EVOLUTION OF POSTAL SERVICE in Maine Sprague's Journal of Maine History VII NOV. DEC. 1919, JAN. 1920 No. 3 pages 123-131 EVOLUTION OF POSTAL SERVICE The Evolution of the American Postal Service. Something About its History in Maine (ADDRESS OF HON. CARTER B. KEENE, BEFORE THE MAINE PRESS ASSOCIATION AT PORTLAND, MAINE, OCTOBER 10, 1919.) The Honorable Carter B. Keene of the town of Freedom in Waldo county, Maine, entered, the government postal service under the first administration of President Cleveland. Since that day politi- cal conditions throughout the country have passed through wonder- ful changes. Administrations at Washington have come and gone but the young man from Waldo county, Maine, remained through it all, unmoved and undisturbed. Partisan turmoil never endan- gered his standing with our Uncle Sam. Instead, his efficiency and faithfulness in serving the public continually advanced him until he became Director of the United States Postal System. He was, appointed to this highly important position when it was established by Congress and holds it at the present time.- It was a pleasure for me to reinforce Ernest G. Walker last year in securing the distinguished speaker who addressed you at Water- ville, But it was more through courtesy than necessity that Mr. Walker invoked my assistance for he belongs to the resourceful group of Washington newspaper men fully capable of accomplishing their purposes without help. In passing let me remind you that Mr. Walker is a Maine man without reservations or interpretations. Embden is his birthplace and the principalship of the Skowhegan high school was one of his early activities. He stands among the very foremost in his profession in Washington, and has won his spurs by push and fair dealing, not by pull or chance. While I was gratified that you could have with you last year the recognized authority on a subject of special interest to, your asso- ciation, I was a bit disappointed that the Honorable First Assistant Postmaster General did not interpret my secret but unexpressed desires by commanding me to accompany him as guide or valet. So a few weeks ago when a feeler-invitation came floating down from Skowhegan, I picked up the message first and suggested to Mr. Koons that he go to Portland with me and do the official illuminating while I did the home coming stunt. of course, he ratified the proposal, for the charm of October days in Maine and the warmth of your former welcome had inclined his ear for an encore. But aside from a perennial hunger to get back to the old state on the slightest provocation, I was particularly eager for an opportunity to renew acquaintances with the Maine Press survivors of 1896. I went with your party on the memorable tour through the Aroostook. What a delightful trip it was! What a wonderful region was unfolded to many of us! And the congeniality of the party was equaled only by the sincere hospitality of our northern friends Your association in later years has been represented in Washing- ton public life by two men of conspicuous ability Asher C. Hinds of Portland and Herbert M. Lord of Rockland. The work of one has ended and time is still recording the achievements of the other. Maine has been generous in recognizing the real worth of her sons and daughters. But I sometimes wonder whether the intellectual strength and high character of Asher Hinds are appreciated in the State at large as they were in the National Capital. If not, it is because self-effacement, which characterized his life and work, has obscured at home the sterling qualities of the editor-statesman. His chosen work in Washington was done alone and only when the product of his brain and industry forced him into the light did the public appraise his full measure of ability. As a parliamentarian lie was the peer of any man, living or dead, and the wonderful com- pilation of parliamentary precedents which bears his name will guide Congressional action for all time. In mid-life, his great frame and brain broke under self-imposed public duty. Asher Hinds was truly great. The other graduate from your association, Brigadier General Her- Bert M. Lord, was formerly editor of the Rockland Courier-Gazette You will recall that General Lord came to Washington as clerk to the Committee on Ways and Means when Governor Dingley, held its important chairmanship. He was an army paymaster during the Spanish-American war and was later transferred to the regular army Untiring industry and good down-east judgment singled him out for Director of Finance of the War Department. He has disbursed billions of dollars for the army. Never in the history of the world have such stupendous sums been placed under the con- trol of one man. Promotions came rapidly-and deservedly too- Until now General Lord enjoys the distinction of being one of the two officers who have been made permanent Brigadier Generals since the signing of the armistic. A Distinguished Service Medal further attests his fidelity to duty. But State pride is luring me from my assigned subject, so I will turn to the development of the postal service-the one Government enterprise that knocks at every door and touches every phase of human interest and activity. Time forbids even a peak to leap over the crude system of early communication in Europe. But out of them all stands forth the fact that postal systems have kept step with the march of individual liberty. England instituted her ser- vice for the accommodation of royalty and for military advantage. The .American postal service was established for the people and the pursuits of peace. "Ship letters," or letters from over-seas, are