Evening star., 1935-12-15

" days, in crowded stores, select
ing Christmas gifts and cards.
You spend several more min
utes fuming in line at the parcel post
window. Finally you have your pack
age weighed and stamped, and have
dropped a fat bundle of cards in the
mail box. 1t is only five or six days
until Christmas, and some of your
gifts and cards must travel hundreds
or even thousands of miles; but you 60
home with that satisfied feeling, Sc
cure in the knowledge that your re-
membranes will arrive just when you
planned-a day or so before Christ
mas. Your holiday worries are over.
at least until the bills start coming in.
Half an hour after you dropped
that card in the corner box a light
truck drove up. and your card, along
with a couple of hundred others (this
is Christmas time), was scooped into
a canvas pouch and then into an
open-mouthed bag in the truck
A few minutes later the truck has
completed its rounds and pulls up at
the nearest branch post Office. The
sacks of mail that have been gath
cred are unloaded, to lay on the plat
form a few minutes until a larger
truck picks them up and carries them
across town to the central post office.
If you live in New York, Boston or
Philadelphia, where the downtown
street traffic is unusually heavy, the
sacks are dumped and their con-
rOIa iVa rNTliF fn hn hot
to the main post Office through pneu-
matte tubes.
Your card now arrives with thou
sands of others, at the unloading plat
form of the main post Office, AS soon
as the sacks are taken of the trucks
they are placed on an endless belt and
carried to a raised platform. Men
grab these sacks off the belt, unlock
them. and dump their contents on
chute where they slide to the facing
table below.
THE facing table is really the first
sorting Practiced hands pick up
each piece and so place it that the
stamp will face outward and be in the
upper right hand corner II the en-
velope has been precanceled it must
be reversed. If no stamp has been
affixed the piece is thrown into
box, to be returned to the sender.
Special delivery and airmail letters
are placed on belt that carries them
to another corner of the floor. Such
mail is handled separately from now
attention. Mail other than first class,
that has found its way to the facing
table by mistake, is placed on belt
which carries it to the proper de-
partment.
Mail placed in the slot is whisked
along on edge to the stacker. which
sorts the pieces and stacks them &C
cording to size. Several cancelling
machines, capable of handling TOO
pieces a minute, are grouped around
the stacker Operators pick up piles
of letters of the size their own ma
chine has been set for and feed them
through the canceller. 1t takes four
facers to keep one cancelling machine
busy. The speed at which mail can
be handled here varies widely with
the humidity. On damp days paper
swells, and excess glue at the edges
of stamps and envelope flaps cause
pieces to adhere to each other. Many
of the larger post Offices are equipped
with dehumidifers, which extract ex-
cess moisture from the air.
After cancellation comes the pri-
mary sorting. This is fairly simple in
a small town served by a single rail-
large railroad centers. In the Wash
ington. D. c., Post Office, for instance,
the primary sorting for first-claSs
mail is: Local, Virginia, West Vir-
ginia, North Carolina, Maryland, Del
aware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New
York, North, South, West, foreign,
New York City, Philadelphia, Will
mington, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Chi
cago and Richmond.
THE card to your next-door neigh
= Dor finds itself in the local rack
a few minutes after it enters the
building. Every or 10 minutes the
local racks of the several primary
sorters are emptied, and other sorters,
who know the city thoroughly, re-
sort the local mail according to the
branch Offices from which the car
riers work. In perhaps an hour
after your card has entered the main
Office it is on its way back to the
branch Office that picked it up. Here
other Sorters distribute the mail to