Postal Politics
David B. Driscoll
The author is Curator of Business & Technology,
State Historical Society of Wisconsin.
Two competing philosophies
Throughout its history, the post office has struggled with two competing
philosophies. Proponents of what has been called the "service first" approach
have argued that effective mail service to every corner of the country
is so crucial to the economic, social and intellectual development of
the nation that it ought to be supplied at a deficit if necessary. Their
fiscally conservative opponents have argued, then as now, that it is foolish
and irresponsible to provide service without the means to pay for it.
Often these points of view reflected an urban-rural split.
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| "The Post Unites America," Works Progress Administration mural in the Richland Center, Wisconsin Post Office. This mural, painted by Richard Brooks in 1937, expresses the nation-building philosophy of the "service first" postal advocates. Photograph by Norene Roberts. Division of Historic Preservation, SHSW. Not to be reproduced without written permssion from the State Historical Society. |
Rural Free Delivery
The creation of rural free delivery
is a case in point. While farmers were wildly enthusiastic about RFD,
many politicians feared that delivering mail to every far-flung homestead
would bankrupt the system. When the Post Office finally implemented RFD
in 1896, it did so in a limited, experimental way, and new routes had
to meet specific requirements for length and number of customers served.
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| Post office in the "Big Store," Little Suamico, Wisconsin, circa 1915. Small town postmasters, especially those who also ran general stores, resisted the introduction of Rural Free Delivery and parcel post service. As they feared, between 1900 and 1920, the number of 4th class post offices declined by about 30,000 nationwide. Classified File 635, Visual Materials Archive, State Historical Society of Wisconsin. |
A formidable obstacle to the establishment of RFD was the opposition of small-town, especially 4th class, postmasters, many of whom also ran general stores. Since the trade of farmers who bought goods when they picked up their mail was generally much more profitable than postal commissions, rural postmasters resisted any improvements that would reduce foot traffic in their stores.
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| Button of Henry C. Payne, issued while he was Postmaster General under Theodore Roosevelt, 1902-04. Payne, a leader of the Wisconsin Republican Party's stalwart wing, served as Milwaukee postmaster from 1876 to1885. He was also a member of the Republican National Committee from 1880 until his death in 1904. Accession number 1993.109.2, Museum Division, SHSW. Not to be reproduced without written permssion from the State Historical Society. |
Postal politics
Rural postmasters were influential beyond their numbers because of the
highly politicized nature of the post office. By the 1830s victorious
politicians were aggressively using their constitutional power to appoint
postmasters as a way to reward party activists. Government incomes promoted
loyalty, of course, but more importantly, as the center of communications
in every community in the nation, the post office department became an
ideal base for local party organizing. By 1900, it was common for the
ruling party's chief political organizer to be named Postmaster General,
and for tens of thousands of local postmasters to be replaced nationwide
with every change of administration. One such operative was Wisconsin
Republican Party leader Henry Clay Payne, who served as Theodore RooseveltÕs
Postmaster General from 1902-1904.
The rural and urban divide
Even after it had proved so
popular that politicians overrode their rural operatives, RFD was implemented
in a partisan way. Rural routes were awarded more quickly in Republican
districts than Democratic ones, and were sometimes timed to influence
local political campaigns. Towns, which hoped to reap the economic benefits
of being a "hub," competed to be named points of origin for the rural
routes, and layouts of the routes themselves, which determined who would
and who would not get service, could also be contentious.
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| Rural carrier Ralph Jones with his rig near Sarona, Wisconsin, circa 1900. In many cases, rural carriers supplanted rural postmasters as political operatives after the introduction of RFD. Visual Materials Archive, SHSW, Whi (X3) 1741. Not to be reproduced without written permssion from the State Historical Society. |
Loss of local market
Rural postmasters, joined by small town merchants and private express
companies, similarly opposed introduction of parcel post service in 1913
and the subsequent easing of weight restrictions. While RFD brought mail
order catalogs to farmers and took their orders back, before parcel post
service, farmers at least had to travel to the nearest town with a railroad
station to pick up their purchases. With parcel post, it was feared that
farmers would rarely buy anything locally at all. Defeated by the prevailing
"service-first" ethos, a number of communities nevertheless mounted buy-at-home
campaigns after parcel post was introduced.
Reform efforts
Some reformers felt the highly partisan nature of the post office led
to corruption and inefficiency. As early as the Pendleton Civil Service
Act of 1884, postal employees, though notably not postmasters, began to
be placed in civil service classifications. However, each party was reluctant
to give up the Post Office's political usefulness when in power, and loyalists
tended to be folded into civil service only after a party had lost an
election, but before it left office. As a result, the change to civil
service came slowly and in piecemeal fashion.
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| Mrs. Willie Gray operating a machine that cancels 32,000 letters per hour, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, December 15, 1967. While automation has helped the Postal Service cope with ballooning volumes of mail, work loads and stress levels remain persistent issues. Photograph from the Milwaukee Journal. Classified File 6551, Visual Materials Archive, SHSW. Not to be reproduced without written permssion from the State Historical Society. |
By World War I the popular expansion of mail services was fairly complete, and most Post Office employees had been officially removed from the political spoils system. A relatively long period of government inattention followed. By the late 1960s, however, the volume of mail had exploded, postage rates had been raised repeatedly, and the post office was still running huge deficits.
This perceived crisis gave fiscal conservatives the opening they needed, and a Presidential commission recommended in 1968 that the post office be re-organized as a government corporation, to operate on an explicitly business model. Again, rural and urban areas split on the proposal, with congressmen from rural districts fearing that sparsely populated areas would lose service in the inevitable economy drives. And postal employees, fearing reduced wages and the loss of civil service protection, staged their first national strike ever in 1970.
Disputes continue
The reorganization was pushed through later that year, creating the United
States Postal Service. Although the issues have changed since then, disputes
have continued. In the past thirty years, the USPS has made improvements
in technology and service, but it has also closed small post offices,
raised postage rates, and sped up work. Whether one is satisfied with
our current postal system or not, it is important to remember that every
effort to expand or reorganize postal service has produced winners and
losers, and many of the most popular innovations have been bitterly contested.
