70 



AUSTRIA-HUNGARY. 



foreign countries similarly situated 4 d. A regula- 

 tion that benefits Great Britain more than other 

 nations legalizes the practice, that has existed 

 only by international courtesy, of forwarding, 

 closed mail bags to ships of war on foreign sta- 

 tions. Postal cards of one country posted in 

 another will not, as heretofore, be suppressed, 

 but will be forwarded and delivered to the 

 addressee as unpaid letters, on which letter, 

 postage is to be collected. Hereafter letters can 

 be posted on board mail packets by affixing 

 stamps of the country to which the ship belongs, 

 unless she is in port, in which case it must be 

 the stamp of the country to which the post be- 

 longs The post-office in Bast India and some 

 other countries not only forwards consignments 

 of merchandise in suitable packages, but the 

 price payable on delivery may be collected by 

 the letter carrier and remitted through the post- 

 office to the consignor. The international mail 

 service has now been made available for this 

 purpose to countries that have adopted or shall 

 adopt this custom. The practice of stamping 

 the name and address of the sender on the ad- 

 dress side of a postal card gains space for a 

 longer communication on the blank side. By 

 a new regulation the signature and address may 

 be written. Till now correspondence in transit 

 to countries outside the Union has been charged 

 so much per letter; but by the new treaty the 

 Union countries agree to transmit mails to 

 non-Union countries at an average rate for 

 sea transit, to be fixed at triennial periods 

 on the basis of the statistics of traffic, as 

 in the case with Union correspondence. This 

 change will enable the countries of the Union 

 to establish moderate uniform rates of post- 

 age to all places outside the Union. The maxi- 

 mum dimensions of packets of merchandise, 

 samples, patterns, specimens, etc., admissable to 

 the mails have by a former rule of the Union 

 been 20 centimetres in length, 10 in width, and 

 5 in thickness, or approximately 8 by 4 by 2 

 inches. By a special arrangement between the 

 United States, France, Great Britain, Italy, Bel- 

 gium, Switzerland, Portugal, Greece, Luxem- 

 burg, Argentina, and Japan samples could pass 

 between those countries in packages not exceed- 

 ing 30 by 20 by 10 centimetres, or 12 inches in 

 length, 8 in width, and 4 in thickness, and of the 

 maximum weight of 12 ounces. These larger 

 limits of size have been adopted for the whole of 

 the Union, though the conventional limit of 

 weight remains 8 ounces. The representatives 

 of countries in which wine, oils, indigo, madder, 

 and other dye stuffs and substances that might 

 escape and damage letters were unsucessful. as 

 they had been at the previous congress at Lis- 

 bon in' 1885, in securing the admission to the 

 letter mails of samples of such articles, which 

 .must continue to be sent by parcel post to coun- 

 tries that exclude them from their letter mail 

 bags. In some countries the law makes the 

 postage on unpaid or insufficiently prepaid mail 

 matter, when it has not been collected from the 

 addressee, recoverable from the sender. The 



convention binds the governments of countries 

 of the Union to introduce such a law if they 

 have not one already in force. Reciprocity was 

 also arranged for, after a long discussion, in re- 

 gard to the detection and punishment of frauds 

 on the postal revenue by means of counterfeit or 

 cleaned stamps. The plenipotentiaries undertook 

 in behalf of their Governments to have a meas- 

 ure for the punishment of forgery of foreign 

 stamps presented to their respective legisla- 

 tures. The Congress discussed details of internal 

 postal administration, and revised and elaborated 

 the former agreements relative to the interna- 

 tional parcel post, money orders, registered let- 

 ters, the collection of bills and drafts, subscrip- 

 tion to newspapers and periodicals, and certifi- 

 cates of identity for travelers. The rate of pay- 

 ment for international money orders was fixed 

 at 1 per cent., and for small sums the minimum 

 charge was reduced from 40 to 20 pfennigs that 

 is, 10 cents. The limit was raised from 500 to 

 1,000 francs. A clearing-house scheme for the 

 adjustment of balances of postal accounts 

 through the medium of the International Bureau 

 at Bern was adopted at the suggestion of the 

 German Postmaster-General. Mr. Wanamaker's 

 idea of an international postage stamp, offered 

 without preliminary notice and without the 

 elaboration of a working scheme, was regarded 

 as impracticable, in view of the difficulties aris- 

 ing from differences in currency and varia- 

 tions in the rates of exchange. One of the 

 advantages would be that it would enable a 

 writer to inclose a stamp in his letter, and 

 thus insure a reply without putting a foreign 

 correspondent to expense for postage. The 

 British and the Indian delegates suggested 

 plans for furthering this feature of the 

 scheme by means of prepaid reply stamps on 

 the principle of return post cards, and the Brit- 

 ish delegate moved to refer these proposals and 

 the American scheme, in so far as it related to 

 prepaying the answer to a letter, to the Inter- 

 national Bureau for examination. The chief 

 of the German postal administration, Dr. von 

 Stephan, being opposed to the least step toward 

 removing the sentimental barriers between na- 

 tions, argued strongly against this motion, which 

 was rejected. It is not unlikely that a reply- 

 paid postage stamp may be instituted in the 

 postal intercourse between the United States, 

 the United Kingdom, the British colonies, and 

 India. Throughout the session of the congress 

 the delegations from the United States and 

 Great Britain generally approved and worked 

 for the same objects, and were supported by the 

 representatives from India and Canada, and, in 

 most cases, by the Egyptian delegate, although 

 it had been suspected in the beginning that the 

 refusal of England to organize sorting offices on 

 mail steamships, such as have been instituted 

 for the convenience of the American postal au- 

 thorities on the German packets, might lead the 

 American delegates, William Potter and Capt. 

 Brooks, to favor Germany's side in contentious 

 questions. 



