“ John Stuart Mill, one of the strongest reasoners in political economy, stated in an incisive sentence that “The community that contains the greatest diversity of industries will always be [119] the most prosperous and intelligent.” It would seem as if his vision were prophetic of our loved New England, where towns and villages contain within their borders the farmer, the manufacturer, the merchant, the teacher, living in useful harmony, and by their diversity of thought and action producing men equipped to accomplish the destiny of this wonderful land. ”

“ He says:
“Anyone who has stood in a German post-office, and has seen the constant stream of men, women and children, pouring in through the doors with packages of all descriptions and sizes, and lining up in never-ending rows before half a dozen and more receiving officials; who has watched heavy wagons driving up to the doors and depositing hundreds of packages, and who has noticed the mountains of parcels heaped up in rear rooms of the post-office, cannot but have been forcibly struck with the magnitude of the parcels post system of transportation in Germany.” ”

“ It is for us to urge, argue, even threaten that they be obeyed, but the appeal of the proponents of the parcels post bill that we punish the express companies by starting a government monopoly in opposition has about the same force to me as an invitation to jump from the frying-pan into the fire. The power is always ours to regulate by law, and the law is already ours. ”

“ Commercial centers are prosperous and important, in proportion as they have adequate, efficient and cheap transportation. This is as true of the country town with a single railroad line as it is of a continent’s metropolis with half a hundred great railroad systems pouring their tonnage into its terminals and with the ships of all the seven seas unloading their cargoes at its wharves.
It is an axiom that good, ample and cheap transportation actually makes commerce. The country town which has no railroad always wants one. ”

“ Is it a province of the government to correct abuses of private corporations, in transportation and other lines, by entering into competition with them, and using the power the entire people has given it, to force corporations to be less greedy? ”

“ Without trespassing too far upon the field of the sociologist, it may safely be assumed that an increased concentration of industry and population is far from desirable. Why then should the government take active steps to promote it? Would it not be better to allow the mail-order houses and local retailers to fight out their own battle for trade supremacy upon equal terms, on the basis of the survival of the fittest? ”

“ The truth is that it is not the political and financial influences of the express companies which keeps Congress from giving this nation a parcels post. It is the pathetic and benighted ignorance of a considerable section of our own people, who have been led to believe that the parcels post would injure them. It is well-nigh impossible to believe that there can still be millions of intelligent Americans who doubt that national prosperity must be promoted by every increase of the [88] facilities and cheapening of the cost of transportation. Yet there is such a section of the American public. ”

“ As it is, can we expect to make parcels post in this country a profitable scheme? With an average haul of 540 miles to a population of but 23 to the mile, is it possible to carry goods at less than 3c per pound at a profit, if it cannot be done in those thickly settled countries at a much higher rate?
If it cannot be done at a profit, why should the government undertake a scheme that will result in a loss? Rural free delivery is costing the country $28,000,000 more than it is getting for the service, and only about one half of the rural population is supplied with the service. ”

“ The thoughtful and progressive wholesaler and retailer believe that any rural parcels post bill will unmistakably impair, curtail and finally dissolve this relationship, which in reality is a partnership between the wholesaler and the retailer. The proposed parcels post legislation will gradually eliminate the country store and the very heart and pulse of country life. Believing this to be absolutely and unmistakably true, we should stand as a unit in opposition to any extension of the parcels post system, upon rural routes, even upon an experimental basis. ”

“ There are many manufacturers who are doing business along the regularly established lines, selling goods to the jobber or the retailer, who are not now seeking or advocating any change in the channels of trade, but those manufacturers would change their system and enter the field of the mail trade if the advantages advocated by others were gained for it. If the avalanche of mail shipments that would follow the inauguration of such a mail trade system were ever once started no one could foresee the end or define the limits of the evils it would ultimately accomplish. ”

“ No parcels-post could be established which would be self-supporting. The innate desire of the people to get something, as it were, for nothing, would soon express itself in a demand for a reduction of rates. No administration could be popular and at the same time effectively resist such a demand. It has been proved over and over again in history, that wherever a democratic body politic has undertaken to conduct a commercial enterprise of a public-service character, the demand for rates far below the cost of doing the business has seldom or never been successfully resisted. ”

“ Another objection to the parcels post is that its operation will add a tremendous force of government officials to the already swelling list. Excepting always that human hog who never votes, never reads, never thinks, but roots and grubs along, grunting out one single word, “Dollars,” which happily die with him, this objection should be considered by all thinking men. The stronger the intrenched force of the party in power, the more difficult will it be to effect needed reforms when stagnation in office produces disease. ”

