Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1912-07-15
THE INTERSTATE COMMERCE
COMMISSION INVESTIGATES
CONTINUED from Page one.)

to pay as much for 10 pound pack
age as dealer would pay for a %
pound package, and three or four
times as much as the dealer would pay
| for 10 pounds included in 100 pound
shipment.
Commissioner Lane expresses the be-
lief that the system proposed will
make practicable the opening of direct
avenues of trade between the farm AMI
the city household. He, likewise, is of
opinion that while the reduction of the
rates on the lighter weight parcels
will average between 90 and 30 per
cent the express companies themselves
will be the beneficiaries of largely in
creased business i'll the handling OF
small parcels.
The report shows that more than
300, 600, 900 parcels are handled annual
| ly by the express companies in the
United States The average house,
| hold of five persons in this country
either sends or receives by express, in
| the course of year, from 8 to 10
packages. The average weight of these
packages is "a pounds; the average
express charge is so cents; and the
average haul is 200 miles. 1t appears
that very small proportion of the ex-
press traffic of the country results from
direct shipments from the farm to the
city home.
Commissioner Lane carried his inYes-
| legations into the express business o.
several Europe.a countries. In
those countries where the parcels pos
system has developed traffic in small
packages, the lighter weight packages
| ,k=aC
dictated. that in foreign countries, the
householder received few parcels
weighing more than 10 pounds per
shipment. The Commission believes
that in the United States the express
traffic in food commodities is chiefly
between the producer and the commits
sion merchant. and that the rates ap-
pear to have been constructed with
view to fostering and encouraging the
growth of that traffic at the expense
of the light package traffic.
The investigators have devoted
year to the constructive work of re-
forming the bases of express rates, of
devising simpler and more easily I'M
derstood means of stating those rates,
and of preparing new rules for the
government of carriers of express traf-
| fic
OF foremost importance is the re-
quirement that all of the express COM
panies shall join in the establishment
of through routes by the quickest lines
of communication between all express
offices and shall publish through rates
to apply between those points. The
same provision gives the shipper the
right to name the route by which his
property shall be carried. 1t is belev-
ed by Commissioner Lane that these
provisions will effect an improvement
in the service and great economy to
the carriers, which now haul ship
ments oftentimes by cireuitous routes
to avoid turning them over to con-
Meeting line.
The most radical departure from ex-
listing methods lies in that adopted of
applying the new rates. In the United
States there are $4,000 express sta
tons. To name rates from each of
these to every other one re-
quires the statement of more than
500, 000. 900 different rates. These
schedules now occupy sever
hundred volumes of from 200 to 800
pages each in the tariff department of
the Commission. The rates themselves
are intricate and involved and ii re-
quires expert authority to determine
the lawful rate between any two
points.
The problem of reducing this enor-
nous volume of rate schedules to a
genuinely practicable compass is one
to which Commissioner Lane devoted
most serious attention. He has evolv-
ed a method whereby the rates from
any point in the United States to all
other points may be printed on a single
sheet or card about one fourth of the
size of a single newspaper page.
The first step in the contamination of
the plan was the division of the United
States into blocks, each approximately
so miles square. Rates are proposed
between each of these blocks, treating
all cities and towns within each block
as common points. Each of these
blocks is one degree of longitude in
length and one degree of latitude in
width To every express station with
in each of these blocks the rate is the
same from any other given block. Thus
the rate is stated as between blocks
rather than as between cities. Supple
menting this block system of making
rates which constitutes each block
zone of origin or of destination the
rates are stated for each package
weighing from l to 100 pounds. The
express companies will be required to
publish a directory of express stations
which will show the block number
within which each station is located
and at each station there will be filed
a single sheet tariff which will give
the rate from that station to all other
blocks in the United States.
TO illustrate: New York City is To-
Gated in block 952. Some 90 other
towns and villages are included in that
same block. Chicago is located in
block S3S. which also contains score
or more of cities and towns. A ship
per in New York wishing to send a
package to Chicago will learn from the
directory the block in which Chicago
is situated. Then turning to the single
tariff sheet, he will ascertain the mum
Der of the scale of rates, which applies
upon all packages between block 952
and block S3S.