The Waterbury Democrat., 1945-01-12

Whats more, Clifford said that seven out of 10 of the department S 100000 temporary employees were women who lacked experience, but who had given up what they were doing ito help out the biggest single business in the world" Gle eX- plained there is an annual turn over of $16,O00,000 900 by the depart ment, with more than $l,00O 100000 in revenuesJ
 Kept Fingers Crossed
 "While these novices at postal work were diligent and eager to learn," he continued 'post-office officials had their fingers crossed when the rush period of Dec 13 to g rolled around Such ineXperi- enced personnel, no matter how willing, can't replace husky men. We knew that. and for that chief reason bombarded the public with pleas for early mailing. They re- sponded well and now everyone can breathe more easily. However, dumping of cards and package the week before Christmas would have led to breakdown of the pos tai system that the best planning in the world couldn't have pre- vented"
 He outlined the long-range method Of holiday mailing plans adopted by the department. 'The day after Christmas in 1943-before most housewives had begun to make soup from holiday eftovers-groups of department officials began to work on handling the 1914 mails, We started with a postmortem on the season just finished, remembering the good things and trying to over come the bad. They appraised the equipment shortage and tried to look ahead to losses Of irreplacablc things-like mailbags and trucks, sirce shortages of both were criti cal.
 Set Up Training Program
 Then we outlined ways Of training temporary personnel so they could learn as much as pos sible in the shortest space of time. We anticipated another war Christ mas with more mail to go over seas and more to come back into the States.
 We had conferences with rail- road officials, for the railroads are the chief carriers of mail. Together we worked out ideas for handling gifts to go oversees. We made eSti- cates of the number of cars that would be necessary to transport packages to our principal shipping points, and by August all was in order.
 While this was going or. we were giving poStmasterS all over the country authority to hire extra personnel and rent trucks for de- livery Of the mail. We were in touch with Army supply depOts which we could draw upon for help in case Of an emergency or tie-up in procedure, and We hady our eyes on spots like Detroit and the West Coast. where congestion was par ticularly bad in 1943
 I'll have to admit he con- tinued, "once the $2000,000 pack ages for servicemen overseas were on the way, a big Christmas bur- den was gone
 Population Shift Factor
 Clifford attributed the record mails this year to two factors--a disturbed population equilibrium, where millions Of people were away from home, and the high degree of prosperity which was general.
 He said the mailsack shortage had been caused by the disappear ance of many which went overseas He quoted statistics to show that from August. 1943, to August, 1944, 6 100000 mail bags were shipped abroad filled with letters and pack
 Probably some dusky maidens ages. Of these, 2,200000 were lost in the Southwest Pacific are using them for sarongs,' he suggested
 This shortage was alleviated somewhat by the use of burlap sacks. but Clifford said they have not proved as satisfactory as the canvas pouches. He said because canvas is badly needed by the armed forces. "allocation of more material for postal bags is highly INla