A Chronology of 

Middle Missouri Plains 

Village Sites

By Craig M. Johnson

with contributions by

Stanley A. Ahler, Herbert Haas, and Georges Bonani

Smithsonian Institution

Scholarly Press

Smithsonian Institution

Scholarly Press

smithsonian contributions to history and technology • number 56

The Winton M. Blount 

Postal History Symposia

Select Papers, 2010–2011

Thomas Lera

Editor
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smithsonian contributions to history and technology • number 56

The Winton M. Blount

Postal History Symposia

Select Papers, 2010–2011

Edited by

Thomas Lera

washington d.c.

2012
ABSTRACT

Lera, Thomas. The Winton M. Blount Postal History Symposia: Select Papers, 2010–2011. Smithsonian 

Contributions to History and Technology, number 56, viii + 134 pages, 126 figures, 9 tables, 2012.—Rarely 

do scholars of postal organizations and systems meet and discuss their ideas and research with scholars of 

philately. In an attempt to bridge this gap, the National Postal Museum and the American Philatelic Society 

hosted the first Winton M. Blount Postal History symposium on 3–4 November 2006 to bring together these 

two research groups to discuss postal history. This publication covers the next two symposia. The 2010 

theme was “Stamps and the Mail: Images, Icons and Identity.” Stamps, as official government documents, 

can be treated as primary resources designed to convey specific political and esthetic messages. Other topics 

and themes for the symposium were stamp design’s influence on advertising envelopes and bulk mailings, 

censorship of stamps as propaganda as used on letters, and the role of the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee 

or organizations that generate the designs. The 2011 symposium was held at the American Philatelic Center 

in conjunction with the United States Stamp Society’s annual meeting. The United States Stamp Society is 

the preeminent organization devoted to the study of U.S. stamps. It is a nonprofit, volunteer-run association 

of collectors to promote the study of the philatelic output of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and of 

postage and revenue stamped paper produced by others for use in the United States and U.S. administered 

areas. The theme of the symposium was “How Commerce and Industry Shaped the Mails.”

Cover images, from left to right: Banking and commerce issue, 1975 (from the Smithsonian National Postal 

Museum Collection, 1985.0482.20067); Figure 4 from Rufe, “‘Live Chicks’ Require First Class Treatment”; 

and manufacturing steel plant parcel post issue, 1913 (from the Smithsonian National Postal Museum 

Collection, 2005.2001.289).

Published by SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION SCHOLARLY PRESS

P.O. Box 37012, MRC 957

Washington, D.C. 20013-7012

www.scholarlypress.si.edu

Compilation copyright © 2012 Smithsonian Institution

“Letter from the Director,” “Introduction,” “Introduction to the 2010 Symposium,” “Introduction to the 2011 

Symposium,” “Bearing Philatelic Witness: Victims of Stalinism on Stamps,” Hochfelder Figures 2, 5, 6, and Straight 

Figure 9 are in the public domain. The rights to all other text and images in this publication, including cover and 

interior designs, are owned either by the Smithsonian Institution, by contributing authors, or by third parties. Fair use 

of materials is permitted for personal, educational, or noncommercial purposes. Users must cite author and source of 

content, must not alter or modify copyrighted content, and must comply with all other terms or restrictions that may 

be applicable. Users are responsible for securing permission from a rights holder for any other use.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Winton M. Blount Postal History Symposium (2010 : Washington, D.C.)

The Winton M. Blount Postal History Symposia select papers, 2010–2011 / Thomas Lera, editor.

 p. cm. -- (Smithsonian contributions to history and technology ; no. 56) 1. Postal service—History—

Congresses. 2. Postage stamps—History—Congresses. I. Lera, Thomas M. II. Winton M. Blount Postal History 

Symposium (2011 : Bellefonte, Pa.) III. Title.

HE6041.W56 2010a

769.569--dc23

2012019198

ISSN: 1948-5999 (print); 1948-6006 (online)

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for 

Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48–1992.
Contents

LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR OF THE NATIONAL POSTAL MUSEUM v

INTRODUCTION vii

KEYNOTE ADDRESS FROM 2011 SYMPOSIUM

 Do We Still Need a Postal System? Thoughts on a Twenty-First-Century 

Federal Communications Policy 1

David Hochfelder 

2010 SYMPOSIUM—STAMPS AND THE MAIL: IMAGERY, ICONS, 

AND IDENTITY

Introduction to the 2010 Symposium 9

Thomas Lera

Hermes: Message and Messenger 11

Diane DeBlois, Robert Dalton Harris, and Sune Christian Pedersen

 You Need to Get Your Head Examined: The Unchanging Portrait 

of Queen Victoria on Nineteenth-Century British Postage Stamps 19

Catherine J. Golden

 Debating Identity and Origins with Early Twentieth-Century American 

Commemoratives 27

Sheila A. Brennan

 The Trans-Mississippi Exposition Commemorative Stamp Issue 

and National Identity at the Turn of the Twentieth Century 35

Tessa Sabol

Stalin on Stamps: Design, Propaganda, Politics 45

Alexander Kolchinsky

Bearing Philatelic Witness: Victims of Stalinism on Stamps 59

Robin Gates Elliott

Postage Stamp Images as Cultural Markers 69

Jack Trammell
i v • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

2011 SYMPOSIUM—HOW COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY SHAPED 

THE MAILS

Introduction to the 2011 Symposium 75

Thomas Lera

 Rural Americans, Postcards, and the Fiscal Transformation 

of the Post Office Department, 1909–1911 77

Daniel Gifford

Order No. 10: Post Office Protection of the Express Cartel 85

David L. Straight

Postmarking Records, Cancellations, and Postmaster Pay 95

Erick Lee Erickson

 “Live Chicks” Require First Class Treatment: The U.S. Special 

Handling Service 109

Robert G. Rufe

United States Parcel Post System: Postage Due Stamps and Proofs 119

Harry K. Charles Jr.

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS 133
Letter from the Director

1 June 2012

It is my great pleasure to introduce the Selected Proceedings of the Postal History Symposia. The first of these symposia was named after Winton M. Blount, the first Postmaster General of the United States Postal Service. Through his generous endowment to 

the Smithsonian National Postal Museum (NPM), the Center for Postal Studies and the 

Chair-in-Research were created in his name in 2006. 

The success of the Postal History Symposia was due in large part to the support of 

our partners: the American Philatelic Society (APS), American Philatelic Research Library 

(APRL), the NPM Council of Philatelists, and the NPM Museum Advisory Council.

I would like to thank all of the philatelists, scholars, and industry leaders who presented at the symposia. Their research and presentations made participation in each 

panel enjoyable to all.

Special thanks are owed to the symposium cochairs Thomas Lera (NPM), David 

Straight and Ken Martin (APS), and Tara Murray (APRL). Without their efforts, the 

symposia would not have been as great of a success.

If you enjoy these papers as much as I hope you will, please continue to support 

future postal history symposia held at the National Postal Museum or the American 

Philatelic Center.

Allan Kane

Director, National Postal Museum

Introduction

Postal history is the study of postal systems, how they operate, and/or the collecting 

of covers and associated material illustrating historical episodes of postal systems. 

The term is attributed to Robson Lowe, who made the first organized study of the 

subject in the 1930s and described philatelists as “students of science” but postal historians as “students of humanity.” Postal history includes the study of postal rates, postal 

policy, administration, and inspection, as well as political effects on postal systems and 

the consequences of politics, business, and culture on these systems, basically anything to 

do with the collection, transportation, and delivery of mail. 

The first symposium “What Is Postal History?” took place in November 2006 and 

was named in honor of Winton M. Blount. In 1969, Blount had become postmaster general in President Richard M. Nixon’s cabinet and put an end to the patronage appointment of postmaster vacancies. In 1971, he presided over the shift of the U.S. Post Office 

from a cabinet department to the United States Postal Service, a nonprofit, governmentowned corporation, and became its first chairman (Figure 1).

The location of the symposium has alternated between the NPM in Washington, 

DC, and the American Philatelic Center in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania. The six symposia 

convened to date were

	 •	 “What Is Postal History?” (Washington, D.C., 3–4 November 2006)

	 •	 “Further, Farther, Faster: Transportation Technology and the Mail” (Bellefonte,

Pennsylvania, 21–22 October 2007)

	 •	 “When the Mail Goes to War” (Washington, D.C., 27–28 September 2008)

	 •	 “Post Office Reform” (Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, 30 October to 1 November

2009)

	 •	 “Stamps and the Mail: Imagery, Icons, and Identity” (Washington, D.C.,

30 September to 1 October 2010)

	 •	 “How Commerce and Industry Shaped the Mails” (Bellefonte, Pennsylvania,

16–18 September 2011)

The theme of each symposium follows a collaborative, interdisciplinary approach 

discussed by various panels. There were over sixty presentations at these symposia, many 

of which have gone on to be published in various academic and philatelic journals. Select 

papers, which had not previously been published, appeared in The Winton M. Blount 

Postal History Symposia: Select Papers, 2006–2009 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2010) as Smithsonian Contributions to History and Technology, 

No. 55. (PDF available for download at http://www.sil.si.edu/smithsoniancontributions.) 
viii • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

This second volume includes thirteen outstanding papers 

selected from the 2010 and 2011 symposia. Of the remaining 

twenty-four presentations at the two symposia, many have been 

published in academic and philatelic journals, and others were 

presented as PowerPoint slideshows and no scholarly paper was 

submitted. 

Details on all of the symposia and panels can be found on the 

NPM Web site (http://www.postalmuseum.si.edu/symposiums/

index.html) under Research/Symposiums. 

Thomas Lera, NPM Winton M. Blount Research Chair

David L. Straight, APS Vice-President 

Tara Murray, American Philatelic Research Library 

Director of Library Services

Acknowledgments

The Winton M. Blount symposium series would not be a 

success without the help and encouragement of many people. 

At the top of the list is Allen Kane, Director of the National 

Postal Museum (NPM), who continues to promote the importance of the symposium throughout the academic and philatelic 

community. Next we would like to thank the NPM Council of 

Philatelists and the NPM Museum Advisory Council for their 

assistance, as well as the staff at NPM who helped at each past 

symposium. 

The symposia could not have happened without the help 

and cosponsorship of Ken Martin, Executive Director, and the 

staff of the American Philatelic Society and Tara Murray and the 

staff at the American Philatelic Research Library. 

We would also like to personally thank the scholars who 

completed the peer reviews. Their knowledge of philately and 

postal operations, along with their suggestions and comments, 

greatly improved the papers.

Finally, we thank Ginger Strader, director, and Deborah 

Stultz, publications specialist, both of the Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, whose guidance, support, and review is 

much appreciated.

FIGURE 1. Winton M. Blount, U.S. Postmaster General from 1969 

to 1972. Courtesy of the National Postal Museum Library, Smithsonian Institution Libraries.
I

n September 2011, the postmaster general, Patrick R. Donahoe, testified to the Senate 

Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs that the U.S. Postal Service would default on its pension obligations by the end of the year unless Congress 

permitted massive layoffs to occur. He claimed that the root cause of the U.S. Postal 

Service’s problems is the accelerating shift from hard copy communications to digital 

alternatives such as email, texting, and online bill paying services. Others argue that the 

real cause is a new congressional mandate that the U.S. Postal Service fund all of its future pension obligations within the next ten years.

In either case, it is clear that over the past four years mail volume declined a whopping 20%. Donahoe anticipates that this trend will accelerate in the future, noting that 

first-class mail volume has dropped “even more rapidly than we had previously predicted.” Donahoe’s proposed solution to the U.S. Postal Service’s woes is to cut 220,000 

career positions from its payroll and to close about 3,700 post offices.1

It is tempting to attribute the U.S. Postal Service’s woes to technological obsolescence. At first glance, Americans today prefer to communicate through modern electronic 

media than through physical mail delivery. The handwritten, hand-delivered letter may 

ultimately take its place on the trash heap of history alongside the telegram and the familiar blue mailbox alongside the pay telephone. This process of obsolescence is inevitable 

in a capitalist economy based on continual technological innovation. 

Yet there is more to the story. Since at least 1970, postal officials have been aware 

that electronic messaging would replace the hand-delivered letter. In that year, the U.S. 

Postal Service and Western Union launched a Mailgram service using Western Union’s 

cables and satellites to transmit electronic letters to post offices, where they were printed 

out and delivered. By the mid-1970s, the U.S. Postal Service and Western Union handled 

over 30 million Mailgrams annually, with growth rates in the double digits. Despite a 

high tariff compared to letter postage, $2 per 100 words, Western Union and the U.S. 

Postal Service expected to handle 7 billion Mailgrams by the end of the 1980s, or about 

10% of the mail volume. Postal officials predicted that by 1990, up to half of recorded 

communications would be transmitted electronically, and they sought to position the U.S. 

Postal Service to handle at least some of it.2

Thus, postal officials have known for forty years that this moment has been coming. Instead of the simple story of email replacing snail mail, the deeper issue is this: for 

the first time in American history, since the breakup of AT&T in 1984, we find ourselves without a national communications policy. This is therefore an excellent—indeed, 

Do We Still Need a Postal System? 

Thoughts on a Twenty-First-Century 

Federal Communications Policy

David Hochfelder

David Hochfelder, History Department, University at Albany, Albany, New York 12222, 

USA. Correspondence: dhochfelder@albany.edu. 

Manuscript received 27 March 2012; accepted 

7 May 2012.
2 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

necessary—moment to look to the past to see what guidance it 

can offer us for the future. 

THE POSTAL MODEL OF A NATIONAL 

COMMUNICATIONS POLICY

In surveying the history of American communications between the Postal Act of 1792 and the deregulation movement of 

the 1970s and 1980s, there have been three models for a national 

communications policy. The first I call the postal model. The 

postal model was based on government provision of affordable 

and accessible communications, the idea that the government 

ought to operate a communications network to serve the people. 

For Americans in the early nineteenth century the local post office served as both an information center and a social hot spot 

(Figure 1). The founding generation believed that the circulation 

of news and correspondence was necessary for the continued 

existence of the American republican experiment. Thus, the cornerstone of federal communications policy for the nineteenth 

century and into the twentieth was the Post Office Department.3

In 1792 Congress passed the Postal Act, which contained 

two far-reaching provisions: a mechanism for the rapid expansion of the system into the trans-Appalachian West and a system 

of subsidies for the newspaper press. Together these provisions 

established the principle of universal access to information networks as a necessary condition for the fullest development of 

citizenship and for the economic development of the new nation. 

The 1792 act facilitated the growth of the postal system by placing the authority for establishing post offices and post roads with 

Congress rather than with the executive branch. This allowed 

local interests to pressure the national government for the rapid 

expansion of facilities and for the reduction of postage rates. 

Reformers during the 1830s and 1840s argued that cheap postage would both promote national unity and preserve affectionate ties in an era of increasing sectional tension and heightened 

FIGURE 1. The Rural Post Office, 1857 (Thomas P. Rossiter, American painter, 1818–1871, oil on canvas, 49.5 × 69.9 cm), captured the 

central role of the postal service in nineteenth-century American life. Courtesy SuperStock/SuperStock/Getty Images.
number 56 • 3

geographic mobility. They succeeded in securing passage of the 

Postal Acts of 1845 and 1851, which reduced letter postage from 

up to 25¢ per sheet for long distances to a mere 3¢ per half 

ounce, a rate that would remain in place for a century. Prior to 

this rate reduction, the postal system was primarily a business 

medium; afterward, it became a social medium as well (Figure 2).

The second important provision of the Postal Act of 1792 

was its favorable rate structure for the transmission of newspapers through the mail. This intended subsidy of the press facilitated a dramatic growth in the number of newspapers and 

subscribers between 1792 and 1840. Low postage on periodicals 

allowed religious, political, and reform organizations to flourish 

during the Jacksonian era by providing them with the means to 

reach a national audience. The postal law also allowed newspaper editors to exchange postage-free copies with the editors 

of any other newspaper. Before the rise of telegraphic news reporting in the 1840s, these exchanges were the primary means 

by which newspapers obtained nonlocal news. They were instrumental in disseminating political and financial information 

throughout the country and thus helped to build the mass political party and an integrated national economy.

At the same time, the Post Office Department sought to improve the flow of the mail. The Post Office had relied on stagecoaches, steamboats, and canal barges to move the mail in the 

first decades of the nineteenth century, and mail contracts were 

important to building up those transportation industries. The 

advent of the railroad in the 1830s provided another step forward in moving the mail. In 1838 Congress declared all U.S. 

railroads to be “post roads,” allowing the Post Office to contract 

with them to carry the mail. By midcentury, it had become clear 

that railroads were to be the primary transportation network for 

moving the mail. After the Civil War, the Post Office moved to 

take advantage of the nation’s expanding railroad network by 

starting the Railway Mail Service. Begun in 1869, this service 

sorted mail en route between commercial centers like New York 

and Chicago. During the mid-1870s, the Railway Mail Service 

started a “fast mail” service between New York and Chicago 

that cut travel times to about twenty-four hours, a dramatic savings in time. On its first trip in 1875, the fast mail carried over 33 

tons of mail between New York and Chicago. By the turn of the 

century, over 10,000 clerks were sorting mail over some 200,000 

miles of railroad line (Figure 3).

Before 1863, postage paid only for delivery of mail from 

post office to post office. Citizens picked up their mail or could 

pay an extra 2¢ fee to have their mail delivered. In 1863 Congress authorized free city delivery, requiring Americans to put 

street addresses on their letters for the first time. By the turn 

of the century, some 15,000 letter carriers provided service in 

nearly 800 cities. In the 1890s, the Post Office began Rural Free 

Delivery, a boon to the majority of the population who lived in 

rural areas. Not only did this liberate farmers from the necessity 

of coming into town to send and collect mail, but it also gave 

them greater access to consumer goods through vehicles like the 

Sears, Roebuck catalog (Figure 4).

In the second decade of the twentieth century, the Post Office inaugurated two services that placed it in competition with 

established businesses in the private sector: the Parcel Post Service and postal savings banks. Begun in 1913, the Parcel Post 

was immediately popular because it offered customers a lowercost alternative to sending parcels through the private express 

companies. On the first five days of service, customers sent four 

million packages. In 1914 one Idaho couple even sent their fouryear-old daughter to visit her grandparents via Parcel Post for 

53¢, far less than the train fare.4

In 1911 the Post Office began operating a network of postal 

savings banks. Although they paid low rates of interest, postal 

FIGURE 3. This photograph from around 1890 shows four Railway 

Mail Service clerks posing with the service’s beloved mascot, Owney. 

From the Smithsonian National Postal Museum, photograph ID 

A.2006-47.

FIGURE 2. This cover from the 1850s was part of a popular campaign to reduce postage to 3¢ for domestic letters and to extend 

cheap postage to overseas mail. From Alphabetilately.com, “Trains 

on US Advertising Covers and Patriotic Covers.”
4 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

savings accounts were popular with recent immigrants, who distrusted commercial banks and were used to postal savings banks 

in their home countries. Described as a “refuge for the timid,” 

they nevertheless succeeded in bringing several millions of dollars out of private hoards and into productive use.5

So by the early twentieth century, the United States had one 

of the best postal systems in the world. Postal officials had made 

every attempt in the preceding hundred years to provide cheaper, 

quicker, and more reliable service and to expand service to include activities like Rural Free Delivery, Parcel Post, and even 

postal savings banks. So the postal model for a national communications policy was based on two ideas: that a government 

department ought to provide excellent public service and that 

doing so improved the lives of citizens.

THE FREE-MARKET MODEL OF A NATIONAL 

COMMUNICATIONS POLICY

The second model for a national communications policy relies on market forces to provide consumers with the communications media they demand. The origins of the free-market model 

date back to Samuel Morse’s first telegraph line of 1844 and 

lasted until roughly the second decade of the twentieth century, 

until, of course, its comeback in the last few decades after the 

1984 breakup of AT&T. As is well known, Morse wanted to sell 

his patent to the federal government. Most Americans of Morse’s 

day regarded the Post Office as the sole legitimate operator of 

communications networks. In fact, the federal government gave 

the Post Office a monopoly on letter carriage, quickly shutting 

down private mail companies when they appeared and prosecuting their proprietors. Thus, it made sense to Morse, and to most 

Americans, to have the Post Office operate the telegraph. 

