USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Professional and industrial history of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Volume II > Part 43
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One letter up to
1. 100
Sit.
4. 700 .. 25.
.. 200
800
2s. 21d.
300
1.s. 1d.
.. 900
2s. d.
..
-
1,000
Os. Sd.
..
..
.400 500 60 miles,
1.s. d. 1.s. 63d. One letter up to
600 miles, 1s. 9d.
Double letters, consisting of two sheets of paper, paid double rates; treble letters paid treble rates; letters weighing an ounce paid quad- ruple rates. The Postmasters were sworn, and their bond was fixed at £100 cach. The Province Congress proceeded in this business subject to action on the part of the Continental Congress; and the order of May 13, 1115, was coupled significantly with a resolution "to prevent any Town or District taking any notice of his Excellency Gen. Gage's precepts for calling a General Assembly." The Continental Congress acted forthwith.
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THE POSTAL SERVICE.
On May 19, 1:45, the Continental Congress appointed a committee to consider the best means of establishing posts for conveying letters and intelligence throughout the country, and on July 26, 1715, the true birthday of the American Post-Office, Benjamin Franklin was chosen Postmaster-General, for the purpose of running a line of posts from Fal- mouth, or Portland, in Maine, to Savannah in Georgia, with as many cross posts as he might think fit. His salary was fixed at $1,000, that of Richard Bache, his secretary and comptroller, as well as son-in-law, at $340. Not to be outdone by Massachusetts, the Continental Con- gress, which had established a Post-office Department before the Declaration of Independence, recommended that postriders be placed at intervals of twenty-five or thirty miles, and that they carry the mail three times a week. In the absence of Franklin, Richard Bache was chosen Postmaster-General on November 2, 1426, and continued to serve until January 28, 1282, when Ebenezer Hazard was appointed in his place, with James Bryson as the First Assistant or Clerk. Hazard served until Washington was elected President and appointed Samuel Osgood Postmaster-General The changes were usually due to the fact that the Post-Office, not withstanding orders to the contrary, failed to be remunerative. The charge of inefficiency brought against Bache and Ilazard amounts to little else. It is the same fate that overtook Camp- bell in 1:18, Hamilton in 1230, and many Postmasters as well as some Postmasters-General since then. But Post-Office receipts cannot be materially increased by the urging of those in charge; beneficent laws and public patronage alone can make the Post-Office rich or self-sup- supporting.
The Continental Congress made Philadelphia the seat of the Ameri- can Postmaster-General, and fixed the salaries of Postmasters at ten per cent. on receipts exceeding $1,000 a year, and twenty per cent. in case receipts remained below $1,000 In 1111 Congress authorised the ap- pointment of an Inspector of Dead Letters at a salary of $100 a year, and the rates of postage were raised fifty per cent. In 1429 the salary of the Postmaster-General was raised to $2,000 first, then to 83,500, and postage was fixed at twenty times the rates of 1:15. At the same time Congress demanded for itself a semiweekly mail. In H80 the salary of the Postmaster-General was reduced to $1,000, that of his secretary and comptroller to $500, and postage was reduced. On October 19, 1281, the postage rates of 1415 were restored, Postmasters were allowed salaries not exceeding twenty per cent. of their receipts, and the salary
412
SUFFOLK COUNTY.
of the Postmaster-General was fixed at $1, 250, that of his AAssistant or Clerk at $800. On October 18, 1282, soon after the appointment of Postmaster-General Hazard, Congress passed the famous Post-Office Ordinance, which controlled until May 31, 1192.
The Articles of Confederation, adopted in 1112, and signed in 1128, had continued the Post-Office work of the Continental Congress, and provided in Article IX that the " United States, in Congress assembled, shall have the sole and exclusive right- and power . . . of establishing and regulating Post-Offices from one State to another, throughout all the United States, and exacting such postage on the papers passing through the same as may be requisite to defray the expense of the said offices." It was under this authority that the Post-office Ordinance of 1182 was adopted. It declared the Post-Office to be "essentially requisite to the safety as well as the commercial interest " of the United States, and the function of the Post-Office was happily defined as " the communication of intelligence with regularity and despatch." The mail was to be carried regularly between New Hampshire and Georgia, and elsewhere when required. A single sheet remained the unit of letters; letter postage, owing to the state of the currency, was fixed at sixteen grains as the unit. This clumsy unit was a rough compromise between the dollar in which Congress intended to deal, and the shilling and pence of the people. Sixteen grains of silver formed 2% of Alexander Hamilton's silver dollar, containing 416 grains of silver 892.428 fine, or roughly four cents of our money, or two pence sterling. The Ordi- nance fixed the price of silver at -4 of a dollar for every twenty-four grains, or the silver dollar at 432 grains. Postage on single letters go- ing less than sixty miles was fixed at thirty-two grains of silver, or about 4d., or eight cents in our money; on single letters going from sixty to one hundred miles the postage was forty-eight grains, 6d., or twelve cents; and for every additional one hundred miles sixteen grains, equal to 2d. or 4 cents, were added. For letters to or from Europe the charge remained ninety-six grains of silver, or one shilling, a rate es- tablished in 1:10, and continued until the second half of this century. Double letters paid double postage; treble letters paid treble postage : and letters weighing an ounce paid quadruple rates. Newspapers were carried outside the mail bags at rates determined by the Government, which took part of the proceeds. The salary of the Postmaster-General was fixed at $1,500, of his "Clerk or Assistant " at $1,000, The Ordi- nance answered the demand of its time, and was heartily supported in
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THE POSTAL SERVICE.
