The Mail Everybody looks forward to the mail coming every day. We might be living in a time when that will be no longer. There is no doubt that the Post Office has to do something to compete with the alternatives the computer offers. People never send letters anymore, they just send an email. A lot of people never send a check to pay their bills; they just get on their computer and transfer funds from their checking account to whomever. I guess I am old fashioned in that I still send checks in the mail.
Mail has been around for over 160 years. In the early days there were no stamps, but the person receiving the letter was responsible for the postal charges. As recently as 1920, mail was delivered in Salisbury twice a day. It was not uncommon for a lady to send a post card to someone local in the morning and invite her for dinner the same day.
If it wasn’t for “junk mail”, the Post Office would certainly go out of business or it would cost about $5.00 to send a letter or card. I think the current rate of $.44 is very reasonable for what you get. The Post Office picks up and delivers your item for that amount. All the current talk about “going green” is just so much dribble compared to how much junk mail goes straight to the trash. Nobody is contesting that.
When I was growing up in the 1950’s, it always cost about 5 times as much to send something by air mail. It was only when someone told me that I may as well send everything regular mail because if it was any distance at all, it would go by air anyway.
The first attempt to speed up the mail was the Pony Express. Their advertisement for riders specified they be under 18, an expert rider, skinny and wiry, preferably an orphan and willing to risk death daily. A rider would ride about 10 miles to the next Express station and get a fresh horse and be off again. This was repeated 10 or 12 times a day with the same rider doing all the riding. For all this hard riding, each rider made $25 s week.The Pony Express was started with its first run leaving Washington on March 31, 1860 by train. Since there was no train west farther than St. Joseph, Missouri, the horse was established as the way west. When the telegraph line of the Creighton Telegraph Line reached Salt Lake City in October 1861, the mail service became obsolete overnight. Most people don’t know that the entire life of the Pony Express was only 19 months. One of the causes for its demise was the fact that it didn’t have a contract with the government to carry their mail. U.S. Mail still traveled by boat from New York and through the Panama Canal on to San Francisco. In its short period of operation, the Pony Express riders covered over six hundred and fifty thousand miles and delivered nearly thirty-five thousand pieces of mail with the loss of only one mailbag. A single rider was killed by an arrow shot by a Plains Indian.
The original charge for a piece of mail carried by the Pony Express was $5.00.
Hmmmm, the $5.00 charge for a letter today might not be so far out of line after all.
15 comments:
I have to disagree with you on at least one point you made in this piece:
"U.S. Mail still traveled by boat from New York and through the Panama Canal on to San Francisco."
Since this piece apparently is about the Pony Express, that sentence has no place here. The Panama Canal was not completed and open for traffic until 1914. This was 55 years after the demise of the Pony Express.
The Panama Canal had nothing to do with this.
Current rate is .45, not. 44.
Seriously why do people come on here just to pick things apart and criticize? So he was off by one penny. Thanks for your articles George! You're a true gem to salisbury.
JH
I was wrong about the Panama Canal. The book I was reading about the mail from New York to San Francisco said it traveled by boat and I stated incorrectly about it being routed through the Canal. Thank you for correcting me. I was also wrong about the current rate being $.44. All my stamps say "Forever" and it's been awhile since I bought them so I was unaware that postage had gone up. Sorry.
$.44 for what we get may be accurate but the problem is that all the STD mail they put in my mailbox isn't wanted. I sort my mail on the lid of my trashcan and most of the time, ALL of it goes in the can.
Thanks for the interesting post George. I enjoy and get excited when I see your article posted. What a wonderful talent you still share with us. Sam
George you seem like a nice soul. But try researching and fact checking next time... the panama canal was started by the French and only completed in the early stages of WWI...
914 what is all this talk of STD mail? Lol did it get drunk and make a bad life decision?
Today, sending a parcel First Class is no bargain over sending it Priority Mail, which sounds ever so much more efficient.
$5 in the days of the Pony Express was more than many people made in an entire month.
Nice to see two comments directed at George. Unfortunately, George passed on a few years ago and is unable to respond at this time.
great piece...I still use snail mail for at least half of my bill paying.
Anyone that uses the USPS today takes their mailibgs very casually. I'd much rather pat a few extra dollars and have a guaranteed delivery than use these clowns and it take two weeks to go from Salisbury to fruitland
Fed ex ground!! Absolutely best option for anything going and their kinkos location makes it very convenient
You are right about USPS. My husband decided to help them out by sending a package out (destinations not important). He was guaranteed 7 day delivery using ground delivery. Well you know the rest. After weeks of calling and being dropped off the tracking program the only thing the Post Office Manager could say "Oh you used ground delivery" like it was a dirty word. Never again.
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