packages, which will be forwarded by the fastest mail facilities, a
charge of 23.8 cents is made, in addition to the regular postage and
the special delivery fee collected for each package.
AFFIRMATIVE DISCUSSION
Our Postal Express. pp. 1-6.
William Sulzer.
MR. SPEAKER: I am in favor of a parcels post. I believe the people of
the country generally favor it, and I feel confident its establishment
will be of inestimable benefit and advantage to all concerned. The
post-office is one of the oldest of governmental institutions, an
agency established by the earliest civilization to enable them to
inform themselves as to the plans and movements of their friends and
foes; and from the dawn of history the only limit upon this service has
been the capacity of the existing transport machinery.
The cursus publicus of imperial Rome--the post-office of the
Roman Cæsars--covered their entire business of transportation and
transmission, and with its splendid post-roads, swift post-horses,
and ox post-wagons the Roman post-office was a mechanism far wider
in its scope than that of our modern post-office; and except for the
use of mechanical power, the old Roman post was far more efficient in
its service of the Roman rulers than is our modern post-office in the
service of the American citizen.
The evil of the Roman post-office and of the royal postal services that
succeeded it was their common restriction to the enrichment of the
ruling powers. They were the prototypes of our modern private railway
and express companies, which have for their chief end the enrichment
of their managers rather than the promotion of the public welfare. In
this country the citizen owns the post-office and wants to use it as
his transportation company. Its end is to keep him informed as to what
his representatives are doing at the centers of public business, to
make known to them his wishes, and to provide means by which he may
communicate with his fellow-citizens for their mutual benefit, and to
supply his wants and dispose of his wares at the least possible cost,
in the shortest possible time, and with the greatest possible security.
The postal system of rates, regardless of distance, regardless of the
character of the matter transported, and regardless of the volume of
the patron’s business, eminently fits it for this great service. That
it will sooner or later be greatly extended over the entire field of
public transportation, is absolutely certain; and the people will
duly appreciate the aid of those who assist in its extension and
development. As far back as 1837, Rowland Hill, of England, promulgated
to the world the law that once a public transport service is in
operation, the cost of its use is regardless the distance traversed
upon the moving machinery by any unit of traffic within its capacity,
and upon this law he established the English penny-letter post of 1839.
Instead of a taxing machine, a contrivance for making money,
the post-office should be an agency for good, reaching out its
multitudinous hands with help and comfort into all the homes in our
widespread land.
Without the post-office where would be that national unity, with its
guaranty of equal rights to all, which is the glory of the sisterhood
of states?
The postal savings system and parcels post was inaugurated in England
largely through the efforts of the great Commoner, William E.
Gladstone. Near the close of his life he made the following statement
about it:
The post-office savings bank and parcels post is the most
important institution which has been created in the last fifty
years for the welfare of the people. I consider the act which
called the institution into existence as the most useful and
fruitful of my long career.
It is because we realize these truths so keenly that we are so
persistent in urging favorable consideration of a parcels post. Its
only fault is its conservatism. What this country now needs, what
Congress should give it, is a parcels post covering much of the
business of public transportation.
In April last representatives of at least 10,000,000 American voters,
including the great agricultural associations of the country, National
Grange, the Farmers’ Union, the Farmers’ National Congress, Retail Dry
Goods Association of New York, the Associated Retailers of St. Louis,
the manufacturing perfumers of the United States, the American Florist
Association, and others, appeared before the House Postal Committee,
demanding a domestic express post as extended and as cheap as that
provided by the Postmaster-General in our foreign postal service. The
argument in behalf of this legislation, with its 4-pound weight limit,
had then been before the committee for many months, but the bill was
not up to the demands of these friends of the post-office. The report
of the hearing showed that the public wanted an 11-pound service at
least. Seldom, if ever, has any proposition received a stronger public
support, and it seemed as if the House Committee on Post-Offices would
be obliged to report at least some legislation back to the House for
its consideration.
Their answer finally came on the 27th of May in the shape of H. R.
26348, introduced by Chairman John W. Weeks, which provides:
That all mail matter of the fourth class shall be subject
to examination and to a postage charge at the rate of
three-fourths of 1 cent an ounce or fraction thereof, to
be prepaid by stamps affixed--stamps of the following
denominations:
Cents.
1 ounce ¾
2 ounces 1½
3 ounces 2¼
4 ounces 3
5 ounces 3¾
6 ounces 4½
7 ounces 5¼
8 ounces 6
On the 1st of June Mr. Weeks wrote to the secretary of the Postal
Progress League as follows:
It does not seem to me likely that any other parcels-post
legislation than possibly the bill which I introduced last
week--this bill--providing for the reduction in rate on
fourth-class matter, will be considered at this session of
Congress.
