Chapter D: M. Carr (2)

The post-office is the most important department of our national government. Its system of rates--regardless of distance, regardless of the character or volume of the matter transported, rates determined by the representatives of the rate payers in Congress assembled on the basis of the cost of the service rendered--its system of uniform rates places our whole country on a plane of the most perfect commercial equality. Up to its limits there can be no possible discriminations either as to persons, places or things. Up to its limits, the humblest citizen on the most out-of-the-way rural route is guaranteed the transport of his supplies and his produce at the same rates as the biggest corporation in our greatest metropolis. These rates moreover, may be steadily reduced with the improvement of our transport machinery and its administration. And yet by our own limitation of this mighty service we deny ourselves its use almost altogether in local traffic, and in through traffic confine it to parcels of less than 6 ounces.

Meantime we pay private express companies what “the traffic will bear” for the transport of our large parcels, and in our local traffic cheerfully carry our small parcels in our pockets or hand bags or dispatch them by private messengers or private vehicles. Such petty work is beneath the notice of our great private express companies. In many small places they have no offices. Even in our great cities they have no regular daily courses, save in a few business districts. If the ordinary city resident would dispatch a parcel by express, he must go after an express wagon on foot or by telephone. The post-man--our public expressman--comes to our doors one, two, three, four times a day, or oftener. We have but to substitute a machine post for our overburdened foot post and, with a perfected system of collection and delivery of insured parcels at reasonable rates, we shall have a postal express at hand, ready and competent to do our bidding on our own terms and conditions.

The possibilities of such a service were illustrated some years ago, when James L. Cowles, of the Postal Progress League, dispatched an 11-pound suit case from New York City to New Haven, Conn. Prepaid as a sealed parcel, with a special-delivery stamp affixed, the suit case was mailed at a branch post-office on Fifth avenue about 5 o’clock in the afternoon; it was delivered at its address in New Haven before 10 o’clock the same evening. On another occasion Mr. Cowles telegraphed from Philadelphia about noon for a parcel of stationery to be sent him from his office, 361 Broadway, New York City. The Philadelphia postman delivered the parcel at Mr. Cowles’ hotel before 8 o’clock the same evening.

In his testimony before the congressional committee on railway mail pay, in 1898, Mr. H. S. Julier, of the American Express Company, testified that the weight of the average express parcel is 25 pounds; its average charge is 50 cents; its average haul in the eastern states is 100 to 125 miles; in the central states a little more; in the western states from 175 to 200 miles. In local traffic the ordinary express charge on the smallest merchandise parcel is 15 cents; in general traffic, 25 cents. The private express service is chiefly confined to traffic between cities. To be successful, a business requiring express service must be located in a large city, where the different express companies have their headquarters; otherwise their parcels will often be subjected to two or three express charges before they reach their destination. The private express company, with its rates based on the value of the service rendered and determined according to volume of business, is deadly to the small place and the small dealer.

Under the growing differentiation of industry there is a steadily growing demand for a door-to-door express service of parcels ordered by telephone, telegram, or by mail. The business can not be done by private express companies to the public satisfaction. Their machinery does not reach the rural districts. An extended postal service is the only public choice.

As long ago as December 6, 1898, the Merchants’ Association of New York issued the following statement to the merchants, manufacturers, and shippers of the State of New York:

A very large part of every dollar paid by you for express
charges is exorbitant and exacted to pay a monstrous profit to
an unrestrained monopoly.

Many of you are compelled by present conditions of competition
to use the express service on a large part of your shipments,
and to pay express charges which are from 300 to over 20,000
per cent of corresponding freight charges. The express charges
on many classes of goods average from 5 to 15 per cent of the
value of the merchandise transported.

These are the charges that you pay. But many of your strongest
competitors are favored by discriminating rates and pay much
less.

The express companies are now uncontrolled by law and you
have no recourse against exorbitant charges; you must ship by
express and must pay whatever the express companies see fit to
charge.

On the 10th of February, 1909, the Merchants’ Association of New York again returned to their attack upon the express companies. Note their charges:

_Exorbitant Rates_

Rates so high in the case of the Adams Express Company as to enable them to pay dividends of over 80 per cent a year on the amount actually invested in their business. In 1907 they made a dividend of $24,000,000.

Excessive charges for collection and delivery varying, on 100-pound parcels, from 27 cents to $7.79 for similar services.

Unreasonable restrictions of free delivery service.

