The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-10-23

Washington, October 22.-When John Smith. on a business trip to New York or Chicago, or any of the country's big cities, writes @ letter home, sticks a moist two cent stamp in the corner of the en- velope and drops 1t into the most eon- venient letter box he does so with the comfortable assurance that his missive will reach it's destination within a period measured approximately by the length of time it takes a railway train to cover the distance. Of the vast organization and the elaborate machinery. required to attain this result he has only d vague idea and he would be greatly surprised if he were to view the number of pro- cesses involved and the number of hands through which this letter must pass be- fore it reaches its destination. Most sur Irising of all to MT. Smith probably would be the fact that the number of handlings and the cost to the government varies but little whether the letter travels a few hundreds miles or all the way across the continent. While it undoubtedly is somewhat more expensive to carry a let ter from New York to San Francisco than from the same city to some small town 200 miles away, the, difference is really slight. The reason for this is that the carriage of mail by fast railway trains costs far less than it's collection and eis- tribution by city carriers or rural free de- livery clerks and in proportion to it's inn portance Is by all odds the cheapest serv- ice performed in the handling of the mail.
 If the letter which MT. Smith deposits in a mail box located in the business sec- ton of New York is addressed to some person living on a rural free delivery route in the western part of New York state it may be regarded as an average letter covering the average distance that is travelled by mail matter in the United States, distance reckoned at about 400 miles. Should he stand near the box for a few minutes--l0, or 15 in the busy part of the day-he will see a mail wagon drive up to the corner. The collector riding on the rear platform of the wagon jumps off, unlocks the box and with a single sweep of his hand transfers its contents to the leather bag that is slung from his shoulder. He is back on the wagon again almost before it has come to 8 stop and Smiths letter along with those of Jones, Brown, Robinson and q hundreds others, is on its way to the gen eral postoffice. .s
 At the postoffice the wagons contents are dumped through a long chute onto tables over which pours a constant ava lanche of mall coming from every direc- ton. The New York postoffice handles daily between 100000 and 5,OOC,ooo pieces of mail and large proportion of ,his comes into the main postoffice of the city between the hours of and in the aft ernoon
 While the white mountain of mail grows higher and higher, clerks are valiantIs attacking it, removing big armfuls of letters, arranging them so that all the envelopes stand on edge and all face the same way and placing them on the feeding board of & busy little apparatus that looks something like a sewing machine and huns like it when it is in motion This Is the automatic stamp cancelling machine The letters are fed into 1t by revolving wheels and in passing through each stamp Is cancelled and the dated post mark is stamped upon the enevolep,
 Formerly 1t was necessary to have this work done by hand. Two operations were