2. For the distribution of an immense mass of congressional documents,
which few people read at all, and most of which might as well be sent in
some other way—would be seen the moment they should be actually subjected
to the payment of postage by those who send or receive them.
3. For the extension of mails over numerous and long routes, in the new or
thinly settled parts of the country, which do not pay their own expenses.
I do not believe these routes are more extensive or numerous than the
government ought to establish; but then the government ought to support
them out of the general treasury. Many of them are necessary for the
convenience of the government itself. For many of them the treasury is
amply remunerated, and more, by the increased sale of the public lands,
the increase of population, and the consequent increase of the revenue
from the custom-house. And the rest are required by the great duty of
self-preservation and self-advancement, which is inherent in our
institutions.
4. For the cost of about two millions of dead letters, and an equal number
of dead newspapers and pamphlets, the postage on which, at existing rates,
would amount to at least $175,000 a year, and the greater part of which
would be saved under the new postal system.
Why should these burdens be thrown as a “tax upon correspondence,” or made
an apology for the continuance of such a tax? It is unreasonable. All
these expenses should be borne, “like all others, by the general tax paid
into the treasury.” This would leave letters chargeable only with such a
rate of postage as is needed for the prevention of abuses, and to secure
the orderly performance of the public duty. And a postage of two cents
would amply suffice for this. Some have suggested that _one cent_ is all
that ought to be required.
There is another view of the matter, which shows still more strongly the
injustice of the present tax upon letters. “It is not matter of
inference,” says Mr. Rowland Hill, “but matter of fact, that the expense
of the post-office is practically the same, whether a letter is going from
London to Burnet (11 miles), or from London to Edinburgh (397 miles); the
difference is not expressible in the smallest coin we have.” The cost of
transit from London to Edinburgh he explained to be only one thirty-sixth
of a penny. And the average cost, per letter, of transportation in all the
mails of the kingdom, did not differ materially from this. Of course, it
was impossible to vary the rates of postage according to distance, when
the longest distance was but a little over one-tenth of a farthing. The
same reasoning is obviously applicable to all the _productive_ routes in
the United States. And we have seen the injustice of taxing the letters on
routes that are productive or self-supporting, to defray the expense of
the unproductive routes which the government is bound to create and pay
for.
Another view of the case shows the futility of the attempt to make
distance the basis of charge. The actual cost of transit, to each letter,
does not vary with the distance, but is inversely as the number of
letters, irrespective of distance. The weight of letters hardly enters
into the account as a practical consideration. Ten thousand letters, each
composed of an ordinary sheet of letter paper, would weigh but one hundred
and fifty-six pounds, about the weight of a common sized man, who would be
carried from Boston to Albany or New York for five dollars. The average
cost of transportation of the mails in this country, is a little over six
cents per mile. For convenience of calculation, take a route of ten miles
long, which costs ten cents per mile, and another of one hundred miles
long at the same rate. There are many routes which do not carry more than
one letter on the average. The letter would cost the department one dollar
for carrying it ten miles. On the route of one hundred miles we will
suppose there are one thousand letters to be carried, which will cost the
government for transportation just one mill per letter. How then can we
make distance the basis of postage?
The matter may be presented in still another view. The government
establishes a mail between two cities, say Boston and New York, which is
supported by the avails of postage on letters. Then it proceeds to
establish a mail between New York and Philadelphia, which is supported by
the postage between those places. Now, how much will it cost the
government to carry in addition, all the letters that go from Boston to
Philadelphia, and from Philadelphia to Boston? Nothing. The contracts will
not vary a dollar. In this manner, you may extend your mails from any
point, wherever you find a route which will support itself, until you
reach New Orleans or Little Rock, and it is as plain as the multiplication
table, that it will cost the government no more to take an individual
letter from Boston to Little Rock than it would to take the same letter
from Boston to New York. The government is quite indifferent to what place
you mail your letter, provided it be to a place which has a mail regularly
running to it.
This brings us to the unproductive routes. An act was passed by the last
Congress to establish mail routes in Oregon territory. An agent is
appointed to superintend the business, at a salary of $1000 a year and his
travelling expenses; contracts are made or to be made, mails carried,
postmasters appointed and paid. This is doubtless a very proper and
necessary thing, one which the government could not have omitted without a
plain dereliction of duty. The honor and interest of the nation required
that as soon as the title to the country was settled, our citizens who
were resident there, and those who shall go to settle there, should enjoy
the benefits of the mail. And as it was the nation’s business to establish
the mail, it was equally the nation’s business to pay the expense. No man
can show how it is just or reasonable, that the letters passing between
Boston and New York should be taxed 150 per cent. to pay the expense of a
mail to Oregon, on the pretext that the post-office must support itself.
