, 1891-04-26

to the superintendent of the eighth d.
vision with the request that the invest
CATION DO continued. Probably the pile
OF correspondence will be increased BY a
score of letters before the subscriber at
Moscow gets his Boise paper regularly.
Thirty.two postal clerks are directly I'M
der Mr.. Nichols charge. EiEhty-three
clerks now run into Cheyenne on the
various lines. Mr.. Nichols district ex-
tends from Cheyenne to Huntington,
OREGON, a distance of 900 miles. The
Cheyenne 4 Northern is also under his
jurisdiction.
Every clerk in the district sends daily
to the chief clerk a trip report showing
the number of errors he checks against
other clerks and postofiees, the time of
beginning and ending the trip, the num-
Der of letters aud papers he handles for
each state and territory in the Union, the
number of registered pouches. letters,
cases. gold boxes and sacks handled,
records of the failures to receive mails
doe from other mail routes or postofices,
delayed mails, failures to deliver mails and
the cause. and the number II papers and
letters carried beyond Their destination
and the cause.
The system of checking errors Is a com
plete and thorough one. Every clerk who
hunobao n aoLona Of Iattoxa d. 49,.
office or mail route ties up with it a slip
OF paper which must have printed or
written upon it the destination OF the
package aud the signature of the postal
clerk making up the package with the
name of the "R. p. O." with which he
is connected. On this slip of paper the
postal clerk or postmaster, who opens and
redistributes the letters either to another
mail route or to the boxes in a postofice,
writes on the reverse side of the slip the
address and number of the missent letters
in the package and signs his name to this
report.
Those slips are sent daily to the division
superintendent where a record OF the
errors made by each clerk and postmaster
is kept. These error clips are returned
monthly to the clerks who are given an
opportunity of making any explanations
they may desire. If these explanations
convince the superintendent that the
letters were not missent or that they were
justified in any way in placing them in
the package where found the error is
stricken off their record.
On Nj. Nichols desk an error slip
charging one of his clerks with missending
a package of letters addressed to
Shoshone, Idaho, had gone through a
dozen hands and had attached to it a score
of letters, the final report clearing the
clerk from blame and fixing it upon the
postmaster of an Idaho junction postofice.
For the first offense of negligence oil
carelessness a clerk is susr ended or fined
a small sum. Continued carelessness en-.
sures his removal. Civil service reform
has worked wonders in the mail service.
Appointments are made from those pass
ing the best competitive examinations and
promotions are given to those clerks
whose records show the least errors in
handling mail and who pass tho best ex-
aminations. No favorites are played and
good me1 get ahead. James f. White,
known in the service as Cap White"
who is the general superintendent of the
service. is a veteran, having been in the
service for over twenty years. He started
as a postal clerk in Iowa, was chief clerk
at Omaha, division superintendent at
Chicago and Is now at the head of the
service in Washington. He was for two
weeks in charge of the Cheyenne post
Office in the early days. He is well &C,
uuainted with the needs of the West and
is rapidly bringing the entire system OF
the railway mail service to a state of al,
most absolute perfection.