The United States Post Office, Incorporated: A Blueprint for Reform

For several generations, the United States Post Office has been the textbook demonstration of the inefficiency of the government in business. To some, the solution to its problems lies only in turning over its functions to free enterprise. A more constructive and politic approach is to inquire whether a structural arrangement falling somewhere between that of a governmental department and that of a privately owned business would permit the Post Office to achieve some of the efficiencies of private enterprise without compromising the most essential elements of public responsibility. This approach has been given new timeliness by the proposal of Postmaster General O’Brien to convert the Post Office into a public corporation.