Evening star., 1924-09-14
Capital Sidelights
ny WILL p. KENNEDY.

senerai terms rather than la specific
details to get the better of his old
newspaper training for mashalins the
facts and figures.
Bearded In his private office the
other day, he was asked "how come"
the statement that the Postal Sery-
ice, OF which he is administrative
onicer, Is the biggest single business
In the world. In the same terse and
convincing way that as a young re.
porter he outlined his stories" to the
city editor in a way that got them
scheduled for the first page of the
paper, the Postmaster General re-
piled:
Every year the United States
Postal Service handles $4,000, ,000, 600
articles. Every year the increase in
the number of articles in the mails
is more than a billion. or the total
mail submitted, 10000, ,o00,s 600 pieces
are letters.
Every year the Postal Service. on
an average, delivers liz letters to
every man, woman and child in the
United States.
1.-The annual load Of letters that the
Postal Service moves Is estimated to
total 133,350 tons.
Every second of the 20 hours of
every day there are 3s9 letters
ute, 23,334, and every hour, 1,4eo, 900.
Nearly $4,000 postmen daily de-
liver mall to millions Of home and
business houses. The Post Office has
S51 900 employees.
To-day. 44,552 rural routes supply
mail to 6,504.592 families or 29,921,-
123 individuals.
THE Postal Service uses annually
vast quantities of wide variety of
supplies-mcre than 800 tons Of sta
tionefy and typewriting paper; nearly
4.e00,0 sheets OF carbon paper: some
175,000,000 envelopes and millions
upon millions of blank forms in end
less variety; more than 10000 quarts
of ink: more than $1,000 quarts of
mucilage: 100000 lead pencils, near
ly 100000 steel pens. 100000, 900
paper clips, rubber bands by the ton
and 2,331,44s pounds of twine.
Nearly 12.000.000 mail sacks are
used, and it requires annually $780,
600 yards of canvas to make new
ones.
"The army of rural letter carriers
travel daily 1,173,473 miles and an
nually, 3s0,256,364 miles.
Fifteen and a half billion stamps
and one and one-quarter billion
postal cards are sold yearly by the
Post Office Department to the Amer
lean public
1t is an almost daily occurrence
for some one in the Government serv-
Ice to devise some way of making a
short cut in the work that saves
Uncle Sam many thousands of dollars,
and these humble workers generally
go unrewarded even by a word of
public appreciation.
- hA ooI
tant of these time and labor saving
innOvations is now at work daily.
very materially shortening the time
of figuring out just how much is
coming to each former service man
under the adjusted compensation act.
Maj. Harry Coope. former adjutant
Of the District National Guard. who
is chief Of staff for the big Holy Name
parade. and who as an aide to the
adjutant general of the Army was as
signed the supervision of the COM
putting division of the adjusted com
pensation branch. found that while
there were a lot of good adding ma :
chimes. there was no subtracting ma
chine. Most Of the work in this divi-
sion centered around subtracting one
date from another. So Mai Coope
and his assistants started in to devise
some way of doing this mechanically.
They furnished the idea to all of the
big concerns manufacturing adding
machines. and as a result the new ma
chine was evolved. 1t consists in a
distortion of an adding machine so
that it will subtract one date from
another. On this machine all the
computing of soldier service. how
many days are due him and show
many dollars, is figured out.
This machine does away with the
necessity for many clerks and means
! a saving of hundreds of thousands OF
dollars year. The magnitude Of the
work Is shown by the fact that with
all claims passing through it, it is
now working up some 10000 day.
Uncle Sam has an excellent gentle
woman working for him who is
known as the cod liver oil LADY,
This is Mrs. Evelene Spencer, special
ist in the United States Bureau of
Fisheries. She is specializing on a
campaign against ricketts,. She first
cameeto Uncle Sans notice during
the war when she did very effective
nation wide service in teaching the
people how to eat more fish during
the meatless days-principallS by
teaching the housewives how to cook
! fish properly.
DIR. T.. ". MeCul1um at Johns Hop
kins and DR.. MendeI at Yale have
been doing research work with cod
liver oil and their findings are just
being broadcast. 1t shows that in
the United States, according to Mrs
Spencer, rs per cent Of the children
have ricketts,, and with that goes de-
fective teeth because of lack Of lime
| in the bone structure.
Mrs. Spencer has just been in New
York in consultation with one Isco-
vesco, Hungarian chemist, working
at the Sarbonne in Paris. 1t has been
| found that cod liver oil contains the
only anti-rachitic yitamin. But Iseo-
| vesco has convinced her that it isn't
| the. Oil, but . something he calls
| 'lipoid' which chances to get into the
oil when it is extracted. The "lipoid'
| really comes from the stomach of the
| cod, pollock, hake, cusk and such fish
Mrs. Spencer emphasizes that it Is
| the city child, rather than the country
child, who gets lots of sunshine, who
| is subject to ricketts,. and she recalls
! that DIR. Mendel said that God must
| have put this something into the
| stomach of the deep sea fish to take
| the place of sunshine, which is nov
| being extracted to cure ricketts,. &
| william Kent Of Kentneld, Calf.
! formerly I member Of Congress, haA
established for himself and his good
| wife 4 unique monument, which is des.
| tined with the passing years to become
one Of. the greatest wonders of these
United States, already centuries old.
The Kent monument Is officiall,
| known as Muir Woods, named in honel
| OF the famous explorer, naturalist and
writer, John Muir, and was created 4
| national monument by presidential
proclamation. 1t was established to pre-.
! serve for future generations a remark.
able grove Of California redwood trees
| and Mr.. and Mrs. Kent contributed
some 373 acres of most friendly ane