Iron County register., 1894-08-23
FOLLOWING A LETTER.

Soufse From the Mall Box to It's De..
tfnation.
IL Is a very simple matter nowadays
70 send letter from here to New
iork- All you have to do is to dron a
letter into lamp-post, and in a little
over twenty-four hours your CORE.
dsPondent in New York is readino II
ana perhaps. debating his answer.
:. Inat seems like a very easy matter.
true, but did you ever stop to
link through how many hands your
..er passes during its brief journey?
why, 1 suppose that at least half a
oozen persons must have something to
oo with 1T, between the time when
.nah 1t and the receipt of it bv nv
friend.
IL takes more than three times that
number at the lowest estimate said the
second speaker, an official connected
with the Chicago post Office. Within a
snort time after you have de.
posted your letter in the mail box. the
eoilector comes around and gathers il
up with Its companions. If the box is
near the office, he carries his sack di.
rec1iy to the Office, but otherwise it is
thrown INTO the collecting cart at one
OF the designated meeting points. and
soon reaches the big building on Clark
street. Here it is dumped on a large
table at which the facers work Their
outy consists in arranging the letters
with their faces in the same way, and
All the stamps, where possible, in the
r'ght-hand upper corner. AS fast
ds the letters are so ar
ranged they are passed to the
men running the stamping machines
1nese machines are capable OF can
ceiling more than twenty-five thousand
stamps in an eight-hour day. and each
OF the machines has taken the place of
half a dozen men. With its compan-
IONS, the letter in which we are inter
ested is passed to the separating table
Here the mail is assorted by states, and
each state is then taken by a different
clerk, and the letters tied up in bundles.
according to the route over which they
are to be sent.
These bundles are collected by an
other clerk. who throws them into their
respective pouches, ready to be deliy-
cred to the dispatching clerk A por-
ter then trucks them into the dispatch
1ng-room, where they are stacked up
until it is time for them to be sent to
the depot. They are again handled
in their transfer to the wagon, and
still again when the wagon reaches the
railroad station. Here they are given
over to the charge of the transfer clerk,
who in turn passes them on to the men
in the railway post office
The pouch containing our -etter. as
it is through New York pouch, prob
ably receives but little attention for
several hours, as local mail must be
handled first. Soon, however. its con-
tents are dumped on the sorting table
and quickly thrown into the proper
boxes corresponding to the proper sub
stations in New York city. Our letter
is again tied up in a bundle and thrown
into a pouch where it remains until
turned over to the driver of the wagon
in New York. Handled again at the
door of the New York post office. it is
carried to the sorting table, where the
bundles of letters are cut open
and each letter stamped with the hour
of its receipt. Another clerk then dis
tributes it into the box of the carrier
who is to deliver it. That official han
dies it twice, once in sorting it for its
proper location, and again, while MAX
ing his rounds, in delivering it to your
friend.
have taken as an example very
simple route, and yet you can see that
your letter has been handled, either
separately or in bundle with others,
no less than twenty-onc times. Had
the letter been directed to some little
out-of-the-way place. even. perhaps. in
this state, it would have been handled
from ten to twenty times additional.
1t is hardly necessary to say that the
fact that so few letters go wrong when
they must be passed through SO many
hands, shows that there is one
department, at least, of the govern
ment in which the employees
are of necessity rapid and ac-
curate in their work. Each one of the
operations that have detailed to you
may seem simple in itself, but few real
ize how much study is required on the
part of a postal clerk in order to re-
tain his position.
The carriers work is probably as
light as that of any of the persons who
handled your letter, and vet he must
be thoroughly familiar with the entire
district that he covers. for he has no
time for hesitation in sorting the mail
belonging to him. The work of the
railway postal clerk. however, is far
more exacting. for he is required to be
a walking encyclopedia of the geog-
raphy not only of the route through
which he runs, but of all the neigh
boring states. He must have the
time tables of his own and
all connecting roads at his
tongues end, or rather photographed
on his mind ready for instant use, for
ten minutes delay of his train may
cause the resorting of several bags of
mail in order to secure better connec-
tions at some other than the regular
points. Every moments delay in the
forwarding of letter counts against
the clerk, and he will probably find
himself called upon for an explanation
when he reaches the end of his run
He has no time to think where letter
ought to go; he must know it, and
know it as well when the destination
is Pecatonica as though it were one of
the large cities of the country. Do you
wonder. then, that occasionally let
ter fails to reach its destination on
time. or are you not rather surprised
that so few complaints are heard?-
Chicago Journal.
in Paris elephant skins are tanned.
The process is the ordinary one. except, |