Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1885-08-27
STAGE TO POSTAL-cAR.

Mr.. John Jameson. the General SUI
perintendent.. of the railway mail serv-
Ice. smiled as he leaned back in his
chair and thought of the difference be-
tween the way we distribute the mails
| now and the way it was done before the
war. YES" said he, ..things seemed
to have changed since the days when
the mailbag used to be received into
one corner of the baggage-car at Wash
! ington and thrown out by the baggage
master at Baltimore or New York, just
as he received it. In those days the
railway-car that carried the mail was
not railway Post-office, with its staff
of busy clerks, as it is now. The rail-
road didnothing but transport the bags
from one city to another. No official
of the Post-otiice went along either TO
guard and protect them or in any way
to handle them on the way. The dis
trlbution then used to be done at a sta
tionary office, and it was very slow
work, too; now there is comparatively
little of the work of distribution done
at the receiving offices-there is no
time for that. The letters and pack
ages of all sorts are thrown in mass
into the mail-cars and the work of dis
tribution is done on the cars while they
are flying along the rails at full speed
on the way between the sender and the
addressee. At present there are about
1900 or 4. 400 railway postal clerks in
the United States always on the road,
and busy at this work"
You have been familiar with the
working of the railway mail service for
a long time?'
Yes, | have been connected with it,
l may say. since the beginning. The
railway Post-office has grown up with
in the past twenty years, and l was on
the road for more than twelve of them.
1t was twenty years ago that the rail-
way Post-office took the place of the old
distributing offices. You know certain
Post offices, designated for the pur-
pose. used to receive and collect the
mails both in large parcels and separ-
ate packages from various points for
particular regions of country, and then
distribute them to the various places
to which they were addressed. These
were called distributing offices, and
served as landmarks to guide the
course of the mails to distant points.
They received them in bulk from the
mailing offices. and, after asserting
them with regard to their respec-
tive destinations, dispatched them by
rail in charge of the baggage-master.
This system of asserting in the sta
tionary office was a slow process.
While the work was moving slowly on
time was flying, and so were the rail-
road cars. but the mail was standing
still in the same place. Twenty years
ago it occurred to somebody that the
work of final distribution could be done
On the railroad car while it was flying
along to its destination, and then the
work was removed from the diStribut-
ing offices. Railway postal clerks or,
as they were then called. route agents,
took their places. At first the number
of hands was comparatively small.
During the first year or two their num-
Der was not above three or four hum
dred for the whole country. but now
there are more than ten times that
number constantly engaged. Some
times there are as many as sixteen
clerks aboard a single train going from
New York City.
ION an average arailway postal clerk
works about fourteen hours night for
six consecutive nights. then he has six
nights of. You see, as soon as the
mail is received in the Post-office it is
transferred to the mail-car. and the
railway clerks are there distributing
and working with their sleeves rolled
up, sometimes hours before the train
starts. The men who 90 from Wash
ington to New York tonight will re-
turn with the mail train from New
York to Washington tomorrow night,
and will keep on going between the
two cities night after night, for six
nights, then they rest for the next
six. On the through mail to
St Louis one set of men work from
Baltimore to Grafton, where they
are relieved by another set. who pro-
coed to Cincinnati, and third relay
take up the work there and go to st.
Louis. This is how all the through
lines are managed. One set of men
always travel between the same two
points.
For long time the accommodation
in the mail-cars was totally inadequate,
and with the facilities it was impos-
sible to do all the work of distribution
satisfactorily and with sufficient dis
patch. so that frequently portions of
the mail, and especially the newspapers,
had to be left behind; but now every
mail-car on every railroad in the
country is a:.veritable Post-office, as it is
called, and affords accommodation for
a sufficient force of clerks to keep the
work up straight along. Isn't it sur
prising that considering the tons of
letters and packages to be got through.
and the speed at which the work must
be done to keep up with the speed of
the train. there should only be one mis-
take in distributing six thousand pieces,
which was the proportion last year"'
Carrying the mails is not the fun
it used to be in the old coaching
days?"
mo; there was no room for staff of
distributing clerks on the old stages.
Why, sometimes there wasn't even
room enough for the mails. When the
people began to be numerous and the
number of letters increased, and es-
pecially when the newspapers began to
spread themselves. the mails began to
be formidable both in size and weight
l mean. for a two-horse
stage You know the roads were none
too good, and when the old machine
got stuck in a hole it was quite the Gus
tom to heave the mails. especially the
which were twenty or
thirty times the weight and size of the |
letters. overheard, SO that the passen-
gers might have room, and the stage |
with its lighter burden might trudSe |
on. But the stages were independent !
1t was only at their own !
they would take the mail. |
al .ax. ho6 a. 4 a..