This means that for at least two years more the American people are
to be left subject to the extortions of the rich and powerful express
companies, while we have in the post-office a well-equipped service of
our own through which much of the people’s business now carried on by
these companies could be done quicker and at infinitely less cost.
Mr. Speaker, if the powers arraigned against the post-office continue
their efforts to limit its functions in behalf of private interests,
they will soon find themselves confronted with a Congress pledged to
extend the service of the post-office to a much larger degree of the
public transmission business; and hence, I think it wise that my bill
should now be brought before the House for immediate consideration.
World’s Work. 21: 14248-51. April, 1911.
Parcels Post and the Retailer.
Fremont Rider.
Of all the arguments against a parcels post by far the most venerable
is that of financial disaster; and even April 1911 finds many an
opponent of a parcels post uttering gloomy prophecies of the enormous
losses which the system would entail, losses which would have to be
met, as he takes pains to point out, by an already bankrupt post office
department.
On the other hand, the men best acquainted both with the problem of
transportation and its cost and with the parcels post as it has been
worked out abroad, go so far as to say, that so far from being an
expense, a parcels post would probably be the most profitable business
venture into which the United States government ever embarked. In fact
a private parcels post, in certain of the metropolitan districts at
least, would probably be started by private capital were it not for one
thing--the growing agitation for a government parcels post which would
render valueless the plant of the private company.
The plan of this private parcels post, in direct competition with the
present express companies is no chimera.... Every thinking person
marvels at the economic waste in the present day methods of city
delivery. By your house in Yonkers, for instance, if you happen to
live in Yonkers, there now rattles, once or twice daily, the wagons
of your butcher, your baker, your laundryman, your milkman, and your
grocer, as well as those of the various butchers, bakers, laundrymen,
milkmen, and grocerymen of your neighbors, all covering in staggeringly
wasteful duplication, the same route. Besides them, up from the city
come, in further duplication and longer distance waste, the wagons
of the nine different New York department stores that deliver in
Yonkers, the wagons of the four local express companies that divide the
“independent” business, and those of the two general express companies
which do the high-priced long distance business. Yet, when you think
of it, one wagon could come to you three times a day and do the work
of all these people, more effectively and at one-tenth of the present
total expense.
You buy a dollar’s worth of groceries of John Jones, the grocer. The
whole package, bread, milk, eggs, butter, and vegetables, weighs,
perhaps, ten pounds. A company doing all the delivery business of a
town, centralized, complete, without waste labor or waste mileage,
stopping its motor wagons two or three times a day at every house on
every street, can make money delivering that ten pounds for six cents.
It now costs Jones, sending out his boy and wagon to a dozen odd houses
scattered all over town, two or three times that amount.
But such a private parcels post will not be undertaken because of the
fear that the government may enter the field. Yet so far at least,
although in the post office the government has most of the plant
necessary to carry on such a business, it cannot be persuaded to go
into it.
The most exasperating reason for this inactivity is the legislative
assumption that our present “parcels post” approaches perfection. The
fact is, of course, that the United States has no parcels post in the
sense in which the term is in accepted international use. The present
fourth class rate is but little used in this country simply because
it is prohibitively high. To send ten pounds of merchandise from New
York to Philadelphia involves, not merely the indefensible nuisance of
separating it for mail transportation into three packages, but a charge
of $1.60. Naturally, instead, the merchandise is sent in one parcel by
express for fifty cents. As the work done by the express company, it
is needless to note, gives them a very handsome profit indeed, it is
evident that by far the larger portion of the government’s $1.60 in
this case would be sheer profit--if the post office were as efficiently
conducted as the express company.
The express company, however, does not attempt to carry a ten pound
package from New York to Seattle for fifty cents. Such long and
profitless hauls they leave for Uncle Sam. Yet, even so, with all the
cream of the parcel business continually and inevitably going to the
express companies, the Post Office Department according to its reports
makes a profit in its “parcels post” business.
Of course were the post office rate from New York to Philadelphia a
real parcels post rate, that is, for example, 20 cents for ten pounds
instead of $1.60, there would be 1,000 pounds of merchandise so sent
where there is one sent today. People will use a parcels post when it
becomes cheap enough to be an economic possibility, and they will use
it enormously, as experience elsewhere has abundantly and conclusively
proved. Until then they will use the fourth class postal rate only for
the occasional cross continental parcel on which the express rate soars
out of all reach, or for the small parcel under a pound in weight on
which the fourth class rate is less than the express companies’ minimum
charge.
