and work their service in conjunction with the rural mail delivery. By this means an extensive service could be provided at reasonable rates of charge.[421] In February 1908 Bills were introduced in the Senate to increase the limit of weight of fourth-class matter, and to provide a rural delivery parcel post for merchandise and other articles mailed on rural delivery routes. Legislation did not, however, result. Meantime, the feeling in favour of a parcel post was spreading, more especially in the farming districts. In November 1911 a Sub-Committee of the Senate Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads was appointed to examine the practicability of establishing a parcel post system. The Sub-Committee was appointed on a resolution of the Senate, moved by Senator Jonathan Bourne, Jr., the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads, and there is indication that the adoption of the system had already been practically decided upon, the real question before the Sub-Committee being that of its practicability as an immediate proposition. The Post Office representatives advocated a limited experimental introduction of parcel post on rural routes and in the city delivery offices. They were impressed with the radical differences between the United States and most other countries where parcel post was in operation, and hesitated to recommend the introduction of a general service. But the members of the Sub-Committee had in mind to introduce as soon as practicable a complete system by the method of enlarging the scope of the fourth-class regulations and reducing the rates of postage. Numerous witnesses appeared before the Sub-Committee, representing general societies of business men, such as the National Dairy Union, the Associated Retailers of St. Louis, Me., and the Retail Dry Goods Association of New York; educational or social societies, such as the American Library Association, the Postal Progress League, and the Knights of Labour; farmers' societies, such as the State Granges and the Farmers' Educational and Co-operative Union of America. Several farmers, lawyers, and other gentlemen appeared to give their own personal views. The chief opposition to the parcel-post came from the representatives of the retailers, who stand in constant fear of losing their business to the mail-order or catalogue houses. The business of these houses is very large, amounting in the aggregate to nearly $200,000,000 per annum, and there is perhaps some reason for the local merchants' apprehensions. The bulk of the mail-order traffic is, however, distributed as freight. But the country merchants were much alarmed, and there were doleful prophecies of the results of a parcel post. The local merchant was represented as the mainstay of the country-side. He it was who sustained the country town, which afforded so valuable a local market for the farmer. He it was to whom alone that same farmer could look for credit to tide him over bad times. He it was