St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1886-06-10
MAKING A DIRECTORY.
The Difficulties Encountered b
Makers of These Books.

II
Makers of These. Books.
''Little do the people realize the amount
of labor and trouble it costs to prepare an
accurate directory of the city in which they
live. The canvasser calls at their resi-
dence, they give him the names of the
members of the family, watch him write
them out, bid him good day. close the door
on his back and think that that fellow
earns his money about as easily as anybody
who is compelled to labor for the cash that
is swallowed up by room rent and restau-
rants. In their mind all he has to do is to
submit the names to the publisher and draw
his salary" This was the remark of one
of the men who is in the business yester-
day.
r. L. Polk & Co. are now at work COM
piling new directory of st. Paul, and they
employ a corps of thirty-four men, who
canvass the various districts for the purpose
of securing the names and addresses of the
people who form the population of the city.
The task OF these men is not pleasant one:
far from it. They have to deal with every
phase of human nature. Their duties carry
them into the lowly cots on the flats and in
Swede Hollow, and through the doors of
the palatial palaces of st. Anthony hill and
Dayton's bluff. They must not miss a
house that is occupied, and are obliged to
run the gauntlet of hungry dogs and strong
armed servants, who are too apt to think
they recognize in them the indomitable
book agent. They must ask pertinent
questions, and school themselves to re-
ceiving impertinent answers with good
grace and without show of indignation or
resentment. Their vocation is an unenvi-
able one.
The new directory Will be ready for de-
livery about the middle of July, and be-
tween this time and then great deal of
work remains to be done. The first trip
made by the canvassers when they secure
the names and addresses is but a small por-
ton of the work necessary to correct
| compilation of city directory. The can
vasser goes to house and the lady usually
| tells him that her husband or brother is a
clerk in some establishment when in fact he
| is porter, or that he is a proprietor when
| he is bookkeeper or cashier. After getting
| this information at the house, the canvaSser
| goes to the establishment where the man is
employed and finds his true position. For
| every name there must be duplicate, and
! if names are found for which there are no
| duplicates, a special messenger is sent out
| to ascertain why this is so, and many times
| it is found that members of the same family
| spell their names differently and this has to
| be corrected. BY this it will be seen that
after the names are first secured,
| the canvaSSers are obliged to go
over the ground again and prove that their
work is right. On their first rounds this
year the canvassers found that there were
3, 100 new houses that were unoccupied,
and they were reported to headquarters as
vacant When they went out the second
time they found that 80 per cent of these
buildings were occupied, many of them by
people who had changed their residence
since they made their first round. Under
| ali these circumstances the business of
directory making is necessarily vexatious
| and slow.