The four vital arguments (the four great express companies) against a
parcels post, once so succinctly enumerated by Mr. Wanamaker, and the
other hoary arguments sampled above, have, however, of late years been
bolstered by another--the welfare of the “small country retailer”; and
round the great fear of a vague but very horrible something called
“trade centralization” the battle for parcels post is at present being
waged.
It has been taken for granted that the small country retailer will
be put out of business by the parcels post with its low delivery
charges--yet there are stores in Yonkers, Plainfield, etc., in spite of
the fact that the New York department stores deliver in these places
free.
Let us examine another aspect of this
death-of-the-small-retailer-fattening-of-the-mail-order-trust-bogey a
minute, and see whether a parcels post means really a more centralized
basis of distribution, or a less.
Speaking very roughly, there are in the world two great tides of
merchandise traffic: one of raw materials, of which food products is
the most important, from the farmer to the urban consumer; one of
manufactured products--to wear, to use, or to eat (as refined sugar or
prepared breakfast food)--from the urban maker to the farmer consumer.
Surprising as it may seem the parcels post argument has dealt almost
entirely with the latter tide: of the former tide, even more important,
as I think I can show, very little has been said.
Let us look for a moment into our existing high cost of transportation,
and therefore, decentralized distribution of farm products.
In New York the farmer sells his milk for--these figures are quoted
very roughly and without elaboration but they will give my point--2
cents a quart. He sells it, usually, to one of two or three--there is
considerable evidence that they all act in agreement as one--gigantic
milk companies (of which Borden’s is the largest) which bring it into
the city and distribute it. The ultimate consumer--again I give a rough
figure--pays 10 cents a quart. The other 8 cents is the “distributing
cost”; and in each case it goes, mind you, to two great corporations,
a milk company and an express (or a rail-road) company. Is this that
decentralized distribution that the defenders of the express companies
in and before our Committee have eulogized.
Take almost any other farm product, strawberries, for example. The
farmer, who grows them, gets 3 cents a basket. Then begins a long line
of tolls: the express company, 3 cents; the commission merchant, 2
cents (he claims, and often with reason, that his “spoilage” is high);
the jobber 1 cent; the small retailer--delicatessen store, corner
grocery or street cart vendor--3 cents (it “costs 25 per cent. to do
business” he says, and it does too). The ultimate consumer pays 12
cents a basket, sometimes more, sometimes, when the market is glutted,
a little less. Here is 9 cents of “distributive costs” of which but
3 went to our friend, the “small retailer.” The rest went to more or
less centralized distributing agencies. Now suppose on the other hand
that the farmer could send his products direct to his list of regular
customers in the city. It would be perfectly feasible with a parcels
post. Strawberries, which the farmer would get 6 cents a basket for
(double what he gets now) could be delivered at your breakfast table
the next morning after picking instead of two or three days old in the
triple transit of commission merchant and his storage place, jobber and
his trans-shipment, retailer and his store, and finally to you. And for
this infinitely better article you would pay only 8 cents (2 cents for
the parcels post) instead of the former 12.
There are only three factors, the farmer, the government parcels post,
and you! This is not theory: it is being done in England, in Germany,
in Japan, and in almost every other civilized country in the world
every day; and has been done for years.
And as for the mail order business bogey, it would not be a bogey in
the country districts because every farmer would be running a little
mail order business of his own, shipping his eggs and butter pats
and comb honey and fresh fruit and vegetables by mail right to his
customers, on their standing or postal card orders, getting enough
for his produce to make small farming worth while, but giving the
consumer better goods at a big saving. Cost of living! There is no
other revolution in the methods of distribution that would make so much
difference in the cost of living as a thoroughgoing parcels post would
work. And instead of greater centralization it would be almost the
ultimate of trade decentralization.
Or, let us look at the thing the other way round. What is the chain
of trade from urban producer of manufactured articles to the country
retailer and consumer? Is there any decentralized purchasing now except
by mail? The farmer buys of the small retailer. But the retailer
buys of the lesser jobber and he of the main jobber and he of the
manufacturer; and this is true whether the product be canned goods or
dry goods. Freight shipments in bulk can underbid single shipments by
mail or express; and the present system of distribution, cumbersome and
expensive as it is to the ultimate consumer, is nevertheless cheaper
than direct single shipments at the present mail or express rates.
The moment that you introduce bulk shipments into any distributive
system you necessarily introduce a middleman somewhere to divide up
that bulk shipment for individual consumers; and the greater the bulk
economically shipped the more middlemen there will be between producer
and consumer.
