The daily morning journal and courier., 1897-08-20
THRIFTY STAR-ROUTERS

Kentucky Mountaineers Almost Mono-
 polized the Business-They Held EiShty-seven Per Cent. of It-Some Tricks of the Trade"-Men of the Second Generation Who Still Make | Good Incomes.
 | From forty to sixty per cent. of the star mail route business, which costs the government about six million dol lars a year. is held by shreWd con tractors who live In or near the little mountain town of London, the seat of Laurel county, Kentucky. It is like wise not generally known, perhaps that the contracts for carrying the Uni ted States mail through the streets of such cities as Brooklyn, Newark, New Haven, Atlanta Vicksburg, Louisville Detroit, Sacramento, Kansas City Jacksonville, Salt Lake, Milwaukee and so on are also held by citizens of this same little town of twelve hundred in- habitants, which until few years ago was nearly two hundred miles from a railroad.
 | The star routes are those over which the mail is transported by stage line, horseback, afoot or in private convey ance. At the close of the last fiscal year there were nearly twenty-one thousand of these star routes in the United States. The other contracts re- ferred to come under the wagon or screen service, where the contractor transfers the mails from the post of- fees to the railway stations.
 Tn addition to the larger cities al- ,-eaav pa mad London mon hold con- tracts for the cities of Lewiston, Springfield, Mass; Bridgeport, Harris burg, Dubuque, Norfolk, Montgomery Knoxville, Mobile, Selma, Vicksburg, Canton, Bloomington, Little Rock, Wichita, Charleston, and many others scattered throughout the entire coun- try. The London star reuters do a more general business. holding thou- sands of contracts in every state in the Union. from Maine to California, and from Michigan to Louisiana.
 The history and operations of the mountain combine which shortly after the war actually held S7 per cent. ot the star route contracts of the country are interesting. Some members of the company frequently made more money | year in and year out, than the Presi- 1 dent was paid, and a number of them are numbered now among the rich mer of Kentucky. Leading pioneers in tht industry were ex-Congressman Frank | Finley, now living at ease in a beauti. ful home at Williamsburg, Ky; Judge Vincent Boreing of London, also ex. tremely wealthy and a prospective candidate to succeed Congressman D | I T,,J Dn1, nf 1 don, one of the richest men in Ken
 lucky, and the Hon. R. D. Hill one O
 the formidable applicants for the DO
 sition of United States district attor
 ney under President Mckinley. O
 these, Judge Boreing Is still largely in
 terested in mail routes. Tn the young
 CT ration-worthy chips from tht | old blocks-are ey-State Senator Et Parker, who ran up against the Platt
 Quay combine as a candidate for ser
 geant- at-arms; w. B. Catching, w H. Steele, P. F. Stillings, J. c. Johnson H. P. Brown J. L. Yaden, J. M. Bore Ing and E. A. Chiffon, all of London
 The heavy operations of the olt
 timers began with the organization O
 the Southern Mail and Transporta
 ton Co.," made up principally of Lon
 don and Williamsburg men, This wa
 just at the close of the war Prior tt
 that time Judge Finley and a few oth
 CT individuals had handled small stal routes here and there with good sue cess, and recognizing the extraordinary possibilities of the business, organized to carry out a scheme of huge propor
 tions. Their intentions were no les
 than to bid for the entire lot of con I tracts, sublet them to second parties 1 let the sub-contractors do the hare work and the members of the compa
 ny draw the surplus, which was to b. in fancy figures. The United States was divided into four postal districts as it is to-day and the star route con
 tracts for the four districts were madt to run for four years, expiring alter
 nately, so that bids for one of the foul
 would be taken every year.
 The Southern Mail and Transports
 tion Co.,, having carefully investigated | the cost of carrying the routes in vari
 ous sections of the country went into
 business with bold front. The com
 pany bid on every star route in { quarter section of the country. Tht bids were not made as a company bu l by a series of firms. Smith & lone: would bid on 8, lot of routes, Brown S Bender on a lot, and so on, all bids however, under one general manage
 ment The reason for this is unique If the government awarded route fol four years for ten thousand dollars, thu contractor had to make bond goot for double that sum to the government Had the Southern Mail and Transpor
 tation Co.,, as body, secured one mil
 lion dollars worth of contracts, i
 could not probably have made bonds good for two million dollars; but 1
 Smith & Jones made a twenty thou
 sand dollar contract, their friend
 Brown & Bender would go on thei
 bonds, and when Brown & Bende
 made a similar contract, their friends
 Smith & Jones would be their bonds
 men. By this scientific method O
 see-sawing an aggregate capital O