Vol. LXIX. No. 4072 NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 12, 1910. weekly, li.oo per year. 
WANTED—A PARCELS POST. 
The Deficit and the Express Companies. 
The purpose of the Government from the very first 
was to secure and hold the monopoly of the business 
of transporting and delivering mail, which is plainly 
a beneficent one. Section 3892 of the Revised Statutes 
of the United States uses this language: “No person 
shall establish any private express for the conveyance 
of letters or packets, or in any other manner cause or 
provide for the conveyance of the same by regular 
trips or by stated periods, over any post route which 
is or may be established by law, or from any city, town 
or place between which the mail is regularly carried; 
and every person so offending —” etc. Section 3985 
provides penalties against the owner, driver, conductor, 
master “or any other person having charge of any 
stage coach, railway car,” etc. This language is as 
precise and exact as it can be made. If it means 
do now, and a large part of what they pocket now, 
in carrying short hauls, would go to the Post Office 
Department where it was intended to go when the 
statutes were first put upon the books. The post office 
business is like any other. It cannot pay dividends 
when the express companies take all the profitable 
part of the work, and leave all the unprofitable part. 
When we get a parcels post, as we will in time, the 
letter rate will go to one cent, the present express 
rates will be greatly cut, and instead of a so-called 
deficit we will have a substantial dividend. 
In giving opposing arguments they would have it 
appear that mail cannot be handled as cheaply as ex¬ 
press. This is far from the truth, provided the Post 
Office Department gets the short haul packages as well 
as the long ones. It is true that the equipment in the 
mail service is more expensive, but it is equally true 
that the men in the mail service handle fully 10 
pieces to one by the express system in any given time. 
to the proper run from which it would be delivered. 
What makes these long shipments unprofitable is be¬ 
cause nearly all the short ones go to the express com¬ 
panies, while the Post Office Department takes the 
long haul at what the express companies get for the 
short haul. It certainly is very plain which method 
is the simpler, and under equal conditions it will be 
just as much cheaper also. Look at the whole propo¬ 
sition as you may and it appears plainly that the ex¬ 
press companies take all the cream and the Post Office 
Department the skim-milk, and mighty blue milk at 
that. Are we going to abandon all packages, and 
carry letter mail only? Are we going to pay a high 
rate of postage, have an increase .on periodicals, and 
let the express ■ companies watch us pay the resulting 
deficit while they pay dividends, each one of which 
would put the Post Office Department on a paying 
basis ? 
The higher the postal rate, the more traffic the ex- 
THE GREAT ALL-PURPOSE COW-A LINE OF MAINE SHORT-HORNS. Fig. 443. See Page 1060. 
anything, it means it is unlawful to receive or carry 
any letter or packet which is mailable. Anything 
weighing less than four pounds is mailable, and there¬ 
fore mail, and is covered by statute. It is plain that 
practically the entire business of the great express 
companies is contrary to law. If the penalties men¬ 
tioned in the statutes were inflicted every driver of an 
express wagon, every local agent, every messenger en¬ 
gaged in express service, every conductor of a train 
hauling express as well as the stockholders of the road 
would be liable. The express business is a gigantic 
graft. It'robs the Post Office Department of all the 
profitable part of the business, and pockets the millions 
of revenue derived from it. The Adams Express 
Company alone paid the enormous amount of tiventy- 
foar million dollars extra dividends in one year. This 
was 200 per cent of the regular dividend. There is 
every reason to believe that other companies paid 
equally as much, if not more. The profits from parcels 
post would not only give us a surplus, but also a 
one-cent letter rate. With a parcels post the express 
companies would not he able to pay the dividends they 
Let us compare the two systems of transporting pack¬ 
ages. All shipments going by express, whether a 
single article or more, are accompanied by a bill of 
lading. These bills are checked with the article 
shipped by each and every messenger through whose 
hands the article passes. If for any reason the bill 
of lading is not accompanied by the article it is so 
endorsed and sent to the next, messenger until it 
finally reaches its destination, the messenger who has 
the article forwarding it in the usual way. In a long 
shipment it passes through many hands, and must of 
necessity be slow and tedious work, and limiting the 
number of pieces handled greatly. On every run it 
gets on it gets handled in precisely the same way. 
Now let us see how it would be handled by mail. 
We will suppose this parcel is on large run out of New 
York City, and destined for a point in California. 
-The clerks on this run would put it in sack labeled 
to run in either northern or southern California, ac¬ 
cording to its location in the State. This would then 
never be opened until it reached that run, where it 
would be worked for the second time and distributed 
press companies get and the less satisfaction they will 
give. Look over the “Publisher’s Desk” of The R. 
N.-Y. and you can learn of their methods every week, 
if indeed you never had any personal experiences with 
them. The men in the mail service have a record of 
one error in 18,000 pieces handled. Wouldn’t that be 
something to compare the work of express companies 
with? Let us have a parcels post, not only the long 
hauls but also the short ones, and we will have a 
means of transportation which cannot be beaten for 
cheapness, efficiency, and safety. Even the few parcels 
going through the mails now are not properly taken 
care of, not through the fault of the men handling 
them, but because of a lack of means of handling 
safely. This is just another proof that the whole 
thing is dominated by the express people, and all sorts 
of discouragement is given the public merely to patron¬ 
ize the express companies instead of the mails. You 
can rest assured that this sort of things is not going 
to stop until we have a parcels post and stop with it. 
The first letters carried to Alaska cost $450 each to 
deliver. The profit on the short-haul letters is so 
