WHY WE HAVE A POSTAL DEFICIT
Walker, Herman B.
Why We Have a Postal Deficit Uncle Sam Pays Tribute to Greed of Private Monopolies By HERMAN B. WALKER THE United States Postoffice last year did business at a loss of about $17,500,000. The...
...Our postoffice today is not self-supporting...
...The purpose of this article and others to follow will be to present some of the evils and to suggest, where the remedy does not suggest itself, how these evils can be remedied...
...Soon after, Congress sold this line to a private company, and has since permitted private corporations to monopolize and control the telegraph and telephone business of the country, without restriction or even regulation...
...1162'322 Western Tel...
...Thirty-five years ago the United States had the cheapest parcels post system in the world...
...Today the United States is practically the only important country in the world where the telegraph business is in the hands of a private monopoly, and the telegraph rates we pay are the highest in the world...
...The Root of the Trouble TO begin at the root of the wrong, let it be understood that Congress controls the postoffice...
...Tel...
...400,800 American Express Company...
...Today our rates for sending parcels by mail are the highest in the world...
...800,000 *In addition to paying an annual ten per cent, dividend of $800,000, the Wells-Fargo, in 1909, paid an extra dividend of 300 per cent, out of its surplus profits...
...Why Is It...
...1,200,000 united States Express Company...
...At least one of these gentlemen, Loud of California, publicly declared that the postoffice should be confined to delivering letters and postcards, and that even the newspapers and small packages should go by express...
...Not only that, but it fails to give the people of the United States the facilities and conveniences in service which people in other civilized countries receive from their postoffices...
...In fact, there are many things wrong with it...
...Then we forbid these carriers to deliver on their routes anything heavier than letters, newspapers and postal cards, excepting at exorbitant rates...
...While other civilized countries are rapidly taking their telephone systems under government ownership, the authorities at Washington recently abandoned a system of government telephones used to connect the departments in the National capital, and arranged to pay tribute, at a high message rate, to the Bell telephone trust for communication between the government offices...
...These big corporations make big contributions to campaign funds, and our congressmen, generally, are more interested in the campaign funds than in the postoffice or the public welfare...
...Going Steadily Backward SO, in this country we have private savings banks, private express companies, and private telephone anl telegraph companies, all of which make large profits, while the post-office, owned and operated by the people, alone loses money...
...they pay less for telephone and telegraph service, less for express service—and the postoffices show a surplus instead of a deficit...
...Most of these and other absurdities are relics of the past, of outgrown conditions...
...In the same year the four largest countries in Europe reported postal surpluses as follows: Great Britain...................$22,000,000 Germany...
...The government performs, through the postoffice, the functions performed here by the private corporations...
...In other words, if our express, telephone and telegraph systems were operated by the postoffice, as they are in most other countries, leaving the rates as they are and paying the same large salaries and heavy expenses paid by the corporations, the United States postoffice last year, instead of having a deficit, would have shown a surplus of nearly $50,000,000...
...Outside of the United States, such institutions as private express companies, private savings banks, private telephone and telegraph companies, are practically unknown...
...All the postal rates, regulations, revenues and expenditures are subject to legislation—are fixed by act of Congress...
...The postal laws made by Congress have been practically unchanged since 1885...
...There is nothing new about the facts to be presented...
...In fifty years, instead of making progress with other nations in our postal methods, we have steadily gone backwards...
...The rule of the corporations which own and operate our systems of transportation and communication is: minimum service and maximum profits...
...Every chairman of the Postoffice Committee of the House of Representatives for twenty years has been opposed to the extension of postal facilities...
...They have all been in the possession of Congress for many years...
...In most of the other civilized countries in the world, for instance, the postoffice operates postal savings banks, parcels posts, telephone and telegraph systems...
...The rule of the countries which have public ownership and public operation of the systems of public transportation and communication is...
...Dividends paid in 1000...
...Looks as if there was something wrong with our postoffice, doesn't it...
...14,000,000 Of all the important civilized countries in the world, the United States is the only one in which the postoffice loses money...
...And these interests have received so much greater consideration in Congress than the interests of the people who pay the rates that for twenty years or more no bill has been reported from the Postoffice Committee of the House excepting the annual appropriation bills...
...And the people of these other countries receive more service, and pay lower rates...
...Express rates are high, because the express companies have a monopoly of the business...
...They are never considered in committee...
...Congress makes the mail pay rates, and the express rates are made by agreement between the express and the railroad companies...
...The first telegraph line in the world was constructed by Congress and was intended to be operated by the postoffice...
