Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 April 1916 — REPRESENTATIVE WOOD “IN HAD" AGAIN. [ARTICLE]

REPRESENTATIVE WOOD “IN HAD" AGAIN.

Representative Will li. Wood of 'his congressional district is an ardent advocate of one cent letter postage, which is being urged by the big users of the mails, like mail order houses, e'c., and would like to have the government return to the old deficit plan in the postoffice department. In speaking of the matter the Indianapolis News says editorially: . i ‘‘Congressman Wood, who wants to revolutionize existing conditions, and send his name resounding down the corridors of time by having it attached to a law reducing postage on city letters from 2 cents to 1 cent, declares, that the present postal rate is not an equitable one; ‘There is no sound reason,’ lieTsays, ‘why a patron of the postal service should be required to pay as much to send a letter to his next door neighbor as to a distant point.’ Nor, if the Lafayette statesman will look at it from another point of view, is there any reason why a patron of the postalservice shouldn’t be required to pay more for a , ter to a distant point than to liis next door neighbor. If is any one government function where the plain people get their money’s worth it is in the mail service. It is undoubtedly worth the full 2-cent charge to send a letter to one’s next door neighbor, as Mr. Wood will find out if .he attempts to send one by any other means than the mail; and it is worth a, good deal more than 2 cents to

send one to a distant point, though this can be done. Furthermore, it is not to be forgotten A;hat it is only recently that the postoffice department has been able to scramble through a fiscal, year without a deficit—and even now some carpers declare that the change is only apparent and is largely due to a different method of bookkeeping. The postoffice department is not a money making institution, though it might well be without doing the country any harm, for there could hardly be a more equitable tax assessed than that paid through the mail service where everybody gets more than his money's worth. It seems t,oo bad that Mr. Wood should hot devote his effulgent talents to more pressing problems.”