Massachusetts. Its defect lay in the fact that the Articles of Confed- eration still left each State a certain field of action in postal matters within the State. In IMt, at the request of Congress, Massachusetts exempted Postmasters and postriders from military duty. A year be- fore certain Virginia gentlemen agreed to ride post once a week be- tween Fredericksburg and Charlottesville. But on the whole the Ordi- nance of 1:82 worked well enough, and was not replaced until three years after the adoption of the Constitution. Samuel Osgood served as Wash- ington's Postmaster-General under the Ordinance he had helped to frame, and Jonathan Hastings, the Postmaster at Boston, had the honor of serving under appointments received successively from the Province Congress, and from the Postmasters-General appointed by the Conti- nental Congress, under the Articles of Confederation, and under the Constitution. He was born when Massachusetts was a loyal Province; he witnessed the agitation and consternation over the Stamp Act; he saw Warren; and he lived long enough to hear that President Jackson had invited Postmaster-General Barry to a seat in the Cabinet. Hast- ings died March 8, 1831 ; but he retired from the Boston Post-Office in 1808, when he was succeeded by Aaron Hill. It was under these men that, owing to the establishment of independent Post-Offices in Cam- bridge, Charlestown, Brighton, Roxbury, Dorchester, and Brookline, the Boston Postal District lost, for some decades, its ancient extent and power.
The history of the Boston Post-Office under the Constitution may be divided into three periods, respectively separated by the Presidency of Jackson-also in other respects an era of American history-and by the year is;5, when the Postal District resumed its former extent. During the period from Washington to the inauguration of President Jackson, Boston had but two Postmasters, Jonathan Hastings and Aaron Ilill. Hastings was originally appointed by the Province Congress of Massa- chusetts, and served until 1808, when he was succeeded by Aaron Hill. Both were natives of Cambridge; both were Harvard graduates; both were identified with the Revolution; both served an unusual number of years as Postmasters. Ilill served in the army of the Revolution; was a Selectman of Cambridge from 1495 to 1805, and in 18ot, Town Clerk from 1:98 to 1805, a member of the Massachusetts Legislature from 1495 to 1808, and a member of the Governor's Council in 1810-11 and 1824-25. lle was appointed Postmaster of Boston on July 1. 1808; his successor was appointed March 21, 1829. Hill died November 22, 1830.
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SUFFOLK COUNTY.
Ile was appointed by Postmaster-General Granger, at a time when United-States Senators resigned to become Postmasters; for Theodorus Bailey retired from the Senate to take the New-York post-office, and Michael Leib gave up the senatorship of the United States for the Philadelphia post-office. As Boston has generally been the third largest Post-Office in the country, one may infer in what esteem the position of its Postmaster was held by public opinion. Yet until 1836 no Postmas- ter was appointed by the President, and until Jackson's time the Post- master-General was not a member of the Cabinet.
The Constitution was to unify and consolidate the national Govern- ment; but until Jackson's day the Post-Office legislation of the country rose very little above the level of 1215 and 1482. Samuel Osgood, the first Postmaster-General under the Constitution, served altogether under the postal laws of the preceding period. Even his salary had been fixed by the Act of 1282, and the present Post-Office Department may be said to have its beginning under the Constitution in the Act of 20 Feb- ruary, 1:92. That law fixed the postage rates which controlled with slight variations until 1845, letter postage ranging from six to twenty- five cents for each sheet, according to distance. The same law made the stealing of letters punishable with death. The Postmaster-General had a salary of $2,000, the Postmasters not exceeding $1,800; but the Act of May 8, 1494, gave the Postmasters up to $3,500, and it threat- ened the theft of money letters by postal employees with death. Mail robbery was likewise punishable with death. The so-called penny post, which began at Boston in 1639, was continued. The Act of March ?, 1;99, made the stealing of money letters on the part of employees pun- ishable with whipping, and aggravated mail robbery with death. In the same year, the expenses of the Post-Office Department, as distinct from the postal service, were charged to the Treasury, which has borne them ever since, while the postal service is intended to pay for itself. The same Act exempted postal employees from militia and jury duty. They are still exempt from militia duty; but the exemption from jury service was accidentally repealed in 1844.
