State and the name of its past or present governor. Each car is devoted
to a special purpose: the distribution of letters and local, or "way,"
work; the distribution of paper mail; and others for storage. The
distributing cars are built upon a different plan from the one
hereinbefore described; the packages, etc., are distributed into large
compartments or boxes slightly pitching back one over the other in a
large case, and the clerk wishing to empty one of them passes into the
narrow aisle to the rear of the case; the pouch or sack is hooked to the
case under the door of the box, and the mail drops into it. Pouches and
sacks are also hung in racks to be distributed into. These cars are
post-offices of no mean pretensions when the amount of work performed is
considered. When it is considered how densely populated the country is
through which this line passes many times each day, and its numerous and
swelling tributaries, the volume of mail conveyed is enormous, yet not
disproportionate.

The average amount conveyed during thirty days, in the sixty days in
January and February of 1881, that the weights of mails were taken
between New York City and Buffalo, a distance of four hundred and
forty-two miles, amounted to 4,416,451 lbs.; between Buffalo and
Chicago, a distance of five hundred and forty-two miles, 2,874,918 lbs.
Over the first section 73,607 lbs. per day, the second section 47,848
per day; while either of these amounts does not equal those carried
during the same period between New York and West Philadelphia, on the
route to Washington, a distance of ninety miles, amounting to 6,202,370
lbs. for the thirty days, and 103,372 lbs. per day, the great
discrepancy in miles must be borne in mind and the fact that government
supplies and public documents to the East and North contribute no small
proportion of the amount. The mail between New York and Chicago is
altogether a working mail. It requires more than two hundred and sixty