When Samuel Morse brought his invention to the attention 

of the Secretary of the Treasury in 1837, he wrote: “The mail 

system...is founded on the universally admitted principle, that 

the greater the speed with which intelligence can be transmitted from point to point, the greater is the benefit derived to the 

whole community.” It was therefore “most natural” to him that 

the Post Office should operate his telegraph since it was merely 

“another mode of accomplishing the principal object for which 

the mail is established, to wit: the rapid and regular transmission 

of intelligence.” Several years later, Morse renewed his call for 

postal control for another important reason, that his telegraph 

might become “an engine for good or evil” if left “in the hands 

of private individuals or associations.”6

When Morse obtained congressional funding in 1843 to 

build a demonstration line between Washington and Baltimore, 

few questioned that the federal government ought to develop 

this new technology. From a constitutional perspective, it seemed 

that this new form of communication properly belonged within 

the Post Office Department’s authority to “establish post roads 

FIGURE 4. A Rural Free Delivery mail carrier in Greenfield, Indiana, about 1905. From the 

Smithsonian National Postal Museum, photograph number A.2008-21.
number 56 • 5

and post offices.”7 Indeed, at the time all national governments 

owned and operated the major channels of communication 

within their borders. Only England allowed a privately owned 

electrical telegraph system to operate between 1839 and its nationalization in 1870. The United States would remain an anomaly among the world’s nations by permitting private ownership 

of electrical communication. 

Despite Morse’s appeals, the federal government abandoned 

the telegraph to private investors. By 1860 most Americans had 

come to accept the permanent presence of a privately owned telegraph network that served two principal classes of customers, 

the press and businessmen. Few citizens saw the need for government control. Instead, the question of federal involvement in the 

industry revolved around the desirability of subsidizing projects 

like lines to the Pacific coast and a transatlantic cable. But the 

Civil War accelerated an existing trend toward consolidation in 

the telegraph industry. In 1866 Western Union bought out its last 

two major rivals. Afterward it would control at least four-fifths of 

the nation’s telegraph traffic. Western Union’s 1866 consolidation 

and its continued dominance of the industry alarmed Americans 

across the political spectrum. This consolidation coincided with 

the rise of an activist federal government during the Civil War and 

Reconstruction. Many Americans wished to see this newly energized state break up, or at least weaken, Western Union’s control 

over the nation’s electrical communication network.

The postal telegraph movement was an important political 

issue between the end of the Civil War and World War I. Between 

1866 and the turn of the century, Congress considered over seventy bills to place the telegraph under Post Office operation. 

Although none passed, the postal telegraph movement enjoyed 

broad support, particularly after the notorious robber baron Jay 

Gould obtained control of Western Union in 1881. During the 

1890s both the Populist Party and American Federation of Labor 

adopted it as key planks in their legislative agendas (Figure 5).

The final stage of the postal telegraph movement occurred 

during the Wilson administration. Many members of Wilson’s 

cabinet were strong advocates of public ownership of utilities. 

Almost immediately after taking office, they began considering a government takeover of the telegraphs and telephones. In 

1918 Postmaster General Albert Burleson obtained control of 

the wires, claiming wartime necessity as the reason. Yet Burleson and other administration officials admitted that they wanted 

government control to be permanent. By 1919 it had become 

clear that government operation of the wires was a disaster, and 

under pressure from the public and a Republican Congress, the 

administration restored private control. This episode ended the 

postal telegraph movement for good and helped to kill off support for public ownership of utilities generally. 

Thus, the failure of the postal telegraph movement kept the 

postal model of a national communications policy strictly confined to the Post Office. A sharp divide hardened into place: the 

Post Office delivered the mail (along with a few other activities 

like the Parcel Post and postal savings banks), whereas the private 

sector handled every other form of communications (Figure 6).

THE PUBLIC-UTILITY MODEL OF A NATIONAL 

COMMUNICATIONS POLICY

However, the failure of the postal telegraph movement was 

not a clear victory for the free-market model of communications 

policy. Americans of the Progressive generation did not want 

unregulated monopolies handling the nation’s communications. 

So a third model emerged around the same time that the postal 

telegraph movement entered its final stage. This third model I 

call the public-utility model. The public-utility model began in 

FIGURE 5. This cartoon by celebrated political cartoonist Joseph 

Keppler captured the antimonopoly sentiment of much of the American public after Jay Gould acquired control of Western Union in 

1881. From Puck, February 23, 1881, 3(207). Chromolithograph, 

18 × 121⁄2 in.
6 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

the second decade of the twentieth century when AT&T president Theodore Vail accepted federal and state regulation of his 

corporation. The tacit agreement between Vail and regulators 

allowed AT&T to continue its dominance of the telephone market while limiting its profits to a fair rate of return and ensuring 

high-quality service to its customers. This regime lasted until the 

deregulation movement of the 1970s and 1980s and the courtordered breakup of AT&T in 1984.

Although Vail was unable to realize his ultimate goal of a 

unified telephone and telegraph network under AT&T’s control, 

he is widely regarded today as an industrial statesman who took 

his public obligations seriously. The high point of the publicutility model was the Communications Act of 1934. This act 

set up the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with the 

authority to closely regulate all aspects of the nation’s communications, including telegraphs and telephones, the new medium 

of radio broadcasting, and even the licensing of ham radio operators. Although the purpose of the FCC was to look after the 

public good, it sometimes resulted in a cozy relationship between 

regulators and the corporations they were supposed to regulate. 

Federal regulation sometimes stifled technological innovation 

and created a massive regulatory bureaucracy. But it had one 

advantage: it took public service as the core of national communications policy.

By the 1970s, many economists and regulators had come 

to believe that federal regulation in many sectors of the economy had gone too far. During the 1970s and 1980s, the federal 

government deregulated several industries, including interstate 

trucking, commercial aviation, and, of course, telecommunications. In 1984 AT&T consented to a court-ordered breakup 

dividing it into eight regional operating companies. The deregulation movement and the breakup of AT&T thus ended the 

public-utility model of national communications policy.

Since that time, the thrust of telecommunications policy 

has been to foster competition and technological innovation. In 

many ways it has succeeded. The cellphone revolution of the 

past 15 years is hard to imagine were AT&T still the nation’s 

major telephone service provider. The commercialization of the 

Internet in the same period has also created opportunities for 

competition and technological innovation that few could predict in 1984.

CONCLUSION: TOWARD A NATIONAL 

COMMUNICATIONS POLICY 

FOR THIS CENTURY

However, today’s national communications policy is marked 

by passivity. The stated objective of the Telecommunications Act 

of 1996 is “to provide for a pro-competitive, de-regulatory national policy framework designed to accelerate rapidly private 

sector deployment of advanced information technologies and 

services to all Americans by opening all telecommunications 

markets to competition.”8

 As we have recently seen in the cellphone business, the true effect of the 1996 act has been to facilitate mergers and reduce the number of media companies. And 

if broadband performance is any indication, the 1996 act has 

failed to provide Americans with world-class service.9

As I see it, the United States no longer has a national communications policy. We have instead a policy designed to benefit the large content and service providers. The central problem 

is that over the past several decades, we have redefined what 

the public interest means. The bedrock goals of communications policy for two centuries, from the Postal Act of 1792 to 

the deregulation movement of the 1970s and 1980s, has been 

to foster an informed citizenry capable of exercising republican 

self-government and to promote commerce and economic development. Today, however, the public interest really means nothing 

more than maximizing consumer choice. Federal regulators no 

longer regard us as citizens but as consumers.

Fredric V. Roland, president of the National Association 

of Letter Carriers, recently expressed optimism about the U.S. 

Postal Service’s future, noting that “it survived the telegraph, it 

survived the telephone.”10 But it remains to be seen if it can survive the absence of a national communications policy. It is not 

my intention to give specific policy recommendations here, but 

I trust that providing a historical perspective on the U.S. Postal 

Service’s present difficulties is of some value.

FIGURE 6. This cartoon protesting continued government operation of the wires appeared on the cover of the employee’s magazine 

of the Postal Telegraph Company in 1919. Courtesy National Archives, Washington, D.C.
number 56 • 7

I conclude with a set of questions that are worth considering 

as we decide the future of the postal system.

First, I have indicated that I believe that we no longer have 

an active communications policy, but rather a passive one based 

on the belief that the free market will satisfy all our demands as 

consumers. So the most basic question to ask is whether we still 

need an active communications policy. Can the free market in 

fact satisfy the nation’s communications needs, if the government 

would simply get out of the way? Conversely, what role ought 

the government play in ensuring universal access to communications networks for citizens who are unable or unwilling to adopt 

the latest innovations?

Second, I have stressed that both the postal and publicutility models were based on concrete and specific principles 

about what the public good is and how to foster it. What principles and values should we place at the core of a twenty-firstcentury communications policy? What is the public good today? 

How can a modern communications policy aid us in our roles as 

citizens as well as consumers?

Third, we should evaluate what other countries are doing. 

Some, like Germany, have almost totally privatized their postal 

systems. Others, like Australia, are undergoing major modernization efforts to position their postal systems to remain relevant 

in the digital age. So most other postal systems in the industrialized world are grappling with the same set of challenges faced by 

the United States. We should be receptive to adopting best ideas 

and practices from elsewhere.

Finally, like it or not, the future of the U.S. Postal Service will 

be constrained by today’s political realities. We need to recognize 

that we face much tighter limits to action than our forebears did 

in eras when the Post Office Department expanded its sphere of 

responsibilities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Given the political and fiscal limitations today, what can we 

reasonably expect postal reform to look like?

NOTES

1. Steven Greenhouse, “Postal Service Is Nearing Default as Losses Mount,” 

New York Times, 4 September 2011; Boston Consulting Group, “Projecting U.S. 

Mail Volumes to 2020,” http://about.usps.com/future-postal-service/gcg-narrative.

pdf (accessed 8 November 2011).

2. President’s Task Force on Communications Policy, Final Report (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1968), 42–44; House Subcommittee on Postal Personnel and 

Modernization of the Committee on Post Office and Civil Service, Postal Research 

and Development: Hearings, 95th Cong., 2d sess., 13 and 18 April 1978.

3. For histories of the U.S. Postal Service, consult Richard R. John, Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse (Cambridge, 

Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), and Wayne E. Fuller, The American Mail: 

Enlarger of the Common Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972).

4. National Postal Museum, “Precious Packages—America’s Parcel Post Service,” http://postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibits/2b2f_parcel.html (accessed 8 November 

2011).

5. “Refuge for the Timid,” Williamsport Gazette and Bulletin, 9 July 1928, 

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1829&dat=19280709&id=8X89AAAA

IBAJ&sjid=aSsMAAAAIBAJ&pg=1307,10527904 (accessed 8 November 2011).

6. Telegraphs for the United States, 25th Cong., 2d sess., 1837, H. Doc. 15. 

For a summary of postal operation of the telegraph, see Robert Luther Thompson, 

Wiring a Continent: The History of the Telegraph Industry in the United States, 

1832–1866 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1947), 20–34.

7. U.S. Constitution, art. 1, sec. 8, “Powers of Congress,” line 7.

8. Telecommunications Act of 1996, Public Law 104-104, U.S. Statutes at 

Large 110 (1996): 56.

9. Frederic Lardinois, “Broadband Speeds Increase Around the World—But 

Not in the U.S.,” http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/broadband_speeds_

around_the_world.php (accessed 8 November 2011).

10. Steven Greenhouse, “Postal Service Is Nearing Default as Losses Mount,” 

New York Times, 4 September 2011.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Boston Consulting Group. “Projecting U.S. Mail Volumes to 2020.” http://about.usps

.com/future-postal-service/gcg-narrative.pdf (accessed 8 November 2011).

Fuller, Wayne E. The American Mail: Enlarger of the Common Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972.

Greenhouse, Steven. “Postal Service Is Nearing Default as Losses Mount.” New 

York Times, 4 September 2011.

John, Richard R. 1995. Spreading the News: The American Postal System from 

Franklin to Morse. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995.

Lardinois, Frederic. 2010. “Broadband Speeds Increase Around the World—But 

Not in the U.S.” http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/broadband_speeds_

around_the_world.php (accessed 8 November 2011).

National Postal Museum. “Precious Packages—America’s Parcel Post Service.” http://

postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibits/2b2f_parcel.html (accessed 8 November 2011).

President’s Task Force on Communications Policy. Final Report, pp. 42–44. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1968.

Thompson, Robert Luther. 1947. Wiring a Continent: The History of the Telegraph 

Industry in the United States, 1832–1866, pp. 20–34. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

U.S. Congress. House. Telegraphs for the United States. 25th Cong., 2d sess., 1837. 

H. Doc. 15.

U.S. Congress. House. Subcommittee on Postal Personnel and Modernization of the 

Committee on Post Office and Civil Service. Postal Research and Development: Hearings. 95th Cong., 2d sess., 13 and 18 April 1978.

Williamsport Gazette and Bulletin. “Refuge for the Timid.” 9 July 1928, p. 4. http://

news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1829&dat=19280709&id=8X89AAAA

IBAJ&sjid=aSsMAAAAIBAJ&pg=1307,10527904 (accessed 8 November 

2011).

Our symposia to date have largely looked at stamps in terms of the work they perform moving the mail in various ways (transportation) and under various conditions (wartime), but what about the stamps themselves? As stamps have evolved 

since the 1840s, their designs, initially a secondary function, are now encoded with 

historical, cultural, and political messages. Stamps, as official government documents, 

can be treated as primary resources designed to convey specific political and aesthetic 

messages. Other topics and themes for the symposium were stamp design’s influence on 

advertising envelopes and bulk mailings, censorship of stamps as propaganda as used on 

letters, and the role of the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee or organizations that 

generate the designs. Seven select papers from the 2010 symposium follow.

Introduction to the 2010 Symposium

Hermes: Message and Messenger

Diane DeBlois, Robert Dalton Harris, 

and Sune Christian Pedersen

INTRODUCTION

The Greek god Hermes, whom the Romans called Mercury, was the general messenger of the gods of Olympus and, specifically, the courier for Zeus.1

 In iconography, he 

has three attributes: a petasus, or protective traveler’s hat that sometimes is given wings; 

a caduceus, or herald’s staff (with two snakes2

 and sometimes surmounted by wings); 

and talaria, or winged sandals (sometimes winged feet). The latter come specifically from 

classical literature: both Homer and Virgil give Hermes golden wings that he straps onto 

his feet.3

Various myths linked Hermes with safe passage (transportation, translation, and 

transaction), making him a “natural” icon for the postal service.4

 Moreover, the era of 

postage stamp design beginning in the midnineteenth century corresponded to a renewal 

of interest in classical art and architecture. Although Hermes as icon is often portrayed 

on the early postage stamps of many countries, as a special messenger he was appropriate 

for special services: private posts, newspaper stamps, special delivery, and airmail.

Hermes, like his Olympian complement, Hestia, was described by Homer as a deus 

penetralis: protecting the works of man. Both gods were deified objects: the herm was a 

road signpost, and Hestia means hearth. Hermes embodied safe travel; Hestia embodied a warm home. The two were rarely depicted together, but the complementarity of 

the roles was expressed by a variety of female companions in postal images that paired 

Hermes with Fortune, Liberty, and Peace. So the three attributes of Hermes, besides accommodating the postal service, also invested the imaginary community with its progressive hopes for a more global understanding (Figure 1).

THE FIRST SEALS OF THE U.S. POST OFFICE

The first seal of the U.S. Post Office Department predates the Constitution of 1789, 

appearing upon a postmaster commission given in 1782.5

 The image depicts Hermes 

holding a classic Caduceus in his left hand and a money pouch in his right and resting 

his left foot on a graticulated globe (Figure 2, left).6

 Although this special messenger had 

already thereby been enlisted on behalf of the scheduled transportation services of the 

postal system, the first laws of 1792 acknowledged that, whatever the monopoly of the 

state with respect to the carriage of letters, “it shall be lawful for any person to send letters or packets by a special messenger.”7

The post office seal that replaced the first design again depicted Hermes in a more 

energetic pose, striding across a graticulated globe (labeled “Americus”) with a caduceus 

Diane DeBlois and Robert Dalton Harris, Postal 

History Journal, P.O. Box 477, West Sand Lake, 

New York, 12196, USA. Sune Christian Pedersen, National Museum of Denmark, Prinsens 

Palæ, Frederiksholms Kanal 12, K1220 Copenhagen, Denmark. Correspondence: DeBlois and 

Harris, agatherin@yahoo.com; Pedersen, christian.sune.pedersen@natmus.dk. Manuscript received 27 March 2012; accepted 7 May 2012.
1 2 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

in his left hand and a money pouch in his right (Figure 2, right).8

In adopting Hermes as icon of the fledgling republican postal 

system, the designers looked to his association with news. A 

woodcut of his figure appeared at the head of a 1735 carriers’ 

address broadside for the Philadelphia newspaper, The American 

Weekly Mercury.

9

By English custom, the press and the posts had enjoyed a 

symbiosis, continued in American policy, which sustained the 

convergence of the daily newspapers with the daily mails. By 

the early 1830s, 90% of the weight of the mails was the news. 

Hermes as icon continued to sustain the news for the public 

sphere, as he also served the private sphere and the governmental 

postal service in between.

In 1792, Simeon Skillin executed a statue in wood of 

Hermes, commissioned by Thomas Russell to be placed above 

the entrance to the Boston post office. In the figure’s left hand 

was a caduceus, and in his uplifted right hand was a letter addressed to “Thos. Russell, Esq., Merchant, Boston—per post.”10

The merchant’s generosity reflects commercial reliance on the 

mails. And the choice of Hermes/Mercury is at once a tribute to 

his representing both commerce and communication.11

The money bag that Hermes carries as a symbol of commercial transactions was added to his iconography in the sixteenth 

century to emphasize the newly confident connection between 

trade and civility.12 The pose of Hermes that was most copied by 

stamp designers was a bronze statue by Giambologna, commissioned by the Medici family of Florence.13 Usually ascribed to 

1576, the Mannerist figure was originally part of a fountain, the 

water spouting from the Zephyr’s column of air at Hermes’ feet 

adding to the illusion of weightlessness. The statue, now at the 

Bargello Museum, has a separate caduceus in the left hand but is 

missing what is assumed was a money pouch in the uplifted right 

(Figure 3). Although the U.S. Post Office Department placed 

a money pouch rather than a letter in Hermes’ outstretched 

hand, this was not to be construed as an invitation to send cash 

through the mail; such practice was, from the beginning, discouraged, and both registry and money order services were developed to provide alternatives.14 As Hermes had been claimed in 

FIGURE 1. Hermes the embodiment of philately (The Empire State Philatelist was the official publication of the 

National Philatelical Society, May 1886) and of the Universal Postal Union (a common design for British colonies in 

1949). From the collection of Diane DeBlois and Robert Dalton Harris.

FIGURE 2. The first two seals of the U.S. Post Office Department, 

shown on postmaster commissions from 1816 and 1820. From the 

collection of Diane DeBlois and Robert Dalton Harris.
number 56 • 1 3

public, private, and governmental agency at the beginning of the 

republic of letters in the new world and the old, so, too, did he 

proliferate on behalf of a succession of successive technologies 

and service options throughout the world.

THE FIRST APPEARANCE 

ON A POSTAGE STAMP

Austria was the first country to place Hermes on a postage stamp, a 1 January 1851 issue intended for the carriage 

of newspapers (Figure 4). As in America, this use was particularly appropriate, as the European periodic press had long used 

Hermes/Mercury in the title or iconography of the product. In 

the service of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Hermes stamp 

broadly delivered the news in terms of distance. But his image 

also persisted over time—until well after the dissolution of the 

empire. The 1851 Hermes head was superseded by another 

petasus-wearing bust facing left in 1867 (appearing in several denominations and shades) and by yet another in 1900. The fourth 

Hermes head series was more stylized and faced right in 1908, 

but the fifth in 1916 reverted to facing left. A series of military 

FIGURE 3. The pose of Giambologna’s statue of Mercury; from left to right: Boyd’s Dispatch 1882, Uruguay 1921 overprinted 

for special delivery, and Tripolitania 1933 for mail via Rome forwarded to catch the second trip of Graf Zeppelin to South 

America. From the collection of Diane DeBlois and Robert Dalton Harris.

FIGURE 4. Hermes, the bearer of news: (top) The Mercury and New-England Palladium published in Boston 1801, (bottom left) Austria 1851 newspaper stamp, and 

(bottom right) Altonaischer Mercurius published in Altona, Holstein, mailed to a Danish subscriber in 1836. From the collection of Diane DeBlois and Robert Dalton Harris.
1 4 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

newspaper stamps appeared in 1916 with a different Hermes 

head facing left and showing a muscular shoulder. J. F. Renner 

designed a large series for 1920–21, with a Hermes head facing 

front and including his caduceus. And the well-known poster 

designer Wilhelm Dachauer presented a seventh Hermes head, 

facing left and surmounted by a caduceus.15 For over seventy 

years, Hermes was the face of news in Austria.

THE FIRST APPEARANCE ON LETTER MAIL

Just six months after Austria’s first newspaper stamp, on 1 

April 1851, Denmark’s first postage stamp featured Hermes, but 

in a subtle way. The Danes already were familiar with Hermes/

Mercury as an icon. The first Danish newspaper was the Mercurius, from 1666, and the Altonaischer Mercurius circulated in 

Denmark from 1698, by the nineteenth century with a woodcut 

that portrayed Hermes as a post rider, linking postal service with 

news delivered with safety and dispatch.

