The latter evoked a passing storm from my
hostess. Hadn't she warned folks time and again to send all her stuff by
express instead of by parcels post, which would sure get her gunned some
day by the stage driver who got nothing extra for hauling such matter?
She had so!
We trifled now with a fruity desert and the lady regaled me with a brief
exposure of our great parcels-post system as a piece of the nerviest
penny pinching she had ever known our Government guilty of. Because why?
Because these here poor R.F.D. stage drivers had to do the extra hauling
for nothing.
"Here's old Harvey Steptoe with the mail contract for sixty dollars a
month, three trips a week between Red Gap and Surprise Valley,
forty-five miles each way, barely making enough extra on express matter
and local freight to come out even after buying horse-feed. Then comes
parcels post, and parties that had had to pay him four bits or a dollar
for a large package, or two bits for a small one, can have 'em brought
in by mail for nothing. Of course most of us eased up on him after we
understood the hellish injustice of it. We took pains not to have things
sent parcels post and when they come unbeknown to us, like these here
to-night, we'd always pay him anyway, just like they was express.
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