Craftsman. 14: 592-4. September, 1908.
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.