In the second place, it has been seen that each of the express companies
of the United States concentrates its activities upon a certain section
of the country. That is to say, on many occasions a package traveling a
long distance may be handled by two or three, or sometimes even four
express companies before it reaches its destination. The wastes and
superfluous costs therein are evident. There is not only the direct cost
of unloading, transferring, and re-loading parcels from one express
company to another--and at many points express offices and yards are the
width of an entire city apart. There is also the cost of the complicated
bookkeeping necessary to determine for what part of the journey of a
package each express company has been responsible and accordingly to
what share of the express charge each is entitled. That this cost is no
mere creature of a brain hell-bent upon Government ownership is proved
by the fact that of a total operating expense of $113,721,057 in 1917,
exactly $32,272,795 or 30% was paid to office employees. As it stands,
this is the largest single item of expense in the express business, nor
does this sum include the salaries of the officers and general
superintendents and minor managers, nor the salaries of their clerks and
subordinates directly engaged in the managing and superintending
aspects of the express business. A consolidation of the express
companies of the country into one agency would end that large proportion
of office work attendant upon the calculation of the pro rata returns to
separate express companies, and upon the issue of separate receipts,
waybills, etc., and would hence result in still further reduction of
express rates.