served by the rural mail delivery. The rural carrier passes the farm
every week day, yet if the farmer wants a package from the town he must
go after it--each of the 100 farmers must hitch up and drive to town
and back for packages that the one carrier could have brought them as
well as not with the outfit that he already has. Or these 100 farmers
must hitch up and take to town packages that the carrier could have
taken for them with the outfit he already has. The time and labor
saved the 4,000,000 families on rural routes would amount to many times
the present postal deficit.
It is only natural that farmers should be especially desirous of a
modern parcels post, because, as already stated, the express service
stops with the railway station. Hence the farmer has no express service
that reaches to him as have the people of towns and cities. The express
companies have never cared to carry their business to the farmer,
and this must convict them of only the most reprehensible motives in
opposing a parcels post limited to rural routes, which would extend
the equivalent of an express service to the farmers. As bearing on the
farmer’s need of a modern parcels post, the following from a letter
just received from Hon. W. L. Ames, Oregon, Wis., a practical farmer
and a leader of national reputation in all agricultural movements, is
of interest:
“One of the things we most need is better and prompter transportation
facilities for rather small articles. I recently needed a small but
important repair for a machine. It weighed 4¼ pounds. It cost 55 cents.
The express company charged 45 cents to bring it to Oregon--200 miles.
The charge was altogether too high, but what I felt most disposed to
complain about was that it took a week to bring the repair to me. Mail
matter moves promptly; but the express company knew that it was certain
of the job of carrying that repair to me, hence no need of haste on the
part of the express company. We need better and added facilities for
the prompter moving of such merchandise. Present delay is a serious
handicap, and undoubtedly a parcels post would give us prompt service
at a less rate, as it would not be expected that the parcels post would
do more than make a moderate profit for the government, whereas the
express business is a constant ‘melon-cutting’ business. We must not
forget, also, that all the equipment for a parcels post on rural routes
is already installed.
“If the government would take charge of what it already has and add
rules to fix charges for carrying parcels on the rural routes, it would
relieve us of much unjust charge and also much annoyance and loss of
time. Under the rulings of the Post-Office Department prohibiting rural
carriers from acting as agents for anyone to obtain business, carriers
are afraid to carry parcels to any extent. But what cuts a yet
greater figure is that no rule can be established to fix the charges
for carrying parcels and make them the same for all. Each person on
a rural route and the carrier cannot dicker for the transportation
of each article. That would soon lead to great dissatisfaction, as
some would think that others were being favored. And to dicker on
each parcel would take so much time and be so much trouble that the
carrier could not be expected to do it. All we need to put into effect
a modern parcels post on the rural routes is a law fixing a reasonable
and proper rate for the transportation of parcels and making it the
business of the rural carrier to handle parcels as well as the mail
matter he now carries.”
Cosmopolitan. 36: 497*-9*. March, 1904.
Who Will Be Benefited by a Parcels Post?
John B. Walker.
Those who have been appointed to defend the Post-Office Department
in the sacrifice it has made of the American people in the matter
of postal parcels delivery have replied to the argument in the last
issue of _The Cosmopolitan_ by claiming that but very few people will
be benefited by a parcels delivery equal to that of Germany. It is
therefore necessary to consider this question: “Who are the people who
will be benefited?”
First. There will be a gross saving amounting to more than two hundred
and fifty millions of dollars per annum. This annual addition to
our national wealth constitutes an economic factor of the highest
importance.
Second. While this sum will be distributed equally among the people in
proportion to their purchases--especially among those who make small
purchases--the direct benefit will be first appreciable in the business
of the following classes:
I. _The Small Storekeepers of the Country Towns and Villages._ One of
the arguments used by those who have been placed in the Post-Office
Department for the protection of special interests, is that a
parcels post would injure the country storekeeper. The very slightest
consideration of the problem, however, would have shown that no one
is so likely to be its beneficiary as he. The chief difficulties with
which the small merchant has to contend are these:
1. Insufficient capital.
2. Distance from wholesale centers.
3. Cost of expressage on small parcels.
The country merchant has the acquaintance of his customers; he knows
their wants and enjoys their good-will, and would have their patronage
if he could be placed in a situation where he could give them equal,
or approximately equal, advantages with a merchant who buys on a large
scale. If one of his customers is driven to go elsewhere, it is not
only because the merchant cannot afford to keep in stock the particular
class of goods desired, but because he cannot afford to ship these
goods in small quantities, on account of the prohibitive rates of the
government’s postal parcels charges of sixteen cents per pound, or the
almost equally prohibitive rates of the express companies.
The country storekeeper has the experience of his customer’s wants,
and he has a knowledge of the best goods, knows what is a fair price
for an article. He is in a position to advise his customer as to his
needs, and if he were not handicapped by lack of capital and cost of
transportation for parcels, he could, in nine times out of ten, supply
the wants of the customer.
