The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1879-01-18 00:00:00

A PARCEL POST.
(From the Pall Mall Gautte )

"Sir Rowland Hill deserves to be remembered in the future
not merely as A very distinguished public servant, or as an
organizer of remarkable ability, or even as the author of an
immense publics benefit, but as a man of extraordinary
imagination. To foresee the penny post was in some re-
spects a more wonderful thing than to devise how it should
be brought into existence. Professor Jevons is not a Sir
Rowland Hill in this respect, but he makes good use of
Sir Rowland Hill's experience in his article, on 'A State
Parcel Post ' in the current number ,of the Contemporary
Review. Ile remembers how little was expected from
the penny post in comparison with what Sir Rowland
Hill expected from it, and still more in comparison
with what has since been realised; and he claims the right
to argue from analogy that what has already happened in the
case of the penny post may be confidently looked for in the
case of a parcel post. It is true there is an element of
sentiment, and even of romance, about the penny post
whim does not extend to the notion of a parcel post. To
get a letter may mean anything; to get a parcel ordinarily
only means some material want supplied. But the
supply of material wanks, when it is prompt, regular,
anti cheap, is a very important element in life; and
Professor Jevons is at some pains to indicate in how
many ways the establishment of a parcel post would put us in
possession of this element. 'The Post-office Authortties,' he
says, find that every new receptacle for letters which they
set up increases morreepoudence by a certain amount;
the trouble of going a hundred yards to poet his letter stops
many a letter-writer. So there are endless numbers of
parcels which we should send and receive it we knew thee
for a small calculable charge we could deposit them in a
neighbouring shop or baud them over to a cart passing daily
at a fixed hour with a feeling of certainty that such parcels
would be dropped at the right doors in any part of the
kingdom.' Professor Jevons specifies several classes of par-
cels which might be expected to be posted in enormous num-
bers. Even as it is, it is very much more common than
it was to deal with shops at a distance. The village
grocer or the village linendraper has been almost
superseded as regards the better class of customers.
Tue sending of goods into the country has become
a large item in the business of many London shops; and if
carriage were more rapid and cheaper, and charged accord-
ing to a fixed and known tariff, this tendency would greatly
increase. We may feel sorry for the small shopkeepers
whose destiny it is to be thus crowded out of life; but it is
useless to blink the fact that this seems to be their destiny.
If a box of tea or a parcel of calico can be posted to any part
of the country by dealers in London or Leeds or Glasgow for
a trifling advance on its cost on the spot, the middlemen
and middlewomen who receive these parcels and redistribute
them to their neighbours must lose some of Shea. business
If life said that goods are wanted in smaller quantities than
a dealer can profitably send to A single customer the alas wer is
that this objection belongs to a time when there is no parcel
post. Given that one is set up, with charges calculated, as in the
case of parcels they would have to be, according to distance,
and it would be easy and cheap to send small orders as well
as large ones. In some kinds of produce, such as batter,
poultry, and Devonshire cream, there is already a consider-
able trade done in this way—a trade which the establish-
ment of a parcel post would both increase and develops.
The things that now keep it down are mainly the cost of
carriage and the uncertainty of delivery, and in both these
respects a parcel post would make a vast difference.
But the system would not in all cases tell against
the retail trader. In some respects he would derive
direct benefit from it; because it would enable
him to get his supplies from the wholesale houses more
cheaply and promptly. • In large towns the shop-keepers
would be enabled to dispense with A large part of their
carrying staff. Two parcel posts a day would satisfy the
exigencies of almost all trades. To these modes of utilizing
a parcel post may be added all the small needs that con-
stantly arise: the books to be got from or sent to the cir-
culating library, the parcel of music to be passed from one
friend to another, the birthday or Christmas or wedding
present—all the numberless things that people want to send,
or to have sent them, ant whicn, as it is, they constantly
neither give nor receive, because there is no easy, certain,
and cheap method of carriage at their command.
"Professor Jevons spends some time in endeavouring to
show that the existing methods do not possess any one of
these recommendations. Into this part of the inquiry there
Is no need, we think, to follow him; every one will be wil- '
ling to take this much of his ease as proved. That when we
have a parcel to send we neither know where to take it,
what to pay for it, when it will get to its journey's end,
nor how much extra will have to be paid when it gets there,
are among the commonplaces of every-day life. A matter
more open to dispute is the possibility of making the change
which would deliver us from all these uncertainties. Pro-
fessor Jevons enumerates four conditions as requisite for.the
successful management of industrial operations by the
State :—That the efficient connection ot the operations
I to be dealt with should be beyond the reach of private
enterprise; that the operations themselves should, be of an
exceedingly routine character ; that they should be performed
under constant and interested criticism; and that there
should be but little capital expenditure. All these requisites
would be united in a parcel post. The Post-office would take
over the pared business of the railway companies and of the
various parcels delivery companies, while contracts would be
made with the existing carriers for the use of their stock of
carts and horses. It would be convenient, were it possible,
to have a tariff which should be uniform as regards distence
and only vary as regards weight. But Professor Jevons shows
that 'scheme parcels are concerned this is impossible, as the
cost of transit Increases Bo greatly with the increase of the
distance travelled that the weight of parcels would have to
be inconveniently restricted or the charge for short distances
made oppressively high. lie would therefore have tariff
maps isiued by the postal authorities, on which elides
should be printed indicating the distances from the par-
ticular place chosen as the centre. Every town or consider-
able village might leave a eel of circles of its own,
and as minute differences are of no account in a general
system of conveyance, it would only be necessary to
measure the distance as the crow flies. The minimum
charge Professor Jevons would fix at Si., for which
be calculates that a parcel weighing 51b, might be carried
fifty miles. A parcel of the same weight might be carried
GOO miles for 10d., or one of 50 lb. might go 100 miles for the
same sum Of the cost of establishing a parcel post Pt o-
lessor Jevons declines to give any precise estimate; but he
is of opinion that it would not amount to more than three or
four times that of the postal telegraphs. Those to whom
this seems a large outlay he reminds that while 'the risk
would be comparatively small ' the advantages and profits
would be 'immense and almost certain.' The public ought
to be grateful to Professor Jevons for suggesting this scheme.
It is not easy to bring a Government to the point of under-
taking anything at once large and novel; and even the
wonderful achievements of the Post-office were forced
upon it, as it were, at the point of the sword.' But if the
public will give a little thought to the subject—it is, after
all, only giving a little thought to their own convenience—
they can bring pressure to bear on the Post-office for its
own good, as they hale done on other occasions. What is
chiefly needed is to get it into people's heads that here is
this very great benefit perfectly within their reach if they
will but hold out
_their hands for it with sufficient energy
and persistence."