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

5 2 • 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 2. The Autocar screen- side truck used for the historic postal test run between Lancaster, Pennsylvania, andNew York City on March 20, 1918. This vehicle transported about 2900 pounds of farm produce in what was thelongest mail- delivery trip of its kind up to that time. Courtesy of the National Postal Museum Library, SmithsonianInstitution Libraries.to the truck’s comparatively few stops in transit while deliveringthe produce to New York City from a rural areaover 100 miles away (Figure 2). 15 That night at the dinnermeeting of the Motor Truck Club of America, New York’sSecretary of State Francis Hugo called the test run, “anepoch in the history of the United States and the world.” 16Epoch or not, that test run and other aspects of the motortruck farm- to- table routes did receive positive public notice.This was because the whole enterprise fit in well withthe food- conservation ethos that dominated the war.The service, to be sure, was far from perfect. It couldbe expensive, first of all. Other periodic drawbacks includedtrucks breaking down and food getting spoiled intransit. Farmers nonetheless embraced the service, and notjust because of how much produce the motor trucks couldcarry. Many farmhands who normally might take produceelsewhere were serving in the military or performing otherwartime duties, and the Post Office Department’s programhelped mitigate that manpower shortage. 17Blakslee emphasized those linkages with the largerwar effort. As he noted in an April 1918 New Times article,“Government profit in any branch of the postal serviceis a good thing, but at the present time that takes secondplace when compared to the necessity for food productionon the biggest possible scale. And do not forget that wehave less men than ever to produce the food.” 18 Throughoutthe U.S. involvement in World War I, the Farm- to-Table postal delivery service was widely praised in thepress. Hoover hailed the service as an important means ofsaving food. 19Blakslee, trying to seize this momentum, promoted anationwide network of profitable motor truck routes. Hereasoned that the surplus he felt would surely result fromthose routes could be used to improve the roads on whichthe vehicles traveled. Virginia’s Senator Claude Swanson,in fact, introduced a bill authorizing the Postmaster Generalto establish such routes and to use half the gross revenuesfrom those routes for road improvements. That billdied in a Senate committee, but in July 1918 Congress didappropriate a smaller amount for a few more experimentalroutes. Just a few months later, however, the armisticewith Germany was signed. The Treaty of Versailles in Juneof the following year would officially end the state of war,but the armistice halted the actual fighting. 20In the post- armistice atmosphere, Blakslee and othersin the department found it tougher to extend—let alonemaintain—the farm- to- table postal delivery program andin particular its motor truck routes. The once solid public