Waterbury evening Democrat. [volume] (Waterbury, Conn.) 1887-1895, 1891-03-07
MEN WHO MEMoRizE.
The big Burden Carried by a Railway Ma
Service Clerks Mind. r.

Service Clerks Mind. n.
81 suppose that the clerks in tho
Railway Mail Service have to exercise
their memories more than any other
class of persons" said Victor ]. Brad
lev, assistant superintendent of the
Second division of the Railway Mail
Service, recently. "For instance, some
of the men of experience are expected
to have the situation of $4,000 or $4,000
post-offices in this country fixed in their
minds. When a man enters the employ
of this branch of <he Postal Depart
ment of the Government, he is gut on
probation for q time. He is assigned
to fix in his mind a certain number of
post-offices within a given time, and If
he does this satisfactorily, and is capa-
BILE in other respects, he receives
permanent appointment.
''In the first six months of his service
he is bound to learn where about 1880
places are situated. OF course, we be-
| gin him on that section of the country
in which he is at work, so that he is
aided in his memorizing by his expert.
ence. The next six months he is ex-
pected to learn even a greater number
of offices, and in four years in certain
cases must have at his tongues end
where between $4,000 and 10000 post
offices are, and be able to tell how to
send mail matter to them. Of course,
the men will forget some out of this
enormous number, but the percentage
is small, otherwise the clerks could not
keep their places.
| "The trouble about the whole thing
is that the employees must be examined
periodically, no matter how long they
| I. L..
make sure they have not ceased review
ing their lessons. A man might have
all his offices committed to memory and
yet forget many of them in a year or
two, if he did not keep up his studying.
By the time men learn the last of their
$4,000 names, they have forgotten some
of the first ones, so their task is an end
less one.
THE mere committing to memory Of
the best way to send letter to its ad-
dress is not all that is expected Of
our men. They must also know some
thing of the less advantageous routes
and the times at which trains which
carry the mails reach intermediate
points. 1t sometimes happens that
the train on which the clerk is at
work meets with a delay, and he can
not make the connections he ordinarily
could. In such cases he must havesa
clear idea of how he can send the
pouches over some other route, so that
they will reach their destinations with
as little loss of time as possible. Often
times this will compel him to re-assort
his mail, so that he can send part of it
one way and part another. Again, he
may have an unusually large amount
of mail matter to handle, so that, in
spite of the utmost diligence, he
can not have the letters, packages,
newspapers, etc, properly assorted
when the train reaches station where
some of the pouches are to be thrown
of. In such cases he must change the
scheme of assortment, getting ready as
much mail as he can, and sending the
rest back as soon as possible. A man
must have a clear, cool head on his
shoulders, and be able to plan out a
long campaign of railroad connections
and routes in his mind.
SIN spite of the qualifications and
study needed to make a satisfactory
railway mail service clerk, the pay OF
the men is poor, promotions are slow
and the tenure of office by no means so
dependent on good behavior as it might
be. The highest annual salary for a
clerk is $1,000 a year, and it generally
takes eight to nine years to reach that
grade. No, place in the service is not
the most desirable one in the world, ms
) most of the 5000 men who are in it will
tell you."-N. Y. Tribune.