DOWN AMONG THE DEAD LETTERS.
Strangers visiting Washington, and admiring the style and architecture of the General Post-Office building, would never know that there are numbers of ladies seated behind the plate-glass of the second-story windows. Indeed, few people residing in the capital are really aware in what part of the building those female clerks are stowed away. I had passed on every side of the building—morning, noon, and night—but never had seen anybody that looked like a "female clerk," till I found myself of their number, one morning; and then I discovered the right entrance to the Dead Letter Office. It is on F street, so close to the Ladies' Delivery that any person entering here would be supposed to be inquiring for a letter at that delivery. There is another entrance on E street, but it is not much patronized by the ladies until after fifteen minutes past nine o'clock; for punctually at that time, the door-keeper is instructed to lock the ladies' door on F street, and those who are tardy are compelled to go up the gentlemen's staircase, or pass in at the large public entrance on E street. Crowds of visitors walk through the building, day after day, but not one of all the ladies employed here do they see, unless they request to be shown the rooms of the female employés.
In this department, working hours are from nine o'clock in the morning till three o'clock in the afternoon. Ladies are not allowed to leave the office for lunch, nor do they waste much time in discussing the lunch they may have brought, as it is only in consideration of their industry and close application that they are allowed to leave the office at three o'clock, instead of four.
This Dead Letter Office is one of the most complicated pieces of machinery in the "ship of state." I will try to explain and elucidate as much of it as came under my observation. Letters left "uncalled for" at the different post-offices throughout the country are sent to the Dead Letter Office, after a certain length of time. Letters not prepaid, or short-paid, through neglect or ignorance of the writer, also find their way here; and so do foreign letters, from all parts of Europe, which have been prepaid only in part, and therefore come here, instead of reaching their destination. Sometimes mails are robbed, and the mail-bags hidden or thrown away, but are afterwards searched for, and their remaining contents brought to this office. Then again, a vessel at sea, homeward-bound, brings letters from ships meeting it, of sailors and passengers, who send their letters in firm faith that they will reach their anxious friends at home; but if our Government happens to have no treaty or contract with that particular government to which the writer belongs, of course, the letters cannot be forwarded, but are laid at rest here. These letters are carefully preserved for a number of years. They are sometimes called for, and found, a long, long time after they were written; in fact, only "dead" letters are destroyed.
Though I wish to speak more particularly of the duties and labor performed by the ladies employed in this department, I must begin by saying that all letters pass through the hands of, and are opened by, a number of gentlemen—clerks in the department—whose room is on the ground floor of the building. A great number of letters contain money, valuable papers, and postage stamps. These are sent to the superintendent's room. Letters without contents are folded, with the envelope laid inside the letter, tied in bundles, and sent up-stairs for directing. Money, drafts, and postage-stamps, however, are not the only articles considered "mailable matter" by the public. One day I looked over a box filled with such matter, taken from dead letters and parcels in the opening room, and found in it one half-worn gaiter boot, two hair-nets, a rag doll-baby, minus the head and one foot, a set of cheap jewelry, a small-sized frying-pan, two ambrotypes, one pair of white kid gloves, a nursing-bottle, a tooth-brush, a boot-jack, three yards of lace, a box of Ayer's pills, a bunch of keys, six nutmegs, a toddy-stick, and no end of dress samples. This matter is allowed to accumulate for three months, and is then sold at auction; but a register is so carefully kept, that the person mailing the doll-baby without prepaying can follow its progress from the little country town where it was mailed to the end of its career under the hammer at the Dead Letter Office, and here can claim the amount it brought at auction.
Every clerk, male or female, has his or her letter, from A to Z, and beginning again with A A, when the alphabet "runs out." Before the ladies take their places at the desk in the morning, the messenger has already placed there the number of envelopes each lady is expected to direct in the course of the day; and large baskets filled with bundles of letters, sent up from the opening room (the bundles marked with the letter of the clerk through whose hands they have passed), are brought into the rooms. The envelopes are stamped in one corner with the lady's letter, in red; so that the ladies are spoken of, by the superintendent or the messengers, as Miss A, B, C, D—not as Miss Miller, or Mrs. Smith. Fifty of these envelopes are contained in one package, so that it is easy to calculate whether any of them are wasted by misdirecting or blotting. The work looks simple enough, when you see a number of ladies seated at their desks, writing addresses on envelopes, with the greatest apparent ease. "And then," as a gushing young lady said to me one day, "how romantic it must be to listen to the outpourings of love and affection that these letters must contain in many cases, and the dark secrets that others disclose." She thought it rather a cruel restraint, when I told her we were allowed to read only so much of a letter as was necessary to discover the name of the writer, and to read no part of it, if the name was signed clearly and distinctly at the end. Let the lady reader pause a moment and ask herself, "Do I sign my letters so that one of these clerks could return them from the Dead Letter Office, without going over the whole of their contents?" By the time you have finished reading this paper, I hope you will have formed the resolution to sign your name "in full," and just as it is, to every letter you send by the mail. Don't sign your name "Saida," when it is really Sarah Jones "in full;" and if you call your father's brick house on Third street, "Pine Grove," because there are two dry pine-trees in the front yard, don't neglect to add "No. 24, Third Street, Cincinnati, Ohio." The greater number of letters passing through this office are badly written and uninteresting; many of them so perfectly unintelligible that no human being can read or return them; not that the greater portion of our community are uneducated or unintelligent people, but that they are either reckless or careless. Letters directed with any kind of common sense are most always sure of reaching their destination without visiting the Dead Letter Office. Not only do people, in a number of cases, neglect to prepay their letters, but frequently, letters without direction or address of any kind are dropped into the letter-boxes. In writing to individuals residing in the same city with them, people think it is necessary only to mention the name of the individual; the "post-office man" is expected to know that the letter is not to go out of the city. The post-office people are, if not omniscient, at least very obliging. I have found a letter directed to "Carrolton, in America," and the letter had been forwarded to, and bore the post-mark of every Carrolton in the United States before it was sent here.