In 1496 the domestic mails, both from New York and the East, were die in Boston on Wednesdays and Saturdays; the foreign mail service continued strikingły imperfect, although vessels arriving in Boston could not break bulk until they had delivered their mail. For each letter so received the Postmaster paid two cents, and charged six or eight. Letters for foreign countries were despatched only when the
THE POSTAL SERVICE
home charges were fully prepaid. But there was no regular foreign- mail service, although the Act of 1499 authorised the Postmaster-Gen- eral to " make arrangements with the Postmasters in any foreign coun- try for the reciprocal receipt and delivery of packets through the Post- Offices." This state of affairs continued until about 1850, and was not fully reduced to an orderly system until ists, when the Postal Union made five cents the standard rate for international letters. The Bos ton Post-Office had its beginning in the care of foreign letters, for Richard Fairbanks was to receive and despatch ship letters only; and yet the foreign mail was the last to be reduced to reasonable uniform- ity. The Post-Office Department at Washington had no " foreign desk " until 1850, and no Superintendent of Foreign Mails until 1868, Its work was almost altogether domestic, and consisted mainly in the extension of postal facilities. Osgood found but about seventy-five Post-Offices. mostly on the shore line from Portland to Savannah; Pickering and Habersham increased the number to nearly one thousand; but it was not until October 1, 1802, that Postmaster-General Granger established Cambridge as a separate office in the present Postal District of Boston, Charlestown was established April 1, 1816, by Posmaster-General Meigs; Brighton, July 1, 1811.
Gideon Granger, who was Postmaster-General from 1801 to 1814, was a true Jeffersonian. At an early day he recommended that negroes be not allowed to carry the mails. In support he alluded to "political considerations," and stated frankly that it was hazardous to acquaint negroes with "natural rights," adding: "They will learn [as mail car- riers| that a man's rights do not depend on his color." These pro- visions of 1802 were re-embodied in the Post-Office Act of 1810, and negroes could not be mail carriers until the time of President Lincoln. But the Act of 1810 abolished whipping as a punishment for stealing money letters on the part of postal employees, and substituted impris- onment up to ten years. Aggravated mail robbery was still punishable with death; and this law continued until Iste, when imprisonment for life was substituted. The lowest rate for letters carried not exceeding forty miles was raised from six to eight cents, and under Postmaster- General Meigs, who served from 1814 to 1823, the rate was, for the period from February 1. 1815, to May 1, 1816, the highest under the Constitution, namely, twelve cents for a single-sheet letter carried not exceeding forty miles, and thirty-seven and one-half cents for a like letter carried more than four hundred miles, From May 1, 1816, to
59
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July 1, 1845, the rates were from six to twenty-five cents. Meigs de- fended Sunday mails as an act of merey, because an act of necessity. llis administration was not marked in Boston ; but he paid more money into the Treasury than any of his predecessors. Meigs paid $387, 209, against $363,310 paid by Habersham, and $291,549 paid by Granger. Since then, owing to the rapid increase of Post-Offices, the service has not been profitable to the Treasury. It was in Meigs's day that Van Rensselaer, a Federalist, resigned a seat in Congress to take the Post- Office at Albany, N. Y., where the Democrats ruled.