The first post office in Copenhagen, from 1624, was in the 

stock exchange. When that building was renovated in 1744–45, 

it acquired a large marble statue of Hermes, caduceus in his left 

arm and money pouch in his right, executed by Johan Christoph 

Petzold. So, for the Danes, Hermes was a daily icon of both commerce and the post.

Moreover, the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen had, in 

1838, returned to Copenhagen, bringing with him hundreds 

of examples of his classical statues, which were exhibited in 

Denmark’s first purpose-built museum. Chief among the works 

were influential images of Hermes.

As in other countries, the introduction of a postage stamp in 

Denmark represented at once a drastic lowering of the costs of 

sending a letter, an administrative way of making the handling of 

letters easier, and a symbolic manifestation of a nation-building 

process, and it was a culmination to a plan of postal reform drafted 

in 1841. One of engraver Martinus William Ferslew’s 1849 essays 

for the stamp featured the head of King Frederick VII. But the 

monarch had, in 1848, given in to pressure from Danish nationalliberals and introduced a democratic constitution, the duchies of 

Schleswig, Holstein, and Lauenberg having proclaimed an independent government. In November 1850, this rebel government 

issued their own stamp, with a design of the two German eagles, 

which signaled a pan-German ideology. It became an urgent matter for the Danish government to manifest sovereignty over reconquered Schleswig territory and demonstrate Danish territorial 

unity, and a suitable postage stamp design—playing down the 

monarch but asserting nationalism—was pushed to completion.

During the period of unrest, the Danish monarchy had relied heavily on Russia as an ally against Prussia. As a strongly 

conservative state, Russia had used its influence to ensure that 

the Danish state did not go too far in its democratic experiments. 

So the final stamp design, although it eschewed the visage of the 

king, included several other icons of imperial rule: the crown 

and the crossed sword and scepter within a laurel wreath (Figure 

5). Overall, it was a conservative design borrowed, according to 

Anders Monrad Møller, from shilling coins in circulation since 

FIGURE 5. The first stamp of Denmark: (left) a 1976 souvenir to honor the designer, 

Martinus William Ferslew, shows the royal crest and king’s head essays of 1849 as well 

as the king’s head and Hermes head essays of 1852; (right) the final product with its 

subtle reference to Hermes, as shown in a centennial reproduction, and a detail from 

the actual stamp. From the collection of Diane DeBlois and Robert Dalton Harris.
number 56 • 1 5

1841 and 1842 that, in turn, were inspired by the obverse of an 

1840 coronation medal of King Christian VIII engraved from a 

plaster relief by Bertel Thorvaldsen.

In the four corners appear post horns, but flanking the word 

post are two of Hermes’ caducei, something that Møller sees as 

a “discrete small message to the businessmen, one of the postal 

service’s very important customer groups.”16 It also carried the 

multiple meanings of news, trade, money, and travel evident in 

an emergent modernizing society.

In 1852, Ferslew essayed a stamp for local mail with a 

Hermes head as the single major design element, along with a 

similar design that featured the democratic monarch (no crown) 

on a stamp that would frank foreign mail. But these designs were 

discarded in favor of continuing with the emblems of state power.

GREECE AND THE CLASSICS REDISCOVERED

The modern Greek state had an imported constitutional, but 

authoritarian, monarch in 186117 when its first postage stamp 

was issued, not with the king’s head but with Hermes. The design 

was also an obvious import from France (Figure 6), where the 

stamps were first printed,18 and the different colors of the regular 

issues of 5, 20, and 80 lepta stamps in green, blue, and red paralleled their French antecedents.19 Hermes, as a Greek god, was 

an appropriate choice, and the first design continued until 1886, 

when a second Hermes head was introduced, also facing right, 

which lasted until 1892.

With the birth of the modern Olympics in 1896, Greek 

postage stamps quoted the Olympian mythos and expressed the 

fruits of archeology. The site of the original games at Olympia 

had been excavated by a team under Ernst Curtius, with backing from Germany, from 1874 to 1881. Among the treasures 

revealed was a fine marble statue of Hermes in the temple to 

Zeus, which was attributed to Praxiteles and immediately became the most popular interpretation of the god. Hermes is modeled without winged attributes, in the role of escorting the infant 

Dionysus safely to his mother Persephone in the underworld. Although the right arms of Hermes and Dionysus were not found, 

artists often filled in the appendages, sometimes even inventing 

a bunch of grapes dangling from Hermes’ upraised arm to tease 

the child. When just Dionysius’s disconnected right hand resting 

on Hermes’ shoulder is included,20 it adds to the poignancy of 

the grouping. In addition to a stamp with the Praxiteles Hermes, 

a series of 1911 featured images from ancient coins, and Hermes 

with Dionysus makes another appearance, as well as a Cretan 

Hermes with wingless petasus and Attic stylized caduceus (Figure 7). Modern Greece adopted a stylized Hermes head as its 

emblem and continues to feature the gods of Olympus and classical myths on postage stamps, so Hermes is rarely not on view.

SPECIAL MESSENGER: SECURITY

In the 1860s, Adams Express Company used a Hermes with 

a protective petasus that resembled a liberty cap to promote its 

services in New York City, where Boyd’s City Dispatch had roots 

back to 1830. Boyd’s issued an adhesive stamp in 1878 with 

Hermes in a Giambologna pose (see Figure 3). The company’s 

Hermes logo floating over the East River acquired images of the 

Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty after these two architectural icons were completed. The visual implication was that 

the special messengers linked Manhattan with the eastern boroughs of New York.

The U.S. Post Office Department adopted Hermes’ petasus 

for the special delivery stamp of 1908 (nicknamed The Merry 

Widow because the petasus resembled the stage chapeau of an 

operetta star of the same year).21 Austria, Bosnia, and Herzegovina used Hermes designs for their special handling stamps 

of 1916 and 1917 that showed him flying flat out, accompanied 

FIGURE 6. The first postage stamp of Greece in 1861 was designed 

by French engraver Albert-Désiré Barre and was printed in Paris 

by Ernst Meyer, bearing a close resemblance to the 1853 issue of 

France. From the collection of Diane DeBlois and Robert Dalton 

Harris.

FIGURE 7. Greek stamp design to honor archeological evidence of 

ancient myths; from left to right: the Praxiteles statue of Hermes and 

Dionysus from 1896, the same myth with the image copied from a 

coin, and a Hermes head from a fourth century BCE coin of Crete. 

From the collection of Diane DeBlois and Robert Dalton Harris.
1 6 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

by Zeus’s lightning bolts. However, Italy used just the winged 

talaria for special delivery in 1945–51.

NEW FORMS OF TRANSPORTATION: CELERITY

Hermes appears in a flying posture to celebrate the more 

rapid transit of mail by steamship and railway. Belgium used the 

iconography particularly effectively to celebrate parcel post by 

railway beginning in 1946. Hermes’ promise of speedy delivery 

also made his image popular in the advertising of the telegraph 

(and, in fact, of all things electrical, from light bulbs to television). But, given his wings, Hermes is most invoked for airmail 

(Figure 8).

HERMES IN REPOSE: CERTAINTY

In the iconography of business paper (bills of lading, bank 

drafts, stock certificates) Hermes is often shown in repose, sitting with, or even on, packing crates on a wharf (Figure 9). 

He became the embodiment of an orderly economy, involved 

with vessels, cargo, risk, markets, and money altogether. Sometimes just his caduceus is present, leaning on a parcel. In this 

pose, which also appears on postage stamps, he assures that all 

has been done than can be done to assure the success of the 

transaction.

The presence of a globe in these images emphasizes the international potential of communication, commerce, and universal understanding (Figure 9). Where an otherwise blank globe 

is shown with the graticulations of longitude and latitude necessary for navigation, we infer at least the certainty of a fixed 

schedule. A single globe showing land masses signifies unity; two 

hemispheres are then joined by Hermes, as with an Australian 

stamp from 1947 (Figure 10).22

The classical female social counterpart to Hermes was Hestia, but he rarely appears with her in iconography. Instead, her 

complementarity is represented by other feminine idealizations 

(Figure 11). Peace (with a laurel branch) is one; the desire to link 

with Communication and Commerce is expressed by Hermes 

holding hands with the feminine deity across a globe. Fortuna 

(Latinized Tyche) appears with her attribute, the cornucopia or 

horn of plenty. She was often shown at the helm of a ship in medieval art23 and, in the company of Hermes, adds a grace note to 

his messenger service.

FIGURE 9. All’s well with Hermes; from left to right: at rest with the still to certify internal revenue, a vignette from a U.S. Internal 

Revenue case stamp 1933; at rest with the goods, Liberia 1894; and reaching for peaceful communication, Esperanto poster stamp 

circa 1900. From the collection of Diane DeBlois and Robert Dalton Harris.

FIGURE 8. Hermes, the icon of airmail; clockwise from top left: 

Hungary 1933, Canada 1928, the Netherlands 1929, and Costa 

Rica 1944. From the collection of Diane DeBlois and Robert Dalton 

Harris. 
number 56 • 1 7

SUMMARY

Postage stamps incorporate elements from three symbolic 

registers (glyphs, numbers, and words) whose mutual intelligibility is embodied by Hermes. On behalf of the postal service, 

Hermes will carry any message. With a complementary female, 

Hestia for the home hearth, for instance, Hermes is identified 

with the path, and together they exemplify a social framework 

for the human values of that message.

NOTES

1. For mythology and iconography, see E. M. Berens, Myths and Legends 

of Ancient Greece and Rome (New York: BiblioBazaar, 2008); Percy Preston, A 

Dictionary of Pictorial Subjects from Classical Literature: A Guide to Their Identification in Works of Art (New York: Scribner, 1983); Edward Tripp, Crowell’s 

Handbook of Classical Mythology (New York: Ty Crowell Co., 1970).

2. One snake is the attribute of Aesculapius and has become the icon for all 

things medical.

3. The Aeneid of Virgil: Translated into English Verse, trans. John Conington 

(London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1867), Book 4, when Zeus sent Hermes to 

Carthage: “And first around his feet he ties / His golden wings, that take the Breeze 

/ And waft him high o’er earth or seas.” The Odyssey of Homer, trans. Alexander 

Pope (Philadelphia, James Crissy, 1828), Book 5: “The god who mounts the winged 

winds / Fast to his feet the golden pinions binds, / That high thro’ fields of air his 

flight sustain / O’er the wide earth, and o’er the boundless main.” 

4. In 1984, philatelist Zaven M. Seron published From the Winged Heels of 

Mercury (Collectors’ Club of San Francisco) as a general history of stamps, but 

without attention to iconography. He does, however, give Hermes the status of first 

postman, fantasizing that his winged heels were jet propelled: “with vapor trails 

streaming outward into Time, the portent of things-to-be” (p. xiii).

5. The earliest recorded example of the first seal is on the 30 April 1782 partly 

printed commission for Albany, New York, postmaster Abraham G. Lansing signed 

FIGURE 11. Hermes and female complements; from left to right: France 1876, Hermes with Peace; Portugal 1920, 

Hermes as Commerce with Industry; French Polynesia 1892, Hermes with Fortuna at the helm. From the collection of Diane DeBlois and Robert Dalton Harris.

FIGURE 10. Hermes links the hemispheres, Australia airmail 1937. 

From the collection of Diane DeBlois and Robert Dalton Harris.
1 8 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

by Eben. Hazard, “Post-Master-General of the United States of North-America” 

(collection of the Albany Institute of History and Art, Albany, New York); the 

earliest in the authors’ collection is the 1804 commission for Middletown, New 

York, postmaster John Grant signed by Gideon Granger. The earliest example of 

the second seal design in the authors’ collection is an 1820 postmaster commission.

6. The size of the pouch indicates it is for coin, but it is interesting to note 

that the word “mail” derives from a Teutonic word for a traveler’s bag and that the 

English postal use in print dates to 1654 as a “mail of letters,” shortened to mail 

(Oxford English Dictionary).

7. The full citation is to section 14 of An act to establish the post office, 

and post roads, within the United States, approved 20 February 1792, The Public 

and General Statues Passed by the Congress of the United States of America from 

1789 to 1827 Inclusive, vol.1, 216. “That if any person, other than the postmaster 

general or his deputies, or persons by them employed, shall take up, receive, order, 

dispatch, convey, carry, or deliver, any letter or letters, packet or packets, other than 

newspapers, for hire or reward, or shall be concerned in setting up any foot or horse 

post, wagon or other carriage, by or in which any letter or packet shall be carried 

for hire, on any established post road, or any packet, or other vessel or boat, or 

any conveyance whatever, whereby the revenue of the general post office may be 

injured, every person so offending shall forfeit, for every such offence, the sum of 

two hundred dollars. Provided, That it shall and may be lawful for every person to 

send letters or packets by special messenger.” By extending the 1789 Constitution 

in guaranteeing individual communication rights, this section of the 1792 law operated much as the Bill of Rights would for other aspects of citizenship.

8. With a complete reorganization of the Post Office Department in 1836 

came a new seal (according to the February 1923 supplement to the Official Postal 

Guide, under Postmaster General Amos Kendall, although a definite date is not 

known), a postrider and his mailbags on a galloping horse. Gone are the classical 

allusions. Even as the celerity of the mail was actually being shifted from stagecoach 

to railway train, the image of man and horse emphasized the potency of federal 

communication.

9. A Checklist of American Newspaper Carriers’ Addresses 1720–1820, 

comp. Gerald D. MacDonald, Stuart C. Sherman, and Mary T. Russo (Worcester, 

Mass.: American Antiquarian Society 2000). The compilation, based on the collection at the American Antiquarian Society, includes evidence of seven newspapers 

with Mercury in their title to 1820; the online catalog of the collection adds three 

more to 1855. 

10. Richard John, Spreading the News (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995, p. 46), quoted coverage of the statue’s erection in the Massachusetts Gazette from 28 July 1792, originally published in the Columbian Sentinel.

11. Both Mercury and merchant derive from the Latin merx for merchandise. 

The name of the closest planet to the sun, Mercurius, comes from classical Latin, 

and its application to quicksilver, or hydrargyrum (Hg, elemental mercury), was 

first recorded in the late fourteenth century.

12. John Hale, The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance (New York: 

Atheneum, 1993), 372–392.

13. As a sampling, the first appearance was on a Greek stamp of 1901, Scott 

165; Uruguay 1921–28, Scott 238–249, W 31–34; Brazil 1922; Danzig Semi-Postal 

1937; South West Africa 1949, Scott 109–111 (J. E. Kloetzel, W. A. Jones, M. J. 

Frakevicz, and C. Snee, eds., Scott 2009 Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue: Countries of the World, Sydney, Ohio: Scott Publishing Co./Amos Hobby Publishing 

Co., 2008.)

14. Registry was established in 1855 and money order in 1864.

15. For more complete descriptions and images of specific stamps, refer to 

the conference presentation at http://www.postalmuseum.si.edu/symposium2010/

Harris-Hermes-presentation.pdf. See also, William Hughes, “Classic Stamps Portray Fleet-Footed Mercury,” Scott Stamp Monthly, May 2010, pp. 33–35, for more 

images.

16. Anders Monrad Møller, Frederik den Fjerdes Kommercekollegium og 

Kongelige Danske Rigers Inderlig Styrke og Magt (Copenhagen: Københavns Universitet, Institut for Økonomisk Historie, 1983).

17. Otto from Bavaria, who was dethroned in favor of a Danish import.

18. See complete details of the stamp production in Hermes ’96: Stamps of 

Greece 1861–1995 and Cyprus 1880–1995 and Postal History (Athens: Philatelic 

Hermes Ltd., 1995). The introduction to this volume, prepared for the 100th anniversary of the modern Olympic Games, emphasizes the primacy of Hermes as an 

icon to the modern Greek postal system: part of a panoply of ancient symbols that 

have not been superseded.

19. This concurrence of colors presages the standardization of stamp denomination colors under the Universal Postal Union.

20. Crete 1908, Scott 96.

21. The so-called Mercury dimes, featuring what appears to be an image of 

Hermes but is actually Liberty wearing a winged cap, were introduced in 1916 

and could pay the special delivery rate. See also discussion of the “Merry Widow” 

stamp, American Philatelist, November 2010, 1036.

22. For a discussion of “The Ancient Two-Sphere Universe” and its iconography, see Thomas S. Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy 

in the Development of Western Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University 

Press, 1957).

23. Leslie Thompson, Fortune: All Is But Fortune (Washington, D.C.: Folger 

Shakespeare Library, 2000).

Bibliography

Berens, E. M. Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome. New York: BiblioBazaar 2008.

Hale, John. The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance, New York 1993.

Hermes ’96: Stamps of Greece 1861–1995 and Cyprus 1880–1995. Athens: Philatelic Hermes Ltd. 1995.

Hesiod. Hesiod, Homeric Hymns, Epic Cycle, Homerica. Translated by Hugh G. 

Evelyn-White. London: William Heinemann, 1914.

Homer. The Odyssey of Homer. Book 5. Translated by Alexander Pope. Philadelphia: James Crissy, 1828. 

John, Richard. Spreading the News. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 

1995.

Kuhn, Thomas S. The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 

1957.

MacDonald, Gerald D., Stuart C. Sherman, and Mary T. Russo, comp. A Checklist 

of American Newspaper Carriers’ Addresses 1720–1820. Worcester, Mass.: 

American Antiquarian Society, 2000.

Møller, Anders Monrad. Frederik den Fjerdes Kommercekollegium og Kongelige 

Danske Rigers Inderlig Styrke og Magt. Copenhagen: Københavns Universitet, Institut for Økonomisk Historie, 1983.

Preston, Percy. A Dictionary of Pictorial Subjects from Classical Literature: A 

Guide to Their Identification in Works of Art. New York: Scribner, 1983.

Seron, Zaven M. From the Winged Heels of Mercury. San Francisco, Calif.: Collectors’ Club of San Francisco, 1984.

Thompson, Leslie. Fortune: All Is But Fortune. Washington, D.C.: Folger Shakespeare Library, 2000.

Tripp, Edward. Crowell’s Handbook of Classical Mythology. New York: Ty Crowell Co., 1970.

Virgil. The Aeneid of Virgil: Translated into English Verse. Translated by John 

Conington. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1867.
You Need to Get Your Head Examined: 

The Unchanging Portrait of Queen Victoria 

on Nineteenth-Century British Postage Stamps

Catherine J. Golden

Queen Victoria, the monarch who greatly expanded the British Empire, became 

the face of the Penny Black, giving birth to a postal empire. When Victoria was 

born on 24 May 1819, postage stamps did not exist. Middle- and working-class 

English families dreaded the postman’s knock. The post was a luxury: the burden of payment fell to the receiver, and a letter could cost a working-class Briton more 

than a day’s wage.1

 In 1837, the year Victoria took the throne, postal reformer Rowland 

Hill, inventor of the postage stamp, published an influential pamphlet advocating reorganization of the postal service entitled Post Office Reform: Its Importance and Practicability. One of the first things Victoria did as queen of England was to appoint a Select 

Committee on Postage charged to look into the condition of the post with a view toward 

postal rate reduction. Little did she realize that her portrait would end up on a postage 

stamp, humorously dubbed a “Queen’s Head” (Figure 1).

On 17 August 1839, Queen Victoria gave royal assent to the Postage Duties Bill. 

In 1840, she ushered in Uniform Penny Postage and the postage stamp, prepaid by the 

sender. Beginning 10 January 1840, anyone could post a prepaid letter weighing up to 

half an ounce anywhere in the United Kingdom for only a penny. Hill describes his idea 

for a stamp as “a bit of paper just large enough to bear the stamp, and covered at the 

back with a glutinous wash.”2

 The postage stamp became official on 6 May 1840. Hill 

believed the public would prefer prepaid stationery and conceived of the postage stamp 

as an “after-thought,”3

 but the stamp was an instant success. Victorians stood in lines to 

buy an innovation equal to today’s iPads and iPhones. Perkins, Bacon & Petch, a government printer, worked day and night to keep up with the demand. In 1860, Queen Victoria knighted the man who transformed the expensive, unwieldy UK postal service and 

invented the postage stamp. Other nations quickly modeled this system of prepayment: 

in 1843, Brazil and two Swiss cantons, Geneva and Zurich, issued stamps; the United 

States followed in 1847.4

The Queen’s Head set the standard for colonial postage and changed the face of 

postal communication, as Thomas J. Alexander illuminates in The Queen’s Own: Stamps 

That Changed the World (2004). However, the image of Queen Victoria on the first 

postage stamp essentially remained unchanged. Turning to semiotics, politics, and postal 

history, this essay poses the following questions to illuminate what the Penny Black—

as index, icon, and symbol—points to and represents. What messages did the elegant 

neoclassical design—virtually unchanged from its adoption until Victoria’s death in 

1901—instill in the minds of Victoria’s subjects? Since designs on stamps and coins are 

Catherine J. Golden, Department of English, 

Skidmore College, 815 North Broadway, Saratoga Springs, New York 12866, USA. Correspondence: cgolden@skidmore.edu. Manuscript 

received 27 March 2012; accepted 7 May 2012.
2 0 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

government controlled and sanctioned, why did stamps maintain an unchanging representation of young Victoria while the 

coinage changed likenesses, aging her markedly? More curiously, why do portraits of an older Queen Victoria appear on 

stamps from, for example, the Dominion of Canada, whereas the 

young bust reigned on all UK stamps and some colonial stamps 

as the official face of nineteenth-century England? Arguably, repeated exposure to the Penny Black and the unchanging image 

of a young monarch played a contributing role in solidifying the 

power of the British Empire and Queen Victoria. 