In addition to the trade he has now, the country storekeeper would,
with the advantage of a first-class postal parcels system, be able to
keep in touch with all the great wholesale distributing agencies of the
country. He would earn a reasonable commission on all goods ordered,
and would be in a position to secure, within a very brief time, by
postal parcels, the goods which the customer, after looking over the
catalogues and receiving the advice of the merchant, should decide to
order.
There would be no investment and no risk, such as is involved in
carrying a stock of goods which may become unsalable. Without large
capital, he is now handicapped by being compelled, on account of the
discrimination against him as a shipper, to lose the sale of all those
articles which he cannot carry in stock in quantities, and which may,
under present arrangements, only be shipped in bulk. If he attempts
to use the mails, the rate of sixteen cents per pound is prohibitive,
while the fact that the bulk is limited to four pounds is almost
equally so; and the express companies’ charges are so high that in the
majority of cases he cannot utilize their services.
Let us suppose that, instead of the United States’ charges for postal
parcels being six thousand per cent. greater than Germany’s they were
on a par, and that the country merchant could receive parcels weighing
from one ounce to one hundred and eleven pounds for a quarter of a cent
a pound. _It is not even necessary that the rate should be so low.
Let it be made four times as great as that of Germany_, or one cent
per pound, and let us see what advantage the country merchant would
have. One hundred and ten pounds covers nine-tenths of the articles
which he would be likely to sell. Instead of a store equipped with
comparatively few articles, the country merchant would be able to
carry, in addition to his regular stock, an extensive line of samples.
He would familiarize himself with the best that there is in the market,
be able to advise his customer to his advantage, and then, receiving
the order, could, within a brief time, have the goods sent by parcels
post directly to the customer’s home, saving the expense of handling
two or three times--making more money by a small commission than he
does now by the larger margin on the goods which he is compelled to
carry constantly in stock.
Good organization is the trend of modern business, and this is
good organization--saving two or three handlings, truckage, some
bookkeeping, et cetera.
II. _The Manufacturers._ Next to the country merchant, the manufacturer
will be the largest beneficiary of the postal parcels delivery. Take,
for instance, the hardware business. The manufacturer is obliged,
under the existing conditions of trade, to maintain large stocks in
an endless number of cities scattered over the country, or do what is
the equivalent of directly maintaining the stocks--that is, to give
extended credit. This is because there is no way of handling small
parcels of hardware without a cost that is so excessive as to force
shipments of hardware to be made in bulk. With a one-cent-per-pound
rate, more than fifty per cent. of the stocks now carried could be
eliminated and orders sent by the hardware merchant directly to the
manufacturer to be shipped by package. One hundred and ten pounds would
cover the greater portion of the trade, and leave only nails, barbed
wire, and similar articles, for bulk handling.
In cotton goods, instead of shipping from the Mills to New York,
trucking them there through the streets, breaking bulk, repacking,
retrucking and reshipping to the merchant there would be but one
operation. A single piece of goods would go direct from the factory
by parcels post at a total cost for handling not to exceed twenty
per cent. of the charges now engendered by our clumsy, costly and
inconceivably stupid method.
The same thing would happen in the grocery business. A factory in
Rochester or Pittsburg, manufacturing canned articles, must ship in
bulk to New York, or Chicago, or St. Louis. There the car-load, after
being hauled to a warehouse, is broken up and transshipped. There is
no reason for this transshipment, no possible excuse for this waste
of money, except that the ownership of the express by a few private
companies has prevented the organization of a parcels post upon lines
which have long been recognized as absolutely successful in Europe.
The question here will be asked: Would this shipment direct from
the factory interfere with the business of the wholesale merchants
whose task it is now to repack and reship? On the contrary, it would
simplify their work and reduce expenses from every point of view. Their
business primarily is one of distribution of credits. They have certain
customers who receive from them certain lines of credit. They furnish
the capital between the manufacturer and the retail dealer. If tomorrow
they could order by letter or telegraph, directly from the factory, for
shipment to the retail dealer by postal parcels, their business would
be greatly simplified and their profits increased.
III. _The Merchants in Large Cities._ Perhaps to no class will the boon
of a parcels post be greater than the merchants in the large cities.
All the way from four cents to fifty cents is now paid for the delivery
of a parcel within a radius of thirty miles around the leading cities
of this country. Experiments have shown that it is possible, where
the interests of a considerable number of merchants are combined, to
deliver an average dry-goods parcel, thirty miles out, at a cost not to
exceed four cents.
As conducted today, the business of delivering parcels consists in
sending the wagon of one dry-goods house to follow another into a city
block, and deliver each its parcel; then each wagon goes off to another
block, and delivers its parcel. In New York city thousands of wagons
meander through the two or three thousand miles of streets, each firm
doing its work independently of the others, and each wasting money by
lack of cooperation.