A mail is run at regular periods to Eagle River, Wisconsin, for the
accommodation of the persons employed about the copper mines on Lake
Superior. Without questioning the certainty of the great things that are
to be done there hereafter, it is no presumption to express the belief
that the expenses of that mail are hardly paid by the postage on the
letters now carried to and from Lake Superior. Nor, after making all due
allowances for the liberal distribution of copper stock at the East, is it
rational to believe that all the people who write letters here, are so
directly interested as to make a tax upon letters the most equitable mode
of assessing the expense.
During the debates in Congress on the act of 1844, an incident was related
by Senator Crittenden, of Kentucky, to this effect. He said he was
travelling in the mail stage somewhere in the State of Tennessee. At a
time of day when he was tired and hungry, the stage turned off from the
road a number of miles, to carry the mail to a certain post-office; it was
night when they reached the office, the postmaster was roused with
difficulty, who went through the formality of taking the mail pouch into
his hand, and returned it to the driver, saying there was not a letter in
it, and had not been for a month. I will not inquire whose letters ought
to be taxed to sustain that mail route, but only remark, that whatever
consideration caused its establishment, ought to carry the cost to the
public treasury, and not throw it as a burden upon our letters.
The Postmaster-General, in his late report, says that “the weight and bulk
of the mails, which add so greatly to the cost of transportation, and
impede the progress of the mail, are attributable to the mass of printed
matter daily forwarded from the principal cities in the Union to every
part of the country;” and “justice requires that the expense of their
transportation should be paid by the postage.” I would add to this the
qualifying phrase, “or by the government, out of the public treasury,” and
then ask why the same principle of justice is not as applicable to long
mail routes as to heavy mail bags. There is and can be no ground of
apprehension, that mails will ever be overloaded or retarded by the weight
of paid letters they contain. It was found by the parliamentary committee,
that the number of letters, which was then nearly fifty per cent. greater
than in all our mails, might be increased twenty-four fold, without
overloading the mails, and without any material addition to the contracts
for carrying the mails. They also found that the whole cost of receiving,
transporting and delivering a letter was 76-100ths of a penny, of which
the transit cost but 19-100ths, and the receipt and delivery 57-100ths.
The cost of transit, per letter, is of course reduced by the increase of
correspondence.
I have dwelt so long on this part of the subject, because I find that here
is the great difficulty in the application of the principles and results
of the British system to our own country—ours is such a “great country,”
and we have so many “magnificent distances.” But disposing as I have of
the unproductive mail routes, and showing as I have, the injustice of
taxing letters with the expense of any public burthens, this whole
difficulty is removed, and it is made to appear that two cents is the
highest proper rate of postage which the government can justly exact for
letters, on the score either of a just equivalent for the service
rendered, or of a tax imposed for the purposes of the government itself.
This is the conclusion to which the parliamentary committee were most
intelligently and satisfactorily drawn—that “the principle of a uniform
postage is founded on the facts, that the cost of distributing letters in
the United Kingdom consists chiefly in the expenses incurred with
reference to their receipt at and delivery from the office, and that the
cost of transit along the mail roads is comparatively unimportant, and
determined rather by the number of letters carried than the distance;”
that “as the cost of conveyance per letter depends more on the number of
letters carried than on the distance which they are conveyed, (the cost
being frequently greater for distances of a few miles, than for distances
of hundreds of miles,) the charge, if varied in proportion to the cost,
ought to increase in the inverse ratio of the number of letters conveyed,”
but it would be impossible to carry such a rule into practice, and
therefore the committee were of opinion, that “the easiest practicable
approach to a fair system, would be to charge a medium rate of postage
between one post-office and another, whatever may be their distance.” And
the committee were further of opinion, “that such an arrangement is highly
desirable, not only on account of its abstract fairness, but because it
would tend in a great degree to simplify and economize the business of the
post-office.”
Waterston’s Cyclopedia of Commerce says, “the fixing of _a low rate_
flowed almost necessarily from the adoption of a _uniform_ rate. It was
besides essential to the stoppage of the private conveyance of letters.
The post-office was thus to be restored to its ancient footing of an
institution, whose primary object was public accommodation, not revenue.”
The adoption of this simple principle, of Uniform Cheap Postage, was a
revolution in postal affairs. It may almost be called a revolution in the
government, for it identified the policy of the government with the
happiness of the people, more perfectly than any one measure that was ever
adopted. It prepared the way for all other postal reforms, which are
chiefly impracticable until this one is carried. We also can have franking
abolished, as soon as cheap postage shall have given the franking
privilege alike to all. We can have label stamps, and free delivery, and
registry of letters, and reduced postage on newspapers, and whatever other
improvement our national ingenuity may contrive, to the fullest extent of
the people’s wants, and the government’s ability, just as soon as we can
prevail upon the people to ask, and congress to grant, this one boon of
Uniform Cheap Postage.