The work of the ladies falls under two heads: "Common" and "Special." We will get the best idea of what "Common" means, in contradistinction to "Special," by watching Miss A, on "Common" work this morning. Taking one of the bundles of letters from the basket, she opens it and takes up the top letter; spreading it on the desk, she finds the envelope inside; it is directed to "William Smith, Philadelphia, Penn.," and the words "uncalled for," stamped on the envelope, show why it was sent here. Now, the signature is to be looked for: it is here—"John Jones;" next, where was it dated?—"Somerville, Ohio;" but does the post-mark on the envelope correspond with that? Yes, it is post-marked from where it was dated; so, "John Jones" will receive his letter back again: his friend, "W. Smith," may have left Philadelphia, or may have died. "John Jones'" letter is returned to him in a coarse, brown "P. O. D." envelope, stamped with the letter A in one corner, and he pays three cents for the privilege of knowing that his friend "Smith" never received his letter. The next is a delicate pink affair, dated, "White Rose Bower"—signed, "Ella;" "only this, and nothing more;" so the letter is hopelessly dead, and thrown into the paper-basket at Miss A's side. The epistle following this is signed, "Henry Foster," and could be returned if it had not been dated at "White Hall" and post-marked "Harrisburg." On looking over the Post-office Directory, we may or may not find a White Hall in Pennsylvania, but there is nothing in the letter to show whether "Henry Foster's" home is in Harrisburg or White Hall; consequently, that letter is dead, too. Here is one, signed plainly and legibly, but the writer has omitted to date it from any particular place. From the tone of the letter, it is plainly to be seen that he lives where the letter was mailed—but where was it mailed? The post-mark on the envelope is so indistinct that any lady not employed in the Dead Letter Office would throw it aside as "unreadable;" but ladies here learn to decipher what to ordinary mortals would be hieroglyphic, or simply a blank. After consulting the pages of the Post-office Directory beside her, Miss A passes the envelope to Miss B. "Can you suggest any post-office in Indiana beginning with M, ending with L, with about four letters between?" Miss B scrutinizes the envelope closely. "The post-mark is not from Ind. (Indiana), it is from Ioa" (Iowa), is her decision. Misses C, D, and E, at work in the same room, differ in opinion, and at last Miss A steps across the hall to the room of the lady superintendent, where a "blue-book" is kept, and, with the assistance of this lady and the book, Miss A discovers the place in Indiana, directs the letter, and continues her work. When she has directed fifty letters, she ties them (with both envelopes—the "P. O. D." and original one—inside each letter) carefully together, and the messenger carries them into the folding-room, where other ladies, employed in this branch, fold and seal them. Of these "Common" letters, every lady is required to direct from two hundred to three hundred a day—a task by no means easy to accomplish.
"Special" work is generally disliked by the ladies, and is of a somewhat "mixed" character. Letters held for postage—consequently not "dead"—come under this head. They, too, are sent back to the writer, if the signature can be found, and the place from which they are dated corresponds with the post-mark; if not, they are assorted according to letter and put away into "pigeon-holes," marked with the letter corresponding. Foreign letters, such as I spoke of before, come under this head, too. Then there are official letters—in relation to military and judicial matters—short-paid, and, therefore, brought before this tribunal. These require minute attention, as three and four documents are inclosed in one envelope sometimes, making it difficult to discover who is the proper person to return them to. Again, there are letters with postage-stamps to be returned, and money letters containing not over one dollar: those with larger amounts are directed in the superintendent's room. Ladies directing stamp and money letters keep account of them in a book, submitted, together with the letters, to the superintendent, at the close of office hours, every day. Money letters are marked with red stars, stamp letters with blue. Stamps taken from dead letters are destroyed by the proper authorities. Then, there is copying to do—orders and circulars, rules and regulations, to be transmitted to the different local post-offices; and translations to be made of communications received from foreign post departments. All this is "Special" work. A large proportion of the letters passing through the office are German letters—some French, Italian, Norwegian, and Spanish; but two German clerks are constantly employed, while one clerk can easily attend to the letters of all the other different nationalities together.
Sometimes it comes to pass that the superintendent visits one room or the other, with a number of letters in his hand; these have been misdirected or badly written. The red letter stamped on each letter guides him to the desk of the lady who has directed it; and very sensitive is each and every lady to the slightest reproach or reprimand received, because of the universal kindness and respect with which they are treated by all the officials with whom they come in contact.