The post office and its story an interesting account of the activities of a great government department

The Stock Exchange and Threadneedle Street branch offices, which for all practical purposes are one and the same office, do a very considerable amount of business direct from the floor of “the House,” and during times of exceptional activity of the Stock markets between 3000 and 5000 telegrams are handed in from the Stock Exchange between 11 A.M. and noon for onward delivery. The Threadneedle Street office is the busiest branch in the City. In dealing with the vast number of telegrams which pass between the different offices in the United Kingdom it would, of course, not be humanly possible for all to reach their destination without error. Everything possible is done to reduce the risk of telegraphic errors and failures, but where the condition of a wire is to some extent affected by climatic conditions, it is obvious that errors and failures may arise. On the whole, however, the percentage of errors to the number of telegrams dealt with is extremely small. Bad writing is often a source of error, and for this the senders are often to blame. To this cause might be attributed such an error as “Reserve me two stalls,” being rendered to the addressee as “Reserve me two stables.” But such an error as “Send three dog pies” instead of “Send three doz. pies” might have been caused either by bad writing, or by the failure of a dot in the signals for the last letter of the word. While such errors have their humorous side, there are some which are distinctly tragic. For instance, the rendering of a message “Child dead” for “Child bad” is due to the signals for “de” being run together or inaccurately spaced.