Each chicken is wrapped in one sheet of this waxed paper, and is then packed in a corrugated paper box made especially for sending chickens by parcel post.
I buy three sizes of these boxes. One size, which costs me four cents each, will hold one four-pound chicken when dressed and drawn. The next size, costing five cents each, will hold two very small chickens, or one large chicken. The third size, costing six cents each, will hold two large chickens, three medium-sized ones, or four small ones.
Do not use makeshifts, such as old shoe boxes. In the first place, your shipment is not properly protected by such a box; in the second place, your postmaster is likely to refuse to accept it for mailing, as he would be justified in doing; and in the third place, your customer receives his chicken in a box that has been used for he wonders what, and has been in he wonders what places.
It is for this reason that I never ask a customer to return a box to me. I do not want to use a box a second time. If I were a city man, getting my chickens by mail, I should want them sent to me in a brand-new box, made for the special purpose of sending chickens by mail—and I'd want them in no other box. Then I'd feel sure of them.
The cost of shipping by parcel post is low. I live ten miles from my county seat, and the postage required to send a five-pound, live-weight chicken, dressed and boxed, from my place to town is eight cents. The postage required to send that same five-pound chicken from here to Chicago, one hundred and fifty miles, is eight cents. The express company charges twenty-six cents for the same service, and does not deliver so quickly.
But parcel-post delivery was not always so admirably done in Chicago. When I began shipping up there last September it was no uncommon thing for my packages to be so delayed that many chickens would spoil.
I recall the "straw that broke the camel's back." I mailed twenty-six chickens one day—and in due course I received thirteen letters, each advising me of the same mournful event. The chicken had spoiled because of delay in delivery. My wife wanted to quit. I didn't. I made good the losses to the customers and prepared a label, a copy of which I forwarded to the Third Assistant Postmaster General at Washington, asking his permission to use it, and telling him of the vexatious and expensive delays in delivering my packages in Chicago.
In due time I received the desired permission, and ordered the labels printed. The scheme worked. Every time a package was not delivered on schedule time the customer notified me, and I made complaint to the postmaster at Chicago.
Gradually the service improved until now I have no trouble at all. If I were to ship two packages today to the same address in Chicago, sending one by parcel post and the other by express, I believe the parcel-post package would be delivered first. At any rate, it has been done for me.
The weakness in the parcel-post delivery lies in the fact that perishable products—such as dressed chickens—cannot be handled in warm weather. I think that if the Post Office Department would cut some of its red tape and permit the shipment of air-tight packages in air-tight conveyors this particular problem could be solved.