The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1897-07-03
Daily T. Ea9le
NJ. M MURDOCH. Editor.
THAT HUMBUG FAST MAIL.

The Topeka Journal and the Hutch
inSon News both roast the alleged fast
mail in a telling way. The Eagle would
add that it is a swindle conceived in the
background and born of a deal IL
was designed to help two Missouri
morning papers TO the detriment or
evening papers, and all at the expense
of the government 1t does not 10 the
slightest degree benefit the people Oh
kansas, or any portion OF them, pul
disgusts every man who has not m
ger in the pie. 1t starts at an unheafd-
of ho,rr and runs nowhere. In order TO
screen themselves with a seeming ex-
cuse. the mail officials propose to take
I'D a midnight collection OF mail al
Kansas City, all the regular mail trains
having been dispatched by 10 o'clock.
Who in Kansas City is going to stay up
10 write letters between 10 o'clock and
midnight? Why not make the collec-
ton at o'clock in the morning, the
hour the fast mail starts? Whole regl-
ments of Kansas City men are so press
ed with business that they can find no
time to write letters till after midnight.
But then, how their letters will be eX-
pedited until they have reached New
ton, two hundred miles west, out on the
prairie, where they will have TO lie over
until some train comes along. picks
them I'D and carries them to their des-
tination. Yet the second assistant post
master general, in replying to letter
of protest from a prominent South Kan
sas man, says Its business. We
should think so, but business for
whom? The train only makes three or
four stops in the two hundred miles,
and when it finally stops for good that
is all there is of il, for it has no mails
to deliver, and if it had, there are no
mail trains by which they could be for
warded. There will be few copies OF
the half baked midnight editions OF two
of the poorest newspapers printed III
kansas City, which will have to wait
till the sv sllng trairs CONT along i'e-
fore they can go forward. But tie
waiting won't hurt them. There will
be nothing in them that the people
hadn't already read in the columns Of
the Eagle, or in the evening papers Of
the night previous. 1t was said, or
claimed, that the regular trains into
South Kansas, into Oklahoma, and into
western Kansas. would be held until
this bastard squirt could overtake them.
If that had been done, or if it is at
tempted hereafter, the authorities at
Washington viii hear from a half mill
ion of people in way that may induce
them td study map of this country, its
mail schemes and schedules. One Of
the oldest officials connected with the
mail service of the west remarked but
yesterday that the so-called fast mail
was simply an unvarnished outrage,
which could not be satisfactorily ex-
planned to the public. That expedited
train will expedite nothing unless it be
the waking hour OF the occupants of
the hencoOpS and pig pens Ell route.
The farmers and the business men liv-
ing along the only portion of the line
'expedited' are not going to get out of
bed To see train go by which stops
neither to throw of nor take on any
mail. The only single instance in
which anybody will be benefited will
be in the delivery of the seventeen
copies of the X. c. Times the Journal
and the Topeka Capital, combined, and
all told, taken at this point This as
Bortment of seventeen papers by COM
ing down on the Frisco train from
Newton can reach Wichita at 1910 in
stead of 1920 by the Missouri Pacific.
as heretofore. AS for the people of
Newton, the point to which this fast
mail is expedited, they can have the
Eagle containing the full Associated
Press reports at $50 a. m, an hour and
q half before the fast mail arrives at
that point All this costs the govern
ment but $500 per day, or from ten to
fifteen cents for every copy of the news
papers expedited All this may be bust
ness, as the second assistant postmaster
general writes. but he will find that it
isn't politics, nor good sense nor fair
dealing.