The Leon reporter. (Leon, Iowa) 1887-1930, 1906-05-31
TIE FARMERS MAIL

Wonderful Progress of the Rural
Free Delivery. Annual Cost is
So Per Patron.
Chicago, May 24.-Apparently rural
free delivery has reached that stage
where the number of new routes to be
! annually installed will be moderate in
comparison with the past five or six
years. Raymond" writes the Tribune
some interesting facts which portray
the condition of the service at this
time, and the policy of the department
for it's maintenance.
There has been, of course, nothing in
governmental history in recent years
which has been so surprising as the
rapid extension of the rural free deliv-
cry service. 1t has reached point
now where it positively could not be
uprooted without affecting the entire
postal system of the country. Rural
routes everywhere fill the place of cap
ilaries to the great system of veins and
arteries, and these capilaries now could
not be eliminated without something in
the nature of a revolution from people
in the country.
There were in operation on the first
day of May no less than 1886 regularly
equipped rural free delivery routes.
These routes serve approximately, as
shown by the figures submitted to the
| department. 3,1S2,65O families, or 13,474-
O65 individual patrons of the postoffice.
COSTS $500 PER CAPITA.
1t costs great deal of money to do
oil hn
out only little over 81 apiece per an
nun for each of the persons who thus
are given special mail facilities to their
doors. Just how much those people
contribute to the postal service is a
problem yet to be solved, but it is more
or less evident from the abolition of
star routes and Of costly small postof-
fees, that all this extraordinary extern
sion of the postal service into country
districts has been at an extremely small
cost to the general public.
Farmers and country people generally
write more now than they ever did be-
fore. They send away and receive more
letters individually than was the case
ten years ago. Furthermore, the estab-
lishment of the rural service unques-
tionably has stimulated commercial con-
ditions throughout the country. Farm
ers have been extremely prosperous in
the last ten years and instead of putting
their money away in old stockings or
burying it in earthen jars beside the
fireplace, they are learning the use of
articles that once were considered en-
travagant luXuries.
BENEFITS EVERYBODY.
The farmer today has catalogues and
commercial circulars of all kinds brought
to his door. He has money to buy and
is buying. The result is as shown by
the experience of postofIice inspectors
and carriers themselves, that the postal
business along the route starts with the
farmer, is continued by the merchant,
and finally becomes reciprocal, the last
development always being the use of the
mails to forward small articles, which
the farmer did without in the old days
until he could make trip to town to
see the store keeper.
| Aside from the larger returns propor-
tionately from rural free delivery, as
compared with the old fourth-class post
Office, the actual money cost has not
been nearly as great as many people
would imagine. The growth of the rural
service has been almost miraculous. In
1898 the total appropriation was only
$4,000. For the current fiscal year
congress has appropriated S25,S2S,300,
and in the postoffice appropriation bill,
which passed the house last month, the
sum set aside for letter carriers and
clerks IN charge of rural sub-stations
was only S2S,200,000.
The house figures this year therefore
were only approximately S3,000,O00 in
excess of appropriations for the current
fiscal year, showing the service has now
reached a permanent basis, where ex-
tensions can proceed practically in line
with the growth of population and with
out any further abnormal increase in
appropriations.
| WESTERN STATES LEAD.
The states in the northern Mississ-
ippi and Ohio valleys have been the
greatest benefciaries of this new de-
velopment in our governmental
machine. Out of 1896 routes which
were in actual operation on the first
day of this month, no less than 14,O76
were in the states of Illinois, Ohio,
Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and
Minnesota. These seven states, there
fore, have had concentrated within
their borders about 40 per cent of the
whole rural free delivery service.
| L HIS ulSUIlDuUlOu Was uOU ulCUdU0u DY
political, but by Typographical and
population reasons.
The seven states mentioned are pecul-
iarly easy to cover. They are free
from mountain ranges, great forests,
and deserts. They are in sections of
country where the climate is reasonable
and the people progressive. The popu-
lation is dense enough throughout
almost all of these states, with the ex-
ception of a certain fringe of Michigan,
Wisconsin, and Minnesota, to justify
the speedy establishment of complete
county service where it has not already
been put into operation.
MUST BE ENOUGH PATRONS.
Not every rural free delivery route
which is asked for is established. On
the contrary, the records show that up
to this month the department has re-
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