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

tlonaIS.
 Nature has done little to dry up the
 
 ation table and sorted over again. The letter in which we are interested IS piaceo in a pouch marked with the name of 8 railway mail route leading out of Buffalo
 When that city is reached the bag is thrown out upon a truck which is trundled over to another tracks and put into ah- other car for the next stage Of the Jouf- ney. This car Is a replica of the one Tn which the letter has previously traNeled except that instead of the entire car De- ing fitted up as postoffice only part or it Is so equipped, the remainder being used for baggage or passengers. At IS what is known in postoffice parlance as a compartment mail car. There IS this important Acknowledgements at least from the point of view of the railways between the compartment car and the full- fledgcd railway postoffice car. that While the government pays the railways TOT the space occupied for postal purposes III the latter, it allows nothing for space similarly occupied in the former l ne fact that they are compelled to furnisn nearly 4Oo0 such cars for the use of the postoffice department without pay IS a sore point with the railways and Is one of the grounds for their claim that thsre should be a readjustment in the basis or railway mail pay, @ claim the justice or which has recently been admitted by the Postmaster General.
 In the compartment car a mail clerk once more removes the letters from the pouches and makes them up into other lots tagged for the different postoffices along the line. Thirty miles out 10 to l3 hours after leaving New York Smiths letter is dropped off the train onto the station platform of the town to which 1t is addressed 1t is picked up by local messenger, who likewise is paid by the railway to perform what is essentially the work of tho postoffice department and is carried a quarter of a mile 10 the local postoffice. Here it is dumped out on a table, sorted out from among Its fellows and passed over to a bronze vis- aged young man who places it with bun oles of others in a light wagon outside the door and drives away four of i've miles over the hills to where Smiths rela- lives are waiting to receive 1t.
 In it's average journey of 400 miles, Smiths letter has passed through score of hands and has been subjected to as many separate operations. Specialized ma chinery and the highest development of steam transportation has been called into play to aid in the rapidity of its journey. Two cents is all that has been paid for this complex service and at that the gov ernment makes a handsome profit on the transaction so far as this particular class of mail is concerned. If Smiths letter had made the 300O mile trip from New York to San Francisco instead of the little moro than an eighth of that dis tance 1t would not have required much more handling. It would have continued on the fast mail to Chicago, there it would hqx-n 11aap ncfarred f0 an0t railroad and the pouch containing it would not have been opened until the last stage of its journey, between Ogden and San Francisco, when it's contents would have bee nsorted out and made ready for prompt delivery on it's arrival. Prac- tically the only difference would have been the increased cost of railway trans- portation and as has been pointed out that is comparatively the smallest item in the cost of handling mail and according to the claim of the railroads does net cover the actual cost of operation.
 I, Just what it does cost the United States to handle a letter is something that the postoffice department is unable to tell It is working on the problem now Some of the items entering into the total are. shown inethe following figures taken from that last annual report of the depart nlent: f+''-
 Postmaster, assistants and clerks Tn Of fees, sdA552, 5S3.
 Rural and city carriers. $es, ,52S, sos. Clerks and railway mail cars, $19,3S 09a
 Use of R, P. O. cars, S4,686,l22' Railway transportation, $44,654,515. | Proportion of pay of postal employees to total expenses. 67 per cent
 Proportion of total expenditure paid for railway transportation, 21 per cent
 Thus the expenditures of the postoffiee f,, rr,. IS the item of personal service, the ray of the postmasters, clerks and carriers employed in the handling of the man. This represents twO-thrds of the total expenditure. Then there Is the cost of moving the mail over all the railroads of the country. This represents only .tbout one-fifth of the total. Finally there is the miscellaneous expense, including other forms of transportation, the cost of sup plies and similar items. This accounts for the remaining 12 per cent or about one-eighth of the total,
 Taking the departments estimate of l5,OO0,0O0,00O pieces of mail as the total handled in the course of year and its total expenditure, which was $229, ,0Oo- GOO last year. it appears that the average cost of handling all classes of mail is a little over 6 cent and a half for each piece The payments to postmastsrs. clerks and carriers is over $50, 600. oO0 a year of a little more than one cent for each piece of mail handled. Eighty-flvc per cent of all mail matter is carried by rail for distances ranging from q few miles to the span of q continent, but the cost of this service is less than a third of the previous sum or little less than four-tenths of a cent for each piece of mail .transporated, while the cost of coll lecting and delivering each p!eqe of pasil