This From The Post Office: Female Mail Carriers

1916

FEMALE "R. F. D." CARRIERS

It Is Estimated That We Now Have One Hundred and Fifty

The post office department itself is not aware of the actual number of woman carriers in the rural delivery service, but it estimates that there are about 150. This is a very trifling percentage of the total number of carriers, 43,652 in 1914; but it seems safe to say that a high percentage of the romance which the rural delivery service is supposed to contain will be found along these 150 routes.

Possibly, just possibly, these faithful messengers of the government are not much concerned about the romantic side of their calling, the Christian Herald remarks. To them it is doubtless a very business-like proceeding, and they are willing to leave the flowery notions about the work to us who think of the R. F. D. service as symbolized by a placid white horse, a comfortable looking, enclosed and easy-going conveyance and a daily jaunt through leafy lanes and over purling brooks, with occasional stops at cheery farmhouses.

We who are strong in imagination, however, do not trouble to visualize these leafy lanes when the trees are bare, the fences hidden by snow, the brook a winding streak of ice and the farmhouses maddening suggestions of warmth and cheer that rural mail carriers cannot stop to share.