The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-02-20

city blocks the schedule is one minute and seven seconds. Between the gene raI post offices of New York and Brooklyn, IT miles, the time is three minutes; a card placed in the New York transmitter for test was re- turned from Brooklyn, stamped, in sev- en minutes.
 The speed required by the post office department is thirty miles an hour, but in New York a thirty-four mile rate is maintained without difficulty during the busiest hurs. On the H line, which handles the fast mail between the downtown section and the Grand Cen tral Station, more than three thousand carriers day are handled.
 So rigiily does the government hold the tube company to it's agreements that delay of three or four minutes in the transmission of a carrier results in a formal complaint, requiring an offt- cial explanation.
 Occasionally, perhaps once in two months, there is block. A carrier, weakened by hard service, grows mis- shapen and becomes jammed in the tube, sometimes at a curve. The air pressure of seven or eight or ten pounds to the square inch is poWerless to drive it forward.
 Behind it if it's predicament is not discvered instantaneously, other car riers are installed. The prevention Of a hopeless piling up of mails at the ter minals depends on the celerity with which the superintendent learns of the accident.
 It is matter of seconds only before the interference with the air current is registered, and in another moment the central telephone bell of the company's private wire Is signalling, "top the ma chimes all alng the llne!"
 An instant later the superintendent or one of his aides is at she receiver. The operator at the pressure gauge, which has indicated the location as well as the existence of the block, re- ports the fact in a word.
 While the superintendent remains mn the telephone wire and gives rapid fire orders, thepressure in the blocked tube is increased to fifteen, twenty, perhaps even thirty pounds t the square inch. If the added power is mt sufficient to | dislodge the disabled carrier from be- | hind the direction of the current Is re- versed so as to force the wreck back ward. Generally the end of the trou- ble is not far off, and the carrier shat tered beyond further usefulness, is hurled ut; but sometimes the jam is so ba1 that there is a delay of many min utes.
 Meanwhile, whether the line is crip- pied for one minute or thirty, the mail at the transmitter is being heaped up in great stacks. The clerks are sur- rounded by enormous quantities of let ters, the mechanics by scores of belated carriers that cannot start until the su- perintendent signals "Go ahead!" From every quarter of the city. brought in by collectors from hundreds of corner letter boxes and by wagons from distant stations, the rush mails are concentrating themselves upon the tube room. When at last the block is lifted the toilers at the terminals must | re1ouble their exertions, if that is pos sible, to restore order before the end of | the day
 We can't afford to have it happen often,' remarked the superintendent 'The government is hard master when its mails have to wait even for a | few seconds
 In the senate winter before last MT. Foraker of Ohio introduced ali amend- ment to the appropriations bill, provid- ing that the postmaster general should have $1,5O0,OOO to distribute fur tubes. I For a brief period the city postmasters began to have hopes of seeing new lines laid, but the usual hostility of ru- ral representatives, this time under the
 leadership of MT overstreet of Indi- ana. defeated the plan In the house.