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Show j OUR POSTOFFICE i There is an island in the South l'acific that gets its mail every five years. And it is glad to get it that often. All convenience is relative. Some things I we formerly thought conveniences are now considered more or less as hard ships. The free rural mail delivery system has been a gradual development, but it has been a boon to rural populations and is now a permanent fixture in the life of the people. A few years ago an old nag jogged along from box to box, depositing joys and tears, checks and bills, and now and then a package. In those days 20 or 25 miles was a long day's journey. Hut it was the R. F. D. just the same. Today, instead of jogging with the horse, the rurat carrier jolts by auto, but he makes better time, more trips, and delivers several times more mail matter than formerly. In the future will it be compressed air chutes, airplane, or radio-electric delivery? The government's rural routes are not unchangeable. It is to the interest in-terest of every community to see that its local postoffice has all of the rural i delivery territory to which it is entitled. In the Iot Office Department is a blue-print map of every rural mail route in the country. Each route is J a studied affair. The tendency in establishing these routes, though quiet, has been competitive. Politics may have had something to do with them, but efficiency and the wishes of rural patrons has been the controlling motive in their placement. If a route from some other town or city encroaches territorially upon the area that your postoffice should have, it is your business to cooperate with your local postmaster, and either have another route established from your local postoffice, or add the overlapping area to your existing route or routes. This is done by the petition of the people to be served and by showing show-ing the postoffice department and inspector wherein it would be advan- tageous to make the change. A person usually calls the town from which he gets his mail HIS town. He usually trades there also. Thus it is possible actually to add 50 or 1(H) or even more, people to YOUR community almost overnight and by the stroke of a pen. |