Rural Delivery Mail Boxes

RURAL DELIVERY MAIL BOXES

Postmaster Pond has received instructions from the post office department at Washington to report at once any depredations upon or defacing of the approved letter boxes put up by patrons of the rural free delivery service, the penalty for such an offense being both fine and imprisonment, according to the extent of the injury. That our readers may know just with the provision of the law is respecting this matter, we give the following paragraph, taken from the recent act of congress establishing the rural mail service:

"Whoever shall hereafter willfully or maliciously injure, tear down, or destroy any letter box or other receptacle established by order of the Postmaster General or approved or designated by him for the receipt or delivery of mail matter on any rural free delivery route, or shall break open the same, or willfully or maliciously injure, deface, or destroy any mail matter deposited therein, or shall willfully take or steal such matter from or out of such letter box or other receptacle, or should willfully aid or assist in any of the aforementioned offenses, shall, for every such offense be punished by a fine of not more than one thousand dollars, or by imprisonment for not more than three years."