THE GOOD DEALS

Do you want to be an honorary owner of a wagon

To remedy the housing crisis, the easiest way is to have a house of your own. Many dream of building, few have the means. So the homeless poor are on the lookout for opportunities.

Last month, the Post Office announced that it was selling a number of cases of mobile offices. Immediately the crowd of homeless people and poor devils threatened with imminent expulsion rushed in. For 250 francs payable immediately, the unfortunates immediately saw themselves owners of a shelter with doors and windows, wooden walls and a roof to the test. All they had to do to be happy was to take the disused postal van and set it up in the middle of nature. There are still, thank God, land for rent.

The Postal Administration warns its customers that the receipt issued by it would serve as a document for the delivery of the object. The citizen buyer had only to present himself at the station of Maisons-Alfort-Pompadour with a truck. Nothing could be simpler, really.

The other day, therefore, a hundred buyers who had paid for the purchase of their house-cash showed up to remove it. The station master saw them approach with some concern, because, if he had on a siding, the postal wagons sold, he had received no instructions to deliver them to the people.

Nevertheless, the station master would have liked nothing better than to see goods that take up space leave, if they had been able to leave. But it was not. Because the Post Office sells, for 250 francs, the cases of mobile offices, but, for that price, it gives neither the wheels of the wagons nor the metal frame, which remain its property. The first comer would be hard pressed to accomplish the task of dismantling; moreover, to load the crates, the arm of a crane is necessary.

The Maisons-Alfort station, which held the wagons sold, did not have a crane or a dismantling worker. The station master gave this little detail to the buyers and said to them, to reassure them:

'See, then, the principal inspector of the Company.

Now the Post Office had no more deigned to warn the chief inspector than the station master.

"Look at the engineer of the central service," said this high functionary.

This one, sensed, says in his turn:

— Mail wagons come under the equipment department. So go see there.

other information:

— When it comes to the delivery of goods sold and purchased, that is up to the operating department.

Unfortunately, car buyers came from there; they did not think it necessary to return there.

But they came to tell us this story. One thing worries us.

- When an individual leaves goods in the station, he owes a fairly high daily tourist tax to the Company. It's fair.

We would like to know what indemnity the Post Office offers to the Railway Companies for blocking the sidings.

BR. V.