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TRANSPORTATION LESS IN COST THAN BY RAIL SAY AERIAL DIRECTORS

Reduction in Rates Puts Work on Par With Millions of Other Letters Handled Each Day--200,000 Messages Carried in All Section--Department Has 65 Planes in Operation.

By CLIFFORD L. MEREDITH.

Until science dusts its mental attic and gives the Postoffice Department a thought-transferring machine capable of delivering guaranteed mileage at the customary 2-cents-an-ounce rate, bill collectors and lovers must continue to put with 120-miles-an-hour air mail service.

Tough luck, of course, but "we can't have everything."

In this befuddled day of speed, billions and shock-absorbers, the average mind does not jump the track nor experience any degree of sustained thrill at the mention of "120 miles per." Speed is taken for granted.

The brilliant achievement of the United States in literally putting across a transcontinental air mail service is absent-mindedly put down as a remarkable thing, not altogether unexpected, but a thing which probably won't amount to much as a pure business proposition.

Taken for Granted.

The average American expects the "government" to do these things. The United States is expected to do everything first, now and eventually. And, therefore, after such achievements pass from the front page they are quite often forgotten. This same average American looks upon the air mail as "good stuff," but something never to affect his daily life, and consequently fully as essential as a finger bowl to a mother-made Thanksgiving dinner.

The attitude is not far from "Now that we've discovered the North Pole, which movie shall we see tonight?"

Perhaps the easiest way to convince one that the United States Air Mail Service is a personal matter is to say that if there is a letter from the North or West in one's mail tomorrow morning, it undoubtedly traveled part of the way behind a roaring aeroplane propeller.

One may never know whether it did or not, unless he glances at the postmark, and figures out the traveling time in comparison with known railroad traveling time. For there is no distinguishing mark on air mail these days. the era of special stamps--at a quarter each--and special cancellation marks has passed. Air mail service has been developed from a novelty, providing curiously marked envelopes to show great-grandchildren, to an every-day affair--as much an everyday matter as coffee for breakfast.

Produce Accurate Figures.

Though the service is still in its infancy, it is no longer a "stunt." The Postoffice Department gives you these figures to digest.

Four separate lines are now in actual operation.

The total daily mileage covered by the Air Mail Service is 6,980.

At twenty mail stations, 300 mechanics and 50 pilots transport approximately 5,000 pounds, or 200,000 first class letters, daily.

The Air Mail Service operates [[the remaining column of text is cutoff]]

and carries it to Cheyenne where it overtakes train No. 35's connection and delivers the mail to that train. These 1,000 pounds of mail have been thus advanced twenty-four hours.

At Cheyenne, the Air Mail takes from the train the 16,000 letters originally carried by plane from New York to Chicago and delivers them that same afternoon in San Francisco. The train would not have arrived in San Francisco until the next afternoon.

By this service the Air Mail has advanced 400 pounds of mail forty-two hours and 1,000 pounds twenty-four hours into San Francisco.

And on the eastbound run, the mail plane leaves San Francisco at daybreak for New York, advancing the mail twenty-four hours by putting in on train No. 20, leaving Ogden at 6:25 that night. The plane leaving Salt Lake at 6 a. m. advances the mail from the Salt Lake and Los Angeles line, and local accumulations in Salt Lake, twelve hours into Cheyenne. There the New York bound mail is taken from train No. 6 and advanced into Chicago twenty-four hours. The plane leaving Chicago at 6 a. m. advances the mail to the New England and Atlantic States one full business day.

Most Difficult Route.

The transcontinental daily air mail is the most difficult permanent flying project yet undertaken. It has required the working out of infinite details for a daily operation of a route nearly 3,000 miles long, under flying conditions which in winter promise to be most trying. At Chepenne, Salt Lake and Reno the daily flying with a full load of mail must be made at altitudes ranging from 12,000 to 14,000 feet above sea level, and over high windswept plateaus with powerful headwinds to cut down speed of the planes. Intensely cold weather and snow will be encountered this winter, all of which has demanded ad- [[the remaining column of text is cutoff]]

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HARRIS EWING

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