Video: Children as a parcel: how children were sent by mail in the USA
2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55
Sometimes parents want to rest. They can send their children for the summer before grandparents: take them by car or bus, escort them by train or plane. Could you send your child by mail? Unlikely. But in the United States at the very beginning of the last century, parents did just that - they sent their children to grandparents by mail.
Mailing in those days cost less than a dollar, which was cheaper than sending a child by train, and traveling with him in addition to accompanying.
Such a living parcel was taken care of at the post office, this mission was performed by the postmen. A mail bag was taken into which the child was packed. A stamp was put on the clothes of the person sent. And ready - the parcel could be sent.
Throughout the entire route of the parcel, the child was under the watchful eye of the couriers-postmen. The service seemed very useful to the people of America. However, the US government decided differently, and it was abolished very quickly.
In 1913, thanks to the postal reform, the "Law on the Post Office" appeared. Thanks to this law, Americans were given the opportunity to receive purchased clothes, medicines, clothing, tobacco and grain in the mail. From now on, all parcels were delivered to the very doors of US residents.
Even village animals could be sent by mail: chickens, geese and turkeys. The main thing is that the weight of the parcel does not exceed 50 pounds, or 22, 68 kg in our opinion. And small children fit perfectly into this nominally established weight.
January 1913. The Ohio Bodges sent a package to Louis Bodge. The parcel was insured for $ 50. The Bojis paid 15 cents for it. It turned out that the load of the parcel was a boy, whom his parents sent in such a clever way to his grandmother, saving on the train.
This boy was the first child sent after the adoption of the Mail Act, but certainly not the last. All in the same 1913, the Savis family from Pennsylvania sent their daughter by mail to visit her grandmother. My grandmother also lived in Pennsylvania, only in another locality.
The girl was delivered to the indicated address on the same day. The parents paid 45 cents for the package. Cheap, prudent and practical, this was the opinion of the Americans who lived at the beginning of the 20th century.
Such departures did not disappear without a trace in the abyss of history. To the Americans, their government has proven hundreds of times that children are not bees, chickens, turkeys that could be sent by mail. But they did not quit.
In 1914, the Perstorf family, living in Idaho, sent their daughter May to Oregon to their grandmother. The girl weighed very little, so she was mailed at a chicken rate of 53 cents. And many children were sent at this rate.
In 1914, the chief postmaster of the United States, A. S. Berlison, issued a decree stating that postmen should not take parcels with children. However, this decision did not in any way affect some resourceful parents who managed to send babies in a package. In 1915, a huge number of children were sent.
The last fact of the shipment of a live package was the return of a 3-year-old girl named Maud Smith. She was returned to her parents from her grandparents. And then another case was brought up against the parents. The mod was discovered in 1920. For since that time, the children have ceased to be sent by mail. Many American parents were naturally unhappy. But what to do - the law is the law …
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