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Show PARCELS POST. Backed by, the administration and bucked by th big express companies, Postmaster General Meyr will urge the establishment of a limited parcels i post before the next congress. Xobody knows what the result will be. Failure, probably; but if so it will result only in more agitation and more education. educa-tion. Failure followed the work of other postmasters general. Postmaster Bissell wanted a parcels post. and before him Wana maker and Vilas sought to inaugurate the system. Maybe it was suggested and urged by others before these. The parcels post is in reality a system of send- ' ing express packages- by mail at a special rate of postage. Other countries have adopted it with re- j suits so satisfactory that the United States seems j just a little behind the times. According to a state- j ment comparing' English parcels post rates and '.' American express rates, which seems authoritative, the transportation charges on a three-pound package pack-age from Xew York and London to Buenos Ayres are respectively $0.30 and 57 cents, a difference of $5.73 in favor of the British rate. Maybe this I little matter of $5.73 saving in transportation f charges on three pounds of goods accounts for the Z fact that Briton's maritime trade is the largest in the world and America's about the smallest. And it is probable American bottoms would be more numerous if transportation rates were more nearlyi f equal. The need of a ship subsidy to encourage) ', American ship builders might vanish, also, if the 57-cent rate superseded the $0.30 rate. In domestic business the comparison is quite as discouraging, the difference between Germany's ' parcels post rates and America's express rates being be-ing more than -5,000 per cent. That 5,000 per cent helps to pay dividends on watered stock, but it doesn't help out the people when they want to ship Christmas packages or anything else. I The economical distribution from the producer I to the consumer has received very little thought from the business interests of the country, except to get hold of the products in the transition and ! extort a profit, passing the goods through a half ' dozen middle men, wholesalers, jobbers and retailers, retail-ers, before the consumer is privileged to buy them. For instance, wool raised in Utah is shipped to the Xew England states, made into cloth, handled several sev-eral times as cloth, sold finally to a clothes maker, handled several times between the maker and the Salt Lake merchant, so that when it finally lands on a man's back at $35 or $4.) a suit, he is possessed pos-sessed of six or eight pounds of wool with about $10 worth of work on it and about $20 profit to some score of middlemen. It is not believed that the parcels post will eliminate elim-inate all this unnecessary profit taking, but it will be possible for big dealers and small retail merchants mer-chants to order small lei of goods and have them laid down in their stores at reasonable races. It is to be. expected that opposition of the express companies will be organized and powerful. The will enlist in their aid many small storekeepers who fear the menace of mail order houses should transportation trans-portation charges be materially reduced. Doubtless Doubt-less there are some grounds for this fear, but the small dealer whose buying judgment is such as to anticipate the wants ,of his trade has nothing to fear from any mail order house. Buying by mail is not so attractive to consumers as going into the store and seeing the goods before them. Besides, the small merchant under a parcels post system would lose very little compared to the gain which everybody would win. Two hundred andt fifty million dollars a year is the estimated saving which would accrue to the people, the consumers of goods, should the parcels post be inaugurated in the United States. That is about $3 for each inhabitant of the country. Of course there are millions of people who do not send or receive an express package in a year, and these consider it none Of their business what the charges of trans portation are. But these charges are added pro rata to the selling price of every article sold in a retail store, and the consumers pay the bill. Postmaster General Meyer is not insistent on having large packages go by mail. Ten pounds as a weight limit would suit him, and he would accept T five pounds if congress will allow only that much. . What he wants is a beginning. When the start is made the people will keep it going if they find V it an economical institution, and it will die a natural natu-ral death from lack of patronage if it is not. |
