Parcels Post. pp. 3-9.
F. E. French.
I have the distinguished and pleasing honor of being here today upon your invitation as a representative of the American League of Associations, which includes representative wholesalers in nearly every important city in the United States. The creation of this League has for its object the development and advancement of the general welfare and mercantile interest of retail merchants in the smaller communities. The relations of its members to all retail merchants are intimate and personal. The retailers desire to buy merchandise from the wholesaler. The wholesaler desires to sell merchandise to the retailer. In short, whatever conserves, promotes and advances the merchandising ability and success of the former, is a direct proportionate benefit to the latter. Whatever relaxes the intimacy between these interests, deprives the retailers of their truest and best facilities as merchants and money makers. The thoughtful and progressive wholesaler and retailer believe that any rural parcels post bill will unmistakably impair, curtail and finally dissolve this relationship, which in reality is a partnership between the wholesaler and the retailer. The proposed parcels post legislation will gradually eliminate the country store and the very heart and pulse of country life. Believing this to be absolutely and unmistakably true, we should stand as a unit in opposition to any extension of the parcels post system, upon rural routes, even upon an experimental basis. If the country merchants will co-operate with the wholesalers in an unyielding resistance to any congressional action that would in any way interfere with the present system of rural deliveries, the proposed legislation will be defeated.
In official words, it is contended that rural parcels post will enable local merchants to hold and increase their trade. On the contrary, the well informed wholesaler, manufacturer and retailer contend, and the entire orthodox system of trade distribution replies, that any parcels post, whether it be a general parcels post law or a rural parcels post law, although intended to be of benefit to the retailers and a boon to the rural population, would, in reality, be a great detriment to both.
Mark well how the camel enters the tent: First his head, next his neck, and last his huge and unwelcome body. First on a few routes only and in experiment only, a local parcels post; next a complete rural parcels post; and finally a general parcels post. Let us beware of the beginning lest in the end we be overcome. During the inauguration of the first and experimental stage, those interests most to be profited by this perilous innovation will remain silent, while from the experiment no safe deductions could perhaps be made which would indicate the effect of parcels post extension upon your prosperity and posterity. Finally you will discover that the currents of trade are running past your door rather than through it, and in that day your elimination becomes a certainty. In that day also every wholesaler who has so long found in the country merchants a sure and steady outlet will know even better than he knows now that rural parcels post, and, much more, the general parcels post is a dangerous blow to country life.
At the risk of telling you much that you know, let me state some of the factors of this great problem so that we may think as one man over its solution.
The mail order houses, some of the farmers, and various other people who reason narrowly, even with generous intent are sustaining the government in its purpose to go into business in behalf of a class of the American people at the expense of the whole American people, and through a bill in Congress they ask all of the people to sanction a trial of this new species of government aid in certain selected places. Our government reasons that if it is made more practicable for rural free delivery routes to become shipping lines between their own termini, everybody depending for income and outgo on such routes will profit by this enlarged service. On the contrary, the American League of Associations holds that everybody will eventually suffer.
The great problem about which we are all trying to think clearly and think together, has been summarized so effectually by a retail merchants’ paper in the central west, that I do not hesitate here to quote its protest against parcels post, endorsed by thousands of retail merchants in every section of America. The protest reads as follows:
“Parcels post is wholly unnecessary, since rural delivery carriers are authorized to carry parcels weighing over 4 pounds, and the matter of compensation is decided by carrier and merchant or by carrier and farmer. Merchants and farmers generally have not availed themselves of this service, for the very good reason that there is no need for it.
“If adopted, parcels post will be immediately seized upon as a delivery outlet by mail order houses which would ship orders by freight or express in bulk lots to local agents for deposit in the post office to be forwarded by the rural deliveries. The catalogue houses have already many of these agents selected, and they have been busily engaged in distributing catalogues for weeks past. As soon as a rural parcels delivery became effective, these agents would become active in the solicitation of business in unfair competition with home merchants, as these agents would have no taxes, no rent, no salaries, etc., to pay.
“Rural parcels post is admittedly merely an entering wedge for extension along European lines. That would mean severe demoralization of our country towns which are dependent almost wholly upon the farmer trade for existence, and which afford the farmer a good home market for every dollar’s worth of products he has to sell. If he does not buy his supplies where he sells his products, he not only demoralizes the business of his home town, but he also deprives himself of his home market. If his home market town dwindles into insignificance through the gradual loss of trade, necessitating the closing of stores and the emigration of merchants and clerks, then the income will shrink so seriously that there will be insufficient funds to provide for schools, churches, libraries, hospitals, good roads, etc.
“Every farming community and its market center are interdependent. It is impossible to injure one without injuring the other. The parcels post would injure both farmers and country merchants. We protest against it as being designed to further the formation of a mail order trust that could eventually control all important channels of distribution and thus levy upon the people any desired tribute.”
Today the people’s problem is to conserve our natural resources and keep the farmer on the farm. Will the gradual impoverishing of the village storekeeper keep the farmer on the farm? Will the decline of the social center, the decline of the schools and the decline of the church facilities keep the farmer on the farm? Will long distance shopping do more for isolated communities than the sight of real goods and the warm touch of living people? Will the picture catalogue or the hearty salesman do more to keep vital the currents between seller and buyer? Would a heavily laden parcels post messenger, running between a mail order agency and a distant farm, often through a foot or two of mud or snow, compensate for the disappearance of the mart and congress of our country’s rural life—the independent, thriving, hospitable store?
Fellow merchants, it is our duty to sustain that store, and to do it now. That store is imperiled by pending legislation, whether by the institution of a local or a general parcels post. If this new service be established by the government, even with the best of motives, we must admit that:
The postal deficit will be increased,
The country’s commercial system revolutionized,
The delivery of legitimate mail delayed,
The population of rural communities depleted, and their progress retarded.
And that the government will promote class legislation, for in seeking to favor the farmer who needs no such preferment, it will subsidize a commercial interest whose basic business principle is hostility to the best trade distribution.
Every thinking individual agrees that rural free delivery has been of great benefit, but the masses of the people do not agree that a financially unprofitable service shall be put upon its feet at the cost of the man who has been the mainstay of the farmer in season and out of season—the country storekeeper.