Parcels post

“ The great retail houses, in increasing numbers, employ the parcels post for sending home the purchases of customers, instead of using their own delivery wagons. They find the government does the work for them cheaper and better than they can do it for themselves. The price charged, which is paid, of course, in postage stamps, varies from two cents for a parcel weighing under two pounds to twenty-two cents for a parcel not exceeding eleven pounds. ”

“ Our parcels post with foreign countries shows beyond argument that the postage rate in our domestic parcels post should be not more than one-third of what it is, at the utmost, and that the weight limit should be several times what it is. The domestic parcels posts of other countries and of Australia and New Zealand show also beyond argument that the postage rate in our domestic parcels post should be only a fraction of what it is and that the weight limit should be several times greater. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Such a rural parcels post as is thus proposed would unquestionably be helpful in building up the trade of the merchants in the small cities and towns and of very great value and advantage to the people who get their mail at the country post offices and along country routes. ”

“ The local merchant who conducts his business well has nothing to fear from the mail-order house. Farmers and citizens prefer dealing with the home man, and the parcels post will give him many advantages that will enable him to increase his trade to proportions which are now impossible. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 a large percentage of citizens who strongly advocate an enlargement of the parcels carrying service performed by the government. A number of foreign countries have for years maintained parcels post systems on broad gauge plans; in fact, in Great Britain, in Germany and a few other countries, the parcels post is conducted in a manner so as to almost monopolize the express business. But in these countries conditions, both geographically and commercially, are vastly different from conditions that obtain within the United States. ”

“ It is urged that the same rate should be charged by Uncle Sam for carrying merchandise by parcels post from a New England factory to the distant mountain mining camps in Idaho or Oregon, or to the prairie towns of Texas, as would be charged for delivering the same package from the same factory by local trolley car service to a nearby postoffice in the immediate suburbs of the New England city where the factory happened to be located. ”

“ The parcels-post rates in foreign countries are very moderate. In Germany, for instance, weight and distance determine the amount of the charge. The distance charge is fixed by means of zones, the first zone having a radius of ten geographical miles from the sending point, the second twenty, etc. The charge for an eleven-pound parcel is six cents within the first zone and twelve cents for every greater distance. For parcels weighing more, the charge is the same for the first five kilograms, but varies proportionately for each additional kilogram. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ The previously existing agreement for parcels weighing as much as eleven pounds each, providing for insurance and the prepayment of customs' duties, continues to be carried on by the American Express Company. [288] Since the establishment of the inland parcel post the question of collecting the value of the parcels on delivery, if the sender and the recipient so desire, has often been raised. ”

“ If such a farce can be seriously thought of as a “test” of what use and economic value a nation-wide parcels post service would be to our people, even to the people residing on the test routes, it will take some graduate of a foolery school or foreman in a joke foundry to so think of it.
Let’s see. A farmer may send a jar of butter, box of eggs, crate of fruit or vegetables, etc., to the village storekeeper and get his pay for the consignment, “in trade” usually. By writing the storekeeper an order, postal card or letter, the farmer may get on the next round of the carrier what he desires. ”

“ It is therefore to the advantage of [Pg 216] the public to divide a heavy parcel, though such a proceeding obviously increases the cost to the administration of its handling and transmission. The despatch of heavy parcels by post is naturally discouraged, and the proportion of such parcels is decreasing. [452] Of the total number of parcels sent by post in 1900, more than 88 per cent. were less than 5 kilogrammes in weight, and the number of greater weight than 10 kilogrammes formed less than 3 per cent. ”

“ Your parcel is in the company of others, intended for all parts of the world, and the first step is to get the parcels to the various parts of the office from which they will be despatched to other destinations. Along the whole length of one side of the table is a wooden framework or sack holding the empty baskets. These ten baskets are labelled Scotch, Irish, Paddington, Foreign and Colonial, Delivery, Liverpool Street, 89Euston, King's Cross, Waterloo and London Bridge, Town, and the sorters stand between these baskets and the table laden with parcels. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The commercial advocates of larger bulk and lower rates by domestic parcels post for the shipment of merchandise by mail do not want either a distance rate or a system limited by territorial zones. They want the privilege of shipping from any factory or central store or warehouse, wherever located, anywhere in the United States, to any customer or consumer, at any postoffice, however remote or inaccessible, in any state or territory. The rate desired is a flat rate of so much per pound without regard to distance. ”

“ Parcels are accepted for localities not served directly by the contracting companies, but such parcels are conveyed only to the point served by railway nearest to the place of destination. It is left to the public to provide for their further transmission. In the case of parcels delivered only at the railway station, an advice of delivery is sent to the addressee by the company or their agents within twenty-four hours of the receipt of the [Pg 207] parcel. This advice is sent by post, and the postage, 5 centimes, is recovered from the addressee. ”

“ There are no communities which need improvement of transportation so much as the country towns which have been misled into opposing the parcels post. The country merchant has been made to believe that the parcels post would take his business away from him and give it to the mail-order house in the great city. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As we do not have many rural free-delivery routes in our sparsely settled intermountain country, I am of the opinion that a rural parcels post, if established, should also operate over the star routes which supply our country offices and our people in boxes en route, and therefore the bill which I introduced provides for such a service. ”

“ 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 United States post-office has always been an express service, although Congress long confined the business to sealed parcels of very small weights—not over 3 pounds—and at very high rates graduated according to distance, with no insurance whatever against loss or damage in the mails. In 1874, however, the business was extended over all kinds of merchandise in unsealed parcels at a common rate of one cent each two ounces, regardless at once of distance and of the volume of a patron’s business. ”

“ Nevertheless, practically all the organizations of wholesalers and manufacturers, besides many local commercial and civic associations, are opposed to the parcels post, and like the retailers, have been fighting it for years. ”

“ Even in our great cities they have no regular daily courses, save in a few business districts. If the ordinary city resident would dispatch a parcel by express, he must go after an express wagon on foot or by telephone. The post-man—our public expressman—comes to our doors one, two, three, four times a day, or oftener. We have but to substitute a machine post for our overburdened foot post and, with a perfected system of collection and delivery of insured parcels at reasonable rates, we shall have a postal express at hand, ready and competent to do our bidding on our own terms and conditions. ”

“ Finally you will discover that the currents of trade are running past your door rather than through it, and in that day your elimination becomes a certainty. In that [133] day also every wholesaler who has so long found in the country merchants a sure and steady outlet will know even better than he knows now that rural parcels post, and, much more, the general parcels post is a dangerous blow to country life. ”