Now, the only reason we can have a flat rate upon first-class mail is because the government makes that a monopoly, and you can send your letters in no other way than through the post office. Hundreds of millions of profitable short haul letters carried between the largest cities of the country where traffic is very dense take care of the proportionately small number of expensive long hauls.
To show how necessary this may be, permit me to inform you that the first batch of letters the government sent to Circle City, Alaska, though each was carried upon a 2c stamp, cost the department some $450 per letter. And it is solely due to the fact that the carriage of first-class mail is a monopoly that inheres in the government that, in spite of such expensive occasional service as this to Alaska just cited, a large part of the receipts from first-class mail are net profit.
Now, even at the low 1c per pound rate accorded to the monthly magazines and other periodicals, not all of their wares are sent by mail. There is you know no monopoly of carriage. The publisher can send packages of his magazine ahead of time by slow freight at less than the 1c per pound tariff, this freight service being used for the large lots going over main transportation lines between the great cities and without expensive changes of route. But upon the quarter hundreds and half dozens and single copies that go for long distances by expensive changes of route and to remote rural localities from back of Portland, Maine, to back of Portland, Oregon, from the upper peninsula of Michigan to the everglades of Florida, and to the crossroads and rural free delivery customers of Ohio, New York and other states of the Union, the government gets the losing job of carrying the periodicals.
I have endeavored in the explanation above to show that the difference in social condition, density of population, length of haul, ability to inaugurate a zone system, etc., will operate against our doing at a profit what may be attempted though even there unsuccessfully, in Great Britain, Germany, etc.
In Great Britain they pay for transportation but 55% of the charge, having thus automatically 45% left for other expenses, and if anybody can do the work at a profit they certainly are in position to attempt it.
Again the average pay of a British postman is only one-half what we give our carriers, which is another feature that must be reckoned with.
The first year they had this service in operation, it showed a heavy loss. They were keeping account of the business, so much in detail that if a man worked in two different branches they divided his salary. The eminent gentleman who fathered the system, then said: “Oh, well, you can’t expect that it should be profitable the first year. This year we will make it profitable.” The next year the loss was more than doubled. “Well,” said he, “bookkeeping is expensive, let us discard bookkeeping.” And since that time they have kept no expense account on the parcels post system.
Now let us examine what would result in the United States if we were to enact parcels post legislation and attempt to get it in successful operation.
I wish to make a quotation from the “Catholic World” of June, 1905, describing the operation of the parcels post system of Germany by a writer who favors its establishment here. He says: