Show LAPSES OF WRITERS MEAN DEAD LETTERS carelessness costs uncle sam a year wa 4 ington the mental m lapses of le learer er writers cost uncle sam about 50 a year that is the estimate of B G cowles super r fendentz of the postoffice post office depart 1 ment s dead letter and parcel post division at washington D C who has had th thirty airty two years experience in handling misdirected mail the last annual report of the postmaster general mentioned 12 letters received during the fiscal year at dead letter offices many are dubbed blanks by postal officials because they carry no addresses at all cowles esti mated that three of every ten blanks contain money in some form other letters known as in completes usually have the name but little else still other envelopes although properly addressed lack stamps and remain unclaimed others are addressed to towns which do not exist some of those place names which were used last year but are un listed in the postal guide include zenda ill sodia wis holton III ind and rich ill from his discussions with postal inspectors cowles has formulated several theories explaining the fail ure of persons to address letters and packages correctly one group he classified as inter erupted addresses in this case the writers were apparently interrupted by a visitor office boy maid or ringing of telephone or door bell and forgot to complete the address another group cowles called the association of ideas As an ex ample he said suppose one per son is writing to another who lives at fort recovery ohio absent mindedly the writer scribble off fort convalescence we get lots of them like that but we can usually figure out what the writer had in mind the high percentage of blanks in sending money cowles attributed to the fact that the writer has al ready written out a name and address on money order slip or pos sibly check and gets the idea he has done all the addressing feces sary ary until three years ago dead letters and nd packages cost the government more than D a year a staff of being maintained in washing ton for the department in 1933 however 1 1082 first class post offices were authorized to handle their own dead mail and a saving of resulted only nine persons are needed in washington now |