The newspapers are assorted in the basement of the Post-office, very much in the same fashion as letters, but they are not tied up in bundles. The separating cases into which they are thrown are so made that a sack hanging at the lower end of the box receives the mail thrown therein, and when full, it is ready for tying, labelling, and sealing up. In this department are received the queerest odds and ends going through the mails to foreign countries, newspapers especially being selected to hide in their folds sundry articles of every description sent to friends "in the auld country." Jewelry, from the penny kind to really valuable articles, handkerchiefs galore, baby's dressing outfits, rattlesnake skins, plugs of tobacco, cucumbers—these and many other curios of every description are found and stopped. If the address of the sender appears on the package, it is returned to him direct. Otherwise it goes to the Dead Letter Office, where it is kept a certain length of time awaiting to be claimed. The unclaimed part is finally sold at auction.
In the letter department there are also curiosities, but of another kind. The greatest part of the letters addressed to Santa Claus in Greenland, or other Northern lands, are treated by the foreign clerks. There are also many mysteries to be unravelled in the queer hieroglyphics which are supposed to be the addresses of letters, especially those going to Russia, Turkey, Hungary, and even Italy. Clerks of the foreign department are not linguists; but the same characters recurring so constantly soon appear familiar, and they experience no trouble in "boxing" the letters to the proper office.
When a mail has closed, no more letters or papers are put in the assorting boxes, but everything that was there is taken out, tied, labelled, and sacked. The letter-bills are then prepared, and after all the sacks are sealed the way-bills are made up in duplicate copies. A full European mail via Queenstown or via Southampton averages nine to twelve hundred sacks, fully two-thirds of which have been made up in the New York office. The way-bill describes this large mail only as so many letter-sacks and so many paper-sacks from the New York office, or the Chicago, or other office of origin, for Paris, or for Dublin, etc., and when the steamers land the mail at its port of arrival, the way-bills are used to check and verify the number of sacks landed. One copy of the way-bill is returned to New York with a receipt from the official at the port of destination, and the responsibility of this office for the mails ceases. Their further transportation will be the business of the administration which has received them.
The Parcels Post system is also taken care of by the clerks of the foreign department, but as it is a system based on special conventions or agreements between any two countries, it is not within the sphere of an article relating to the international mail service as regulated by the Postal Union Conventions. The exchange of large parcels, however, as well as of ordinary correspondence, is one of the improvements which remain for future postal congresses to introduce in the system. At present, the United States parcels' post exchange is confined to the West Indies, Central America, Mexico, Hawaii, and Newfoundland. Ordinary merchandise not exceeding eleven pounds can be forwarded under that system for twelve cents a pound.
The general supervision over all American exchange offices is centred in the Office of Foreign Mails, in Washington, but the fact that over ninety per cent. of foreign mail matter is handled, or passes through the New York office would make exceedingly advantageous, especially for business interests all over the country, the transfer to New York of the supreme direction of that service. Many times questions have to be decided and steps taken at short notice, delay being the great bugaboo of postal officials, and in such cases constant and daily touch with a system ever increasing and improving would be of incalculable benefit. The New York force, however, is so well trained, its superintendents and clerks are so completely acquainted with every detail of the system, that so far the business world has not suffered from the present arrangement. It certainly has not gained. A flattering testimonial of this efficiency of the New York foreign force is found in a report to his government of the New Zealand Postal Agent residing at San Francisco and in charge of the important British-Australian Mail Service. "I find," says he, "that the New York officials are extremely anxious to make the best connections and are indefatigable in their efforts to expedite the transfer of mails. Messrs. Maze and Boyle,[1] Superintendent and Assistant Superintendent of mails in New York City, are particularly energetic and watchful, and no stone is left unturned at that office to further our interests in that direction, and the mails are often transferred to tugs and sent after the Atlantic liners when late."
United States System of Tying, Sealing, and Labelling Sacks.