Housekeeper. 31: 11-35. August, 1908.
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.