“ Whether or not the railways are owned by the government does not touch the argument founded on the parcel post of other countries. If government ownership of railways lessens the cost of the postal service, it may be an argument that our Post-Office Department pays our railways too high a rate for transporting mail matter, but it has nothing to do with the character of the mail service our government should give our people. ”

“ And that the government will promote class legislation, for in seeking to favor the farmer who needs no such preferment, it will subsidize a commercial interest whose basic business principle is hostility to the best trade distribution.
Every thinking individual agrees that rural free delivery has been of great benefit, but the masses of the people do not agree that a financially unprofitable service shall be put upon its feet at the cost of the man who has been the mainstay of the farmer in season and out of season—the country storekeeper. ”

“ Perhaps in Australia the government enters into more radical schemes than in any other country. And this fact is being developed. That the extension of the control of industry and business, and the activities in every field of production and distribution is but an incentive for a greater demand on the government for further movements in the same direction. The outcome of such policies is a final ending up in complete socialism. Do we want our government to be a paternal one? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Rural parcels post is admittedly merely an entering wedge for extension along European lines. That would mean severe demoralization of our country towns which are dependent almost wholly upon the farmer trade for existence, and which afford the farmer a good home market for every dollar’s worth of products he has to sell. If he does not buy his supplies where he sells his products, he not only demoralizes the business of his home town, but he also deprives himself of his home market. ”

“ Passing from the consideration of these elusive and mendacious appeals by self-seeking interests, I ask your attention to what in my judgment are positive objections to the parcels post, objections that are not based wholly on dollars and cents, but on the broader principles of humanity that are above the fleeting tribulations of our little hour, and whose laws of action create or destroy states or nations as they are applied wisely or unfortunately. ”

“ The people who oppose the parcels post are the innocent and unwitting dupes of the express monopoly. This is the one point in the parcels post argument that cannot be too constantly emphasized. When the dupes are brought to understand their true interests, Congress will not dare stand for a single session as the protector of express graft. ”

“ But the disparity between the domestic parcels post of the United States and of foreign countries is greater than is warranted by the length of the average haul. No fact is better established in the science of transportation than that the cost of transporting an article bears little relation to the distance transported. But if the density of population should fix the rate of postage and the limit of weight in a domestic parcels post, then surely we should have a lower rate of postage and a higher weight limit than those countries in which the population is not so dense as is ours. ”

“ Again, what justice is there in any law that proposes government aid to the man whose product weighs eleven pounds, or measures within certain cubic inches, and denies the same relief to another citizen and taxpayer whose product necessarily exceeds these limits? If this is not special legislation bestowing subsidy or patronage on the few at the expense of the many, then what is it? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Up to its limits, the humblest citizen on the most out-of-the-way rural route is guaranteed the transport of his supplies and his produce at the same rates as the biggest corporation in our greatest metropolis. These rates moreover, may be steadily reduced with the improvement of our transport machinery and its administration. And yet by our own limitation of this mighty service we deny ourselves its use almost altogether in local traffic, and in through traffic confine it to parcels of less than 6 ounces. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Small wonder that the express companies are fighting with every resource against the parcels post. They constitute one of the greatest groups of financial power in the country. They are united firmly. Most of the companies are large stock-holders in the others. Thus the United States Express Company was shown by the report of the Public Service Commission of New York, issued in 1908, to be capitalized at $10,000,000. Of this, the Adams Express Company owned nearly $1,000,000, the American Express Company exactly $1,000,000, and the Southern Express Company, $70,000. ”

“ In modern transportation methods, as, for instance, those in vogue in Germany, this expense is so trifling as to be scarcely worth considering. Freights move in Germany on a uniform tariff, based entirely upon bulk, weight, and distance, discrimination is impossible, and any shipper can learn in a moment, by referring to the table, the exact freight charge to any point, and can ship knowing that his competitors must pay the same price for the same service. ”

“ If the universal experience of humanity counts for anything, then the antiquated parcels post, such as we have, aids the catalogue house and the modern parcels post puts it out of business and keeps it out of business. ”

“ There is nothing in the world to prevent just the sort of a plan, which is thus held up to our horror and execration, from being carried out now, except that it would not pay. The mail carriers on rural and star lines not only have the authority, but they would be very glad to have the opportunity of delivering packages along their routes which solicitors for catalogue houses might deliver to them. And, furthermore, they can now, no doubt would be glad to, take packages of any size; whereas a rural parcels post only provides for packages up to 11 pounds. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There would be some shadow of excuse for refusing to accept so great a convenience as the parcels post if, in accepting it, we would destroy a large investment in the business of the express companies. But, in fact, we would not destroy any legitimate values in these companies. They own practically nothing on which they would lose a dollar. ”