the first communi- cations mentioned in our colonial history. In 1639, the General Court of Massachusetts ordered that all " letters from beyond the seas be deposited with Richard Fairbanks of Boston, who was to receive one penny each for their delivery. Thus Richard became first postmaster of record in America. And since Massachusetts and -Maine were then one, may we not claim that the American postal service had its birth in " Our State ? " But should it be urged that Richards narrow functions ' did not entitle him to the dignity and glory of first postmaster, our prestige is not impaired, for the first "public" post in America was established in Boston in 1677, when the General Court of Massachusetts commissioned John Hay- ward postmaster " to take in and convey letters accoring to their directions." The first newspaper in the colonies appeared in Boston in 1704. John Campbell, a Scotch bookseller, was the publisher, also post- master of his city. The following notice appeared in the first number: All persons in town and county may have said News Letter weekly, upon reasonable terms, agreeing with John Campbell, Postmaster, for the same. So even in the early days we find the press and the post closely allied. Indefinite as were the subscription rates--" reasonable terms " -- may we not assume that the literary Scotchman pitched upon rates fair to the publisher, just to the government, and rea- sonable to the publication delightful trinity, which some charge has been jarred in the shifting events of later years? Poorly paid as were postmasters in the colonial days, there came, to their relief some compensating, advantages then that would be even in our day. One of the early Philadelphia postmasters was Andrew Bradford, publisher of the " Mercury." By a strange coincidence the Mercury was delivered by mail, while its competitor Franklin's Philadelphia Gazette was not. A little later Franklin succeeded to the postmastership and in commenting on his new assignment said: I accepted it readily and found it of great advantage; for, though the salary was small, it facilitated the correspondence that improved my news- paper, increased the number demanded, as well as the advertisements to be inserted, so that it came to afford me a considerable income. Benjamin Franklin, Massachusetts born, was the great moving genius in our postal growth. Successful administration of the Philadelphia post office and his wide reputation for business sagac- ity led to his appointment in 1753 as Deputy Postmaster General of America. Out of meager and scattered postal facilities, lie began the construction of an orderly and coordinated service and, while the results of his labor appear almost ridiculous when com- pared with the undertakings of later years, the fact remains that Franklin was the man of vision and force who blazed the way for the superb postal privileges we enjoy today. Franklin held his commission under British rule until 1774, when he " was displaced by a freak of ministers," as he described it. The Continental Congress soon undertook the management of postal affairs and he was the unanimous choice for Postmaster General under American authority. The Revolutionary struggle forced Franklin into important fields abroad, and out of his memorable service in France we see Lafayette beside Washington at Yorktown and Pershing beside Foch at the Marne. The postal service almost disappeared during our eight-year conquest for independence. The army was its chief patron and the Deputy Postmaster General fol- lowed the troops from place to place con foot in heroic effort to keep them in touch with home. On the adoption of the constitution, the Government took over what was left of the Colonial system -- 28 Post offices, 14 of which were in Massachusetts, and a few broken-down mail routes. Sam- uel Osgood of Massachusetts, appointed in 1789, was the first Post- master General under our constitutional form of Government. New York and Boston were the leading postal centers. But their business was amusingly limited. Sebastian Bauman, the first post- waster of New York under Osgood, kept his office in a grocery store and his clerks boarded with him in part payment of their salaries. Tit 1812 the force of the office was reduced to two clerks because of lack of business. New York today has a postal roll of over lo,ooo. The postal force of Boston consisted of a postmaster and two clerks as late as 1817. It is now 3,000. Congress early contracted the habit of investigating the execu- tive departments-a habit which has never entirely disappeared- land as the result of one of the first investigations the postal activi- ties in our own state are disclosed. Among the mail routes in operation in the United States from October 5, 1789, to January 5, 1790, was one from Portsmouth to Portland and one from Portland to Wiscasset. These routes and terminal post offices came down from colonial days. Joseph Barnard was the post-rider from Ports- mouth to Portland and $600 per annum was paid him for three trips a week in the summer and two in the winter. Wiscasset's mail supply was meagre indeed. Richard Kimball was the post- rider and made a trip every two weeks for $150 per annum Port- land arid Wiscasset were the only post offices in Maine when Samuel Osgood began the construction of the greatest postal service in the world. Portland was the first office in the State and Samuel Free- man, appointed February 16, 1790, first presided over the mails tinder our present form of Government. Ebenezer Whittier was appointed postmaster at Wiscasset on the same day. Whether these postal pioneers served under the