Parcel post

Okay.

Well, in the early days of the parcel post, a century ago, now there wasn't a lot of this and it didn't happen for a long time, but it did apparently happen.

And there are documented cases where parents mailed their children using the Postal Service.

They attach postage and they send small children to relatives with mail carriers.

He began his postal career in 1983 as a part-time clerk in Central Pennsylvania, went on to spend 25 years as a postmaster in a small rural community, and today serves as historian of the United States Postal Service.

His story of the mail is really a story of America itself, Benjamin Franklin and the Revolution, the expansion westward, the Civil War, rural free delivery, parcel post, zip codes, and the enormous communications network Americans eventually came to take for granted.

And we begin with Steven Kochersberger's own remarkable journey through the Postal Service.

Steven, welcome to America at 250: Due Diligence.

And these small post offices, you know, if you lived on a farm or a ranch and you wanted to get your mail, that might be a whole day trip into town just to pick your mail up.

So when it became available for people to live on the c- in the countryside to have their mail brought to their home, they loved it and they wanted it, and it gave birth to the mail order industry, where they could start, uh, sending their orders right from their home.

In 1913, Parcel Post was introduced, whereby the Postal Service could deliver packages that were heavier than four pounds.

That was the previous limit.

If you don't have his name by now, here's another clue.

During his administration, the Postal Savings Plan and Parcel Post were established.

Who was he? William Howard Taft, 27th President of the United States.

His life is part of your American heritage.

Um, however, people once deliberately mailed their children through the US postal system.

What? [laughs] After Parcel Post began in 1913- [laughs] ...

there will se- there were several documented cases of parents sending young children with postal carriers because the postage would be cheaper than a train ticket.

The children weren't stuffed into boxes.

John C. Coons, First Assistant Postmaster General, entered the service as a railway postal clerk.

Was transferred to Washington and made Post Office Inspector, subsequently made Chief of the Division of Salaries and Allowances, and member of the Parcel Post Commission, in which latter connection his services were considered of a special value and importance.

Appointed Chief Post Office Inspector, and upon the resignation of the late First Assistant Postmaster General, Daniel C. Roper, was named to succeed him.

His legal residence is in Carroll County, Maryland.

Cost per mile of travel by rural carrier is 0.1510.

This difference in cost is receiving departmental consideration.

Shipment of parcel post packages increased 14% in 1917, the increase representing more than 25 million pieces.

Cooperation of postmasters in bringing the insurance feature, particularly that of partial damage, prominently to public notice has resulted in an increase of over $8 million insured parcels over the showing of 1916.