Street boxes for mail collection began to appear in large cities by 1858. In 1863, free city delivery was instituted in 49 of the country’s largest cities. By 1890, 454 post offices were delivering mail to residents of United States cities. It was not until the turn of the century, however, that free delivery came to farmers and other rural residents.

See my stampless covers for sale on eBay.

In 1945, he won a Pulitzer Prize “for distinguished service as a cartoonist” and the Allied high command awarded him its Legion of Merit. His illustrated memoir, Up Front, was a bestseller. That same year, his “dogface” Willie appeared on the cover of Time.

U.S. Postal Service art director Terry McCaffrey chose to honor Mauldin through a combination of photography and an example of Mauldin’s art. The photo of Bill Mauldin is by John Phillips, a photographer for Life magazine; it was taken in Italy on December 31, 1943. Mauldin’s cartoon, showing his characters Willie and Joe, is used courtesy of the 45th Infantry Division Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Click for more information on Bill Mauldin

To get the postmark, customers should affix the stamps to envelopes of their choice, address the envelopes to themselves or others, and place them in a larger envelope addressed to:

(Winter Holidays) (Hanukkah) (Kwanzaa) Stamp(s)
Postmaster
421 Eighth Ave., Rm. 2029B
New York, NY 10199-9998

After applying the first-day-of-issue postmark, the Postal Service will return the envelopes through the mail. There is no charge for this service.

In the 1920’s, as airmail was ‘taking off’ all across America, the U.S. government was eager to develop mail service between North and South America. On March 8, 1928, Congress passed the Foreign Air Mail Act to regulate that international service.  A few weeks later, the Postmaster General solicited bids for companies to take over a wide-ranging network of mail routes all across Latin America and the Caribbean.

It was the catalyst that created that provided the impetus for three major air carriers to merge into one.  Atlantic, Pan American, and the Aviation Corporation united as the Aviation Corporation of the Americas. A new Pan American Airways Incorporated was created to act as the main operating subsidiary of the new corporation, and it was the ‘darling’ of President Calvin Coolidge’s administration.

The Federal government looked very kindly at Pan Am, and considered it the United States’ “chosen instrument” for foreign policy.  Airmail was seen as an important strategy to facilitate U.S. economic expansion into Latin America and the Caribbean…and Pan Am was considered the right tool for the job.  To a large degree, Pan Am’s success was the direct result of provisions in the Foreign Air Mail Act.

The Act decreed that only airlines capable of operating on a scale and manner that would “project the dignity of the United States in Latin America” would be granted the right to carry international mail.  The Act also specified that contracts would only be given to companies that had been invited for operations by the countries of Latin America.

In these two areas…Pan Am had no competitors.

The U.S. government, in fact, awarded Pan Am every foreign airmail route for which bids were invited. These included routes to Havana, Cuba; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Nassau in the Bahamas; Mexico City; and Santiago, Chile.

Re-Purposing War Planes – With a large number of war-surplus aircraft in hand, the Post Office almost immediately set its sights on a far more ambitious goal, which was transcontinental air service. It opened the first segment, between Chicago and Cleveland, on May 15, 1919, and completed the service on Sept. 8, 1920, when the most difficult part of the route, the Rocky Mountains, was spanned. Airplanes still could not fly at night when the service first began, so the mail was handed off to trains at the end of each day. Nonetheless, by using airplanes the Post Office was able to shave 22 hours off coast-to- coast mail deliveries.

The Rose of Washington is a multi-colored Civil War patriotic designed by Charles Magnus.  It is his arguably his best-known work.   The colorful and elaborate rose is printed in blue on one side and bronze on the other.  The Rose of Washington cover features a foldout rose enclosure with numerous scenes and monuments of Washington, D.C.

Browse dozens of articles on all types of postal history such as Airmail, Naval, Patriotic, Town Cancels, Auxiliary  Markings, Stampless,  Registered, Advertising, Censors, Special Delivery and just about anything else you can imagine.

Many articles focus on the Civil War, WW II, US  Presidents and the US Post Office while at the same time I have posted guides to aid in your postal history collecting efforts.

If you enjoy collecting First Day Covers, Event Covers, commercial covers or  pictorial slogan cancels you will plenty of information in these areas too!

The main provision of the Air Mail Act changed the manner in which payments were calculated.   The purpose of the provision was to discourage the carrying of bulk junk mail to boost profits and to encourage the carrying of passengers instead.  A second provision allowed any airmail carrier with an existing contract of at least two years standing to exchange its contract for a route certificate giving it the right to haul mail for 10 additional years. 

But it was the third and most controversial provision that raised concern.  The Act gave Brown authority to extend or consolidate routes based on little more than his personal judgment.  Brown took full advantage of his new powers which resulted in one of the most notorious ‘black eyes’ in Post Office history.

Dirty Doings Going On
The Air Mail Scandal, also known as the Air Mail Fiasco, is how American journalists of referred to the political scandal that arose from an investigation into Brown’s meeting with the executives of America’s three top private airlines and their parceling out of America’s airmail routes.

The men who attended the aptly dubbed ‘Spoils Conference’ had divided the nation’s lucrative air routes among themselves.  The three carriers later evolved into United Airlines (which took the northern airmail route), TWA which had the mid-United States route,  and American Airways (later American Airlines) which controlled the southern route.

Smaller airlines were enraged by the obvious political favoritism.  In September 1933, a complaint was registered with the Senate Committee on Ocean Mail and Air Mail.  Chairman Hugo Black of Alabama agreed to establish a special Senate committee to investigate alleged.

It soon became evident that Brown’s administration of the air mail had increased the efficiency of the service and lowered its costs from $1.10 to $0.54 per mile and that there were obvious partisan politics involved in investigating what appeared to be a Republican scandal by a Democratic-controlled committee. 

Still despite all this, the hearings raised serious questions regarding its legality and ethics.

In 1930, more than 10,000 trains were used to move the mail into every city, town, and village in the United States. Following passage of the Transportation Act of 1958, mail-carrying passenger trains declined rapidly. By 1965, only 190 trains carried mail; by 1970, the railroads carried virtually no First-Class Mail.

On April 30, 1971, the Post Office Department terminated seven of the eight remaining routes. The lone, surviving railway post office ran between New York and Washington, D.C., and made its last run on June 30, 1977.

Postal aircraft could fly with sacks of mail for an average cost of $64.80 for each hour in the air. Pilots received a base pay of about $3,600 per year and then were paid five to seven cents more for each mile they flew, flying an average of five to six hours each day. After a year in operation, postal revenues for the year totaled $162,000. The cost to fly the mail had been just $143,000. This first year of operation was to be the only time in airmail history that the service showed a profit.