A Heavy Deficit Inevitable
The commercial advocates of larger bulk and lower rates by domestic parcels post for the shipment of merchandise by mail do not want either a distance rate or a system limited by territorial zones. They want the privilege of shipping from any factory or central store or warehouse, wherever located, anywhere in the United States, to any customer or consumer, at any postoffice, however remote or inaccessible, in any state or territory. The rate desired is a flat rate of so much per pound without regard to distance.
It is urged that the same rate should be charged by Uncle Sam for carrying merchandise by parcels post from a New England factory to the distant mountain mining camps in Idaho or Oregon, or to the prairie towns of Texas, as would be charged for delivering the same package from the same factory by local trolley car service to a nearby postoffice in the immediate suburbs of the New England city where the factory happened to be located.
Government Bears the Burden
The national government in each and every case would pay the full actual cost of transportation and delivery to the point of destination, whether it were by trolley, railroad, stage-coach, wagon, pack-horse, mule, sled or snowshoes. Of course it is not contended that the government could secure an average or flat rate for the cost to it of transporting merchandise by mail, the same to all points in the United States, as it is urged that it should charge. On every package mailed the government would of necessity pay the full cost of carrying it from the point of shipment by mail to the place of delivery to the consignee, no matter how great the distance or how costly the character of the transportation.
In other words, while the government is expected to and of course must itself pay the full distance cost of transportation and delivery in every case, and could not give the service unless it did so, it is expected to look for reimbursement wholly to an average flat rate, like the rate for letter postage, or the present rate of the existing domestic parcels post for small parcels—a rate that is the same everywhere, without regard to the distance from point of mailing to point of destination.
Averages Are Misleading
The argument of averages is relied on to meet this insuperable objection. It has been suggested that the average haul of all second-class matter (which comprises only regularly entered publications, periodicals and magazines) was 540 miles in 1907, as shown by the report of the Postoffice Department, and on that as a basis it was estimated that an average rate of 5½ cents per pound or $29.70 per ton for other transportation charges, and $165.00 for labor and supplies, a total of $212.00 a ton, would leave a profit to the government of $27.00 a ton from a general parcels post rate of 12 cents a pound, which would produce a revenue of $240 a ton.
The estimates given above were embodied in an address by the Postmaster General before the Union League Club at Philadelphia on October 26, 1907.
For reasons based on facts that are undeniable and unquestionable, these averages and the estimates based on them, would prove utterly delusive and misleading when put to the test of a practical application of the proposed extension of the domestic parcels post to include merchandise in larger bulk and at lower rates than those now authorized by the postal laws. It is not necessary that the proposed extensions should be actually tried to demonstrate the deceptiveness of these average estimates. The conditions are before us and arise from facts so clearly known and established that he who runs may read.