William Sulzer.
Mr. Speaker: I am in favor of a parcels post. I believe the
people of the country generally favor it, and I feel confident its
establishment will be of inestimable benefit and advantage to all
concerned. The post-office is one of the oldest of governmental
institutions, an agency established by the earliest civilization to
enable them to inform themselves as to the plans and movements
of their friends and foes; and from the dawn of history
the only limit upon this service has been the capacity of the
existing transport machinery.
The cursus publicus of imperial Rome—the post-office of the
Roman Cæsars—covered their entire business of transportation
and transmission, and with its splendid post-roads, swift post-horses,
and ox post-wagons the Roman post-office was a mechanism
far wider in its scope than that of our modern post-office;
and except for the use of mechanical power, the old Roman
post was far more efficient in its service of the Roman rulers
than is our modern post-office in the service of the American
citizen.
The evil of the Roman post-office and of the royal postal services
that succeeded it was their common restriction to the enrichment
of the ruling powers. They were the prototypes of
our modern private railway and express companies, which have
for their chief end the enrichment of their managers rather than
the promotion of the public welfare. In this country the citizen
owns the post-office and wants to use it as his transportation
company. Its end is to keep him informed as to what his
representatives are doing at the centers of public business, to
make known to them his wishes, and to provide means by which
he may communicate with his fellow-citizens for their mutual
benefit, and to supply his wants and dispose of his wares at the
least possible cost, in the shortest possible time, and with the
greatest possible security.
The postal system of rates, regardless of distance, regardless
of the character of the matter transported, and regardless of
the volume of the patron’s business, eminently fits it for this
great service. That it will sooner or later be greatly extended
over the entire field of public transportation, is absolutely certain;
and the people will duly appreciate the aid of those who
assist in its extension and development. As far back as 1837,
Rowland Hill, of England, promulgated to the world the law
that once a public transport service is in operation, the cost
of its use is regardless the distance traversed upon the moving
machinery by any unit of traffic within its capacity, and upon
this law he established the English penny-letter post of 1839.
Instead of a taxing machine, a contrivance for making
money, the post-office should be an agency for good, reaching
out its multitudinous hands with help and comfort into all
the homes in our widespread land.
Without the post-office where would be that national unity,
with its guaranty of equal rights to all, which is the glory of
the sisterhood of states?
The postal savings system and parcels post was inaugurated
in England largely through the efforts of the great Commoner,
William E. Gladstone. Near the close of his life he made the
following statement about it:
The post-office savings bank and parcels post is the most important
institution which has been created in the last fifty years
for the welfare of the people. I consider the act which called the
institution into existence as the most useful and fruitful of my long
career.
It is because we realize these truths so keenly that we are so
persistent in urging favorable consideration of a parcels post.
Its only fault is its conservatism. What this country now
needs, what Congress should give it, is a parcels post covering
much of the business of public transportation.
In April last representatives of at least 10,000,000 American
voters, including the great agricultural associations of the
country, National Grange, the Farmers’ Union, the Farmers’
National Congress, Retail Dry Goods Association of New York,
the Associated Retailers of St. Louis, the manufacturing perfumers
of the United States, the American Florist Association,
and others, appeared before the House Postal Committee, demanding
a domestic express post as extended and as cheap as
that provided by the Postmaster-General in our foreign postal
service. The argument in behalf of this legislation, with its
4-pound weight limit, had then been before the committee for
many months, but the bill was not up to the demands of these
friends of the post-office. The report of the hearing showed that
the public wanted an 11-pound service at least. Seldom, if ever,
has any proposition received a stronger public support, and it
seemed as if the House Committee on Post-Offices would be
obliged to report at least some legislation back to the House for
its consideration.
Their answer finally came on the 27th of May in the shape of
H. R. 26348, introduced by Chairman John W. Weeks, which
provides:
That all mail matter of the fourth class shall be subject to examination
and to a postage charge at the rate of three-fourths of
1 cent an ounce or fraction thereof, to be prepaid by stamps affixed—stamps
of the following denominations:
| Cents. |
| 1 ounce | ¾ |
| 2 ounces | 1½ |
| 3 ounces | 2¼ |
| 4 ounces | 3 |
| 5 ounces | 3¾ |
| 6 ounces | 4½ |
| 7 ounces | 5¼ |
| 8 ounces | 6 |
On the 1st of June Mr. Weeks wrote to the secretary of the
Postal Progress League as follows:
It does not seem to me likely that any other parcels-post legislation
than possibly the bill which I introduced last week—this bill—providing
for the reduction in rate on fourth-class matter, will
be considered at this session of Congress.
This means that for at least two years more the American
people are to be left subject to the extortions of the rich and
powerful express companies, while we have in the post-office a
well-equipped service of our own through which much of the
people’s business now carried on by these companies could be
done quicker and at infinitely less cost.
Mr. Speaker, if the powers arraigned against the post-office
continue their efforts to limit its functions in behalf of private
interests, they will soon find themselves confronted with a Congress
pledged to extend the service of the post-office to a much
larger degree of the public transmission business; and hence,
I think it wise that my bill should now be brought before the
House for immediate consideration.
Parcels Post and the Retailer.
Fremont Rider.
Of all the arguments against a parcels post by far the most
venerable is that of financial disaster; and even April 1911
finds many an opponent of a parcels post uttering gloomy
prophecies of the enormous losses which the system would entail,
losses which would have to be met, as he takes pains to point
out, by an already bankrupt post office department.
On the other hand, the men best acquainted both with the
problem of transportation and its cost and with the parcels
post as it has been worked out abroad, go so far as to say,
that so far from being an expense, a parcels post would probably
be the most profitable business venture into which the
United States government ever embarked. In fact a private
parcels post, in certain of the metropolitan districts at least,
would probably be started by private capital were it not for one
thing—the growing agitation for a government parcels post
which would render valueless the plant of the private company.
The plan of this private parcels post, in direct competition
with the present express companies is no chimera.... Every
thinking person marvels at the economic waste in the present day
methods of city delivery. By your house in Yonkers, for instance,
if you happen to live in Yonkers, there now rattles, once
or twice daily, the wagons of your butcher, your baker, your
laundryman, your milkman, and your grocer, as well as those
of the various butchers, bakers, laundrymen, milkmen, and
grocerymen of your neighbors, all covering in staggeringly
wasteful duplication, the same route. Besides them, up from
the city come, in further duplication and longer distance waste,
the wagons of the nine different New York department stores
that deliver in Yonkers, the wagons of the four local express
companies that divide the “independent” business, and those of
the two general express companies which do the high-priced
long distance business. Yet, when you think of it, one wagon
could come to you three times a day and do the work of all
these people, more effectively and at one-tenth of the present
total expense.
You buy a dollar’s worth of groceries of John Jones, the
grocer. The whole package, bread, milk, eggs, butter, and
vegetables, weighs, perhaps, ten pounds. A company doing
all the delivery business of a town, centralized, complete, without
waste labor or waste mileage, stopping its motor wagons
two or three times a day at every house on every street, can
make money delivering that ten pounds for six cents. It now
costs Jones, sending out his boy and wagon to a dozen odd
houses scattered all over town, two or three times that amount.
But such a private parcels post will not be undertaken because
of the fear that the government may enter the field.
Yet so far at least, although in the post office the government
has most of the plant necessary to carry on such a business,
it cannot be persuaded to go into it.
The most exasperating reason for this inactivity is the legislative
assumption that our present “parcels post” approaches
perfection. The fact is, of course, that the United States has
no parcels post in the sense in which the term is in accepted
international use. The present fourth class rate is but little
used in this country simply because it is prohibitively high.
To send ten pounds of merchandise from New York to Philadelphia
involves, not merely the indefensible nuisance of separating
it for mail transportation into three packages, but a
charge of $1.60. Naturally, instead, the merchandise is sent
in one parcel by express for fifty cents. As the work done
by the express company, it is needless to note, gives them
a very handsome profit indeed, it is evident that by far the
larger portion of the government’s $1.60 in this case would
be sheer profit—if the post office were as efficiently conducted
as the express company.
The express company, however, does not attempt to carry
a ten pound package from New York to Seattle for fifty cents.
Such long and profitless hauls they leave for Uncle Sam. Yet,
even so, with all the cream of the parcel business continually
and inevitably going to the express companies, the Post Office
Department according to its reports makes a profit in its
“parcels post” business.
Of course were the post office rate from New York to Philadelphia
a real parcels post rate, that is, for example, 20 cents
for ten pounds instead of $1.60, there would be 1,000 pounds
of merchandise so sent where there is one sent today. People
will use a parcels post when it becomes cheap enough to be
an economic possibility, and they will use it enormously, as
experience elsewhere has abundantly and conclusively proved.
Until then they will use the fourth class postal rate only for
the occasional cross continental parcel on which the express
rate soars out of all reach, or for the small parcel under a
pound in weight on which the fourth class rate is less than
the express companies’ minimum charge.
The four vital arguments (the four great express companies)
against a parcels post, once so succinctly enumerated by Mr.
Wanamaker, and the other hoary arguments sampled above,
have, however, of late years been bolstered by another—the
welfare of the “small country retailer”; and round the great
fear of a vague but very horrible something called “trade
centralization” the battle for parcels post is at present being
waged.
It has been taken for granted that the small country retailer
will be put out of business by the parcels post with its
low delivery charges—yet there are stores in Yonkers, Plainfield,
etc., in spite of the fact that the New York department
stores deliver in these places free.
Let us examine another aspect of this
death-of-the-small-retailer-fattening-of-the-mail-order-trust-bogey
a minute, and see
whether a parcels post means really a more centralized basis
of distribution, or a less.
Speaking very roughly, there are in the world two great
tides of merchandise traffic: one of raw materials, of which
food products is the most important, from the farmer to the
urban consumer; one of manufactured products—to wear, to
use, or to eat (as refined sugar or prepared breakfast food)—from
the urban maker to the farmer consumer.
