Parcel Post Makes a Big Splash

Even with the coming of Rural Free Postal Delivery, farmers still had to pick up packages at the local railroad freight office. Before 1913, the maximum weight of any package was four pounds.  Anything over that had to be divided up into four pound packages and each package cost $1.92 whether it was going across town or across the country. 

The delivery of packages belonged to the private express companies - American Express, United States Express, Wells Fargo and Adams Express.  Opening the federal postal system to parcel post was not a popular idea.  The four objection cited were the four major express companies.  James Cowles, "the Father of the Parcel Post", along with the Populist Party, fought Congress for the government to deliver packages.  One report said that "it is likely to change our conception of government." 

The farmers lobby won out, however, when in 1913, when the Postmaster General called it "the greatest and most immediate ever scored by any new venture in this county."  By 1914 parcel post had reached three million deliveries a year. 

The original purpose was to help farmers get produce to city.  The "farm to table" movement wasn't much of a success, however, but the "factory to farm" was.  Once again mail order brought things of the city to the farmer via parcel post.  Mail order sales increased by five times in the first year of parcel post.  The real winners were Sears and Wards.

The old country store was doomed.  Along with the country salesmen who sold merchandise from farm to farm, the parcel post system, despite effort to "boy local" (sound familiar?) the catalog won out.  During World War 1 it was a show of loyalty to shop at your town merchant, and catalog buyers were labeled as "traitors" to their community. 

RFD, parcel post and mail order all made the farmer closer to the city and changed the face of buying and delivery, not to mention advertising in America.  Eventually it changed the whole dynamics of American's population with fewer people making a living from farming.

Next time...the Decline of Main Street
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Today in Pioneer History: "On August 5, 1858, the first transatlantic telegraph cable is completed.  The efforts of Cyrus West Field were finally rewarded after several attempts by both British and American ships.  The cable reached Newfoundland after crossing the Atlantic at a depth of more that two miles.