Blade and Ledger Agents

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1916

Photos of Bessie Logue, Iowa; Laverna Young, Indiana; Andrew Mausine, Indiana; Embree Thompson, Texas; Will Thompson, New Jersey; Charles Clapper, Indiana.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 11.

Fits Horse With Snowshoes

1919

Mail Carrier Fulfills Contract Despite Heavy Drifts.

VANCOUVER, B. C., Canada. — By fitting his horse with snowshoes, "Ole the Bear" (A. R. Westerberg) was last week able to live up to the terms of his contract and deliver the mail from Downie Creek to Revelstoke, a distance of forty-five miles, making the trip in three days. Ole built the snowshoes out of birch bark, making them circular and about a foot in diameter. To protect his horse's legs he covered the upper part with old blankets and gunny sacks.

Up the Big Bend district, where Ole takes King George's mail, the snow is several feet deep, and is covered with a breaking crust. A short time ago George Laforme, a packer, lost thirty horses and mules in trying to bring them out over the treacherous surface.

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.