Ottumwa semi-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1899-1903, 1903-03-03
Field Seed.

to verifying the amount all the col
unlns Of figures must be footed up and
techn'calities as to signatures and in
dorsaments attended to.
1he vouchers are then carried for
ward in bulk. weighing hundreds Of
pounds a day, to what is called the
round table section" Here in two
large rooms men stand at circular
tables n throw the vouchers into
p~igeon-holes labeled with the names
Oh each state where the orders were
orlg,.dally issued, including the new
!, possessions acquired by Uncle Sam.
After having thus been distributed by
states, the slips are taken to another
section where a number of busy women
are employed in asserting them into
alphabetical order, according to the
section asserting them by towns them
selves. AS some states have 1000 or
more postoffices, the magnitude of this
task may be easily understood.
The next step is to arrange the or
ders numerically, in each town, so that
they may follow in the rotation o.
their original issue. 1t is little short
of marvellous to watch the def fingers
of the girls who count them. Each
young woman manages to hold in her
hand a hundred of these orders at a
time. which she sorts and counts at a
lightning rate OF speed.
No n can know it all in such a
place, but each person must be accom-
plished in his OIL particular line-they
must all be parts of the n machine,
whose workings are as perfect as the
Bingham mill. where "a broken thread
or shred spolls the web through a hun
dred yards and is traced back to the
girl who woye it"
In the recording division the &C
counts are registered and settled with
the postmasters. The final process,
which is the object of all these distrib-
utions and accountings, is the check
ing of each voucher by the statement
of the postmaster who issued 1t. This
laboriDus task requires careful atten-
ton and unceasing watchfulness, for
thousands of errors or attempted
frauds creep into these postmasters'
statements. Orders issued for SIS or
500 are reported at 81, So and So,
which error, whether deliberate or un-
intentional, if not discovered, would
be so much profit to the issuing post
master and a corresponding loss to the
United States treasury. The work OF
checking 10000, 600 of these vouchers
yearly occupies t~hirty-five quick-Witted
clerks, whose daily labor is incessant.
After the final auditing the state
ments are bound in volumes aggre.
eating many thousands, and are kept
for seven years in the files which o N
eycomll the halls of the bureau. The
millions of Honey order vouchers are
also collected and labeled with the
names of the pcstoffices, where they
were issued. At this point it is that
the orders have reached the original
shape in which they were first sent
out.
Plan to Reduce the Work.
The necessity for thus preserving
the statements and vouchers is said to
arise from the fact that the accounts
are often r%eopened and overhauled
after several years to verify settle
ments or to correct alleged errors. The
money orders are also valuable in pri-
yate lawsuits and are called for many
times in the year for such purposes.
lHdy dIlSS III SIhSoSSSro
Arizona. for instance, involving the
disputed payment of a debt. One par
ty alleges that he paid the debt by re-
Uniting a money order, which the oth-
err party denies. The local postmaster
requests a search of the files m the
auditors office and if the money or
der is found it is sent to the postmas-
ter, who presents it in u n after
ward returns it to Washington to be
again placed on file.
At the end of every seven years the
bulk of one years statements and
money orders is sold under the law as
waste paper, which is ground to pulp
ait a paper mill in Hagerstown, Md.
under the eye of a representative OF
the treasury department.
The necessity for all this routine
auditing work, with it's infinite detail,
is due to the fact that every money
order comes into the office as a sepa-
rate voucher. At present a bill Is
pending in congress, called the post
check bill" which is designed to treat
the checks as mutilated currency In
stead Of vouchers, thus saving the al
most unlimited task of the present
process. Instead Of sending the vouch-
ers to the auditor, the postmaster
would take one of these checks In its
place, deposit it in and get credit for
it from the national banks. The banks
would forward the checks to the treas.
ury, where they would be DESTROYED
as money unfit for use. Instead of the
separate slips. which, to quote the
auditor, occasion "a hundred million
checking and 200 additional manipula'
lions of the sixty-odd million money
orders in this Office before they can
find their final resting place ! n the
morgue' of the files room; instead
of this the postmaster would send the
bank receipt, which would include
numberless vouchers and thus reduce
to a very small fraction the present
work in the auditors office.