Governor Dennison is a working business-man. He is an impressive orator, tall in person, of courtly but winning manners. He is a good specimen of a Christian gentleman, a devoted member of the Protestant Episcopal Church.
Mr. Dennison, immediately upon entering the precincts of the postal bureau, commenced the study of the peculiar as well as intricate business of the department. His active mind, tact, and general knowledge soon mastered many of its intricacies, and, with a precision which surprised the more knowing ones of the office, arranged and alphabeted its business in such a manner as to facilitate operations and lessen actual labor. By this time Governor Dennison is, no doubt, quite familiar with the business of a post-office.
One of the most important postal arrangements under this gentleman’s administration is the establishing by steamships a postal communication with China and Japan. Congress passed a law, February 17, 1865, authorizing the postmaster to contract for such conveyance. The tender of “The Pacific Mail Steamship Company,” the only one offered, was accepted and engaged for the service. The compensation therefor is $500,000 per annum for the performance of twelve round trips between San Francisco and Hong-Kong, China, touching at Honolulu in the Sandwich Islands, and Kanagawa in Japan.
This is one of the greatest events of the day, and inaugurates a new era in the commerce of our country. Unless the United States, however, unites all her great advantages and brings them to bear upon her foreign relations in such a manner as to place her commerce on a footing with that of other nations, the mere fact of a new era with these is simply a postal experiment. It is for us to become masters of the commerce of the world; and with this line of steamers regularly established, and the completion of the Pacific Railway, there is nothing to stand in the way of success.
Postmaster Dennison, taking this view of it, says, in his annual report, 1864,—
“There are other ocean-routes besides the one to Brazil which can be safely and profitably occupied by American lines of mail-steamers,—among which the route between San Francisco, Japan, and China, at present unoccupied by foreign mail-packets, is perhaps the most important in a commercial point of view, and may be made available in securing to us a large participation in the commerce of the East, the greater portion of which is now enjoyed by Great Britain through her mail-steamship connections _viâ_ Suez in the Indian Ocean and China Seas.