The express companies carry and deliver for the general public money remittance for any sum. For carrying sealed remittance of a hundred dollars or less—for the carriage and delivery of which the government has provided in its postal money order regulations—the express companies are criminals under that Section 181.
Had the express company “influence” not reached federal legislators, it is not only highly probable, but almost a certainty, that our postal service would today be both prepared and permitted to transmit and deliver sums of money to any amount and at rates lower than now charged by the express companies.
If a publisher has ten or a hundred thousand copies of a book to deliver to mail-order purchasers, some express company steps in and makes him an offer for delivery, a trifle lower than the 8-cent-a-pound rate charged by the Postoffice Department for the same service.
In such instance, the express company making such tender of delivery on any “post route” is a criminal, under the specific wording of that Section 181.
In previous pages of this volume the reader will find testimony of people and of firms that pay large carriage bills for second-class matter. Among this testimony are found statements (some of them under jurat), that the express companies carry periodicals in bulk of five to ten pounds and upward from New York to Chicago, and to other points equally distant from office of publication, at a rate materially below the cent-a-pound rate charged by the government for postal carriage.
In one instance, it is known that one express company has offered to contract to carry periodicals from New York to Chicago over a certain connecting railroad at a rate of one-half cent a pound.
What does that mean?
It means simply this:—The railroad handling such express business hauls express cars en train with the United States mail, and the railroad handling such express consignments of periodical mail matter makes the New York-Chicago haul at somewhere around one-fourth of a cent a pound. That is, it is somewhere around one-fourth cent a pound unless the carrying road takes more than half the express company’s contract charge.
“What more?”
The express company contracting such business and the railroad handling it are criminals under that Section 181 of the federal statutes.