The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1890-07-06
THE POSTAL SERVICE
Wonderful Female Readers of
The Dead Letter Office.
THEY ARE BETTER THAN MEN
Their Salaries, and Look at the Women who
Earn $1,000 a Year-Romance
of the Department.

IeSpOnucnce oil IHE HERALD. II spent
day this week among the ladies of the post
office department. They are the brightest
of Uncle Sans daughters, and he has no
more efficient clerks than these girls who
handle the mails, decipher dead letters and
do the thousand and one odd things which
have to be done in the great machine
known as
THE POSTAL SERVICE
Postmaster General Wahamaker appreci-
ates the value of woman's work. He has
his journals kept by woman clerk, and
this clerk is paid 81 900 year, which is the
highest salary paid to woman in the de-
partment | have made thorough inquiry
as to the value of women as clerks. and /
find they are the equals Of men. They are
not SO prone to loaf as their brothers, and
as one of them said to me yesterday: "You
will not find a single girl in these offices
who makes il practice of having two hats
and leaving one on the peg when she slips
out with the other and takes an excursion
over the city. L know of men who do this
very thing Their chiefs see that their
hats are there and they suppose they are
busy at work in some other part OF the
building.
Il don't think the women shirk their
work as much as the men, this girl went
on. ''They are not on sick leave any more
than the men are, and their work will aver
age fully as well. In some classes of their
work in the department the women are
superior TO the men, and l don't believe
there is a woman in the department that
does not earn her salary"
What salaries dc you get?' I asked.
There are, in round numbers, eighty
ladies in the postoffice department" was
the reply. land these receive from $40 to
900 year. There are only about six who
get 500 a year, and the average salary
must be at least ST. 900. Fifty-fiye Of us
get $500 year, fifteen receive 500 month
and there are fully dozen who get 81 ,000
These salaries are not large in comparison
with those received by the men who, in
some cases. do the same work, and in Wash
1ngton they do not mean anything like
fiches.n
"Do most of the women support them
selves, and what is their average agel''
lit is hardly fair 20 ask woman her
age" said the postoffice maiden; ''but
three fourths of the women here are above
thirty, and we have many gray-haired
ladies among them. The gray-haired
women, in many cases, make the best clerks,
and though some of them could not pass the
civil service examination, they know all
about the work and can turn out more and
better work than the school graduates, who
are now coming in under the civil service
rules. A great many of the new clerks are
quite young, and we have many blooming
maidens of eighteen aud twenty who work
side by,,side with gray haired women of fifty
and sixty. The most of the lady clerks
have families depending upon them, and moi
few of them are widows. Many of them
have had fathers or husbands noted in the
history of the country, and the average
social standing of all is high.''
The main work of
THE DEAD LETTER OFFICE
is done by women, and the variety of its
work is but little known to the people. The
lady talked with in the above paragraphs
is dead letter Office clerk, and, like the
other ladies met in the department, she is
as quick as lightning and as bright as dol
lar. One of the department rules relating
to dead letters requires a knowledge of the
foreign languages. All unclaimed foreign
letters are sent to this bureau, and these
ladies have to read the addresses on tbs
envelopes whether they be French, Ger
man, Russian, Swedish or Dutch. There
are fifteen different countries belonging to
the postal union. and thousands of mis-.
directed letters are received from these
every week. The skill shown by these
clerks is wonderful, and they find the RICH
addresses of letters which are more diff
cult to read than Chinese puzzle. a com
piete records kept of every such letter re
ceived, and any unclaimed foreign lette!
which comes to the department can b,
traced back to the country from which i
was sent. These clerks, If they discove
that the letter is improperly addressed
judge from the writing the locality t
which it should be sent ana if there is an,
possibility of It getting to the proper per
son it is readdressed. If not, it is remailed
without opening, to the country from whicl
it came.
Another department of the dead lette
Office of which the country knows nothin,
is devoted entirely TO the taking care b
and sending back
MISDIRECTED PHOTOGRAPHS.
More than thirty Thousand photographs e
astray every year, and fully $4,000 lover
never get the pictures which their sweet
hearts send them. Photographs are re
turned when possible, but they are neve
destroyed, ana there is an odd million or s.
living dead men boxed up in the cases o
the postoffice department and stored ava
in the rooms of the basement Another de
partment is devoted entirely to the return
ing Of stamps, and more than 100000 letter
are received every year at the dead lette
Office containing postage stamps. If thes
stamps amount to more than 2 cents the
are returned to the owner. and if the owne
can not be found, they are never used agar
If there is no index to the sender tn
stamps are pasted on sheets, fifty stamps I
the sheet, aud with brush of red ink on
of these fair lady clerks spells the faces G
Washington, Jefferson or Jackson, as tn
case may be, and when large number {
these sheets have accumulated they al
taken down to the basement furnace an
committed to the flames.
An immense amount Of
OBSCENE MATTER
goes through the mails, and some of til
letters that come 20 the dead letter offiC
are the vilest of the vile. Many of the
contain bad pictures, and some are file
with writing which no pure woman ougf
TO read. For this reason women are M
permitted to open the dead letters. and TIL
work is all done by men. With long, shar
knives they rapidly go through the letter
cutting them open and passing them to ii
lady clerks.
They are then divided into departments
for each lady has her peculiar cities an
localities after which she looks For il
stance, all Alabama letters are sent to or
woman, and another girl has the lookia
over of letters of certain number of cite
in the great northwest. Another will pas
upon letters from the Pacific slope, an
others have eastern cities, so that often tn
number OF a street gives the city and stat
to which the letter should have address,
but the names OF which have been onitte
The knowledge OF the country possessed
the clerks sorpasseth understanding, an
like the wonderful lady clerks of the trea
ury. they seem to know by intuition jul
where letter ought to 20 and by sort
lf,.fr 10 he .,l.14 al