Note 552 — V LOCAL RATES

"We have been influenced to make this change from the fact that in large cities and towns the departmental stores, the manufacturing establishments, and other concerns which do a large postal business, use the messenger service to deliver their letters as they found it cheaper, and in this way a large amount of revenue was lost to the Post Office.... Several firms will amalgamate their messenger service, employing say five or ten boys, to whom they will pay 1 cent or ½ cent for each letter, and in that way they will make a profit. Of course, this action on their part is illegal, but it is one of those illegalities that we can hardly prosecute, and we thought it was better to adopt the uniform 1-cent rate which we had formerly."—Hon. R. Lemieux (Postmaster-General), Parliamentary Debates, Canada (Commons), 16th June 1908.