Mail cart

“ A mail cart would be of little use in a country where there are no roads, but this strange cradle can be used instead of one. When the mother wants to go to the garden or call upon a friend, all she has to do is to take the cradle from the rope by which it is suspended, and hang it down her back with what we may call the handle of the bag over her head. ”

“ I discovered instances in which the serious expense of railway conveyance was incurred, when, speed being unimportant, a cheaper mode served equally well. It is obviously of no use to a place that its letters should arrive in the middle of the night, every purpose being answered if they come in time to be included in the earliest practicable delivery. Consideration of this led me to propose, in such cases, the substitution of mail-carts. In one such case this year the effect was an annual saving of about £800, and in one in the following year more than £2000. ”

“ Parcel-post packages are commonly very bulky. Such may now be mailed for local delivery and for delivery in the first, second, and third zones, that is, within three hundred miles of the place of mailing, if they do not exceed seventy pounds in weight, while packages not in excess of fifty pounds may be mailed to any address in the United States. The handling of these packages necessitates the use of entirely different character of equipment. As far as it is practicable to do so, this matter is segregated from mail of the other classes. ”

“ This is about double the present rate of pamphlet postage in the United States. The delivery of parcels by stage-coaches, railroads, and common carriers, is much more thoroughly systematized in that old country, with its dense population and limited extent, than it can be with us, on our vast territory, so new and so unfinished. Consequently, there is less necessity there for sending pamphlets by mail, and the thing is rarely done except in the case of small pamphlets, of an ounce or two weight, or in cases where despatch in transmission is important. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This system, which was suggested by the celebrated Rowland Hill, originated at a period in English postal history when the requirements of trade and commerce demanded a revisal of the code. Perhaps no man was better qualified for the purpose than was Mr. Hill. In 1839 railroad post-offices were in use for mail-bags. Each railway company provided a car, when desired to do so by the postmaster-general, for the exclusive use of the mails. These cars were fitted up with boxes to facilitate the distribution and reception of the mails. ”

“ Meyer’s recommendations comes from three sources, namely:
Large manufacturers, jobbers and other classes of business men who annually spend enormous amounts for letter postage.
Country merchants who are unduly alarmed over the growth [9] of the catalogue houses, and who fear that a parcels post extension will increase the mail order business to their detriment. ”

“ Now, even assuming for a moment, that every book parcel that the Post Office carries is abstracted from parcels which would otherwise be conveyed by railway, it is obvious that the companies would not sustain any loss by such parcels becoming part of the mail, if the Post Office paid to the companies for its mail rates only as high as the booksellers pay them for their parcels, in which, for the most part, such books would be conveyed, if they were sent at all. ”

“ In its daily 24-mile course, visiting over 100 families, the average rural post-wagon handles less than 26 pounds of mail per day, collected and delivered; it collects less than 1 pound. The average rural family posts hardly one merchandise parcel a year. Its total merchandise traffic dispatched and received is less than 10 parcels a year. The postal revenue from its entire merchandise traffic is less than 50 cents a year. The total cancellations of the average carrier in 1904 amounted to only $10.64 a month ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is estimated that the delivery division effects the delivery daily through the carriers assigned to the general office and to the various stations of approximately 5,000,000 letters, cards, and circulars, 800,000 papers, periodicals, and pieces of printed matter and small parcel-post packages, and 65,000 bulky parcel-post packages, or, in all, close to 6,000,000 pieces of mail of all classes. ”

“ According to one expert’s estimate, it is possible to carry the second-class mail matter for short distances on dense traffic routes, and in quantity lots to one address, that of a news dealer, for example, as is done for the average daily paper for the part of its circulation that goes by mail, up to 45 miles with little loss even at this low 1c a pound rate, though first-class mail at the rate paid by it can be transported nearly 5,000 miles before the service shows a loss, and post cards over 11,000 miles. ”

“ The chief opposition to the parcel-post came from the representatives of the retailers, who stand in constant fear of losing their business to the mail-order or catalogue houses. The business of these houses is very large, amounting in the aggregate to nearly $200,000,000 per annum, and there is perhaps some reason for the local merchants' apprehensions. The bulk of the mail-order traffic is, however, distributed as freight. But the country merchants were much alarmed, and there were doleful prophecies of the results of a parcel post. ”

