This 1948 forum edition (meaning it was made for educational and library use) of The March Of Time gives viewers a look at the late-1940s U.S. Postal Service, including great footage of postal operations at the New York City Post Office, delivery methods of post and parcel, and a look at two reenactments of real mail-tampering cases investigated by the office of the Chief Post Office Inspector. The film opens with men and women buying stamps and mailing letters the New York City Post Office. Postal employees sort letters as they fall down from a chute. A mailman grabs mail out of boxes as he prepares to go on his route (02:11). Men throw mail on a conveyer belt (02:35), and another employee puts a cannister into a pneumatic tube. The film shows the map of underground pneumatic tubes used by the Postal Service in Manhattan. A man weighs a package for shipping (03:00). In a warehouse, men sort through and move packages, tossing them into various bins. Men put sacks of post into a truck. A man hangs a mail sack on a train route (04:04), which the train catches as it flies past. Inside a train mail car, men sort mail. A similar scene is shown, but this time the postal service employees are inside a postal bus (04:44). Men load air mail into a plane (05:03). A helicopter takes off and flies mail to what appears to be the Los Angeles Terminal Annex next to the L.A. Union Passenger Depot. There are shots of packages and letters addressed to overseas locations (06:20). A man cranks the engine on an old postal truck. Postmaster General Jesse M. Donaldson meets with officials in his office to discuss his department’s growing deficit (07:17). There is the shot of the front exterior of a large Post Office department building (07:48). The film shows viewers a shot of postal employees from an observation slit used by Post Office Inspector’s department to monitor employees (08:20). Chief Post Office Inspector James J. Doran sits in his office. The film then shows the reenactment of a postal train thief (Emmerson Daiker?) as he steals mail while aboard a mail car (08:58); two agents from the Inspector’s office catch the thief and arrest him. This is followed by a reenactment of the case of mail bomber Edward P. Bradshaw. A car drives up to the post office in Wilton Center, CN (11:30); a woman retrieves a heavy package, which late explodes on the lap of her husband. In the office of the Chief Inspector, men examine the remains of the package. There is a shot of Providence, RI (13:13), and the film shows investigators speaking to a mail clerk, talking with a man selling ACME batteries, and of police marching Bradshaw into the Inspector’s office. A mailman leaves a post office with a bundle of letters and then walks through a residential area delivering mail (16:02). A rural post carrier grabs a bundle of letters and a box of chicks that he takes out to deliver (16:43). A mother balances packages at a mail drop box as she tries to drop off a letter on behalf of her daughter (17:28). The film concludes with a shot of mailmen walking down the steps of the New York City Post Office on their way to their mail routes (17:58).

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