The Winton M. Blount Postal History Symposia - Smithsonian ...

1 5 6 • s m i t h s o n i a n c o n t r i b u t i o n s t o h i s t o ry a n d t e c h n o l o g yFigure 1. The Penny Black and the Mulready as reproduced in Congressional Documents(26th Congress, 1st Session, Senate Document 547).he recommended rating letters by weight rather than thenumber of sheets of paper, two postage zones (under andover 500 miles) because distances in the United States weremuch greater than in Britain, the introduction of postagestamps, prepayment of postage for letters and newspapers,abolition of the franking privilege, as well as guards for“mail of importance” and special agents to inspect postoffices and instruct postmasters. 4 Great Britain, in contrast,to this day charges a penalty of double postage fornonprepayment but has never made prepayment of postagecompulsory.The campaign to adopt the key elements of the BritishUniform Penny Post—a low uniform rate per unit ofweight, elimination of any distinctions for distance, andcompulsory prepayment with stamps—became known asthe “cheap postage” movement in the United States. Mostreformers also advocated higher postage rates for newspapersand abolition of the franking privilege because theyunderstood the extent to which American letters subsidizedother classes of mail. At the same time, British reformersbegan a crusade for lower international postage rates; inthe United States this international “cheap ocean postage”movement became entwined with domestic letter rate reform.However, following passage of the 1851 Post OfficeAct—which lowered rates but did not match the Britishone- penny rate, still contained a distance factor for mailto the West Coast, and did not require prepayment—thecheap postage movement withered. The willingness of thecheap postage reformers to accept a significant reduction inletter rates, without the other reforms, reflects the extent towhich reforming the Post Office was not their primary goal.In Great Britain, the Uniform Penny Post had beenessentially an economic reform. Utilitarian thinkers, influencedby the writings of Jeremy Bentham and John StuartMill, sought to reduce tax rates in a way that wouldproduce the greatest economic benefits for the greatestnumber of members of society. Since the post office generatedsubstantial revenue for the British treasury, the highpostage rates in Great Britain certainly qualified as a formof taxation. Unlike Great Britain, the post office was nota revenue source for the United States treasury. The U.S.post office sought only to break even in its operations andwas often allowed to operate at a deficit, due to the importanceattached to the dissemination of published politicalinformation. The Post Office Department believed that itwas providing letter service as cheaply as possible, giventhe tremendous volume of free and deeply discountednewspaper postage that was subsidized with the postagecollected on letters. Consequently, the key economic argumentin America was one of demonstrating that the postoffice could still meet its “break even” requirement by deliveringa higher volume of mail at lower postage rates,rather than the British argument of releasing the nation’seconomic potential through lower taxes.The economic content of much of the American writingabout cheap postage has led some scholars to assert