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Government Goes into Business: Parcel Post in the Nation's Political Economy, 1880–1915*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Richard B. Kielbowicz
Richard B. Kielbowicz
Affiliation:
University of Washington
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Extract

From today's vantage point, the radical potential originally envisioned for parcel post is hard to imagine. One historian facilely characterized postal savings banks (1910) and parcel post (1912) as small incremental advances in the evolution of state action: “From legislation designed to restrain harmful practices in big business, it was but a step for the government to embark in business on its own accord.” Yet parcel post marked a dramatic departure in public-sector initiatives: it put the federal government in the transportation business to compete with well-established private firms. That the United States started parcel post so late – it was the last major industrialized nation to do so – suggests the extent to which the service raised fundamental questions about the proper sphere of state action.

Type
Research Notes: Populists and the Post Office
Information
Studies in American Political Development , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , Spring 1994 , pp. 150 - 172
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

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53. 1911 House Hearings 246–65, quotes at 248, 259.

54. Walker, John Brisben, “The Aid Which the Post-Office Department Might Render to Commerce,” Cosmopolitan 36 (02 1904)Google Scholar: third unnumbered page following p. 378. As an example of magazines' dubious ethics in advocating parcel post, Walker was writing for a Hearst-owned magazine, which stood to benefit, at a time when William Randolph Hearst, a congressman from New York, had introduced a parcel post bill.

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62. 1912 Senate Hearings 541–88, quote at 546.

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66. Statement of Provisions Essential to a System of Parcel Post Adequate to Meet the Service Requirements of Producers and Consumers by the Farmers National Committee on Postal Reform, June 1, 1912, S62A-F20, Senate Records.

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