Unreasonable regulation as to size of parcels.

Unreasonable regulation as to packing.

Delays in delivery.

Failure to notify shippers of nondelivery.

Delays in settlements of claims.

Delays in returns of undelivered goods.

Marking parcels 1 to 5 pounds over actual weight, and compelling consignees to pay for the fictitious increase.

System of Postal Express.

David J. Lewis.

MR. CHAIRMAN: In December the government issued its first annual report on the statistics of express companies for the year 1909, which developed the fact that the average pay of the express companies to the railways for carrying express matter was about three-quarters (0.74) of a cent a pound, while the postal reports show that the government paid for its letter or mail transportation about 4 (4.06) cents a pound, barring the weight of equipment in both cases. It was apparent to me at once that the parcels function could not be successfully or economically discharged by the government on the basis of letter-transportation rates. And then the economic significance of another fact developed: It was that the express companies’ service was at a disadvantage, even greater than that of the post office, in regard to the nonrailway transportation of its parcels. The express companies have no agency and at present rates can not secure an agency to reach nonrailway or rural points. In short, it appeared that the express companies had exclusive control of one of the absolutely essential conditions of fast package transport, the express rate of three-quarters of a cent a pound, while the post office had equally exclusive possession of the other great agency of necessary service--the rural delivery system. Common sense indicated what the solution must be; these two advantages, the railway express transportation rate and the rural delivery system must be made cooperative; must be united under one control. The express railway transportation rate would, if the government parcels amounted to but one-fourth of the express business, save it, if in its control, at least $50,000,000 a year, while the addition of rural delivery to the express business would add to this great service the farming population of our country at practically no cost to them or the country. The bill I have introduced for postal express is the result of these conditions.

_Principal Provisions of the Postal Express Bill_

As I have said, the idea of the bill is to unite in one service the two great instrumentalities above named, in order that a greatly cheapened and an even more extended service to the public may be had. For this purpose the bill provides for the compulsory purchase by condemnation of the railway-express company contracts and franchises, as well as the equipment and property devoted to the express business per se, and their subsequent employment by the postal department in connection with rural delivery and the postal system. The express-railway transportation privileges are all the subjects of contracts between the railways and express companies. They constitute the primary condition of the express service, and while the equipment and other facilities are only immediately necessary to a running plant, and their acquisition is provided for, it is the contracts which constitute the conditions sine qua non of the service. Happily, there can be no legal question as to the right of the government to acquire these contracts and other facilities upon providing just compensation.

_Necessity for Postal Express_

In addition to those grave needs for such a service, which the majority of national communities have recognized, as commending its adoption domestically and internationally, there exist in the United States supplementary reasons which it is believed render the institution uncommonly necessary.

Briefly summarized, they are:

(_a_) The greater area over which our population is distributed and correlatively greater transportation distances which consume so much time by freight that a fast or express service needs to be resorted to in a larger number of instances than if the journey were short.

(_b_) The 100-pound minimum and corresponding charge in railway practice and the inadaptability of railway methods to diminutive consignments.

(_c_) The prohibitive minimum charge of the express companies in respect to small consignments.

(_d_) Absence of railway “collect and delivery” service and absence of “collect and delivery” service by express companies as to our farming population and a large portion of our urban population.

(_e_) Incalculable waste of transportation effort, so far as made, in movement of necessaries of life from the farms to points of consumption, a serious factor in our high cost of living.

Of course, the need for fast service will depend upon the greatness of the distance, when demand is immediate, as much as upon the valuable or perishable character of the shipment. In our country, with an average haul for freight of 251 miles, from three to ten times as long as in Europe, the demand for speed to overcome the obstacle of the time lost in distance, the time-element necessity for an express service is correspondingly increased; and so the disadvantages of inadequate or ineconomical express service are vital. The railway organization of America and its system of practices does not seem adapted to meet this great need; while its refusal, upon adequate grounds, to accept a smaller payment than the rate for its minimum shipment of 100 pounds precludes it from this service even if speed were not prerequisite. The minimum charge of 25 cents (average 27 cents) imposes an equally substantial and serious restriction upon the express service as now conducted; so that when it is considered that the farmers or nonurban, about half of our population, are virtually excluded from the service of this great agency, and the express rates by their prohibitive costliness substantially minimize the service for the urban population, it is apparent that instead of possessing an express service commensurate with its needs, the United States has both unexampled necessity for, and unexampled deficiency in, its dispatch or express agencies. Add to this situation the tremendous waste and corresponding costliness of the unorganized country-to-town transportation of our necessaries, and such almost equally wasteful and quite equally costly express service as we have, and have we not put a finger on one of the big leaks which swallow so much of the unprecedented productiveness of our country?