THE SEMIOTICS OF STAMP DESIGN

Stamps function on many levels. These small physical objects made up of paper, ink, and glue were created to signify 

prepayment and speedily move the mail. As Stuart Rose reminds 

us in Royal Mail Stamps: A Survey of British Stamp Design, the 

stamp foremost functions operationally by indicating country of 

origin and price of postage in a design that supports its “indexical” function. The famous Penny Black uses the queen’s head to 

indicate nation; the words on the stamp, “postage” and “one 

penny,” respectively point to the stamp’s function and value. 

However, stamps also have a representational function: a stamp 

represents a country of origin to its citizens and the world and 

sends a political, historical, or cultural message about the country of origin across social classes and national boundaries since 

stamps, more than coins, are for foreign and domestic use. 

David Scott applies three classes of signs defined by Charles 

Sanders Peirce—indices, icons, and symbols—to elucidate the 

semiotic function of stamps in his pioneering European Stamp 

Design: A Semiotic Approach to Designing Messages (1995): 

“an icon is a pictorial sign; an index, a pointer sign; a symbol, a 

conventional sign. Whereas the stamp functions primarily as an 

indexical sign (pointing to the country of origin), as an object it 

encompasses iconic and symbolic elements (pictures, letters and 

numbers).”5

 David Scott acknowledges the fluidity of indices, 

icons, and symbols, which, of relevance to the Penny Black, interact to convey a chosen message: “The great advantage of using 

the monarch’s head as a national symbol is that it can be used 

both as an icon and as an index, as both a definitive and a commemorative image.”6

 “To this day England has never thought it 

necessary to identify her stamps with more than her sovereign’s 

portrait,” notes Donald M. Reid in “The Symbolism of Postage 

Stamps: A Source for the Historian.”7

 A legacy from primacy of 

issue, the sovereign, depicted as the principal stamp image or a 

discrete, smaller figure, foremost identifies a stamp as British. 

But the monarch’s head is also a pictorial sign or icon, as Keith 

Jeffery emphasizes in “Crown, Communication and the Colonial 

Post: Stamps, the Monarchy and the British Empire”: “From the 

start there was a semiotic ambiguity, with the iconic image of the 

monarch also conveying the practical, indexical information that 

the stamp was British.”8

 To compound this “semiotic ambiguity,” the sovereign’s head is also a symbol, which stamps commemorating the stamp’s own invention illustrate.9

 For example, 

the 1940 design that marks the centenary of the postage stamp 

features the head of Victoria, who ushered stamps in, alongside 

the head of George VI, the reigning monarch.10

As Jack Child recognizes in Miniature Messages, “The humble postage stamp, introduced in England in 1840, has evolved 

over the years to the point where an initially secondary function 

of the stamp deserves serious study, that is, the use of the postage 

stamps as advertisement or propaganda (domestic or international), with themes as far ranging as nationalism, history, politics, economics, art, culture, and so on.”11 Child specializes in 

the semiotics and politics of Latin American stamps, but his insight about “miniature messages” as domestic and international 

“advertisement or propaganda” applies to the “humble postage 

stamp, introduced in England in 1840.” In “Politics, Psychology and the Postage Stamp,” Harlan J. Strauss, too, introduces 

stamps as propaganda: these official government documents not 

only advertise but subliminally implant messages into the minds 

of users, giving an official “stamp” to aspects of the country of 

origin, including great leaders and causes, national symbols, and 

more. Strauss calls upon stimulus-response theory from psychology to explore how “postage stamps as propaganda affect a literate population”:12 repeated exposure to the words and images 

on a postage stamp can inform, influence, and move a literate 

consumer to think and act. 

PUTTING THE QUEEN’S HEAD 

ON A STAMP

The famous Penny Black established a still dominant pattern of stamp design. How did the queen’s head come to grace 

the first postage stamp? The answer is a bit complicated. 

FIGURE 1. Penny Black. From the Smithsonian National Postal 

Museum, Accession Number 2011.2037.1.
number 56 • 2 1

In Hill’s day, the Department of Treasury, in conjunction 

with the Board of Stamps,13 controlled the design of stamps 

and prepaid stationery.14 The design emerged from a Treasurysponsored competition, which invited “all artists, men of science and the public in general” as well as “people in any part 

of the civilized world”15 to submit designs for postage stamps 

and prepaid stationery (which took the form of letter sheets and 

envelopes). The Treasury received over 2,600 colored and blackand-white designs (49 of which were for stamps) by foreign and 

British artists; designs ranged from practical to ornamental, 

simple to complex, embossed to plain, and beautiful to crude. 

The Treasury evaluated the designs according to the following 

criteria: convenience to the public, security from possible forgery, ease of checking the design, and expense of production and 

circulation. Although not a post office employee, Rowland Hill 

in 1839 received an appointment to the Department of Treasury 

to oversee production of the new stationery and stamps. Of the 

four prizes the Treasury awarded, Hill did not find any single 

entry suitable for stationery or stamps; nonetheless, he made use 

of several ideas, including William Wyon’s and Benjamin Cheverton’s concept of putting the sovereign’s head on the stamp.16

Cheverton (one of the prizewinners) offered a persuasive argument for using a portrait: it would be difficult to forge.17 Hill, 

presumably also influenced by the time-honored practice of 

putting a sovereign on coins, commissioned Henry Corbould, 

a well-known illustrator and miniaturist, to make a drawing of 

Queen Victoria’s profile after William Wyon’s 1837 City Medal 

as the design on the first postage stamp.18

Wyon, the premier engraver and medalist of his age, created the City Medal to commemorate Queen Victoria’s first 

visit to London in 1837. He knew Victoria’s face intimately; 

he began drawing the princess at age thirteen. The neoclassical 

design gracing the Penny Black is based on Wyon’s impressions 

of the young princess from a sitting when she was fifteen years 

old. Neoclassicism, a 1765 art movement, reacted to the heaviness of baroque and rococo styles and aimed to return art to 

the perceived purity of the classical arts of Greece and Rome. 

Wyon wanted his portraits of Victoria to be balanced, uncluttered, pure, even beautiful, so it is not surprising that the queen’s 

medalist found favor with the queen. He produced other images 

of Victoria as she grew into womanhood and married glory, but 

the image of a youthful Victoria endures as the face of the Penny 

Black, which, in turn, became the model for all Victorian postage 

stamps and many colonial stamps. 

THE RECEPTION OF A QUEEN’S HEAD

Stamps were an immediate sensation. In 1842, Punch, the 

Victorian Londoner’s New Yorker, mocked the fad of stamp 

collecting. A “new mania,” Punch notes, has “bitten the industriously idle ladies of England . . . ; in fact, they betray more 

anxiety to treasure up Queen’s heads than Harry the Eighth did 

to get rid of them.”19 One such “industriously idle” Victorian 

woman, who collected Queen’s Heads as fervently as Henry VIII 

decapitated queens, took out an advertisement in the Times in 

October 1842 asking people to “assist her in her whimsical project” of papering her boudoir with cancelled stamps. When she 

placed the notice, she had already received from friends 16,000 

Queen’s Heads (slang for stamps), but she needed more to complete her decor.20

Stamp collecting quickly surpassed rock and coin collecting 

in popularity. In Her Majesty’s Mails (1864), William Lewins describes the furor of timbromanie in Birchin Lane in 1862, which 

cut across social classes and bridged the gender divide: “crowds 

nightly congregated, to the exceeding annoyance and wonder of 

the uninitiated—where ladies and gentlemen of all ages and all 

ranks, from Cabinet-ministers to crossing-sweepers, were busy, 

with album or portfolio in hand, buying, selling, or exchanging.”21 But not all Victorians proudly put the Queen’s Head on 

their letters. To quote one Victorian schoolboy, licking a stamp 

provided the “satisfaction of kissing or rather slobbering over 

Her Majesty’s Back.”22 An amusing rhyme entitled “Lines on the 

Post Office Medallion” appearing 6 June 1840 in a weekly scandal sheet called The Town suggests the kiss landed lower on the 

queen’s “behind”:

‘You must kiss our fair Queen, or her pictures, that’s 

clear

Or the gummy medallion will never adhere;

You will not kiss her hand, you will readily find

But actually kiss little Vickey’s behind.23

Jokes about the first postage stamp targeted other body 

parts, such as the queen’s mouth; a ninety-one-year-old man 

posted a letter to a lady friend on 5 May 1840 that read, “I 

send you a Queen’s head, the day before it is in Penny circulation . . . what a pity they should make Victoria ‘gummy’ like an 

old woman without teeth—as I am.”24

A HEADY MESSAGE IN 

A VERY SMALL SPACE

The Penny Post was an egalitarian measure to bring an affordable post to all social classes. With it, the queen gave up her 

privilege of franking: postmarks granting the queen and members of Parliament free carriage of mail. Victoria’s exposure on 

the stamp more than compensated for the loss of her franking 

privilege. The Queen’s Head, which Victorians saw nearly daily 

for over sixty years, extended the queen’s agency, bringing her 

royal authority regularly into nearly every home in her kingdom. 

Since photography was not widely in use, for most of Victoria’s 

subjects, stamps and coins were the only places where her British and Commonwealth subjects could catch a glimpse of their 

queen. “At no point in the Victorian age were British users of 

stamps to see anything else but the head of Victoria,” as Asa 

Briggs notes; “There was, after all, only one side to the stamp, 

unlike the coin.”25 To push Briggs’s point further, since Britain 
2 2 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

never changed the philatelic portrait of Victoria, who never ages 

on the stamp, at no point were Victorian users of stamps to see 

anything but the young head of their queen. The unwavering 

stamp design sent a message from the government to the general 

public that defined Victoria and her nation. 

Although government-sanctioned coinage reflects Victoria’s 

life stages over her sixty-four-year reign (1837–1901), stamp design does not.26 Every time anyone received or posted a letter, 

the heady message gained force. Did Britain retain the youthful 

Queen’s Head because of the queen’s vanity (e.g., Victoria had 

an enormous appetite and worried constantly about her weight)? 

Did the continuity of the design reflect a conservative stamp practice dominant throughout Victoria’s and Edward VII’s reigns? 

Not all supported the administration’s decision to retain 

the Wyon image. The Philatelic Record forcefully raised in 1879 

whether “‘the mythic effigy’ going back to the Wyon medal 

[could] be cast into oblivion? Surely the likeness of our Queen 

as she is—of the sovereign who has earned our love and esteem 

by over forty years of beneficent rule, of the lady whose joys and 

sorrows as wife, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, 

have been shared in by her faithful subjects—should have greater 

attractions for us than that of the untried girl but lately called 

to the throne.”27 Was the decision to maintain the image on the 

stamp (but not the coinage) thus primarily motivated by the message that Britain wished to convey not “for us” (its citizens) but 

to the world? Stamps, even more than coins, are denominated 

for broad-based acceptance nationally and internationally. Did 

the administration recognize that by maintaining an unwavering 

design, the philatelic portrait became an international symbol of 

Victoria’s strength, confidence, and longevity, qualities located at 

a higher level of abstraction and influence than is a portrait on a 

postage stamp?28

Granted, stamps changed color during Victoria’s reign (Figure 2). The Penny Red replaced the Penny Black in February of 

1841; the red Maltese cross cancellation was not readily visible 

on the Penny Black, and the Post Office feared people would 

try to reuse stamps. The Penny Red with a black Maltese cross 

cancel remained in use from 1841 to 1879. The Two Pence Blue 

also remained in circulation for thirty-nine years. Following a 

provisional 1880–81 issue when surface printing replaced line 

engraving, the Penny Lilac came into circulation from 1881 to 

1901 and became the most issued Victorian stamp. The young 

head in all colors of the rainbow appears on stamps in denominations as small as 1⁄2d (penny) and as large as £5. Small variations occurred in printing techniques, colors, corner lettering, 

and frames. However, the sovereign’s portrait, through repeated 

exposure, became an icon of national identity and, for some Victorians, a symbol of national pride: as Frederick Philibrick and 

W. A. Westoby claimed in 1889, “stamps of no other country in 

the world save Great Britain will be able to show an unbroken 

line of representations of its sovereign during fifty years from 

their first issue.”29

THE QUEEN WHO NEVER AGES

If we think of a design on a postage stamp as a record of history and a form of propaganda, then the postage stamp, domestically and internationally, bore the same face of England from 

1840 until the dawning of the twentieth century. Queen Victoria’s 

inauguration symbolized a movement away from the corruption, 

injustice, and disease long associated with the England of Victoria’s predecessors, George IV and William IV, often referred to 

as her elderly “wicked uncles.” However, Queen Victoria and 

her nation underwent major changes in life and politics during 

her long reign as the coinage highlights but the stamp hides: the 

young, newly crowned monarch (preserved on the stamp) became 

a blushing bride (she married her beloved Prince Albert on 11 

February 1840), a devoted wife and mother, a proponent of family values, a grieving widow (Prince Albert died of typhoid fever 

on 14 December 1861), a doting grandmother, an old woman, 

and a demanding and increasingly reclusive, unpopular monarch. 

FIGURE 2. Penny Black, Two Pence Blue, Penny Red, and Penny Lilac stamps. From the collection of Catherine J. Golden.
number 56 • 2 3

In 1840, when Victoria debuted on the stamp, England was 

busy building her empire. Britain was expanding in India, fighting in China and Afghanistan, founding Wellington (New Zealand), and penetrating Africa. Was the government’s decision to 

retain the young monarch on the stamp thus a calculated move 

to maintain the promise that accompanied Victoria’s coronation 

at a time when Britain was the undisputed leader of the Industrial Revolution? Was it a strategic decision to advertise to her 

nation and the world an image of stability and power fueling 

Victoria’s continually expanding empire?

 We now recognize Victorian England as an age of contradictions. Major innovations in science, industry, education, and technology stand alongside dreadful mistakes, wars, and rebellions, 

including the First and Second Opium Wars, the Crimean War, 

and the Anglo-Boer War. The government righted many social 

abuses: the Ten Hours Bill of 1847 limited women’s and children’s 

workdays to ten hours; the 1870 Forster Act established government responsibility for education; the Married Women’s Property 

Acts of 1870 and 1882 granted married women the right to hold 

property. Concomitantly, British colonialism—especially incursions into India and Africa—planted seeds for political and social 

problems that plagued Britain well into the twentieth century. To 

recall stimulus-response theory, all the while the Victorians faced 

disease, poverty, war, colonial uprisings, or discontent in their 

enormous imperial holdings, the British government insured that 

Victoria’s domestic subjects across the social classes saw and used 

postage stamps with an unwavering design that came to symbolize, among other things, grace, authority, and even invincibility. 

The real Queen Victoria changed over time and aged ungracefully. In the fashion of Dorian Gray’s own infamous portrait, the 

queen’s silhouette on the postage stamp intentionally remained 

fresh and youthful and maintained a public, international face of 

the queen unblemished by pain, struggle, trouble, or time.30

THE QUEEN’S FACE TRANSCENDS ENGLAND: 

COLONIAL POSTAGE

Queen-Empress Victoria became the face on postage stamps 

of nearly every British imperial possession.31 In regard to format, 

iconic context, and textual message, the design on the Penny 

Black conclusively set the standard for colonial postage (and 

stamps to this day).32 Since Victoria’s colonial subjects intensively used these stamps for their daily correspondence, colonial 

stamps illustrate what Strauss describes as a “subliminal effect 

that makes the postage stamp one of the more ubiquitous forms 

of political propaganda.”33 Colonial postage stamps bearing Victoria’s face advertise a vast imperial network that extended to 

India, Africa, New Zealand, Australia, the West Indies, and Asia. 

If we view Victorian colonial stamps as propaganda, we 

might assume that the unquestionable reproductions of British 

iconography on colonial stamps instilled in users a sense of loyalty to the crown or impressed upon them Britain’s unshakeable 

leadership, perhaps subliminally influencing their thoughts and 

actions. Some colonial stamps seem to do just that. The queen’s 

portrait on an 1896 postage stamp of Hong Kong (Figure 3), 

which became a Crown Colony in 1842 as an outcome of Britain’s First Opium War with China,34 closely resembles the portrait on the Penny Black. Framing the young head are English 

words (Hong Kong and the postage price) and Chinese characters, showing a blending of cultures. This stamp offers a miniature message about colonial loyalty proclaimed to Victoria’s 

Hong Kong subjects and the world.

Some colonial stamps advertise the mother country’s preeminence on a vast imperial stage. Postage stamps of Uganda, 

a British protectorate from 1894 to 1962, show a melding of 

imperial and colonial imagery that stereotypes Africa as “other” 

(Figure 4). Stereotypical symbols of this East African nation 

FIGURE 3. China Hong Kong 1896 stamp. From the collection of 

Catherine J. Golden.

FIGURE 4. Uganda Protectorate 1898 issue. From the collection of 

Catherine J. Golden.
2 4 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

join with the “civilized” mother country on an 1898 stamp, acknowledging Britain’s power and sovereignty: two regal lions 

and spears flank a shield bearing the portrait of an older Queen 

Victoria; in a variation of this design, elephants take the place 

of the lions and spears.35 In both versions, lush foliage magnifies the tropical climate of this East African Crown Colony. The 

lion has fierce and regal connotations, but the spear, jungle, and 

elephant emphasize the wildness of the Uganda Protectorate 

while the portrait of Victoria elevates the stabilizing influence 

of Britain, the civilized mother country. The change in postage 

stamps that occurred in the 1960s as soon as European colonies 

in Africa gained their independence reinforces how the portraits 

of Victoria and successive British royals became repugnant imperial icons: new icons on stamps, such as African leaders or plant 

and animal life, “stamped” out the old order and celebrated 

independence.36

Some colonial stamps glorify the mother country and Britain’s imperial network by depicting her holdings rather than her 

visage. Following the July 1898 Imperial Conference on postal 

rates held in London, Canada was among the British dominions 

and possessions that agreed to a uniform rate and gently ushered 

in imperial postage. The resulting 1898 Canadian Christmas 

stamp (the first Christmas stamp) celebrates the beginnings of 

imperial penny postage (Figure 5) and demonstrates how stamps 

could become a means openly to proclaim a message, in this case 

to call attention to Canada’s adoption of the imperial postage 

rate, which other regions in the British Empire could implement 

with the queen’s approval. Hill’s Penny Post plan concentrated 

on the “formal” British Empire; the penny rate took fifty-eight 

years to go into effect for her colonial possessions. This stamp, 

designed by Postmaster General (later Sir) William Mulock (a 

Canadian politician and cabinet member), shows a world map 

with British colonial holdings colored in bright red. The stamp 

text emphasizes Britain’s size and stature; “we hold a vaster empire than has been” comes from an ode entitled “A Song of Empire” that Welsh poet Lewis Morris composed in 1887 to mark 

Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. From this example, Reid observes, “Whether one views modern history through the lenses 

of the White Man’s Burden, modernization theory, or the model 

of a capitalist-dominated world market, the connection between 

the spread of the ‘postage-stamp revolution’ and English imperialism is clear.”37 Mulock does put Canada at the center of the 

British Empire. Nonetheless, how symbolically different is this 

1898 Canadian stamp from the much-ridiculed, unambiguously 

imperial 1840 stationery that William Mulready designed of 

Britannia sending winged messengers on a glorious postal outreach to all four corners of the globe to celebrate Uniform Penny 

Postage?38

The history of Canadian stamp design bears revisiting. In 

1851, the colony of Canada printed stamps of a beaver surmounted with a royal VR cipher (3d), Prince Albert (6d), and a 

young Victoria (12d). When the Dominion of Canada came into 

existence in 1867, it issued a stamp with a young head of Victoria based on an engraving by Charles Henry Jeens.39 However, 

two stamps issued in the 1890s when Canada increasingly asserted its independence from Britain show less flattering portraits 

of an older Victoria wearing her small crown and veil (Figure 

6). The 1897 Jubilee stamp (the first Canadian commemorative) 

celebrating sixty years of Victoria’s reign and thirty years of Canada’s dominion features a young head based on two portraits the 

queen chose personally, one by Alexander Chalon in 1838 and 

another by Heinrich Von Angeli in 1862, alongside an older, less 

invincible looking Victoria modeled after an 1887 photograph 

by Alexander Bassano. The stamp also includes acanthus leaves, 

traditionally associated with Victorian England and the queen 

herself. That same year, the Maple Leaf issue came out, featuring 

the older head based on a portrait photo by W. and D. Downey 

and surrounded by Parliament-inspired maple leaves, an enduring symbol of Canada.40

Might a desire for autonomy from British imperialism’s 

“heady” power and the long delay in empire-wide penny postage, which colonies long sought (they felt financially burdened 

in communicating with the mother country), have caused a resentment that led to aging Queen Victoria on postage stamps? 

