The Railway Mail Service

THE RAILWAY MAIL SERVICE

UNITED STATES MAIL

RAILWAY POST OFFICE

Clarence R. Wilking [deceased]

Route 7

Marietta, Ohio 45750

1985

1995 - RAILWAY MAIL SERVICE LIBRARY

THE RAILWAY MAIL SERVICE

The Railway Postal Clerk A Vanished Breed

The first record of rail transportation of mail in the United States was in 1831, when a mail contractor utilized the service of the South Carolina Railroad. It was in the shift from stage to rail that a new job or profession appeared that of the "route agent," the forerunner of the railway postal clerk. On the old stage lines, a local postmaster, who usually had his office in the tavern, opened the carrying case containing the mail and exchanged "mails" while the stage driver changed horses. On the railroads, this could not be done, and a man was soon assigned to accompany the mail on the train; a separate compartment was set aside for the mails, beginning in 1835. This agent usually rode in the baggage car, and was at first the baggage man or other employee of the stage company or railroad.

In 1837, the Post Office Department began appointing "route agents" of its own on some lines; the first recorded agent was John E. Kendall, who rode from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. Others soon followed, and each route agent was given a hand postmarker to stamp local letters received along the way.

In 1838, with the rapid building of railroads, Congress declared all railroads to be "post roads," and provided for making direct contracts for mail by rail wherever the cost would not exceed 25% more than the cost by stage.

The duties of the route agent included accompanying the mails to the train and receiving them in his compartment (or in his part of the baggage car). Right before the departure of the train, he opened the letter box on the depot platform and took out latemailed letters. Before 1847, when stamps were introduced, he made out waybills for collection at delivery of these letters, which were then tied with the other letters in brown wrapping paper and addressed to a DPO (Distribution Post Office); these packets so wrapped were referred to as "mails." Mail which was received at each station was sorted and turned in to the terminal office or nearest DPO; local letters were dispatched en route. There were 35 post offices designated as DPOs in 1810; these were important post offices in centers of large areas, counties, or states, to which mail was sent for distribution.

It was soon seen that the weak spot in the system was the DPOs at the termini or junction points where the mails had to be redistributed, missing all close connections. An attempt was made in 1857 to remedy this by establishing "express agents," who continued from a line, on to a connecting line; this facilitated the through dispatches greatly, but did nothing for other lines and connections at junctions.

In 1863, a meeting of postal officials was held in Cleveland, Ohio, which emphasized the need for "postal reform," and severely castigated the abuses and delays in the DPOs explaining how letters were being sent by circuitous routes, in order that more DPOs would share in the commissions for redistribution. Letters were subject to so many distributions that the postal charges upon them were entirely absorbed and, in many cases, the distribution commissions of a postmaster largely exceeded the whole proceeds of his office.

A glance at the route agent system in 1860 shows that it was increasing rapidly, with the constant building of railroad lines. On June 30, 1864, there were 6,085 mail routes; distances served by each type of service were: 7,278 miles by steamboats; 22,666 miles by railroads; and 109,278 miles by stage and sulky. The railroad and boat lines were the most important, as they were the arteries which fed the horse routes. These railroad routes at first formed an unorganized and unattached service loosely related to the Post Office Department and to the DPOs. Technically, they were given some supervision by the nearest large DPO, in addition to some general instructions from Washington.

The first experiment in distributing mails in socalled "post offices on wheels" was made in 1862 by William A. Davis between Hannibal and St. Joseph, Missouri. Its aim was to expedite the connection at St. Joseph with the overland stage, which had replaced the Pony Express routes to the West a year earlier. The railroad company furnished a baggage car, altered as requested by Davis. Besides being similar to a route agent's car, it was provided with a table and a 65pigeonhole letter case, but it had no pouch rack. Davis boarded the westbound train at Palmyra, Missouri, with authority to open the sacks and letter packages which were addressed to the St. Joseph DPO, to remove all California letters, and to make up and sort the mail in a manner identical to the way the St. Joseph DPO would have dispatched it. Davis was paid at the rate of $100.00 per month. The railroad was harassed by guerrillas and by lack of maintenance, resulting in several suspensions and finally abandonment of the experiment. After the Civil War, RPO (Railway Post Office) service was reestablished on this line, and it became known as the Chicago & Kansas City RPO.

