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TRUCKS, TUBES, AND MAIL ROBBERS 299
behavior. This move to prohibit racing news seemed to me another step in the direction of regulating public conduct.
Ideas and money are two things which are no good if they are not kept in circulation. Safeguarding freedom of the press was one way of assuring continuous interchange of many shades of thought. Keeping money in circulation is sometimes a harder task. As a bank account is based on confidence, so the volume of postal savings indicates public confidence in the government. In some ways, too, postal savings provided a barometer of financial and industrial activities.
For that reason, getting into circulation an estimated billion dollars which had been sewn into mattresses and tied in stockings was a very important thing for business recovery in 1921. More than 70 per cent of the postal-savings depositors were foreign-born or of foreign extraction, trusting their savings to no institution but the United States Government. The government was in the banking business to facilitate national savings and to promote economy and thrift. But up to that time postal savings had not scratched the surface, notwithstanding the conception of public duty that had inspired its founding.
We were not in competition with banks, we did not want depositors who had already learned to trust private institutions, and the Post Office certainly was not making any money by maintaining a savings bank. Postal savings was the conduit through which money could be brought into circulation, and it acted as a training school of thrift that would ultimately make savers, investors, and private bank depositors out of countless thousands. Financial reform measures are taken up slowly at best, and while we could not accomplish some of the major changes we might have liked to see made, we did manage to arouse the interest of the public, bankers, and members of Congress in the advantages that would ultimately be reaped by the country as a whole in getting more money into circulation through the medium of postal savings.
One of the things that interested me most was the operations of the foreign mail, conducted through the Universal Postal Union, and based upon mutual agreement and mutual service. We sought to make the Postal Union the best possible agency in the promotion of international comity and understanding, since through it are concluded the agreements regulating rates for the exchange of foreign mails.
During 1 92 1 parcel post conventions were concluded with Spain, Indo-China, Persia, the Straits Settlements, French Cameroons, Latvia, Finland, Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, and the Fiji Islands. Parcel post service was also resumed with Germany, Austria, and Hungary. In September, service to Russia via England was inaugurated.
Sea postal service, interrupted by the war, was resumed on June 26, 1 92 1, when the steamship America departed from New York to Plymouth, Cherbourg, and Bremen. This service, established on nine vessels