...Here is a statement, as made by themselves, of the profits divided among stockholders in 1909, in the form of dividends, Companies...
...The result is what might reasonably be expected...
...We carry magazines from New York to Chicago, by mail, for one cent a pound, and pay the railroads four and a half cents a pound for transportation...
...Our postal system has not grown to keep pace with our development as a nation—to meet modern conditions and needs...
...2,012,790 N. Y. & N. J. Telephone Co...
...Imagine a manufacturer or business man in any line trying to do business today with the same methods and machinery he used fifty years ago...
...The Well-Fargo Express Company last year divided profits of $24,800,000 among its stockholders...
...Congress fixes the rates of postage, the weight limit of mailable packages, says what articles are mailable or not mailable, regulates the salaries of postal employees, and determines how much the postoffice shall pay the railroads, steamships and others for carrying the mails...
...Not only do we pay higher rates for express, telephone and telegraph service, in order that the corporations owning these utilities may make big profits, but we also pay higher taxes in order to make up the deficit in the postal revenues caused by the fact of our having permitted the great bulk of business belonging to the postoffice to have been diverted to the private corporations...
...Tel...
...Well, our postal laws, methods and machinery have been changed but little in that length of time...
...Our letters are delivered by carriers to our houses and offices in the cities and by rural carriers to isolated farm houses, while in small towns and villages people have to go to the postoffice with and for their mail...
...These bills never get out of committee...
...And there is...
...In 1906 the postal deficit in the United States was $10,500,-000...
...The reason it has not grown is mainly because the express companies, the railroad companies and the telephone and telegraph companies have not wanted it to grow...
...13,293,072 Chicago Telephone Co...
...15,000,000 Russia...
...They are all matters of public record and more or less of public knowledge...
...Such a profit, for a single year, would more than suffice to build and equip a telegraph system with an office in every postoffice in the country...
...The Telephone Trust...
...The express companies carry magazines the same distance, at the same rate, and pay the railroads less than half a cent a pound for transportation...
...15,000,000 France...
...In our cities, the express companies call for and deliver packages with powerful, modern automobile trucks, while the mails are hauled in wagons drawn by decrepit horses or mules, and delivered by foot carriers...
...This does not include the enormous amounts paid in interest on bonds and in extravagant salaries to officers and directors...
...He would be a laughing stock, if he were not a bankrupt...
...A man who has a single letter to mail may drop it into a city letter box on a street corner, and a postman will collect it, while, usually, the business firm which has a large quantity of circulars or other matter to mail must take it to the postoffice because of lack of postal facilities for the postmaster to send after it...
...On American railroads today, mail and express cars are hauled in the same trains, and the government pays the railroads anywhere from three to five times as much fcr hauling the mail cars as the express companies pay for hauling express cars...
...We pay rural mail carriers starvation wages (less than a dollar a day after deducting the cost to them of keeping their rigs) and require them to equip themselves with a horse and wagon each capable of carrying half a ton of merchandise or mail...
...2 160000 American Tel...
...In addition to these payments, these same companies, according to their own reports, retained surplus profits of nearly $14,-000,000...
...maximum service at minimum cost...
...We have more than 60,000 postmasters, almost all of whom are selected for their offices, not because of their knowledge of postal matters, but because of their political standing, influence or usefulness...
...24,800,000 Adams Express Company...
...The profits divided among their stockholders by the ten largest express, telephone and telegraph companies in the United States last year amounted to more than $52,000,000...
...Mackay Companies (Postal Telegraph)...........$ 3,655,216 Western Union Telegraph Co...
...At the same time, the United States post-office gives less service and charges more for the service it renders than any other postal system in any large civilized country...
...A man with an empty wagon drives from town to take the farmer his weekly paper or a letter containing a notice that the railroad has a small package for him, and the farmer has to hitch up and drive to town to get the package, to bring out a few pounds of groceries, or to deliver his butter and eggs...
...Yet the railroads are post roads, public highways...
...So far as the value of the postoffice to the people of the country is concerned, the only legislation on the subject in twenty-five years, aside from the establishment of rural free delivery, has been to limit the extent of postal service and increase the rates paid by the public for service...
...The only reason we can't have a cheap and convenient parcels post or postal telegraph is because they would interfere with the large profits of the express and telegraph trusts...
...IN Congress, year after year, bills are introduced for the establishment of a parcels post and for a postal telegraph...
...Our Representatives and Senators have it wholly in their power to say what service the postoffice shall render the people, and how much shall be charged for the service...
...A cheap parcels post would mean lower express rates...
...2,730,436 Wells-Fargo Express Company...
Vol. 2 • July 1910 • No. 28