Mr. MeLean, Postmaster-General from IS23 to 1829, is one of the most illustrious men ever connected with the service. His administra- tion is marked by the consolidated Post-Office Act of 1825, and by the establishment of about four thousand new Post-Offices. In the Boston District he established the following: Roxbury, August 25, 1823; Dor- chester April 3. 1826; East Cambridge, March 16, 1828; Cambridge- port, March 18, 1828; Jamaica Plain, January 12, 1829; and Brookline, March 3, 1829. Thus the number of Post-Offices in the Boston Postal Distriet was increased to ten ; from 1639 to 1802 there had been but one. Postmasters were now placed under bonds, and prohibited from engag- ing in lotteries. The power of the Postmaster-General over the whole service and its finances was almost absolute. Mr. Justice Story thought it excessive, and his famous commentary upon the Constitution con- tains a memorable warning against the political abuse almost invited by the Post-Office laws. Until Barry, the Postmaster-General was not a member of the Cabinet ; but he was a political officer. Granger was appointed and removed for political reasons; and when Jackson became President, there began that commingling of party politics and Post-Office affairs which continues until now, although the Act of 1836 gave the auditing of all Post-Office accounts to the Treasury, and deprived the Postmaster-General of the right to appoint Postmasters whose annual salary exceeds $1,000. The Civil-Service law of 1883 has still further stemmed the tide, and no Postmaster-General has engaged in removals or appointments called political, unless he was urged, not to say forced. by the political party to which he owed his own appointment.
For the first quarter that Postmaster-General Osgood was in office, he reports a total revenue of $4,510.65, Boston, the third largest office contributing $664.93. In the year ended October 5, 1991, the Boston Post-Office collected 83,694.15 in a total of $42, 255.14 for the whole country. In the year ended September 30, 1821, the Postmaster at
THE POSTAL SERVICE.
Boston, Aaron Hill, deducted $5, 169.41 from the gross receipts of his office, expending $2, 825.66 for six elerks, $300 for rent, $91.30 for fuel and light, and $6 :. 22 for incidentals, leaving him a net compensation, as the published account states, of $1,881.11. The receipts of one let- ter carrier are not included. Ile received two cents for every letter he delivered. In the year ended March 31, 1827, the net amount of post- age acerned at the Boston office was $52, 057.31; at Cambridge, $689.50; at Charlestown, $931.15; at Brighton, $101.34; at Roxbury, $148.60; and at Dorchester, $151.01. These sums remained, after all local office expenses were paid, and illustrate the rapid growth of the district in wealth and activity. In the same year the Philadelphia office paid $11,446.04 to the Postmaster-General, and New York $114, 388. 81. The Boston Post-Office under Hastings was first at If Cornhill, now called Washington Street; then in State Street, where Brazer's building now stands; and from 1816 to 1899 it was at the corner of Congress and Water Streets. Hill retired from the Boston Post-Office in 1829, and was succeeded by Nathaniel Greene, a true Jacksonian.
The first Postmaster at Cambridge was Ebenezer Stedman; his sue- cessor was Joseph Stacey Read. Stedman was born May 16, 1143; he was graduated at Harvard in 1265; from 1286 to 1190 and from 1296 to 1801 he was Selectman at Cambridge ; from 1286 to FSOS he was Town Treasurer; he died October 2, 1815. Read was born in 1:54; by trade
he was a saddler; he died in 1836. Both men were held in general re- spect. Their office dealt with the Boston Post-Office only. The first Postmaster of Charlestown, appointed in 1816, was John Kettell. The first Postmaster at Brighton, appointed in 181;, was no less a man than Noah Worcester, famous as the founder of the Massachusetts Peace Society and as the author of peace tracts that circulated almost through- out Christendom. In 1818 Harvard created him a Doctor of Divinity, and in 1844, seven years after his death, his memoirs were published. He was born November 25, 1458, in Hollis, N. H. ; was a fifer in the Continental army: took part in the battle of Bunker Hill; acted as a Congregational missionary in New Hampshire, and removed to Brigh- ton when it was a village of about 650 inhabitants. He served as Post- master until 1834, and his daughter Sally was his deputy. In 1830, when the Jackson administration was in full operation, Brighton had 912 inhabitants; Cambridge, with its Post-Offices at Cambridge, Cam- bridgeport and East Cambridge, had 6.0 ;? inhabitants; Charlestown had 8,783; Roxbury, 5,21 ;; Dorchester, 1,011: Brookline, 1,013; Bos-
SUFFOLK COUNTY.
ton with Chelsea, 62, 163; and the present Postal District, ss, 351 in all, as reported by the Census of the United States.