Colonial Government is not shown by the records of the Post Office Department. But we do know that some postmaster at Portland received $7.22 for his official services for the three months ending '- January 5, 1790, and for that period also some postmaster at Wiscasset received the munificent salary of thirty-six cents. Bath, Biddeford and Kennebunk were added to the Maine post offices in 179l. The evolution of the postal service is the interesting story of improved transportation and business expansion. The. post-rider of colonial days gave way to the stage coach and the stage coach, after stubborn competition, surrendered to the trains; then fol- lowed the railway post office and the different systems of individual delivery. No great postal advance has been promoted that did not encounter violent opposition both in Congress and outside, and it has often been necessary to launch improvements under the guise of experi- ments. Even when the Colonial postal service was taken over and the new one instituted, authority was found under the dubious title, " An Act for the temporary establishment of a post office." But the experiments of today are the settled policies of tomorrow The speeches ]it Congress in condemnation of many of our indispensable postal adjuncts are as amusing today as the lurid forecasts of some of our revolutionary fathers in their resistance to the adoption of the American Constitution. But great postal reforms have finally succeeded and will continue to succeed as public demand and changed conditions suggest their necessity. Repeated calls for a money order system fell upon indifferent ears in Congress until the public, incensed over the distressing losses Suffered through soldiers of the Civil War trying to send money home, spoke in no uncertain terms. A system was authorized in 184 and on November 1st of that year Augusta, Bangor, Eastport and Portland offered the first money order facilities in Maine. Rural free delivery was urged also for years before authority for the service was granted. The alarming decline in rural life has- tened the legislation. The boys and girls were flocking to the cities, farms were being abandoned, production was falling off and the old folks " were left behind almost as caretakers among the scenes of former thrift and contentment. How well I remember the alarm felt in many quarters as the Government was about to embark in reckless extravagance. Rural free delivery started as all experiment. On October 1, 1896, three rural routes were installed in West Virginia by Postmaster General William L. Wilson. Maine was alive to her opportunity, and on November 23, 1896, three Maine routes were authorized; one from Gorham with John E. Manning as carrier, another from Naples, with Benjamin F. Graf- fam as carrier, and the third from Sebago Lake with Gilbert E. Moulton as carrier. The service spread like wild fire, and miserly experimental appropriations quickly gave place to generous allow- ances. Additional routes followed closely and today 480 rural free delivery carriers are delivering mail at the gates of more than 250,- 000 patrons in our state. The daily newspaper was useless to the farmer before rural free delivery. Now it is a necessity. Thou- sands of our Maine farmers get the latest market quotations before dinner and are thoroughly informed on the big news of the day. Even Babe Ruth's latest prowess at the bat does not escape their argus eyes. What wonderful relief rural delivery has brought to the former isolation of farm life! Approximately 43,000 rural routes are in operation in the United States, supplying over one- fourth of our entire population with daily mail. Such an enter- prise almost defies description. If the daily mileage of rural car- riers were reduced to a line, it would extend 1,127,110 miles a dis- tance equal to forty-five times the circumference of the earth. Rural free delivery has been the great force in farm life betterment ; it has gone much farther than speeding up the mails. In almost inevitable sequence it has aroused the public to the advantages of good roads, and good roads make the farmer and the consumer neighbors. But as I look out over prosperous rural Maine, with her mail carriers, telephones and improved highways, my mind runs back ,to the old New England neighborhood whose individuality we must admit has faded as in modern agencies have made men independent. It seems to me that out of the toil and sacrifice and dependence of those days sprang a comradeship, the old neighborhood spirit, that beautifully displayed the real New England heart and life. Who among you will write the story of the old New England neighbor- 'hood before the landmarks disappear and while the sweetness yet remains ? After forty years of desultory effort, Postal Savings gained recog- intion in the Act of June 25, 1q10. But the force that brought postal savings to the front and kept it there until Congress acted was the panic of 1907, when big financial institutions trembled or fell and gold ran into hiding. Eight years of practical operation has, I hope, fulfilled the prophecies of its advocates. Certainly the apprehensions of its opponents hive been dissipated. Six hundred thousand depositors are happy in the knowledge that Uncle Sam holds $165,000,000 of their savirgs and will pay back every dollar on demand. But the real success of postal savings cannot be meas- ured in figures. It reaches much farther, as you will see, when I tell you that 90% of these savings stand in the names of people born under another flag who through groundless fear wilt trust their savings to the Government and the Government alone. And