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

From General Office to Madison
 Square in Five Minutes-The System
 in Operation in Five Cities.
 Imagine a miniature subterranean railway with metal cylinders for care and hollow tubes for tracks, a perfect signal system and a schedule that pro vides for a speed of core than thirty miles an hour and wait of less than fifteen seconds between trains.
 That is the sort of transportation line the United tates Post Office Depart ment has built in five of our cities The system is called the pneumatic mail tube service. The cost of it's five divisions is about one million year.
 Whn it is fully deysloped, says Pear sons Magazine, it will take from the treasury several times as much as that. One of these days maybe, it will grow big enough to carry its freight from city to city.
 Nearly seven miles of double tubing are now in operation in New York in- cluding the connection between the general post-offices nf Manhattan and Brooklyn. Boston has practically the same mileage Chicago, with AGA miles, ranks next. t. Louis has about two miles and Philadelphia slightly less than one and half miles.
 To secure appropriations from con gress for the tubes the city postmas- ters have to make hard fight each year.
 In spite of the fact that all the cities yield enormous revenues to the Post Office Department, the congressman from farming districts and small towns ltoppose every bill providing the neces- sary funds.
 As they are in the majority, they vote an appropriation of from ten to twenty millionseach year to extend the rural free delivery which is responsible for the deficit in the service. But they won't give the cities relief, even though New York affords the department a clean profit f at least ten million dol lars a year.
 The crush mail for the New York tube service amounts to twenty-two hundred letters a minute. This is in the rush hours-but there are few of any kind. From 4 a. m. till Il ?. m. the devil machines roar and hiss in the basement.
 As in other cities, the tubes of New York are laid by private corporation and are leased to the government at a fixed rate.
 For several years there have been three divisions in New York. They are knWn as the H. D. and Brooklyn lines. The route of the H line is from the general post office at Park row and Broadway to tatin H. at Lexington avenue and Frty-fourth street.
 It has connections with three inter vening branch offices. The P line links the general post office with the down. town branch in the Wall street district. The additional money given to New Yrk by the last congress will be sent to install tubes serving ten or twelve oth- CT sub-stations. In the basement of | the general post-office three compress sors are roaring and grinding. A fourth is held in reserve, oiled and ready for immediate action in case of a breakdown. Under the Madison quare branch is a plant or three en- zines. Two are installed in the shops at Depew place and two more are be- heath the Brooklyn office. 1 From the cofnpressors the air is con- veyed to the tubes through pipes large enough to hold small boys body. o l great is the pressure In these initial conduits that sudden leak would turn loose a current almost strong enough l to blow the nearby machinery to- | pieces; and of man were within range he would probably be battered into a 1 shapeless mass against the wall. | Lay a penny on this valve opening if you would like to see how great in the force," suggested the superinten- dent, as he stood beside a pipe in the Depew place plant.
 1 The valve was opened far enough to let the air through a crevice only as | wide as match. Within a second the | coin had been projected into the wall plaster like a bullet from long dis ance rifle.
 Once in the tubes the current is con- | LllAQ0pt lllC GciillC cllI u otN 6lluS a circuit several times, with the com l pressors merely furnishing the quanti- | ty needed to replace what is lost at the i outlets and to maintain the required force.
 Behind every carrier is a pressure of at least seven and one-half pounds to the square inch in addition to the nor nal pressure; at some points it is kept up to eight or even twelve pounds, and if the necessity arises, as when brok- en carrier must be pushed out after be- coming damned in curve, the power can be raised within a few seconds to thirty pounds or more.
 Besides the compressor engines the machinery for operating ;he tubes in- cludes the complicated steel and brass mechanisms attached 10 the utlcts and irlets at each station. These c3ntri- vances, huge appalling in their intri- cacy work with freedom from noise that seems inexplicable when their size | is considered.
 A carrier is eight and a half inches in diameter and twenty-four inches long At one end is a circular door, fastened by four lock bolts; on the other is a steel plate. The capacity of the carrier is nine pounds of mail and that is equal to about six hundred letters or fifty copies of a standard size, sixteen 1 page newspaper.
 When the present operating company reorganized the service in New York ] about three years ago the carriers were manufactured at a cost of six teen dollars each, but now one can be made for eight dollars and half at l the new ShnnS established in DeneM