The Meridian times. (Meridian, Idaho) 1909-1938, 1912-06-28
BUSINESS INJURED
Proposed Parcels Post Bill Pass.
es the House-People Should
Rouse Themselves.
KEEP IT FROM BECOMING LAW
Erect on Every Country Resident
Would Be Deterioratlns--What
This Means to Nation
and to You.

attempted step toward further absorb
ton of trade and industry by few
great commercial and industrial CEN
ters at the expense of the town and
village.
Every countryman, whether a resi-
dent of the town or a dweIler on the
farm, should rally to fight the noxious
blu.
The aim of every good, patriotic
citizen should be to encourage those
measures that go toward the estab-
lishment of local industries and the
investment of home capital, toward
the upbuilding of education and civic
betterment For the diverse reason
it is the duty of every honest citizen
to wage eternal conflict with pressing
evils that have a tendency opposite
to the above municipal virtues.
The parcels post bill is an evil that
strikes at the very heart of the small,
prosperous town, because it would
tend to take away from the local mer-
chant the business on which he re-
lies to exist--take it away from him
and give it to the big mail order
house in the city The taking away
of trade, or the transfer of it to other
channels, cannot fail to drive mer-
chants and employees elsewhere. The
city, having taken the trade from the
country, would lure them to it's con-
gested confines. Capital follows trade
Village churches, schools, banks and
libraries would be correspondingly af-
fected. The commercial traveller would
go out of business, the local liveryman
would suffer and the hotel keeper
would be compelled to rely chiefly on
the 10y riders" for patronage. If
these with their kindred business
men, finding they could not make a
living in the country town, as before
the passage of the proposed parcels
post bill, should so to the city, the
natural result would be a decrease in
price of country real estate. How
many millions of dollars, think you,
will be sacrificed If the mail order
houses, aided by the parcels post bill,
are allowed to cut down the patronage
of the country merchant? And if the
mail order houses grow in the next
five years as they have in the last
five, do you care to estimate in your
own mind, facts and figures as to how
many vacant store rooms there will
be in your town, how many country
people will be forced into the filth and
turmoil of the cities? What will be-
come of the national influence for
good that emanates from the country
town with it's church, it's school, its
shop? Men from such communities
are the brains of the nation today. We
find them everywhere in the cities,
leading the progress of their times.
Edward B. Moon, secretary OF the
American League. of Associations,
says:
In these centers terminate the
forces that make for real manhood and
womanhood--the forces that give us
strength and vigor as a nation. These
little trade centers are training
grounds for young men and young
women"
Prof. Woodrow Wilson says: 1.-THE
cultivation of the active faculties by
exercise, diffused through the whole
community, is itself one OF. the most
valuable of national possessions"
The moiling city, then, recruits
from the able, healthy country, with
men educated and trained in the small
social and educational centers. Sup
pose power be given any special class
to tear down that social and educa-
tional center. What is the result not
only upon the village itself, but upon
the city and the nation?
The retail merchant has been the
pioneer in building towns. His we'll
fare has been synonymous with
growth and prosperity. Unless the
merchant continues to be prosperous,
the town will go down. With the mer-
chant, who suffers?
The answer is far-reaching. Those
who lose with the dealer in trade are
the clerks, the hotel keeper, the livery
man, the commercial traveller, the
wholesaler who sells the merchant
goods, every house owner, every farm
owner within trading radius, every
mechanic, every laboring man, every
uOSlOAg WHY CNOAJ
and so on down the Iist-for no resi-
dent can live in a town under such
conditions and not suffer either social
or financial loss, or both.
We need laws that will encourage
and sustain the villages OF this coun-
try instead of legislation that gives
special privileges to depicting greed.
Mail order houses, assisted by free
rural delivery, has already lessened
the number of country business men
by ten per cent. And in those COM
munities where the mail order houses
have experimental to ascertain just
how much business they could get,
property values have either remained
stationary or deteriorated. The young
people of these communities have
gone to the city. they have given up
the healthy, happy career of the eome
try towns for the discouraging, teem-