Bloomberg's Leonard on New Book, 'Neither Snow Nor Rain'(Audio)

the combined retail outlets of McDonald's, Starbucks, and Walmart. We're gonna talk to the author of a new book neither snow now a rain, Devin Leonard. He'll be joining us right now. Let's go to Catherine Cowdy in the Bloomberg newsroom for a Bloomberg business flash. Thank you, Pam and Bloomberg. Taking Stock is brought to you by s c I. In the future, the asset management business will be profoundly different.

Find out how SEIS Global Operating Platform can help you navigate the new operational frontier at se i C dot com. Slash imagine well. The stock market is clawing back some of the ground at lost last week. The benchmarks are advancing, helped by games and banks and consumer discretionary companies. Traders have lowered their expectations for higher interest rates in June

after day to show manufacturing slowed last month. Tom lee Had of research at fund Strat Global Advisor says the SMP five foundered can still post double digit games this year. Click economic data has improved um. The technicals are certainly a lot stronger, but I think the hyably the single easiest thing to focus on is is how good conditions are in credit markets. Uh, you know, high yields on track to have a double duty here, and I think

that's all equity investors need to know. Stocks basically followed. We tag the markets every fifteen minutes throughout the trading day. Down industrial average is up one points the game of six ten seven percent, trading at seventeen thousand, eight D two smps I found it up fourteen point seven tenths of a percent to two thousand seventy nine. The Nazak is up thirty two points two thirds of a percent, trading at forty eight oh seven less Texas in do

we need of crude oil? Down a dollar eighteen a barrel two point six percent to forty four seventy four. SPI gold is up sixty cents announced to twelve nine, and the Tenure Treasury is down eight thirty seconds, with the YELD at one point eight six percent. Among today's top business stories, constructions spending increased in March to its highest level in more than eight years. Games in home building and non residential construction offset a drop in government projects.

The Commerce Department reported construction spending increased three tens of a percent in March after a one percent increase in February. And now let's get an update of some of the other stories were following today on Bloomberg Radio. Catherine, thank you from the Bloomberg News roommin Mark Crumpton. This news update is brought to you by Mercedes Ben's outstanding offers are in full bloom at your Mercedes Benz Tri State dealers take advantage of limited time lease and finance programs

on select models this spring season. Visit m b usa dot com for details. Today, campaigning in Indiana ahead of tomorrow's primary, Democrat Bernie Sanders is making it clear he's trying to persuade the party's so called super delegates to switch allegiances. He told supporters in Evansville, Beating the Republican

Party has to be the priority. The point that we're gonna make to the super delegates in an area where Hillary Clinton and I agree, and that is, it will be a tragedy for this country if we end up with a Donald Trump or some other Republican of the White House. Mr Trump is once again leveling charges that his party is working to block his nomination. The bosses are trying to run it. You know, it's a Ridge party. It's a whole rigs situation. The bosses like an Arizona

the busses. I win Arizona in a landslot. I beat Pruce so badly it's almost ridiculous. And then the bosses have delegates to have a delicate, a crooked delegate system where the going and may try and get delegate so they can play games. New York Senator Chuck Schumer is calling for federal probe into an outdoor advertising company's latest effort to target billboard ads to specific consumers. Schumer is dubbed Clear Channel outdoor Americans so called radar programs spying

billboards wanting the service may violate privacy rights. Global News twenty four hours a day, powered by our two hundred journalists in more than one hundred fifty news bureaus around the world from the Bloomberg News Room by Mark Crumpton. Katherine, Thank you. Now, let's get a quick update of the equity benchmark Stale Industrial averages up one hundred three points at seventeen thousand, eight hundred seventy six. Smp F I

founded up fourteen points to two thousand, seventy nine. NASDAC higher by thirty points, is trading at forty eight oh five. And that's a Bloomberg Business flash. You're listening to taking stock with pim Box at Kathleen Hayes on Bloomberg Radio. The US Postal Service, it is much maligned, but yet it does deliver of the world's total mail volume. And if you rely on Amazon to purchase your goods, chances are the US Postal Service has a hand in getting

them to your door. Here to tell us everything about the US Postal Services Devin Leonard, reporter for Bloomberg Business Week, and he's here to tell us about his new book entitled Neither Snow nor Rain. A landmark century spanning social, political, and economic history of the United States Post Office. Devin, always a pleasure. Thanks for coming out, Thank you, and congratulations on the book. Thanks well, well, you know, it came out of an article that I wrote for bloomber