Keith Jeffery in “Crown, Communication and the Colonial 

Post” cautions against “a simplistic analysis which on the one 

hand equates a slavish reproduction of royal or British iconography with colonial loyalty and, on the other, local images with 

separatism.”41 The politics of stamp design is not simple, but 

we cannot ignore that colonial stamps designed by local British 

colonial administrators (e.g., the Maple Leaf issue) point to an 

assertion of identity and an independence of spirit. It may be less 

significant that 1890s Canadian stamps reject British iconography to show an aging Victoria than that they show a side to Victoria that distinguishes Canada from Britain. Not surprisingly, in 

1965, Canada redesigned her flag and adopted a large, stylized 

red maple leaf to replace the Union Jack.42

FIGURE 5. Canada 1898 Christmas imperial penny postage issue. 

From the collection of Catherine J. Golden.
number 56 • 2 5

FINAL NOTE: WHY EXAMINE 

THE QUEEN’S HEAD?

Examined from the perspective of stimulus-response theory, 

Victoria’s enduring silhouette on the stamp—if only through repeated exposure—provided continuity and comfort during an 

age of rapid change in industry, education, communications, 

transportation, and gender roles. French historian Élie Halévy 

was fascinated that Victorian stamp design did not change; the 

youthful Queen Victoria remained the official face of Britain, 

even if she aged on some colonial stamps like Canada, Uganda, 

and India.43 In remaining young on all domestic and some colonial stamps until her death in 1901, Queen Victoria became to 

her people and the world a symbol of power and longevity even 

as the sun began to set on the British Empire. 

Might the design’s continuity be more significant than the 

enduring youth of the Queen’s Head? Queen Victoria symbolizes what today we call Victorian values—moral propriety, domesticity, and family affection—as well as empire, power, and 

morality. The term Victorian, which came into use in the 1850s 

following the Great Exhibition of 1851,44 still applies to long 

multiplot novels, gracious homes with double parlors, manners, 

morals, and an illustrious age of imperial expansion. The Penny 

Black solidified a still reigning pattern for stamp design. More 

importantly, even the Victorians recognized that the virtually unchanging design was a “‘mythic effigy’ going back to the Wyon 

medal.”45 Something as deceptively simple as a postage stamp 

came to play a pivotal role in the national myth making both of 

Britain’s longest reigning monarch and her empire. 

NOTES

1. Postal charges grew high in England because the British Treasury viewed 

the post office as a revenue-generating office, not simply as a method of fee recovery 

for services provided. The Treasury raised postal rates, for example, to offset the 

inflationary pressure of the Napoleonic Wars. Different from the way mail operates 

today, payment fell to the receiver, not the sender; in addition, prepayment was a 

social slur on the recipient. One had to be financially solvent to receive a letter. If 

the recipient could not afford to pay for a letter, it was returned to sender.

2. Rowland Hill, Post Office Reform: Its Importance and Practicability, 2nd 

ed. (London: Charles Knight, 1837), 45. Hill goes on to note the stamp was something “the bringer might, by applying a little moisture, attach to the back of the 

letter” (45). He is assuming continuation of the common practice of folding a letter and sealing it to make its own cover; however, after 1840, envelope use rose 

in popularity since a letter in an envelope weighing up to half an ounce could be 

posted for a penny.

3. A. G. Rigo de Righi, The Story of the Penny Black and Its Contemporaries

(London: National Postal Museum, 1980), 5. 

4. Zurich issued the 6 Rappen and 4 Rappen on 1 March 1843; Geneva 

released the Double Geneva on 1 October 1843. The canton of Basel issued the 

Basel Dove on 1 July 1845. Brazil produced the Bull’s Eye stamp on 1 August 

1843, and on 1 July 1847, the United States issued 5¢ and 10¢ stamps featuring, 

respectively, Benjamin Franklin on a red-brown stamp and George Washington on 

a black stamp.

5. David Scott, European Stamp Design: A Semiotic Approach to Designing 

Messages (London: Academy Editions, 1995), 7. 

6. Scott, European Stamp Design, 18.

7. Donald M. Reid, “The Symbolism of Postage Stamps: A Source for the 

Historian,” Journal of Contemporary History, 19, no. 2 (1984): 228. 

8. Keith Jeffery, “Crown, Communication and the Colonial Post: Stamps, the 

Monarchy, and the British Empire,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth 

History, 34, no. 1 (March 2006): 49. The portraits of six monarchs have appeared 

on British definitive stamps since 1840. 

9. Scott, European Stamp Design, and Jack Child call upon Charles Sanders 

Peirce’s typology of semiotics. Child also helpfully defines the terms index, icon, 

and symbol in Miniature Messages: The Semiotics and Politics of Latin American 

Postage Stamps (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2008), 15. Both stress how 

in stamp design, to quote Scott, “the two systems—iconic and symbolic—interact 

to reinforce the desired message” (14). 

10. Whereas definitive (or ordinary) stamps present iconic messages that are 

not time sensitive, commemorative stamps celebrate historical or cultural landmarks. A similar pairing of the heads of Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II 

appears on a 1990 stamp commemorating the 150th anniversary of the postage 

stamp.

11. Child, Miniature Messages, 3. 

12. Harlan J. Strauss, “Politics, Psychology and the Postage Stamp,” The 

Congress Book, 1975:158. 

13. The Board of Stamps originated in 1694. The term stamps refers not to 

postage stamps but to duties on a range of items including vellum, newspapers, 

advertisements, and many commodities. 

FIGURE 6. The 1897 Dominion of Canadian stamps. From the collection of Catherine J. Golden.
2 6 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

14. In 1884 in response to complaints about the designs issued by the Board 

of Inland Revenue (which subsumed the Board of Stamps), the government set up a 

committee to oversee stamp design. 

15. Asa Briggs, Victorian Things (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 

338.

16. Some postal historians state Cheverton wanted the sovereign on the 

stamp, although others suggest he wanted a portrait. His design no longer exists, 

but as Douglas Muir notes, a relative of Cheverton’s named Eliza Cooper found a 

die that shows the head of a young woman, which is possibly Queen Victoria; see 

Douglas N. Muir, Postal Reform and The Penny Black (London: National Postal 

Museum, 1990), 88. Briggs states in Victorian Things (339) that Cheverton wished 

the design to be based on Wyon’s head of the queen. 

17. Cheverton also suggested that if stamps were printed on watermarked 

security paper, there would be an even greater protection against forgery. 

18. Ironically, Wyon submitted a design to use the sovereign’s head. As Rigo 

de Righi notes in Story of the Penny Black (11), “It is hand-drawn in ink, but 

though it is nearer to the issued stamp than any other submitted, it somehow failed 

to win Wyon an award.” 

19. Quoted in Briggs, Victorian Things, 350. 

20. Quoted in Briggs, Victorian Things, 351. 

21. William Lewins, Her Majesty’s Mails: A History of the Post Office and an 

Industrial Account of Its Present Condition, 2nd ed. (London: Sampson Low, Son, 

and Marston, 1865), 313. 

22. Quoted in L. N. Williams and M. Williams, The Postage Stamp: Its History and Recognition (London: Penguin, 1956), 19. 

23. Quoted in Muir, Postal Reform, 180. 

24. Quoted in Rigo de Righi, Story of the Penny Black, 40. 

25. Briggs, Victorian Things, 339.

26. The Young Head coins (in circulation from 1838 to 1887 and designed 

by Wyon) show Victoria as she looked at her coronation at just eighteen. Copper 

pennies minted in 1860, which vary this image to show the queen’s hair coiled into 

a bun, present her as a devoted wife and mother of nine children. Wyon also designed a Gothic portrait of Victoria in 1848–49 when Britain considered switching 

to a decimal coinage. Coins minted on the occasion of Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 

1887 (in circulation 1887–93) show an older Victoria wearing a small crown and a 

veil over the back of her head. The final “Widow’s Weeds” head issued in 1893 (in 

circulation from 1893 to 1901) shows Victoria more as her subjects came to know 

her: an elderly widow, dressed in perpetual mourning for her beloved husband and 

consort, Prince Albert, who died in 1861. 

27. The Philatelic Record argued this point in its foundation year, 1879, 

which also marked the death of Hill. See Briggs, Victorian Things, 355. 

28. Here I am indebted to the ideas of Rudolf Arnheim and his discussion 

of Holbein’s portrait of Henry VIII in Visual Thinking, which Strauss references in 

“Politics, Psychology and the Postage Stamp,” 160. 

29. Quoted in Briggs, Victorian Things, 355. 

30. I elaborate this point in Posting It: The Victorian Revolution in Letter 

Writing (Gainesville, Fla.: University Press of Florida, 2009), 106–107, where I 

extend the comparison between Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) and the 

Penny Black. Keith Jeffery makes this reference in passing in “Crown, Communication and the Colonial Post” (50), but I was not aware of his reference when I made 

this connection and developed it.

31. Jeffery in “Crown, Communication and the Colonial Post” (50) notes 

Victoria never appeared on stamps of British Guinea (issued from 1850) or the 

Cape of Good Hope (issued from 1853). 

32. See Scott, European Stamp Design, 8, where he suggests that the Penny 

Black also set the pattern for the current British definitive stamp with the Arnold 

Machin portrait bust of Queen Elizabeth II in regard to format, iconic content, and 

textual message. 

33. Strauss, “Politics, Psychology and the Postage Stamp,” 157. 

34. Although China gave Hong Kong to Britain in “perpetuity,” in 1997, it 

was returned to mainland China and assumed the status of a special administrative 

region. 

35. This portrait resembles the Bassano-inspired head on the Canadian stamp.

36. For discussion of 1960s Ghana postage, for example, see Child, Miniature Messages, 19. 

37. Reid, “The Symbolism of Postage Stamps,” 227. 

38. For a discussion of the Mulready envelope design and its reception, I refer 

the reader to my book Posting It, 89–101.

39. Beginning in 1851, the provinces of Canada, cooperating with the administration of the General Post Office in London, began to issue stamps, but each 

province issued a different stamp.

40. The maple leaves were initially in all four corners, but the design changed 

because of Universal Postal Union regulations. For more information on these 

stamp designs, I recommend Winthrop S. Boggs, The Postage Stamps and Postal 

History of Canada, (Lawrence, Mass.: Quartermain Publications, 1974), 317, 321. 

41. See Jeffery, “Crown, Communication and the Colonial Post,” 51.

42. Beginning in 1868, the Canadian flag included a small Union Jack and a 

quartered shield to signal Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. The 

coat of arms of Canada replaced the shield in 1921, though this ensign was modified again in 1957. The 1965 maple leaf flag remains the current flag. 

43. See Briggs, Victorian Things, 339. 

44. The first world’s fair, this London exhibition of culture and industry, a 

crowning achievement of Victoria’s reign, attracted over six million visitors who 

came to the Crystal Palace to see over 13,000 exhibits from Britain and countries 

across the globe. 

45. The Philatelic Record, quoted in Briggs, Victorian Things, 355.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alexander, Thomas J. The Queen’s Own: Stamps That Changed the World. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 2004.

Boggs, Winthop S. The Postage Stamps and Postal History of Canada. Lawrence, 

Mass.: Quartermain Publications, 1974. 

Briggs, Asa. Victorian Things. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.

Child, Jack. Miniature Messages: The Semiotics and Politics of Latin American 

Postage Stamps. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2008. 

Daunton, M. J. Royal Mail: The Post Office since 1840. London: Athlone Press, 

1985.

Golden, Catherine. Posting It: The Victorian Revolution in Letter Writing. Gainesville, Fla.: University Press of Florida, 2009. 

Hill, Rowland. Post Office Reform: Its Importance and Practicability. 2nd ed. London: Charles Knight, 1837. 

Jeffery, Keith. “Crown, Communication and the Colonial Post: Stamps, the Monarchy, and the British Empire.” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 34, no. 1 (March 2006):45–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/

03086530500411290. 

Lewins, William. Her Majesty’s Mails: A History of the Post Office and an Industrial Account of Its Present Condition. 2nd ed. London: Sampson Low, 

Son, and Marston, 1865. First published 1864 by Sampson Low, Son, and 

Marston.

Muir, Douglas N. Postal Reform and the Penny Black: A New Appreciation. London: National Postal Museum, 1990.

Reid, Donald M. “The Symbolism of Postage Stamps: A Source for the Historian.” 

Journal of Contemporary History, 19, no. 2 (1984):223–249. http://dx.doi

.org/10.1177/002200948401900204. 

Rigo de Righi, A. G. The Story of the Penny Black and Its Contemporaries. London: National Postal Museum, 1980. 

Robinson, Howard. The British Post Office: A History. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton 

University Press, 1948.

Rose, Stuart. Royal Mail Stamps: A Survey of British Stamp Design. Oxford, U.K.: 

Phaidon Press, 1980. 

Scott, David H. T. European Stamp Design: A Semiotic Approach to Designing 

Messages. London: Academy Editions, 1995. 

Strauss, Harlan J. “Politics, Psychology and the Postage Stamp.” The Congress 

Book, 1975, 157–80. 

Williams, L. N., and M. Williams. The Postage Stamp: Its History and Recognition. 

London: Penguin, 1956.
Patriotic commemorations flowered following World War I in the United States, as 

did campaigns for securing limited-issue federal postage stamps. Beginning in 1920 

with the Pilgrim Tercentenary issue, commemorative stamp subjects were moving 

away from solely advertising world’s fairs as the U.S. Post Office Department (USPOD) 

celebrated battles, anniversaries, and individuals that were part of greater cultural trends 

that sought to define Americanness in post–World War I America. Because of the accessibility of American commemoratives, both in size and through imagery, these stamps 

served to reinforce and naturalize an exceptionalist and triumphalist vision of the American past that obscured the complicated legacies of conquest and inequality. 

This paper will examine imagery from a few commemorative stamps from the interwar years and the circumstances of their printing that celebrated regional anniversaries 

held in Plymouth Rock, Mayport, and Minneapolis, as well as stamps honoring Polish military heroes Casimir Pulaski and Theodore Kosciuszko. Conversations revolving 

around these stamps, in correspondence or in the public media, demonstrate how the 

USPOD became a powerful institution that legitimized and distributed historical narratives and one that allowed ordinary citizens to engage with its government. Knowing of 

the postal service’s power to circulate interpretations of the American past to millions of 

people, some citizens sought commemoratives as part of grander strategies fighting for 

social and political equality while others wanted stamps to perpetuate a romanticized 

view of colonial America. These debates over commemorative subjects reflected contemporary struggles over immigration restrictions, constructions of race, and definitions of 

citizenship in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s.

PILGRIMS AND ORIGINS

During the interwar years, attempts to craft the unique history of America’s origins, 

particularly in nostalgic ways, were displayed through regional anniversaries that wove 

local events and people into official national narratives. Some of those stories were showcased on commemorative stamps.1

 For the Pilgrim Tercentennial celebration in 1920, 

poems and speeches glorified the legacy of the Massachusetts Pilgrims as nation builders and model immigrants. Plymouth was proclaimed to be the “corner stone of the 

Nation,” and Vice President Thomas Marshall touted the achievements of the “pilgrim 

fathers” who “prepared the way” for “the birth of a new and mighty world.” He used 

Debating Identity and Origins 

with Early Twentieth-Century 

American Commemoratives

Sheila A. Brennan

Sheila A. Brennan, Center for History and New 

Media, George Mason University, 4400 University Drive, MS 1E7, Fairfax, Virginia 22030, 

USA. Correspondence: sbrennan@gmu.edu. 

Manuscript received 27 March 2012; accepted 

7 May 2012.
2 8 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

the opportunity to argue for immigration restrictions, advocating that immigrants needed to follow the example set by the Pilgrims and commit to staying in United States rather than merely 

coming to work and returning home. According to Marshall, 

the Pilgrims came to America “to worship God and to make 

homes, determined never to return to Europe.”2

 Politicians and 

patriotic-hereditary groups used a perceived legacy of the Plymouth Pilgrims in the early twentieth century not only to assert the 

primacy of Plymouth as America’s birth place but also to speak 

to local and national concerns over immigration and labor.

This legacy was represented in the Pilgrim Tercentenary 

stamp series (Figure 1). Interestingly, the USPOD seemed so convinced that the world associated the story of the Pilgrims’ landing at Plymouth as quintessentially American that none of the 

three postage stamps printed in the series contained the identifying words “U.S. Postage,” which all other stamps prior and since 

carried. Even the U.S. Mint’s commemorative anniversary coin 

imprinted the words “United States of America” on the front of 

the half-dollar coin.3

Mayflowers, fittingly, flanked each stamp’s scene, and like 

the Columbians, the Pilgrim Tercentenary series formed a short 

narrative. The story began on the 1¢ stamp with the Mayflower

appearing to sail west across the ocean on its journey, with the 

ship pointing to the left, with no land in sight—origin or destination. Similar to the Columbians, the landing occurs in the 2¢ 

stamp (Figure 2), which was the most commonly used because it 

was the standard rate of first-class postage from 1883 to 1932.4

This stamp’s engraving makes the landing look harsh, unexpected, and jolting for the party at Plymouth Rock. Although this 

image suggests that struggles lie ahead for the settlers, the rock 

is what grounded the travelers and is the object that grounded 

those celebrating the anniversary in the past. Plymouth was the 

ceremonial ground in 1920 and provided the physical connection to the past events. The journey’s symbolic end revealed itself 

in the 5¢, where the Mayflower Compact was signed, indicating 

political agreement, permanence, and divine right and blessing 

of their settlement as the central figure pointed toward the light 

illuminating the signing (Figure 3). On the basis of a painting 

by Edwin White, the signing image illustrates families migrating 

together even though only men signed the document.5

The scene emphasizes that a community comprised of family units crafted the Mayflower Compact and pledged to work 

together. New England preservationists and genealogists argued 

that the Pilgrims were the true first Americans because family 

units arrived together to form a permanent settlement, unlike the 

commercially minded immigrants to Jamestown. By representing 

this scene, the tercentennial committee reiterated their argument 

and wanted all Americans to distinguish Plymouth as the birthplace of the America. 

Placing Plymouth Rock at the center of the national American narrative was attacked by historians and angered heritage 

and preservation groups who desperately wanted to pull the Pilgrims down from their pedestal to broaden the story of European settlement in the New World. For many years, Virginians 

and New Englanders argued over where the American story truly 

began, Plymouth or Jamestown; a debate imbued with strong 

regional pride left over from the Civil War.6

In celebrating the founding of New York in 1924, the 

Huguenot-Walloon New Netherland Commission petitioned for 

FIGURE 1. Pilgrim Tercentenary, 1¢, 1920. From the Smithsonian National Postal Museum Collection, Accession Number 

1980.2493.6627.

FIGURE 2. Pilgrim Tercentenary, 2¢, 1920. From the Smithsonian National Postal Museum Collection, Accession Number 

1980.2493.6629.

FIGURE 3. Pilgrim Tercentenary, 5¢, 1920. From the Smithsonian National Postal Museum Collection, Accession Number 

1980.2493.6633.
number 56 • 2 9

a commemorative stamp series as part of their mission to share 

the story of their ancestors with the entire United States. The 

commission wrote that the Walloons were pilgrims too and their 

story was “wonderful and romantic, and all Americans should 

know it.” Apparently the commission understood what they were 

up against in trying to educate Americans about their history because a few collectors wrote to the postmaster general puzzled by 

the printing of that series and inquired about the significance of 

those events. One collector begged for a short bibliography because “all of the histories I have at hand seem to be a bit deficient 

in matters relating to the events these stamps commemorate.”7

Collectors and citizens occasionally questioned the standard 

of “national significance” when they did not recognize subjects 

depicted on stamps. U.S. Post Office Department officials justified this choice by writing that the Huguenot-Walloon anniversary was “of more than ordinary interest particularly in those 

sections of the country where these colonists originally settled” 

(Figures 4 and 5), criteria that may have justified other commemorative choices in during the 1920s.8

 In the case of these issues, 

the series contained no readily identifiable images and none were 

labeled. The Nieu Nederland sailed in 1624 east toward America 

in the 1¢ issue, and families landed in what became New York 

in the 2¢. The last stamp in the series is even more cryptic, with 

an unidentified monument facing a rising sun with palm trees 

and plants surrounding it that are not similar to the landscape 

pictured in the 2¢ settlement stamp.

