The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1893-12-17
DEAD LETTER SALE.
AUCTION OF UNCLAIMED GOODS
FROM THE PosTcFFICE.
1t Furnishes Some Amusement to
tho Curious and Increases the
Treasury Balance.

washington, Dec. l5-The annual sale
of the dead letter office takes place in q
few days. It always attracts a curious
assemblage of inquisitiye people and sec
ond hand dealers. It is always productive
of Imaginable incidents. The articles which
are put UP for sale are divided into job
lots and each lot is numbered and de-
scribed in a catalogue which the auction
GERS issue. But occasionally box" or a
package figures in the list and there
is much speculation as to the contents.
People have been known to buy second
hand desks and find government bonds
in them: and a great many of the people
who attend the dead letter sale conflne
their bids to the mysterious parcels whose
contents is unknown. Some of these bid
ders carry away their purchases without
examination, but others open them in the
face of the crowd and there is always
loud guffaw when some gray-haired man
finds that he has purchased a pair of old
corsets and some badly worn stockings
So the sale affards some amusement. 1t
has that interest for some people, and for
others it has this-that it demonstrates
what an extraordinary variety of matter
is entrusted TO the mails. Everything
from an old shoe TO SCORPIONS goes to the
dead letter office-some Of l. because il IS
OF the class of matter declared to be I'm
mailable.'' But the proportion OF ..unmai-
able matter which gees to the dead let
ter Office IS very small.
1t happens sometimes that things OF
great value creep into a dead letter sale
The superintendent of the dead letter
ollce carefully weeds out the money IN
letters and if it is not claimed, it is dis
posed of to the best advantage and the
amount is credited to Uncle Sam. The
dead letter office finds as much as $4,000
in miSdirected letters in a single year
Under the rules of the department every
effort is made to find the owner OF a letter
or parcel. IL he cannot be found and the
property remains unclaimed for two
years. it is sold for Uncle Sans benefit.
But the owner does not lose his interest
in it. If he can prove his claim at any
time IN he future, the amount of the
money turned into the treasury as the
vaule Of his property will be returned to
him. If it was in money or any negotia-
bic security, he viii get its full value
If it was in merchandise, he will get only
what it brought at the auction sale.
1t seems almost incredible that with a
cheap postal note and money order SyS-
TEN at their command, so much as $4,000
loose money should be mailed TO defective
addresses in a year. But this has hap
pened more than once. From the figures
can be conjectured the immense amount
of money which annually goes through
the mails entirely unguarded. Last year
the amount handled in the dead letter
Office was not quite $4,000 It was nearly
$4,000 though, and the amount which
lessness of the money-senders was more
than $1,000. Unclaimed money is much
the larger source of revenue of the dead
letter Office. The sale of unclaimed prop
erty seldom brings in more than $1,000.
The sale of last year realized $2.S0T.
These two items represent very small
proportion of the value of the matter
which passes through the dead letter
Office every year. Here Is the face value
of the matter, exclusive of merchandise
which comes into the hands Of the Office
29.O17 letters CO. aiming money. 4, O64
1886 letters containing drafts,
notes, money orders, etc, face
1854 letters containing postal
notes 5,4lS
s. 846,17o
In addition to this property worth more
than two and 8 quarter millions on its
face the office last year handled 37,7S5 let
tiers containing photographs, doubtless of
some value to their owners; 160, 129 con-
tanning postage stamps, some of which
were undoubtedly intended for collections
and were worth more than their face
value; 37,733 containing receipted bills,
cancelled notes and legal papers. and
1926 containing merchandise.
You might think that the superintendent
of the dead letter office was anxious to
obtain valuable letters, but he is not.
He tries just as hard as he can to educate
the public through the newspapers and
through postmasters to address letters
and packages with more care and to see
that at least the packages have enough
postage on them. Large placards in post
Offices warn letter-writers to be more
careful-notices printed in the postal
guide give minute instructions to be fol-
lowed The monthly supplement to the
guide contains long list of Don is. :"
But still q careless public HiSdirect or
misnlail seven million letters and pack
ages IA a year. Misdirection, incorrect,
illegibte and inefficient addresses are the
chief causes of the miscarriage of mail
matter Then in free delivery towns
there is the failure of the letter-writer to
place the house or business address on the
envelope, TO give the business or in some
other way TO Identify the person for whom
the letter is intended. The people who
receive letters are not seldom to blame
for the pOstoffice department finds as one
chief cause of error the failure of perma-
nent or temporary residents to notify the
local postotFfce Of change of address.
The is one simple little regulation of
the postcffice department, the general
observance Of which would throw a great
many of the dead letter clerks out of a
Job. If the name of the sender of a letter
or package is put on the envelope or
wrapper. the department will invariably
return it if it is insufficiently addressed
or not prepaid. But the patron Of the
postoIfice, though warned of this fact a
thousand times wiz go right on sending
matter through the mails in plain wrap
pers and taking the chances of its reach
ing its destination safely.
There is one cause of the detention of