The Postal Service most certainly stayed close to the expanding republic. Between 1790 and 1840, the number of post offices exploded from just 75 to over 13,000. A few years after the Civil War, the service was operating over 76,000 offices. That, says Cameron Blevins, made it the largest “communication network” on earth. As the associate professor at the University of Colorado Denver explains, this was basically a function of 19th century expansionism. As the pioneers forced their way west, and Manifest Destiny rushed Americans from sea to shining sea, post connected the “whole nation together”. And so it proved in practice too. Consider Arizona’s Supai post office as an example. Established in 1896, it connected the Grand Canyon’s miners and the Havasupai nation of Native Americans to the wider world. 128 years later, mules still haul the outgoing mail three hours up steep, sandy passes to the next post at Peach Springs. Ten years after Supai’s founding, in 1906, free rural delivery integrated even more Americans. Just before the outbreak of the First World War, the Post Office started delivering parcels, further connecting people to the bounties of American life.
Public respect for the Postal Service reached further heights during the Great Depression, when FDR expanded its footprint still further. In truth, though, its acclaim during the first half of the last century isn’t really about numbers. In the Thirties, three-quarters of all Americans believed the federal government would “do the right thing almost always or most of the time”. Far from being naïve dupes, this civic faith was fired by depression and war, together creating remarkable social solidarity. At the core of this social trust were institutions, like the Post Office, that for Blevins represent the veritable cartilage and guts of the nation. “The US Post,” he says, “is a model of what an effective government could be.”
That, in turn, made Americans have more faith not just in far-off bureaucrats — but also in each other. For Americans born in the first half of the last century, neighbourliness and social trust flourished. Buttressing this sensibility was New Deal liberalism. More than a pastiche of programmes, the New Deal was grounded in a principle that Americans look beyond narrow self-interest and towards the common good. FDR, for his part, understood the Post Office was the one federal entity Americans most used, leveraging it as a tool of social solidarity.
“FDR understood the Post Office was the one federal entity Americans most used, leveraging it as a tool of social solidarity.”