The Sunday tatler and Jersey City express. (Jersey City, N.J.) 1883-1886, 1886-08-08
A LETTER CARRIERS LIFE.
NoT HALF SO DELIGH1FUE AS IT
SEEMS 70 BE.

Half the Time under Suspicion, and as
Badly Beset by Spies ms the Horse
Car C0nductor-The Inside Stories of
some Recent Thefts MT the Post Oflce.
ssI don't know what changes the new adj
ministration may make at the post Office"
said one of the letter-carriers to TATTLER
a dav or two ago shut do know that the
letter-carrier has no sinecure. In the
first place, we are obliged to give 1900
bonds for the faithful discharge of our
duties. Weare required, too, to report
from our rounds at given times, with all
our route served, no matter how large the
mail with which We start out may be.
Every point has got to be covered and
every letter delivered. 1t is not an IN
usual thing for me to 60 out with 800
letters in my bag, and about twice week
/ am condemned to have seventy-fve
pounds of newspapers tied around nay
neck for delivery. Can / carry them?
Well, l have to, and that's all there is
about it. Then if anything goes wrong,
the whole Office is put under suspicion at
once. You remember the case of Freytag,
who cleaned cut the valuable letters sent
to big firms He was in State prison for
his crime. That fellow was put to the
duty of asserting the mail for the carriers.
He had box into which letters for his route
were thrown. Whenever he struck let
ter that he thought had money in, he'd
just throw it into his box. No one could
tell whether he was putting only
his own route letters in the box or
not, and SO he had chance to
throw the valuable missives for points
in other routes with his. He would
never fail to deliver the valuable letters to
places on his own 1oute. He stole all the
valuable letters he could from the routes
of other carriers. The result of it all was
that all the carriers were dogged,around by
spies and detectives. Finally his methods
were found out and he was seized. On an
other occasion when letters were missed it
seemed impossible to find out who took
them. Holes were bored through the
floor of the rooms overhead and the men
were watched while at work through them.
Finally one of the young clerks was seen
to take letter into an clubhouse, open it
and take out 50. His arrest followed
promptly. Of course, we were all under
suspicion again till the guilty man was de-
tected. But it is nothing unusual for us
to be under espionage. Way over on West
Side avenue is a letter box that the col
lector is obliged to visit on his usual
rounds. He missed it one morning to
make his time to the Office, and was sur
prised by being taken into custody as soon
as his bag was opened. Billy Cox had
dropped decoy letter into the box that
very morning, and it was not in the luck
less collectors bag. He had to serve q
term for delaying the mail.
"That's enough to show you that the
life of a letter-carrier is not a delightful
one by any means; but it isn't half the
story It is full of discomforts and hard
work. I want to hold my place, of course,
4 because ] have q family to provide for,
but if were single man or had a dollar
in my pocket to go into new field of
enterprise with, you can just bet your bot
tom dollar that wouldn't lead this dogs
life for two days."