The labor world. [volume] (Duluth, Minn.) 1896-current, 1917-12-29
BY David j. Lewis.

the honor of authorship in the house
OF representatives affords striking IL
lustration of the efficiency of our pos.
tai system where It is allowed to dis
charge its functions. The public is
saving some $70,0o0,oo0 this year on
its postal express parcels as COM
pared with express charges, and a
postal. surplus of $10,000,000. The
postoff1ce has a. genius for doing little
things cheaply and we'll. It is carry
ing over 400,000,O00 parcels this year,
more than the express companies, and
these parcels never moved at all until
the advent of the parcel post and
for generations the traffic was killed
by prohibitive rates and restricted
service of the companies.
An even greater evil exists today in
the field of public communication, sa-
cred to the postoffice under the con-
stitution. Private and foreign func-
tionarfess have possession of our public
agencies OF electrical communication,
the telegraph and telephone, and are
killing more traffic than the express
companies ever did by, prohibitive
rates and restrictive service.
Scene I. take you to an average
town in Europe and introduce YOU to
the postmaster. You go into his Of
flee. 1t is the express office, the tele-
graph office. theIelephone office, all
in one. He shows you his electrical
communicating system It converges
to one line Of poles in the street, car
rying the DISQUALIFICATION wires.
The toll-telephone wire is also the
telegraph wire. and you can use it for
both purposes 1T the same moment,
The European postmaster uses all
five fingers Of the postal hand. the
express package up to 10 pounds.
the savings bank, the letter. the tele-
graphic and tetephonic agencies of
communication. " Unity, efficiency,
economy and an annual surplus of
$22,00o,000 is the result.
The above picture is true Of the 16
great postal SYSTEMS of the world, and
in 1910 the groes profits from their
postal-that .is4s their mail, express,
telegraph and telephone activities
amounted to 3N5,334,217 or 20 per
cent of their gross receipts
Scene II. Wdgo now to- my home
town and we ,neet the American post
master. It would be a misnomer to
call him postmaster in other coun-
tries. for his functions have been d.
vided among strangers. Looking from
the postoffice window he shows you
their .rudiment4iy fragments. You
see on one corner the office of Wells
Fargo, on anoth4r the Adams, farther
down the street the National and
American Express Offices And even
in the field Of Communication, sacred
to the postal system under the con-
stitution, what do you see? Well,
all still in sight. you see the separate
offices :of the, Western Union and tho
presun1ptuously named Postal tele-
graph companies, ALI wing with each
other and the express companies in
the prodigious waste of the postal
resources. When Alexander G. Bell
found he. could talk over a wire the
news was cabled to Europe, and the
postal telegraph engineers soon found
they could use the telegraph wires
for telephoningi and -telegraphing at
the same moment, and SO in Europe
you see only one line Of poles for
both. But on the Maryland roads,
the glory Of the Union, you see three
lines Of poles Western Union,
the Postal Telegraph (neither render
ing any telephofie service), and the
pole lines of the Bell system, a better
teleeraphic structure than either tele-
graph companies, yet it is rendering
no public service whatever.
Before the parcel post we had the
highest parcel rates. We still have
the highest telegraph rates; they run;
as you see, fromt,two to four times as
high as with postal system for the
same distance. The, effect Of these
rates is that they choke off about
four-fifths Of our. natural telegraphic
correspondence. t New Zealand, with
our wage and price levels, and with
a IL per cent rate, shows kilograms
per capita, the United States but 1915,
l per capita. And yet with the same
letter rates we send 101 letters per
capita, and the5sNew Zealander, our
closest rival, sends o. But we rank
18th, not first among the telegraph
users of the world.
It seems a duty to say that these
telegraph and telephone rates are the
scandal Of pubic service rates the
world over, and only to be compared
with the express rates before the ad-
vent of the parcel post. We rank
29th. or the highest but two among
81 telephone institutions. on the rates
for local call. while we rank the low,
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