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Show UNCLE SAM HAS WORLD'S CHEAPEST POSTAL SERVICE The United States' has the cheapest postal rates in the world according ac-cording to Postmaster General Harry S. New who says in the current issue of the National Republic: "To those who complain of the rates of postage in the United States, let it be said that ours is the cheapest postal service in the world. I have seen statements publicly dmae, extolling the services of the London post office and stating that the English housewife feels absolute security in ordering at 1 0 o'clock in the morning from a provision pro-vision store ten miles away, the supplies for her evening dinner. The British service is good excellent but that statement is purely fanciful. fan-ciful. I have the authority of General Williamson, the Director of the British Postal Service, for saying that there is no such! practice in England and that there never has been. Without meaning to institute comparisons, our parcel post service gives in some respects more than the British. The English weight limit is eleven pounds to the package, while we will take one at seventy pounds for the first three zones and fifty pounds for the others. The unit cost of a parcel transaction in the United States is I am quite certain, cheaper than that in any other country of any considerable side. The cost ascertainment shows that for the year 1923 the postal service handled 23,054,831,638 pieces of mail matter of all kinds and that the average expenditure per piece was 2.49 cents plus. What did. this expenditure represent? It represented first the collection of the piece of mail where not actually deposited in a post office; the handling of that piece in the postoffice of origin; its distribution there; its delivery from the Railway Mail Service to the postoffice of destination, and its hauling there and its delivery either directly by carrier or other service to the addressee, 1 whether on a city, rural or star route. It represented an average rail-! way haul of 442 miles. This was the average distance carried of every piece of mail committed to the service. For all this service the department depart-ment expended on the average less than two, and one half cents per piece." |