Details
WASHINGTON, GEORGE, President. Letter signed ("G:Washington") as President, TO ACTING POSTMASTER GENERAL EBENEZER HAZARD, New York, 8 June 1789. 1 page, folio, 325 x 205 mm. (12 3/4 in. x 8 in.), regrettably mounted on card, faint mat-burn at edges.
THE NEW PRESIDENT AND THE POST OFFICE
Less than two months after taking office as President, Washington requests a report on the Post Office: "As I have (without doing it officially) requested from the Heads of the several Executive Departments [i.e. the Cabinet] such information, as might be requisite to bring me acquainted with the business and duties of the Departments, I have thought fit to ask, in the same informal manner, for some specific information, in writing, relative to the past and present state of the Post-Office. I must, therefore, request you will advise of the general state of the Establishment -- of the annual expences of conducting the whole business, for every year, since you have been at the Head of it -- and of the annual income, for every year, during the same period - by which the exact deficiency, or profits of the Post-Office, yearly, will be seen at a single glance. I presume the department has been managed in so methodical a manner, that there can be but little trouble or delay in making the necessary Report and Abstracts...."
Hazard apparently supplied the financial details Washington requested in a letter of 27 June, to which Washington replied on 3 July, commenting that while the office appeared profitable since 1782, he wished to know "the causes of the decrease in income" to 1789 and observing that if productiveness had been diminished by certain provisions of Congress, as Hazard had maintained, it "must have been either by the increase of expence attending the conveyance of the mail by Stages (instead of Riders, as formerly)," or from having extended postal service into remote areas "where the expence of carrying it greatly exceeded the produce of it" (Fitzpatrick 30:352-353). Hazard, who had headed the Post Office since 1782, was supplanted in September by Samuel Osgood (1747-1813), first Postmaster under the new Federal government. Not in Fitzpatrick.
THE NEW PRESIDENT AND THE POST OFFICE
Less than two months after taking office as President, Washington requests a report on the Post Office: "As I have (without doing it officially) requested from the Heads of the several Executive Departments [i.e. the Cabinet] such information, as might be requisite to bring me acquainted with the business and duties of the Departments, I have thought fit to ask, in the same informal manner, for some specific information, in writing, relative to the past and present state of the Post-Office. I must, therefore, request you will advise of the general state of the Establishment -- of the annual expences of conducting the whole business, for every year, since you have been at the Head of it -- and of the annual income, for every year, during the same period - by which the exact deficiency, or profits of the Post-Office, yearly, will be seen at a single glance. I presume the department has been managed in so methodical a manner, that there can be but little trouble or delay in making the necessary Report and Abstracts...."
Hazard apparently supplied the financial details Washington requested in a letter of 27 June, to which Washington replied on 3 July, commenting that while the office appeared profitable since 1782, he wished to know "the causes of the decrease in income" to 1789 and observing that if productiveness had been diminished by certain provisions of Congress, as Hazard had maintained, it "must have been either by the increase of expence attending the conveyance of the mail by Stages (instead of Riders, as formerly)," or from having extended postal service into remote areas "where the expence of carrying it greatly exceeded the produce of it" (Fitzpatrick 30:352-353). Hazard, who had headed the Post Office since 1782, was supplanted in September by Samuel Osgood (1747-1813), first Postmaster under the new Federal government. Not in Fitzpatrick.