Progressive Wellington

New Zealand Graphic, Volume X, Issue 10, 11 March 1893, Page 220

Progressive Wellington

THE POST AND TELEGRAPH DEPARTMENTS.—PART 111.

THERE are certain subjects for wit, certain well worn, crusted jokes of which the professional humourist

seems never to tire. They are conceived and brought forth in picture, jokelet, and funny par with such regularity and such unnatural frequency that one can scarcely wonder that nowadays most are still born, and fail to raise a smile amongst even the most easily tickled. Certainly one of the greatest favourites is the one which represents the Civil Service clerk as a man of abundant leisure, whose most serious work is the study of a sporting paper or the latest betting reports. Save for the fact that it would be a most inhuman and unkindly action to rob the unfortunate joke manufacturer of any of the tools of his trade, we should like to take him over almost any of the branches of almost any of our civil service offices, but more especially would we love to take such a one round the mail room of a big post office, say Wellington or Auckland, on a big mail day. The joke anent the civil service clerk and his elegant and interminable leisure would die a sudden death never to be resurrected. We do not know where you could find a scene of brisker work, we had almost said more feverish work, but this would give a wrong impression, for though everything is being done at a speed that makes one’s head and eyes ache to watch, there seems an absolute absence of anything approaching flurry. The clerks, with quick-glancing eyes and nimble fingers, might be so many automata for aught they seem to feel. They work with the exactitude and at the pace of some marvellously-made piece of mechanism, only without the slightest noise, save only the constant thump of the clerks who pound letters with lightning-like rapidity with the heavy date and postmark stamps. Come, let us examine the mail room together. The room is large and well lighted. At a medium sized and strongly - constructed table stand the clerks or stampers previously referred to stamping letters. They keep up a continual thump thump with their stamps, new heaps of letters being supplied them as soon as ever they show signs of getting through what they have. These letters are brought from the boxes or bags 'faced ’ —that is to say with the names and addresses all right showing. It would be interesting to know how many letters these quick stampers can go through in an hour, 120 to 130 a minute, we were told. At that rate it would certainly run into four figures, and substantial ones at that. Newspapers, books, parcels, etc., are treated the same way. Such is the first process.

Letters are then removed to the tables seen running down thecentreof the room. It will be seen these tables are divided into four compartments on each side, and each compartment has three ledges. It is not entirely easy to explain, in black and white, the process of sorting, but it is the simplest imaginable in execution. As has been said; the table is divided into four compartments each side, and each of these compartments is a district. On the top ledge

of each are placed the letters for distribution in the boxes. On the second are placed in rough assortment those for delivery by letter carriers, while on the third or lowest shelf may be seen those destined for different country places and districts. This primary sorting is performed with the utmost

dispatch, the speed'at which the officers work being almost incredible. With a view to proving what was already known and for our edification a test was made the other morning, with the result chat some of the best sorters averaged 70 letters per minute. Only really experienced sorters can do so well. As to what might be considered a maximum day’s work in the circulating branch at Wellington, the following is about the best :—234 bags of mails received, opened, and disposed of, 164 bags closed and dispatched, and over 100 bags of forward mails checked in and out of the office, a total of 498 bags handled during one particular day. This, in April last year, was, of course, a very long day. The number of letters and other articles dealt with were 69,910, or within a fraction of 70,000 ; but

thia does not represent the actual work, inasmuch as many of the letters and other articles had to be dealt with as often as three and four times.

I'he letters for delivery in town are subsequently re-sorted at tables of precisely similar construction by the carriers. Walk further down the room and you shall find two arenas of mail bags, for that seems the only manner in which they may be described. There is a table in the centre, and hung all round in circles and tiers are the mail bags, their wide and seemingly voracious mouths held agape for papers by strong hooks. By the side of the table stands the officer-in-charge sorting newspapers. A great pile of papers is placed for him on the table, and with swiftly • flying bands, he with artful knack pitches papers here and there as a conjurer throws cards amongst his audience in the dress - circle, stalls, and gallery. Each paper falls true into the bag for which

it is destined, that bag bearing, of course, the name of some country place or another. These bags are not touched till the mail is on the point of closing, then the letter mails are put in and the bag sealed up, except, of course, where the size of the mail necessitates a separate bag for the letters and papers.

