The handling and delivery of mail has always been a serious business, underpinned by the trust of the public in requiring timeliness, safety, and confidentiality. After early beginnings using horseback and stagecoach, and although cars and trucks later replaced stagecoaches and wagons, the Railway Mail Service still stands as one of America’s most resourceful and exciting postal innovations. This service began in 1832, but grew slowly until the Civil War. Then from 1862, by sorting the mail on board moving trains, the Post Office Department was able to decentralize its operations as railroads began to crisscross the nation on a regular basis, and speed up mail delivery. This service lasted until 1974. During peak decades of service, railway mail clerks handled 93% of all non-local mail and by 1905 the service had over 12,000 employees.

   Railway Post Office trains used a system of mail cranes to exchange mail at stations without stopping. As a train approached the crane, a clerk prepared the catcher arm which would then snatch the incoming mailbag in the blink of an eye. The clerk then booted out the outgoing mailbag. Experienced clerks were considered the elite of the Postal Service’s employees, and spoke with pride of making the switch at night with nothing but the curves and feel of the track to warn them of an upcoming catch. They also worked under the greatest pressure and their jobs were considered to be exhausting and dangerous. In addition to regular demands of their jobs they could find themselves the victims of train wrecks and robberies.

   As successful as it was, “mail-on-the-fly” still had its share of glitches. If they hoisted the train’s catcher arm too soon, they risked hitting switch targets, telegraph poles or semaphores, which would rip the catcher arm off the train. Too late, and they would miss an exchange.

The word “elite” in the second paragraph is closest in meaning to___________.

Câu hỏi liên quan

• Learning to write is ..........

• According to the paragraph 1, which of the following is true of the young Barton Clara?

• Based on the passage, what is probably true about tsunamis?

ZUNIA12

• The word “rupture” in bold in paragraph 3 is closest in meaning to .............

• We can see from paragraph 5 that after his father’s death, Mantle ______.

• The words “this faculty” refers to the sea cucumber’s ability to ....

• According to the writer, people should ______.

• The fourth paragraph of the passage primarily discusses .....

• Greenhouse gases cause the warming up of the Earth because they ____.

• It can be inferred that the names of the three basic shapes mentioned in paragraph 2 reflect ______.

• We sometimes think of writing as more real than speech because ..................

• Which of the following is NOT the thing Bethan does as a Facebook addict?

• What is the main idea of this passage?

• This passage is mainly aimed at .................

• If there was a preceding paragraph to this passage it would most likely be concerned with which of the following topics?

• Why does the author of the passage mention the report of the President’s Science Advisory Committee (lines 14-15) ?

• Who will play music at the picnic this year?

• Nowadays there are ____________.

• The word ”fixture” in line 16 is closest in meaning to _________ .

• According to paragraph 2, evidence from fossil suggests that ...............