_Prohibitive Express Charges_

We should expect express charges to be higher per ton here than abroad, as much higher as our freight-per-ton charges. But no necessary economic cause is known which justifies a substantially higher proportion or ratio of the express to the freight charges here as compared with other countries. The average express charge per ton here is shown to be $31.20, while the average freight charge is $1.90 per ton, giving a ratio of the express charge to the freight charge of 16 (16.42) to 1. This express charge includes the cost of such collect and delivery service as is rendered, covering, it is thought, about 90 per cent of the traffic. In the table now inserted this element of the expense of the express companies for collecting and delivering, amounting to 11.50 per cent, is excluded, because many of the European countries and other data do not include this factor of cost. The table embraces 10 countries, while the specific data upon which the ratios are based are set forth in Appendix B. All countries have been included where the express data is clearly distinguishable from general freight statistics.

_Ratios of average express charges to average freight charges in 11 countries._

-----------------------------+----------+----------+----------
| Average | Average | Ratios of
| express | freight | average
Countries | charge | charge | and
| per ton. | per ton. | freight
| | | charges.
-----------------------------+----------+----------+----------
Argentina | $6.51 | $1.95 | 3.2-1
Austria | 3.77 | .74 | 5.0-1
Belgium | [A]4.92 | .53 | [A]9.3-1
Denmark | 5.49 | .87 | 6.3-1
France | 6.88 | .95 | 7.2-1
Germany | 3.80 | .76 | 5.0-1
Hungary | 3.68 | .93 | 3.9-1
Netherlands | 2.43 | .67 | 3.6-1
Norway | 1.90 | .49 | 3.8-1
Prussia | 4.32 | .86 | 5.0-1
+----------+----------+----------
Average for 10 countries | | | 5.23-1
United States | 27.61 | 1.90 | 14.53-1
-----------------------------+----------+----------+----------

[A] Belgium delivers parcels.

From this table it appears that while Argentina charges three times, Austria five times, Belgium nine times, Denmark six times, France seven times, Germany (including Prussia) five times, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Norway, about four times as much for carrying a ton of express as of freight, the express companies of the United States charge nearly fifteen times as much.

No further statement need be made to show that the charges of American express companies are prohibitively excessive, and such as to disqualify this service as a national economic agency. The instances given represent merchandise carried by passenger trains in all instances, and while higher charges for both the express and freight tonnage in America are justified by the longer haul, there is no necessary economic reason for a higher ratio of express charges to freight charges. The presence of the “express company” is the only circumstance distinguishing express transportation here from that of the instances cited. In those the “express company” has no part; the work is done exclusively by the railways. As we shall see later, the deficiencies of the express companies are constitutional, not gratuitous merely, and are such as can not be remedied through corporate agencies.

_Inadequacy of Various Proposals--Regulation_

We have seen that the present express fails to reach the farm, in itself a fundamental objection to its adequacy. It may be suggested that where its high charges are such as to inhibit the traffic, they might be corrected by appeals for reductions to the Interstate Commerce Commission. A glance at the express report for 1909, it is true, will show that the profits of the companies are clearly out of normal proportion to the investment. But it will also show that such profits amount to but 8.44 per cent of the gross receipts, i. e., to only 8.44 per cent of the rates charged. So that even if all the profits were taken away, the modified rates would show but a wholly inadequate reduction; so that the desired relief could not thus be obtained. As a matter of course, no such reduction would even be asked. No one would wish that they conduct the business without a profit. But in practice even when the justification for a reduction is present, and the power and purpose active, the regulating board will always hesitate to even substantially reduce a rate in the fear of unduly trenching on private rights.

It was this principle which Bismarck had in mind when in connection with a similar subject he spoke of--

The attempts to bring about reform by (regulatory) laws have
shown the futility of hoping for a satisfactory improvement
through legal (regulatory) measures, without trenching
materially on established rights and interests. (Parsons, The
Railways and the People, p. 318.)

With a margin of but 8 per cent of the rate to work on, the board would feel this constraint in a marked way; for under substantially reduced rates a very slight perturbation of the customary traffic might place in danger the whole net return. Substantial relief in the way of regulation is thus shown to be wholly impracticable.