In the Wellington district where so many of the mails are train mails, much of the primary sorting is done by the mail agents on the train, and this lessens the office work very considerably. The letters and • papers t from Home are made up in one large mail for the colony — at least that is all the Home Government contract to do, and any extra sorting has to be duly paid for. Such sorting takes place by the Brindisi and Suez mails, which are divided into four for Wellington, Auckland, Canterbury, and Otago, each of these places including the surrounding districts. The ’Frisco mail is, however, made up for the colony as a whole, and is sorted ,into districts by the mail agent on the specially fitted up mail room on the ’Frisco mail boats, this officer being, of course, in the service of the colonial, not the Imperial Post Office. Though the improvement in the Brindisi service has been so marked of late and brought so much of the news which formerly came by ’Frisco, the increase of work—of letters sent and received—has been so great that, notwithstanding all the intermediate mails, the San Francisco service brings larger mails than ever. The postal service of New Zealand is one of which she may well be proud, and one which reduces to a minimum the obvious disadvantages under which a country must labour whose principal towns are situated as ours are. TELEGRAPH OFFICE. Almost more interesting is it to go into the telegraph department. In 1871 there were 344 miles of line in the Wellington district, and in 1891 there were 576. In 1871 the number of telegrams sent was 114,093, but in 1891 it was 441,115. The revenue was £7,581 in 1871 and £13,546 in 1891, this of course not including the amount for Government messages, which would for 1891 have brought up the revenue to £22,659. A curious point is that the proportion of telegrams sent to 100 letters was 15 26 in 1871 and in 1891 was 10 83. As we are on figures it may not be altogether uninteresting to inquire into the statistics for the whole colony. There were in 1891, 5,349 miles of lines and 13,235 lines of wire. The number of stations open was 573, and the number of telegrams forwarded was 1,968,264. The revenue was £117,633 without Government messages, and £142,474 with

them, and 8 29 was the proportion of telegramssent to every 100 letters.

To the outsider the interior of the operating-room is one great and confusing mystery. Like the mail room, it is large and well lighted, and here one is almost oppressed by the constancy of the labourer. On each side down the

(In charge We’lington Telegraph and Telephone Exchange.) room are massive tables of polished cedar, each with its little instrument of shining brass and little glass shade, the brass work glittering like burnished gold. The chatter and clatter of the metal conges are bewildering, and to a nervous man (not a timid individual, a man with nerves, that is to say) would doubtless be maddening. Boys, or rather young men, with sheaves of telegrams fresh from the counter in the receiving office, hurry backward and forward delivering work and taking up messages received. The clicking sound you hear is a message being delivered, the dull deadened tapping one being sent, and on each side there are a couple of dozen, more or less, instruments either sending or receiving messages in this way. How the operators distinguish the sounds is a wonder to the outsiders. It will take a cadet three months to pick up the work in any sort of fashion, and it usually takes from three to five years for a man to become an expert operator. Some get on quicker, some never really get smart, but five years is about the time. Each table, be it understood, controls a different wire. Herewillbe a gentleman whodoesnothing but send messages to Auckland. He will send 60 to 70 messages—average commercial messages—in an hour, and of course the man at the other end must receive them at the same speed. As may be imagined, the strain must be fairly severe, yet as a rule the operators are healthy and cheerful looking men, who bear their troubles, if they are such, very lightly. The latest addition to the postal arrangements of the colonies was, of course, the Telephone Exchange, which has assnmed giantesque proportions of late years, and which

will doubtless continue to grow with amazing rapidity now that the Postmaster General has reduced the subscription. The impatient subscriber who fumes and occasionally swears over a delay of say a dozen seconds in answering his bell should make a point of being taken over the telephone exchange. He will come away a humbler and a wiser man, with a considerable respect]for the telephone girl which he did not possess before. If the noise is confusing in the telegraph room with the chattering clatter of the metal tongue, it is a thousand times worse, confusion worse confounded, in the telephone bureau, where the tongues are women’s. There are about a dozen of them at work, each in front of the frames as shown in the picture. A glance at one of these frames may give some idea of the manner in which the exchange is worked. The first thing to strike the eye is a number of little shutters—fifty to each annunciator if we are not mistaken—some of which fly open every second or so disclosing a number, say 16. This shows that No. 16

wants to talk to someone, and pressing a key the telephone girl rings his bell and asks him what number he wants. He states ; and if it happens to be one of the other ninetynine of her division, she can make the connection at once. It is a good many chances to one, however, that the subscriber wants a number in another division, and the operator then connects him with the switchboard in front of her, calling out to the girl in charge of the division containing the number her client requires and the division, with geneally the name of the firm added to make matters easier. There is an impression amongst many people that the girls stop occasionally to laugh and chatter amongst themselves, while the unfortunate subscribers are fretting themselves into a fever at the delay. A very brief visit to the exchange would dispel any such delusion. The girls have not, during busy business hours, time to wink or brush away a fly, let alone talk, even if there were not a stern and implacable presiding genius to check any frivolity, and placards intimating how strict must be at-

tention to business. Happily there are no bells in th telephone exchange else are we sure no mortal could stand a day of it and keep sane. There is a little whining sound and that is all save for the everlasting cries of • No. 16—L, No. 126—K, ring up, what number? ring off, engaged,’ which are fired off in quickest succession by twenty voices at once. How the nimble fingered operators keep their heads is a perpetual mystery to an outsider, and one has only to have seen the hurry and scurry of the telephone exchange to be extremely tolerant of such trifling mistakes and delays as will occasionally occur in the best regulated bureaux.

Our portraits for this week include Mr C. C. Robertson, who joined the staff as a cadet operator to the Telegraph ottice in Dunedin, in 1867. He is at present officer in charge of the Wellington Telegraph Office and supervisor of the Telephone Exchange. A reproduction from a photo of Mr W. C. Smythe is also given. He joined as electrician on December 24th, 1884, a position he still holds. Mr Smythe was formerly assistant instructor at the School of Military Engineering, Chatham, and is electrician to Messrs L. Clark, Muirhead and Co