The 5¢ denomination actually represents a stone monument 

erected by Jean Ribault, who explored the area near Mayport, Florida, in the 1560s to establish a refuge colony for French Huguenots 

(Figure 6). Before returning to France to pick up passengers for 

the trip back to Florida, Ribault erected a stone column festooned 

with the French king’s coat of arms to claim Florida in the name of 

France. As part of the Huguenot-Walloon anniversary in 1924, the 

Florida Daughters of the American Revolution chapters financed 

the building of a similarly shaped monument to honor Ribault and 

the “first landing of Protestants on American soil.”9

The Huguenot-Walloon Tercentenary Committee very specifically wanted the memorial commemorating Jean Ribaud’s settlement to be pictured on a stamp to challenge the idea that the 

Pilgrims of Plymouth were the first and only Protestants to sail to 

America in search of religious freedom who helped to build a nation. Celebrating white settlers’ Protestant beliefs on stamps may 

have been yet another way that native-born Protestants clung to 

an idealized and fictional vision of a harmonious and homogenous American past. This vision saw immigrant radicals, Jews, 

and Catholics as threats and foreign to mainstream American 

culture. Battles over immigration, public education, and prohibition, for example, often divided the population along religious 

lines.10 Defining the United States as a Christian Protestant nation helped those remembering these early settlements to deal 

with an uncomfortably heterogeneous population of the 1920s. 

Ancestors of Huguenots and Walloons desired stamps to commemorate their contributions to early America stemming from 

regional, religious, and ethnic-racial pride as they staked their 

ground in New York City as the region’s original immigrants. By 

earning a series of stamps, the federal government appeared to 

endorse this interpretation.

The Norse-American Centenary stamp series provides another example of how the government endorsed a narrative of 

ethnic pride proposed by a regional commemorative committee. 

Similar to the Huguenot-Walloon celebration, this was a regional 

FIGURE 5. Huguenot-Walloon Tercentenary, 2¢, 1924. From the 

Smithsonian National Postal Museum Collection, Accession Number 1980.2493.2361.

FIGURE 4. Huguenot-Walloon Tercentenary, 1¢, 1924. From the 

Smithsonian National Postal Museum Collection, Accession Number 1980.2493.2359.

FIGURE 6. Huguenot-Walloon Tercentenary, 5¢, 1924. From the 

Smithsonian National Postal Museum Collection, Accession Number 1980.2493.2363.
3 0 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

anniversary with an organizing committee that petitioned for a 

commemorative as one piece of a larger festival honoring first 

waves of immigrants. A congressional joint resolution commended Norwegian immigrants who contributed to the “moral 

and material welfare of our Nation” and were credited with settling the “great Midwest,” rather than piling into cities like contemporary immigrants.11 Imagery and narratives presented by 

the centennial committee sought to unite Norwegians in America 

to a heroic past, one that could be traced to Vikings such as Leif 

Erikson, whose arrival in the New World predated Columbus 

and the Pilgrims. The committee balanced asserting their differences as Norwegians while also claiming their right to be a part 

of the dominant official narrative of the American past.12

Again, this series of stamps emphasized immigration and a 

journey across the Atlantic that asserted that all of these groups 

were early immigrants and distinguished their stories of migration from those of new immigrants arriving in the United 

States in the early twentieth century (Figures 7 and 8). The 2¢, 

Restaurationen, shows the ship carrying the first Norwegian 

immigrants, sailing west without land in site toward the United 

States in 1825. The second stamp does not represent the landing, but rather, the 5¢ issue featured an engraving of a Viking 

ship built for the Columbian Exposition. That ship sailed from 

Norway to Chicago to remind fairgoers and stamp consumers 

in the 1920s that Norwegian explorers had visited America long 

before Columbus, the English-Dutch Pilgrims, the Huguenots, 

or the Walloons. This particular image pointed the ship’s bow 

toward the east, or toward the homeland, yet on the stamp itself 

the Viking ship sails from a banner or shield of Norway toward 

one of the United States. The Norse-American Viking ship is flying colors similar to an American flag.

These stamps were in high demand from collectors because of 

the design and intensity of the ink colors, and collectors asked the 

USPOD to reprint these issues. Postal officials regretted that they 

had to treat all commemoratives consistently and could not reprint this series alone because they would hear protests from other 

groups claiming the Norwegians received preferential treatment.13

In this case, the USPOD understood that the subject matter represented on the stamp held great meaning for petitioners—past 

and future—and citizens. Postal officials were careful to balance 

the sensitivities of commemorative scenes chosen with interests of 

some collectors who focused more on the attractiveness and particulars of stamps’ designs. Regional anniversary committees took 

advantage of the opportunities available from the USPOD’s commemorative stamp program to legitimize their interpretation of 

the past and to insure that the founding stories of their ancestors 

were included in the broader story of America’s origins. 

The timing of these commemorations spoke directly to the 

contemporary fights over immigration. Legislation in 1921 and 

1924 established eugenically minded quotas developed by Congress to shape the racial biology of future American citizens. 

The Johnson-Reed Act (1924) drastically reduced the number 

of immigrating Poles, Greeks, Italians, and Russians entering the United States and completely eliminated immigration 

from Asia.14 It was not coincidental that these regional anniversary stamps also reinforced the idea that the United States 

was founded by white Protestant western Europeans and that 

the future national racial and ethnic salad bowl should aspire to 

achieve that ideal from the past.

HEROES FROM POLAND

Soon after Johnson-Reed, Polish Americans and immigrants 

petitioned the USPOD to honor two Polish Revolutionary War 

heroes on stamps as part of a larger strategy to portray Polish 

Americans as good Americans with ancestral ties to the birth of 

the United States as a nation. Efforts began in the early twentieth 

century to recognize the contributions of Count Casimir Pulaski 

and General Thaddeus Kosciuszko with statues and postage memorials. In 1910, monuments honoring both men were dedicated 

in Washington, Pulaski’s financed by Congress and Kosciuszko’s 

donated to “the people” by the Polish American Alliance.15

FIGURE 7. Norse-American Centennial, 2¢, 1925. From the Smithsonian National Postal Museum Collection, Accession Number 

1980.2493.2370.

FIGURE 8. Norse-American Centennial, 5¢, 1925. From the Smithsonian National Postal Museum Collection, Accession Number 

1980.2493.2372.
number 56 • 3 1

Pulaski was a Polish nobleman who volunteered to fight for 

the colonies and has been called the Father of the American Cavalry. He fought and died at the Battle of Savannah in 1779, and 

the city honored him as a local hero. To further extend Pulaski’s 

reputation as a national hero, the local chapter of the Daughters 

of the American Revolution spearheaded a stamp campaign in 

1929. Honoring Pulaski as a war hero was not in question when 

President Herbert Hoover declared 11 October 1929 as Pulaski 

Day, yet no stamp came.16 Hoover and Congress acknowledged 

Pulaski as a national hero, but earning a commemorative stamp 

proved more difficult. 

Surprisingly, strong rebukes came from a Polish newspaper the 

following year that may have influenced the government’s decision 

to print a Pulaski commemorative. The paper accused U.S. postal 

authorities of using a double standard when choosing whom to 

honor on stamps, using the headline “Polish Proposition Refused—

Germans Favored.” According to this paper’s editor, the USPOD 

honored a German Revolutionary War hero, Baron Frederic Wilhelm von Steuben, on a stamp but refused to reciprocate for a Polish Pulaski.17 French newspaper editors even decried the choice of 

a von Steuben stamp. They did not seek a Pulaski stamp, but rather 

sought recognition for French military officers who fought for independence, such as Lafayette and Rochambeau. Missing from the 

correspondence file were panicky or angry letters from government 

officials strongly urging the postmaster general announce a Pulaski 

stamp quickly.18 The world noticed when a government printed 

new stamps, making choosing and issuing commemorative stamps 

a challenging cultural and political task for postal officials. A few 

months later, nearly fifteen months after the Savannah anniversary 

celebration, a Pulaski issue was announced.

Even noncollecting Americans noticed new stamps and 

questioned the reasoning behind postal decisions. Present in 

the files was an angry letter from an American who asked why 

the USPOD honored Pulaski with a stamp and did not chose 

an American soldier. She spoke of her fears surrounding immigration held by many fellow citizens. Mrs. M. A. Van Wagner 

criticized Polish immigrants for coming to the United States only 

to “get employment here and take our American dollars back 

to Poland” while others remained unemployed (presumably she 

meant native-born citizens) in the early years of the Great Depression. For Van Wagner, the Pulaski stamp signified another 

way that America had been “forgnised,” similar to the gangs of 

foreigners who were responsible for importing “poison” liquor 

during Prohibition.19 Her letter stands alone in the Pulaski file as 

one of protest, but her emotional reaction to this stamp reflects 

real sentiments felt by some Americans in the interwar period not 

only toward eastern European immigrants but also in the power 

she felt stamps possessed in representing, or perhaps misrepresenting in this case, an official narrative of the United States. 

Stamps may have been small, but their images were powerful.

Concurrent to the Pulaski stamp campaign, petitions arrived at the USPOD seeking a stamp to honor another Polish 

Revolutionary War hero, Thaddeus Kosciuszko. At the time of 

his death in 1817, Poles and Americans mourned his legacy as a 

war hero and his commitment to fighting for liberty worldwide. 

His legacy continued on in the form of monuments and celebrations dedicated in his honor.20 Among those commemorative efforts was one to immortalize his legacy on a postage stamp that 

would reach across the United States and abroad to his homeland, Poland. The Kosciuszko Foundation first petitioned the 

postmaster general in 1926, by way of New York Senator Royal 

S. Copeland, to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the general’s “coming” to the colonies.21

After those attempts failed, queries were reshaped, and 

the foundation asked for a stamp that would instead honor the 

150th anniversary of his “naturalization as an American citizen.”22 From 1931 to 1933, hundreds of endorsement letters 

arrived in the office of the postmaster general supporting this 

stamp, amounting to a greater volume than the support for Pulaski’s stamp just a few years earlier. Seven years after the first 

requests, Postmaster Farley fittingly chose to announce the Kosciuszko issue on Polish Day at the Century of Progress World’s 

Fair in Chicago. Farley claimed that he was “happy to convey 

(his) highest regard for the American citizens of Polish extraction” and declared that Kosciuszko’s name would be “forever 

perpetuated in the hearts of American people.”23

Citizenship was a key element in pitching the stamp, which 

then was reflected in the announcements printed in newspapers. 

Kosciuszko’s “admission to American citizenship” and the “privilege of becoming a citizen” were celebrated alongside his military 

service. Much like Farley, who paid homage to Polish citizens, 

other reactions to the issue emphasized that the general’s legacy 

on a stamp “honors not only the man himself, but his countrymen who have come by the hundreds of thousands to the country 

he helped to establish as a land of liberty for all men.”24 Whether 

Kosciuszko actually became an American citizen was not questioned at the time, but the stamp offered a strong symbolic gesture and honor for all people with Polish heritage as bestowed 

upon them by the government. They were nation builders, too. 

Choosing to honor Kosciuszko’s “naturalization” proves to 

be a curious claim made by the foundation. There appears to be 

no documentary evidence to support the claim that he became 

an American citizen, even though he was held in high regard and 

called a friend by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and 

other Revolutionary War era notable figures. After the war, Kosciuszko haggled with the new Congress, like other soldiers, to 

be paid back wages for his service in the Continental Army. He 

earned membership in the Society of the Cincinnati, which was 

limited to military officers who served during the Revolution. 

Kosciuszko returned to his native Poland to fight, unsuccessfully, 

against Russian occupation and oppression. On a trip back to 

the United States, Kosciuszko hoped to lobby support for Polish independence from American and French governments but 

found himself politically opposed to John Adams’s anti-France 

policies. In light of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, Thomas 

Jefferson urged Kosciuszko to leave the country to avoid imprisonment. If Kosciuszko had been naturalized, he would not have 

needed to flee the country. According to Congressional records 
3 2 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

in 1976, Representative John H. Dent tried to rectify that by 

submitting a resolution to confer citizenship upon Kosciuszko, 

perhaps in the spirit of the bicentennial celebrations.25 Kosciuszko’s actual status was less important than the way that Polish 

American cultural groups constructed his historical identity to 

be an American citizen. These groups believed there was a lot at 

stake by representing Kosciuszko as a citizen as well as a Revolutionary War military hero. Polish immigrants and Polish Americans were conflicted, much like the immigrants and citizens of 

Norwegian descent discussed earlier, about how best to balance 

their cultural and political identities as Poles and as Americans. 

These groups sought legitimacy to their interpretations of the 

past through representation on commemorative stamps.

Whereas the Norse-American Centennial Committee chose 

ships to represent their immigration stories, the Polish American groups chose portraits to represent Pulaski and Kosciuszko 

in very different ways. Pulaski visually is associated with Poland, 

with his portrait flanked by the modern flags of Poland and the 

United States. Generally, other commemoratives did not print the 

U.S. flag. Pulaski’s portrait appears in the center, where he casts 

his glance to his left, to the side where the Polish flag appears 

from behind his portrait. In contrast, the Kosciuszko stamp did 

not feature either flag (Figure 9). Perhaps because the stamp commemorated the 150th anniversary of his “naturalization” as an 

American citizen, flags were not necessary for indicating his nation of origin; Kosciusko was American, Pulaski was Polish. The 

stamp design selected depicts Kosciuszko wearing his uniform and 

standing, which actually is a reproduction of a full-bodied statue 

that sits in Lafayette Park across from the White House in Washington. Rejected designs represent Kosciuszko as a citizen, not as 

a soldier.26 In the chosen design, he appears larger than life as he 

looks down upon the stamp reader from his pedestal. Like many 

other Revolutionary War officers represented on stamps, he is 

standing, not on horseback, and, with sword drawn, appears ready 

to lead a battle. Pulaski, who was a royal count, looks out from 

his portrait wearing a dress military uniform. Oddly, he is not on 

horseback, although he is credited as founding the American cavalry. No identifying language tells a stamp consumer that Pulaski 

died at the Battle of Savannah. And unless one read the newspaper 

announcements discussing the stamp, the average American probably did not understand that the dates printed on the Kosciuszko, 

1783–1933, celebrated his fictional naturalization.

Obtaining these commemoratives were great achievements 

for the fraternal and Polish heritage organizations to express ethnic pride, but they also used the stamps as another way to claim 

their status as racially white. Their members experienced discrimination and understood that Poles and other eastern European immigrants were defined as racially different from old stock 

immigrants hailing from western Europe, even as cultural and 

legal definitions of whiteness were changing in the United States. 

Celebrating Kosciuszko’s naturalization suggests that it was important for the Polish National Alliance, Polish Roman Catholic 

Union, and other organizations to tie their heritage with American citizenship. Since only a “free white person” was eligible 

for naturalization, Kosciuszko qualified as white. Poles were 

inching their way out of a racially in-between status in the early 

twentieth century, a position also faced by other immigrants. The 

difference was that these organizations could flaunt on federal 

stamps the accomplishments of two Polish military men who 

volunteered (and died, in Pulaski’s case) for the American cause 

during the Revolutionary War—the origin of the republic. Polish American groups received help from the USPOD in proving 

themselves as being fit for American citizenship since their ancestors helped to found the country. The legal and cultural murkiness of racial classification in the early twentieth century made it 

more imperative for first- and second-generation immigrants to 

be able to stake their claim to whiteness, and in the case of Polish 

immigrants, earning two stamps helped. 

We can see through these stamp subjects from the 1920s 

and early 1930s that civic and cultural groups believed that the 

USPOD influenced the public’s understanding of the American 

past through producing and circulating historical narratives. 

These groups, and many others whose petitions were rejected, 

desired federal recognition of their interpretation of segments of 

American history afforded by representation on a commemorative postage stamp. 

NOTES

1. John E. Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, 

and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University 

Press, 1992), 13–20, 169–185.

2. Charles A. Merrill, “Urges Revival of Pilgrims’ Faith,” Boston Daily Globe, 

22 December 1920; “Urges Bar on Aliens,” Washington Post, 20 February 1920. All 

historical newspaper references are from ProQuest Historical Newspapers, http://

www.proquest.com/en-US/catalogs/databases/detail/pq-hist-news.shtml.

3. Roger Brody, “Pilgrim Tercentenary Issue,” http://arago.si.edu/flash/ 

?s1=5|sq=Pilgrim Tercentenary Issue|sf=0. To view an image of the commemorative 

coin, see http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pilgrim_tercentenary_half_dollar

_commemorative_obverse.jpg.

4. U.S. Postal Service, “Rates for Domestic Letters, 1863–2011,” http://

about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/domestic-letter-rates-1863-2011.htm. 

FIGURE 9. (left) General Pulaski, 2¢, 1931. (right) Kosciuszko, 5¢, 

1933. From the Smithsonian National Postal Museum Collection, 

Accession Number s1980.2493.2503, and 1980.2493.2590.
number 56 • 3 3

5. The 5¢ Signing of the Compact stamp is a miniature engraving based on an 

Edwin White painting from 1858. William Bradford may have been the main figure 

in this painting since he is pictured on the U.S. Mint’s half-dollar commemorative 

coin also issued for this anniversary. This international journey ends with a 5¢ 

stamp, which was the standard surface rate for overseas letters. 

6. “Jamestown and Plymouth,” The William and Mary Quarterly 17, no. 4 

(April 1909): 305–311.

7. The following sources came from the Huguenot-Walloon Tercentenary 

stamp design files Stamp Design Files, National Postal Museum (hereafter cited 

as Design Files),Scott 614–616: Huguenot-Walloon New Netherland Commission, 

Huguenot-Walloon New Netherland Commission, 1624–1924, Program (New 

York, 1924); Ruth Hawes to Post Office Department, 25 August 1924; J. D. Riker 

to Post-Master General of the United States, 18 June 1924; Lois D. Williams to Post 

Office Department, 21 July 1924. 

8. Irwin Glover to James R. Fraser, 9 January 1925; Gisle Bothne to Postmaster General Harry S. New, 10 December 1924; Carl G. O. Hansen to Mr. Harry 

S. New, 10 December 1924; all in Design Files, Scott #620–621.

9. Roger Brody, “Huguenot-Walloon Tercentenary Issue,” in Arago: People, 

Postage and the Post, National Postal Museum, http://www.arago.si.edu/index

.asp?con=1&cmd=1&mode=1&tid=2033829&. For plaque text, see photo of the 

monument Shannon McCann, “Brown on White” on Flickr Photo Sharing, http://

www.flickr.com/photos/whenlostin/2743408241/in/photostream/. 

10. Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in 

the 1920s, 1st ed. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995); Douglas J. Slawson, The 

Department of Education Battle, 1918–1932: Public Schools, Catholic Schools, 

and the Social Order (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005); 

David Roediger, Working Toward Whiteness: How America’s Immigrants Became 

White, The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs (New York: Basic 

Books, 2005).

11. Representative Ole J. Kvale, (Minn.) Joint Resolution Authorizing 

Stamps to Commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the Landing of the First Norse 

Immigrants, HJ 270, 1924.Congressional Record 65 (26 May 1924): 9581.

12. April Schultz, “‘The Pride of the Race Had Been Touched’: The 1925 

Norse-American Immigration Centennial and Ethnic Identity,” The Journal of 

American History 77, no. 4 (March 1991): 1265–1295.

13. Norse-American Centenary stamp Design Files, Stamp #621.

14. Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 

1998), 91–117.

15. “Monuments of Two Polish Heroes to be Unveiled in Washington May 

12,” The Atlanta Constitution, 11 May 1910; “Nation to Honor Polish Patriots,” 

Chicago Daily Tribune, 9 May 1910. For stamps that were eventually approved, 

such as those honoring Thaddeus Kosciuszko, see rejection letters for why petitions 

were denied for specific years in the Design Files, Scott #734.

16. “Savannah Exalts Pulaski’s Memory,” New York Times, 6 October 1929; 

Telamon Culyer, “Sesqui-Centennial of Georgia’s First Clash of Armies,” Atlanta 

Constitution, 6 October 1929; “Notable Fete Is Planned to Honor Pulaski,” Washington Post, 6 October 1929. Bernice E. Smith to Congressman Charles G. Edwards, 5 April 1929; Charles G. Edwards to Honorable Walter F. Brown, 6 April 

1929; American Consul Central to Honorable Secretary of State, 23 September 

1930, from Design Files, Scott #690.

17. Bernice E. Smith to Congressman Charles G. Edwards, 5 April 1929; 

Charles G. Edwards to Honorable Walter F. Brown, 6 April 1929; American Consul Central to Honorable Secretary of State, 23 September 1930, Design Files, Scott 

#690.

18. Design Files, Scott #690.

19. M. A. Van Wagner to Postmaster General, 2 January 1931, Design Files, 

Scott #690.

20. Gary B. Nash, Friends of Liberty: Thomas Jefferson, Tadeusz Kospciuszko, and Agrippa Hull: A Tale of Three Patriots, Two Revolutions, and a Tragic 

Betrayal of Freedom in the New Nation (New York: Basic Books, 2008), 207–213.

21. Senator Royal S. Copeland to Postmaster General Harry S. New, 29 April 

1926, Design Files, Scott #734.

