Fourth-Class Postmasters Sometimes
Write Queer Letters, Telling Their
Troubles to the Department.
The eagerness with which fourth-class postmasterships are sought seems
strange when one remembers that the salaries are small and the duties
often exacting. No fourth-class postmaster receives more than a thousand
dollars a year. More than half of them receive less than a hundred dollars
a year; fourteen thousand receive less than fifty dollars a year; and
hundreds of them receive ten or twelve dollars a year.
Henry A. Castle, former auditor for the Post-Office Department, recently
contributed to the _Sunday Magazine_ an article filled with curious
information concerning the fourth-class postmaster and his idiosyncrasies.
Here, for example, is a facetious letter from an Illinois postmaster who
for some time had been vainly trying to resign:
But anyhow, this time I am unanimously through fiddling
about it, and this here 'leventh and last resignation of
mine has got to be accepted, let the chips fall where they
may. Along about four o'clock this afternoon a passel of our
best citizens informed me in no uncertain tones that if I
wasn't up and gone by midnight they 'lowed to tar and
feather and rail-ride me out of our law-abidin' little city,
for a small matter that it ain't necessary for me to go into
details at present; and a spell ago a friend let me know
that they had reconsidered to the extent of decidin' to make
it nine o'clock instead of midnight, and were already
a-bilin' of the tar.
So you can see for yourself that it is high time for me to
step down and out. No more at present from
Yours truly,