Our Postal Express.

James L. Cowles.

The United States post-office has always been an express service, although Congress long confined the business to sealed parcels of very small weights—not over 3 pounds—and at very high rates graduated according to distance, with no insurance whatever against loss or damage in the mails. In 1874, however, the business was extended over all kinds of merchandise in unsealed parcels at a common rate of one cent each two ounces, regardless at once of distance and of the volume of a patron’s business. This placed the humblest citizen in the most out of the way postal district of the country on a par with the biggest corporation in our greatest metropolis as to the cost of the transportation of his produce and of his supplies in parcels up to four pounds, and, though still with no insurance against loss or damage, the new postal express immediately became a dangerous competitor to the private express company with its distance rates based on what the subject will bear and always discriminating in favor of the big town against the little town, the big corporation against the ordinary citizen.

The private express interests got quickly to work, therefore, and Congress soon checked up the growing postal express business by increasing the postal rate one hundred per cent—from eight to sixteen cents a pound. Later Congress bowed to the powerful book and seed interests of the country and reduced the rate on their merchandise to the old rate of 1874, and now, for many years, the post-office and the public have been subjected to two sets of rates on matter indistinguishable both in character and as to the cost of their transportation.

The evil of this absurd postal classification, continued these twenty years by Congress, becomes decidedly evident when our domestic service is compared with the foreign parcels post services established by President Taft and Postmaster-General Hitchcock, with their common 11 pound weight limit at 12 cents a pound, on all merchandise posted from the United States to foreign countries and from those countries to the United States:

From Austria:
4½pounds.35
11pounds.86
From Italy:
7pounds.39
11pounds.79
From Norway:
2½pounds.16
11pounds.96
From Germany:
4½pounds.33
11pounds.81
From Belgium:
4½pounds.35
11pounds1.10
U. S. Foreign Rates:
2¼pounds.36
7pounds.84
11pounds1.32
U. S. Domestic Service:
2¼pounds.36
4½pounds (2 parcels).72
7pounds (2 parcels)1.12
11pounds (3 parcels)1.76

Under the English post-American express arrangement English postal parcels now come to New York three pounds for sixty cents; seven pounds for 84c; eleven pounds for $1.08, and these parcels are forwarded by the American express company throughout the country at a common rate of twenty-four cents a parcel, eight cents a pound on a three-pound parcel; about three and a half cents a pound on a seven-pound parcel, and less than two and a half cents a pound on an eleven-pound parcel. Meantime the express company taxes domestic merchandise of the same weights from 25 cents to $3.20, according to the distance traversed, while Congress taxes the public for a similar domestic postal service, three pounds, forty-eight cents; seven pounds, 2 parcels, $1.12; eleven pounds, 3 parcels, $1.76.