During the sixty years from the inception of these private express
companies in the United States to the dawn of the twentieth century, the
rendering of this express service, of vital significance to the economic
needs of the United States and of vital potential significance to the
social needs of the people of the United States, was relegated without
whimper to unchecked private agencies. Although the last thirty years of
the nineteenth century saw the development of the United States into a
complex and extensively specialized industrial mechanism--with a growing
dependence of each geographical division of the country upon every other
geographical division and of each economic unit upon every other
economic unit--the country seems never to have suspected that it might
well claim authority over so important a link in its industrial
integration as the transportation and delivery of all merchandise too
small or too valuable to be transferred and delivered as freight. There
sprang into being during this period only some futile and spasmodic
attempts at state regulation. By 1871, Germany had developed its
remarkable Government express service, which later was classified into
passenger and fast freight divisions, with corresponding variation in
costs. In Great Britain, agitation for developing the express business
as a part of the postal system had resulted in the establishment of a
Government parcel-post as early as 1883. By 1892, the French Government
was conducting an express business, selling the transportation of
parcels both large and small to the French people without yielding
profit to any owners of stocks and bonds, but imposing charges just high
enough to meet the cost of the system; and developed, like our own rural
free delivery, with an eye primarily to the service of the people, not
to the profit-and-loss balance-sheet. But who were these countries that
the United States could learn anything from them? The United States was
the land of opportunity, and if gentlemen of affairs had been skilful
enough to corral under their control the express business of the land,
we most emphatically refused to thwart their opportunity for making the
most of their foresight. We suggested jail for the agitator who
insisted that the country owed the poor man a living, but the keystone
of our economic creed was a faith that we owed the rich man a living. We
weren't interested in what was serviceable as such to the people as a
whole--we believed in the divine right of private enterprise of the
economically capable. Were the express companies enforcing exorbitant
rates? _Private enterprise._ Did they discriminate against certain
shippers? _Private enterprise._ Did express profits represent a small
amount of traffic at a high profit instead of a large amount of traffic
at a low profit? _The freedom of private enterprise._ Was the cost of
expressing a package unduly high because of the costliness of frequently
transferring it into the hands of five separate companies? _Private
enterprise._ Could the Government do the business more satisfactorily,
more cheaply and more extensively, and thus reduce the cost of many
commodities to their consumers? _The holiness of and the necessity for
the untramelled right of private enterprise._
Accordingly, it was not until 1890 that even any accurate and reliable
figures of the quantity and quality of the express service of the
country were available for purposes of mere study and investigation.
Within the census of that year, the express companies happened to be
included--a survey being made of their operations for the fiscal year
ending June 30, 1890; and thus for the first time and after fifty years
the American people were able to get some information on the operations
of the private agencies to whom the express service of the land had been
entrusted. It is true that the act of Congress authorizing the census of
1880 had contained a provision for the collection of statistics of the
express companies, and that a schedule of inquiry directed toward that
end had been formulated and distributed. Only two of the eighteen
companies in existence, however, replied to it. The others maintained
that the census law had no authority over their vested interests, and
declined to make a report. The Census Office in 1880 actually reacted to
this attitude by courteously abandoning its legally-authorized
investigation, and contenting itself with publishing merely some
information on the contracts between the express companies and the
railroads. And, although the 1890 Census went so far as to publish the
expenditures of the express companies, it very naively declined to
report upon their receipts.