Santa Claus

STATES & CITIES

Santa Clause

On a large map of Indiana a sharp eye can pick out Santa Claus (pop.: 100) in the northern end of Spencer County about 3 mi. east-by-south of the Nancy Hanks Lincoln Memorial and the same distance north of the Southern Ry. tracks. Santa Claus consists of one rough street, a few frame houses and a general store in the back room of which is a post office. The hamlet's time of fame is Christmas, when to it comes all the childish mail addressed to Santa Claus. Also several thousand persons ship its postmaster their Christmas cards and merchandise with the request that he remail them under the Santa Claus postmark. All this is a lot of bother and expense to the deficit-developing Post Office Department in Washington.

This year Postmaster General Brown was informed that an unknown business house in New York was sending 1,000,000 pieces of Christmas advertising to Santa Claus for remailing. "General" Brown ordered extra men and postal equipment to the village to handle the rush. Then the firm changed its mind, decided to mail from home. Thoroughly annoyed, the Postmaster General last week announced that his department had had enough of this foolishness and that on Jan. 1 the name of the Santa Claus post office would be changed to something more commonplace.

All Indiana, it seemed, arose in angry protest. Senator James Eli Watson and the state's entire Congressional delegation pleaded with "General" Brown to withdraw his threat. Loudly they pointed out that the Post Office Department had no authority to change a village's name and that so long as the people of Santa Claus wanted to be Santa Clausians, their post office should stay Santa Claus.

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