Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 August 1885 — REFUSED TO CARRY THE MAIL. [ARTICLE]

REFUSED TO CARRY THE MAIL.

The Pacific Mail Company Defies Uncle Sain. (Washington telegram.] The Postoffice Department is in receipt of information that to-day an agent of the department attempted to sail on a Pacific Mail steamer from San Francisco for ports on the west coist of Mexico aud Central America, taking with him a trunk, for •which he offered to pay the regular charge for extra biggage. The postal officials in San Francisco presumably are too familiar with the Pacific Mail Company's officials, for the purser on the steamer had information that the trunk contained the usual mail matter for Mexico and Central America, and he promptly refused to accept pay for the trunk or permit it to be put on board the steamer. The mail was then ordered to be sent by rail from San Francisco to New Orleans, and thence by steamer to Mexican and Central American ports. By this route mail sent from San Francisco will reach ports on the east side of Mexico and Central America in twelve days. The Pacific mail from San Francisco to ports on the Western coast is nineteen days, so that a week will be saved in the new route. On the Ist of April it ceased to be compulsory with American steamers to carry the mails, but it ban not be pretended that this change of the law relieves the steamship companies from any of the obligation of common carriers. They have a regular published tariff of charges on freight of different classes and on extra baggage, and it is cerlainly an extraordinary proposition that they can discriminate against United States mail matter when packed in a trunk, and taken with, him by one of the passengers.