Clerks and Carriers Are Bonded.
Each clerk and carrier when appointed to the service must furnish bonds in the sum of $1,000. In most first and second class cities there are surety companies that make a specialty of supplying such bonds for persons on entering the postal service. The charge, which is paid by the employee, is twenty-five cents per annum for a carrier and fifty cents for a clerk. In addition the carrier must furnish his own uniform and cap, which averages from $15.00 to $20.00 a year. The only other expense imposed upon a clerk is thirty-five cents for his badge, and this is returned to him when he leaves the service and surrenders the badge.
CHAPTER III.
SALARIES AND OPPORTUNITIES.
The salaries for postal clerk and carrier are the same throughout the Union. Starting in at $600 the first year, the man who is efficient and has a clean record is advanced to $800 at the beginning of the second year; the third year he goes to $900 and so on to the sixth year when he reaches the maximum for this branch of the service, $1,200. But there are opportunities beyond this to clerks of exceptionable ability, and to carriers, too, if they elect to be transferred to the clerical branch, as is evidenced in the brilliant career of Postmaster Morgan of New York, referred to in the [opening chapter]. Transfers are permitted from carrier to clerk, or visa versa, after three or four years service.