Cheap Postage Part 3

"Mr. McDuffie is reported to have made the following correct and just remarks, showing he understands well the operations of that Department. If the bill shall become a law, our word for it, that in less than six months one-fourth the offices in the Union will be discontinued, because n.o.body will be found who will keep them.

But let the bill go into operation, and in less than twelve months the very clamorers for low rates of postage will become so sick of it, that they will be the first to unite in demanding its repeal.

If we supposed our advice would have any influence, we would recommend to the Department and all Postmasters to hold on to the old books, arrangements and fixtures, even if the bill does pa.s.s, because in two weeks after Congress shall meet next year, it will be repealed and the old order restored."-_Kentucky Yeoman._

" 'Mr. McDuffie rose, evidently much excited, and after expressing his regret that bodily infirmity disabled him to give the strength of his convictions in regard to the evils which would flow from the bill, he protested against its pa.s.sage, as a measure more radical and revolutionary than anything that had ever been done by Congress. He denounced it as most unjust. It removes the burden from those who ought to have it, the manufacturers and merchants of the North, and throws it upon the farmers of the South and West, who are already oppressed by the tariff, and who will have to pay the expense by a tax on their necessaries.

" 'You will sacrifice the intelligence of the people to the rapacity of the manufacturers. He could not imagine that the agriculturist anywhere could feel postage as a burden; it is but a moderate compensation for services rendered by the government. A poor man pays $10 duty on his sugar, salt and iron, and now you make him pay the postage. You will break up one half of the smaller offices, you will in ten years make the post-office the greatest organ of corruption the country has ever seen, and the man who wields its patronage can command the sceptre. By throwing it on the treasury, you destroy the responsibility of the head of the department, and in ten years you will have it cost you ten millions of dollars.' "

Instead of a revenue of nearly four millions, it is therefore probable that the revenue of the first year of the experiment will not much exceed a million and a half. It will be remembered that Congress appropriated $750,000 to make up the expected deficiency; but this will fall far below the necessities of the service; and it is very probable that this sum will be consumed in the payments of the contracts for the two first quarters. They are very busy at the Department sending off letter balances, the postage of which will of course const.i.tute a charge on the Treasury; and as the postage on each of these packets will amount to about three times as much as the first cost of the balances, the Department will make money out of this transaction.-_Charleston Mercury._

"I voted against this act. It is probable that a reduction might have been made in the rates of postage which would not have diminished the amount of revenue; but the reduction made by this act is too great, and will have the effect of throwing the Post-Office Department as a heavy charge on the general treasury, which has not been the case heretofore. The post-office tax was the only one in which the North and the East bore their share equally with the South and the West. We would all like to have cheap postage; and if that were the only consideration involved, I would have voted for the act; but there were others which influenced me to oppose it. The reduction of postage will cause a diminution in the post-office revenue, which must be supplied by the _general treasury_. The treasury collects the revenue which must supply this deficiency, by a duty levied on imports; so that the tax taken off of the _mail correspondence_ will have to be collected on _salt_, _iron_, _sugar_, _blankets_, and other articles which we buy from the stores. The manufacturing States profit by this, because it aids the _protective_ policy. I might add other objections, but deem it unnecessary at present."-_Letter of Hon. D. S. Reid, of --, to his const.i.tuents._

The Postmaster-General, in his report made Dec. 1, 1845, says:

"So far as calculations can be relied on, from the returns to the department, of the operation of the new postage law, for the quarter ending 30th September last, the deficiency for the current year will exceed a million and a quarter of dollars; and there is no reasonable ground to believe that, without some amendment of that law, it will fall short of a million of dollars for the next year."

The actual deficiency for the year ending June 30, 1846, was only $589,837; and for the second year above alluded to, ending June 30, 1847, it was but $33,677. And the Postmaster-General's report for December, 1847, estimates the resources of the department for the year ending June 30, 1848, at $4,313,157, and the expenditures at $4,099,206, giving an actual surplus of $213,951. If this expectation should be realized, (and there is hardly a possibility but that it should be exceeded), the income will exceed the annual average receipts for the nine years before the reduction of postage, $51,467. The Postmaster-General ascribes the increase solely to "the reduction in the rates of postage," while nearly a million of dollars are saved in the expenditures by the provision of the law of 1845, directing the contracts to be let to the lowest bidder, without reference to the transportation in coaches. So far, therefore, the triumph of the law of 1845 has been complete. It has proved that the same economic law exists here as in England, by which reduction of price leads to increase of consumption.

On the other point, however, of meeting the wants of the people, so as to bring all the correspondence of the country into the mails, its success is very far from being equally satisfactory. The five and ten cents' postage does not have the effect of suppressing the private mails and illicit transportation of letters.

