(e) Reliable public-service motive.
(f) Economies of single organization, in which all existing serviceable plants should be merged.
With regard to the element of fast service, discussion is unnecessary. It is now commonly rendered by the railways for the express companies in connection with the passenger service. It seems worthy of suggestion, however, that a single organization like the post office might on the strong lines of traffic, where carload lots might be regularly obtainable, employ for certain kinds of matter the fast freight service, profiting enough on the carload rate reductions to fully cover the expense of delivery and collection, the regular railway 100-pound charges to be paid to the postal express by the shipper. It is further suggested that in this way agricultural products might be received through the rural free delivery in small allotments from the truck gardeners and farmers, consolidated into carload lots and conveyed on the trunk lines to the branch lines and distributed over the branches to destination by passenger trains. The Prussians do, in fact, have this latter service, for which the charge is based on a tariff of twice the freight rate, the regular service by passenger train calling for a charge of four times the freight rate. The railways would now perform such service if, of course, the collect service existed to gather the shipments from the country and assemble them.
It is obvious that the element most wanting is the service described as “collect and delivery,” necessary between consignor and railway at the beginning and railway and consignee at the conclusion of the act of transportation. Our country is utterly deficient in this respect as to the “country” or farming population. In towns of about 3,000 or 4,000 population up the present express companies do render this service for such traffic as their rates permit to move; but what is required is a service as extensive as the postal agency, which reaches cities, towns, and country with the degrees of efficiency of the urban and rural deliveries, conceded to far excel such delivery as the express companies give.
There can be no doubt that with regard to this collect and delivery the postal department is the only agency to which we can look for a service sufficiently extensive to be really efficient. It only remains to observe that with regard to the farming part of the country the service already exists in the form of rural free delivery, equipped and paid for, and actually waiting with empty wagons to receive and execute the work.
Advantages of Postal Express
In three years under a postal administration it is believed that the reformed system will produce:
(a) A minimum charge of 7 cents for the first pound, graduated to 17 cents for a 11-pound package, for average distances.
(b) General reductions of about 28 per cent in all merchandise charges.