The Importance of Mail Service to the Early United States

After the formation of the United States as a republic in the late eighteenth century,a series of interlocking improvements increased the circulation of information,in velocity and volume,in ways that encouraged and facilitated social mobility,economic ambition,and the willingness of persons to do business with strangers at a distance.

The first piece of this new communications network was the United States Post Office,which had been launched back in 1792 on an explicit mission to make the circulation of news and information as free and easy as possible all across the United States.Two early decisions helped make the postal system an extraordinary force for national integration:First,newspapers-all newspapers-were granted ready access to the post at trivial expense;and second, Congress (the law-making branch of the national government) adopted the habit of never turning down citizen petitions for new routes and post offices.Although it clearly benefited business,this early support for an expansive postal system did not spring from commercial considerations;in fact,private letters (mostly business communications)paid very high postage to subsidize the comparatively free flow of newspapers.It was the widespread republican suspicion of elected politicians,gathered in the nation’s far-off capital in Washington,that fostered the popular conviction that liberty itself depended on cheaply spreading the news.Political rivals on the national stage required information about their enemies and their enemies’constituents all over the nation;state and local officials demanded frequent communications from their representatives in Congress;and common voters-especially as the right to vote expanded to include all adult white males-had to be informed and inflamed about their favorite candidates and political parties.As a result,by the early 1830s the post office employed 8,700 individuals (three-fourths of all federal employees)and delivered 16 million newspapers a year;this number doubled by 1840.Current newspapers could be found in the farthest corners of the wilderness practically from the first days of settlement.The touring French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville found that the residents of frontier Michigan Territory were better informed than the common people of northern France,which had been settled since time immemorial.

If the circulation of news was encouraged for political purposes,it nevertheless revolutionized business as well.Those newspapers were filled with prices and other market-related information, subjecting buyers and sellers everywhere to real market forces. Information worked like an electric current in the capitalist free-market system,flipping switches and setting up situations.The arrival of a bushel of wheat in New York increased the supply-and theoretically depressed the price-of that commodity for New York buyers. Knowing the selling price of wheat in New York helped farmers in rural Ohio or Illinois decide what to plant and what to expect in return for their produce at harvest time.Knowing what goods were for sale (the earliest mercantile ads typically printed detailed lists)increased demand among country people and reduced consumer satisfaction with the limited choices available in local self-sufficient markets. Wherever information flowed freely,price competition began to exercise its influence on how people valued what they bought and sold:The value of a gallon of whiskey or a pair of shoes moved toward an equilibrium price where supply balanced demand,minus the cost of transportation.

Delivering the mail,of course,turned out to be a major impetus behind campaigns for improved transportation.Better postal service depended on the condition of local roads,which stimulated local officials and taxpayers (some more than others to clear the roads, drain the mud holes,and build bridges and drainage tunnels where small,erratic streams threatened to cut off delivery for days or weeks at a time.Better roads,together with the availability of lucrative federal contracts for carrying the mail,encouraged private stagecoach lines to improve capacity,speed up service,and move toward dependable schedules.Of course,once people became acquainted with better service,they demanded its continuation and further improvement.Competition thus repaid successful innovations that helped improve the circulation of people and information using whatever technology-primitive or experimental-was available.By the 1850s,letters and newspapers might travel by sailing ship, steamboat,canal boat,railroad,and stagecoach before being delivered by the rural deliverer.?

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