Evening star., 1913-11-28
The Postal Service.
WI.-The Railway Mail
Service.
By Frederic ]. Haskin.

If you can imagine what II means 70
know the exact location Of some ten thou
sand post offices: to know by what rail-
roads they are reached, and by which of
these roads a letter will reach them
quickest: through what junction points
It must travel. and a hundred and ono
other things. and then to be able to throw
letters into a half hundred pigeonhoies,
each pigeonhole representing certain
locality, and each letter going into the
right pigeonhole at the rate Of q hundred
or moro a minute. the while the train is
laundering along at a forty or fifty mile
gait, then you can grasp what 1t means
to be a railway mail clerk.
It requires some 1900 clerks to man
the 3.4O0 railroad post offices in the
United States, and they draw total pay
Of about $2O.OOO.00O a year. For many
years they were the poorest paid of all
the servants of the government, consid-
ering the strenuousness of their calling
and the dangers to which they are ex-
posed. but today their average compen-
sation is more than 500 a month. and
$169 a year more than the average postal
servant gets.
The postal clerk in the past had to run
a serious risk Of getting killed In the dis
charge Of his duties. The ordinary postal
car was run UP next to the engine and
With a heavy engine ahead Of it and a
heavy train behind it, the result in case
of a wreck usually was mass of kindiing
wood. with the clerks killed or wounded.
To add to the horrors Of the situation.
gas lighting pipes suddenly severed would
begin to pour their loads of gas out over
the mass Of wood and mail, and in hun
dreds Of instances the horrors Of incin-
Grafton were added to those Of collision.
X
The postal clerks begged the govern
ment to insist upon the equipment Of
all postal cars
Postal Clerks Beg with electric
for Electric Lights. railroads n s' an an
swered that electric train lighting was
still in the experimental stage, in face
Of the fact that every one Of them
was even then featuring its crack trains
as being electrically lighted throughout.
and the government accepted the state
ments Of the railroads. Then, when the
steel cars came out, the clerks begged
that the railroads be required to furnish
steel postal cars. pointing out that the
average postal car was being hired by
the government for approximately $4,000
a year. rental which they considered
high enough to entitIe them to steel
cars. There was the usual protest, but
finally Congress required the gradual
substitution Of steel cars for the old
wooden ones. !
The degree Of proficiency demanded in
the railway mail service is remarkable.
In other branches of the government
service man has to take an entrance
unless 1t be for promotion to some other
grade. In the railway mail service the
clerks must constantly study and men,
orize thousands of new post offices and
OF every 10000 pieces Of mail handled
by the railway mail service last year
1897 were handled correctly.
Each clerk must undergo an average
OF about three examinations a year. The
department has books printed giving full
data about each post office in given
territory, and showing the system of dis
tr1oution OF mall SO as to reach each one
OF them. The clerk must memorize all
these. usually for all the post offices
makes out a card for each post Office
on the front OF which there is the post
ONCE name and on the back the routing
particulars He buys himself a little
cept in dimensions. to the big cases
seen In every postal car. This little
case contains 2SS holes. He labels each
hole, doing it in such way that all
letters going to certain individual offices
or to certain groups Of offices, are put
into their proper pigeonholes. Then he
must take the packs Of cards he has made
out, and throw each card into its proper
pigeonhole. Not only must he learn to
do 1t accurately. but rapidly as we'll
After he has satisfied himself with his
proficiency in distributing these cards
he goes before the authorities and dis
tributes the cards in their presence,
being timed for speed and checked up
for accuracy.
K *