A SLOT'S TWO SIDES

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 152, 24 December 1929, Page 10

A SLOT'S TWO SIDES

SENDERS AND SORTERS

THE EVENING POSTING

SYSTEM PEO3I CHAOS

The day's shopping and the penning of fond messages partly over, crowds formed queues at the counters of the General Post Office towards five o'clock yesterday afternoon, and afterwards at the posting slots, where, apart from the host of telegrams conveying the compliments of the season, handed in elsewhere, a steady stream of envelopes poured in, while down in the basement the parcels counter rumbled under a steady avalanche ->*£jnore practical expressions of goodwill. From, the outside all was cheeriness and festive pleasure, but within it was «i different tale. Though the cheerfulness remained, it ■was a more serious business, because most of the postings were for certain mails, and these must not be missed.

At 5.30 p.m. the flow of letters and cards had completely filled and overflowed the hampers under the local distribution slots, and though the foreign mails filled up more slowly, that stream also had to be reckoned -with. From then until the rest of $he "pre-tea" postings had been caught up on, there were some 40,000 letters in a huge mound under the slots, while on the facing-up table batches of even, more ■were being dealt with. As the letters formed a snowflake delta high over the receiving hampers, and threatened to choke right up to the slots, the hampers were taken away, and the Christmas correspondence rush became a fanshaped pile built up from the floor; the base was swept away to keep the slots open.

Without a perfect system the rush of posting was such that it would have caught up on the sorting, and the letters would never have caught their connections. Over a flozen assistants brought in for the occasion "faeed-up" the letters on the table. People could save the postal authorities a great deal of trouble at times such as these if they would package letters, especially business firms which, every half-hour or so, post hundreds of letters of exactly the same dimensions. These fall some face up, some face down, and all have to be turned light way up before they can be machine-stamped. This is not all the trouble. Letters of approximately the same size pass through the stamping machines much more readily than others. Some- that have been re-direct-ed have to be turned face down so that the second stamp may not obliterate the first. Large size-envelopes cannot be - passed through the stamping machines at all, and have, moreover, to be sorted into special eases, where they will not block up the boxes. Then the thick letters jam in the machines, and they also have to be placed together for separate treatment by means of the "hammer stamps," which can b© kept moving all the afternoon without the cramp that attended the use of the oldfashioned hand stamp, and which are, moreover, far quicker. As the time draws on, late fee letters pour in, and these have to be handled separately. The stamping machines are marvels of speed, at least one is. It is a New Zealand machine, an. ingenious arrangement of endless rubber bands, against which the bundles of letters are loosely pressed, seized, and flicked past the stamp at the speed with which chaff flies out of a winnowing machine. Another machine is an American one, which counts all it stamps; it is slower, but a recorder.

Faced up and stamped, the letters then, go to the sorters at the cases, where deft hands seem automatically to flick the letters into their boxes. Ceaselessly the sorters handle the letters with the smooth dexterity of the card sharp, hour after hour. The lucky ones are thoso who have to take a few steps to cover their case. The monotony of standing in one spot for hours tells on others, who are utterly weary before the tide of Christmas ' correspondence is over. Employing unskilled men for the facing up, etc., frees the regular sorters, who know the boxes by heart, and all these, working at top speed, keep the flow down so that the southern mails by the ferry, the northern mails by train, and the more local sorting all reach their destinations betimes.

Suburban postings, from letter boxes and the smaller post offices, the giant flow through the slots of the central office, and occasional inward mails from other centres, all reached the facing up tablo towards the end of the afternoon, ana sorting became a strenuous ■work to avoid the jam that would spell the missing of mails, but the system, under the supervision of officers who direct assistance to weak spots in the defence, was equal to the strain; and by the time people had had their tea, ana were out in the streets for the evening's amusements, the afternoon posting rush- had waned, swelled again, and given place to the evening posting. To-day—for the public still lovo to leave the posting till the last minutethere was a morning rush again, but mercifully there is a time limit to posting, ana then the sorters will ease up till the New Year rush sets in.