The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-08-04
ECONOMIES IN
 EQUIPMENT FOR
 THE U. s. MAILS
Baus Now Purchased at Half Former COSt-Better Work
 ing Conditions.

ed on postar cars from the mail Wag- l
 ons of the Government, or see them thrown off at the station in the cltles'
 can form no idea of the immens1ty or
 this branch of the public service. Sta
 tistics and tables of figures may nave little interest for the ordinary reader, but when it is staked that the total
 number of mail bags used for trans porting the mails amount to about five millions, and if placed end to end ]
 would stretch from Boston to San
 Francisco and extend into the Pacific Ocean, some estimate may be formed of the tremendous mass of such equp- | i ment needed in the dispatch of public |
 business At the beginning of this administra- tion an inventory was taken to learn what equipment for railway postal transportation the government had on
 hand. It was discovered that the |
 grand total of such property was B.
 549,489 pieces, of which 46S,846 were
 mail pouches, 2,592,479 were sacks,
 and 48S164 were mail locks Since this inventory was made the growth |
 of the service required the purchase
 of over one million and half mail
 bags to meet the steadily increasing demand. This business of the govern
 ment is so enormous that tabulation |
 made in the Railway Mail Service two
 years ago showed that the eight mail bag Repositories of the United States
 received and sent out again during the
 year just preceding nearly 40,OOO,O0O
 sacks and pouches As the real
 amount of stock then was about A.
 000,000, it will be seen that this equip
 ment was handled ten times by the
 system of distribution devised to re-
 lieve congestion at one point and meet
 pressing demands at another, without
 which arrangement the peculiar ex-
 actions of the service could not be
 met. The amount thus handled is
 now very much larger, sacks and
 pouches passing to and fros through |
 these Repositories and the mail bag
 storehouse at Washington aggregating
 56,Q00,00 pieces.
 The money required from time to
 time for the purchase of this great
 supply and the price to be paid, so
 as to come within the appropriation.
 were matters of grave concern to |
 those in charge. Congress supplied |
 the funds, but where the supply could i
 be bought at the lowest price-gov-
 ernment standards maintained-was
 the problem. In the summer of |
 1913, the Department was paying
 $1.44 for its ordinary mail pouches |
 This price was deemed too high, and |
 experts were set to work to devise |
 something which would be of equal |
 capacity, equal durability, at a less cost. The result was that a pouch |
 was designed which the Department
 contracted for and purchased for less
 than 60 cents each, and this pouch |
 has been produced in large quantities and is replacing those formerly under | contract. Experts were also placed |
 on the proposition of designing a | cheaper but equally effective pouch |
 for the exchange of mails by moving
 trains. The Department was then pay ing $1.70 for these catcher pouches. | Within short time a pouch was evolved, designed on scientific princi- |
 pies, which is giving far better ser vice and at greatly reduced cost, | viz, 80 cents each.
 The saving in this production of equipment will amount to a very large sum, for there have been over 150,000 of these new style bags placed | in the service within the last two i years at reduction of fifty per cen tum, and this economy will of course continue and grow in amount as the | further demand for supply is met l , While, the old style of equipment re- | quired expert attention to keep them | in repair, this newer product requires ] but little, and is kept in good condi- i tion at a nominal cost by machine | operators. n The repair and proper maintenance of mail bags is provided for in an es- l ! tablishment located at Washington. Experienced and efficient people are only employed, for repair work must be well done before bags can again be permitted to enter the service. The l
 number repaired and placed in good l | condition during the past year was ! over amillion. | One of the difficulties connected |
 with this repairing process, which | was also something of a hardship to i the operators, was the accumulated dirt and dust which attached to these | bags when returned from the service | and which was menace to the health | { Of those so employed. No attention
 had ever been paid to the dangerous
 and unsanitary conditions under which /!
 this work was done. No attempt to cleanse these bags from the foul inn purities they gathered and collected lad ever been made, and those en- ] ployed at the work, men and women, | were forced to inhale the dust which |
 an ordinary shaking out by hand fails l to remove, which was considerable, as i the shaking out process was hastily i and imperfectly done. The official | in charge saw the need of q change 1 to better methods, and steps were at once taken to discover it. Cores | pondence was had with manufactu- | rers of machinery both in this and
 foreign countries. A system was fin ally adopted consisting of large tum
 bling barrels, each having a capacity for holding several hundred bags. 1 Driven rapidly by electric power the dust confined to a tightly constructed room and carried off by blowers and lodged in immense canvass recep- tacles, resembling a dirigible balloon when inflated, this process was found thoroughly suitable, for careful tests | showed that all dust was complete ly removed. Four thousand a day are now treated by this process. l The life of mail bag is about six years, but the rough usage to which | 1t is exposed renders many of them l unfit for repairs. Such bags pass in- | to the hands of expert inspectors who | utilize such parts as still have some good material left in making what is
 known as "pieced bags" Many are
 thus reclaimed, and returned to the
 service, constituting with the sale of | condemned material, the salvage of