Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 8.djvu/396

 362

��The Railway Mail Service.

��xmder the door of the box, and the mail drops into it. Pouches and sacks are also hung in racks to be distributed into. These cars are post-offices of no mean pretensions when the amount of work performed is considered. When it is considered how densely populated the country is through which this line passes many times each day, and its numerous and swelling tributaries, the volume of mail conveyed is enormous, yet not disproportionate.

The average amount conveyed dur- ing thirty days, in the sixty days in Jan- uary and February of 1881, that the weights of mails were taken between .New York City and Buffalo, a distance of four hundred and forty- two miles, amounted to 4,416,451 lbs.; between Buffalo and Chicago, a distance of five hundred and forty-two miles, 2,874,^18 lbs. Over the first section 73,607 lbs. per day, the second section 47,848 per day ; while either of these amounts does not equal those carried during the same period between New York and West Philadelphia, on the route to Wash- ington, a distance of ninety miles, amounting to 6,202,370 lbs. for the thirty days, and 103,372 lbs. per day, the great discrepancy in miles must be borne in mind and the fact that gov- ernment suppHes and public documents to the East and North contribute no small proportion of the amount. The mail between New York and Chicago is altogether a working mail. It requires more than two hundred and sixty clerks to handle this mail, who travel annually 2,030,687 miles.

The clerks on the westerly bound trains are assigned the distributing of mails by route, for all Middle, Western, Southwestern, and Northwestern States, and on the easterly bound trains for the Middle and Eastern States.

��When such States as New York, Penn- sylvania, Ohio, and Illinois, with respect- ively 3,070, 3,681, 2,6o3,and 2,568 post- offices, are taken into consideration, some idea may be formed of the work required in preparing a system of dis- tribution, the vigilance required to keep pace with the frequently changing sched- ules, and the study of the clerks to properly carry its requirements into effect. Beyond Chicago, in the new country, the work of distribution grows less intricate, but the powers of endu- rance of the clerks are severely tested. On the Hne between Kansas City, Missouri, and Deming, New Mexcio, a distance of 1,147 miles, the clerks ship for a long voyage — five days on the outward trip and the same on the inward, sleeping and eating on the train.

There are a number of lines in the far West, on which the clerks do not leave the train for a number of days. Throughout the country the total number of pieces of ordinary mail handled by 3,855 railway postal clerks on the lines, during the year ending June 30, 1883, amounted to 3,981,516,280; the num- ber of errors made in their distribution was 958,478 pieces, or a per centage of correct distribution of 99.97. This minutia of detail is applied to the dis- tribution of a vast bulk of mail. It is estimated that in Boston, Massachusetts, between eighty and one hundred tons of mail matter are daily dispatched, and between forty and sixty tons are daily received ; while at New York City this quantity is more than doubled. Even figures become interesting when they represent the standard of intelligence and progress, as shown by an increased correspondence and literature. In na branch of the government service, it can be safely said, have the tenets advanced by the advocates of the civil-service

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