Thursday Open Line


This week in 1858, Boston and New York started an experiment, putting official mail collection boxes along the streets so passersby could drop off their outgoing letters. Before that, they had to go to the post office or catch the mail carrier on his route. The new collection boxes were a welcome innovation, and in the ensuing 155 years became a familiar, if lately dwindling, feature at street corners across the country. Today, in spite of ever-growing volumes of e-mail and text messages, the U.S. Postal Service handles over 170 billion pieces of mail a year to serve America’s over 315 million addressees. To move this volume takes more than 672,000 employees, working out of some 37,000 postal facilities. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau, online at <www.census.gov>.