Dead letter office

“ Advertised letters, uncalled for and sent to the dead-letter-office, cost the government annually over $60,000! This is a dead loss, as, from the very nature of the superscription and imperfect direction, such letters have no more chance of reaching their places of destination than a sinner has of going to heaven.
DECOY-LETTERS.
Devices employed for the public good, if predicated on the principles that maintain all men dishonest and are themselves deceptive, both in theory and practice, cannot be considered either honorable or complimentary to our public men. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Occasionally a grave clerk smiles sardonically at the ridiculous character of some of the articles which come to light; sometimes, perhaps, looks thoughtfully at a withered rosebud, or bunch of pressed violets, a homely little pin-cushion, or a book-mark, wishing it had reached its proper destination. I can not answer for other employees, who may not have even this amount of heart and imagination to invest in the dull business of a Government office ”

“ You may be changed three or four times over, but I have been for thirty years in the same place, my good sir.' To this the other officials usually answered: 'It's all very well for you, Sprechen Sie Deutsch, Ivan Andreitch: the post office is your job—receiving and despatching the mails; the worst you can do is to close the post office an hour too early if you are in a bad temper, or to accept a late letter from some merchant at the wrong hour, or to send off some parcel which ought not to be sent off—any one would be a saint, of course, in your place. ”

“ Letters, or other articles, which from any cause remain undelivered in any Post Office, or which having been posted, cannot be forwarded by post, shall under such regulations as the Postmaster General may make, be transmitted by Postmasters to the Post Office Department as Dead Letters, there to be opened and returned to the writers on payment of any postage due thereon, with five cents additional on each Dead Letter to defray the costs of returning the same, or such Dead Letters may in any case or class of cases be otherwise disposed of as the Postmaster General may direct. ”

“ The inside of the office is now wide awake, the world outside is in arms and “eager for the fray.” Millions of letters go and come, millions of hearts are made glad by a mere stroke of the pen, which passes lightning-like through this postal medium, millions of hearts are alike made sad, and mourn and sob over the one line that brings news of sickness and of death.
The post-office in many points of view presents the appearance of a besieged fort. The chief clerk is at his post: he stands on a platform somewhat elevated above the line of the main floor ”

“ The system, more particularly in its connection with the postal department, originated, we are inclined to think, from some suspicious postmaster or his chief clerk, and thus was established a plan to test the employees, alike unjust and questionable in equity. It is said that these decoy-letters can never injure honest men. Are we to understand from this that men of questionable character and thieving proclivities are employed by the government? Is it customary to appoint rogues to office, and, after appointing them, lay traps for their detection? ”

“ Not that the secrets of a post-office become known to its officers by improper means, but by that process of secret modes of detection whose mysterious workings are unknown to those unconnected with the institution. Very little behind the great city we have named stands that of Philadelphia; and its post-office, like the tomb, has buried secrets which an “Old Mortality” alone has the power to bring forth. The task be ours to paint the mysteries of the postal tomb. ”

“ If, unluckily, an epidemical passion for letter writing should rage to such a degree as to overpower all ordinary and extraordinary means of control, even let the pent up spirit lift the safety valve and expand itself in freedom. Or, in more staid language, no longer confine the public to the use of the Post Office, but allow letter writers to choose a mode of transmission for themselves. ”

“ In places where a weekly mail would have answered, a daily, semi-weekly, or tri-weekly mail was run, and so where a place of somewhat more consequence needed a semi-weekly mail a daily mail would be run. Instead of making every post-office a paying one, by making it the depot for a sufficient population, swarms of unnecessary offices were created to gratify local politicians, the effect of which was that none were remunerative. We are sorry to say that this evil afflicts the service in many parts of the North, and that there is great need of discontinuing offices now in existence. ”

“ We do not imply that from the political ranks there cannot be found men in every respect calculated to fulfil any office in the postal department, but we do mean to say that in numerous cases men are selected not for their ability to perform the duties intrusted to them, but for a blustering, roystering reputation they had gained in their respective wards. Every failure in our state department, the want of energy, the lack of intelligence, the confusion attendant on improper amusements, can invariably be traced to these improper political appointments. ”

“ Yet it must however be stated, to the credit of the authorities of those days, that though they refused any improvement in pay or prospects, they offered the men good investment for their money in the way of an insurance scheme [40] for their benefit. If they could not better provide for their employés while living, they made amends to them when dead. The Post-Office was willing to provide a decent funeral cheaply for any of its servants whom death from ill-nutrition and overwork had saved from becoming State pensioners. ”

“ It is no wonder, therefore, that suspicion should haunt the guilty mind, and every man in power judge of others by the example set in high places.
Some years ago, long before the postal system became the mighty engine of power that it is now, a Philadelphia postmaster, since gathered to his fathers, openly stated that no man should intrust a clerk in the post-office (his own office) with the knowledge that a letter posted contained money! ”

“ It isn't sad. When they shut me in here first I felt the day was so long. Since the King's Post Office I like it more and more being indoors, and as I think I shall get a letter one day, I feel quite happy and then I don't mind being quiet and alone. I wonder if I shall make out what'll be in the King's letter?
Gaffer. Even if you didn't wouldn't it be enough if it just bore your name? ”

