clerks to handle this mail, who travel annually 2,030,687 miles.

The clerks on the westerly bound trains are assigned the distributing of
mails by route, for all Middle, Western, Southwestern, and Northwestern
States, and on the easterly bound trains for the Middle and Eastern
States.

When such States as New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois, with
respectively 3,070, 3,681, 2,603, and 2,568 post-offices, are taken into
consideration, some idea may be formed of the work required in preparing
a system of distribution, the vigilance required to keep pace with the
frequently changing schedules, and the study of the clerks to properly
carry its requirements into effect. Beyond Chicago, in the new country,
the work of distribution grows less intricate, but the powers of
endurance of the clerks are severely tested. On the line between Kansas
City, Missouri, and Deming, New Mexico, a distance of 1,147 miles, the
clerks ship for a long voyage--five days on the outward trip and the
same on the inward, sleeping and eating on the train.

There are a number of lines in the far West, on which the clerks do not
leave the train for a number of days. Throughout the country the total
number of pieces of ordinary mail handled by 3,855 railway postal clerks
on the lines, during the year ending June 30, 1883, amounted to
3,981,516,280; the number of errors made in their distribution was
958,478 pieces, or a per centage of correct distribution of 99.97. This
minutia of detail is applied to the distribution of a vast bulk of mail.
It is estimated that in Boston, Massachusetts, between eighty and one
hundred tons of mail matter are daily dispatched, and between forty and
sixty tons are daily received; while at New York City this quantity is
more than doubled. Even figures become interesting when they represent