion since 2007 as costs have outpaced revenue, with once-dependable first-class mail falling in volume.

So, we think about the postal business. The competition for the exchange of information is all over the world. Cellphones and computers, with texting and sending documents, have certainly drawn people away from the use of the postal service. Then we add the delivery services of Amazon, UPS and FedEx, and we can see how this might affect our federal post office. How many times you receive a bill in the mail and then write a check to pay for something? Or do you get the bill online and pay it the same day? You have no need for the postal people. At least the ads and solicitations for groceries, the call for contributions to various charities, or invitations to try some new products do make some added income.

Then, I think of the people who were mail carriers over the years. This list includes Morgan Freeman, Steve Carell, Rock Hudson, John Prine and even Walt Disney. Even Abraham Lincoln served as a local postmaster before he went to law school and entered politics. One of my classmates, John Moore, has been a mail carrier since shortly after high school and is still delivering at the age of 83. His dad preceded him as a rural carrier, and between the two, they served the Postal Service for 110 years. My hats off to John and his years of service.

Yes, we do have a huge deficit. Sometimes methods of the old days disappear. Think of the telegraph. There is no need for that world-changing device any longer. So, how can we keep some semblance of our postal system alive? The price of stamps has risen. I remember the 5-cent stamp and the pricier airmail stamp in my youth. My most recent purchase of a forever stamp was 73 cents, but I learned that it will soon go up to 78 cents. Buy now?

Wait a minute. Someone picks up your letter from a postbox, then delivers it to a post office. There, it is sorted by ZIP code, sent by truck and perhaps an airplane to another city. Next, it is sorted again and delivered to your recipient, all for less than a dollar! Not a bad deal if you think about it. Yet, my purchase of 100 stamps lasts most of the year. I guess I am not doing my job there. I write my articles on a computer. I email it to the Journal. Then, I read that edition later online. The printed newspaper may be in as much trouble as the post office.

I do not know what the president will do with this agency if he thinks he has the power, but I don’t think massive layoffs will help the economy. Can we use less personnel? Perhaps. That is certainly what some of our political thinkers are feeling. God bless our mail people. Hang in there.