Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 54, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 February 1904 — About Rural Routers’ Salaries. [ARTICLE]

About Rural Routers’ Salaries.

The proposed bill raising the salaries of rural route carriers is provoking a good deal of discussion over the country aDd in Congress. The bill now most likely to pass raises their salaries $lO, per monta, or from S6OO to $720, per year. But it also forbids them acting as agents for newspapers, and from noting as messengers and oamers for people along the route. It is said that a good many carriers olaim that the taking away of their earnings from these agency side lines will redooe their net earniDgs as muoh as the $lO per month increases them. Snob however is not the oase with any oarrier out of Rensselaer, nor, as we are confident with any carrier,, who touohes Jasper oounty. We doubt if their gains from these side lines average $25 per year for each man, nor if any of them get more than SSO per year from them And it takes a whole lot of trouble to get that muoh out of these extras. Thus, judging from the experience of carriers near us, it seems evident that they will make a very good trade, when they exehange their side-line profits for .$l2O per year inorease in salary. How the farmers will feel about losing their present privilege of □sing the oarriers as errand boys is another matter. In many oases however the privilege is a great advantage to them. As to how the city newpapers and city mail order boosts feel over the probable loss of the oarriers as soliciting agents, it is dear from the howl they are making that they do not like it even a very little.