The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-10-23
HOW THE ORDINARY LETTER TRAVELS AND WHAT IT COSTS
 TO RUN THE MAIL SERVICE
Elaborate Machinery Employed to Garry Mail From Writer to Reader In Shortest Possible Time-Coss Little More to Garry Letter Across the Continent Than
 Across State
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necessary on each envelope and clerk who was a rapid worker could dispose oi 15o0 to 1900 letters an hour. Now the oanceling machine eats up 5000 letters or 40,OO0 postals in an hour and at tht busy period nearly score of these ma chimes are in operation at once in the main New York poStoffice.
 From the cancelling machine the let ters are carried in bundles to what Is
 known as the primary separation tables which face a big case made up of com partments about a foot square. Each of these bears the name of a city, state CT group of states. The clerks go swiftly through the bundles of mail that they carry, and throw each letter into it's proper compartment. Other clerks remove the letters from these cases and take them to the secondary separation tables which are arranged in similar fashion, | except that the number of separate ?om- partments is much larger. Each of these is marked with the name of some city or postal route and the number of sep arate routes and locations that each clerii must have literally at his finger tips runs anywhere from 5000 to 10.O00. h spite of the fact that the letters 30 fly ing through the air like the flakes of a spring snow storm, each clerk disposirg of from 50 to @ a minutes or practically 'N thv itlt, oL aOllo u SocOIu. IUOuSI working at this speed it is very rarely that mistake occurs or that letter tails to go into the particular compa-t. fnent at which it is aimed
 By this time Smiths letter is reposing With a large number of others in the compartment marked New York and Chicago Railway postoffice," which means that 1t Is to go to one of the travelling postoffices operated on the through mail trains between these two cities. The next process is ''tieing out The letters are placed in bundles, each one tied with a string and marked on top with a facing slip' containing the name of the route to which it is consigned. These bundles are cropped to the basement of. the postofficc Building through a chute and there hey are placed in cylindrical shells constructed cn the same principle as the pneumatic change carriers employed in department stores Each shell holds about half a bushel of letters When the one contain ing Smiths missive is loaded a cap l. fastened on and the shell is shot through a pneumatic tube leading up town to the branch postoffice located in the Grand central terminal. The journey of about three and half miles is made in seven minutes or at the rate of 90 miles an hour. With the old fashioned method Of wagon delivery the same trip would require from half to three quarters of an hour.
 At the branch postoffce the mail is enptied out of the pneumatic shells into regulation mail bags, each properly tag ged, and is dropped through big chtites to the platform alongside the tracks where tbe railway mail cars stand waiting Thus far Smiths letter has travelled perhaps TOUT miles in Il period that may have been one hour or three. Now, however. It begins to make real speed On board No. B., which leaves New York at o:3o every night and claims the proud dis tinction of being the worlds greatest mail train, it will make 70 miles an rour over much of the next stage of it's jour- ney. The train is made up entirely of mail cars, part of them being Storage cards in which mail bags are piled and part. R. F. O., cars as they are knowr. in the service. The latter are veritable traveling postoffices fitted up with nppi- ances for holding the pouches and with separation tables on which the clerks sort the letters and fill the bags that are dropped off at each station as the train rushes on, through the, night. Our friend Smiths letter. teing destined for the wes- tern part of the state. Is not disturbed in fits pouch until the second of the three relays of clerks that work the mail between New York and Chicago tonnes on duty at Syracuse. There the contents of tn. .neuah are dumped upon the seaar'