Business Week in two thousand and eleven. It was a cover story called the End of Mail, and that got a ton of response, and it led led to doing this book, which is, I guess, not just the end of mail, but the beginning of mail too. It goes on the way back to the ancient Abyssinians and uh, you know, two thousand BCS. So I was gonna make you say a motto, I guess of letter carriers everywhere, you know, neither ring nor snow, nor gloom of night

and so on. But tell us a little bit about your researches for the book, and then we'll get into some of the things you found out. Well, it was really, really fascinating. I I and I spent a lot of time talking to former postmaster generals um and I spent a bunch of time in Washington. I went out to Detroit and looked at the archives with the National Letter Carriers Association, you know, the union for the letter carriers

and also the postal workers side the clerks union. I guess they have a big archive in New York too that I sent her researcher too was actually my son who did a lot of work on this too. But it's just there's a lot of reading, a lot of talking, a lot of studying, and the whole thing is pretty fascinating. And you went into the back rooms of a lot

of the postal service operations. Correct, yes, I have. I wish I could go to go to even more, but I've been to a bunch of them in New York and it's and and it's just really interesting because what everybody tells you it is, you know, is that you have all these letter carriers pointing to these stacks of mail, and they're just saying they used to be three or four or five times is higher, and and everybody's walking around with much less mail in their bags, and and

it's you know, it's it's it's disappearing, even though there's they're still they still delivered. I guess a hundred and fifty four billion pieces. That's down from uh two hundred and thirteen billion just a decade ago. So um, so you know, the future of the postal services kind of uh, in in doubt, in jeopardy. So now there are people I don't know any of them, but I do know people that they love to sort of heap abuse on the US Postal Service. Tell us a little bit about this.

In some words, just lumbering bureaucracy. But you say it's not, it's it's efficient. Well, it depends on how you want to look at it. I mean, clearly, clearly they are lumbering sometimes, but they deliver more mail per employee than any other postals, you know, postal service in the world.

So if you just look at efficiency, you know, you know, measured in in that way, there by far and away the most efficient postal service in the world are and in history, paying for your mail to be delivered has changed since the postal service began. Tell us a little history about the stamps and the postal service. No, I think that's one of the things that that I was fascinated by. You know what sort of led me want to write the book was that Pete, there was no

home delivery for a long time. Everybody had to go to the post office to get them. Imagine what the lines were like then. I mean they're not so that, you know, they're pretty long now. But there's no home delivery, I guess, are very limited home delivery until the Civil War when Abraham Lincoln's Postmaster General, Montgomery Blair, he saw all these women, wives and girlfriends of soldiers just waiting and waiting for the post office for letters to come,

and he just thought that that was wrong. So he started city delivery. And then and then John Wanamaker towards the end of the nineteenth century started pushing for rural free delivery, and and and that that uh that passed about a decade after you left. But but I guess all of those things are are relatively new, especially especially

free rural delivery. For the longest time, people in uralaries still had to go to the post office even when there was home delivery in cities now, postal carriers used to make multiple deliveries a day. You say that in some places seven times a day, well, and there was there was at least twice a day delivery until uh nine, So for so from for most of the postal service history there were multiple deliveries a day. And in places like New York that you know there were as many

as as seven deliveries. So no, it's just incredible. You just saw your your your mailman all the time, and you could send a letter in the morning and get a response in the afternoon. So who need the email? By law? You say, the US Postal Service has to visit every address in the country six days a week. Is that under threat? Well, it's under threat. It's sort of unsustainable because the problem is that the amount of mail is going down, but the number of addresses goes up.

There are a million new addresses every year every time there's another housing development, and you know, that's a bunch of new mailboxes. So that's that's going to kill the Postal Service unless they unless they change they changed their business model, and they've been trying to do it, but Congressman left and so I just stand also that people trusted the postal Service so much that they actually sent their children through the postal system. I know that blows

everybody's mind. No, I mean this was after after the Postal Service began delivering parcels, and that was in Uh. People just started sending all sorts of things to the mail just to see sort of you know, what they get away with. And there's some famous cases. A famous case in Idaho where the family sent there their young

daughter May May Piersdorff was it was her name. Rather than buying a train ticket for it to go visit her grandmother, they went to the post office and paid fifty three cents uh to send her to sender in the mail the post the postmaster actually put the put the stance on her coat. They put on the train, and they took her to see her grandmother. And there you go, there you go. Devin Leonard, the author of the new book Neither Snow nor Rain, a History of

the United States Postal Service. Bloomber Taking stock is brought to you by Sector spider ets. Why by a single stock when you could invest in the entire sector. Visit sector spdrs dot com or call one eight six six sector et f