The Southern Press

Mail Mismanagements—Screws Loose Somewhere.

We conceive it to be a hard case enough that the Postmaster General should, in defiance of law and equity, deprive us of our due in the printing at his disposal. But it is harder still that we should be made to suffer additional losses by the miserable mismanagement of his department, on which the seal of his incapacity has stamped itself in unmistakable characters.

Every mail brings us from every quarter complaints of the vexatious delays to which our subscribers are subjected; and in numerous instances the irregularities of the receipt and the circuitous route by which they come, fasten the blame on the post office. From our exchanges of all parties, rises the same complaint, for it bears heavily on the press, punctuality in the receipt of which is all important. To country subscribers especially, who get the news but once a week, this is a nuisance past enduring. And they are very apt, in their indignation, to visit the sins of the post office on the unfortunate publisher.

We have lost some subscribers from this cause, and this alone; and numerous others have written us on the subject, making complaints, but declaring that they would take the paper even in spite of the delays and difficulties attending its receipt. This blundering with the newspaper mails was bad, but complaints now have broken out in a new department of that service.

The following letter, from a highly respectable source, is but one of many received from the South. It was sent with the request for publication.

We have repeatedly been written to by our subscribers, urging us to expose the deliberate suppression of the Southern Press, or its stoppage in transitu, which they said they could prove, and were well satisfied of. But we have foreborne, because we did not desire to throw an imputation on a class of men, most of whom are above the suspicion of such scoundrelism.

We are loath to believe it now. But whether the thing arises from incompetency, ignorance or knavery, it should be rectified; or the Postmaster General resign an office he is unfit to fill.

We believe the fault to be in the head, more than in the members.