Post Office Improvements.

The accompanying petition is submitted to the attention of officers and students of the University. Forming as they do, a large group of the patrons of the Cambridge Post Office, they cannot but be directly interested in the efficiency of the postal service here; and their influence with the authorities in the prosecution of needed improvements in this office should therefore be considerable.

The facilities of the Cambridge Post Office are at present shamefully deficient; for the quarters now held by the Government, though cramped and insufficient for years, have not been improved or enlarged to an extent which has in any way met the needs of a rapidly increasing business.

The needs of the Post Office can plainly be seen in the following statements, the truth of which any person may ascertain for himself.

1. There is a serious lack of space for delivery windows. On Sunday morning as many as twelve hundred person call for mail and there is a constant line of people waiting to be served. There is so little space that persons waiting at the window used for the delivery of letters and sale of stamps, cannot help being in the way of those who wish to mail letters or to go to the lock-boxes, and vice versa.

2. The lack of room for handling the large and constantly increasing amount of mail matter is very seriously felt; and temporary make-shifts have to be resorted to which are far from meeting the needs of the office.

3. A lack of sufficient clerical force necessitates the constant overwork of the clerks now employed.

4. The sanitary accommodations are badly deficient.

5. The rule forbidding carriers to remain in the office beyond the time required for arranging the letters for their routes, forces those who have not time to go home, either out upon the street, or into the cellar, which is always damp and ill-ventilated and the floor of which is in rainy weather actually covered with water.

6. The lease of the quarters at present occupied expired a year ago and the Government is now a tenant at will. The lessor stands ready to enlarge the office by the addition of an adjoining store, and to make extended improvements in heating and lighting if he can have any assurance that the premises will be leased for a term of years.