District of Columbia. A Superintendent
of Public Documents looks after the receipt, distribution, and sale of
government publications.

The most important subjects of recent legislation concerning this
department have been the dependent pension act, the act providing for
the survey of Western lands suitable for irrigation, and the land
forfeiture act. By this act over 8,000,000 acres of lands were forfeited
by the railroads for failure to fulfill the conditions under which the
land was originally granted to them.

_#The Post Office Department.#_--The Post Office Department was
established in 1789, but the Postmaster-General did not become a cabinet
officer until 1829. The Postmaster-General has charge and management of
the department, and of the domestic and foreign mail service. He can
establish post offices and appoint postmasters of the fourth and fifth
classes, i.e. those whose salaries are less than $1,000. These number
over 50,000. The total number of postoffices is about 56,000. The
President appoints to those of the first three classes. Other officers
besides the Assistant Postmasters-General are, the Superintendents of
the Money Order Division, of Foreign Mails, and of the Railway Service,
and an Assistant Attorney-General for the department.

The United States is a member of the Universal Postal Union, of which
most, if not all, of the civilized countries are members. The central
office is known as the International Bureau of the Universal Postal
Union, and is conducted under the superintendence of the Swiss Postal
Administration, and its expenses are borne by all the nations composing
the Union. The revenues of the Post Office Department nearly equal the
expenditures, and would have exceeded them before this but for the fact
that as soon as the amount of receipts has warranted, improvements have
been made in the service, through the reduction of postage rates and
the extension of the free delivery system. It has never been the policy
of the government to make this department a source of revenue.

The patronage of the postoffice department is the most important of any
of the departments, and it is very largely for this reason that the
Postmaster-General is a member of the Cabinet. Crawford of South
Carolina secured in 1820 the passage of an act limiting the term of
office of postmasters to four years. The appointment of postmasters does
not come under the Civil Service Act. It is the principal aim of civil