22. Senator David Walsh (Mass.), “Stamp in Honor of Brig. Gen. Thaddeus 

Kosciusko,” Congressional Record 75 (16 February 1932): 4016.

23. Copeland to New, 29 April 1926; Senator James Couzens (Mich.), S.J. 

Res. 248 “Authorizing the Issuance of a Special Postage Stamp in Honor of Brig. 

Gen. Thaddeus Kosciuszko.” Information Office, Post Office Department, press release, 22 July 1933. Congressional Record 74 (6 February 1931): 4121. The design 

file is filled with letters of support coming from individuals, politicians, businessmen, and fraternal organizations. 

24. “Stamp to Honor Kosciusko,” New York Times, 23 July 1933; Richard McPCabeen, “The Stamp Collector,” Chicago Daily Tribune, 13 August 1933; 

“The Stamp Album,” Washington Post, 20 August 1933; Editorial, “Honoring 

Kosciusko,” Hartford Courant, 27 July 1933. 

25. Regarding the stamp, I found some correspondence from 1986 in the 

design file that asked the curator of the National Postal Museum where to find 

documentary evidence of Kosciuszko’s naturalization. The curator said there was 

no documentary evidence and attached a letter written in 1953 to the Director of 

the Public Library of Newark stating that there was no official “naturalization, but 

that through his deeds and actions he became an ‘American’.” See also Representative John H. Dent (Pa.), “To Confer U.S. Citizenship Upon Thaddeus Kosciusko,” 

H.J. Res.771, Congressional Record 122 (21 January 1976): 544.

26. Max Johl, The United States Commemorative Stamps of the Twentieth 

Century (New York: H. L. Lindquist, 1947), 1:267–270.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arago: People, Postage, and the Post Smithsonian National Postal Museum. http://

arago.si.edu/.

Bodnar, John E. Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 

1992.

Brody, Roger. “Pilgrim Tercentenary Issue.” In Arago: People, Postage and the Post. 

Smithsonian National Postal Museum, 16 May 2006. http://arago.si.edu/

flash/?s1=5|sq=Pilgrim Tercentenary Issue|sf=0 (accessed 8 June 2012). 

———. “Huguenot-Walloon Tercentenary Issue.” In Arago: People, Postage and 

the Post. Smithsonian National Postal Museum, 16 May 2006. http://www

.arago.si.edu/index.asp?con=1&cmd=1&mode=1&tid=2033829& (accessed 

8 June 2012).

Congressional Record. LexisNexis Congressional. 2009. http://www.lexisnexis.com/

academic/1univ/cong/default.asp (accessed 8 June 2012).

Dumenil, Lynn. The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s. 

New York: Hill and Wang, 1995.

Jacobson, Matthew Frye. Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants 

and the Alchemy of Race. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998.

“Jamestown and Plymouth,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 17, no. 4 (April 

1909): 305–311.

Johl, Max. The United States Commemorative Stamps of the Twentieth Century. 

Volume 1. New York: H. L. Lindquist. 1947.

Nash, Gary B. Friends of Liberty: Thomas Jefferson, Tadeusz Kospciuszko, and 

Agrippa Hull: A Tale of Three Patriots, Two Revolutions, and a Tragic Betrayal of Freedom in the New Nation. New York: Basic Books, 2008.

ProQuest Historical Newspapers. http://www.proquest.com/en-US/catalogs/data

bases/detail/pq-hist-news.shtml (accessed 7 June 2012).

Roediger, David. Working Toward Whiteness: How America’s Immigrants Became 

White, the Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs. New York: Basic 

Books, 2005.

Schultz, April.“‘The Pride of the Race Had Been Touched’: The 1925 NorseAmerican Immigration Centennial and Ethnic Identity.” The Journal of 

American History, 77, no. 4 (March 1991): 1265–1295. http://dx.doi.org/10

.2307/2078262. 

Slawson, Douglas J. The Department of Education Battle, 1918–1932: Public 

Schools, Catholic Schools, and the Social Order. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005. 

Smithsonian National Postal Museum. Stamp Design Files, National Philatelic 

Collection.

The Trans-Mississippi Exposition 

Commemorative Stamp Issue and National 

Identity at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Tessa Sabol

World’s fairs, for as long as they have been held, have captured the interest of national and international audiences. Robert Rydell, a world’s fair scholar, posits 

that these expositions were intended to “win popular support for national 

imperial policies”1

 and “carry forward into the cultural realm the political efforts to reconstruct the United States after the Civil War.”2

 After the depression of 1893, a national 

synthesis was important to establish. Realizing that progress and industrialization were 

hardening class lines3

 and regional lines, fair organizers sought to unify the population 

through these annual events with the Trans-Mississippi Exposition in Omaha, Nebraska. 

The commemorative stamp issue for the 1898 Trans-Mississippi Exposition in 

Omaha, Nebraska, was an ideal tool for this purpose. By circulating these stamps internationally, the federal government was able to shape a new national confidence and invoke 

nostalgia regarding its formation and identity, taking into account the disparate feelings of 

eastern and western citizens regarding the newly expanded country. The imagery in these 

stamps catered to the needs and concerns of both geographic regions, endorsing a combination of western nostalgia and the reality of progress to reassure the nation, creating 

a sense of national pride in its characteristics. Though the stamps were part of the propaganda for the fair, they can stand alone and emphasize the nostalgia of the nation’s internal 

imperialism at a time when there was nowhere left to expand beyond U.S. borders.

INTRODUCTION

In 1898, with the country settled from ocean to ocean and the frontier declared 

closed, the nation struggled to unify its multiple identities. Just five years before, Frederick Jackson Turner, a historian, delivered his Frontier Thesis. The qualities needed for the 

frontier were strength, acuteness, inquisitiveness, restlessness, and dominant individualism, according to Turner.4

 There were certain archetypes that helped to solidify a Western 

mythology and the national idea of the Western frontier, all stemming from the Frontier 

Thesis. The West itself was appealing for the qualities that it embodied, such as opportunity and a future outside of the “old” East that was fully populated and small in comparison to the vast expanse of the West;5

 however, not all of Turner’s notions of the West 

were glorious. He acknowledged that those venturing Westward must be ready to face 

hardships that could result in deprivation, labor, and death. It became popular to depict 

the “dignity in defeat” in order to demonstrate an unflinching sort of self-sacrifice.6

 But 

Tessa Sabol, Rockville, Maryland, USA. Correspondence: tnsabol@gmail.com. Manuscript 

received 27 March 2012; accepted 7 May 2012.
3 6 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

by the end of the century, Turner declared that, “four centuries 

from the discovery of America . . . the frontier is gone, and with 

its going has closed the first period of American history.”7

 Anxiety over the end of the frontier led to the construction of national 

mythologies and nostalgia in the late nineteenth century.8

In the 1860s, the country had been divided internally by the 

Civil War, and by 1898, the reunification of North and South 

was still tenuous. Racial and sectional divisions were very apparent by the country’s centennial and persisted through1898.9

 The 

West, in contrast, was a region larger than the North and South 

combined and ill defined. Relations between East and West were 

politically strained. Because the West as a region was so new 

at this time, it was more like a colony of the East, dependent 

upon the federal government economically, breeding resentment 

on both sides.10

Edward Rosewater, owner of the newspaper The Omaha 

Bee, took on the challenge of exposition development as head 

of its department of publicity.11 Rosewater had connections with 

the Post Office Department and had the idea of having a commemorative issue for this fair to “give to the project the prestige 

of government recognition and support.”12 The use of a commemorative series of postages stamps to accomplish a unified 

national nostalgia in 1898 was risky because of the precedent set 

at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. A sixteen-stamp 

series was created for that exposition, and those stamps were 

largely a failure in the collector community because the entire 

series cost $16.34, which was almost two-weeks’ pay for an average citizen.13 The 1898 series was only $3.80, still expensive, 

but far more affordable. With newspapers becoming major industries in small towns across the vast country by 1898,14 news 

of these stamps was spread faster and therefore built the anticipation for these stamps.15 Boston and Chicago post offices even 

sold out of the series.16 A fairly broad set of criteria for the stamp 

selection was outlined by the Third Assistant Postmaster General’s Office in late 1897;17 however, because of the limited amount 

of time given to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to create 

these stamps, preexisting images were selected. These postage 

stamps largely ignored the immigrant and African populations 

and therefore largely appealed to white American majority.

I have divided the nine stamps (designed by Raymond Ostrander Smith and engraved by G. F. C. Smillie and Marcus Baldwin) into three categories: Native American relations in the United 

States, Western industry, and U.S. westward expansion. The 

stamps visually lend themselves to this division, and historically, 

they were also three charged topics around the turn of the century. 

NATIVE AMERICAN RELATIONS

By 1898, most Native American populations had been 

moved onto reservations, and the last few Native American uprisings were coming to a close. The nation had turned to the 

project of subjugation, assimilation, and education of the Native American population. The three stamps focusing on Native 

Americans (Figure 1) visually demonstrate education of or protection from Native American populations while also reminding 

Americans of their savage majesty. The popularity of visual depictions of the Old West helped to culturally elevate these three 

stamp images for Western audiences, and the appeal of romanticized Wild West shows in the East combined to create three 

Native American–themed stamps.

“Marquette on the Mississippi” is based upon an 1867 

painting by William Lamprecht entitled Father Marquette and 

the Indians (Figure 2). Marquette was a Jesuit priest sent from 

France to Canada in 1666 as part of an expedition party that 

sailed down the Mississippi River to the Arkansas River in 1673. 

This image shows Marquette preaching to a group of seated Native Americans on the bank of the river. Marquette gestures upward during his sermon. He is centrally located in the image and 

disconnected from many of the Native Americans by the boat 

and river itself. The only Native American standing is gesturing toward Marquette, possibly imitating him as he teaches the 

gospel, so that he may then go to the rest of his tribe and preach 

the ideals of Christianity. The Native American holds a peace 

FIGURE 1. The 1¢ “Marquette on the Mississippi,” 4¢ “Indian Hunting Buffalo,” and 8¢ “Troops Guarding Train,” 1898. Courtesy of the 

Smithsonian National Postal Museum (1980.2493.1785, 1789, and 1793).
number 56 • 3 7

pipe, emphasizing the overall positive nature of their interaction. 

The other Native Americans in the image look up at him, almost 

like young children ready to learn. Though most stamps in this 

series deal with East–West relations, this stamp focuses on the 

North–South relationship.

Subjugation through the education of Native Americans 

was seen by the greater public as being of critical importance to 

make them completely American. With foreign immigrants, freed 

slaves, and Native American populations, the value of education 

and literacy was seen not only as necessary for enlightenment but 

also as having national and democratic importance.18 Education 

was seen as salvation for Native Americans around the time of the 

fair.19 This informs the image of Marquette providing salvation 

and education to Native Americans. Easterners and Westerners 

both could understand this image as Native Americans willing to 

turn their backs on savagery and assimilate into a unified American national identity, despite the fact that in reality they were not 

seen as truly American in 1898. As the 1¢ postage stamp, this 

image was used to pay the domestic letter rate on the flag patriotic cover used during the Spanish American War.20

In addition to being seen as naïve pupils, Native Americans 

were seen as wild, as depicted in “Indian Hunting Buffalo,” 

FIGURE 2. Wilhelm Lamprecht (1838–1906), Père Marquette and the Indians, oil on canvas, 1869. Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette 

University, Gift of Reverend Stanislaus L. Lalumière. Courtesy of the Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Marquette 

University Library (00.3).
3 8 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

based on Buffalo Chase by Seth Eastman (Figure 3). The design of the postage stamp eliminates any environmental context 

from the scene. The Native American is solitary and thus not as 

threatening to Americans as an entire tribe riding with weapons. 

Despite the fact that this is a hunting scene, it is surprisingly nonviolent. The emphasis is more on the majestic appearance of both 

animal and Native American as wild and free. The landscape in 

the design seems to echo the speed at which this Native American 

rider pursues the buffalo.

This postage stamp addresses the national nostalgia for 

westward expansion by recalling a more inquisitive time, marked 

by a fascination with Native Americans, when ethnologists travelled to immerse themselves in their savage culture for research. 

This stamp illustrates the first discoveries of the West, the beginning of what would expand the country tenfold. It comes at a 

time when buffalo were all but extinct and most Native American people were contained on reservations, quite the opposite 

of what we see here. Visual art depicting Western subjects had 

changed greatly in both method and popularity by 1898, and the 

notion of the Western myth was in full swing, perpetuated by the 

huge success of Wild West shows and dime novels.21 By the end 

of the century, Western painting style had shifted from ethnography to depictions of action and excitement, drawing the viewer 

in. Harper’s Weekly out of New York and other mass media publications craved those thrilling images, thus giving them national 

distribution and visibility.22

This postage stamp reflects this style shift by making the 

viewer a secret onlooker observing hunting practices, giving the 

scene a sense of movement, action, and drama. Yet no actual violence is depicted here, alleviating any worry that this image might 

be too unseemly. Additionally, the opinion of the time was that a 

Native American chief should not play a featured role on a U.S. 

stamp. Therefore, the anonymous warrior was used.23 This image 

appealed to Easterners nostalgically looking toward the past, when 

the Native American could nobly hunt and roam the frontier, as 

they read their dime novels and attended Wild West shows. It appealed to Westerners as an escape from the former violence they 

dealt with during settlement of the frontier. Overall, it was a unified national vision of the excitement of the frontier and the Native 

American as formerly noble, a fascinating aspect of the past. 

FIGURE 3. Seth Eastman (1808–1875), Buffalo Chase, 1854, print. Courtesy of the Nicollet County Historical Society, St. Peter, Minnesota 

(umn10277).
number 56 • 3 9

The final stamp in this series of Native American imagery, 

“Troops Guarding Train,” is based upon Eastern artist Frederic 

Remington’s drawing entitled Protecting a Wagon Train (Figure 4), depicting the threat rather than either the educability or 

the nobility of the savage. The design references Native Americans but excludes their physical presence in the image in favor of 

showing the might of the U.S. military, a paternal presence, protecting its westward-bound citizens. Native Americans, in this 

image, are an inferred threat. In the far right lower corner of the 

stamp, a soldier kneels down, aiming his shotgun, indicating that 

there is a potential attack on the horizon. Of course, in reality, 

the threat of attacks on migrants was minimal, and most deaths 

on the road to the West were disease related.24 The Frontier Thesis and the Western myth appear in “Troops Guarding Train,” 

where the federal government is placing itself as protector of this 

frontier ideal and protector of those brave Americans willing to 

risk everything, including their lives, to move West. The military is the guardian of innovation, tenacity, individualism, and 

ultimately the spread of democracy. Visually, the federal creators 

distributing this image are placing the government within such a 

beloved context, linking it to popularity when the country was 

divided in its support.

WESTERN INDUSTRY

The next three stamps (Figure 5) depict scenes of Western 

industry, both a popular attraction at the Trans-Mississippi fair 

and a conflicted area of history. There was deep bitterness between the rich East and struggling West.25 Because the Western 

economy often depended on capital from other regions, they 

were wary of being dependent.26 The farming experiment labeled 

the prairie states as a place for failure.27 Whereas the idea of the 

rugged individual was held high on a pedestal in the romantic notion of the West, in reality, that individualist usually ended up as 

a poor laborer.28 Like farming, mining was wrought with greed, 

FIGURE 4. Frederic Remington (1861–1909), Protecting A Wagon Train, print. Courtesy of the Denver Public Library, Western History Collection, Denver, Colorado (Remington MMS WH1691).
4 0 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

corruption, and unrest, even after the gold rush. Most Easterners who traveled West to make their fortune in gold, especially 

those after 1849, left empty-handed.29 Greed also abounded in 

the cattle industry. As early as the 1880s, cattle barons in a hurry 

to get rich quick grabbed enormous amounts of grasslands for 

grazing but could not maintain their herds. This ultimately led 

to the collapse of the cattle industry in the West. Despite this, the 

cattle industry rebounded and was one of the most successful 

industries of the West by 1898.

The three postage stamps depicting Western industry mask 

these conflicts to unite the nation around innovation, flattering 

the West’s abilities to overcome adversity while omitting the 

unpleasant nature of the failure of these industries in the first 

place. Each of these industries featured prominently at the TransMississippi fair, yet again lending an air of sophistication and 

legitimacy to the West.

The 2¢ “Farming in the West” stamp is the only one in the 

series that is based on a photograph, which depicts the Amenia 

and Sharon Land Co. in North Dakota (Figure 6). As there are 

several identifiable individuals in the postage stamp it is the first 

in history to show living Americans.30 Originally, this image was 

intended to be used on the $2 stamp, the highest denomination 

of the issue. It was changed to the 2¢ stamp at the last moment 

by the Post Office Department because the 2¢, as the first-class 

letter rate, was the most widely used postage stamp, and it was 

determined that this subject matter would be of particular interest to citizens.31

This image is the essence of the Frontier Thesis and the freedom that the United States guaranteed. The farmer in the image, 

Evan A. Nybakken, was an immigrant from Norway who helped 

to develop the West.32 This image shows great success despite the 

frequent reality of farming failure in the West. The line of plows 

and farmers is almost infinite, as is the amount of farm land that 

the company owns. The most modern and sophisticated farming 

equipment is featured front and center to showcase the innovation that came out of necessity in such a harsh environment, just 

FIGURE 5. The 2¢ “Farming in the West,” 50¢ “Western Mining Prospector,” $1 “Western Cattle in Storm,” 1898. Courtesy of the Smithsonian National Postal Museum (1980.2493.1787, 1798, and 2000).

FIGURE 6. John R. Hamlin (1833–1903), Plowing 

on the Amenia and Sharon Land Company, Amenia, 

N.D., gelatin silver print, 1888–1889. Courtesy of 

Institute for Regional Studies, North Dakota State 

University, Fargo (5.5.1).
number 56 • 4 1

like the fair itself. Visually, the “Farming in the West” postage 

stamp is both encouraging to Easterners, who, given the visual 

increased propaganda encouraging emigration, would likely not 

be aware of the grave hardship and disappointments of Western farming, and flattering to Westerners for their inventiveness 

and perseverance over a seemingly impossible task. Thus, interest in Western investment would continue in the East, and having received recognition on the domestic-rate stamp, Westerners 

would be encouraged to continue innovating. Though not necessarily an important detail to Easterners, who were already living 

in overcrowded cities with foreign immigrants, it showcases that 

frontier spirit that settled the West. 

By featuring actual living farmers, thus giving them a small 

amount of notoriety, the stamp adds another level of adulation 

to the Western cause. The Amenia and Sharon Land Co. even 

bought up large quantities of this stamp to use on company 

mailers. It generated such good advertising that other companies approached them to find out how to have a stamp of their 

businesses,33 demonstrating that this stamp was a huge point of 

Western pride.

Contemporary praise transitions to sentimental recollection with “Western Mining Prospector.” It is the second of three 

stamps in this issue based on a drawing by Remington, this one 

from The Gold Bug. The image is of a prospector, two donkeys, 

and a dog. Thousands of Americans flocked to the West in search 

of gold beginning in 1848, yet here the prospector is alone in the 

wide landscape. There is also no visual evidence here of the large 

majority of individuals who ventured West to get rich and failed. 

The image is open-ended, full of that tension and anticipation 

that both Remington and Western mythical frontier art glorified. 

There is no sense of family; rather, the emphasis is on the 

individual. The image shows that Americans, no matter what 

age, are filled with a sense of power encouraged by the frontier myth. This stamp illustrates the essence of the imagination 

that overtook Easterners travelling West.34 It shows the West as a 

land of opportunity and potential wealth, although not directly 

acknowledging the sacrifices that Easterners made when they 

traveled out in search of gold. As the 50¢ stamp, it did not necessarily see as much circulation as the smaller denominations but 

was used frequently on registered covers to foreign countries.35 It 

both exaggerates and omits aspects of the gold rush to appeal to 

the broader national audience. 

Exaggeration also plays an important role in “Western Cattle in Storm,” designed from a painting entitled The Vanguard

by John MacWhirter. Interestingly, the artist and the subject of 

the original painting are not American, but Scottish, in origin.36

The large black bull boldly leads the rest of the herd through the 

harsh weather to safety. The image is highly atmospheric, creating extreme drama. It is impossible to see the landscape even feet 

behind the herd, yet they push forward, mirroring Western settlers’ perseverance. Visually, this stamp creates drama and action 

that the Eastern and Western consumers of art desired. There are 

no fallen cattle here. They are rock solid in the face of extreme 

weather and steadfast through hardship, just as the industry itself was after its collapse from unforeseen conditions and overambitious growth. The potential in the image appeals to that 

frontier myth so popularly perpetuated in the East with its high 

drama and action. All three stamps depicting Western industry 

mask failures and promote exaggerated nostalgia that East and 

West could find appealing.

