The Elk Mountain pilot., 1918-01-03
Government Ownership Of Telegraph and
Telephone Lines Coming Says the
Author Of Parcels Post Law.

(From The Public Forum, Denver)
About 100 forward thinking people of the
City of Denver sat down at dinner at the
Shirley Hotel last Saturday night in honor Of
David j. Lewis, member of the Tariff Com
mission, formerly Congressman from Mary
land and author of the parcel post law. Mr..
Lewis had been in Colorado for three days in
vestigating the sugar conditions and was in
vited by the progressive, thinking people Of
the city to address them on some phase of
governmental ownership. He chose the topic
"Postalization of the Telegraph and Tele-
phone" and the following summary of his
address shows how carefully he handled his
subject and how certain he is that it is but
question of short time when the telegraph
and telephone will become part of the great
American postal system:
1.-THE parcel post of which l had the honor
of authorship in the House of Representatives
affords a striking illustration of the efficiency
of our postal system where it is allowed to
discharge its functions. The public is saving
some seventy millions of dollars this year on
its postal express parcels compared with
express charges, and postal surplus Of ten
millions. The Postoffice has a genius for do
ing little things cheaply and we'll. 1t is car
rying over four hundred million parcels this
year, more than the express companies,
and these parcels travel four hundred miles
for fourteen cents. Eighty per cent of 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, sacred to the
postoffice under the Constitution. Private
and foreign functionaries have possession Of
public agencies of electrical communica-
tion, the telegraph and telephone, and are
killing more traffic than the express compa-
nies ever did, by prohibitive rates and restric-
tive service
Scene l. take you to an average town in
Europe and introduce you to the postmaster.
You go into his office. 1t is the express
office, the telegraph office, the telephone
Office, all in one. He shows you his electrical
communication system. 1t converges to one
line of poles in the street, carrying the tele-
graph telephone wires. The toll-telephone
wire is also the telegraph wire, and you can
use it for both purposes at the same moment.
The European postmaster uses all five fingers
of the postal hand, the express package up to
no pounds, the savings bank, the letter, the
telegraphic and telephone agencies Of com
munication. Unity, efficiency, economy, and
an annual surplus of s22,OOO,0OO is the result.
The above picture is true of the sixteen
great postal systems of the world, and IN lSlo
the gross profits from their postal-that is
their mail, express, telegraph and telephone
activities amounted to l24,335,Zlf or ~ per
cent of their gross receipts.
Scene 2 We go now to my home town and
we meet the American postmaster. 1t would
be misnomer to call him a postmaster in
other countries, for his functions have been
divided among strangers. Looking from the
postoffice window he shows you their rudi-
mentary fragments. You see on one corner
the Office Of Wells Fargo, on another the Ad-