The Absurdity of Local Mail Service
A scathing editorial laments the bureaucratic inefficiency of sending mail across Puget Sound only to have it return to a destination a half-mile away.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Here on Puget Sound we have numerous commentaries on the pitiful peculiarities of the postal service, but perhaps none of them are more pointed than the fact that mail to Bellingham mailed here in Fairhaven must go to Seattle—more than a hundred miles and return—by steamboat, taking generally about 36 hours before it can get to its destination, not more than half a mile from the post office where it was first mailed. This to a town which is about to be included with this town in the same corporation, and the same may be said of the four post offices on Bellingham bay, no two of which are more than four miles apart, and between which half-hour ferries are constantly running through the day.
“Mail to Bellingham mailed here in Fairhaven must go to Seattle... taking generally about 36 hours before it can get to its destination, not more than half a mile from the post office.”
While modern mail is vastly more efficient, the frustration of local bureaucracy remains a recurring civic complaint. This story captures the mid-territorial era reliance on maritime transport for even the most basic communication between neighboring towns.
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