EOTO Blog: The Mail

 Ever since the invention of writing, it naturally follows that people have been paid to transport documents from one place to another. Writing is meant to be spread, and to do that required logistics. Men, horses, roads to ride on, accurate directions, safe places to stop along journeys, and much else. To accommodate this, numerous governments in numerous places in the world, such as Mongolia, Persia, India, Rome, and a handful of other places developed postal systems for government and military post. 

For most of history, if you wanted to send a letter somewhere, you had to hire someone to deliver the letter, whether that be by horse, wagon, boat, or foot. This costed money. Couriers and cargo would often go missing or get lost, and there was often little recourse for those affected. So, when Enlightenment ideas came around, many nations when reconstructing created postal services accessible to common people.

Mail in the United States

The United States was one such country. The Crown had a postal network of its own in the colonies for a substantial period of time, even headed by none other than Benjamin Franklin at one point. So when the Founding Fathers set out to create there own Government, they decided a postal service was explicitly necessary, even going as far to establish it directly in the Constitution, Article 1 Section 8, otherwise known as the Postal Clause. 

For much of early America's history, the postal service was the main way Congress could influence the public on what they should and shouldn't read. So naturally, it became a hotbed of first amendment issues. For example, Northern Abolitionists were sending pamphlets promoting the cause to the South, and Congress debated blocking their delivery, but ultimately decided against it. Congress continued to use the postal service as precedence for legislation, using postal roads to develop national routes, and affecting numerous other industries and areas. 

To put it simply, to have good connection to the outside world makes it easier to sell your stuff, and that makes the economy grow if everyone has that. Theres more examples than just post roads, but the postal service was and still is crucial to the Government's function. The postal service was also heavily linked to the press at the time, with the first Postmaster General Benjamin Franklin also being a major newspaper publisher at the same time he held office. The news was largely disseminated through the mail, and that led to a number of first amendment hangups. 

Technology

In 1840, Sir Rowland Hill invented the postage stamp system, which revolutionized the process for letters, making it simple and easy for any citizen to send a letter to another at minimal cost. The United States adopted the system in 1847, and the practice continues today. 

Postal services developed alongside technologies during the Industrial Revolution, including usage of rail lines, industrial practices in package sorting, air travel, and computer processing of mail for sorting. Private couriers still exist, but they largely service larger packages from delivery sites like Amazon and eBay, while each Government's postal service cooperates with others for the delivery of letters.