Lyle post office scandal and huge liquor business

Article Type: 
Business
Publication Date: 
Wednesday, July 7, 1886
Publication Date Is Approx: 
false

-The following comes to us as a Washington special to a Minneapolis paper. Perhaps the statements therein may be a little exaggerated, but we understand them to be substantially correct. President Cleveland would undoubtedly do the most satisfactory thing for the Lyle public if he would allow the post office to remain in its present hands:

WASHINGTON, D. C., June 26.- A petition has been sent to the post office department using the appointment of a man named Collins as postmaster at Lyle, Mower county. There is probably more liquor business done in the town of its size in the United States. It is right on the borders of Iowa, and the honest, independent farmers of that state who are unable to wet their whistles on account of the prohibition law which prevails flock over the line in thousands. The license fee for selling liquor there is $500, and in spite of this enormous drain upon their resources the whiskey shops and beer saloons do a thriving business. Collins, the applicant for the post office, is one of the Iowa men who left that state because it was altogether too dry for him. It is reported that he has only been a resident of the state of Minnesota for 10 days, but he is ripe for an office and proposes to get it if such a thing is possible.