The Inquiry Department
This is one of the most interesting departments of any post-office. The one at New York is under the supervision of Mr. William T. Gutgsell, and its functions are many. It handles all inquiries for missing mail, and during the year ended June 30, 1922, this amounted to 243,457. The number of inquiries, however, by no means equals the number of letters and packages which are found to be undeliverable. Undeliverable mail is disposed of by the Inquiry Section, and the magnitude of its work may be appreciated from the fact that no fewer than 150,000 letters were mailed without postage during the year. Among the other items that loom large in the report of the Inquiry Department is the number of letters directed to hotels which were not claimed by the addressees. Of these there were 1,200,000; 18,000 parcels of fourth-class matter were found without address, the delivery of which could not be effected, and 56,000 pieces of unaddressed matter were restored to the owners. In former years all letters and packages of value found to be undeliverable throughout the country and not provided with the cards of the senders were forwarded to the Division of Dead Letters at Washington, but on January 1, 1917, branch dead-letter offices were established at New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. The branch at New York is conducted by the Inquiry Section, and its work concerns Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New York, 5074 offices being included. From this area last year there were received 3,518,604 pieces of undeliverable matter of domestic origin. A very large part of this mail had to be opened in order that restoration to the owners could be effected. Many of the letters, etc., were found to contain valuable enclosures, as indicated by this tabulation:
OPENED DEAD MAIL WITH VALUABLE
ENCLOSURES
| Number | Amount | |
| Money | 10,352 | $ 27,559.93 |
| Drafts, checks, money-orders, etc. | 35,178 | 2,528,844.19 |
| Postage-stamps | 98,413 | 4,641.67 |
Many letters found to contain drafts, checks, money-orders, etc., are restored to the owners, for if the contents do not themselves disclose the address of the owners, the banks upon which the checks are drawn are communicated with to secure the information desired.
The Inquiry Department includes the Indemnity Bureau, which reviews, adjusts, and pays claims involving loss or damage to insured or C. O. D. parcels. Of these claims 112,432 were filed during the last fiscal year, and the amount paid on the claims was $544,314.46.
Another bureau of this department is charged with the duty of examining all misdirected letters and parcels which cannot be distributed or delivered by the employees regularly engaged in sorting the mails. The carelessness of the public in the matter of addressing mail is apparent from the statistics of this bureau for the year just passed, which show that it handled 1,576,366 letters with the very creditable result that of this number it succeeded in correcting and forwarding 686,233, from which it is evident that the post-office took more pains than did the senders. Of the number handled it also restored to the senders approximately 424,000.
Order and Instruction Section
This department is under the supervision of Mr. Edward R. McAlarney and is maintained for the issuance of various bulletins of information, public announcements, news items, and the circulation through official publications of instructions, orders, and intelligence regarding postal matters. It is "the office of publication" to the post-office; it issues posters, bulletins, news of the service, notices announcing the change in rates and conditions, the sailing and arriving of ships, changes in time of despatch and routing of the mail, etc. It is a busy department and the magnitude of its service corresponds to the great volume of work that it performs.
The Examination Section