The report of the House Committee in 1844, showed beforehand that such a reduction could not have the effect here, just as the parliamentary report had shown in 1838, that nothing but an absolute reduction to 1_d._ could suppress the private mails in England. "Individuals can prosecute on all the large railroad and steamboat routes between the great towns, as now, a profitable business in conveying letters at three and five cents, where the government would ask the five and ten cents postages." Hill's New Hampshire Patriot said, shortly after the act went into operation:

"Private expresses _have not_ been discontinued in this quarter.

Far from it. They are now doing as large a business as ever, carrying letters at half the government rates. And, strange as it may appear, they appear to be sustained by public opinion. The new postage act did not abate what is called 'private enterprise,' and the act itself, it is thought, will soon be found to be insufficient."

The report of the Postmaster-General in 1845, speaks of a practice of enveloping many letters, written on very thin paper, in one enclosure, paying postage by the half-ounce, and thus reducing the postage on each to a trifle.

"An incident recently occurred which will forcibly ill.u.s.trate the injurious effects of such a practice upon the revenues of the department. A large bundle of letters was enveloped and sealed, marked 'postage paid, $1.60.' By some accident in the transportation, the envelope was so much injured as to enable the postmaster to see that it contained one hundred letters to different individuals, evidently designed for distribution by the person to whom directed, and should have been charged ten dollars.

The continuance of this practice would, in a short time, deprive the department of a large proportion of its legitimate income. The department has no power to suppress it, further than to direct the postages to be properly charged, whenever such practices are detected. This has also introduced a species of thin, light paper, by which five or six letters may be placed under one cover, and still be under the half-ounce."

He adds:

"The practice of sending packages of letters through the mails to agents, for distribution, has not entirely superseded the transmission of letters, over post roads, out of the mails, by the expresses. The character of this offence is such as to render detection very uncertain, full proof almost impossible, conviction rare. The penalties are seldom recovered after conviction, and the department rarely secures enough to meet the expenses of prosecution. If the officers of the department were authorized in proper cases to have the persons engaged in these violations of the law arrested, their packages, trunks, or boxes, seized and examined before a proper judicial officer, and, when detected in violating the law, retained for the examination of the court and jury, it is believed that the practice could be at once suppressed."

In his last report, December, 1847, he also says that, "Private expresses still continue to be run between the princ.i.p.al cities, and seriously affect the revenues of the department, from the want of adequate powers for their suppression." The complaint is continually, of a want of adequate powers to suppress the practice. The law of 1845 has gone as far as could be desired in the severity of penalties and the extent of their application, involving in heavy fines every person who shall send or receive letters; and every stage-coach, railroad car, steamboat, or other vehicle or vessel-its owners, conductors and agents, which may knowingly be employed in the conveyance of letters, or in the conveyance of any person employed in such conveyance, under penalty of $50 for each letter transported. What the post-office department would deem "adequate powers"

for the suppression of illicit letter-carrying, may be seen in the following extract of a bill, which was actually reported by the post-office committee of the House of Representatives, and "printed by order of the House:"

"And it shall be lawful for the agents of the post-office, or other officers of the United States government, upon reasonable cause shown, to arrest such person or persons, and seize his or their boxes, bags, or trunks, supposed to contain such mailable matter, and cause the same to be opened and examined before any officer of the United States; and if found to contain such mailable matter, transported in violation of the laws of the United States, shall be held to bail in the sum of five thousand dollars, to appear and answer said charge before the next United States Court to be held in said State, or district of said State; and upon conviction thereof, shall be fined as aforesaid, one hundred dollars for each letter, newspaper, or printed sheet so transported as aforesaid, and shall be held in the custody of the marshal until the fine and costs are paid, or until otherwise discharged by due course of law."

The report of 1845 thinks there is "no just reason why individuals engaged in smuggling letters and robbing the department of its legitimate revenues should not be punished, in the same way and to the same extent, as persons guilty of smuggling goods; nor why the same means of detection should not be given to the Post-office Department which are now given to the Treasury." That is, the power of detention and search in all cases of suspicion by the agent, that a person is carrying letters. What would be the effect of carrying out this system, in breaking up the practice complained of, or what would be the amount of inconvenience to travellers and to business, of a thorough determination in the department to execute such a law in the spirit of it, all can judge for themselves. The British government, as we have seen, dared not entertain such a proposition. I have no hesitation in saying, that such a system of coercion can never be successfully executed here. It is better to meet the difficulty, as the British government did, in a way to make the post-office at once the most popular vehicle of transmission, and the greatest blessing which the government can bestow upon the people. The New York Evening Post said, years ago:

"Congress yields, and pa.s.ses such a law. What then? Is Hydra dead?