It is altogether probable that with thorough organization city delivery
could be conducted, within a radius of thirty miles, upon a basis
not to exceed one half cent per pound. This would mean but two cents
per package for the average four-pound dry-goods parcel, including,
of course, the large number which are transported but a few blocks.
But that is not the only advantage. It would take from the merchants
the constant effort which the maintenance of good delivery systems
involves. I have personally studied the delivery systems of nearly all
the leading merchants in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, and have
spent a day in the delivery department of Marshall Field in Chicago.
Everywhere I heard the same complaint--that the brains consumed in
managing the parcels delivery was one of the most expensive items in
the cost of operating a great establishment.
IV. _Book Publishers._ The cost of delivering a book by mail is now
eight cents per pound. This, for a four-pound book, means a tax
of thirty-two cents. Just how far this retards the development of
intelligence in the people is not difficult to estimate.
V. _Stationers’ Supplies._ The large class of manufacturers and
wholesalers who are engaged in supplying the stationery trade would
find the parcels post a great convenience in receiving supplies and
in delivering to customers; a matter of lessened capital, lessened
trouble, and greatly increased profits.
VI. _The Railways._ At first sight it might appear that the interests
of the railways would not be favored by a postal parcels law. But the
briefest analysis of the problem shows that the benefit to them would
perhaps be greatest of all.
To-day vast numbers of freight-cars stand idle, waiting carload
shipments. These bulk shipments are necessarily made at the very
minimum of cost. In the low price of bulk shipments, American railways
lead the world. Even at existing prices, however, water transportation
carries off a large part of the burden.
The benefits to the railways, by transferring freight from the class of
bulk to parcels, would be:
1. Goods being shipped in a constant stream of packages, instead of
intermittently by car-load or train-bulk;
2. A higher price would be obtained from shipments of the same freight
in parcels as compared with the previous cost in bulk;
3. The large increase in traffic due to better, cheaper, speedier and
more direct, and in every way infinitely more convenient, facilities;
4. The additional prosperity which a saving of anywhere from two
hundred and fifty to six hundred millions of dollars per annum would
mean to the country at large.
There are to-day far-seeing railway officials who have given this
problem serious consideration, and who have arrived at the conclusion
just stated.
VII. _The Farmer._ Last, but not least in importance, comes the
farmer. To-day, cut off from parcel delivery, he is the victim of bad
government, both in his bad roads and lack of postal facilities. The
one step of progress that the United States post-office has made of
recent years, that is worthy of respect, is the rural postal delivery.
As proposed, however, it is ridiculous. The idea was advanced by some
politicians for the purpose of creating additional patronage. Merely
to deliver letters and newspapers to the farmer would, of course,
be to operate a service without hope of placing it on a profitable
basis. It would be as if the New York merchants would keep a thousand
wagons traveling around the streets of New York to deliver nothing but
kid gloves and lace veils--nearly empty, while other wagons would be
carrying the burden of the goods sold.
Rural free delivery is absolutely impossible unless accompanied by
a postal parcels law. Giving a rate even four times as high as that
of Germany, the entire rural delivery could be put on a paying basis
to-morrow.
Here again would be an advantage to the country merchant. The farmer
to-day, when he wishes to buy, hitches up a pair of horses, drives
four or five miles, and makes a few purchases. If the United States
had the postal parcels law of Austro-Hungary, the farmer would draw a
postal check, mail it free, the merchant would deliver the goods to the
post-office, and a few hours later they would be in the hands of the
farmer.
The life of the farm, which has so many drawbacks, would thus be made
vastly more comfortable. It is impossible to estimate in dollars how
great the saving to the country would be in this one particular.
It would be easy to show the endless ramifications of this beneficial
service; but space need not here be taken up for that purpose.
Sufficient has been indicated to show that there is no man or woman,
however poor, however rich, who would not be vastly benefited and
convenienced by a government postal parcels system.
Craftsman. 14: 592-4. September, 1908.
More Efficient Postal Service. Gustav Stickley.
Speaking of the success of the rural routes, of which there are more
than thirty-eight thousand already established in this country, Mr.
Meyer says: “The isolation which existed in many parts of the country
has been overcome; the people are in daily communication with their
friends in the rest of the world; the daily papers and magazines come
to the door of every farm house on the rural routes, and enlightenment
and information are being spread broadcast through the land. Medical
men have said that already the establishment of the rural service is
having its effect upon the mentality of our country patrons, and that
because of it insanity is on the decrease. The extension of the rural
routes to include a parcel post,” he asserts, “will be a boon both to
the rural population and to the store-keeper as the latter can receive
his orders by mail or telephone and despatch the desired merchandise by
the rural carrier. The farmer will be saved from hitching up his horse
and losing the time he needs for planting or harvesting his crops, and
it will enable the store-keeper to increase his sales and meet the
requirements of modern trade.”
