Evening star., 1952-05-09

as pointed out in your articles.
My sincere thanks to you for this
series of articles. am clipping them for
reference.
Leslie ]. johnson.
The abandonment of the directory
service is sorry reflection on the once
excellent postal system. Doesn't it cost
the post Office more to return a letter
to the sender, perhaps for hundreds of
miles. than to look up the correct or in
complete address?
Years ago, my aunt addressed let
ter to "the only house with the inclosed
front porch on Addison street" and it
was delivered promptly. If the present
system keeps on, the post Office will re-
turn letters for failure to cross "t."
r. X.
Pity the poor carrier! Articles in The
Star have stated minimum of 10 en-
ployes handle local letter before de-
livery. Then we read the blame is placed
without exception" on the carriers, the
last Of the 10 to handle those letters.
Seemingly the other nine are letter.
perfect and make no mistakes.
Now. let's use little philosophy and
get to the basic cause of these COM
plants. Retarded collections, overbur-
dened carriers wearing themselves out
trying to maintain service which was
guillotined by that Infamous order cur
failing deliveries and abolishing serv-
ices which did speed the delivery of mail
are the main causes of these complaints.
An overburdened employe, be he carrier
or executive. cannot maintain high
degree of efficiency. Under the former
two-delivery system, miSsorted letter
in the morning mail could be re-sorted
and delivered that afternoon, now it
lays over until the next day.
So let's give credit to those public
servants who are really doing their best
under the present policies and concen-
trate on the faults of those policies.
William F. Robertson.
Your May editorial states Some
thing Has Been Wrong"-meaning the
local postal service. You are correct,
as far as you go. However, the present
slow, uncertain and inefficient mail
service is not confined exclusively to
Washington. 1t is the same Nation
wide.
4SAA NAOoAAA6 PuA 0SA QPlA oecUCO III PdlU
'"The public has right to expect rea-
sonably efficient service from the Post
Office Department - That is like
saying every one should like goodness
and hate sin. You would have struck
good blow for the return of swift, sure
and efficient mail service had you gone
on and insisted that the public. as well
as postal employees, had a right to expect
intelligent administration of postal
affairs.
Why place the blame "squarely on
careless carriers and SorterS" for mail
that remains in collection boxes for as
much as 20 hours before it is collected,
postmarked and sent on it's way to the
final delivery point? The blame should
rightfully rest on those who fixed the
policy of infrequent collections.
John T. DOnelon.
X X
don't want to burden you with this
stuff, but here is something interesting
which learned, and may be of interest
to you. Yesterday we had substitute
on delivery. On those days we always
have our fingers crossed, but this new
substitute has been pretty good as far
as time is concerned. AS you notice, I
live at 1910 N. Stuart street, Arlington.
Yesterday he put letter in my mail
slot addressed to 1910 N. Taylor street,
which is the street next to me. Acting
on the postmasters request that he
wished to receive complaints for con-
structive reasons, I called the superin-
tendent of carriers at the Arlington post
Office He thanked me for calling him
but stated that it was not the carriers
fault. He explained that the mail is
made up" for him at the post Office by
experienced men but sometimes they let
an inexperienced fellow take over tenn
porarily. And these streets are so close