The Presidency of Jackson brought Postmaster-General Barry into the Cabinet; it brought postal legislation of the first importance; and with it came the railway that was destined to revolutionise the postal facilities of the country. It appears that the service at the beginning was to have its own "posts," or special riders at fixed intervals; in 1199 authority was given to carry the mail on regular stage lines, but with the proviso that the cost must not exceed the revenue: the Act of 1825 enabled the Postmaster-General to send the mail in steamboats. provided the cost did not exceed three cents a letter; the railway as a post road was not recognized by law until 183%, when the country had nearly two thousand miles of railway. The reason why the mails did not go sooner by private conveyance is readily seen : the charges were very high. In 1833 the triweekly mail between Louisville and New Orleans was carried by land, the " Ohio and Mississippi Mail Line" of steamboats declaring that they could not carry letters for the sum of three cents each. In 1838 the law declared that the transportation of mail matter by rail must not exceed the cost in stage coaches by more than twenty-five per cent. In 1823 the country had 85, 200 miles of post road, and only on 20,913 was the mail carried in stages; in 1829 the mail was carried 13,000,000 miles in all, half the distance in mail coaches, the remainder in sulkies or on horseback; in 1832 the trans- portation of the mails had reached 23, 625, 021 miles, 16, 222, 643 being by coach, against 6,902, 977 by sulky or on horseback, and but 199,301 by steamboat. But see the Blue Book of 1833, p. * 213.
It appears, then, that under Jackson and his two Postmasters-General, Barry and Kendall, the transportation of mail by private conveyance, as distinct from Government transportation, came into general use ; that, with few exceptions, steamboats in domestic waters did not largely engage in the carrying of the public mail; and that railroads soon took the larger part of the business. Boston was supplied in the main by mail coaches, some of them quite grand, until the railroads fairly momopolised the business of carrying the mail. And it is right to affirm that, as compared with other parts of the country, the railways centering in Boston have charged moderate prices for carrying the mail. The most extravagant prices have been charged for certain Southern mails, for mails on the Mississippi river, and for the over- land mail to California before the building of the Pacific railways.
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THE POSTAL SERVICE.
The Boston Postal District has been profitable to the Department from the adoption of the Constitution, and though not the third largest city in the country, Boston generally pays the third largest profit -a dis- tinetion it has had with searee an exception since 1289. Before Jack- son the stage was the great mail carrier for Boston; since then the railway has had almost a monopoly of carrying Boston mails, the Bos- ton mails carried in domestic steamboats being insignificant. But for some years a heavy foreign mail was carried to and from Boston in foreign steamships.
The Postmasters at Boston from the era of Jackson to the establish- ment of the present Postal District were seven, two of whom served two terms each. Nathaniel Greene, appointed on March 21, 1829, was the last of the Boston Postmasters to receive his commission from the Postmaster-General. The Post-Office Act of 1836, framed by Amos Kendall, placed the appointment of all Postmasters whose income exceeds $1,000 a year in the hands of the President, with the advice and consent of the Senate. The same law limited the term of these appointments to four years, and gave the President the absolute power of removal. The result has been that Postmasters are in some sense political officers, although their duties are chiefly ministerial and en- tirely non-political. Greene was born May 20, 1497, at Boscawen, N. 11., and died in Boston, November 29, 18;1. lle founded in 1821 the American Statesman, a Boston newspaper which was merged, some ten years later, in the Boston Post. Until some few years ago the weekly edition of the Post was called the American Statesman. As an avoca- tion Greene gave some attention to literature, translating from the Italian, French and German. On April 28, ISII, immediately after the accession of President Tyler, George W. Gordon was appointed Postmaster in Greene's place; but Greene was reappointed on Septem- ber 20, ISIS, and served until 1849. When the Taylor-Fillmore administration came in, William Hayden was appointed Postmaster, on May 14, 1819, but George W. Gordon was reappointed on September es, 1850, and served until 1853. Gordon had been a member of the Boston Common Council in its palmy days from 1835 to 1839. Hayden sat in the same body from Ist to 1845; in 18It, Isis, and 185? he was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. From Is24 to ISHI he had been Auditor of the City of Boston. He was born November 8, 1795, at Richmond, Va., and died October 6, 1850, at Malden, Mass. He was graduated at the Boston Latin School in 1801.
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SUFFOLK COUNTY.
Like so many Postmasters in Boston and elsewhere, Hayden was a newspaper editor, being connected with the famous Boston Atlas, the Whig organ. Another newspaper editor who became Postmaster at Boston was Edwin C. Bailey, appointed on September 21, 1853, who served during the Presidency of Pierce. Edward Curtis Bailey was born June 10, 1816, in New York City; he entered the Boston Post- Office under his uncle, Postmaster Greene. In 1847 and 1848 he was a member of the Boston Common Council; in 1848, still under Greene, he took charge of the General Delivery. From 1849 to 1853, under Postmasters Hayden and Gordon, he served as Chief Clerk. While Postmaster, from 1853 to 1851, he became owner of the Boston Herald, selling out in 1869. After a pause he edited the Boston Globe in 1828- 49, and then the Patriot at Concord, N. H. He was killed in a rail- road horror at Quincy, August 21, 1890.
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