After a 200 per cent stock dividend declared by one express company
shortly ago and a surplus of some $30,000,000 in another, the
announcement of a 90 per cent increase in certain express rates will be
hailed with much joy. There seems to be a cheerful disposition on the
part of these corporations to treat the public to the Roosevelt-Straus
remedy for all monopolistic evil—publicity. At least, they are candid
and without blush over their unconscionable extortions so, obviously,
the admission that they have oppressed the public by unjust rates, and
intend still greater encroachments, ought to be sufficient to quell the
evil at once. Publicity, forsooth! So long as no actual infraction of
any law is involved, why may not a monopoly increase its schedules to
“all the traffic will bear?”
The only good publicity in this instance may do is to stimulate a
dilatory and debilitated Congress to pass the Parcel Post enactment
recommended by Roosevelt and urged by Postmaster-General Meyer. Since
the express companies can annually “cut a melon” of enormous dividends;
and since the postal deficit for the fiscal year has reached the sum of
$16,910,000 it becomes probable that the long despised and antagonized
parcels post will loom up as perhaps the most practicable means of
helping the government out of the ditch.
How very curious it is that all the “wild ideas” of the Pops come, one
by one, to be recognized as instances of wonderful foresight. If the
parcels post is going to be a good thing for the government, and an
invaluable thing for the common people in the future, it is pertinent
to ponder on how much ahead the department might be at the present
date, if the system had been adopted years ago. Instead of a deficit,
there might have been a neat balance, or a possible surplus, for Mr.
Meyer to offer as a result of the operations of the last fiscal year.
Of course, the franking privilege has been grossly misused for the
circulation of partisan literature favorable to the administration
which got the spoils of office; and the railroads clean up their pile
on the job of hauling the mails, but all these things but go to show
that the postal department, instead of being an argument against the
government taking over public utilities, is the strongest kind of an
argument in favor of so doing. If the government owned the railroads,
one avenue of dead loss would be closed; and likewise the elimination
of railroad rings from control of the administration would remove the
incentive to flood the mail with literature in the interests of such
corporations and other monopolies.
[Illustration]