Postal rate

“ Although occupied with other affairs, the reduction in the postal rate was not then dismissed from my thoughts. The interest it had excited induced me to read Reports, &c., on postal administration, and it was in the perusal of their contents that the question arose in my mind, whether the cost of a letter was affected by the distance it had to be conveyed.”—Note of a conversation with Sir R. Hill two or three years before his death, by Miss F. Davenport-Hill.—Ed.
[97] “Post Office Reform; its Importance and Practicability.” By Rowland Hill. Published by Charles Knight and Co., London. 1837. ”

“ While population increased from 1885 to 1910 only a little more than double, the revenue from the sale of stamps, etc., and the weight of second-class matter, each increased over 5 times. No other possible reason can be assigned for the increase in stamp mail, and the tremendous development of every branch of the postal business 5 times faster than the growth of population, than the increased circulation and influence of the newspaper and periodical press, brought about by the reduced postage rate. ”

“ If the people pay—have paid and are willing to pay—the actual cost of an efficient, honestly administered and managed postal service, that is all they should be asked or expected to pay.
But returning to the express companies’ raidings into the postoffice revenues, let me here assert what every observant citizen of intelligence knows: The express companies are today carrying millions of pounds of books—leather, cloth and paper bound books—at a rate for carriage and delivery materially below the government’s excessive rate of eight cents a pound. ”

“ The international parcel post has always been regarded as primarily commercial, [657] and the service has been deliberately restricted to small parcels on the ground that the conduct of an ordinary transportation undertaking is not a postal function, and that the admission of heavy parcels would render impossible the maintenance of the postal principle of uniformity of rate. ”

“ The adoption in numerous countries of the principle of uniformity of rate for inland postal traffic, and the enormous simplification of the system of rates and of their practical administration which it achieved, led naturally to an endeavour to effect a like simplification of the rates for postal traffic exchanged between the various countries. ”

“ In 1900, therefore, a special class of packets, named Geschäftspapiere, was introduced in the internal service of the German Imperial administration. Papers partly or wholly written, but not of the nature of private or personal communications, were admissible at a reduced rate of postage. [521] Except for local traffic the new rates were:—
Compared with the total postal traffic the number of packets passing at the reduced rate is quite small, but it is increasing, and is sufficiently large to indicate that the privilege affords a considerable advantage to the public. ”

“ I have discussed this second-class mail rate—the cent-a-pound rate for periodicals—elsewhere. With private companies (the express companies) carrying and delivering second-class mail matter for the average mail haul, at one-half cent a pound (and standing for a “split” with the railroads for one-half of that) , the question as to whether or not the government can carry mail matter without loss at one cent a pound, is not worth debating among men whose brains are not worn in their sub-cellars. ”

“ From the foundation of our national government, the people of the United States, through their representatives in Congress, have always determined the scope of their postal service, the pay of their mail carriers, their own postal rates; and from the first they seem to have provided for the postal transport of merchandise in very small sealed parcels at very high rates—by the act of 1792, 24 cents an ounce for distances up to 30 miles, higher rates for greater distances. In 1810 they fixed the postal weight limit at 3 pounds, and it so remained for many years. ”

“ It was urged also that the sample post rate was too high and was fenced by troublesome regulations; that the book rate was also too high; that there was no reason why the book trade should be favoured; that in respect to the mass of the people the charges were so high as to impose on the transmission of small articles the same sort of prohibition that was placed on the transmission of letters under the old postal system; that a comprehensive system could not be carried out by the railways until the railways would co-operate ”

“ The Post Office has recently absolutely entered into competition with the Railway Companies. As carriers, the Companies derived considerable profit from parcels. The Post Office, finding that railways afford the means of carrying any quantity of bulk, has seen fit to undertake the conveyance of books and other parcels at very reduced postal rates. If the Post Office should extend its operations a little further, it must be brought into absolute antagonism with the Companies. ”

“ Postal rates are simple, definite, and generally known; and every post office is a receiving agency. It is convenient to use the post, which offers the further advantages of quick transmission, and the greater degree of security attaching to a State institution. The line on which a postal service for small parcels can best be justified is that by the utilization of existing machinery for the disposal of additional traffic, not so large as to overburden or disorganize the practical arrangements, a useful public advantage can be secured without inordinate cost. ”

“ The cost of transmission by sea of a foreign letter in the British service is on the average 1⁄4d. Foreign rates are not, however, fixed on a simple cost basis. The reduction to a penny of the letter rate between Great Britain and all parts of the British Empire; between Great Britain, Egypt, and the United States; and between the United States and Germany and France, has been made from considerations of general advantage, political or otherwise, rather than from considerations of immediate profit or loss on the postal service. ”

“ It cannot be fixed at a really low level, because it is to be applicable to a parcel sent across the whole territory of a postal administration; and with such a parcel, even if weighing only 1 pound, the cost of transportation is an appreciable item.
The uniform rate for parcels is an expedient for smooth working rather than a scientific rate, and against the acceptance of uniformity of rate as a principle must be placed the fact that railway companies have not adopted it. The actual results of the uniform rate have not been altogether satisfactory. ”

“ That is figured at the 2nd class rate of 1 cent a pound. If Mr. Britt’s own estimate, on another page of the same report, that it cost the Postoffice Department 9 cents a pound to transport and handle second-class mail, is correct, which as previously shown it is not, then other departments of the government would be raiding the postal service revenues—revenues which private individuals, firms, corporations and governments subordinate, now alone pay—to the extent of more than $4,500,000 a year. ”

