The Letter-Carrying System
But few persons have any adequate idea of the vast number of letters which day after day pass through the post-office into the hands of the carrier, to be delivered at their final destination. The following list gives the number of letters delivered and collected in the four largest cities during the month of June, 1865:—
| Mail Letters Delivered. | Drop Letters Delivered. | Letters Delivered. | |
| New York | 799,389 | 253,434 | 785,990 |
| Philadelphia | 492,004 | 168,330 | 361,068 |
| Chicago | 118,200 | 9,200 | 100,591 |
| Cincinnati | 84,370 | 7,714 | 47,201 |
| ———— | ———— | ———— | |
| Total | 1,493,963 | 438,678 | 1,294,850 |
During the same period there were collected from pillar or lamp-post boxes 1,294,850 letters.
The annexed statement gives the number of letters delivered in three principal cities:—
| Boston | 284,440 |
| Baltimore | 152,230 |
| Chicago | 130,819 |
| ——— | |
| Total | 567,489 |
| Philadelphia | 516,836 |
So, according to this, the amount of business transacted through the Philadelphia post-office is almost equal to that of Boston, Baltimore, and Chicago combined. Statistics further show that it is nearly equal to the combined business of Brooklyn, St. Louis, Washington, Cincinnati, and Cleveland.
From the little room which we have termed the “distribution-room,” letters are sent and scattered over the area named above, to the full amount of 18,000 daily, not including those called “city drops.” The distributor is to know, or is supposed to know, apart from consulting the directory, the name of every street, lane, and alley, as well as their locality, so that he can place the letters so directed into their separate pigeon-holes, both for the city carriers and the “subs.” He has to observe the limits of certain routes, and see that his letters do not go astray, thus causing a delay in the delivery of at least twenty-four hours. Many letters are received without direction, and others, again, so imperfectly given that it requires the exercise of a little of Job’s patience, assisted by an imperfect directory, to find out where they actually belong. The carriers, however, to whom these letters are submitted, being familiar with the names of persons on their routes, select from this débris of letters those that they think belong to the parties to whom they are so carelessly directed. A good carrier never brings back a letter to the office until he is fully satisfied that it is not on his route. Philadelphia can boast of such.
This retentive quality is also powerfully exercised at the box-windows. There are 2600 boxes, which we may say will average six letters each daily, thus making an aggregate of 15,600. These letters are selected from the “pile” by clerks, who actually know not only the names of the owners of the boxes, but the names of those who are entitled to their use,—as, for instance, the clerks and porters of the parties engaging them. This is what we term a wonderful exercise of memory and its practical application. Newspapers are distributed on the same principle as are the letters.
The newspaper department of a post-office is one that may well be called the “reservoir” of the press: here flows all that makes up that vast institution, here comes the highest standard of our literature, down to the meanest sheet venality produces. A number of men are constantly employed in the newspaper room, or, as we term it, “the rotunda of literature.” This is emphatically the wholesale room; for they deal in bulk. Papers coming singly, directed to individuals, pass through the same process as do the letters. The packages directed to neighboring cities find their way through the “rotunda” in canvas bags to their respective places of destination. Let us here say one word of