Surprising as it may seem the parcels post argument has
dealt almost entirely with the latter tide: of the former tide,
even more important, as I think I can show, very little has
been said.
Let us look for a moment into our existing high cost of
transportation, and therefore, decentralized distribution of farm
products.
In New York the farmer sells his milk for—these figures
are quoted very roughly and without elaboration but they will
give my point—2 cents a quart. He sells it, usually, to one
of two or three—there is considerable evidence that they all
act in agreement as one—gigantic milk companies (of which
Borden’s is the largest) which bring it into the city and distribute
it. The ultimate consumer—again I give a rough
figure—pays 10 cents a quart. The other 8 cents is the “distributing
cost”; and in each case it goes, mind you, to two
great corporations, a milk company and an express (or a rail-road)
company. Is this that decentralized distribution that
the defenders of the express companies in and before our
Committee have eulogized.
Take almost any other farm product, strawberries, for example.
The farmer, who grows them, gets 3 cents a basket.
Then begins a long line of tolls: the express company, 3 cents;
the commission merchant, 2 cents (he claims, and often with
reason, that his “spoilage” is high); the jobber 1 cent; the
small retailer—delicatessen store, corner grocery or street cart
vendor—3 cents (it “costs 25 per cent. to do business” he
says, and it does too). The ultimate consumer pays 12 cents
a basket, sometimes more, sometimes, when the market is
glutted, a little less. Here is 9 cents of “distributive costs”
of which but 3 went to our friend, the “small retailer.” The
rest went to more or less centralized distributing agencies.
Now suppose on the other hand that the farmer could send his
products direct to his list of regular customers in the city.
It would be perfectly feasible with a parcels post. Strawberries,
which the farmer would get 6 cents a basket for (double
what he gets now) could be delivered at your breakfast table
the next morning after picking instead of two or three days
old in the triple transit of commission merchant and his storage
place, jobber and his trans-shipment, retailer and his store,
and finally to you. And for this infinitely better article you
would pay only 8 cents (2 cents for the parcels post) instead
of the former 12.
There are only three factors, the farmer, the government
parcels post, and you! This is not theory: it is being done in
England, in Germany, in Japan, and in almost every other
civilized country in the world every day; and has been done for
years.
And as for the mail order business bogey, it would not be
a bogey in the country districts because every farmer would be
running a little mail order business of his own, shipping his
eggs and butter pats and comb honey and fresh fruit and
vegetables by mail right to his customers, on their standing
or postal card orders, getting enough for his produce to make
small farming worth while, but giving the consumer better
goods at a big saving. Cost of living! There is no other
revolution in the methods of distribution that would make so
much difference in the cost of living as a thoroughgoing
parcels post would work. And instead of greater centralization
it would be almost the ultimate of trade decentralization.
Or, let us look at the thing the other way round. What
is the chain of trade from urban producer of manufactured
articles to the country retailer and consumer? Is there any
decentralized purchasing now except by mail? The farmer buys
of the small retailer. But the retailer buys of the lesser jobber
and he of the main jobber and he of the manufacturer; and
this is true whether the product be canned goods or dry
goods. Freight shipments in bulk can underbid single shipments
by mail or express; and the present system of distribution,
cumbersome and expensive as it is to the ultimate consumer,
is nevertheless cheaper than direct single shipments
at the present mail or express rates. The moment that you
introduce bulk shipments into any distributive system you
necessarily introduce a middleman somewhere to divide up that
bulk shipment for individual consumers; and the greater the
bulk economically shipped the more middlemen there will
be between producer and consumer.
Now where the parcels post could afford a cheaper way of
doing the distributing than the machinery at present in use,
the people ought to have the benefit of it; but in spite of the
obvious benefits of a parcels post it is not wise to jump to the
ultimate conclusion. No one would be rash enough to say that
the present system of retail selling is entirely wrong. Even
if the flat-rate, “zoneless” parcels post were established there
are certain kinds of goods—books, for example, in which every
article is a “novelty” which must be personally handled before
choice and purchase, in which a local retailer with a display
is, if not essential, at least a great convenience.
But so far we have been considering an ideal, flat-rate
parcels post, without that “zone” provision which is an important
provision in the bills and proposals for a parcels post
which are now being most actively agitated.
The zone system of parcels post proposes, roughly, a flat
rate per pound and per additional pound within the limits of
any delivery office (that is a service which involves no transfer
from one post office to another) and a rate considerably
heavier (but still much less than the present fourth-class mail
or express rate) for delivery elsewhere in the United States.
This would furnish the cross-roads store with a most convenient
delivery system and furnish it at a cheaper price than its city
rivals could secure it. The local retailer would have the advantage
of the difference between the two charges. To give
this advantage to the local retailer is probably wise from the
standpoint of general public policy. The small retailer in the
country does the public a very actual and very valuable service.
To have a stock displayed for selection is often an assistance
in purchasing; there are certain things which cannot in any
case, be bought by mail; there are other things which may
sometimes preferably be bought direct, just as most people like,
occasionally at least, “to shop”; there is a welcome personal
touch in retailing which is lost in the long distance purchase.
For these and other reasons the retail store will remain,
stripped of overcompetition and non-essential distributive
agents, competing with the parcels post, not in price so much,
as in the kind and quality of service. That is the way the small
retailer in Germany had adapted himself to the parcels post;
and although in his case there is no zone preferential to aid
him, he has made good.
After all, there is the gist of the answer to those who oppose
a parcels post on anti-centralization grounds. They speak as
though there were but one factor in retailing—price. As a matter
of fact there are many factors, and the best students of
retailing methods consider service one of the most important.
With a parcels post established the public would be getting value
for its money in cheapness or service, as it chose; with the
present express system it gets neither.
Star Routes and Rural Parcels Post.
F. W. Mondell.
I do not want to put the entire blame for the hidden, circuitous,
and indirect opposition to parcels post upon the express
companies. There is another class of people who are opposed to
parcels post who do not directly show their hands. They are
the firms and corporations who send out a very large letter mail,
upon which they pay 2 cents for every half ounce. The average
citizen who only writes an occasional letter does not realize
how heavy the burden 2-cent letter postage is to people who
send out great numbers of letters.
There are many large concerns, like the mail-order houses for
instance, promoters, jobbers, and dealers in special extensively
advertised lines, whose actual letter postage amounts to many
thousands of dollars a year. Such people naturally oppose any
change in the postal service which might increase the postal
deficit, even temporarily, because of their anxiety to have the
letter rate reduced. The yearly income of the Post Office Department
from letter postage is about $132,000,000, and it is
said that some mail-order houses pay several hundred thousand
dollars a year for letter postage. A reduction of that by half
would be well worth working for.
It would not be fair in the discussion of this subject to overlook
the fact that there are arguments against the establishment
of a general parcels post which are advanced in perfect good
faith and which are entitled to serious consideration. Those
local merchants who have some misgivings about the matter are
entitled to have their views carefully considered, but as I have
indicated, it is my opinion that in the main their fears are not
well founded, and arise largely from the fact that they have not
had an opportunity to give the matter their personal consideration,
and therefore have been inclined to accept the arguments
of interested parties. There are also a considerable number of
people who are honestly opposed to the parcels post in the belief
that it is an unwarranted extension of government activities
into a field which ought to be satisfactorily covered by private
enterprise, and who still hope that the express service may be
so cheapened and improved as to very largely satisfy the demand
for a parcels post. There are also those who feel that owing to
the vast area of our country it would be difficult to adopt a system
of parcels post which would be generally satisfactory and
at the same time self-supporting.
The argument is also made that the handling of a large
amount of merchandise by the postal service would make delivery
difficult where city delivery is provided, and delay the transmission
of letters by the loading of the mails with merchandise.
These arguments do present problems which must have serious
consideration. They are none of them, however, in my
opinion, problems which are insurmountable, but a consideration
of them, as well as of that character of powerful opposition
exerted indirectly to which I have referred, leads thinking
people to the conclusion that the outlook for the establishment
of a general parcels post in the country in the near future is
far from promising. With this as with all progressive legislation,
little progress will be made until the people as a whole
become thoroughly interested in the subject, quite generally
make up their minds what they want, and in no uncertain tone
make their wants known.
So long as only those who are opposed to the extension of the
parcels post are generally heard from by members of Congress,
there is not much likelihood of definite action being taken, and
the probability is that in any event a general parcels post in
this country can only be secured through the medium of a
modest and limited and more or less experimental beginning
in the way of a local or rural parcels post.
President Taft in his last annual message recommended a
parcels post limited to rural free-delivery lines. This recommendation
was made on the ground of economy, to meet the
opposition aroused by the argument that a general system would
create a great deficit in the postal revenues, for a time at least.
The local system would also have the virtue that it would
furnish an object lesson in a partial and limited way, which
might be valuable in determining the propriety of further
extending the system. There is, furthermore, an argument
for rural parcels post which does not apply in the same degree
to a general parcels post, and that is that while the dwellers
in cities and towns have ready access to stores and opportunities
of express service, the dwellers in rural communities
do not have these advantages, and therefore a rural parcels post
which would enable them to have articles delivered on local
routes or to local post offices would be of great benefit and advantage
to them. As we do not have many rural free-delivery
routes in our sparsely settled intermountain country, I am of
the opinion that a rural parcels post, if established, should
also operate over the star routes which supply our country
offices and our people in boxes en route, and therefore the bill
which I introduced provides for such a service.
Such a rural parcels post as is thus proposed would unquestionably
be helpful in building up the trade of the merchants in
the small cities and towns and of very great value and advantage
to the people who get their mail at the country post offices
and along country routes. This being true, I supposed I would
avoid much of the storm of opposition which those who have
advocated a general parcels post have heretofore encountered.
