A striking proof of this recognition of a truth came at first hand to Rowland Hill's knowledge. He was consulting an old medical friend, and in the course of conversation the latter said that his footman wished to obtain an appointment as letter-carrier. Whereupon my father pointed out that the man was better off as footman, because, in addition to receiving good wages, he had board, lodging, and many other advantages. This, answered the doctor, had already been represented to the man; but his reply was that in the Post Office there was the certainty of continuity of employment and the pension for old age. The fact that the employees in a public department are not, like many other workers, liable at any moment to be sent adrift by the death or impoverishment of their employers, constitutes one of the strongest attractions to the service. Has this circumstance any connection with the growing disinclination of the poorer classes to enter domestic service?
In 1854 rural distribution was greatly extended, 500 new offices being opened. This extension, it may be remembered, was one of several measures which were persistently opposed by the enemies of the postal reform. How much the measure was needed, and, when granted, how beneficial were its results, is shown by the fact that it was followed by the largest increase of letters which had taken place in any year since 1840, or a gain on 1853 of 32,500,000.
The measure affected several hundreds of different places and a very large percentage of the entire correspondence of the United Kingdom. Formerly there were to every office limits, sometimes narrow, sometimes wide, beyond which there was either no delivery, or one made only at additional charge, generally of a penny a letter: an arrangement which, in spite of my father's repeated efforts to amend it, outlived the introduction of the new postal system for more than fourteen years, and in the districts thus affected partially nullified its benefits. Not until this and other survivals of the older state of things were swept away could his plan be rightly said to be established.
London—whose then population formed one-tenth and its correspondence one-fourth of the United Kingdom—was also not neglected. It was divided into ten postal districts,[206] each of which was treated as a separate town with a local chief office in addition to its many minor offices. The two corps of letter-carriers—the general postmen and those who belonged to the old “twopenny post”—which till this time existed as distinct bodies of employees, were at last amalgamated; their “walks” were rearranged, and a new plan of sorting at the chief office was instituted, while the letters and other missives intended for the different districts, being sorted before they reached London, were no longer, as of old, sent to St Martin's-le-Grand, but were at once dispatched for distribution to the local chief office whose initials corresponded with those upon the covers. Door letter-boxes increased in number in the houses of the poorer as well as of the richer classes; and the use, in addition to the address, on the printed heading of a letter of the initials denoting the postal district from which it emanated, and on the envelope of that where it should be delivered—a use to which the public generally accustomed itself kindly—greatly facilitated and expedited communication within the 12 miles circuit, so that thenceforth it became possible to post a letter and receive its reply within the space of a few hours—a heartily appreciated boon in the days when the telephone was not. As a natural consequence, the number of district letters grew apace, and the congestion at St Martin's-le-Grand was perceptibly lessened. At the same time, the Board of Works to some extent amended the nomenclature of the streets and the numbering of houses. The most important delivery of the day, the first, was accelerated by two hours; in some of the suburbs by two and a half hours. That is, the morning's letters were distributed at nine o'clock instead of at half-past eleven. Since that time, and for many years now, the delivery has been made at or before eight o'clock. Nothing facilitated these earlier deliveries more than the sorting of letters _en route_; and the practice also enabled more frequent deliveries to be made. Improved communication with the colonies and foreign countries, through better treaties, was likewise effected; and each improvement was rendered easier by the rapid growth everywhere of railways and shipping companies, and the increased speed of trains and steamships.