I know, in these restless and anxious days, that the Postal Savings System is a wonderfully comforting and steadying influence. Postal savings . promotes thrift and economy and thrift and economy lead from the sweatshop to the school, from the alley to the home. The banks are the churches of saving; postal savings the Salvation Army of thrift. On January 3, 1911, the postmaster at Rumford opened the first postal savings bank in Maine. Parcel post and postal savings ran together for a time in their quest for Congressional sanction. I remember that in 1908 the Post- master General sent me to Muskogee, Oklahoma, to discuss postal savings and parcel post before the Trans-Mississippi Congress in session there and, if possible, to get an endorsement of the projects. Postal savings had a smooth passage, but parcel post stirred up such petulant opposition that it looked as if resolutions of condemnation would be adopted. It was urged that parcel post would utterly exterminate the small merchants and that "catalogue houses," as ,the large mail order houses were styled, would be supreme. Every- body seemed to forget that the mails that go out also come back. Parcel post finally won its way and on August 24, 1912, Congress gave the Postmaster General authority to go ahead. The following January the new service made its bow. It was a success from the start. Rates of postage have since been reduced, larger and heavier packages. are now accepted and a greater indemnity is offered. Parcel post fill's a long neglected field in our postal service and its possibilities are almost limitless. Each mail carrying agency has yielded in turn to the irresistible march of inventive genius, and now thousands of letters taken up from mother earth into the unmarked highways of the sky are driven through space with almost incredible speed. Aerial mail is less than two years old. It was started between Washington and New York in ill-suited aeroplanes built for war, not for commerce. Troubles followed as in the early days of automobile travel. More reliable machines with greater carrying power have been secured and eight mail planes now fly daily, rain or shine, between Wash- ington and New York, New York and Cleveland, and Cleveland and Chicago. Each plane carries between 13,000 and 15,000 letters. The very fastest New York-Chicago train carries the mails between those cities in 22 hours. Air mail goes in 9 hours. Five hours is the limit of railway speed between Washington and New York- aeroplanes carry the mail in half that time. The wonderful prog- ress in air navigation the past year is but a beginning of mechanical possibilities and I stand with those who believe that the day is at hand when business and social mail will take wings between the great distributing points of our country. In closing let me pay a sincere tribute to the postmasters of the United States and their subordinates, high and humble? The great world war bowed them down with stupendous responsibilities which the public little appreciates, and it is a constant source of gratify- ing amazement to me that they were able to carry the burden at all -that our postal service did not utterly collapse as was virtual the case with every other belligerent nation. Let me take you behind the scenes. Constantly increasing mails, with an enormous parcel post business of a night's building, found the postal em- ployees of the United States up to their efficient physical power in April, 1917. Then came the war, and thousands of virile and trained men ill our post offices answered the call. Postal experts are not born. Their value comes through years of tedious toil, and the brightest novice is almost useless for weeks and months. The loss of skilled man power was a shock as severe as it was sudden . Unprecedented bond sales were launched and thousands upon thou- sands of tons of printed matter in furtherance of the loans were forced into the mails. Then followed a two billion War Savings campaign with its enormous mailings of literature. Nor was this all. More than 80% of all the War Savings and Thrift stamps sold were disposed of by postmasters and their employees. Millions of revenue stamps were rushed to our post offices for expeditious sale -or delivery; car loads of draft questionnaires calling for immediate delivery were heaped upon the service. Postmasters became recruit- ing officers for the Army, the Navy and the Marine Corps. In the smaller cities and towns, they were required to register alien ene- mies and the Department of Labor turned our post offices into effec- @tive employment agencies. The Food Administration literally deluged the mails with conservation literature; and the volume of regular mail kept flowing all the while. With courage and patri- otisin unsurpassed, 300,000 postal employees of all grades and sta- tions performed their full duty to the public and to the Government, (c) 1998 Courtesy of the Androscoggin Historical Society ************************************************* * * * * NOTICE: Printing the files within by non-commercial individuals and libraries is encouraged, as long as all notices and submitter information is included. Any other use, including copying files to other sites requires permission from the submitters PRIOR to uploading to any other sites. We encourage links to the state and county table of contents. * * * * The USGenWeb Project makes no claims or estimates of the validity of the information submitted and reminds you that each new piece of information must be researched and proved or disproved by weight of evidence. It is always best to consult the original material for verification.