Much to my surprise, however, the onslaught against this very
modest proposition, intended to help the local merchant and the
people of the country, has been even more terrific than the outburst
against the general proposition; all of which makes one
fact as clear as the noonday sun, and that is that the opponents
of a parcels post realize that the local parcels post, if it works
well and is generally satisfactory, will be the entering wedge
for the general parcels post. It also illuminates quite as clearly
another fact, and that is that the opponents of parcels post believe
that the rural parcels post will work well and be generally
satisfactory. Another important fact emphasized by this opposition
is that the opponents of parcels post believe that the agitation
for a local parcels post is much more dangerous than the
agitation for the general parcels post, because it is more likely
to be successful. The gentlemen who have been spending their
money so liberally in opposition to the local or rural parcels
post have thus made clear three important facts:
First. They believe that there is a strong probability of a
local parcels post being established.
Second. They believe that such a system will work to the
satisfaction of the people.
Third. They believe that, the local system having proven
satisfactory, it would lead to the establishment of a general
system.
In this condition of affairs it would seem that it is the duty
of the friends of a parcels-post system to get behind the President’s
suggestion of a local parcels post enlarged so as to include
star routes and country offices.
Some one is spending a lot of money to defeat the rural parcels
post. One way they are doing it is by sending out petitions
by the tens of thousands, which they ask the local merchants
to sign and send to their Congressman. I have received
hundreds of these petitions. They have various sorts of headings
printed in various kinds of type, but they are nearly all
alike.
After having in the first paragraph drawn a dreadful picture
of the awful disaster and destruction which the rural
parcels post will bring to the farmers and to the country towns,
in whose behalf they weep and wail—a destruction compared
with which the devastation of Sodom and Gomorrah would be as
the passing of a summer zephyr—they tell us how all these
direful calamities are to come, as follows:
In every town catalogue agents of mail-order concerns would
establish themselves. They would need no stores, pay no rent,
employ no clerks, require no credit and give none, and carry no
stock. Their whole time would be devoted to soliciting orders from
catalogues. The merchandise would be shipped to them by express
or freight from the retail mail-order houses in the large
cities. When received it would be deposited in the local post office
and the packages delivered by the rural carriers.
The only trouble with this lovely piece of sophistry is they
fail to explain to us why the very game they describe can not
be worked just as well now as it could after a rural parcels
post had been established. There is nothing in the world to
prevent just the sort of a plan, which is thus held up to our
horror and execration, from being carried out now, except that
it would not pay. The mail carriers on rural and star lines
not only have the authority, but they would be very glad to
have the opportunity of delivering packages along their routes
which solicitors for catalogue houses might deliver to them.
And, furthermore, they can now, no doubt would be glad to,
take packages of any size; whereas a rural parcels post only
provides for packages up to 11 pounds. So, when you come to
analyze it, this “local-solicitor-of-the-mail-order-trust” bugaboo
is found to be just another one of the strawmen, the poor miserable
scarecrows, that the express companies are trying to
terrify us with.
The mail-order houses claim they can sell cheaper than the
local merchants because they do not have any local expense.
The moment they are called upon to pay for the services of a
local agent their expenses are greater than those of the local
merchant. I think this disposes of the “local-agent bogy.” He
is the most transparent of all the scarecrows the express companies
have raised.
General Deficiency Bill.
William S. Bennet.
Mr. Speaker: In view of the great interest in the parcels
post question, I submit herewith the views of the Farmers’
National Congress:
[By John M. Stahl, legislative agent Farmers’ National
Congress.]
It has been said, and not without justice, that because of
greater density of population parcels can be carried at a less
cost in the domestic mails of Germany or Belgium than in the
domestic mails of the United States, because the average haul
would be shorter in Germany or Belgium. But the disparity
between the domestic parcels post of the United States and of
foreign countries is greater than is warranted by the length of
the average haul. No fact is better established in the science
of transportation than that the cost of transporting an article
bears little relation to the distance transported. But if the
density of population should fix the rate of postage and the
limit of weight in a domestic parcels post, then surely we should
have a lower rate of postage and a higher weight limit than
those countries in which the population is not so dense as is
ours. For example, the area of the Commonwealth of Australia
is 2,974,581 square miles, and the present population is
4,300,000. The area of the United States, excluding Alaska
and the islands, is 3,025,600 square miles. Alaska and Hawaii
would add a shade less than 600,000 square miles. The
area of the Philippine Archipelago is 832,968 square miles,
and the population, according to the 1908 census, is 7,835,436.
It is certain that, including all our territory and all our population,
we have an average population of more than 20 per
square mile. Australia has a population of less than 2 per
square mile. If the argument of the opponents of a modern
parcels post for the United States, founded on the density of
population of Belgium, Germany, etc., is a good argument, then
the rate charged in our domestic parcels post should be much
less and the weight limit should be much greater than in the
domestic parcels post of Australia. But the postage rate in the
domestic parcels post of Australia is as follows: Intrastate, 1
pound, 6 pence (12 cents); 2 pounds, 9 pence (18 cents); 3
pounds, 1 shilling; and 3 pence (6 cents) for each additional
pound up to and including 11 pounds, the postage rate for an
11-pound parcel being 3 shillings (72 cents).
The interstate rate in the parcels post among the six states
of Australia is as follows: One pound, 8 pence (16 cents); 2
pounds, 1 shilling 2 pence; 3 pounds, 1 shilling 8 pence; and
6 pence additional for each additional pound up to and including
11 pounds, making the charge for an 11-pound parcel 5 shillings
8 pence ($1.36).
New Zealand is 1,200 miles from Australia and extends
for 1,100 miles. It has a population of only 1,000,000. Yet the
rate in the parcels posts between the States of Australia and
New Zealand is just the same as it is among the States of
Australia, and the weight limit is the same.
Now, if the people of Belgium and Germany should have
a less postage rate and a higher weight limit in their domestic
parcels post than we have because the population of Germany
and Belgium is denser than our population, then we should
have a much less postage rate and a much higher weight limit
in our domestic parcels post than have the people of Australia,
because our population is more than ten times as dense as the
population of Australia. But, on the contrary, the average
postage rate in not only the intrastate but also in the interstate
parcels post of Australia is less than in our domestic parcels
post, and the weight limit is 11 pounds, as compared with
4 pounds in our domestic parcels post. The rule laid down
by the opponents of a modern parcels post for the United States
must apply to Australia as well as to Belgium and Germany,
and by this rule the rate in our domestic parcels post should
certainly be less than 8 cents a pound and the weight limit
should certainly be far above 11 pounds.
The postage rate in the domestic parcels post of New Zealand
is 4 pence (8 cents) for the first pound and 2 pence (4
cents) for each additional pound. The population of New
Zealand is less than one-half as dense as our population. The
weight limit in the domestic parcels post of New Zealand is
11 pounds. If the argument of the opponents of a modern
parcels post for the United States, founded on the density of
population is correct, then the rate in our domestic parcels post,
instead of being several times that of New Zealand, should
be less, and the weight limit, instead of being only about one-third
that of New Zealand, should be greater.
Our parcels post with foreign countries shows beyond argument
that the postage rate in our domestic parcels post
should be not more than one-third of what it is, at the utmost,
and that the weight limit should be several times what it is.
The domestic parcels posts of other countries and of Australia
and New Zealand show also beyond argument that
the postage rate in our domestic parcels post should be only
a fraction of what it is and that the weight limit should
be several times greater.
Whether or not the railways are owned by the government
does not touch the argument founded on the parcel post
of other countries. If government ownership of railways lessens
the cost of the postal service, it may be an argument
that our Post-Office Department pays our railways too high
a rate for transporting mail matter, but it has nothing to do
with the character of the mail service our government should
give our people.
As a matter of fact, government ownership of railways has
no apparent effect on the parcel post of foreign countries.
Both those in which the railways are in large part owned by
the government and those in which the government does not
own any railway mileage have a parcel post much superior to
ours.
Possibly our government should not conduct a parcel post
at any considerable loss, although it should be borne in mind
that the object of our Post-Office Department is to serve the
people and not to make money. It might be successfully argued
that fundamentally there is no greater reason why the Post-Office
Department should be a source of revenue than that
the War Department should be a source of revenue. The
mails have become so very important in the transaction of
business, in the communication of intelligence, and affect so
many of the operations of our daily life, that each year it
becomes apparent that the test of our Post-Office Department
should be the excellence of the service it gives our people; and
the relation of expenditures, so long as they are judiciously and
economically made, to receipts is of less and less importance.
But we would not advocate any parcel post that, when fully
established and on a normal basis, would add much, if any,
to the net cost of our Post-Office Department. However, it
is apparent from a study of the profits of our express companies
that our Post-Office Department could carry parcels
in our domestic post at a much less rate than 16 cents a
pound without increasing the net cost of the Post-Office Department.
Further, a study of the profits of our express companies
show clearly that we are being charged altogether too
much by these express companies for the service they give
us, and that their charges should be subjected to that most
effective of all control—the competition of a modern parcel
post. This study shows with equal plainness that the present
weight limit on parcels in our domestic post, which compels us
to send by express all parcels weighing more than 4 pounds,
should be raised to a much higher figure, probably 25 or even
100 pounds. Recent investigations and revelations have shown
that our express companies are really subjecting us to extortion.
The competition of a modern parcels post may not prove
sufficient of itself to make the charges of the express companies
what they should be, but it would certainly be most
effective in accomplishing this result. We are subjected to
overcharges by express companies as are the people of no
other country on the face of the earth. In fact, the most important
countries of Europe, as well as Australia, New Zealand,
etc., are not subjected to any overcharges at all by express companies
for the reason that in those countries and colonies there
are no express companies of the nature of those existing in
this country. On account of the overcharges of our express
companies we have a very good reason, indeed, for a modern
parcels post in this country; and this very good reason is in
addition to those that so many other countries have found
amply sufficient to warrant a modern parcels post.
And it should not be forgotten that the enormous profits
of our express companies on the capital they actually have
invested in the express business show conclusively that our
government could give us a modern parcel post without increasing
the net cost of the postal service after that parcel
post had been established and its business had reached normal
proportions.
