Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1909-01-08
A Death Blow to the Small Town.

We live in an era of progress. We are
moving forward so rapidly that there is
danger that some proposed so-called mod
ern improvements may be accepted as ben
efcial which in their actual working out,
when practically tried, would prove to be
evils in the guise of benefits. An illustra-
ton of this is the proposition to turn the
Post Office Department into carrier of all
kinds of miscellaneous merchandise by the
adoption of a parcels post system. From
national point of view one of the most
serious dangers from this system is the in
evitable effect that it would have, to throw
into mail order channels and transfer to
the great cities of the country vast vol
ume of trade now done in the small cities,
country towns and villages. That this
would be an evil no one with mind ca
pable of thought can deny. Stupendous
changes in the methods of transacting the
business of distributing merchandise to the
consumers would result, and the result OF
every change would be to transfer trade
and population to the great cities. IL
would practically wipe out the Jo0Dine
trade and the country merchant would IN
evitably become, as the Postmaster Cen
eral says, in effect, he has become in Ger
many, sales agent without any stock in
trade, offering specific goods as they are
sold, just as a manufacturers agent does
in this country, requiring no more OF the
machinery of trade than is necessary to
transmit his orders to the central factory
or warehouse. Retail merchants now en-
Gagged in trade in thousands of the smaller
trade centers in all parts of the country
would be forced out of business, their stores
would be closed and some great mail order
concern in big city would do the busi-
ness. The people employed to transact it
would necessarily live in the cities where
the trade was done. In every European
country where the parcels post system ex-
lists, it has had this effect. The cities OF
those countries in Europe have grown in
population and trade with stupendous
strides, at the expense of the country,
since the parcels post system has been in
vogue. That system has undoubtedly been
one of the great promoting influences tow
ard this Capitalization of trade and popu-
lation in the cities.
To break the effect of this fundamental
objection to the parcels post, the propo-
nents of that scheme urge that it Will stlm-
ulate the settlement of the rural regions,
because it will increase the convenience
of rural life. So it would stimulate rural
settlement, if the government would iur-
nish everyone who would move into the
country with a donation of money and a
free supply of garden tools If the huge
treasury deficit which would be caused by
the parcels post system if inaueurated were
applied directly to such donations and gifts
from the government, it would undoubtly
result in creating many new country homes
but the reaction from such scheme would
far over-balance the benefits from it.
The fact is incontrovertible that the goods,
wares and merchandise, household GOODS
garden tools, dry goods and clothing gro
ceres and all food products not produced
on the farm must be purchased from some
source by the dwellers in the country
Where are these goods to come from, and
where are the people who conduct the trade
of supplying them to live? If the countless
millions of dollars expended by the dwell
ers in the country for such things in the
course of a year are sent to the great cities
and the goods ordered there from huge mail
order concerns, to be delivered by parcels
post, then the fact can not be gainsaid
that the people who transact that immense
volume of annual business will be concen-
trated in the cities. The large population
now transacting the business in the small
cities, the country towns and the country
villages, will be transferred to the cities.
The eventual working out of such system
would result, in the end, in dividing our
population into two classes-those living
in the great cities and those living on
farms, whether they be large or small, In
the country. The intermediate population
which now furnishes the social center for
the farmers life, in the nearby town OF
village, or in a small city where practically
every social advantage can be had that
exists in the larger cities, would struggle
for existence against constantly increas-
ing industrial force that would tend, like
mighty maestrom to sweep into the large
cities year by year a greater and greater
proportion of the population and trade Of
the entire country.
1t is this effect on the population en-
gagged in commercial pursuits and in the
trade of distributing to the consumer count
less millions of dollars worth of merchan-
disc every year that is entirely overlooked
by the proponents of the parcels posi-
scheme when they contend that the effect
of that system would be to move popula-
ton from the cities to the country.
Stricken at His Bath