“ If, however, they were limited to the heads of the department, and not extending down to the humblest workers in the office, the evil effects ever attending on such changes would not so materially operate against its interests, and, of course, that of the community. A general sweep of the employees of any one State or government department makes the whole system a gigantic political, rather than what it should be, a social, institution.
In whatever light, however, we view the post-office, it presents to us a subject of the highest interest. ”

“ ELEMENTS OF THE AMERICAN POST-OFFICE.
The elements which make up our postal department are those which politics create. These are constantly changing, and every change produces its own creatures. The very resignations are the consequences of these changes, and not of the desire to secure other employment. Men would rather owe to themselves the right of leaving a position than submit to the pompous notice from an official, commencing with, “Your services are no longer required,” &c. ”

“ Bernard Shaw, in an article celebrating the advent of the new technique, once wrote, "Nowadays an actor cannot open a letter or toss off somebody else's glass of poison without having to face a brutal outburst of jeering." What an extravagance to bracket as equally exploded absurdities the opening of a letter and the tossing off of the wrong glass of poison! Letters--more's the pity--play a gigantic part in the economy of modern life. The General Post Office is a vast mechanism for the distribution of tragedy, comedy, melodrama, and farce throughout the country and throughout the world. ”

“ Scarcely a day passes in any of our provincial post-offices without some incident occurring calculated to surprise, amuse, or sadden. Very probably within a few minutes one person will have come to make a complaint that a certain letter or letters ought to have arrived, and must have been kept back; another will make an equally unreasonable request, or propound some strange inquiry which the poor post-office clerk is supposed to be omniscient enough to answer. ”

“ However unimportant the contents of a letter may be, the violation of its secrecy while it is in charge of the Post-Office Department, or even after having left its custody, becomes an offence of serious magnitude in the eye of the law; and as the quantity and importance of mail matter is continually increasing, it has been found necessary to adopt means for its security, which were not required in the earlier history of the Post-Office. ”

“ How long would a fraud like that last and live? How long could the money be drawn for that service in that country? They say no human being lived there. Who was to be postmaster? Who was to make the reports? How long, in your judgment, would it be before the department would find out that there was no such post-office, no postmaster, and no mail? No one could think of a more shallow device than that Stephen W. Dorsey, a man who is blest with as much brain as any man it is my pleasure to know, would never dream of such an idiotic device. And yet, that is the testimony of Mr. Rerdell. ”

“ And here we may observe that if the system of opening letters at the General Post Office were merely adopted for the purpose of discovering criminals and preventing crime, we should still deprecate the proceeding, although our objections would lose much of their point in consideration of the motive: but when we find—and know it to be a fact—that the secrets of correspondence are flagrantly violated for political and other purposes, we raise our voice to denounce so atrocious a system, and to excite the indignation of the country against the men who can countenance or avail themselves of it! ”

“ The victory, however, is always on the side of the post-office: the effect of the fire from their port-holes is felt when all within its lines are quiet. The wheels of the department uninjured move on. Let us take a glance through yonder opening. We are on the outside, looking into the interior of this postal fortress. Hundreds of active business-men are moving about in their shirt-sleeves, looking fierce and desperate: they are engaged in a great struggle,—a struggle with time. ”

“ While the ladies were examining this book of literary curiosities, Mr Bright took occasion to comment with pardonable pride on the working of the Post-Office.
“You see, ma’am,” he said, “we do our best for the public—though many of ’em have no idea of it. We don’t send letters to the Returned Letter Branch till we’ve tried, as you see, to get the correct addresses, and until two separate letter-carriers have attempted to deliver them. ”

“ Losses, for example, are often imputed to the Post Office for which it is entirely blameless. Did space allow, scores of instances might be cited. One of the most absurd was the case of a London merchant, who, in the course of very many months, wrote at intervals angry letters to the Postmaster-General asking why such or such a letter had not reached its destination. No amount of enquiries could trace the errant missives; and the luckless Department was, at corresponding intervals, denounced for its stupidity in equally angry letters to the Press. ”

“ Possibly to many it might seem to justify some such cynicism as that the Post-Office is a public institution whose employés make mild conspiracy their serious business in their working hours, and deliver letters and send telegrams only as a pastime.
The spirit of unrest, at last finding expression in organised agitation, has for so long been associated with the Post-Office that that department has come to be regarded in the public mind as not merely a vehicle of general convenience, but principally as a hot-bed of discontent. ”

“ In these days, when postal facilities have so enormously extended, and cheap and rapid communication by letter has become so completely a part of our everyday life, like the air we breathe or the water we drink, few persons ever trouble themselves to think how it would be possible to exist without them; and those who are not old enough to remember the former state of things, under a postal system which the authorities at St. Martin's-le-Grand of that day regarded as almost a marvel of perfection, can hardly picture to themselves the inconvenience to which the public had then to submit. ”

“ Not so; they are mail-bags. See how furiously one is thrown down: it is seized upon as if a victim to be sacrificed. “Brass lock,” yells one. “Iron,” screams another. Brass or iron, they are quickly unlocked, and in an instant their contents are scattered like chaff, and away they go to the four quarters of the globe as fast as busy hands, wind, tide, and steam can take them.
No fort—not even Sumter, Darling, or the defences of Vicksburg—ever presented a more busy scene of life and death than does the post-office on the opening of mail-bags: it may indeed be compared to “life and death;” ”