Now where the parcels post could afford a cheaper way of doing the
distributing than the machinery at present in use, the people ought
to have the benefit of it; but in spite of the obvious benefits of a
parcels post it is not wise to jump to the ultimate conclusion. No one
would be rash enough to say that the present system of retail selling
is entirely wrong. Even if the flat-rate, “zoneless” parcels post were
established there are certain kinds of goods--books, for example, in
which every article is a “novelty” which must be personally handled
before choice and purchase, in which a local retailer with a display
is, if not essential, at least a great convenience.
But so far we have been considering an ideal, flat-rate parcels post,
without that “zone” provision which is an important provision in
the bills and proposals for a parcels post which are now being most
actively agitated.
The zone system of parcels post proposes, roughly, a flat rate per
pound and per additional pound within the limits of any delivery office
(that is a service which involves no transfer from one post office to
another) and a rate considerably heavier (but still much less than
the present fourth-class mail or express rate) for delivery elsewhere
in the United States. This would furnish the cross-roads store with
a most convenient delivery system and furnish it at a cheaper price
than its city rivals could secure it. The local retailer would have
the advantage of the difference between the two charges. To give this
advantage to the local retailer is probably wise from the standpoint
of general public policy. The small retailer in the country does
the public a very actual and very valuable service. To have a stock
displayed for selection is often an assistance in purchasing; there
are certain things which cannot in any case, be bought by mail; there
are other things which may sometimes preferably be bought direct, just
as most people like, occasionally at least, “to shop”; there is a
welcome personal touch in retailing which is lost in the long distance
purchase. For these and other reasons the retail store will remain,
stripped of overcompetition and non-essential distributive agents,
competing with the parcels post, not in price so much, as in the kind
and quality of service. That is the way the small retailer in Germany
had adapted himself to the parcels post; and although in his case
there is no zone preferential to aid him, he has made good.
After all, there is the gist of the answer to those who oppose a
parcels post on anti-centralization grounds. They speak as though there
were but one factor in retailing--price. As a matter of fact there
are many factors, and the best students of retailing methods consider
service one of the most important. With a parcels post established the
public would be getting value for its money in cheapness or service, as
it chose; with the present express system it gets neither.
Congressional Record. 46: 1941-7. February 3, 1911.
Star Routes and Rural Parcels Post.
F. W. Mondell.
I do not want to put the entire blame for the hidden, circuitous, and
indirect opposition to parcels post upon the express companies. There
is another class of people who are opposed to parcels post who do not
directly show their hands. They are the firms and corporations who send
out a very large letter mail, upon which they pay 2 cents for every
half ounce. The average citizen who only writes an occasional letter
does not realize how heavy the burden 2-cent letter postage is to
people who send out great numbers of letters.
There are many large concerns, like the mail-order houses for instance,
promoters, jobbers, and dealers in special extensively advertised
lines, whose actual letter postage amounts to many thousands of dollars
a year. Such people naturally oppose any change in the postal service
which might increase the postal deficit, even temporarily, because of
their anxiety to have the letter rate reduced. The yearly income of the
Post Office Department from letter postage is about $132,000,000, and
it is said that some mail-order houses pay several hundred thousand
dollars a year for letter postage. A reduction of that by half would be
well worth working for.
It would not be fair in the discussion of this subject to overlook the
fact that there are arguments against the establishment of a general
parcels post which are advanced in perfect good faith and which are
entitled to serious consideration. Those local merchants who have some
misgivings about the matter are entitled to have their views carefully
considered, but as I have indicated, it is my opinion that in the main
their fears are not well founded, and arise largely from the fact that
they have not had an opportunity to give the matter their personal
consideration, and therefore have been inclined to accept the arguments
of interested parties. There are also a considerable number of people
who are honestly opposed to the parcels post in the belief that it is
an unwarranted extension of government activities into a field which
ought to be satisfactorily covered by private enterprise, and who still
hope that the express service may be so cheapened and improved as to
very largely satisfy the demand for a parcels post. There are also
those who feel that owing to the vast area of our country it would be
difficult to adopt a system of parcels post which would be generally
satisfactory and at the same time self-supporting.
The argument is also made that the handling of a large amount of
merchandise by the postal service would make delivery difficult where
city delivery is provided, and delay the transmission of letters by the
loading of the mails with merchandise.
These arguments do present problems which must have serious
consideration. They are none of them, however, in my opinion, problems
which are insurmountable, but a consideration of them, as well as of
that character of powerful opposition exerted indirectly to which I
have referred, leads thinking people to the conclusion that the outlook
for the establishment of a general parcels post in the country in the
near future is far from promising. With this as with all progressive
legislation, little progress will be made until the people as a whole
become thoroughly interested in the subject, quite generally make up
their minds what they want, and in no uncertain tone make their wants
known.