Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 300, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 December 1915 — Points Out Inequalities of Uncle Sam’s Mail Service. [ARTICLE]

Points Out Inequalities of Uncle Sam’s Mail Service.

Brother Logan, of The Goodland Herald, points out some unreasonable and unfair things in connection with the government’s plan of getting mail to citizen® who are differently situated. His discussion is timely and very proper. The postoffice department is a sort of law unto itself and every postmaster-general who is placed at the helm tries to make reforms that will popularize him. The plans all seem to be at the expenes of the residents of cities and .towns that are too small for free distribution of the mails. • . In all the large cities and in most places of 5,000 people or more there are plans for free mail distribution, the deliveries being from- once to a half dozen times a day. Also in the country there is free distribution of mail, provision being made for parcels post deliveries and collections. The cities and the country favored with free deliveries get them absolutely without cost, but persons who live in the small cities and towns who have to go to the postoffice for their mail are required to pay for the privilege and if they accommodate the postmaster by haring a box they lessen his work and while getting a little more prompt service themselves they pay well for it. Time was a few years ago when a person who had a call box paid 25 cents a quarter for it. The price has been pushed up by steady stages until it reached 45 cents and now an order has been issued increasing the rate to 60 cents a quarter or $2.40 per year. Persons with the lock boxes and drawers pay more. While the -sums they pay will not in the aggregate go very far toward the great expense of carrying the mails, the injustice of the plan is very plain. All who have their mails delivered are exempt from paying and all who have to go to the office after their mails have to pay. Editor Logan thinks that the injustice could be corrected by declining to rent the boxes, but The Republican is not much in sympathy with any plan of boycott. A belter method, it would seem, would be to petition members of congress, pointing out the inequality. 'Surely none can fail to see that the plan is unfair and should demand correction. Whether t be for free mail boxes or for some expense to those who now get their mails free, in order to proportion the expense, we do not know, but it is a topic worth consideration by the law