The United States Postal Service is the one government agency that touches every American on a daily basis. Through rain, sleet, and snow, Postal Service employees deliver more mail every delivery day, per capita, than most countries deliver in a month. A healthy postal network facilitated communication among army commanders and the first elected representatives, and representatives and their constituents; newspapers sent through the mail enabled Americans to participate in political life.
As directed by Congress, postal officials first extended the mail system geographically, adding mail routes and Post Offices to embrace communities up and down the coast and then westward, keeping pace with the traveling frontier.
In the mids, Congress increased access to the mail by simplifying and lowering letter-postage rates. Later in the century, Congress introduced the convenience that most Americans now expect ā free home delivery of mail, first in the city, then in the country. To check for mail, city dwellers no longer had to wait in long lines at crowded Post Offices, and farmers no longer had to unhitch horse from plow and plod five or six miles into town.
In , the Post Office Department introduced Parcel Post ā affordable parcel delivery available to all Americans that opened up a new world of mail order merchandise to many, especially in rural areas.
To enable the Post Office Department to serve all Americans, no matter how remote, yet still finance its operations largely from its revenue, Congress gave the Department a monopoly over the carriage of letter-mail by a group of federal laws known as the Private Express Statutes. Without such protection, Congress reckoned that private companies would siphon off high-profit delivery routes, leaving only money-losing routes to the Department, which then would be forced to rely on tax-payers to continue operations.
