The New York train is scheduled to arrive Back Bay Station at 5:30 a.m. where mail trucks from the Cambridge A office take the mail and bring it out to the Central Square building. There it is sorted into the various route categories before being brought over to Cambridge 38, where it is further subdivided into street divisions. These processes take a fair amount of time, and since by postal regulation all postmen must be starting on their routes by 8:40 a.m., a late train often means that no New York mail is delivered in the University until the next day.
In a community such as Harvard this late mail is more serious than it might be in other areas. The Superintendent at the Central Square office points out that for every one Wall Street Journal delivered in his own district (Cambridge 39) four are delivered in the Harvard Square area, and a corresponding figure is shown on several other publications which come daily from New York, with an obvious time value. The problem is a considerable one from both the post office's and the public's point of view, but there appears to be no ready solution which might come about in the next few years. It seems unlikely that the New York, New Haven, and Hartford will change their ways in the near future (the line now blames "inclement weather" for the bulk of its delays), and to start a system of twice-daily deliveries throughout the entire area is not presently feasible, according to Post Office authorities. Though such a plan would get the New York mail out regularly, it would also be quite costly.
Thus, while over the past 150 years snow, rain and heat wave all failed to suppress the swift couriers, the New York, New Haven and Hartford has at least partially succeeded.
Since the University occupies such a prominent position in the delivery program of the Cambridge Post Office, and since the amount of time value mail which comes into the University from outside and which often must wait an extra day for delivery is so great, the question of having a separate federal post office for Harvard has naturally been considered.
The University petitioned the Federal government for such a Harvard branch office in 1951. The government refused, reportedly because the University could not offer the building space which would be needed to have an efficient Harvard postal service. At that time the University felt that the construction of a special building for this purpose would run into too great an expenditure of funds which would be better used elsewhere.
However, if a Harvard postal system were to be set up, it would not necessarily have to be contained in a single unit. At M.I.T. the system is broken down into several small units which serve various parts of the M.I.T. campus. Cambridge 39 brings mail sacks to each of these postal divisions where a clerk sorts it and has it distributed to the offices and dormitories in his particular domain. This has the advantage that regardless of whether or not the mail train is late, delivery of New York and western mail can be always made on the day it arrives in Boston.
No Definite Plans
This plan, however, is one that does not appear to bear very heavily on the near future, and although the postal authorities in this area think that such a system would be a good thing for the University as well as for the post office, they are not including it in any plans for the future. The same thing may be said about the lateness of the mail train; it poses a problem which lies out of the local office's domain and which must be considered as part of a daily routine.
This situation is largely due to the vast bureaucratic structures which gradually spiral down to level of post office such as Cambridge, 38, and which is so tied up with relatively small considerations that any large-scale improvement such as the correction of the existing New York mail situation becomes virtually impossible. A Post office for Harvard University falls victim to the same type of disinterest in any sort of problem which might take an excessive amount of study and consideration. Within this framework the local office is quite helpless.
Cambridge, 38 handles the mail when it comes into its area of action and jurisdiction and rests content to devote its energy to the task of maintaining an efficient postal system on a relatively small scale. If it continues to succed in doing this, it will have done one job well.