XXXIII MAILING AND CIRCULARIZING Scheduling the work. Special equipment. Folding. Enclosing. Training slow hands to work faster. Stamping envelopes. Measuring the quantity done. Training for the work. EVEN in a small office where no great amount of circularizing work is done, or where the outgoing mail is light, the problem of handling what little there is of this work should be organized. If it requires only the part time of one clerk, that one clerk should be assigned to the work every time it must be done, for the work itself is of a kind that requires special manual dexterity and well-considered methods, and that one clerk will, through previous experience, possess these qualifications in a higher degree than any of his associates, even though he may be far from being an expert. But the clerk, totally inexperienced in this work, is, on all these operations-even some of the simplest -a veritable dub alongside the expert. In larger offices where there is a heavy volume of either mailing or circularizing work, it should be segregated in a separate division. It is work of a kind that calls for a peculiar deftness of hand and is in fact the nearest approach to factory problems that is to be found in office management. In every large city a numerous body of workers can be found who are specialized in circularizing work-accustomed to working but a few weeks in any one place, and then being laid off. Although in their specialty they may be considered as experts in comparison with ordinary untrained office clerks, their methods are far from scientific and can usually be greatly improved upon, in cases where there is sufficient work of the kind being done to make a motion study of it. SCHEDULING THE WORK Where this section is established it will usually be closely connected with the advertising department, and if the latter is competent, it will have learned the value of tests. It is customary to test a number of such letters simultaneously so that time may not be lost in finding a good letter. Each test is carefully recorded as to the manner in which it was made, the list used, and an exact copy of the contents of the envelope. The replies received are also carefully recorded by the advertising department, and as soon as it is found which letter "pulled" the best, the entire mailing is sent out. From this it is evident that the mailing section must be prepared to handle a large volume of work promptly and quickly, and such requirement necessitates organization and planning beforehand. There must be a strict schedule for everything, from the printing of the circulars to their final stamping and mailing. If there is a large volume of addressing to be done, and the section is not organized to do it immediately, the work should be handled by any one of the numerous addressing companies to be found in every large city. As a rule, however, the envelope will be the same, no matter what the enclosure, so they can be addressed during the time the tests are being made. They should not be stamped in advance, as some unforeseen circumstances may intervene that will render the mailing inadvisable, and in such case the labor of stamping would be wasted, or at least the money invested in the stamps would be tied up until the envelopes could be used. There was a case in which a company had prepared to send out a large mailing of one million letters during the recent war, and the envelopes were stamped and addressed ready to be sent out, while in the meantime the tests were being made. On the day of the Battle of the Marne, when it seemed that the Germans were about to enter Paris, the replies on the test letters dropped to practically nothing, and consequently the company decided not to mail the circular. Subsequent tests showed that this was a very wise decision, but the stamped envelopes and the money tied up in them remained "frozen assets" for months. SPECIAL EQUIPMENT It is generally assumed that for circularizing work, any ordinary table is adequate, and that special equipment is unnecessary; but repeated experience has shown, however, that much higher outputs can be obtained if the equipment problem is thoroughly studied. It is true that a table is all that is needed for the folding of the circular, or for the enclosing operation, but if there is any considerable quantity of such work, the table will need to be provided with three special places: (1) for the material as it is received; (2) for the work in process; and (3) for the finished work before it is removed. The following description of a circularizing department, before and after improvements were devised, will illustrate this condition: Large tables were used, each about 6 feet long by 21⁄2 feet wide, and at each, two girls were seated. These tables were close together and in long rows, with no circulating aisles. The circulars were folded on machines, and enclosing operations constituted almost the entire work at these tables. As the circulars were folded, they were placed in large baskets, each holding between 40 and 50 pounds, and piled one upon another several feet high. Two or three girls at a time lifted down these heavy baskets, dragged them across the floor to their tables, then took from them an armful of folded circulars and dumped them upon the tables. At the same time, other girls were carrying away in their arms, to be put through the mailing machine, the envelopes they had filled. The tables were so crowded with circulars, envelopes, enclosures, and finished envelopes, that room to do the work properly was utterly insufficient, the congestion being aggravated by the piles of work of one girl flowing over on the part reserved for the work of her fellow at the same table. The first step made in the improvement of these congested conditions was to equip the tables with transverse dividing partitions a few inches high, so that a certain clear working space was reserved exclusively to one operator, a shelf being also provided at the back of the table. Second, the 50pound baskets were replaced with standard-size boxes of light construction, which, when entirely filled, would hold more than 10 pounds' weight of circulars, and were therefore easily handled. These boxes were then delivered to the operators by special workers, who also removed the finished work; thus, there was no handling of material whatever by the girls at the tables. The boxes were placed on end on the tables, so that the worker could withdraw a small handful at a time, and the envelopes and enclosures were delivered in the same boxes. Then a number of additional wooden trays were made for use on the mailing machine, and one placed on the shelf provided on each table. As these trays were filled with the finished work, they were taken away to the mailing machine, in front of which a rack was provided to hold them. These few and very simple improvements in the way of special equipment made possible the handling of a much larger output, with less effort than previously, and the girls were not called upon to do any heavy lifting whatever. In any large circularizing task of this kind, similar improvements will suggest themselves to the observer who gives thought to the matter. FOLDING Letters which are personally addressed must be folded separately, the best method of doing this being to provide the workers with a bone folder, which is a piece of flat bone or celluloid, with which the creases can be made more neatly and with less fatigue to the operator than when the creasing is done with the fingers. Each such letter, as it is folded, must be compared as to address, to the envelope. Expert operators enclose the letter in the envelope but do not seal it at the same time, leaving that work for a second operation. All persons assigned to this task should be urged to do the work as rapidly as possible, whether there is much or little of it, as they will thus learn the habit of speed and will be available when there is a large amount of such work to be performed. Letters which are not "filled in" with name and address can, of course, go into any envelope, so that in this case it is not necessary to make comparisons. They may either be folded on a small office folding machine-if there is a sufficient amount to make such a machine profitable or by hand. If the work is done by the latter method the operation is somewhat as follows: Assuming that the letter is the ordinary 81⁄2 by 11 sheet, and it is to go into a small envelope, there will be three folds, one across the middle and two in the opposite direction. The clerk takes a quantity of the letters-from 20 to 50— according to the thickness of the paper, and folds this batch across the middle, making a definite crease with the bone folder. She then takes another batch and repeats the operation until the entire amount is folded and lying in batches. She then picks up one of them, holding it in the left hand underneath the fold, and with the right hand deftly grasps the first circular with the thumb and first finger, and lifts it up and off the pile, but does not release it. As the hand goes down for the next one, the first circular is rested against the pile in the left hand, and as the second is brought up, it rests against the first, these operations being repeated until she has picked off all of those in the folded batch. The lot is then creased once more with the folder, but this time they are separated and will lie perfectly flat, and this is |