Show R 0 B B own BT rs a A mob ri TOD I 1 SD W 2 0 YOU WANT 1000 1000 if so BO just ejust catch a railway niall mall robber uncle sam will pay you that lauch for him this boang a standing offer offen which tho the post postoffice office dep a rt in e n t makes for the capture of anybody who ventures to pillage a train that la Is carrying tho the malls mails train robbing la is the most distinctively american of all professions it is likewise tho the most perilous bar nono none ono one of the most recent exam ples pies was the holding aup of the overland limited bound from san francisco to chicago endpoints and points east it was halted baited at midnight by a red lantern placed in the middle of the track three miles west 0 of f omaha and the mall mail car was plundered seven pouches of registered letters and packages wag being thrown out and rifled the flying squadron ot of detectives with headquarters at af oma ba got after the robbers so quick that the latter were actually unable to make their escape from the city As slated by the corps of professional bandit hunters under chief W P canada they captured every one a 0 the holdup men to the number of five within a week illustrating the fact that the days of train robbing as a safo andrasy and easy method of acquiring wealth are past the government will spend unlimited money to catch such outlaws and the railroads offer additional rewards tor for their seizure alive or dead doad pursuit of them nearly always a winds up with a desperate tight and the shooting is to kill chief canada has under him eight men all of them dead shots with rifle or pistol pastol they travel in a special car of extra length halt of which is occupied by stalls for nine horses arrangements are such that they can be on their way to the scene of a train robbery within thirty minutes after news of it has been received arriving there with fresh horses they can telegraph tor for relay mounts as they are needed two of the men being expert operators who can easily climb a pole with a portable instrument they know how bow to follow a trail that no ordinary person could distinguish and final escape for the bandits Is almost out of the question train robbers have grown much bolder within r ebent years formerly they plied piled their highly stimulating vocation in remote and isolated parts of the country nowadays they do not hesitate to operate in densely populated ed districts and near the largest cities not long ago a train was held up near benicia Be nicla cal and the mall mail rifled A gang of nine men conducted the affair and all of them were captured and sent bent to prison five of them for life and the others for terms of fifteen years to forty five alva years thus the adoption of measures sternly t repressive the POst postoffice office department part ment Is enabled to prevent the robbing of mall mail trains from becoming more popular as a form of industry though on an average half a dozen instances of such outlawry occur every year but there Is another kind hind at af criminal enterprise which has shown a tendency to increase alarmingly and with which shiell tho the authorities find it difficult to deal thiis Is the pillaging of Post offices by professional thieves the extent of the business being indicated by the fact that during last year nearly 2000 were burgled this seems to be under present conditions dit ions a fairly profitable species of crime posto alices are easily entered at night and there is usually a safo safe on the premises which containing as it does the stock of stamps atar rips and a sum bum of money representing postal funds may be expected to yield anywhere from a fe few w hundred to several thousand dollars not long ago the postoffice Post office at south bend ind was burglarized and in stamps and cash was taken during the sa same in e twelvemonth the postoffice Post office at daytona pla fla yielded loot to the extent of and was stolen from the Post at santa cruz cal the robbing of lpes is today a well organized industry conducted by tramp thieves of desperate character who call them themselves men these have practically superseded the old time safe blowers formerly the blowing of safes was done by a few skillful expert mechanics who carried high class tools and knew just where to drill ILI the lock in order to break it or where to insert 6 V 0 f s an explosive but th the practice much simpler methods provided with no apparatus except a bottle of nitroglycerine a coll coil of fuse and caps they enter the post postoffice office through a door or window with the help of tools stolen perhaps faoro a nearby blacksmiths shop meanwhile two or three men are stationed outside as pickets to give an alarm incase anybody approaches or to shoot it if there Is occasion common barao ap Is used to fill the joints of the safe door and enough nitroglycerine is allowed to percolate in behind this tamping to furnish the requisite explosion then the fuse la is lighted and at a safe distance results are awaited when the safe has been torn open its contents are hasi hastily tily thrown into a sack all registered and ordinary mall mail that happens to be on the premises Is rifled and the thieves make off should they be interrupted they are always ready to kill and usually they escape now and then they have pitched battles with citizens and the latter being unprepared are apt xo to get the wont of iti it I 1 such a job to Is baay nearly always successful and attended by comparatively little risk even it if a postoffice post office robber la Is captured and convicted the maximum penalty under bader the la law is only five years in prison A reward of to is offered in c cases ases i ot of the kind by the government and during the last year thieves of this class were arrested but t alre business sa offers special attractions to criminals of the sort here described and so goes merrily on recently there has been a new and rather startling development of this kind ol of industry the postoffice post office robbers have taken to practicing their profession in automobiles upstate up state in new york they are going from town to town in motor cars stolen of af course and pillaging postoffice post office after postoffice post office in some instances several of them in a night in this way a gang of can easily rifle tile the postal safes la in halt half a dozen or more towns between midnight and daybreak bleeding away thereupon onto to a distance of miles or more from the scene of operations and scattering the car caf la is deft ett behind it Is easy to steal another one when they want it the stamps stolen by the robbers are easily disposed of through a fence in totne botne city who converts them into money by selling them at a discount it Is astonishing say the detectives of the postal service how few questions are aked a ked and how little it takes to satisfy business people of the highest standing that it is proper to buy stamps which are at least under suspicion of having been stolen all stamps look alike and are current everywhere at face value They can not b bo 0 identified as stolen goods in the hands of either thief or receiver one of the most remarkable robberies occurred not long ago aga at richmond va where the post postoffice offIce was entered some time between saturday evening and the following monday morning the vault blown open and in stamps and money two tuo suspicious strangers left the city with levs several ral trunks soon after the burglary and by clever work the government detectives traced these trunks through several cities to new york there they ari arrested ested eddie pay and richard harris notorious men when they called at the railroad station for the trunks which contained burglars tools and a large part of the missing stamps both were sent to prison there was a few years ago in oklahoma and indian territory a little company of desperadoes desperado eB known as the bill cook gang which operated with great frankness they would walk into Post offices in the daytime take what money there was on hand band and walk out again As a mode of making a living nothing could be more simple but they did this sort of thing so BO frequently as to exasperate the pos poa tal authorities and as a result special prices were put on their heads every one of them was finally killed or captured and bill got forty five years in what to Is colloquially colloquy bally known as the stone jug street letter boxes are robbed from time to time but this species of depredation Is no longer practiced with nith the of former days the boxes now in use are so ingeniously contrived that it Is hardly possible to fish letters out of them either with a crooked piece of wire or by means of a string with a sticky disc of leather on the end both of these being methods anciently employed there remains however the expedient of opening the box with a false key all atthe letter boxes in any given city havelocke have locks exactly alike and may be opened with one key this as one easily sees to Is necessary inasmuch as a single postman may have to visit and make collections from or more widely scattered receptacles it follows then that a thief if he possesses a copy of the key has all the boxes at his mercy and this la Is not hard to obtain by ming filing off and removing one of the padlocks among criminals there are many clever lock smiths fifteen years ago there was much I 1 robbing orletter of letter boxes by thieves who worked in gangs covering up their tracks aracka with remarkable cleverness their operations were so BO extensive that the post postoffice office department made trials of many kinds of locks some of which cost as much as 5 each those now in use cost only 40 cents apiece wholesale for the authorities have made up their minds that a burglarproof mall mail box Is an impossibility |