Selected Articles on the Parcels Post

by Unknown

D. M. Carr.

Bills have been introduced in the present Congress, by Senators Burnham and Kean, with a view of further improving the postal service. These measures are for the purpose of enabling the postal department to extend its parcel delivery service, commonly designated as the “parcels post.”

There is a large percentage of citizens who strongly advocate an enlargement of the parcels carrying service performed by the government. A number of foreign countries have for years maintained parcels post systems on broad gauge plans; in fact, in Great Britain, in Germany and a few other countries, the parcels post is conducted in a manner so as to almost monopolize the express business. But in these countries conditions, both geographically and commercially, are vastly different from conditions that obtain within the United States. In the old countries, there is greater density of population, and distances which mail matter traverses are about one-thirteenth the distance that the average piece of mail matter is carried in the continental United States.

In considering any postal innovation, it is essential that not alone the operation and the revenue of the postal department be taken into consideration, but also what the effect of the innovation will be upon the industries located in various districts of the United States. Some of the bills introduced in Congress, chief among them, that introduced by Congressman Hearst during a former session, and the one by Congressman Henry of Connecticut, during the present session, have elements that mark them as undesirable and thoroughly impractical under prevailing conditions, or any possible conditions that may arise in the United States during the next quarter century.

The postal department is not conducted for the purpose of profit; rather it is conducted to perform a special service, which governmental function can best perform for the people. But the department should be self-sustaining. The revenue derived for the services rendered the people should be sufficient to cover all expense of operation economically performed. Any legislation involving the performance of this service for less than cost to the government does not appeal to the economist as wise or desirable. Yet the postal department does perform certain services at a loss, although there are compensating circumstances which more than overbalance the expenditure. In the carrying of newspapers and periodicals, under the present system, there is probably a loss, but at the same time the people receive a general benefit far outweighing the cost to the government by having cheap and good literature and such information as the press of the country conveys and this at the minimum of expense. The second class rate, a subsidy granted the press, has been instrumental to a degree impossible of estimation in improving the intelligence of the people and raising the standard of citizenship.

The proposals set forth in the Henry bill, involving the establishment of a parcels post system with a maximum weight of 11-pounds and the maximum charge for maximum weight 25 cents from one postoffice in the United States to any other postoffice or where mail is delivered, are objectionable from an economic view. In the first place, such service would entail heavy losses annually to the department; these losses possibly reaching $150,000,000 or $200,000,000 annually. Then again this system of parcels post would be a wonderful factor in increasing the unequal distribution of business throughout the nation. Geographical and other conditions greatly vary throughout the states of the United States. In the thickly populated districts, where manufacturing is carried on, the cost of labor and the cost of production of articles of manufacture, ranges from 20 to 50 per cent less than in other sections, principally in the agricultural regions. A parcels post that allows the transportation of merchandise at as low a rate as that provided for in the Henry bill, would enable consumers residing in agricultural districts, where wages are high, to purchase their goods in the lowest priced markets in the United States, and the results of this system would be to concentrate industries in the large cities and densely populated districts to the detriment of agricultural and other sections now undergoing commercial and manufacturing development. This would retard the growth of towns and the upbuilding of manufacturing industries in those sections. Thus it can be seen that there would be no compensating effects to justify the installation of a parcels post of this character.

The exorbitant charges made by the express companies and other carriers have caused the people of the United States to demand that the package carrying machinery of the United States postal department be enlarged. Recognizing this demand, Postmaster-General Meyer in his annual report made the recommendation that the parcels carrying service of the government be broadened and that the parcels post be extended so as to make the maximum weight of a package carried 11 pounds with a graduated rate up to one pound and a pound rate of 12 cents, making the maximum rate for the maximum weight $1.32. He also recommended that a parcels post be established over rural delivery routes, starting from the post-office where the route emanates and ending upon a rural route. For this service he recommended that the limit of weight be 11 pounds and the charge 5 cents for the first pound and 2 cents for each additional pound, making the maximum charge for an 11 pound package 25 cents, and that this service be limited to bonafide merchants and others residing along the line of a rural route.

In making his recommendation as to parcels post enlargement, it is evident that the postmaster-general well considered not alone the welfare of the department as to revenues sufficient for proper maintenance and the installation of a more efficient service, but as well carefully weighed the economic aspects as they relate to geographical and commercial conditions throughout the Union.

A careful study into Mr. Meyer’s plan will show that it does not contemplate any revolution in commercial methods. Notwithstanding the charges made to the contrary, by those opposed to his views, it does not appear that should his system be adopted by Congress that the large houses doing an exclusive mail order business would have any advantage over the merchants of the smaller cities and towns. The rural parcels post would certainly be not alone advantageous to the twelve or fifteen millions of people residing in agricultural districts, who are now served by more than 38,000 rural carriers, but would be of great value to the live merchants in the smaller towns who at a minimum of expense could utilize the rural service for the delivery of goods to their patrons in the country.