“ Elle est très appreciée du commerce dont elle facilite les opérations. Si l'on entre dans la voie de la taxation au poids, comme pour les articles de messagerie, ce sera un recul."—M. Mazoyer, Documents du Congrès postal de Rome, 1906, Berne, 1906, vol. ii., p. 393.
[610] The analysis relates to the British inland service in 1913-14.
[611] The number of packets sent at the blind post rate is very small comparatively (some 300,000 a year) , and those packets are therefore not considered separately. ”

“ When sent together with a letter, samples might be enclosed in sealed covers; but in order to enable the administration to maintain a control over the use of the privilege, the postal officials were empowered at discretion to require the sender to open such packets. [512]
In 1860, when the Austro-German Postal Union was renewed, the limit of weight for samples was reduced to 1⁄2 pound (15 loth) . Following this reduction the Prussian rates for samples were reduced in 1861: for samples weighing more than 2 loth only the rate for a double letter (according to distance) was to be charged. ”

“ The lowest rate reported was that in India, where the minimum charge was, and still is, for all distances, as low as three farthings; and though the weight thereby covered is certainly very small—being only about one-tenth of an ounce—yet on the one hand such restriction appears to produce little or no inconvenience to natives, and on the other hand it is more than counterbalanced by the vast extent of country over which a letter may be conveyed. The new postal system, which involved in effect the complete adoption of my plan, was established on the recommendation of a Commission of Inquiry. ”

“ Under the German-Austrian Postal Union, established in 1850, it was at first arranged that separate parcel rates should be charged by each administration to and from the frontier, according to its own inland rates. Later the rate was fixed at 2 pf. per pound for each 5 miles, to be charged by each administration concerned in the transmission. In 1857 one definite parcel rate was established for the whole territory of the Union, graduated according to direct distance, viz. 2 pf. per pound for each 4 miles, with minima of from 11⁄2 to 7 sgr. ”

“ There are many large concerns, like the mail-order houses for instance, promoters, jobbers, and dealers in special extensively advertised lines, whose actual letter postage amounts to many thousands of dollars a year. Such people naturally oppose any change in the postal service which might increase the postal deficit, even temporarily, because of their anxiety to have the letter rate reduced. ”

“ Neither the relatively small postage rate within a single state nor the moderate rate of the Postal Union, the establishment of which represented one of the most remarkable stages in the progress of civilization, would have been possible without these vehicles, as the always ready, cheap, and indefatigable bearers of our correspondence. ”

“ Parcel mails are in the international service frequently denied the privilege of rapid transmission accorded to letter mails. [658] The developments of the present war have emphasized the essential distinction to be drawn between communications on the one hand, and packages of goods sent by parcel post on the other.
The general basis of postal rates is naturally affected in some degree by the fact that the Post Office is a State undertaking, and the propriety of Government control deserves [Pg 329] consideration. ”

“ On the 1st January, 1899, also, the provisions of the Act which reimposed postage payment on newspapers and periodicals went into effect. This was An Act further to amend the Post Office Act (assented to 13th June, 1898) [158] which we have already quoted as being the Act authorizing the reduction in the domestic postage rate to 2 cents per ounce. The third section of this Act repealed section 26 of the Post Office Act and substituted the following therefor:—
26. ”

“ But perhaps the chief contentions of the publishers, which the Post Office was bound to some extent to admit, and would in any case find it difficult to meet, were the claim that newspapers create a vast quantity of first-class mail; and the claim that since the payment made to the railway companies in [Pg 162] respect of the transportation of the mail is based on a sliding scale, decreasing as the volume of traffic increases, the weight of second-class matter brings down appreciably the rate actually to be paid. ”

“ January 8th, 1849.—Some one has sent me, from New York, a copy of the American Postmaster-General’s Annual Report. Their reduction to two rates at Midsummer, 1845, has been very successful. Previously to that time the Post Office did not pay its expenses, and the distribution was curtailed from year to year in a vain attempt to make it pay. Now with extended distribution and reduced rates (on the average about half the preceding rates) the Post Office has a surplus income. The Postmaster-General recommends making the lower rate (5 cents = 21⁄2d.) ”

“ In 1912-13 the total number of parcels exceeded 130 millions.
The service affords a great public convenience, and the simplicity of its rates is an undoubted boon. The uniform rate has, however, proved unsatisfactory in some respects. At all points at which the traffic would be profitable, the Post Office is open to the competition of private enterprise; but for that part of the traffic for which the uniform rate must inevitably be unprofitable (unless it be fixed so high as to be exorbitant for short-distance and average-distance traffic) there will naturally be no competition. ”

“ The increase was partly due to what was, in one point of view, an untoward coincidence, viz., the concurrent [412] extension of the railway system. For though this tended greatly to the convenience of correspondents, and therefore to increase in the amount of correspondence, yet its effect in augmenting postal expenditure was quite startling. That an improvement which has so prodigiously cheapened the conveyance of passengers and goods should have greatly raised the cost of conveying the mails, however paradoxical, is demonstrably true, as indeed appears by the following simple statement. ”

“ The uniform rate favours such traffic, but the expense to the Post Office is disproportionate to the revenue. From the broader standpoint this is perhaps not altogether loss to the State, since by this means local industries are often brought in touch with markets which could not otherwise be reached, and the rural population is enabled to obtain from the towns many amenities not otherwise procurable. ”