Bertram Benedict

“ Who can hope to measure the gain in individual morale when a man realizes that his own advancement depends upon the extent to which he can serve others, not upon the extent to which he can serve himself; when such a public utility as the express companies is in the hands of administrators who have turned their attention away from endeavors to derive as high rates as possible from the public to endeavors to charge the public as low a rate as possible? ”

“ The war found us an unintegrated miscellany, and our Government a creature strangely and even desirably aloof from the thoughts and aspirations of our daily lives. And now, almost overnight, sacrifice in France and at home has welded us into one people. Shall we remain one, or shall we revert to factions, to factions either at loggerheads with one another, or else indifferent one to the other? Assuredly we shall soon re-degenerate into warring factions unless our still largely inchoate strivings for national unity can discover vehicles to carry them forward. ”

“ For nineteen months they have subordinated self and enthroned society. Shall we send them back to the limbo of self-aggrandizement or shall we carve out new paths for the development of character in our American citizens? For obviously the decades immediately at hand are to witness also a direct growth of the control of the workers over their industry, whether it be private or public industry. ”

“ In Great Britain, agitation for developing the express business as a part of the postal system had resulted in the establishment of a Government parcel-post as early as 1883. By 1892, the French Government was conducting an express business, selling the transportation of parcels both large and small to the French people without yielding profit to any owners of stocks and bonds, but imposing charges just high enough to meet the cost of the system; and developed, like our own rural free delivery, with an eye primarily to the service of the people, not to the profit-and-loss balance-sheet. ”

“ Although the last thirty years of the nineteenth century saw the development of the United States into a complex and extensively specialized industrial mechanism—with a growing dependence of each geographical division of the country upon every other geographical division and of each economic unit upon every other economic unit—the country seems never to have suspected that it might well claim authority over so important a link in its industrial integration as the transportation and delivery of all merchandise too small or too valuable to be transferred and delivered as freight. ”

“ The express service is much more than an important business undertaking, and it is much more even than a valuable agent in quickening the industrial activities of the United States—it is, or rather it can be, one of the most serviceable media for the development of an American culture as that culture expresses itself in the economic processes of the nation. The future of the nation's express service is basically a problem of national morale. ”

“ And the future of the express service concerns not only national morale, but also individual morale. Aside from a few serviceable and hitherto usually unappreciated social servants, whether in private or in public bodies, success in America has lain along the lines of private enterprise for private gain. For the first time, a widespread summons for service to the people has been able during the nineteen months of war to supplant in the hearts of our most capable administrators the summons to exploitation of the people. ”

“ If we hope to keep unnarrowed, and even to broaden, the present fields in which opportunity is given our fellow-citizens to devote their lives primarily to their fellows' service rather than primarily to their own gain, any national activity as socially-necessary and as nationally-significant as the express companies must inevitably revert in ownership to the nation to whose needs it ministers, and the men and women within the machinery of its operation must serve owners who are not a handful of individuals, but the people, all the people who make up America. ”

“ And yet the statesmen at Washington have disposed and doubtless will still endeavor to dispose of the proposal to have the Government own and manage the express service of the land by speeches on texts to the effect that the spirit of America demands individual freedom; that that is the best Government which governs the least; that incentive to productive endeavor is possible only in private establishments and completely disappears in the public service ”

“ The economies possible [28] by consolidation are lessened only slightly by the fact that on the main railroad trunk routes express traffic is often carried by trains composed entirely of express cars, in which there can obviously be little saving by consolidation of the express system and the parcel-post. In passing, it should be noted that the railway mail cars are furnished by the railroads, and in most cases the trucks and wagons and automobiles used in transporting mail through a city render that service by contracts of the Post Office Department with their owners ”

“ The explanation of the willingness of the railroad companies not to disturb the express companies in their exclusive exploitation of the express service field is hence not difficult to find. Even those few of the directors who were not directors in railway systems were nevertheless also of that group of controllers of industry which was responsible for the sinister connection between American politics and American big business which for so many years had prostituted the promise of American life. ”

“ As a matter of fact, the Supreme Court of the United States some years ago decided that capitalized excess profits may not be used as a basis of computing fair rates of dividends upon capital as against the state. Possibly Congress might find it wise to settle the whole problem in any bill providing for Government acquisition by abiding in the judgment of the Interstate Commerce Commission, leaving the Government or the express companies, or both, the right to appeal to the Supreme Court if dissatisfied. ”

“ As has been seen, the increases in express rates since the birth of the American Railway Express have been absorbed in wage increases. Now, in a statistical study, the phrase "wage increases" will connote a mere item of expense, but to the wage-worker it will connote happiness. It means more nourishing food; it means more wholesome dwelling conditions; it means more schooling for the children; it means more recreation ”