In an honest endeavor to arrive at a correct conclusion as
to the features of our domestic parcel post we can not do
better than to study the parcel post of Australia and New
Zealand, for the dominant elements in the population of Australia
and New Zealand are the same as in ours, the people
of Australia and New Zealand have obtained their ideas of
government and the functions of government from the same
source that we have, their institutions and conditions approach
ours nearer than those of other countries, and they
have the same problem of adapting the government service
to a wide expanse of territory in the settlement and development
of a new country. This problem, though much greater than
ours at this time—the area of Australia is nearly the same
as that of our states, while the population is only about one-twentieth
as much—is the same in its nature.
Another reason is that the postal service of Australia and
New Zealand is so satisfactory in every way. On page 25 of
“L’Union Postale” for 1909 it is stated in regard to the New
Zealand postal service: “The financial results of the administration
were very satisfactory. The receipts increased by 9.04 per
cent and the expenditure by 7.22 per cent over the preceding
year.”
It will be seen that the postal business of New Zealand
conforms to the rule of good business management that as
a business increases in volume the receipts should increase faster
than the expense.
In the last published report of the postmaster-general of
New Zealand it is pointed out that notwithstanding several
important reductions in the postage rate the revenue of the
postal service had during the preceding sixteen years increased
by a considerably larger amount than the expense. “From
December 16, 1907, the postage on inland post cards was reduced
to one-half penny. From January 1, 1908, the rates
for inland letters were made 1 penny for the first 4 ounces
and one-half penny for each additional 2 ounces. From January
1, 1908, the commission chargeable on money orders within
New Zealand is 3 pence for each 5 pounds sterling or fraction
of 5 pounds. Owing to the reduction in postal rates
made the year before, the number of parcels increased 81.57
per cent.” “The rate of postage for inland parcels was reduced
from 6 pence for the first pound and 3 pence for each
additional pound to 4 pence for the first pound and 2 pence
for each additional pound. The public, moreover, has by the
change been induced to send by parcels post articles which
were previously forwarded as packets.” “The reduction in
postal rates may be practically referred to as having resulted
in a great increase in parcels-post business.” There was a
handsome net balance to the credit of the postal business. “The
net balance on the year’s transactions would be much higher
if the value of official correspondence dealt with were taken
into account.” “The expansion of the business has necessitated
large additions to the staff. The increase of the staff was,
however, below the percentage of increase of the receipts. An
amendment to the post-office act contributed to improve the
financial condition of the postal service.” The experience of
New Zealand and the Commonwealth of Australia in postal
service is well stated by the colonial treasurer, Hon. Sir J. G.
Ward, in one of his recent financial statements, as follows:
“Experience has shown that every concession in postal rates
creates a new class of business which is ultimately to the
profit of the post-office.”
Of course, in the official publications of the Commonwealth
of Australia and of New Zealand one hears nothing to the
effect that the government should not engage in any competitive
business—one hears that only in the United States. If that
were put into effect, our national government would be compelled
to stop building war ships in the navy-yards, to close
up altogether the government printing establishment, to stop
at once all its irrigation projects, to close up all the land-grant
colleges, to stop at once casting cannon and making small firearms
and ammunition, etc. As a matter of fact, when our
Constitution was framed there was no question among those
that framed it that it should give to the national government
the power to do certain things, in competition with private enterprise,
that would be for “the public welfare;” and there
was never any intimation that the national government should
not engage in any competitive business. On the other hand,
those that helped to frame the national Constitution and to
secure its adoption participated in and sanctioned legislation by
Congress that put the national government into several lines
of competitive business.
The publications of the labor officials of Australia and New
Zealand are decidedly numerous, and show plainly that the
working people of these colonies, as well as the other elements
of their population, are heartily in favor of a modern parcel
post. It may truly be said that the parcel post of Australia
and New Zealand has the hearty and universal approval of
the people of those colonies. The officials and the rank and
file of the labor organizations of these colonies are among
the heartiest supporters of their parcel post. And it is certain
that the very large majority of the rank and file of our labor
organizations and the very large majority of our city people,
as well as of farmers, heartily favor a modern parcel post.
As for the relation of a modern parcels post to the so-called
catalogue houses: In his official reports the postmaster-general
of both Australia and New Zealand frequently emphasizes that
for years a thoroughly modern colonial, intercolonial, and
foreign parcels post has been enjoyed by the people of those
colonies, even in “the most remote districts to which the mail
service penetrates.” Notwithstanding this, in all of the many
publications on Australia and New Zealand, or by the officials
of those colonies, there could not be found a sentence to
the effect that the local merchants of those colonies have been
in the least injured in their business by catalogue houses.
This fact certainly merits being emphasized. In all the
countries in which there is a modern parcels post the catalogue
house is unknown. In our country, which is the only enlightened
country that has not a modern parcels post, the catalogue
house exists and, to some limited extent, flourishes.
Hence the fact is plain that instead of a modern parcels post
aiding catalogue houses the very opposite is true. If the
universal experience of humanity counts for anything, then the
antiquated parcels post, such as we have, aids the catalogue
house and the modern parcels post puts it out of business and
keeps it out of business.
The rural delivery service has grown to more than 20,000
routes. Official reports show that the average weight of mail
delivered by each team or single-horse wagon in the rural
delivery service is only 25 pounds. On nearly all the trips the
carrier could practically as well take 500 pounds in his wagon.
The more than 40,000 rural carriers make more than 12,480,000
round trips each year. If a parcels post on the rural routes
earned $2 for each round trip the gain would be, in round numbers
$25,000,000 a year, and this, with some little reforms that
all agree should be and easily could be made, would wipe out
the postal deficit. Now, if the rate on the pound packages
in a rural route parcels post was 5 cents a pound the carrier
to earn the $2 per round trip would be compelled to carry not
the 500 pounds that he could, but only 20 pounds additional
going and coming or a total load of only 45 pounds.
This is a fair calculation as to profit to the government, for
the expense for the rural carrier service would not be any
greater whatever, and the small expense for handling the additional
20 pounds at the terminal post-office would be more
than covered by the increased first-class mail (handling which
is very profitable) resulting from the parcels post.
As, on the average, about 100 families are served by each
rural route, if, on the average, each family had delivered
or sent each trip only one-half pound of parcel, taking into
account that a good many parcels would weigh less than 1 pound
and that every parcels-post bill proposes for them a higher
rate than for heavier packages, the rate could be made much
less than is proposed and yet the postal deficit would be wiped
out altogether!
And this would be of very great benefit to the 4,000,000
families served by the rural mail delivery. The rural carrier
passes the farm every week day, yet if the farmer wants a
package from the town he must go after it—each of the 100
farmers must hitch up and drive to town and back for packages
that the one carrier could have brought them as well as not
with the outfit that he already has. Or these 100 farmers
must hitch up and take to town packages that the carrier could
have taken for them with the outfit he already has. The
time and labor saved the 4,000,000 families on rural routes
would amount to many times the present postal deficit.
It is only natural that farmers should be especially desirous
of a modern parcels post, because, as already stated, the
express service stops with the railway station. Hence the
farmer has no express service that reaches to him as have
the people of towns and cities. The express companies have
never cared to carry their business to the farmer, and this must
convict them of only the most reprehensible motives in opposing
a parcels post limited to rural routes, which would
extend the equivalent of an express service to the farmers.
As bearing on the farmer’s need of a modern parcels post,
the following from a letter just received from Hon. W. L.
Ames, Oregon, Wis., a practical farmer and a leader of national
reputation in all agricultural movements, is of interest:
“One of the things we most need is better and prompter
transportation facilities for rather small articles. I recently needed
a small but important repair for a machine. It weighed
4¼ pounds. It cost 55 cents. The express company charged
45 cents to bring it to Oregon—200 miles. The charge was
altogether too high, but what I felt most disposed to complain
about was that it took a week to bring the repair to me.
Mail matter moves promptly; but the express company knew
that it was certain of the job of carrying that repair to me,
hence no need of haste on the part of the express company.
We need better and added facilities for the prompter moving
of such merchandise. Present delay is a serious handicap, and
undoubtedly a parcels post would give us prompt service at a less
rate, as it would not be expected that the parcels post would
do more than make a moderate profit for the government,
whereas the express business is a constant ‘melon-cutting’
business. We must not forget, also, that all the equipment
for a parcels post on rural routes is already installed.
“If the government would take charge of what it already has
and add rules to fix charges for carrying parcels on the rural
routes, it would relieve us of much unjust charge and also
much annoyance and loss of time. Under the rulings of the
Post-Office Department prohibiting rural carriers from acting
as agents for anyone to obtain business, carriers are afraid
to carry parcels to any extent. But what cuts a yet greater
figure is that no rule can be established to fix the charges
for carrying parcels and make them the same for all. Each
person on a rural route and the carrier cannot dicker for
the transportation of each article. That would soon lead to
great dissatisfaction, as some would think that others were
being favored. And to dicker on each parcel would take so
much time and be so much trouble that the carrier could
not be expected to do it. All we need to put into effect a
modern parcels post on the rural routes is a law fixing a
reasonable and proper rate for the transportation of parcels
and making it the business of the rural carrier to handle parcels
as well as the mail matter he now carries.”
Who Will Be Benefited by a Parcels Post?
John B. Walker.
Those who have been appointed to defend the Post-Office
Department in the sacrifice it has made of the American people
in the matter of postal parcels delivery have replied to the
argument in the last issue of The Cosmopolitan by claiming
that but very few people will be benefited by a parcels delivery
equal to that of Germany. It is therefore necessary to consider
this question: “Who are the people who will be benefited?”
First. There will be a gross saving amounting to more
than two hundred and fifty millions of dollars per annum.
This annual addition to our national wealth constitutes an economic
factor of the highest importance.
Second. While this sum will be distributed equally among
the people in proportion to their purchases—especially among
those who make small purchases—the direct benefit will be first
appreciable in the business of the following classes:
I. The Small Storekeepers of the Country Towns and
Villages. One of the arguments used by those who have been
placed in the Post-Office Department for the protection of special
interests, is that a parcels post would injure the country storekeeper.
