Jasper County Democrat, Volume 15, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 May 1912 — POSTAL BILL PASSES [ARTICLE]

POSTAL BILL PASSES

HOUSE ADOPTS MEASURE CARRYING ABOUT $260,000,000. Experimental Parcels Post on Strictly Rural Routes and Other Important Legislation Is Created. Washington May 3. —After several weeks of debate the house finally passed the post office appropriation bill carrying approximately $260,000,000 for the expenses of the postal service for the next fiscal year. The bill passed by a vote of 227 to 6 without a roll call although roll calls were had on several of the legislative features of the bill.

Among the important legislative sections of the bill is that which creates an experimehtal parcels post on strictly rural routes and a temporary parcel post on general routes, This legislation, however, is subject to change at the next session, when a 1 joint committee, authorized by the hill, makes recommendations for the establishment of an unlimited parcels post. As adopted the parcels post rates on rural routes will be five cents a pound for the first pound and one cent for each additional pound on packages hot exebeding 11 pounds in weight. The general rate is 12 cents a pound with a package limit of IT pounds. ' Other legislative features-of the bill embrace the Shackelford, good roads amendment providing for federal aid to good roads by a system of tolls for the use of roads over which rural mails are carried; the Barnhardt amendment requiring newspapers and periodicals to publish the names of their owners and stockholders, and committee amendments revoking the ‘‘gag” rule in the post office department and also requiring that steel cars only shall be used for the railway mail service after. July 1. 1917