_Various Parcels-Post Schemes_

There remains to discuss the numerous proposals for limited carriage of parcels up to 11 pounds, and so forth, by the postal department. These all concern the present railway status quo of the post office. It is apparent that such proposals can only result in two things--the express companies taking the major portion of the short-haul, profitable traffic and the postal department getting the long-haul and losing traffic. But there is another fact recently disclosed by the express report--a fact rendering any of these proposals, so far as they involve railway transportation, wholly untenable.

The Post Office Department pays an average of 4 (4.06) cents per pound to the railways for carrying the mail, excluding equipment.

The express companies pay an average of three-quarters (0.74) of a cent per pound for carriage of express matter, excluding equipment.

It is manifest that not even the government could render substantial service under conditions so utterly unequal. It could not pay--what we shall see when we come to consider the length of the express and the mail hauls amounts to--about three times as much as the express companies pay to the railways for carrying its parcels. One is mail service, which is naturally more costly; the other more closely resembles a fast freight service, which lies midway between the mail and the freight in the weight cost of railway movement.

Other difficulties in such proposals, based on the status quo of the post office, need only be suggested:

(_a_) The government would have to install urban delivery wagons at a cost its traffic might not justify.

(_b_) The express companies still in the field, the wastes of service would merely be increased by the entrance of the Postal Department, and the people would have to pay it all.

(_c_) The government, being a moral agent with the inelastic rate proposed, would be at the mercy of its unrestrained competitors.

(_d_) The express companies’ contracts with the railways permit them to reduce their compensation to the railways to the point of 150 per cent of the freight rate--i. e., from the present ratio of about 8 (7.80) to 1 of the freight rate to about 1½. Of course, they could not go to this extreme without destroying their own profits, but their contracts permit them to go as far as they might wish. Thus, while the government in the beginning might have to pay about three times as much to the railways for its parcels per pound, in a struggle the express companies could exaggerate this disparity to any point they wished for the purpose of destroying the postal department as a competitor.

_Essential Elements of an Adequate System_

For the sake of brevity we state these elements categorically:

(_a_) Fast service.

(_b_) Greatest economically feasible extension of delivery and collect service, necessitating coordination with both urban and rural free delivery systems.

(_c_) Express railway contracts to secure the relatively low railway rates.

(_d_) Cheap capital charges.

(_e_) Reliable public-service motive.

(_f_) Economies of single organization, in which all existing serviceable plants should be merged.

With regard to the element of fast service, discussion is unnecessary. It is now commonly rendered by the railways for the express companies in connection with the passenger service. It seems worthy of suggestion, however, that a single organization like the post office might on the strong lines of traffic, where carload lots might be regularly obtainable, employ for certain kinds of matter the fast freight service, profiting enough on the carload rate reductions to fully cover the expense of delivery and collection, the regular railway 100-pound charges to be paid to the postal express by the shipper. It is further suggested that in this way agricultural products might be received through the rural free delivery in small allotments from the truck gardeners and farmers, consolidated into carload lots and conveyed on the trunk lines to the branch lines and distributed over the branches to destination by passenger trains. The Prussians do, in fact, have this latter service, for which the charge is based on a tariff of twice the freight rate, the regular service by passenger train calling for a charge of four times the freight rate. The railways would now perform such service if, of course, the collect service existed to gather the shipments from the country and assemble them.

It is obvious that the element most wanting is the service described as “collect and delivery,” necessary between consignor and railway at the beginning and railway and consignee at the conclusion of the act of transportation. Our country is utterly deficient in this respect as to the “country” or farming population. In towns of about 3,000 or 4,000 population up the present express companies do render this service for such traffic as their rates permit to move; but what is required is a service as extensive as the postal agency, which reaches cities, towns, and country with the degrees of efficiency of the urban and rural deliveries, conceded to far excel such delivery as the express companies give.

There can be no doubt that with regard to this collect and delivery the postal department is the only agency to which we can look for a service sufficiently extensive to be really efficient. It only remains to observe that with regard to the farming part of the country the service already exists in the form of rural free delivery, equipped and paid for, and actually waiting with empty wagons to receive and execute the work.

_Advantages of Postal Express_

In three years under a postal administration it is believed that the reformed system will produce:

(a) A minimum charge of 7 cents for the first pound, graduated to 17 cents for a 11-pound package, for average distances.