George B. Armstrong, an Assistant Postmaster at Chicago during the Civil War, was summoned, along with other special agents and extra post office clerks, to go to Cairo, Illinois, and clear up a congestion of both army and naval mails; he was put in charge of a new DPO there. Because he did a good job at Cairo, Armstrong was heeded when he made suggestions regarding the distribution of mail in railway postal cars. Working with A.N. Zevely, who had been chosen by the Post Office Department to look into postal "reform," Armstrong started to put his theories to work.

Zevely wrote to various railroad officials in the spring of 1864, asking that special cars be prepared for experiments with "traveling post offices." Apparently, even though he promoted the experiment, Zevely seemed to have only a hazy idea regarding the technical improvements needed; that is when Armstrong provided the knowhow. He proposed that all possible direct mailings to DPOs be discontinued; this meant no more packaging of letters. Secondly, he proposed that all post offices be classified, showing which were junctions, which had star routes, etc. Third, he proposed a system of traveling post offices; this proposal, while the most important of the three, would be useless without the other two reforms. In short, Armstrong, after classifying offices and dispensing with the wrappers, would have all letters for the same office or connection tied up in a package. (Basically, this system is still in use.) Since all letters were not yet postageprepaid with stamps, he needed to provide for continuation of the postbilling; however, his suggestions simplified the system overall.

With these recommendations, the Postmaster General authorized Armstrong to test his theories by actual experience on railroads out of Chicago. Armstrong arranged with the Chicago & North Western Railroad to remodel a route agent's car. Letter cases with 77 separations each were borrowed from the Chicago DPO and were installed. Papers were sorted in a crude case of 10 x 12 inch boxes. The car was about 40 feet long, with two windows and natural light in the upper deck; it was equipped with oil lamps, but no end doors. The crew opened pouches and sacks, cut and "worked" letter packages, making up mail for local dispatch, crossing star routes, and points beyond termini.

Publicity was arranged with the Chicago Times for the first trip on August 28, 1864, between Chicago and Clinton, Iowa. The "United States Railway Post Office" left Chicago with a crew of four, plus some business and newspaper men who went as far as Dixon, Illinois. Because the clerks were not familiar with the letter cases, a small amount of #1 mail was "carried bye;" i.e., mail for the first post offices along the route was not worked before those offices were reached, so it was "carried bye" its destination. However, mail was worked on this first trip with surprising ease and efficiency. This line, with only a slight variation, became a part of the Chicago & Omaha RPO.

Very soon, other RPO lines were established, and a form of national organization developed. The service was placed under a General Superintendent of the RMS (Railway Mail Service); George B. Armstrong was the first appointee. The service mushroomed and became the backbone of the Post Office Department; it would provide employment to thousands of a special kind of postal clerk for over the next hundred years.

Years later, the heirs both of Davis and of Armstrong claim kinship to the initiator of the Railway Mail Service to this day, it is not obvious who should be so honored. Although the service between Palmyra and St. Joseph was first in time, the Chicago and Clinton run was the first to perform the full functions of a Railway Post Office. Pouches and sacks had been made up and addressed to the line, the clerks on the line had opened the pouches and had cut and worked up the packages of individual letters for local dispatch and they had made up mails for crossing star routes and points beyond termini. So rests the case of a controversy unique in postal history.

The RMS in the East was very slow to be developed, due to the opposition of eastern postmasters, with their fat redistributing commissions; while in the West, out of Chicago, RPOs were being steadily added. The first full year of the infant RMS saw only three RPOs later known as the NY & Wash, NY & Salamanca, and NY & Pitts established in the East, where opposition to this new service threatened the whole system. When Harrison Parks, one of the original four clerks on the Chicago to Clinton run, was put in charge of the eastern runs, he found no local service being performed and few qualified clerks.

The bitterest opposition was in New England, around the newly established Boston & NY RPO. The resentment of politically powerful postmasters and newspapers, notably in Boston, was apparent in the attack on the RMS system in the Boston Morning Journal in 1874. The paper proposed an immediate return to the DPOs and route agents, accusing the Post Office Department of holding all westbound mails for the two daily RPO trains to New York. Captain White, an official of the RMS, publicly informed the Boston postmaster of his duty to send mail to New York City and points beyond via the dozen daily closed pouch trains running at that time, rather than holding it all for the two RPO trains. After the RMS established by such firm tactics its authority over the dispatch of mail, there was a steady improvement everywhere. Many other RPOs were established in the East, some connecting with those in the Midwest.

The RPO titles were uniformly named from East to West and from North to South. In the case of two RPOs having the same termini, an intermediate city would be included in the title of one; e.g., the Chicago & Cincinnati RPO was easily distinguished from the Chicago, Richmond & Cincinnati RPO.

