THE POST OFFICE: Now Lincoln! Now Bolfvar!

In Sioux Falls, S. Dak., a woman mailed 400 Christmas cards on the day before the fateful Aug. 1 with stickers that read: DO NOT OPEN BEFORE DECEMBER 25. In Chicago somebody mailed a letter with a 3¢ Statue of Liberty stamp plus a penny, stuck to the envelope with Scotch tape. In Brooklyn, N.Y., Lever Bros, finished mailing 3,000,000 soap samples at a rate of 1,000,000 per day, saved $90,000. In Dallas a group of youngsters at the First Methodist Church mailed out their Saturday night program on a thousand 2¢ postcards, saved the church $10. In San Francisco the inscrutable Chinese lined up at post office windows on Clay Street—"China Station"—there started an inscrutable run on 3¢ stamps that would, on fateful Aug. 1, become as rare as the 5¢ phone call, the 10¢ hamburger, the 50¢ haircut and, for that matter, the fine 5¢ cigar.*

Thus last week the U.S., in a mixed-up, 20%-above-normal, Christmas-like post office rush, anticipated the increase of postal rates from 3¢ to 4¢ (lavender-colored Lincolns or gold-colored Bolivars) for first-class letters, from 2¢ to 3¢ for postcards, from 6¢: to 7¢ for domestic airmail. Richer by $450 million revenue, Postmaster General Summerfield rosily called it "the beginning of the greatest period of postal progress in American history." Epilogue to an era, in the letters-to-the-editor column of the Chicago Daily News: "I have nothing to say, but I thought I'd just write one more letter to the editor before the Republican-economy 4¢ postage goes into effect."