(b) General reductions of about 28 per cent in all merchandise charges.

(c) The extension of the service to the out-of-town and agricultural population.

(d) The elevation of the employees to the plane of the postal service.

(e) The coordination of country supply of the vital necessaries with urban demand by a cheap and regular collect and delivery service.

(f) As a result, a greater attractiveness in rural life and improved highways.

(g) In 10 years’ time, with the development of the traffic, a reduction of rates to about one-half of the present rates.

It is as difficult to describe in detail the manifold economic and social results of a great agency like this as to give a bill of particulars of the benefits of the postal system. And in this connection it seems not irrelevant to suggest that a proper coordination of the railway mail with the railway express service may indeed render penny postage feasible. As things are now the rural free-delivery agency does not bring a direct fiscal return to pay for itself. In a few years, as the traffic develops in parcels and agricultural products, the proposed system would enable it to do so. This would assure a considerable financial gift to the account of penny postage.

_The Agricultural Post_

In the present state of things the truck farmer must devote a large part of his time to marketing; that is, to the transportation of his product, however little it may be, to the place of demand. He must also for this purpose provide himself with transportation facilities, however small his business. These involve a horse, and its maintenance and care, and a barn; and the expense of both during the unproductive seasons. And yet in a socio-economic sense his work and expense of transportation is the smallest element in his service to the public, although it requires the maximum of upkeep work and expense, if not of capital. The proposed postal collect and delivery eliminates all these, and would enable the truck farmer to enter into the business on a minimum of capital, and pursue it on a minimum of labor and expense. The field service of a horse he could hire as occasion might require. Thus the truck-farming industry would receive a necessary impetus and the cost of such foods be greatly reduced to the consumer, saying nothing of the advantage in quality coming from a speedier forwarding to the market by daily allotments instead of the delays now incurred to garner a worth-while load.

This application of postal express, with its thoroughly articulated service and regular schedules, may be taken as illustrative of the close relations which may be established between the rural producer and town consumer, as well as between producers and merchants generally.

It is manifestly unfair to the proposition to judge its social value on a mere computation of the savings in rates which may be made. While this saving would amount to some $35,000,000 a year on the traffic of 1909, and from seventy to a hundred millions a year when the traffic reaches its normal dimensions, yet as large benefits will follow in clearing the prohibitive rate clogs from this necessary conduit of commerce that it may freely discharge its normal output, in placing the 50,000 express employees on a postal basis, in rendering it easier to engage in and market food production, to relieve the towns and cities of high prices for necessaries of life, and relieve them, too, of the overplus of labor, and, perhaps, too, in aiding in reversing that tendency of population movement from the country to urban centers to which is due the most aggravated and most discouraging social problems of our time.

Hearings before the Committee on the Post-Office and Post-Roads. April 20-29, 1910. pp. 296-7.

Postal Savings Bank and Parcels Post.

Letter of Dr. Barth.

Whilst the postal savings-banks system became firmly established some time ago in Belgium, France, Great Britain, Italy, Holland, Austro-Hungary, Russia, and Sweden, all efforts have failed to introduce the system into the German Empire. In the year 1885 the draft of a postal savings-bank law was laid before the Reichstag. The draft never came out of the committee. The principal reason of this opposition lay in the competitive interest of the many local savings banks existing in Germany, which are generally under the control of commercial boards of directors. Since the frustration of the plans for the law in the year 1885 no further serious efforts have been made to introduce postal savings banks.

All the greater has been the development of the parcels-post traffic with us. This traffic dates in Prussia back to the eighteenth century. Under Frederick William I there already had been introduced a postal monopoly (the exclusive right of the mail to forward packages) for packages up to 20 pounds. Under Frederick the Great this monopoly was increased to 40 pounds. By a postal law of June 5, 1852, it was again reduced to 20 pounds, and only entirely abolished by the law of March 20, 1860. This postal monopoly has never been revived in Germany; nevertheless, the parcel postal traffic has developed tremendously without the protection of a monopoly. In Germany the weight for postal parcels has now been set at 50 kilograms (110 3-10 pounds); while, as is well known, there has also existed since 1885 European international parcels-post traffic with a maximum weight limit of 5 kilograms (about 11 pounds). Only very few articles within the aforementioned weight limits are excluded from the postal traffic. Even live singing birds, fish, crabs, fresh flowers, grapes, etc., are sent by us in postal parcels. The parcels-post service in Berlin employs about 1,000 officials. The rate within the postal territories of Germany and Austro-Hungary is 25 pfennigs (6 cents) for packages up to 5 kilograms (about 11 pounds) in weight and 10 geographical miles in distance: at 50 pfennigs (12 cents) for further distances. With heavier parcels the rate increases rapidly for every kilogram (2½ pounds) in excess of 11 pounds with the growing distance, so that, for instance, at a distance of 150 geographical miles every kilogram over 5 costs 50 pfennigs (12 cents) more. This rate proves that the post lays its principal stress on receiving parcels up to 5 kilograms (11 pounds) in weight.