In 1869, the RMS was organized into six divisions, under a single general superintendent, George Armstrong. Armstrong introduced the first standard mail cranes in 1869, for the exchange of mail at nonstop stations; until then, the trains merely slowed down for the exchange. Installed by the railroads at every nonstop station, the mail crane had special catcher pouches which contained the mail to be dispatched; a catcher arm in the doorway of the RPO caught the hanging pouch on the fly. All closedpouch, star route, and route agent runs were placed under RMS jurisdiction. The first extensive use of night RPO trains began, providing overnight delivery of most mails within 300 miles.

Many innovations which lasted during the RMS existence originated between 1868 and 1872. State General schemes and mail train schedules appeared, along with cards and practice cases to aid in preparation for examinations. A service rating system of merits and demerits and an oneyear probationary period were introduced to weed out the politically appointed incompetent clerks. A standard system was introduced for the proper "make up" of all mails which defined the duties of post office crews and RPO clerks.

By 1873, there were 752 railway postal clerks in the United States. The first famous "Fast Mail" train was established on September 16, 1875, on the NY & Chicago RPO. Previously, there had been fast service on short and separate lines, but their time values were lost at connecting points. With the cooperation of the various lines involved, this much publicized event in RMS history was a significant milestone of progress in the entire postal service, because it saved from 12 to 24 hours in transit time. The initial trip included four postal cars (two 50foot "letter cars" and two 60foot "paper cars") and one drawingroom coach which accommodated 100 distinguished officials, including the Vice President, reporters from all sizable eastern newspapers, mayors, postmasters, and top railroad officials. In later years, this train was known as New York Central's "Twentieth Century Limited." Although this train got most of the publicity, Pennsylvania RR's competing "Limited Mail" route from New York to Chicago and St. Louis via Pittsburgh started on the same date. This train to Chicago in later years became known as Pennsy's crack "Broadway Limited."

These events finally led to the establishment of the storied Overland Transcontinental line, which extended the NY & Chicago service westward to San Francisco. The first transcontinental Fast Mail to the Pacific ran in 1889; from Chicago, this involved the Chicago & Council Bluffs RPO (Burlington RR), Omaha & Ogden RPO (Union Pacific RR), and the Ogden & San Francisco RPO (Southern Pacific RR and Central Pacific RR). In later years, the Chicago & Omaha RPO (Chicago & North Western RR) gradually took over the link between Chicago and Omaha.

With the enactment of the Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883, all postal employees were placed under Civil Service no longer could clerks be appointed merely because they knew the right people.

Most dissatisfaction by the RPO clerks in the early days was due to the poorly constructed and serviced postal cars used by the railroads. Any railroad work was considered dangerous in those days, especially that of the postal clerk; his car was generally the weakest in the train, often an old wooden remodeled baggage car, which was located right behind the engine and received the full impact in cases of headon crashes or derailments. This was a special problem up into the early 1900s; whereas the other cars of the train were constructed of steel, the RPO was of wooden construction.

From 1877 to 1884, 25 clerks were killed and 147 were seriously injured out of 3,153 employed; from 1885 to 1892 the figures jumped to 43 and 463, respectively. The most historical of all mail train wrecks was made famous by the song, "Wreck of the Old 97." The engine and four cars of the Washington & Charlotte RPO Southern RR Train 97 crashed over the side of a 75foot trestle near Danville, Virginia, in 1903, killing eleven clerks and seriously injuring three clerks.

To help correct the injustice of the government's not paying death benefits in these early days, the clerks organized their own Railway Mail Mutual Benefit Association in 1874. Each member was assessed $1.10 upon the death of any other member, and $2,000 was paid to the latter's beneficiary. This provided a little financial security for the families involved. Years before the clerks' and carriers' national groups were even founded, the MBA endeavored to secure legislation for better wage and working conditions. In 1886, to protect the interest of clerks, the "Brotherhood of Railway Mail Postal Clerks" was organized and gradually took over the fight for better wages and working conditions. In 1898, a Beneficiary Department was added, paying $4,000 for accidental death and $18 weekly for disability. This organization became the "Railway Mail Association" in 1904; that name was kept for 45 years, after which it was changed to the "National Postal Transportation Association." In 1899, the association started printing a monthly magazine, the "Railway Post Office" which was one of the finest published by any union organization. In 1949, the name of the magazine was changed to the "Postal Transport Journal."