912 to prove a blow to the
express companies as in the earlier years when they had so strongly
resisted any proposal for its introduction. In face, however, of the
strong and widespread movement in the country in its favour, they
realized that they would be unable always successfully to resist its
establishment, and no open opposition to the proposals of 1912 was
encountered from them. They did not appear before the Senate
Sub-Committee.

The Sub-Committee saw no insuperable difficulty in the way of
introducing a general system at once. Moreover, they were impressed by
the fact that a parcel post system was in operation in most other
countries of the world, even in Australia, a country slightly larger in
area than the United States and much more sparsely populated, where the
two factors which so radically distinguished the United States from most
other countries in which a parcel post had been established were met
with in even greater degree.

When the questions of the desirability and practicability of
establishing a system had been decided, there still remained the
difficult and important question of the scheme of rates of charge on
which the system should be based. Some of the witnesses before the
Sub-Committee advocated a uniform rate, representing that a graduated
rate was undesirable and would be unacceptable, as giving a special
privilege to certain sections of the people. A more general opinion was
that a flat rate would be unsound economically. With such a rate, the
express companies would step in and take all the profitable traffic; and
it would, moreover, be necessary to fix the rate so high as to render it
prohibitive for goods of low value and for the purpose of moving traffic
on the rural routes. In a country of vast extent the actual cost to the
Government for the transportation of parcels of the same weight would
differ widely in proportion to the distance for which they were conveyed
in the mails, and the differences would be sufficiently great to render
it easily possible to graduate a scale of postage approximately in
accordance with the distance and the actual cost. The department
estimated the cost of transportation for mail matter to be 1.32 cents
for each 200 miles, and taking this as a basis, differential rates in
respect of transportation were arrived at for a series of zones.

The charge for handling, i.e. for collection, delivery, administrative
and all other incidental services, was calcul