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

Closely allied to the Stores are the factories. Speaking broadly, the Post Office does not make the goods which it requires; it gets them for the most part from other firms: the goods are brought into the factories to be examined and tested, and the Stores distributes them throughout the Kingdom. A certain amount of manufacture does, however, take place at the factories. A quantity of telegraphic apparatus is made here: the supply and upkeep of thousands of miles of telegraphs and telephone lines has to be provided for. In one place you will find a machine, the work of which consists in installing wires into cables: in another you will find a machine doing exactly the opposite kind of work, pulling cables to pieces that have had their day; the wires are untwisted, and the gutta-percha is stripped off. The insulators for the telegraph poles all come into the factory, and the arms on which they are to be fixed for the support of the wires are made here. They are of British oak or Australian karri-wood. All kind of fittings for postal and telegraph work, including silence cabinets for the telephone business, are constructed in the factory. Repairs form a large part of the work. Here are awaiting repair, straps, postmen's bags and pouches, and the great bull hides— envelopes as they are called— in which the mail bags are wrapped to be dropped by the Travelling Post Office. Many of these are continually being brought into the factories to be repaired, rent and split up all to pieces, indicating the violence of the action which often takes place during the exchange of the bags.