o40 A.XM A I. i;i;i'n|;i' ol' Till'; Off. Dov. 



creased over 1,0()(),(I()U miles, eiifailiii<; an additional cos! ol' nearly 

 $600,000. Dnring the same year the droj) letter rate in cities having 

 (arricr service Mas icdnccd from 2 ccnis to 1 cent and the ])ostal rate 

 on bi-weekly and monthly publications placed at a uniform rate 

 of I cent a pound, just one-fourth what is paid in our country, yet 

 the Canadian Postal Department showed a surplus of nearly |],000,- 



000 for that year. 



A recent writer states that he had been an assistant postmaster 

 in Wisconsin for nearly 27 years, under five postmasters, and that 

 with a single excejition, and that for only a short time, not one 

 of these postmasters ever had so much as a chair or desk in the 

 office or ever knew anything about its management; that the work 

 was dime by paying an assistant postmaster one-half the salary 

 received by the postmaster. Why not cut out these sinecure ])ost- 

 niasterships and helj) reduce that deficit? Then put the Aveighing 

 and payment to railroads on an equitable basis; in short, put good 

 business methods into our postal management, and this deficit Avould 

 soon disappear. There are some 40,000 rural delivery wagons traveb 

 ing the roads of our country, each one carrying less than one-fourth 

 of a load. Give us the parcels post and these carriers something 

 to haul and the postal deficit will look out for itself. 



It is argued that the country merchant opposes the parcels post 

 on the ground that he cannot then com[)ete with the great mail order 

 houses of the cities. Last year J grew a few i)oiatoes on a dry hill- 

 side among young trees. No rain fell and the })lants stood still. 

 At harvest time the potatoes were few and small. The cost was 

 high. If I took them to <mr countiy store-keeper and tell him these 

 conditions, saying that 1 can not compete in price with the grower 

 who found conditions more favorable and that he should pay me 

 .Ijil.OO ])er bushel instead of 30 cents or 40 cents which he may be pay- 

 ing, what will his answer be? If he tells me that he cannot buy and 

 sell merchandise as cheaply as a man 500 miles away in a distant 

 state with excessive rents and clerk hire to pay, what answer have 



1 a right to give? But I believe this objection is groundless. It 

 often happens that for the need of some small article which cannot 

 be had at the country store, or upon which the price asked is ex- 

 cessive, the farmer makes up an order of sufficient size to warrant 

 a freight shipment, sending it to a mail order house, when if he 

 could have had the one article sent at reasonable cost by parcels post 

 he Avould have limited his order to that and bought the rest from 

 the home store. Just so long as we ])ermit corporate interests to 

 dominate this question just so long will we do without this needed 

 reform. It is time that we sj)eak in no uncertain language and de- 

 mand this right. 



Few of us feel that we know much about the tariff, and sometimes 

 we wonder, when we think of the recent debate on this subject in 

 Congress, whether any one knows much about it. If we have arrived 

 at any conclusion I think it has been that this matter ought no 

 longer to be the football of party politics or the grab bag of private 

 interests; that it ought to be removed entirely from political manipu- 

 lation and turned over to a commission of men trained by study 

 and experience to arrive at just and equitable conclusions. In other 

 AAords, that there ought to be a tariff commission which should 

 settle the question of duties upon imported goods. 