The very slightest consideration of the problem, however,
would have shown that no one is so likely to be its beneficiary
as he. The chief difficulties with which the small merchant
has to contend are these:
1. Insufficient capital.
2. Distance from wholesale centers.
3. Cost of expressage on small parcels.
The country merchant has the acquaintance of his customers;
he knows their wants and enjoys their good-will, and would
have their patronage if he could be placed in a situation where
he could give them equal, or approximately equal, advantages
with a merchant who buys on a large scale. If one of his customers
is driven to go elsewhere, it is not only because the
merchant cannot afford to keep in stock the particular class
of goods desired, but because he cannot afford to ship these
goods in small quantities, on account of the prohibitive rates
of the government’s postal parcels charges of sixteen cents per
pound, or the almost equally prohibitive rates of the express
companies.
The country storekeeper has the experience of his customer’s
wants, and he has a knowledge of the best goods, knows
what is a fair price for an article. He is in a position to advise
his customer as to his needs, and if he were not handicapped
by lack of capital and cost of transportation for parcels, he
could, in nine times out of ten, supply the wants of the customer.
In addition to the trade he has now, the country storekeeper
would, with the advantage of a first-class postal parcels system,
be able to keep in touch with all the great wholesale distributing
agencies of the country. He would earn a reasonable commission
on all goods ordered, and would be in a position to
secure, within a very brief time, by postal parcels, the goods
which the customer, after looking over the catalogues and receiving
the advice of the merchant, should decide to order.
There would be no investment and no risk, such as is involved
in carrying a stock of goods which may become unsalable.
Without large capital, he is now handicapped by being compelled,
on account of the discrimination against him as a shipper, to lose
the sale of all those articles which he cannot carry in stock in
quantities, and which may, under present arrangements, only
be shipped in bulk. If he attempts to use the mails, the rate
of sixteen cents per pound is prohibitive, while the fact that
the bulk is limited to four pounds is almost equally so; and
the express companies’ charges are so high that in the majority
of cases he cannot utilize their services.
Let us suppose that, instead of the United States’ charges for
postal parcels being six thousand per cent. greater than Germany’s
they were on a par, and that the country merchant could receive
parcels weighing from one ounce to one hundred and eleven
pounds for a quarter of a cent a pound. It is not even necessary
that the rate should be so low. Let it be made four times
as great as that of Germany, or one cent per pound, and let
us see what advantage the country merchant would have. One
hundred and ten pounds covers nine-tenths of the articles which
he would be likely to sell. Instead of a store equipped with
comparatively few articles, the country merchant would be able
to carry, in addition to his regular stock, an extensive line of
samples. He would familiarize himself with the best that there
is in the market, be able to advise his customer to his advantage,
and then, receiving the order, could, within a brief time,
have the goods sent by parcels post directly to the customer’s
home, saving the expense of handling two or three times—making
more money by a small commission than he does now
by the larger margin on the goods which he is compelled to
carry constantly in stock.
Good organization is the trend of modern business, and this
is good organization—saving two or three handlings, truckage,
some bookkeeping, et cetera.
II. The Manufacturers. Next to the country merchant, the
manufacturer will be the largest beneficiary of the postal parcels
delivery. Take, for instance, the hardware business. The
manufacturer is obliged, under the existing conditions of trade,
to maintain large stocks in an endless number of cities scattered
over the country, or do what is the equivalent of directly
maintaining the stocks—that is, to give extended credit. This
is because there is no way of handling small parcels of hardware
without a cost that is so excessive as to force shipments of
hardware to be made in bulk. With a one-cent-per-pound rate,
more than fifty per cent. of the stocks now carried could be
eliminated and orders sent by the hardware merchant directly
to the manufacturer to be shipped by package. One hundred
and ten pounds would cover the greater portion of the trade,
and leave only nails, barbed wire, and similar articles, for bulk
handling.
In cotton goods, instead of shipping from the Mills to New
York, trucking them there through the streets, breaking bulk,
repacking, retrucking and reshipping to the merchant there
would be but one operation. A single piece of goods would go
direct from the factory by parcels post at a total cost for
handling not to exceed twenty per cent. of the charges now
engendered by our clumsy, costly and inconceivably stupid
method.
The same thing would happen in the grocery business. A
factory in Rochester or Pittsburg, manufacturing canned articles,
must ship in bulk to New York, or Chicago, or St. Louis.
There the car-load, after being hauled to a warehouse, is broken
up and transshipped. There is no reason for this transshipment,
no possible excuse for this waste of money, except that
the ownership of the express by a few private companies
has prevented the organization of a parcels post upon lines
which have long been recognized as absolutely successful in
Europe.
The question here will be asked: Would this shipment
direct from the factory interfere with the business of the
wholesale merchants whose task it is now to repack and reship?
On the contrary, it would simplify their work and reduce expenses
from every point of view. Their business primarily is
one of distribution of credits. They have certain customers
who receive from them certain lines of credit. They furnish
the capital between the manufacturer and the retail dealer.
If tomorrow they could order by letter or telegraph, directly
from the factory, for shipment to the retail dealer by postal
parcels, their business would be greatly simplified and their
profits increased.
III. The Merchants in Large Cities. Perhaps to no class
will the boon of a parcels post be greater than the merchants
in the large cities. All the way from four cents to fifty cents
is now paid for the delivery of a parcel within a radius of thirty
miles around the leading cities of this country. Experiments
have shown that it is possible, where the interests of a considerable
number of merchants are combined, to deliver an
average dry-goods parcel, thirty miles out, at a cost not to
exceed four cents.
As conducted today, the business of delivering parcels consists
in sending the wagon of one dry-goods house to follow
another into a city block, and deliver each its parcel; then each
wagon goes off to another block, and delivers its parcel. In
New York city thousands of wagons meander through the
two or three thousand miles of streets, each firm doing its
work independently of the others, and each wasting money by
lack of cooperation.
It is altogether probable that with thorough organization
city delivery could be conducted, within a radius of thirty miles,
upon a basis not to exceed one half cent per pound. This
would mean but two cents per package for the average four-pound
dry-goods parcel, including, of course, the large number
which are transported but a few blocks. But that is not the only
advantage. It would take from the merchants the constant
effort which the maintenance of good delivery systems involves.
I have personally studied the delivery systems of nearly all
the leading merchants in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston,
and have spent a day in the delivery department of Marshall
Field in Chicago. Everywhere I heard the same complaint—that
the brains consumed in managing the parcels delivery
was one of the most expensive items in the cost of operating
a great establishment.
IV. Book Publishers. The cost of delivering a book by
mail is now eight cents per pound. This, for a four-pound
book, means a tax of thirty-two cents. Just how far this retards
the development of intelligence in the people is not difficult to
estimate.
V. Stationers’ Supplies. The large class of manufacturers
and wholesalers who are engaged in supplying the stationery
trade would find the parcels post a great convenience in receiving
supplies and in delivering to customers; a matter of lessened
capital, lessened trouble, and greatly increased profits.
VI. The Railways. At first sight it might appear that the
interests of the railways would not be favored by a postal parcels
law. But the briefest analysis of the problem shows that the
benefit to them would perhaps be greatest of all.
To-day vast numbers of freight-cars stand idle, waiting carload
shipments. These bulk shipments are necessarily made at
the very minimum of cost. In the low price of bulk shipments,
American railways lead the world. Even at existing prices,
however, water transportation carries off a large part of the
burden.
The benefits to the railways, by transferring freight from
the class of bulk to parcels, would be:
1. Goods being shipped in a constant stream of packages,
instead of intermittently by car-load or train-bulk;
2. A higher price would be obtained from shipments of the
same freight in parcels as compared with the previous cost in
bulk;
3. The large increase in traffic due to better, cheaper, speedier
and more direct, and in every way infinitely more convenient,
facilities;
4. The additional prosperity which a saving of anywhere
from two hundred and fifty to six hundred millions of dollars
per annum would mean to the country at large.
There are to-day far-seeing railway officials who have given
this problem serious consideration, and who have arrived at the
conclusion just stated.
VII. The Farmer. Last, but not least in importance, comes
the farmer. To-day, cut off from parcel delivery, he is the victim
of bad government, both in his bad roads and lack of
postal facilities. The one step of progress that the United
States post-office has made of recent years, that is worthy
of respect, is the rural postal delivery. As proposed, however,
it is ridiculous. The idea was advanced by some politicians
for the purpose of creating additional patronage. Merely
to deliver letters and newspapers to the farmer would, of course,
be to operate a service without hope of placing it on a profitable
basis. It would be as if the New York merchants would
keep a thousand wagons traveling around the streets of New
York to deliver nothing but kid gloves and lace veils—nearly
empty, while other wagons would be carrying the burden of
the goods sold.
Rural free delivery is absolutely impossible unless accompanied
by a postal parcels law. Giving a rate even four times
as high as that of Germany, the entire rural delivery could
be put on a paying basis to-morrow.
Here again would be an advantage to the country merchant.
The farmer to-day, when he wishes to buy, hitches up a pair of
horses, drives four or five miles, and makes a few purchases.
If the United States had the postal parcels law of Austro-Hungary,
the farmer would draw a postal check, mail it free,
the merchant would deliver the goods to the post-office, and a
few hours later they would be in the hands of the farmer.
The life of the farm, which has so many drawbacks, would
thus be made vastly more comfortable. It is impossible to
estimate in dollars how great the saving to the country would
be in this one particular.
It would be easy to show the endless ramifications of this
beneficial service; but space need not here be taken up for
that purpose. Sufficient has been indicated to show that there
is no man or woman, however poor, however rich, who would
not be vastly benefited and convenienced by a government
postal parcels system.
More Efficient Postal Service. Gustav Stickley.
Speaking of the success of the rural routes, of which there
are more than thirty-eight thousand already established in this
country, Mr. Meyer says: “The isolation which existed in
many parts of the country has been overcome; the people are in
daily communication with their friends in the rest of the world;
the daily papers and magazines come to the door of every farm
house on the rural routes, and enlightenment and information
are being spread broadcast through the land. Medical
men have said that already the establishment of the rural service
is having its effect upon the mentality of our country
patrons, and that because of it insanity is on the decrease.