Much of the opposition to this measure has come from the country
store-keeper, who very naturally dreads that such largely increased
facilities for delivery by mail would simply extend the already
wide domain of the department store and drive him completely out of
business. But this objection has been met by the plan for a special
postal service for the rural routes, which would be given at a much
lower rate than that prevailing throughout the general system of parcel
post. This special rate as advocated by Mr. Meyer would be five cents
for the first pound and two cents for each successive pound up to
the limit of eleven pounds, thus enabling any one along the line of
rural route to use the mails for delivery of packages at a charge of
twenty-five cents for the maximum weight, as opposed to one dollar and
thirty-two cents for the same weight if sent at the regular rate of
twelve cents a pound,--which regular rate would necessarily have to
be used by department stores unless they should go to the trouble and
expense of maintaining a large system of rural agencies throughout the
country.
The result of such a system in bringing about the general dissemination
of business throughout the country by fostering small individual
enterprises is almost beyond calculation, especially as a secondary
result would be the growth of small villages and settlements throughout
the thinly settled farming districts. And these two changes in the
present state of affairs would go far toward solving the whole problem
of the possibility of turning the tide from the city back into the
country. The hardships and discomforts of many of the conditions
of city life, particularly among people of limited means, and the
uncertainty of the wage-earner’s means of livelihood, are now endured
chiefly because of the greater disadvantages that are attached
to farming in remote parts of the country or to undertaking the
responsibility of working independently of any large commercial or
industrial organization. For months, the Craftsman has been urging the
establishment of rural settlements and the introduction of handicrafts
in connection with small farms. Nothing that is likely to be done in
the way of legislation to this end seems to us to make so possible a
general change for the better along these lines as the postal measures
recommended by the Postmaster-General, supported by the President and
now recognized by Republicans and Democrats alike as a reform that
will not be downed, no matter how powerful are the interests opposing
it. Given the postal savings bank as an encouragement to thrift, and
transportation facilities that will not only bring all necessary
merchandise within reach of the farmer, but also take the products
of his own industry and a great part of the output of the village
workshops to the nearest market at a reasonable rate, and the rest will
follow almost as a matter of course. When a man has a fund of several
hundred dollars, there is hardly any question as to what he will do
with it if he has a chance. The desire to own a home and a little patch
of land is universal with civilized mankind and when to the possibility
of gratifying this desire is added facilities that render life in the
country as interesting and as much abreast of the times as life in the
city, the tenement question in cities will soon cease to be the serious
problem it is now.
Independent. 70: 105-7. January 12, 1911.
Parcels Post Once More.
Proportional rural population is not diminishing. We do not know what
the present census will say, but we do know that from 1890 to 1900
the country gained enormously on the city in its proportion of new
settlers. The old record of 65 per cent. for the city tumbled down
to a little over 30 per cent., and we know of no reversal of this
tendency. Back to the country has become a universal cry. Lands are
rising in value steadily, and deserted farms are a myth. At least,
Governor Hughes in one of his speeches said that he should like to
know where they were in New York State, for he could not find them.
Country churches have often died, to be sure; but they were killed
seventy-five years ago, and they do not note at all any decadence
of farm prosperity. They went out when railroads began to be built.
Crossroads stores have not been run to any extent for half a century,
any more than crossroads taverns. They do not belong to advanced stages
of country life, and are not needed.
Never was country life more progressive, better organized or more
lifeful and hopeful. The crossroads has been displaced by the village
store, and this village store must deliver its goods. It wants the
parcels post. The trolley is reaching its fingers up into the valleys
and touching the farmyards with its carrying capacity. The automobile
is doing even more to reach the isolated farmhouse. We might as well
forbid these forces and conveniences as to deny the farmer a parcels
post. The same argument lies with intense force against rural free
mail delivery in every form. It destroys many post offices; it keeps
the farmer at home; it dissolves hamlet life: but it aids in the great
movement of distributing the blessings of a complete life all over the
country.
We are quite willing to face the frightful proposition which is offered
us, of a community with no business institutions except the post office
and the freight depot. We have seen the tens of thousands of district
schoolhouses blotted out without a qualm, for we have seen the union
schools gloriously taking up the work in their place. We have seen
the little stores and taverns that used to be convenient for watering
horses vanish, because we find a substitute in department stores,
almost invariably within reach, by aid of the trolley and automobile.
We are not worried at all when we contemplate a picture involving a
more substantial country home, with its isolation abolished, hidden
among the hills, but visited daily by the rural free delivery carrier,
even tho he shall have in his automobile a ten-pound package for the
housewife.