The parcels-post traffic in 10-pound packages is therefore the normal one. For many trades and producing branches a very strong direct traffic between the producer and the consumer has grown up in these 10-pound packages, and many articles which in the locality in which they were produced were either not utilizable, or forced to sale at a very low figure, have found a market which without the cheap 50 pfennig (12 cents) postage they would never have attained. Mushrooms gathered in the forests of Masuren near the Russian frontier come to Berlin in postal parcels. Large crabs caught in the waters of western Prussia come even to Paris. We ourselves, for example, obtain for our household through the parcels post meat from Silesia, butter from eastern Prussia, eggs from Mecklenburg, melons from Hungary, etc. For the household this is not only cheaper but also more convenient than the purchase in the market halls, for the post brings the parcels (for delivery sum of 15 pfennigs; 3½ cents) to the door, also calls for parcels, cashes in the amount in c. o. d. deliveries, in short, makes it extremely convenient for the order. It is clear that this postal traffic forced out many middlemen; the retailers especially in small places have been made to feel very keenly the competition of the large forwarding houses in the capital cities. Their complaints therefore were formerly directed very actively against the cheap parcels postage. But since the flat land in turn could derive benefits for its agricultural products, such as fruits, meats, butter, eggs, etc., from these self-same cheap rates, the complaints of the retailers became silenced after awhile as far as the question refers to the cheap parcels rates. They now turn so much the livelier against large warehouses and forwarding businesses for whom one is seeking through all sorts of lawful tricks to make the competition more difficult. The parcels-post traffic has meanwhile become so firmly rooted that it seems impossible to upset it. Considered from a politic-economic viewpoint it presents itself as a most important and very beneficent branch of the whole system transport.

Following the German example in the United States would, I believe, be of enormous advantage, particularly for the agricultural districts surrounding the large cities. For the producer of eggs, poultry, butter, vegetables, fruits there would develop, with a cheap parcels-post rate, entirely new market possibilities; also the decentralization of many branches of industry would to a certain degree become a possibility.

Monthly Consular and Trade Reports. No. 329. pp. 104-6. February, 1908.

German Parcels Post.

Consul W. T. Fee, of Bremen, states that the parcels post system of Germany, as well as most of the railroads, is owned by and is under the control and operation of the Imperial government. He adds:

The express companies in Germany are less developed than those in the United States, where the largest part of parcels forwarded are handled by these companies. Under the German parcel-post system, parcels are divided into five classes namely: (1) Parcels with value declared; (2) registered parcels; (3) common parcels, value neither declared nor registered; (4) collect-on-delivery parcels; and (5) urgent parcels. Each shipment of parcels must be accompanied by a waybill called “packet addressee”; and no more than three packages which must be of the same class, and which must bear the same address, are to be entered on one waybill. Each c. o. d. or urgent package, however, must have its own waybill.

Forms of waybills, with the respective postage stamp of the amount of the charge printed thereon, are furnished by the postoffices at the price of the postage charge, while waybills, without this stamps imprint, are sold by the postoffices at the price of 1.19 cents for five pieces. Forms of waybills, which are purchased from other sources, must conform in every respect with those furnished by the postoffice department. There are two different kinds of waybills in use, foreign and domestic.

At times of increased postal traffic, before Easter, Whitsuntide and Christmas, a waybill for each package is required. The prices charged by the postoffice for forwarding parcels vary according to the weight of the packages and distance. The fees charged are shown in the following statement:

For distance up to-- over

46 92 230 461 702
miles miles miles miles miles

For parcels weighing up to--
cents

11 pounds 5.9 11.9 11.9 11.9 11.9

15.4 pounds 7.1 14.2 16.6 19.0 23.8

17.6 pounds 8.3 16.6 21.4 26.18 35.7

19.8 pounds 10.7 21.4 30.9 40.4 59.5

22 pounds 11.9 23.8 35.7 47.6 71.4

additional 2.2 pounds 1.1 2.38 4.76 7.1 11.9

The maximum weight for parcels to be forwarded by post is 110 pounds.

For registered packages an additional fee of 4.76 cents is charged, while the insurance fee for packages with declared value is 1.19 cents for each $71.40 or fraction thereof. For “not-prepaid” parcels up to 11 pounds a collection fee of 2.38 cents is levied. Besides this, in places where there is delivery to the house, an extra fee of 3.5 cents is charged for packages weighing up to 11 pounds.

Packages may be sent c. o. d. in the German Empire if the amount to be collected does not exceed $190.40. These c. o. d. packages, if payment is not made at presentation, will be held for seven days. Meanwhile another request will be made on the consignee to pay the amount charged, and then if payment is refused the package is returned to the consignor. The fee charged for c. o. d. packages in addition to the ordinary postage is 2.38 cents, and the fee for the postal money order, by means of which the amount collected is returned to the consignor is charged. The charges for these money orders for amounts not exceeding $1.19 are 2.38 cents; not to exceed $23.80, 4.76 cents; $47.60, 7.14 cents; $95.20, 9.52 cents; $142.80, 11.9 cents; and $190.40, 14.28.

Printed matter, samples without value, newspapers and business cards do not come under the heading of parcels or packages, different rates of postage and also different limits of weight and measure being provided for these classes.

In case of loss the postoffice refunds for common packages at the maximum rate of 71.4 cents per 1.1 pounds, and for a registered package at least $10.

Parcels are handled by the postoffice entirely separate from letters and other mail matter. A request may be sent to the postoffice on an unfranked postal card to call for a package, whereupon the parcelpost wagon will call at the place designated in the request. An extra charge of 2.38 cents is made for this service, regardless of the size or weight of the package.

Under ordinary circumstances, a package sent from Bremen to Munich, Bavaria, a distance of 470 miles, thus crossing Germany from north to south, will be delivered on the evening of the second or on the morning of the third day. If it weighs up to 11 pounds, it will cost 11.9 cents. If it is a c. o. d. package for $142.80 it will cost 11.9 cents for postage, 2.38 cents for collection fee, 11.9 cents for return money order, and 1.19 cents for delivery charge for the money order, in all 27.37 cents. The same package could be sent at the same rate from Bremen to Königsberg, a distance of 579 miles.

There is no restriction as to the size of the packages to be shipped within the German Empire, as long as they are not cumbersome, but the size of packages to foreign countries, as a rule, must not exceed 23.6 inches in each dimension. Exceptions from this rule are made for goods like umbrellas, canes, charts, furs, plants, etc., which may measure 39.37 inches in length, if they do not exceed 7.87 inches in breadth and height. Besides this there is a space limit of 25 cubic decimeters (1 cubic decimeter = .035 cubic foot) for packages destined for Algiers, Tunis, Santo Domingo, and the French colonies, and 20 cubic decimeters for packages to Bolivia, Brazil, and Canada, while packages for Great Britain and nearly all its colonies may measure one meter in each dimension, with a space limit of 54 cubic decimeters. Packages to foreign countries, exceeding the before-mentioned limit in weight and measurement, may be shipped as “postal freight.” The rates for such shipments, however, vary too much to be quoted here, and they are, in most instances, subject to contracts of the postoffice department with prominent forwarding agents.

For packages to the United States--that is New York, Jersey City, and Hoboken--the charges are from 30 cents for 2.2 pounds up to 64 cents for 11 pounds. To all other places in the United States, Alaska excepted, the rates are 55 cents for 2.2 pounds up to 88 cents for 11 pounds.

According to a postal treaty between the United States and Germany, which is in force since October 1, 1907, packages, which for any reason cannot be delivered will not be returned after a period of thirty days, as heretofore, but the consignor will be informed of this fact by the postoffice in order to give him a chance to dispose of the package in some other way. If the consignor has not disposed of the package within two months it will be returned to him as undeliverable.

For special delivery of a package 5.8 cents is charged, and for urgent packages, which will be forwarded by the fastest mail facilities, a charge of 23.8 cents is made, in addition to the regular postage and the special delivery fee collected for each package.

AFFIRMATIVE DISCUSSION

Our Postal Express. pp. 1-6.

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.

World’s Work. 21: 14248-51. April, 1911.

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.