THE 40-HOUR WEEK

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 51, Issue 3139, 13 July 1942, Page 6

THE 40-HOUR WEEK

NOT FOR EBEN. HAZARD RAN U.S.A. POST OFFICE COULD NOT AFFORD A CLERK

In these days of nationwide discussion about the 40-hour week and overtime pay on Government projects, it is interesting to consider the case of Ebenezer Hazard, who was in the Government’s service at the close of the Revolutionary War. He likely will go down in history as the original “nothing to do ’til to-morrow” man. He ran the U.S. Post Office 'Department alone, because his salary didn’t warrant his keeping a clerk, states the Christian Science Monitor.

Before he became the first Secretary of the Insurance Company of North America, which is this year observing its 150th. Anniversary, Hazard was Postmaster-General in Washington’s Cabinet. In the company’s archives is a copy of a letter he wrote to President Washington, under date ■o.f September 21, 1789, when Philadelphia was the capital of the United States. The letter, asking for “more assistance,” follows: “Dear Sir, Though I have made repeated applications for more assistance, and so clearly pointed out the necessity there was for it that a Committee of Congress reported in favour of its being allowed, I have been left to encounter the whole business of the Department almost alone. . . . besides the general superintendance of fifteen hundred miles, exclusive of post roads, I have had. to maintain a very burdensome correspondence: to examine the quarterly returns from all the eastern offices; to enter all the accounts; to keep the books of the Department (which since my appointment has been in double entry); to make communications to Congress and Committees, which have frequently required lengthy and tedious calculations; to form and enter into contracts and pay the contractors quarterly; to inspect the dead letters, and to do the business out of doors as well as within. My own attention has been so frequently necessary that I have not had time for proper relaxation, and in three years past have not been to the distance of ten miles from this city. I once hired a clerk, but found, my salary was not equal to that expense in addition to the support of my family, and was obliged to dismiss him.”

At that time there were 75 post offices in the United States and total postal revenues were $30,000. To-day there are approximately 45,000 ! post offices, doing an annual business in excess of $750,000,00)0.