POSTAL FACILITIES, EECENT IMPROVEMENTS IN. 



689 



the name of the article in hand. This crude 

 card, on being presented, secured the delivery 

 of the package or the book to the proper per- 

 son. The idea was improved upon by Mr. 

 Keating, of the Yale Lock Manufacturing Com- 

 pany, in 1880, and he produced a silicate card, 

 the size of an ordinary envelope, ruled in blank, 

 and labeled with the words : " Date," " Name," 

 "Papers," "Packages," " Books," arranged in 

 proper form. "When a parcel is received, the 

 date of reception is indicated, the name written 

 in, and a figure placed under the appropriate 

 heading. This card is then deposited in the 

 letter-box. 



Mail-Bags. These are manufactured in dif- 

 ferent forms and colors, according to the serv- 

 ice required, and are the result of a close 

 study of the question by Postmaster-General 

 Marshall Jewell and Thomas L. James, while 

 the latter was postmaster in New York. For 

 the convenience of the various services they 

 devised the following classes: Leather mail- 

 pouches, brown ; leather horse mail-bags, 

 brown ; through registered mail-pouches, scar- 

 let and wbite duck ; mail-carrier pouch, striped 

 blue and white duck ; mail-sacks, made of jute 

 canvas; mail-sacks, cotton canvas with thir- 

 teen blue stripes, for foreign mails ; registered 

 foreign mail-sacks, with twelve red stripes ; 

 coin-sacks, made of jute ; inter-registered mail- 

 sacks, with vermilion stripes. 



Sealing Bags. The system of sealing mail- 

 bags originated in Great Britain about 1875. 

 After the bag was bound and tied, the ends of 

 the cord were passed through holes in a little 

 block of wood, depressed into a cup hollowed 

 in the side of the block, and the cup filled with 

 wax, on which the seal was impressed. Any 

 accident by which the wood became wet re- 

 sulted in its swelling and injuring the seal. An 

 improvement was made by Henry G. Pearson, 

 of the New York city post-office, whereby a 

 piece of tin about the size of a fifty-cent piece, 

 but deeper, was struck out in form of a cup, 

 and substituted for the wood. Its expense 

 was merely nominal, and it was not patented. 

 Its benefit, howover, caused its rapid introduc- 

 tion in all directions. 



Bag-Distributing Ratk. This is a light frame- 

 work made of gas-piping, and fitted with hooks 

 for holding mail-bags, designed for the rapid 

 sorting of mail-matter. The rack is constructed 

 with segments and angles, rather than circles, 

 the obvious advantage being that the eye of 

 the distributor more readily locates each bag, 

 as there is too much sameness in a circle. The 

 hooks are made of malleable iron, and adjust 

 themselves to any sized sack or pouch, and by 

 the movement of a finger-piece, the bag when 

 filled can be removed without lifting. The 

 racks are built singly or in sections, and 

 mounted on casters, so as to be conveniently 

 adjustable to any light or position. Their in- 

 troduction has diminished much of the labor 

 devolving on clerks, and the ease with which 

 the bags can be reached enables a ready cor- 

 TOL. xxvu. 44 A 



rection of any error in the throwing of letters 

 or papers. This frame is the invention of 

 Gen. La Rue Harrison, of Washington, D. C. 



Lamp-post Boxes. Since the octagonal form, 

 which was held in place by having the lamp- 

 post pass through it, was replaced by the 

 square box with the rounded top, but little 

 improvement has been made, except at a very 

 recent date. In the box, as ordinarily con- 

 structed, a little door is opened at the side by 

 being let down, and the mail removed. In 

 1881 a new box was devised by Henry G. 

 Pearson, which opens at the front, the hinging 

 of the door being at the side. At the bottom 

 of the door is a shelf, which follows the door 

 outward in the opening, and prevents the con- 

 tents of the box from falling. Just within the 

 door, at its upper edge is a series of compart- 

 ments for holding checks, to be put by the col- 

 lector in a small receptacle in the upper right- 

 hand corner, which specify the time of the 

 next gathering. These checks are renewed 

 every evening, are gathered one at a time dur- 

 ing the day, and serve as an indication of the 

 visit of a collector to his box. On his return 

 to the office from making his rounds, he is 

 obliged to hang up his check on one ot a series 

 of numbered hooks, and any failure is immedi- 

 ately noticed by the absence of the check. Of 

 these new boxes only 250 have been manufact- 

 ured, and these are used exclusively in the 

 down-town territory in New York city. 



Caneeling-Maeliines. For five or six years an 

 effort has been made, both in Europe and 

 America, to perform automatically the cancel- 

 ing of stamps, and the stamping of the name 

 of the post-office from which a letter is sent, 

 but on account of the great diversity in shape 

 and size, as well as thickness of envelopes, no 

 automatic means has yet been found success- 

 ful. Postal cards can be more readily massed 

 and subjected to mechanical work than letters. 

 Two instruments, designed by Mr. Leavitt of 

 of Boston, were submitted for trial in the Bos- 

 ton post-office about 1880, and one invented 

 by Leonard Tilton of Brooklyn is now on trial 

 in the New York post-office, but up to the 

 present date nothing superior to hand move- 

 ment has been found except in the case of 

 postal cards. 



Postal I'nion. An international convention, 

 which originated in a meeting of delegates from 

 different counties, held at Berne, Switzerland, 

 in September and October, 1874. An agree- 

 ment was entered into and signed Oct. 9, 1874, 

 to go into effect July 1, 1875. The Congress 

 included authorized representatives from the 

 following countries, all of whom signed the 

 treaty which was there formed and adopted: 

 Germany, Austria, Hungary, Belgium, Den- 

 mark, Spain, Great Britain, Greece, Italy, 

 Luxemburg, Norway, Sweden, Netherlands. 

 Portugal, Roumania, Servia, Russia, Switzer- 

 land, Turkey, United States, and Egypt. The 

 delegate from France declined to sign, the 

 French Government not feeling itself at liberty 