The extension of the rural routes to include a parcel post,” he
asserts, “will be a boon both to the rural population and to
the store-keeper as the latter can receive his orders by mail
or telephone and despatch the desired merchandise by the rural
carrier. The farmer will be saved from hitching up his horse
and losing the time he needs for planting or harvesting his
crops, and it will enable the store-keeper to increase his sales
and meet the requirements of modern trade.”
Much of the opposition to this measure has come from the
country store-keeper, who very naturally dreads that such largely
increased facilities for delivery by mail would simply extend the
already wide domain of the department store and drive him completely
out of business. But this objection has been met by the
plan for a special postal service for the rural routes, which
would be given at a much lower rate than that prevailing throughout
the general system of parcel post. This special rate as advocated
by Mr. Meyer would be five cents for the first pound and
two cents for each successive pound up to the limit of eleven
pounds, thus enabling any one along the line of rural route to use
the mails for delivery of packages at a charge of twenty-five cents
for the maximum weight, as opposed to one dollar and thirty-two
cents for the same weight if sent at the regular rate of
twelve cents a pound,—which regular rate would necessarily
have to be used by department stores unless they should go to
the trouble and expense of maintaining a large system of rural
agencies throughout the country.
The result of such a system in bringing about the general
dissemination of business throughout the country by fostering
small individual enterprises is almost beyond calculation, especially
as a secondary result would be the growth of small
villages and settlements throughout the thinly settled farming
districts. And these two changes in the present state of affairs
would go far toward solving the whole problem of the possibility
of turning the tide from the city back into the country. The
hardships and discomforts of many of the conditions of city
life, particularly among people of limited means, and the
uncertainty of the wage-earner’s means of livelihood, are now
endured chiefly because of the greater disadvantages that
are attached to farming in remote parts of the country or to
undertaking the responsibility of working independently of any
large commercial or industrial organization. For months, the
Craftsman has been urging the establishment of rural settlements
and the introduction of handicrafts in connection with
small farms. Nothing that is likely to be done in the way of
legislation to this end seems to us to make so possible a general
change for the better along these lines as the postal measures
recommended by the Postmaster-General, supported by the
President and now recognized by Republicans and Democrats
alike as a reform that will not be downed, no matter how
powerful are the interests opposing it. Given the postal savings
bank as an encouragement to thrift, and transportation facilities
that will not only bring all necessary merchandise within reach
of the farmer, but also take the products of his own industry
and a great part of the output of the village workshops to the
nearest market at a reasonable rate, and the rest will follow
almost as a matter of course. When a man has a fund of
several hundred dollars, there is hardly any question as to
what he will do with it if he has a chance. The desire to
own a home and a little patch of land is universal with
civilized mankind and when to the possibility of gratifying
this desire is added facilities that render life in the country
as interesting and as much abreast of the times as life in the
city, the tenement question in cities will soon cease to be the
serious problem it is now.
Parcels Post Once More.
Proportional rural population is not diminishing. We do
not know what the present census will say, but we do know
that from 1890 to 1900 the country gained enormously on the
city in its proportion of new settlers. The old record of 65
per cent. for the city tumbled down to a little over 30 per cent.,
and we know of no reversal of this tendency. Back to the
country has become a universal cry. Lands are rising in
value steadily, and deserted farms are a myth. At least, Governor
Hughes in one of his speeches said that he should like
to know where they were in New York State, for he could
not find them. Country churches have often died, to be sure;
but they were killed seventy-five years ago, and they do not
note at all any decadence of farm prosperity. They went out
when railroads began to be built. Crossroads stores have not
been run to any extent for half a century, any more than
crossroads taverns. They do not belong to advanced stages
of country life, and are not needed.
Never was country life more progressive, better organized
or more lifeful and hopeful. The crossroads has been displaced
by the village store, and this village store must deliver its
goods. It wants the parcels post. The trolley is reaching its
fingers up into the valleys and touching the farmyards with
its carrying capacity. The automobile is doing even more to
reach the isolated farmhouse. We might as well forbid these
forces and conveniences as to deny the farmer a parcels post.
The same argument lies with intense force against rural free
mail delivery in every form. It destroys many post offices;
it keeps the farmer at home; it dissolves hamlet life: but it
aids in the great movement of distributing the blessings of a
complete life all over the country.
We are quite willing to face the frightful proposition which
is offered us, of a community with no business institutions except
the post office and the freight depot. We have seen the tens
of thousands of district schoolhouses blotted out without a
qualm, for we have seen the union schools gloriously taking up
the work in their place. We have seen the little stores and
taverns that used to be convenient for watering horses vanish,
because we find a substitute in department stores, almost invariably
within reach, by aid of the trolley and automobile.
We are not worried at all when we contemplate a picture involving
a more substantial country home, with its isolation
abolished, hidden among the hills, but visited daily by the rural
free delivery carrier, even tho he shall have in his automobile
a ten-pound package for the housewife.
Without parley, we believe that the American people, almost
without dissent, demand a parcels post service; and that
if put to popular vote, this demand would be exprest by a
majority of 90 to 1 the country over. The people are growing
impatient over delay, and they are expressing this impatience
very loudly. We believe that the coming Congress will hardly
find it possible to ignore this desire. We quite agree with
one of our contemporaries who says that the next step of
social and economic progress in the United States is unquestionably
bringing the producer and consumer closer together
by reducing the cost of carrying small parcels.
William Sulzer.
Absence of a parcels-post law enables the railroad companies,
through subsidiary companies called express companies,
to eliminate all competition and prevent all regulation in one
branch of transportation and to escape compliance with the laws
that are being enforced against them in other branches of transportation
by the several state commerce commissions and the
Interstate Commerce Commission.
That the owners of the securities of these express companies
have made enormous profits is a recognized fact. One hundred
per cent, even 200 per cent, profit when an express company
“cuts a melon” no longer excites surprise when found in
the news columns of our evening paper.
No one objects to a fair profit for good service, but conditions
seem to indicate that the transportation companies are
not satisfied with the first and are not giving us the second,
while developments before commerce commission hearings indicate
that their backwardness in adopting economical and
scientific business methods causes a tremendous unnecessary
expense. This they are meeting by maintaining and even increasing
already exorbitant rates for service that many believe
are discriminatory, and that grave injury and injustice to business
and to the general public results.
As an example, W. P. Dickinson, of the Burlington Railway,
is quoted in the Railway Record as saying at a public
hearing that the expenditures of the Burlington traffic department
for printing and stationery in the fiscal year 1910 was
$222,000. Assuming that they are typical for all the railways in
the United States, the cost of printing railroad tariffs alone
under present methods, is $6,000,000 to $10,000,000. In modern
transportation methods, as, for instance, those in vogue in Germany,
this expense is so trifling as to be scarcely worth considering.
Freights move in Germany on a uniform tariff, based
entirely upon bulk, weight, and distance, discrimination is impossible,
and any shipper can learn in a moment, by referring to
the table, the exact freight charge to any point, and can ship
knowing that his competitors must pay the same price for the
same service.
In the United States the shipper can not know all the tariffs
that are published or how they affect rates. He is supplied
with a few easily understood tables, but it is not within human
possibility for him to even read, to say nothing of comprehending,
the millions that are filed with the commission every year
and how they affect the cost of the transportation he buys.
So it seems this extraordinary printing expense of millions,
whatever its purpose may be, operates to keep the average
shipper ignorant about rates. Ignorance is always dangerous,
and particularly so in transportation matters.
Harrington Emerson, the expert, testified at the hearing
before the Interstate Commerce Commission at Washington
last November, that $300,000,000 annually in railroad operating
expenses in this country would be saved if the railroads
adopted better business methods of management.
To save for the consumers that enormous sum, no better
beginning can be made than for the government to establish
a satisfactory parcels post and adopt scientific business methods
in its management.
That the interests that control our railroads also own and
control the express companies and that their separate incorporation
is merely a device to cover extortion and discrimination
by complex contract relations is indicated by Senate Document
No. 278, pages 53, 54, and 55:
| Stock held by railways in express companies | $20,668,000 |
| Railway securities held by express companies | 34,542,950 |
| Holdings of express companies in the stock of express companies | 11,618,125 |
| Total intercorporate ownership express companies June 20, 1906 | 66,829,075 |
The peculiar, graduated, increasing rate for small-weight
parcels is absolutely prohibitive for express transportation except
at an actual loss for a considerable proportion of business.
Most express shipments are in small parcels. They therefore
pay the higher scale. This increased rate is exacted for both
terminal and haulage service and is as high as 37½ times the
first-class freight charge.
The express companies take from the Post Office Department
the profitable business and pocket millions of profits,
but leave the unprofitable for the Post Office Department. The
profits from a parcels post would stop the post-office deficit
and give us a 1-cent letter rate. The annual surplus of the
British post-office department about equals our annual postal
deficit. The British have a serviceable parcels post.
The men in the mail service have a record of one error
in 18,000 pieces handled. Compare that with your experience
with the express companies.
The opposition to the parcels post at the late congressional
hearing was made by persons who appeared in the name of
American Hardware Manufacturers’ Association, Illinois Retail
Merchants’ Association, National Association of Retail
Druggists, National Association Retail Grocers, National Retail
Hardware Association, National Federation of Retail Implement
& Vehicle Dealers’ Associations, Wholesale Dry Goods
Association, Paint Manufacturers’ Association of the United
States.
There was no direct opposition by the express companies
to the parcels post.
Since the members of the above commercial associations
can not to any important degree be beneficiaries of the present
confiscatory and restrictive system that has a monopoly
of the transportation of merchandise in packages of 4 pounds
to 20 pounds, some other reason for their opposition to the
parcels post must be found, and in that connection the testimony
given by these gentlemen at the hearing is interesting.
The main objection to the parcels post was that it would
build up catalogue houses to the injury of retail businesses.