By no means, its ninety-nine other heads still rear their crests, and bid defiance to the secretary and his law. In Pearl street, there will yet hang a bag for the deposit of the whole neighborhood's letters,-at Astor House, and at Howard's, at the American, and at the City Hotels, still every day will see the usual acc.u.mulation of letters,-all to be taken by some 'private,'

trustworthy, obliging wayfarer, and by him be deposited in some office at Boston, Philadelphia, Albany, Baltimore."

I have no doubt that the cheap transmission of letters, out of the mails, is now becoming systematized and extended between our large cities, and an immense amount of correspondence is also carried on between the large cities and the towns around. The Boston Path-Finder contains a list of 240 "Expresses," as they are called, that is, of common carriers, who go regularly from Boston to other towns, distant from three miles to three hundred. Most of these men carry "mailable matter" to a great extent, in their pockets or hats, in the shape of orders, memorandums, receipts, or notes, sometimes on slips of paper, sometimes in letters folded in brown paper and tied with a string, and not unfrequently in the form of regularly sealed letters. If we suppose each one to carry, on an average, ten in a day, a very low estimate, there are 750,000 letters brought to Boston in a year by this channel alone. Everything which calls public attention to the subject of postage, every increase of business causing an increase of correspondence between any two places, every newspaper paragraph describing the wonderful increase of letters in England, will awaken new desires for cheap postage; and these desires will gratify themselves irregularly, unless the only sure remedy is seasonably applied.

In the division of labor and the multiplication of compet.i.tions, there are many lines of business of which the whole profits are made up of extremely minute savings. In these the cost of postage becomes material; and such concerns will not pay five cents on their letters, when they can get them taken, carried and delivered for two cents. The causes which created illicit penny posts in England are largely at work here, with the growth and systematization of manufactures and trade; and they are producing, and will produce the same results, until, on the best routes, not one-sixth of the letters will be carried in the mail, unless the true system shall be seasonably established. The evils of such a state of things need not be here set forth. One of the greatest, which would not strike every mind, is the demoralization of the public mind, in abating the reverence for law, and the sense of grat.i.tude and honor to the government.

In this respect, of bringing all the correspondence into the mails, in furnishing all the facilities and encouragements to correspondence which the duty of the government requires, in superseding the use of unlawful conveyances, and in winning the patriotic regards of the people to the post-office, as to every man's friend, the act of 1845 has entirely failed. It has not only falsified the predictions of us all in regard to its productiveness, on the one hand, but it has even convinced the highest official authority that it has failed to prove itself to be _the_ CHEAP POSTAGE, which the country needs and will support. In his last annual report, the Postmaster-General says:

"The favorable operation of the act of 1845, upon the finances of this department, leads to the conclusion that, by the adoption of such modifications as have been suggested by this department for the improvement of its revenues, and the suppression of abuses practised under it, the present low rates of postage will not only produce revenue enough to meet the expenditures, but will leave a considerable surplus annually to be applied to the extension of the mail service to the new and rapidly increasing sections of our country, or would justify a still further reduction of the rates of postage. In the opinion of the undersigned, with such modifications of the act of 1845 as have been suggested, an uniform less rate might, in a few years, be made to cover the expenses of the department; but by its adoption the department would be compelled to rely upon the treasury for a few years. At this time, during the existence of a foreign war, imposing such heavy burdens upon the treasury, it might not be wise or prudent to increase them, or to do anything which would tend to impair the public credit; and, ON THIS ACCOUNT alone, recommendation for such a reduction is not made.

"Postage is a tax, not only on the business of the country, but upon the intelligence, knowledge, and the exercise of the friendly and social feelings; and in the opinion of the undersigned, should be reduced to the lowest point which would enable the department to sustain itself. That principle has been uniformly acted on in the United States, as the true standard for the regulation of postage, and the cheaper it can be made, consistently with that rule, the better.

"As our country expands, and its circle of business and correspondence enlarges, as civilization progresses, it becomes more important to maintain between the different sections of our country a speedy, safe, and cheap intercourse. By so doing, energy is infused into the trade of the country, the business of the people enlarged, and made more active, and an irresistible impulse given to industry of every kind; by it wealth is created and diffused in numberless ways throughout the community, and the most n.o.ble and generous feelings of our nature between distant friends are cherished and preserved, and the Union itself more closely bound together."

