PARCELS POST “TESTS.”
It may as well be said here as elsewhere that such “tests” of the feasibility and desirability of a good parcels post service as Mr. Hitchcock proposes to make are but procrastinating foolery. Great Britain and every continental country of Europe has an efficient parcels post service in operation.
Postmaster Generals and railroad and express company raiders know that. The countries indicated have made all the “tests” we need have of people-serving parcels post, and every one of them derive more or less revenue from that service, there being no deficits.
Postmaster Generals and our railroad and express company raiders know all that. So, also, do our Senators and Congressmen know that. Even alleged “farmer” Congressmen know it.
Our public servants know even more than that. They know that under the International Postal Union agreements our government has entered into, our postal service today handles these foreign countries’ parcels, of either United States or of foreign origin, weighing up to eleven pounds. They also know our own postal service now won’t permit our own people to send by mail, packages weighing more than four pounds. They also know that for carrying a four-pound parcel by his own mail service the American must pay 64 cents if the parcel is for delivery in any of the foreign countries covered by Postal Union agreement,[17] but if sent by some one in any of those countries for delivery in this, the sender may make up a parcel weighing as much as eleven pounds and for its delivery will have to pay only 48 cents.
I say that our mail carriers and public officials know these things. The facts as stated must be known of the Postal Union agreements. On request, the Postoffice Department does not hesitate to give this information to anyone. The following is a paragraph taken from a department communication. It was sent in response to a request made by Mr. Alfred L. Sewell, who wrote a most informative communication that appeared in the Chicago Daily News of date November 6, 1911. I take the quotation from Mr. Sewell’s article.
Mailable merchandise may be sent by parcels post to Bahamas, Barbadoes, Brazil, Bermuda, Bolivia, Danish West Indies (St. Croix, St. John, St. Thomas), Colombia, Ecuador, British Guiana, Costa Rica, Guatemala, British Honduras, Republic of Honduras, Haiti, Jamaica (including Turk islands and Caracas), Leeward Islands, Windward Islands, Mexico, Newfoundland, Nicaragua, Peru, Salvador, Trinidad, Tobago, Uruguay, Venezuela, in the western hemisphere, and to Australia, Japan and Hongkong in the east, and to Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden in Europe. The postage rate is uniform at 12 cents a pound, or fraction of a pound. A parcel must not weigh more than eleven pounds, nor measure more than three feet and six inches in length, or six feet in length and girth combined.
Then why prattle about a “test” as to the desirability and practicability of a good, cheap parcels post service in this country; one that will serve our own people?
Especially why prattle about such a parcels post service on a few selected rural routes? It is not only foolishly silly, but it looks suggestively wrong—as if there was some ulterior motive back of any suggestion of such a test. “Why?”
Well, if such test is made under regulations suggested by the Postmaster General, the only parcels that service, or “test” service, is designed to carry, are such as originate on a selected rural route and are for delivery on the same route or on a route immediately connected with it. That is, as I understand Mr. Hitchcock’s recommended regulations, any farmer or villager along the selected “test” rural route may send a package (weight and rate of carriage yet to be decided upon) to any other farmer or villager on the same route or connected route, or to a resident of the town or city at which such route originates or starts.
If such a farce can be seriously thought of as a “test” of what use and economic value a nation-wide parcels post service would be to our people, even to the people residing on the test routes, it will take some graduate of a foolery school or foreman in a joke foundry to so think of it.
Let’s see. A farmer may send a jar of butter, box of eggs, crate of fruit or vegetables, etc., to the village storekeeper and get his pay for the consignment, “in trade” usually. By writing the storekeeper an order, postal card or letter, the farmer may get on the next round of the carrier what he desires. That is, he will get what he has asked for if the storekeeper has it in stock. The farmer, or the farmer’s wife, may do the same thing in the event that the consignment of their products, presuming that the “regulations” will permit the carrier to handle perishable goods, goes no farther away than the county seat or other town or city from which the rural route starts. They can also send such parcels to any railroad station on the route for shipment to any more distant point. In such case, however, the farmer must pay an express carriage charge from the local railroad station to the destination of his shipment.
But enough of this local application of the proposed “test” regulations. It will readily be seen that if the farmer or villager on a selected test route desires to send a parcel, not above the regulation weight—whatever that may be—to any point not on the same route, he will have an express charge to pay—whatever that charge may be. And if he orders something, inside the regulation weight, from some factory or city not on his carrier’s route, he must also pay an express charge for its carriage to his local railroad station. If he wants the article or goods delivered at his home by the rural carrier, he must pay an additional charge—the postal carriage charge, whatever that may be.
As a “test” of the service value of a parcels post, could anything be more absurd? If so, it would be difficult to frame it up. Such a “test,” however, will still leave the raiding express companies in position to hold up the selected “home circle,” rural-route residents on all shipments, which go to or come from any city or point outside the home circle—and that is about what, if not just what, the proposed “test” is designed or intended to do, or so it appears from the ladder top.
In this connection it should be noted that the rural-route delivery enactment, or the department regulations under which it was to be applied, carried an express protecting “joker.” If not, why was the rural route carrier required to furnish a cart or other carrying vehicle of only twenty-five pounds capacity? Was it valid for ulterior reasons which named so small a weight? Would it have cost the government any more money for rural carrier service if a maximum weight of 500, or even of 1,000 pounds, had been named for the carrying vehicle?
The reader may answer. To The Man on the Ladder, though, that 25-pound requirement looks to be of doubtful mail-service value, if, indeed, not suspiciously queer.
It was carefully figured in 1900 that our rural, or non-railroad, communities alone lost $90,000,000 a year in excessive express charges and delays in delivery by reason of the criminal apathy of their government in the matter of furnishing even a reasonably adequate domestic parcels post service, such, for instance, as that furnished by the German government. The German government carries an 11-pound package anywhere in the German empire or in Austria-Hungary for 12 cents.
To aid the reader, I give, following, a table covering the data essential to a fair understanding both of the excessive pay for a service which our government should render for a tenth of the money and, also, of why our express service is inconvenient—is wasteful and expensive—by reason of the distance the express offices are from the people ordering. This last is clearly shown by comparing their number with the larger number of postoffices in the several states named.