In reply to questions by members of the congressional committee,
however, some of their specific objections applied only
to the rural free delivery now firmly established and which
nobody dreams of abolishing.
The other objections advanced were also to conditions already
in existence, some of which at least it would seem would
be less objectionable if we had a serviceable parcels post.
For instance, the mailing of catalogues by the catalogue
houses. That can be done now to the farmer’s door for one-half
cent an ounce, but even that low rate does not always
get the business. I have seen the catalogue of Sears, Roebuck
& Co. and the Chicago House Wrecking Co. that were sent
by each of these firms to addressees who did not specify how
he wished them sent. They were received since the date of
the hearing; both catalogues came by prepaid express.
Had we a parcels post competing with the express companies
and reducing their extortionate charges the express
companies would be less able to deprive the government of
that revenue by underbidding the Post Office Department rate
on catalogues.
At the congressional hearing so much was said by the opponents
of the parcels post about the catalogue houses, how
they were behind the parcels post—that it was for their sole
benefit, etc., etc.—that I went to Chicago and succeeded in
getting an interview with Mr. Julius Rosenwald, president of
Sears, Roebuck & Co. He declined to support the parcels post.
He said they were very well satisfied with conditions as they
are, under which they had built up their immense business,
which was done entirely by catalogue and without salesmen
or commission. He explained that only an insignificant amount
of their sales went by mail, that what did was unprofitable, as
it cost as much to make ready and handle such little sales
as larger shipments, jewelry being the only exception, and even
for that they advised express.
Evidence that catalogue houses do not want or need, and
do oppose, the parcels post was not lacking at the hearing.
For example: Marcus M. Marks, of the Merchants’ Association
of New York, after stating that the Merchants’ Association
is not in favor of a general parcels post and has frequently
placed itself in opposition thereto he quoted one of the
large Chicago catalogue houses as in opposition, and for this
reason: “The result would be that instead of shipping goods
in large bulk it would tend to create a demand for small
shipments, which would increase his expense of doing business.”
Marshall Field & Co., one of the largest concerns in
this country, were referred to by both J. G. Baker, president
National Federation of Retail Implements, etc., and H. L.
McNamary, of the Hardware Dealers’ Association, as opposed
to the parcels post.
All the opponents of the parcels post at the hearing, mostly
retailers in heavy-weight goods, were very insistent to impress
upon the minds of the committee the great injury that is being
done their business by the big catalogue houses, who, they
claimed, are underselling them and are doing a very large
and increasing percentage of the business that belongs to and
should go to the retail dealer. But is it correct to charge to the
parcels post this great loss of trade which has occurred while
we have no parcels post and that has been brought about
by conditions that can claim no assistance from a parcels post?
Is it reasonable to say that a parcels post would produce such
conditions when no such conditions do exist as above noted
where the parcels post has been in operation for many years?
Let Us Have a Parcels Post.
There would be some shadow of excuse for refusing to
accept so great a convenience as the parcels post if, in accepting
it, we would destroy a large investment in the business of
the express companies. But, in fact, we would not destroy
any legitimate values in these companies. They own practically
nothing on which they would lose a dollar. Most of their
money is not in the business of transporting freight, but in
banking and investment enterprises. These would not be interfered
with. Their tangible property actually used in transportation
would be required, and would undoubtedly be taken
over at good figures by the government, when it established
a parcels post business. Their investments in stocks, bonds
and banking business would be undisturbed. The express
companies would lose nothing except their graft—the privilege
of charging outrageous rates for the service they render.
In morals and equity that ought to be ended as soon as possible.
The truth is that it is not the political and financial influences
of the express companies which keeps Congress from
giving this nation a parcels post. It is the pathetic and benighted
ignorance of a considerable section of our own people,
who have been led to believe that the parcels post would injure
them. It is well-nigh impossible to believe that there can
still be millions of intelligent Americans who doubt that national
prosperity must be promoted by every increase of the
facilities and cheapening of the cost of transportation. Yet
there is such a section of the American public. Misguided
and ignorant, it has permitted itself to become the chief bulwark
of protection to the express companies’ graft. It persists
in believing, in the face of nearly a century of world experience
to the contrary, that there is danger in too easy, too
cheap and too universal transportation!
Reference, of course, is had to the fears which the merchants
of the country towns entertain as to the effect of
the parcels post upon their business. The country merchant
has come to accept on this point the sophistical, disingenuous
and dishonest arguments of the express lobby, skillfully put
out through agencies whose real purpose is concealed.
The argument that cheap transportation of parcels will
injure the country towns is exactly as reasonable as the contention
that London and New York, Hamburg and Liverpool,
Seattle and Sidney, must be injured by the railways and steam-ships
which, bringing all parts of the world into close and
easy communication, would make it impossible for great and
dominating centers of population, commerce and industry to
exist. Everybody can see how absurd such an argument would
be. The best possible transportation facilities constitute the
first requisite to making a great city. Commercial centers
are prosperous and important, in proportion as they have adequate,
efficient and cheap transportation. This is as true of
the country town with a single railroad line as it is
of a continent’s metropolis with half a hundred great railroad
systems pouring their tonnage into its terminals and with the
ships of all the seven seas unloading their cargoes at its
wharves.
It is an axiom that good, ample and cheap transportation
actually makes commerce. The country town which has no
railroad always wants one. The hamlet which has no post-office
is forever riding the neck of its congressman until it
gets one. Great cities vote millions to build artificial harbors,
to provide wharfage, and to increase every possible facility for
cheap and rapid transportation.
There are no communities which need improvement of transportation
so much as the country towns which have been
misled into opposing the parcels post. The country merchant
has been made to believe that the parcels post would take
his business away from him and give it to the mail-order house
in the great city. It would do nothing of the kind. On the
contrary, it would give the country merchant the one facility
which he does not now have: it would place him on a parity
with the merchant in a great city.
Quick, cheap transportation would enable him to buy better
and cheaper. He could sell many articles from catalogues
instead of having to carry them in stock. He could create a
mail-order business of his own in his surrounding territory.
The local merchant who conducts his business well has nothing
to fear from the mail-order house. Farmers and citizens
prefer dealing with the home man, and the parcels post will
give him many advantages that will enable him to increase his
trade to proportions which are now impossible.
Of course, this does not apply to the country merchant
who buys his goods badly or at high prices, and who gives
long credits and sells at long prices. Parcels post or not,
his day is doomed. More alert men, with better business ideas,
will soon occupy his place. The alert, hustling merchant will
use the parcels post so effectively that the old sleepy head’s
day will end just that much sooner.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Every enlightened
country except the United States has a parcels post.
No country would think of abandoning it, any more than
it would think of disestablishing its letter postal service. In
the experience of all the world the argument about injuring
the country town is sweepingly and completely refuted. The
small town would gain vastly more than the large town by this
tremendous increase and improvement of its transportation
facilities. The whole public would benefit, for precisely the
same reason that it benefits by having fast steamships instead
of sailing vessels, limited passenger trains instead of stage
coaches, two-cent letter postage instead of five-cent.
The people who oppose the parcels post are the innocent
and unwitting dupes of the express monopoly. This is the
one point in the parcels post argument that cannot be too
constantly emphasized. When the dupes are brought to understand
their true interests, Congress will not dare stand
for a single session as the protector of express graft.
Small wonder that the express companies are fighting with
every resource against the parcels post. They constitute one
of the greatest groups of financial power in the country. They
are united firmly. Most of the companies are large stock-holders
in the others. Thus the United States Express Company
was shown by the report of the Public Service Commission
of New York, issued in 1908, to be capitalized at
$10,000,000. Of this, the Adams Express Company owned
nearly $1,000,000, the American Express Company exactly
$1,000,000, and the Southern Express Company, $70,000. How
tremendously profitable the business of the United States Express
Company has been is shown by the fact that whereas
the company claimed an investment of only $2,042,000 in real
estate and equipment, it had $7,464,000 in investments, $895,000
in cash holdings, and $2,000,000 in collateral and other loans!
That is to say, while this company had very little more than
$2,000,000 invested in its transportation business, it had more
than $10,000,000, representing surplus and undivided profit, in
general investments!
It has accumulated such vast profits because it has been
for many years charging unconscionable and scandalous rates
for its service.
The Adams Express Company is shown by the current
number of Moody’s Manual to have $12,000,000 capital.
After paying large regular dividends and numerous extra
dividends for many years, the company in 1907 found itself
with such a tremendous surplus that it actually paid a special
dividend of 200 per cent in 4-per-cent bonds! Every holder
of a one-hundred-share of stock was presented with two hundred
dollars’ worth of 4-per-cent bonds! The present, of
course, represented in part the excessive charges which the
company had been permitted to collect from the public.
But the most startling statistics of express accumulations
are the financial statements of Wells Fargo and Company. For
many years this company’s capital stock was $8,000,000. Its
most recent statement, as published in Moody’s Manual, listed
these assets: Real property, $4,100,000; equipment used in transportation,
$2,044,000; stocks owned as investments, $3,211,000;
bonds owned as investment, $3,750,000; loans, $17,165,000;
cash on hand and in the bank, $5,459,000.
Such were the accumulations of this company whose own
statement admitted that the equipment actually used in its
transportation business represented only $2,044,000. The company
has always paid large dividends. Its star performance
in this line was the payment, early in 1910, of a cash dividend
of 300 per cent. Every holder of a one-hundred-dollar share
of stock was given three hundred dollars cash!
This was not all. The stock of the company was worth
in the market exceedingly high prices. In addition to giving
this 300-per-cent cash dividend, the company increased its
stock from $8,000,000 to $24,000,000, and gave the holders of
the original $8,000,000 the right to subscribe at par for two
shares of the new issue for each share of their previous
holding.
These figures suggest the profits express companies have
been making. They have been making them because our government
is the only government which permits such a monopoly.