Nothing can be more true than the position, that "postage is a tax," and that it is the duty of the government to make this "tax" as light as possible, consistent with its other and equally binding duties. Nothing more sound than the doctrine that it is utterly wrong to charge postage with _anything more_ than its own proper expenses. Nothing more just than the estimate here given of the benefits of cheap postage. The blessings he describes are so great, so real, so accordant with the tone and beneficent design of civil government itself, and especially to the functions and duties of a republican government, that I do not think even the existence and embarra.s.sments of a state of war, such as now exists, are any reason at all for postponing the commencement of so glorious a measure. If it could be brought about under the administration of an officer who has expressed himself so cordially and intelligently in favor of cheap postage, and whose ability and fidelity in the economical administration of affairs are so well known, it would be but a fitting response to the statesmanlike sentiments quoted above.

I am now to show that, on the strictest principles of justice, on the closest mathematical calculation, on the most enlarged and yet rigid construction of the duty imposed on the federal government by our const.i.tution, two cents per half ounce is the most just and equal rate of postage.

IV. _What is the just Rule to be observed in settling the Rates of Postage?_

The posting of letters may be looked at, either as a contract between the government and the individuals who send and receive letters, or as a simple exercise of governmental functions in discharging a governmental duty. The proper measure of the charge to be imposed should be considered in each of these aspects, for the government is bound to do that which is right in both these relations.

Viewed simply as a contract, or a service rendered for an equivalent, what would be the rate to be charged? Not, surely, the amount it would cost the individual to send his own particular letter. The saving effected by the division and combination of labor is a public benefit, and not to be appropriated as an exclusive right by one. In this view, the government stands only in the relation of a party to the contract, just as a state or a town would do, or an individual. No right or power of monopoly can enter into the calculation. We can ill.u.s.trate the question by supposing a case, of a town some thirty miles from Boston, to which there has. .h.i.therto been no common-carrier. The inhabitants resolve to establish an express, and for this purpose enter into negotiations with one of their neighbors, in which they agree to give him their business on his agreeing to establish a reasonable tariff of prices for his service. If the number of patrons is very small, they cannot make it an object for the man to run his wagon, unless they will agree to pay a good price for parcels. And the more numerous the parcels are, the lower will be the rate, within certain limits, that is, until the man's wagon is fairly loaded, or he has as much business as he can reasonably attend to. This is on the supposition that all the business is to come from one place. But if there are intermediate or contiguous places whose patronage can be obtained to swell the amount of business, there should be an equitable apportionment of this advantage, a part to go to the carrier for his additional trouble and fair profits, and a part to go towards reducing the general rate of charge. If, however, the carrier has an interest in a place five miles beyond, which he thinks may be built up by having an express running into it from Boston, although the present amount of business is too small to pay the cost, and if, for considerations of his own advantage, he resolves to run his wagon to that place at a constant loss for the present, looking to the rise of his property for ultimate remuneration, it would not be just for him to insist, that the people who intend to establish an express and support it for themselves, shall yet pay an increased or exorbitant price for their own parcels, in order to pay him for an appendage to the enterprise, for which they have no occasion, and as such he himself undertakes for personal considerations of is own.

And if he should be obstinate on this point, they would just let him take his own way, and charge prices to suit himself, while they proceeded to make a new bargain with another carrier, who would agree to accommodate them at reasonable prices adjusted on the basis of their patronage. And if an appeal should be made to their sympathy or charity, to help the growing hamlet, they would say, that it was better to give charity out of their pockets than by paying a high price on their parcels; for then those would give who were able and willing, and would know how much they gave. This covers the whole case of arranging postage as a matter of equal contract.

The just measure of charge is, the lowest rate at which the work can be afforded by individual enterprise on the best self-supporting routes.

Plainly, no other rate can be kept up by open compet.i.tion on these routes.

And if these routes are lost by compet.i.tion, you must charge proportionably higher on the rest, which will throw the next cla.s.s of routes into other hands, and so on, until nothing is left for you but the most costly and impracticable portions of the work.

The only material exception to this rule would be, where there is an extensive and complicated combination of interests, among which the general convenience and even economy will be promoted by establishing a uniformity of prices, without reference to an exact apportionment of minute differences.

It can be easily shown, that all these considerations would be harmonized by no rate of postage on letters, higher than the English 1_d._, or with us two cents for each half ounce. Considered as a business question, unaffected by the a.s.sumed power of monopoly by the government, the reasonings of the parliamentary reports and the results of the British experiment abundantly establish this rate to be the fair average price for the service rendered. A moderate business can live by it, if economically conducted, and a large business will make it vastly profitable, as is seen in the payment of four or five millions of dollars a year into the public treasury of Great Britain, as the net profits of penny postage.

If we look at the post-office in the more philosophical and elevated aspect of a grand governmental measure, enjoined by the people for the good of the people, we shall be brought to a similar conclusion. The const.i.tutional rule for the establishment of the post-office, is as follows: