II. RAILWAY MAIL PAY IS ABOUT TO BE FORCED STILL FURTHER BELOW THE LEVEL OF JUST COMPENSATION, UNLESS PAYMENTS ARE PROMPTLY READJUSTED, ON ACCOUNT OF THE ADDITIONAL VOLUME OF MAIL THAT WILL RESULT FROM THE INAUGURATION, ON JANUARY 1, 1913, OF THE PARCELS POST.
Congress has provided for a vast and incalculable extension of mail traffic by creating a "Parcels Post," to be inaugurated on January 1, 1913, which, by opening the mails to many articles not previously accepted at the post-offices and by materially reducing the rates on mailed merchandise, is expected enormously to increase the volume of the shipments which it covers. The Government seems to have assumed that, under existing contracts, which were made before the meaning of the word "mail" was thus extended, the railways can be compelled, until these contracts expire, to carry this great additional volume of mail traffic WITHOUT ANY COMPENSATION WHATEVER. If the former practice of the Post Office Department is followed, no new contracts will be made until after the next quadrennial weighings in each of the four weighing sections, so that the position of the Government amounts to an assertion that the whole added volume of the Parcels Post mails will have to be carried without any compensation by the railways of New England for four years and six months (these railways are in the first weighing section but the weighing for the adjustment to be made on July 1, 1913, has begun and will be completed before the Parcels Post is inaugurated), by those of the second weighing section for three years and six months, by those of the third weighing section for two years and six months, by those of the fourth weighing section for one year and six months, and by those of the first weighing section, not located in New England, for six months. No presentation of the injustice of the mail pay received in former years suggests even the approximate extent of the losses which the railways will thus incur in the next four and one-half years, unless readjustments are promptly made on account of the Parcels Post.