free delivery in the smaller cities and towns.
The results of these experiments have been so satisfactory that the
Postmaster-General recommends, and I concur in the recommendation,
that the free-delivery system be at once extended to towns of 5,000
population. His discussion of the inadequate facilities extended under
our present system to rural communities and his suggestions with a view
to give these communities a fuller participation in the benefits of the
postal service are worthy of your careful consideration. It is not just
that the farmer, who receives his mail at a neighboring town, should
not only be compelled to send to the post-office for it, but to pay a
considerable rent for a box in which to place it or to wait his turn at
a general-delivery window, while the city resident has his mail brought
to his door. It is stated that over 54,000 neighborhoods are under the
present system receiving mail at post-offices where money orders and
postal notes are not issued. The extension of this system to these
communities is especially desirable, as the patrons of such offices
are not possessed of the other facilities offered in more populous
communities for the transmission of small sums of money.

I have in a message to the preceding Congress expressed my views
as to a modified use of the telegraph in connection with the postal
service.[23] In pursuance of the ocean mail law of March 3, 1891, and
after a most careful study of the whole subject and frequent conferences
with shipowners, boards of trade, and others, advertisements were issued
by the Postmaster-General for 53 lines of ocean mail service--10 to
Great Britain and the Continent, 27 to South America, 3 to China and
Japan, 4 to Australia and the Pacific islands, 7 to the West Indies,
and 2 to Mexico. It was not, of course, expected that bids for all
these lines would be received or that service upon them all would be
contracted for. It was intended, in furtherance of the act, to secure as
many new lines as possible, while including in the list most or all of
the foreign lines now occupied by American ships. It was hoped that a
line to England and perhaps one to the Continent would be secured; but
the outlay required to equip such lines wholly with new ships of the
first class and the difficulty of establishing new lines in competition
with those already established deterred bidders whose interest had been
enlisted. It is hoped that a way may yet be found of ov