“ Especially in smaller communities and in the thinly settled outskirts of larger communities can one wagon or one motor truck often render the service now requiring one express wagon or motor truck and one post office wagon or motor truck. On less crowded routes and on less crowded trips, one railroad car can often render the service now requiring an express car and a railway post office car. ”

“ The express companies of the United States are unique organisms, and have no counterparts in any country outside of North America. In Europe, their services are performed by the parcel-posts or by the railroads themselves, often in conjunction with collecting and delivering companies. ”

“ The example of the Railroad Administration indicates the widespread services in lessening want or even in increasing comforts which Government control brings in its wake—the raising of all wages to that level below which a decent standard of living cannot be maintained and the abolition of artificial and undemocratic special wage privileges of sex or color in favor of equal pay for equal work. ”

“ The adequacy of the compensation would naturally entail much discussion—on the one side would stand those insisting that the Government pay for only the contemporaneous value of the physical property taken over; and on the other side would stand those insisting that the contracts with the railroads, good will, and other intangible assets of the express companies possess true value despite their intangible nature and should accordingly be purchased. ”

“ COST OF LIVING
A moment's reflection is sufficient to show that a Government postal express would make express facilities available to a far greater number of persons than are served at present by the express companies. For the Government postman and the Government post office cover the country as a whole—the express companies operate only along railroad, electric, steamboat and stage-lines. ”

“ Lower rates mean increased business; and in an agency which has developed the field at its disposal so inadequately as have the express companies, each additional unit of business can be handled at a lower cost and hence at a greater profit than each previous unit. This consideration was the primary one advanced by the Interstate Commerce Commission in ordering 16% reduction in the express rates in 1914. ”

“ But it is the extension of the express facilities to just that element of the population living off the railroads and on the rural post routes in which lie the greatest potential benefits that an express service can render to the nation. For, speaking by and large, most of this population is engaged in farming; and, conversely, possibly the majority of the producers of foodstuffs in the country live off the railroads and on the rural post routes. ”

“ The consolidation of effort, the reduction in the number of separate express agencies, the minimizing of accounting, the simplification of management, the pooling of equipment and facilities,—these administrative reforms should result in a marked decrease in relative operating expenses. The transfer of control from a moneyed group—or rather from three moneyed groups—interested primarily in private profits to a public official seeking only service to the public, this similarly is a definite achievement. ”

“ A large majority of the 25,000,000 persons served by the rural postal delivery are still without express service. There is still little opportunity for the direct transmission of foodstuffs from the producer to the consumer which at the present time presents the most hopeful method of attacking the soaring cost of food. ”

“ The goods shipped are sent in express cars attached to passenger trains or on special express trains maintaining the speed of passenger trains. Because of the speedy transportation thus afforded, merchandise large enough to be sent as freight, such as machinery and live stock, is often forwarded by express; but by far the greater part of express traffic in normal times is composed of articles weighing less than one hundred pounds. The larger companies conduct their activities in foreign lands as well as in the United States ”

“ In Italy, the limit is 24 inches in any one dimension, although in certain cases packages 41 inches long are accepted. The limit in Denmark is 39 inches in any dimension. In France, the limit is 60 inches in any direction. With no limits upon weight and size, the parcel-post might handle the problem of especially cumbersome articles whose size is disproportionately large for their weight by following the example of the express companies, charging a special rate twice as large as the normal rate. ”

“ Greater distances, more sparsely settled territory, greater wealth, greater geographical specialization of function and hence greater need for integration between different sections, higher standards of living, more diversified demands—these are some of the features of the problem here as compared with the problem abroad which make an absolute comparison of express services valueless. ”

“ Finally, there are the hosts of miscellaneous items of operating expenses in which we must be led to expect saving by all other experience in consolidating similar agencies performing similar services. Some of these expenses might even be eliminated entirely under Government ownership and control. Such are the cost of superintendence and auditing, insurance, the cost of securing traffic commissions, advertising and law expenses, to say nothing of the profits paid stockholders in normal years. ”

“ All in all, the mileage covered by the express companies totals 307,400. On the other hand, the mileage covered by the postal system is 1,374,056. Of this amount, 1,112,556 represents the mileage of the rural routes alone, and the number of persons served by the rural routes in 1917 was more than 27,000,000. Of course, it is certain that not all of the persons along these more than one and a quarter million miles were deprived of the benefits of an express service, but it is equally certain that many of them were, and it is probable that the majority of them were. ”

“ On January 1, 1919, an increase of about 9% in express rates went into effect, making a total increase since the United States entered the European War of about 19%, this representing the only increase in express rates since the reduction of 16% ordered in 1912 and effective in 1914, and representing also a smaller increase in rates than was found necessary by the railroads in their freight traffic. ”

“ Consolidation of the express service with the postal service would result in a consolidation, not only of equipment, but also of personnel. If one truck does the work of two trucks, or four trucks of five, two truck employees can do the work of four, or eight of ten. ”