The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1916-11-24

run at a profit-a pet theory of the
private interests-that the Journal
will lay before it's readers a letter
from Postmaster General Burleson to
Representative Henry T. Rainey of
Illinois, showing that the department
has not only earned a neat surplus,
but greatly enlarged and increased
the efficiency of the service. The
letter was given as an extension of
the remarks of Mr.. Rainey in the
House of Representatives on Septem-
Der 7, as follows:
What the Postoffice Department Has
Done and Is Doing for the Rural
and Farming Population
Parcel Post
The United States parcel post is
handling approximately 1,100,000,OOO
parcels year, or over 90000,000 a
month. 1t is impossible to state the
proportion of this business which is
distinctly rural. 1t is undoubtedly
true, however, that the chief function
of the governments express service
has proved to be agricultural. That
is, the government is the principal eX-
press carrier now operating between
city and country and vice versa. The
bulk of the parcel post business is of
this nature, whereas the bulk of the
business of the private express COM
panies passes between city and city.
The growth of the parcel post as a
medium of exchange between city and
country has raised questions which
are now more or less bitterly in con-
trOversy. Retailing organizations of
the cities have attacked the farm-to-
table feature of the parcel service
which involves direct exchange by
government express of farm products
between the rural producer and the
urban consumer. A second and a
larger controversy has to do with the
effect Of the development of mail
order business upon the country mer-
chant.
Does the farmer want his new ex-
press facilities-Which he did not have
befOre-taken away? Is he not better
off now than he was before? Is he
not brought into closer relation, into
almost direct touch, with city life?
Has the farmer not been drawn ir %
closer association with the entire
social and business fabric of our coun-
try? And does not this make for the
intelligent development of the farmer,
and also make the conditions sur
rounding life on the farm more in
teresting and attractive? All these
questions are applied from the purely
business one of whether the parcel
post tends to make the things which
the farmer must buy cheaper, and to
expand and improve the market for
the things which he sells. Undoubted-
ly the parcel post does do both of
these latter things.
And the country farmer is not the
only gamer because of the parcel
post The country merchant is of
: fered new facilities, too, which may
more than offset the business secured
by the mail-order houses of the large
cities. Because of the parcel post he
is 2enabled to handle merchandise
heretofore out of his reach, and nat
urally the scope of people to whom
he can possibly sell is greatly en-
larged.
In many sections farmers within
second-zone distance of large cities
have demonstrated that the farm-to-
table selling by parcel post is a huge
success. In a number of cities from
to 500 packages of farm produce are
passing through the postoffices daily.
hold, and its expansion into genuine
economic proportions is assured.
The following letter addressed by a
farmer to former Postmaster Praeger
of Washington, d. c., reflects the at
titude of practically every farmer
toward the parcel post:
"To my mind nothing has ever been
inaugurated in America which will
tend to make the farmer more content
TO stay on the farm than the estab-
fishing OF the parcel post method of
disposing of his products. 1t gives
him business practice; it gives him
the feeling of doing a mail-order bust
ness. He finds much more satisfac-
tion and pleasure in preparing his
produce for real appreciative human
beings first hand as against a sort of
commission machine into which his
produce. no matater how painstaking-
" it has been prepared, is dumped. 1t
also brings rural dwellers into close
communion with the envied city resi-
dents. 1t gives him the feeling that
his efforts are appreciated and creates
- high incentive to produce the best
nossible articles, and thus win the
confidence of his patrons"
One of the most interesting develop