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

A band conveyor takes the letters from the posting room which are addressed to places in London or abroad, to the ground floor of the building in baskets, and the empty baskets are sent down by a return band. The correspondence for the provinces, which is dealt with at a large sorting office at Mount Pleasant, nearly a mile away, is put into bags, and another band conveyor takes these bags to the departure platform at the west end of the sorting office. There is a third band conveyor suspended from the ceiling of the same floor, which is for the conveyance of bags of mails from the east to the west of the sorting office. The London letters and those for abroad are conveyed to the ground floor, which is occupied by the E.C. district sorting office. The letters are brought to the eastern end of the immense room and with them are bags of letters which have arrived from provincial offices and abroad, amounting altogether to upwards of five millions weekly. The posted letters are arranged in order for stamping on what are called facing tables, on which running bands are placed, and at the end of these tables are electric stamping machines which can obliterate the stamps on the letters up to a rate of 700 or 800 per minute. Then the letters pass into two main divisions. On the northern side correspondence for all parts of London, except the E.C. district, is dealt with, and direct despatches are made to every chief district and sub-district delivery office in London for every delivery during the day. On the southern side the postmen prepare the correspondence for the twelve daily deliveries in the E.C. district. Upwards of 1400 postmen are attached to this office. A noticeable feature of the work of sorting is that the letters travel from east to west always, and at the west end is the platform from which bags for other offices are despatched.