“ One European enthusiast pronounced the establishment of the parcels post “a service to mankind only less splendid than that of the transmission of thought.”
[24]
In England it is claimed that the parcels post service would be a source of profit but for the amounts paid to the railroads for transportation, the share of 55 per cent of the receipts being regarded as exorbitant. Generally the parcels post is so joined with the rest of the mail service that its entire cost can not be counted.
The international business has grown to enormous proportions. ”

“ Today’s merchandising methods, the plethora of mass mailings subsidized by low postal rates, and the growth of the sale of large mailing lists as an industry in itself have changed the mailman from a carrier of primarily private communications, as he was in a more leisurely day, and have made him an adjunct of the mass mailer who sends unsolicited and often unwanted mail into every home. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With but few exceptions, the mails in which the missing letters and money packages should have been conveyed to New York, would have come from the East by the express night trains, over the Boston and New York Railroad. Upon those trains, the mails were in charge of the baggage-masters, the regular mail or "route agents" being confined to the way mail-trains running at different hours of the day. A variety of circumstances, besides their good reputation, conspired to avert suspicion from these baggage-men. ”

“ It is too often the case that persons of influence, in proposing a candidate for this responsible post, greatly undervalue the nature and importance of the duties to be performed, supposing that they involve merely the mechanical labor of delivering mail bags at the different post-office stations upon the route. The fact is, that the successful working of our postal machinery depends in no small degree upon the active, faithful, and intelligent discharge of the Route Agents' duties. ”

“ 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 following evening the movements of the suspected person were again watched, the Agent having a better knowledge respecting the exact nature and value of a portion of the [Pg 128] contents of the mail bags which were to be forwarded at that time.
Upon this occasion, the train was "on time," and the carrier a little later than usual, so the mails were placed directly upon the barrow, and wheeled by the baggage-master to an obscure part of the depot, more remote from observation, and less in the way of passers, than that where they were carried the previous night. ”

“ In the early days of the parcel-post it was used chiefly by the person who had friends or relatives in Europe and wished to send a present to them, but it is now being used very extensively in commercial transactions. By this means goods ordered from abroad are forwarded by the great mail-order houses, and the total volume of this business is large.
Much difficulty is experienced in inducing senders of mail matter to wrap it securely. ”

“ The principle that controls the average haul in the case of second-class matter would be reversed in the case of parcels post extension. The greater the distance the more remote the territory, the more sparse the population the larger would be the proportion of merchandise shipments by mail as compared with the whole volume of such shipments. ”

“ Packages began to arrive with insufficient postage, and the crippled girl's pocket money vanished with alarming rapidity. The letter carrier always delivered the daily budget of mail to the little maid under the trees when the weather permitted of her being at her post, and it chanced that for a fortnight after the answers to her endless chain began pouring in, she received her own mail, so no one but Allee knew her secret, and there was no one but Allee to help her out with her heavy postage bills. ”

“ Patrons who repeatedly fail to respond promptly to the carrier’s ring must be reported to the postmaster. Carriers must not enter any house while on their trips, except in the discharge of their official duties. Mail matter must not be delivered by carriers which has not passed through the post office or station with which they are connected. Mail matter intrusted to carriers must not be exhibited to persons other than those addressed, except on the order of the postmaster or some one authorized to act for him. Letters for delivery must not be carried by carriers in their pockets. ”

“ If these people have pressing need for any article of merchandise weighing over four pounds it cannot reach them, under existing law, by mail. They must order it sent by express and make the long drive to the nearest express office to get it. ”

“ These conditions are met by a system of distribution devised to meet just such needs, whereby congestion is relieved at one point and pressing demands accommodated at another, the various mail bag depositories under capable management rendering such necessary aid. The whole supply of bags has been handled as much as ten times in one year through these depositories without which the peculiar conditions of the service could not be met. Mountain carriers in the northwest require special pouches especially in the sections where snow shoes are needed. ”

“ And, if any person shall take any letter or packet, not containing any article of value, nor evidence thereof, out of a post-office, or shall open any letter, or packet, which shall have been in a post-office, or in custody of a mail carrier, before it shall have been delivered to the person to whom it is directed, with a design to obstruct the correspondence, to pry into another's business or secrets ”

“ In nothing perhaps will the advantages now offered by the Post-office, in connection with the packet service, be more appreciated by the public than in the reduced rates of postage. The following table shows the initial rates for letters to several places abroad in 1829 and in 1884: [81] —
If we were asked to point out a mail-packet of the present day as fulfilling all modern requirements in regard to the packet service, and showing a model of equipment in the vessels as well as order in their management, we would not hesitate to name the mail-steamers plying between Holyhead and Kingstown. ”