It is a monopoly which not only extorts millions upon millions
every year from the people, but which enables railroad
companies, through their intimate business and financial relations
with the express companies, to conceal a very considerable
part of their earnings. The express companies are
large holders of one another’s stock, and also of railway stock;
in turn, the men who control the great railway combinations
are themselves big owners of express-company stocks and
bonds. The express companies lease from the railroads the
right to transport freight over the railroad lines. The terms
of these leases represent, not a reasonable and fair charge
for the service, but an elaborate project of covering up excessive
earnings and extortionate charges in a maze of complicated
intercorporation transactions.
The worst penalty that the American public pays in order
that the express grafters may make these huge profits and
conduct these manipulations, does not lie in the excessive
charges. It lies rather in the stunting and depressing effect
upon general business, which is a necessary and manifest result
of a policy that denies the freest and cheapest transportation
facilities to the entire community.
Housekeeping by Parcels Post.
Isabel G. Curtis.
What would a parcels post mean to the American housekeeper?
The suburban or rural family could receive the bulk
of its supplies by mail—clothing, food, even eggs and butter
and fresh meat. And the country household that had something
to sell could, by availing itself of the parcels post, eliminate
the expensive middleman and ship direct to the consumer.
Thus the city housekeeper could receive eggs, butter
and other things by mail at much less than she pays now. In
scores of ways the parcels post would tend greatly to decrease
the cost of living, for it would revolutionize the present
cumbrous and expensive methods of retail business.
The United States Postoffice authorities will accept a package
of not more than twelve pounds in weight and not more
than three and one-half feet wide by six feet long for delivery
at any postoffice in England, Germany or in any one of the
thirty-nine foreign countries blessed with the parcels-post system,
at a rate of twelve cents a pound. But you are denied
the privilege of sending the same package to any destination
in your own country at any price. A four-pound package
sent to a local point will cost the sender sixty-four cents
while the same package can be sent to New Zealand or Costa
Rica for forty-eight cents.
The parcels-post rates in foreign countries are very moderate.
In Germany, for instance, weight and distance determine
the amount of the charge. The distance charge is fixed by means
of zones, the first zone having a radius of ten geographical
miles from the sending point, the second twenty, etc. The
charge for an eleven-pound parcel is six cents within the first
zone and twelve cents for every greater distance. For parcels
weighing more, the charge is the same for the first five
kilograms, but varies proportionately for each additional kilogram.
In Germany, the weight limit is one hundred pounds,
in England eleven, in France twenty-two and in Belgium one
hundred and thirty-two pounds. That there is no good economic
reason why any civilized community cannot have a parcels
post seems to be proved conclusively by the earnings of
the postal departments of the governments that have tried
it. The postoffice departments of Germany and France each
has a yearly surplus of more than $14,000,000, and England
enjoys a surplus of more than $20,000,000—a striking contrast
to our own Postoffice Department, with its annual deficit of
millions.
“Then why don’t we have a parcels post?” you ask. The
answer given to this question many years ago by Mr. John
Wanamaker, when he was Postmaster General, means just as
much today as it did then.
“There are just four reasons against the establishment of
a parcels post,” said he. “They are the American, the Adams,
the United States, and the Wells Fargo Express Companies.”
It has been said by some congressmen and postoffice officials
that there is no parcels post because the public has not
demanded it. Why not demand it now? Let every woman
write to her husband’s congressman and speak her mind!
As pointed out by an Englishman recently in New York,
one of the great advantages of the parcels post is its celerity.
“Before it came into vogue,” he said, “customers often had to
wait days for their goods. Now, within the London radius,
it is a case of only a few hours, for the parcels post makes
several deliveries daily. By paying a small additional fee,
‘immediate delivery’ is secured.
“The great retail houses, in increasing numbers, employ
the parcels post for sending home the purchases of customers,
instead of using their own delivery wagons. They find the
government does the work for them cheaper and better than
they can do it for themselves. The price charged, which is
paid, of course, in postage stamps, varies from two cents for
a parcel weighing under two pounds to twenty-two cents for
a parcel not exceeding eleven pounds. Many of the London
laundries now send home the week’s washing by parcels post
for the same reason that the big stores are taking to it. The
service cost less than that which they had previously provided
themselves.”
This gentlemen dwells upon the importance of the fact
that goods thus conveyed by the government are virtually insured
up to the value of most packages sent.
Parcels Post. George E. Miller.
Now what are the advantages and disadvantages of the
parcel post? The advantages can perhaps best be illustrated by
reference to the work done by the parcels post abroad. There,
especially in Germany and Great Britain, this great modern
convenience has been brought to the greatest perfection. And
there it is worth studying.
In the first place, it has been demonstrated there that the
parcels post is the greatest stimulant of domestic trade ever
devised by man. In the next place, it has made life in the
country, in both Germany and England as comfortable and
convenient as in the city. And lastly, it has proven so great
a blessing in the cities, towns and villages that in many instances
merchants have disposed of their delivery wagons and
they depend upon the parcels post exclusively for the delivery
of merchandise to their customers, except in the matter of
goods of too much weight or bulk to go through the mails.
In London the government runs motor wagons in all directions
into the country for many miles for the delivery
of parcels, and this service is being extended until presently
it will cover the country. Parcels up to the weight of
eleven pounds are carried through the British mails, while in
some other countries the limit is much higher, Italy, Chile,
Cuba, the Netherlands, and New Zealand are the only other
countries holding the weight to the same maximum as Britain.
In Germany and Austria packages weighing one hundred and
ten pounds are received, and in Belgium the limit is one
hundred and thirty-two pounds. In France it is thirty-two
pounds. In the United States alone the limit is as low as
four pounds while the rate with us is so high, sixteen cents
a pound, as to make the service prohibitive for ordinary use.
Abroad the rates vary, but they are always aimed to be not
much above cost, and they are materially lower than the rate
now charged here, and much lower even, than the rate proposed
by the president, which is twelve cents a pound.
No more enticing tale is told by the traveler returned
from abroad than that relating to the parcels post. In England,
Germany, and some of the other countries, the housewife
particularly luxuriates in the joint convenience of the
telephone and the liberal mail service. Does she want a spool
of thread of a certain color and texture, or a bottle of medicine,
or a cake or loaf of bread from the bakery, or any one of a
thousand small needs, the necessity for which may come with
all too much suddenness, she simply steps to the phone and
makes her request and by the next visit of the postman she receives
that which she ordered. And yet, she may be ten or
twenty miles from the nearest town.
The farmers of those countries likewise receive untold
benefit from the same service. Not long ago a gentleman
called at the post-office department in Washington to relate
a circumstance coming under his observation.
“I saw a Yankee demonstrating an American potato digging
device to a farmer in Germany,” he said. “Suddenly one of
the parts of the machine broke. It looked like bad business
for the Yankee, but he, with real American resourcefulness,
sprang to the telephone and ordered a duplicate part from his
repository in a village two miles away, and in twenty minutes
the postman delivered it to him and the demonstration of
the digger proceeded to a successful conclusion. Of course,
this was an exceptional instance. Everything connected with
it happened luckily for the man selling the digger. His agent
in the repository happened to be right on the spot when the
telephone message came, and the postman happened to be just
on the point of starting in the right direction to make a speedy
delivery. But it seemed to me to tell an eloquent story of
the parcels post, and its effectiveness.”
A red-headed, freckled, vivacious manufacturer from Detroit
was in Germany not long ago and he also brought back a
fund of parcels post stories. But his most significant statement
was in regard to the effect of the service upon the country
merchant.
“No man,” he said, “can study this question abroad and retain
the belief that the parcels post will ruin the country
merchant. On the contrary, it has been the making of him.
The country merchant of Germany is far more solid and substantial
since the introduction of the parcels post than he ever
was before. It has made him a permanent, fixed cog in the
industrial scheme of that country and given him an opportunity
which he never had before of making himself indispensable
to the community in which he does business.
“How did this happen? By the natural evolution of events.
Nothing else. The wholesale houses of Germany simply
stepped into the field themselves and issued catalogues as
fine as any the mail order houses could produce. And these
they placed with the country merchants in every town and
village in the empire. The result was that each merchant had
several dozen catalogues upon his counters for the benefit of
his customers. He was authorized to say to all who came:
‘Here I am. You all know me. You know whether I
am responsible. If you give me your order and the goods
do not prove to be exactly as represented, you need not take
them and I will refund your money. If you want goods of
the same grade as those sold by the mail order houses, I
can sell them to you, and at the same price. And I also have
better goods which will cost you more. But I can give you
exactly what you want, and as cheaply as any one.’
“In the meantime the country merchants have been able
to greatly reduce the stocks carried in their stores. This
reduced the amount of capital tied up in their business. And
yet, by means of the catalogues, their customers were able to
select from as large an assortment as they could in the largest
stores, in Berlin.
“And this latter fact is amply recognized by the people
of Germany. They step into a store in the most remote village
of the country, and make their selections and place their
orders, securely confident that they have seen all they could
have seen if they had made the journey to one of the large
cities. And they are all satisfied. They regard their mercantile
system as the very best on earth, and I think it is.
I had occasion, while visiting at a house out in the country
one hundred miles from Berlin to need a dress suit, and I
didn’t have one on that side of the Atlantic. I rode to the
nearest village one morning, stepped into a little store, was
measured by the storekeeper, and by mail that afternoon received
a very fair ready-made evening suit. I was both pleased
and surprised but the circumstance was a matter of course
to the people I was visiting.”
These are some of the advantages of the parcels post. Now,
about the disadvantages. These would, in this country fall exclusively
upon the express companies. These unaccommodating
friends, who have been with us so long, and who deliver nothing
at your door unless you chance to live in a large city, would
doubtless suffer the fate of the German mail order houses if
the government of the United States were to inaugurate a
parcels post upon the same scale as that in Germany. They
would have to go, for who would pay the higher price to have
a parcel sent by the nondelivering express company when the
mails would be both cheaper and would deliver the parcel at
your door in city or country?
As for the country merchant, of course, he would demand
the German system, and equally, of course, he would get it.
Otherwise, he also might have to walk the plank and the wholesalers
of the United States would never permit that. They
could not afford to.