The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-07-01
WANTS ONE GENT
 POSTAL RATES Cheap Letter Post of Much More Importance Than Cheap Newspaper
 Post. CLASSES SHOULD
 BE CONSOLIDATED Cost to People Would Be Less and Efficiency of Service Improved.

gard to cheaper postal rates:
 | A one cent letter rate is a matter of universal demand. Everybody wants it. It will pay the full cost of the service rendered.
 But what shall be the unit of our one cent letter post? Shall it be a
 weight or a space unit, or shall It be
 determined by both space and weight? It has been suggested that all parcels
 inclosed in sealed government enyel- opes of a certain strength, size and
 shape, should have a common rate, re-
 gardless of their weight. If we had a general standardization of postal
 packets much time and expense would
 be saved both to the public and to the
 postoffice and the difference in weight
 of such packets made up of sealed en- lvelopes or boxes of certain definite
 strength, would certainly make little
 difference in the cost of their trans
 portation,
 If however, we are still to determine
 our postal units by weight alone, what shall be our one cent letter unit? Snall
 It be the one ounce unit of our General
 Merchandise Post, the two ounce unit
 of the Book Publishers Post, the four
 ounce unit of the Public Periodical land Newspaper Post, or the pound
 unit of the Periodical and Newspaper
 Publishers Post?
 Measured by the only just criterion 1.-the cost of the sevice rendered-one
 class of mail matter would seem to be lentltled to the same rate as another
 where the whole business Is done by
 the postof1ce. In cases where the Pe-
 riodical and Newspaper Publishers do
 a large part of the postal business, routing, bagging and transporting
 their matter to railway stations, there is good reason for giving them 8 lower rate on their merchandise than the rest of us enjoy, but where the same postal work Is done. by the postofFice department, the same rate should be charged in one case as in another. Tn these days of the differentiation of industry when every man Is doing some particular line of business and is l looking to the rest of the world as market for the sale of his speciality and for the purchase of his supplies, lit Is quite as important to have a qnick, certain and uniform system for the transportation of merchandise as for the transmission of intelligence. The magazines and newspapers of our day are chiefly puryeyors of advertls- ing intelligence and celerity, safety, certainty, common rate regardless of distance, are factors of quite as great importance in the transport of advertised products as of advertise ments. The value of the advertise ment indeed, is in direct proportion to the time and cost involved in the transport of the advertised product. With a reasonable use of transport machinery a one cent a pound rate might be easily made possible on all mail matter, In our opinion there is no oeasion for raising the rate of the Publishers Post We will deal with this subject later.
 It is matter of vital importance that the citizen should have at hand the cheapest, quickest, safest possible means of acquainting himself with the plans and movements of his public servants at our State and National capitals and of conveying to them his orders. But in these days when powerful individuals control the press of great States and often determine what sort of political intelligence shall go forth to the public and what shall be withheld a cheap letter post is of almost more importance to the public than a cheap newspaper and periodi- cal post. If any class of mail matter Is to be transported free, 1t should be the letters of the people.
 Sixty years ago Pliny Miles of New York found a free postal system In ex- istence in Iceland and to this free circulation of intelligence at the com mon expense, he attributed the high cultivation of the Icelanders and their long time pre-eminence in literary re- search and in other intellectual pur- suits
 The high letter rate of the old time postoffice running from eight to twen- ty-five cents in England made it very difficult for the public to combine for their advancement. The establish ment of the English penny letter post by Rowland Hill in 1SS9 made modern democracy possible. Then, for the first time was the ordinary man en- abled to communicate quickly and cheaply with a distant friend
 The adoption of a two ounce one cent letter rate consolidating as 1t would the present first, third and fourth classes of mail matter, would greatly reduce the cost of the postal business while 1t would prove an im- mense public convenience. It would put an end forever to those absurd distinctions under which we are now taxed twice as much for seeds, bulbs, cooked chestnuts, etc., for food as for seeds, bulbs, raw chestnuts, etc., for planting and four times as much for the transportation of photograph al- bum without writing; under which a package of visiting cards with the name written thereon are taxed thir- ty-two cents pound blank cards sixteen cents pound and printed cards eight cents a pound, this all though the cost of the handling of the written cards in absealed packet is actually less if anything than that of the printed or blank cards in unsealed packets.
 Under the law of the World Postal Union, printed books and samples of merchandise of no value are posted |around the world in unsealed packets, a two ounce book packet for a cent, a