The West Virginian. [volume] (Fairmont, W. Va.) 1914-1974, 1919-08-06

loss ana tne INDIVIDUAL bookkeeping
is abolished By tSe intercommunity
Postal Truck Service. Community
Secretary spensellor at Mount Joy
sends list OF prices every week TO
Community Secretary McGrath at
Park View. The prices OF butter,
eggs, poultry, vegetables, potatoes.
honey, apples and every other sort Of
farm produce are posted in the Park
View community center, and the peo-
pie give their orders to Mr.. Nc
Grath. He mails the community's
entire order every day to Mr.. Spen-
sellor, and the goods come through
the next day by postal motor truck.
Once a week Community Secretary
McGrath draws a check in payment
for the weeks deliveries, in favor Of
Secretary sponsellor.
/ Simple, ISN'T It? But that Is only
the beginning. All Mount Joy Town
ship can not supply the demands Of
Park View, although the business be-
tween these two communities now
already amounts to two hundred dol
lars day. For Christmas, Com
munity Secretary McGrath bought one
hundred and forty turkeys from Com
munity Secretary Anna May Love at
Maryland Springs. Washington mar
kets were charging fifty-seyen cents
pound for turkeys; they cost the
Park View people forty-one cents,
which was six cents a pound more
than the commission houses were
paying them. Money in everybody's
| o.,
five hundred and fifty-one dollars
from Secretary McGrath to Secretary
Love covered the financial end of the
whole transaction between the COM
munities. Christmas trees were SELL
ing for dollor apiece; the Park
View community got them by postal
motor truck for twenty-five cents.
The other day when was in Wash
ington, eggs were selling for eighty
two cents in the stores, but at Ed
Wards house there was a dozen of
Mount Joy eggs that had cost Mrs.
Ward but fifty-three cents. Oysters
were sixty TO eighty cents a quart in
| Washington last winter, although the
oyster farmers along the lower Po-
tomac and Chesapeake Bay got only
seventy-five cents gallon for them.
Park View people like oysters
Through Secretary McGrath they con-
tracted for the entire supply of
Charles Connolly at Britton Bay and
ioaid him dollar and half gallon,
double what he could get from tho
commission men. Park view people
had oysters all winter at forty cents
quart
That's really all there is to the
story. What Park View and Mount
Joy are doing can be done anywhere
where there is post office and
I schoolhouse. You don't even need the
schoolhouse. There are postal motor
truck routes in operation all over the
! United States, out of Portland,
Maine, out of New York, Philadelphia,
Baltimore and Washington. In Ohio
Georgia, North Carolina and Louisi-
ana, Mr.. Blakeslee's motor trucks are
running on regular routes. One route
in the South, Mr.. Blakeslee told me,
was about to be abandoned as I'M
profitable, but when the cooperative
community metbol of marketing was
introduced. it developed into a daily
service-of three thousand pounds.
Another route started with only
twenty-eight pounds a day, and now
handles ton day. There are al
most hundred Of the post office mo-
tor trucks now running between out
lying rural communities and cities.
carrying loads both ways of all sorts
Of commodities.
Milk BY Parcel Post.
/ said something IN the beginning
| O L. -
not yet worked out, but is coming.
why" Ed Ward asked me-. Should
not the post office provide containers
for milk just as 1t provides containers
for other kinds Of man matter? What
is the essential difference between
a mike and mail-pouch?" Ward
has vision Of the postal truck max
ing the rounds of the farms, gather
ing up the children along with the
eggs, butter and vegetables and
bringing them all to the schoolhouse,
then taking its load OF postal freight
to town. coming back in the after
noon with its return load and dis
trtbuting the children along with the
mail. at their respective homes! Why
could not the same truck, he asks,
pick UP the filled milk-cans and take
them back to the center on this eve
ming trip for night shipment to town,
and then when 1t goes out after the
children and produce in the morning
leave the empty milk cans at the
farms where they belong? There does
not seem to be any good reason why
not.
There does not seem to he any
good reason. for that matter, why
every schoolhouse On the whole Unit
ed States should not become a COM
muntty center and a postal agency
And Ed Wards Job in the United
States Bureau of Education is to
show communities how to work this
out.