Ottumwa semi-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1899-1903, 1899-11-14
Features OF Assistant Postmaster
General Heath's Report
SUCCESS OF THE HEDRICK ROUTE.
many Application. for Postal wagon
Service-Opposition Found to Have
Originated in Country Stores
Farmers Enthusiasfic.

iNots lu.--1AlhouS tuC lI-
teresting feature of the first assistant
postmaster generals annual report is
a statement that one Missouri farmer
calculates that in the last fifteen years
he has walked or driven $4,000 miles,
going to and from his postotfice to get
his mails, all of which travel is now
saved him by rural free delivery.
At one point on rural route No. l.,
twelve miles northwest of Lafayette,
Ind, there are eight boxes grouped to-
getherf
At Charlottesville, Ind, the rural car
riers also wear the regulation uniform,
and on each of the five routes a deliv-
cry wagon, provided by the carrier
himself, similar in construction to those
at Lafayette, are used.
At Hedrick, Ia, where the service. has
only been started about three months,
the mail carrier has had handsome
delivery wagon, specially built, with
side doors, pigeon holes and other ap-
pliances.
In speaking of the objections to rural
delivery from some quarters, Mr.. Heath
says:
''In the objections they urge the argu-
ment is seldom advanced, or if adj
vanced is never sustained, that the new
service is inferior to the old, or that it
is not desired by the people who had
petitioned for it. The complaints al
most invariably run in one group, as
sorting that rural free delivery, takes
patronage from the postmaster-mer-
chant, and that it deprives the post
master of postal receipts which he
would be entitled under the law to
retain, as his personal compensation,
those receipts, under the rural free de-
livery system, now;going into the treas
Jury of the United States to the credit
of the general postal revenues.
Occasionally petitions are presented
of persons alleged to be aggrieved, ask
ing the re-establishmept of postoffices
which. have been discontinued because
OF rural service, but when these petit
tions have been investigated, it has al
most invariably been found that the
signatures were either Obtained under
Misrepresentation or they We're APP
pended as an act OF neighborly courte-
sy, without any idea that they would
be effective. One petition was carefully
scrutinized, name by name, and it was
found that all the signatures except
: three were those of persons living out
side the delivery, and that the three
that remained were those of lands be-
longing to village band, of which the
village postmaster was the leader;
"In another case, where most for
midable looking petition was
presented from an Indiana town
categorical inquiries We're adj
dressed to all the petitioners
asking: DO you want the postoffice
re-established, or do you want rural
free delivery yourselves?' The replies
were almost unanimous that they want.
ed rural free delivery themselves. Thus
in reality, the alleged protest was no,
a protest, but a petition for an extern
sion of rural free delivery so as to take
in the residences of the remonstrants.'
Touching on the conflict with star
route contractors, Mr.. Heath recon-
mends that section 466 of the postal
laws and regulation edition Of 1899
which forbids mail contractors and
their drivers access to any mail matter
in postoffices or to any mail locks OF
keys, be modified SO as to permit star
route messengers, under special APP.
pointment and oath, to perform ruraI
free delivery service. Then it will be
possible for provision to be inserted
In star mail transportation contracts
whereby the department may require
rural free delivery service to be rem
dered when it does not conflict with
the regular transportation, the service
to be performed with or without extra
compensation,