1892 
Mexico City 
(Mexico) 
July 
people waiting for an interview and a swarm of clerks and officials 
were going in and out with books and documents for the Minister*s 
signature and attention, 
> , f *» . * , - ' * ’ > ‘ , . , I i I- I 
This department of the government is in a state of confusion 
and Mr, Romero has been recalled from his long term as Minister at 
Washington to straighten out matters and evidently has a heavy task 
before him. 
In all matters that I have become familiar with in business, 
both public and private, in Mexico the lack of an effective system 
is very apparent. 
One of the most striking and familiar illustrations is in the 
v • , r i 
e 
arrangements of letter lists at the post office, A list alphabeti¬ 
cally arranged and numbered is hung up containing the arrivals by 
each mail from each direction and the letters are kept in apartments 
by days in place of by letters, so that unless you search through a 
long series of lists very oarefuliy and give the exact number of 
your letter to a clerk you cannot hope to get a letter. 
As frequently occurs, a letter or package will be overlooked and 
not entered on the list,- in which case it is sheer accident if the 
owner ever hears of it again. At Guadalajara I had a half dozen 
packages lying in the office for over a month that were not entered 
on the list, and the olerks all said there were no such packages for 
mej yet when I had ordered another set of articles, thinking the 
first were iGst, the latter were produced with the last arrivals 
but bearing post mark showing that they had been lying in the office 
for about 5 weeks while I had been almost a daily caller for mail 
and had become quite well-known to the clerks. There is an excess¬ 
ive amount of stupidity among the clerks that is hard to understand 
by anyone familiar with the alertness required of postal clerks in 
87 