WESTWARD EMIGRATION 

AND INTERNAL IMPERIALISM

The “end of the frontier” had been declared,37 causing anxiety over the perceived loss of the Western myth. At the time the 

postage stamps were created, the government was on the brink of 

the becoming a major world power looking toward international 

imperialism. Yet with the next three postage stamps, the federal 

government wanted to remind the nation of the internal struggles 

it faced while forming the United States (Figure 7). These stamps 

show the progress of westward expansion, from the conquering 

of the Rocky Mountains to the great emigration to the emergence 

FIGURE 7. The $2 “Mississippi River Bridge,” 10¢ “Hardships of Emigration,” and 5¢ “Fremont on Rocky Mountains,” 1898. Courtesy of 

the Smithsonian National Postal Museum (1980.2493.2003, 1795, and 1791).
4 2 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

of “civilized oases” by the 1890s, which were “ready to show off 

[their] accomplishments to the world.”38 These stamps minimize 

the volatile political history of East and West and conjure a unified vision of national sacrifice for greater progress.

The idea of bridging Eastern and Western regions together 

is manifest in “Mississippi River Bridge,” taken from the admission ticket design for the Republican National Convention 

held in St. Louis in 1896 (Figure 8). It is an impressive show of 

transportation progress and of literally “bridging” the East and 

West. From this bird’s-eye view looking westward, the modern 

St. Louis skyline displayed behind the bridge seems to promise 

prosperity. The viewer is standing on the Eastern bank of the 

Mississippi River, looking westward toward a future. Importantly, the Eastern bank is hardly visible in this image, placing all 

of the emphasis on the opposite bank, where the city meets the 

horizon. Not only that, it suggests a certain sophistication that 

the West hoped to establish at the Trans-Mississippi fair, a way 

to prove to the East that the West was a place of refinement as 

well as hard work.39 Yet, by this time, St. Louis was considered 

“middle West,” lacking the ruggedness commonly associated 

with the far West.

The Post Office Department and Rosewater made a very 

calculated decision to favor the Western cause by changing this 

image from the 2¢ denomination it originally carried to the $2 

one. Their reasoning was based on a rivalry of sorts between St. 

Louis and Omaha.40 Rosewater did not want St. Louis (at this 

time considered more Eastern than Western) to be on the most 

circulated stamp of the series. Rosewater claimed that it would 

“not have served the interests of the northeast community to 

have a St. Louis landmark on the stamp”;41 however, he would 

rather promote a more Western image of farming than one specific location of an untrustworthy big city. 

If we look at this image through the lens of its source material, it seems to associate the Eastern Republican Party with 

Western urban advancement. The 1896 Republican National 

Convention was during candidate William McKinley’s run for 

the White House. The opposing Populist Party candidate was 

William Jennings Bryan. According to the Populists, Eastern 

investors and capitalists were conspiring to rob the West (particularly the farmers) of the fruits of their labor.42 Ultimately, 

McKinley succeeded in gaining the presidency over the Western 

Populist Party and was faced with uniting the entire expanded 

country behind him. This image flatters the West with the depiction of Western city sophistication, and it expands the refined 

East westward visually.

Quite the opposite of that promising image of expansion, 

“Hardships of Emigration” depicts a family emigrating West, 

facing the hardship of one of their horses collapsing from exhaustion. They appear to be completely isolated and alone in 

the expansive landscape. No wagon train (like that in “Troops 

Guarding Train”) or civilization can be seen. This stamp, above 

all the others in the issue, is the most emotional. The loss of a 

horse could spell disaster for a family traveling West. Not only 

did it limit their transportation to their destination, but they 

would also have lost a valuable asset once they arrived. Depictions of families and adventurers in the process of traveling West 

FIGURE 8. An 1896 Republican National Convention admission ticket, engraving on paper, circa 1896. Courtesy of the 

Cornell University Political Americana Collection, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Libraries, 

Ithaca, New York (2214.PM0053).
number 56 • 4 3

via covered wagons were certainly popular during the nineteenth 

century. This postage stamp is another romantic, highly dramatized image to appeal to the West and recognition of what those 

who found success in the West had to endure to get there. At the 

time, Eastern citizens were struggling with overcrowded cities 

and the emergence of slums full of foreign immigrants and newly 

freed slaves from the south.43 Poverty and crime abounded,44 so 

the wide expanses of the West must have been appealing, especially in light of the picturesque visual depictions of Western art 

of the time. This image pays homage to those Easterners who 

risked everything in search of a better, simpler life. 

Where “Hardships of Emigration” leaves the viewer uncertain, “Fremont on the Rocky Mountains” features a triumphant explorer, John Charles Fremont, on the highest peak of 

the Rocky Mountains in 1842, just before planting an American 

Flag firmly in the ground. As the 5¢ international-rate postage 

stamp, this image is what would travel all throughout Europe on 

mail from America. It seems appropriate, as this stamp shows the 

only instance of an overt national symbol. The figure of Fremont 

is monumental, raised higher than the clouds, only upstaged 

by the flag he is holding. Beyond the figure of Fremont, there 

seems to be no one, as though he is the first to have laid eyes on 

the magnificent scene. This image truly reflects the triumphant, 

characteristics of Turner’s Frontier Thesis as it depicts Fremont, 

an Easterner, successfully conquering the Rocky Mountains. 

Because of the foreign interest in the American West, the Post 

Office Department officials wanted Fremont on a stamp in this 

series. “A picture of Fremont precariously standing on top of a 

mountain would convey and captivate the essence of America’s 

westward expansion.”45 Because this was probably the most 

widely used of all the stamps in this series because of its foreign 

rate,46 that very strong message of U.S. imperialism (albeit internal here) was widely communicated.

However, there is more Western myth than reality in this 

image. The purpose of his mission was to survey the location of 

the South Pass, but that was not terribly triumphant or dramatic. 

Historian Geoffrey Ward believes that this dramatic unfurling of 

the flag on what was believed to be the highest peak of the Rocky 

Mountains was just something “to add luster to his reputation as 

an explorer.”47 Therefore, Fremont’s personal account of planting that flag into the mountain, true as it was, was only acted out 

to perpetuate that great conquering Western ideal of manifest 

destiny. This stamp affectionately recalls the East conquering the 

West, an ultimate visualization of the Frontier Thesis. 

CONCLUSION

The messages embedded in these nine postage stamps would 

not have been so widely consumed without the platform of the 

world’s fair and the advancement of both the postal system and 

the development of advertising. The rapid rate of national expansion across the continent created a need to speedily disseminate both written and visual media for vast audiences. This new, 

more rapid communication across the country amplified and 

perpetuated the Western myth.48 Railroad expansion and wide 

circulation of newspapers closed the time gap between an event’s 

occurrence and its distribution to the greater public.49 This closing circulation gap also affected postage stamps, making them 

both functional and a viable form of propaganda. In fact, they 

passed through over 70,000 post offices. Their commemorative 

nature brought them to the attention of the philatelic community, the members of which were outspoken about the stamps before and after their issuance.50 These elements came together to 

form a successful national advertising campaign, which spread 

the visual language of both the nostalgic Western myth and the 

reality of progress. By making them a commemorative issue and 

associating them with the collection of memorabilia, along with 

the popularity of stamp collecting in general, the stamps enjoyed 

a higher circulation.51

Values of American innovation, triumph, ruggedness, democracy and independence are encompassed in the 1898 TransMississippi Exposition postage stamp commemorative issue. 

While glossing over the more unpleasant aspects of westward 

expansion and advancement, as was the trend of visual depictions of the West at the time, the federal government created a 

series of images that appeal to the Eastern vision of the triumphant Western frontier myth as well as to the Western viewer by 

showcasing the progress of Western innovation. The combinations of images show a great deal about how the government 

was attempting to unite the country and reaffirm that although 

the frontier was no more, the characteristics the frontier created 

were still fundamental to America as a cohesive nation.

NOTES

1. Robert W. Rydell, John E. Findling, and Kimberly D. Pelle, Fair America: 

World’s Fairs in the United States (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution 

Press, 2000), 5.

2. Rydell et al., Fair America, 7.

3. Rydell et al., Fair America, 7.

4. Edward Buscombe, “Painting the Legend: Frederic Remington and the 

Western,” Cinema Journal, 23, no. 4 (1984): 12.

5. Buscombe, “Painting the Legend,” 10.

6. Brian W. Dippie, “Drawn to the West,” The Western Historical Quarterly, 

35, no. 1 (2004): 15.

7. Ivan Musicant, Empire by Default: The Spanish-American War and the 

Dawn of the American Century (New York: Henry Holt and Company), 4–5.

8. Buscombe, “Painting the Legend,” 12.

9. Dippie, “Drawn to the West,” 8.

10. Richard White, It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own: A New History of the American West (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 

354

11. Rydell et al., Fair America, 592.

12. Rydell et al., Fair America, 592.

13. Randy Neil, United States of America: The Trans-Mississippi Issue of 

1898, with contributions by Jack Rosenthal (Danbury, Conn.: Andrew Levitt), vi.

14. David Traxel, 1898: The Birth of the American Century (New York: 

Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), 23

15. Neil, The Trans-Mississippi Issue of 1898, xii.

16. Neil, The Trans-Mississippi Issue of 1898, xii.

17. Gary Griffith, “The Source of the Five-Cent Trans-Mississippi Stamp,” 

The Collectors Club Philatelist, 77, no. 1 (1998): 32.

18. Traxel, 1898: The Birth of the American Century, 312.
4 4 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

19. Robert A. Trennert Jr., “Selling Indian Education at World’s Fairs and 

Expositions,” American Indian Quarterly, 11,no. 3 (1987): 203.

20. Neil, The Trans-Mississippi Issue of 1898, 45.

21. Buscombe, “Painting the Legend,” 13.

22. Buscombe, “Painting the Legend,” 17.

23. Neil, The Trans-Mississippi Issue of 1898, 73.

24. White, It’s Your Misfortune, 99.

25. Traxel, 1898: The Birth of the American Century, 21.

26. White, It’s Your Misfortune, 267.

27. John E. Findling, “Omaha 1898: Trans-Mississippi Exposition,” in Historical Dictionary of World’s Fairs and Expositions, 1851–1988, ed. John E. Findling (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990), 152.

28. M. Hoch, “How the West Was Really Won,” U.S. News and World Report, 108, no. 20 (1990): 3.

29. J. S. Holliday. Rush for Riches: Gold Fever and the Making of California

(Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1999), 60. 

30. Gary Griffith, “The 2-Cent Trans-Mississippi Is an American Classic,” 

Stamp Collector, 72, no. 12 (1998): 6.

31. Griffith, “The 2-Cent Trans-Mississippi,” 6.

32. Neil, The Trans-Mississippi Issue of 1898, 55–56.

33. Neil, The Trans-Mississippi Issue of 1898, 59.

34. Neil, The Trans-Mississippi Issue of 1898, 135.

35. Neil, The Trans-Mississippi Issue of 1898, 142.

36. Neil, The Trans-Mississippi Issue of 1898, 144.

37. Traxel, 1898: The Birth of the American Century, 66.

38. Neil, The Trans-Mississippi Issue of 1898, vii.

39. Robert W. Rydell “The Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition: 

‘To Work Out the Problem of Universal Civilization,’” American Quarterly, 33, 

no. 5 (1981): 588.

40. Neil, The Trans-Mississippi Issue of 1898, 156.

41. Neil, The Trans-Mississippi Issue of 1898, 156.

42. White, It’s Your Misfortune, 370.

43. Traxel, 1898: The Birth of the American Century, 32.

44. Traxel, 1898: The Birth of the American Century, 32.

45. Neil, The Trans-Mississippi Issue of 1898, 108.

46. Neil, The Trans-Mississippi Issue of 1898, 110.

47. Rydell, “The Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition,” 588.

48. Buscombe, “Painting the Legend,” 13.

49. Buscombe, “Painting the Legend,” 12.

50. Neil, The Trans-Mississippi Issue of 1898, xii.

51. United States Postal Service, Trans-Mississippi Issue: Celebrating the 

100th Anniversary (Washington, D.C.: United States Postal Service), 4.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Buscombe, Edward. “Painting the Legend: Frederic Remington and the Western.” 

Cinema Journal, 23, no. 4 (1984): 12–27.

Dippie, Brian W. “Drawn to the West.” The Western Historical Quarterly, 35, no. 

1 (2004): 4–26.

Findling, John E. “Omaha 1898: Trans-Mississippi Exposition.” In Historical Dictionary of World’s Fairs and Expositions, 1851–1988, ed. John E. Findling, 

pp. 152–153. New York: Greenwood Press, 1990.

Griffith, Gary. “The 2-Cent Trans-Mississippi Is an American Classic.” Stamp Collector, 72, no. 12 (1998):6.

———. “The Source of the Five-Cent Trans-Mississippi Stamp.” The Collectors 

Club Philatelist, 77, no. 1 (1998): 27–41.

Hoch, M. “How the West Was Really Won.” U.S. News and World Report, 108, 

no. 20 (1990): 56–64.

Holliday, J. S. Rush for Riches: Gold Fever and the Making of California. Berkeley, 

Calif.: University of California Press, 1999. 

Musicant, Ivan. Empire by Default: The Spanish-American War and the Dawn of 

the American Century. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1998.

Neil, Randy L., United States of America: The Trans-Mississippi Issue of 1898.

With contributions by Jack Rosenthal. Danbury, Conn.: Andrew Levitt, 

1997.

Rydell, Robert W. “The Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition: ‘To Work 

Out the Problem of Universal Civilization.’” American Quarterly, 33, no. 5 

(1981): 587–607.

Rydell, Robert W., John E. Findling, and Kimberly D. Pelle. Fair America: World’s 

Fairs in the United States. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 

2000.

Traxel, David. 1898: The Birth of the American Century. New York: Alfred A. 

Knopf, 1998.

Trennert, Robert A., Jr. “Selling Indian Education at World’s Fairs and Expositions.” American Indian Quarterly, 11, no. 3 (1987): 203–220.

United States Postal Service. The United States Postal Service: An American History 

1775–2006. Washington, D.C.: Government Relations, United States Postal 

Service.

White, Richard. It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own: A New History of the 

American West. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991.
Stalin on Stamps: Design, Propaganda, Politics

Alexander Kolchinsky

INTRODUCTION

Joseph Stalin, the dictator of the Soviet Union from 1929 to 1953, has been a central figure in the history of twentieth century. Thousands of books and articles explore 

his private and public life. However, very little, if any, substantive research has been 

published on Stalin and Stalinist propaganda on stamps, and what is available suffers 

from limited competence in philately.1

 In this article, I will examine Stalin’s image on 

stamps and its relation to contemporaneous political circumstances. I will discuss the design, political meaning, and importance of these stamps for domestic and international 

propaganda. 

CONSOLIDATION OF STALIN’S POWER: 1929–1934

Our understanding of Stalin has changed dramatically over the last 15 years. This 

change has been brought about by the wealth of new archival material and extensive research. It used to be commonplace to think of Stalin as an unremarkable, twodimensional figure, who reached unprecedented power almost by accident. This concept 

has been replaced by another one, that of a complex, shrewd, industrious politician, a 

man with many talents and criminal mind.

Stalin was born Iosif Dzhugashvili officially on 21 December 1879 in the small 

Georgian town of Gori.2

 By 1899, he became a faithful follower of Lenin and began 

his activity as an underground radical activist, organizing boycotts, arsons, extortions, 

strikes, and robberies, as well as printing and distributing Marxist literature. In 1917, 

Stalin supported the Bolshevik coup and became a member of the first Soviet cabinet. In 

1922, Lenin appointed him Secretary General of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik 

party. Before Lenin died in January 1924, he prepared his political Testament, in which 

he strongly advised the party to remove Stalin from power. Against Lenin’s will, his 

Testament was read to party representatives only after his demise, and its discussion was 

essentially suppressed. As the result, Lenin’s recommendation was ignored, and Stalin 

continued his political ascent.

In 1929, Stalin turned 50. By that date, he had defeated his enemies and rivals within 

the party, and the official newspaper, Pravda, in its feature editorial proclaimed a new 

official slogan: “Stalin is the Lenin of today.” Since Lenin had been deified even before 

his death, this formula did the same for Stalin. 

However, not everybody was happy about Stalin’s leadership, and during the 17th 

Congress of the Bolshevik party in January 1934, Stalin received fewer votes for his candidacy as a member of Central Committee than his closest party comrade and popular 

leader Kirov, who received the most. The results of the elections had to be rigged to give 

Alexander Kolchinsky, Champaign, Illinois, USA. 

Correspondence: alexkolc@gmail.com. Manuscript received 27 March 2012; accepted 7 May 

2012.
4 6 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

Stalin enough votes. According to most historians, this was a 

major step in further consolidation of his dictatorship. 

These were the circumstances when the first Soviet stamp 

depicting Stalin appeared as the high value of the set “Ten years 

without Lenin.” This happened in November 1934, nine months 

after the actual commemorative date. The design of the stamp included a visual representation of the formula “Stalin is the Lenin 

of today” (Figure 1A).

The designers chose the rather rare artistic device of double 

profile.3

 The most difficult problem was the combination of a 

live person—Stalin—with the deceased Lenin, and here it has 

been done quite aptly. Stalin looks fully alive, whereas Lenin is 

depicted as a bust in marble. Apparently, the only earlier design 

representing this formula as a double profile had been published 

in Pravda in 1933, and in that case Lenin looked rather ghostly 

(Figure 1B). Over the next few years, the double-profile Lenin–

Stalin became a staple of Soviet propaganda, and one could 

argue that its execution on the stamp of 1934 became exemplary 

for artists who used other media. 

The incorporation of Stalin in the set dedicated to Lenin 

reflected his monopoly of power. This monopoly was further 

strengthened by the events that happened within a month after 

the appearance of the stamp: the assassination of Kirov and the 

beginning of an all-out campaign of terror. This is a good illustration of how propaganda stamps as historic documents can not 

only reflect past events but also serve as indications of the future.

The international aspect of Soviet propaganda on stamps 

has been underestimated.4

 In particular, neither the whole 1934 

set nor the first Stalin stamp was ever analyzed from this angle. 

Meanwhile, the authors of the stamp obviously targeted international audiences as much as domestic ones. The amount of 

writing was kept to a minimum, whereas the profiles of Lenin 

and Stalin were already well known throughout the world. In 

the background, there were people marching with huge banners. 

This powerful picture was emphasized by a crimson red color 

with light orange background, creating a clear association with 

fire. The artfully fading background added a theatrical quality 

to the design.

The thirty kopeck stamp could be used as postage on international correspondence, as it paid the rates for foreign airmail 

postcards and for letters to central Europe. It served primarily 

philatelic markets since only 50,000 copies were issued, the lowest print run for Soviet commemoratives stamps of that period, 

and copies on covers are rare. 

STALIN VERSUS HITLER

The design elements of the first Stalin stamp of 1934 display 

a striking similarity to the first appearance of Hitler on an official German postal card issued in 1934, where he is shown in a 

double profile with Hindenburg (Figure 2).5

 The image conveyed 

the same ideas of legitimacy and continuance of power, although 

in this case Hitler’s profile was behind Hindenburg’s since the 

latter remained the nominal head of the state. The left part of 

the postcard showed a massive demonstration with torches celebrating the ascent of the Nazis to power. Some visual elements 

of the picture were also similar to the 1934 Stalin stamp: a large, 

menacing crowd carrying banners that symbolized the Communist and Nazi ideologies and a corresponding color scheme of red 

and orange with a connotation of revolutionary fire. However, it 

seems that Soviet designers achieved a more impressive integration of design elements.

The first appearance of Hitler on German stamps, his birthday souvenir sheet of 1937 (Figure 3), was rather bland in its 

design. The impact of this sheet was limited to those who were 

already under the spell of Hitler’s personality: contrary to other 

propaganda stamps of the Third Reich, it did not include any 

Nazi symbols. The motto said “Wer ein Volk retten will kann 

nur heroisch denken” (“He who wants to save his people must 

think heroically”). Although today it sounds rather general, at 

FIGURE 1. (A) First Soviet stamp with Stalin (1934). From the collection of Alexander Kolchinsky. (B) An early double-profile Lenin–

Stalin (from Pravda, 30 July 1933). 
number 56 • 4 7

FIGURE 2. First appearance of Hitler on German postal stationary (1934). From the collection of Alexander Kolchinsky.

FIGURE 3. First appearance of Hitler on stamps (1937). From the collection of Alexander Kolchinsky.
4 8 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

the time of the issue it served a very specific purpose of justification of the annexation of Austria.6

 After 1937, Hitler’s birthday 

was commemorated by issuing semi-postal stamps every year 

until 1944. Besides, he was depicted on several other stamps, 

including the main definitive set of 1941–1944.7

 Ironically, the 

worse Germany’s situation was in the war, the more ornate these 

stamps became, going from plain portraits in 1937 to a full set 

of Nazi symbols surrounding Hitler in 1944. In general, the excessive use of the dictator’s likeness on stamps while the country 

was losing the war seems to be a major failure of the Nazi propaganda machine and a sign of Hitler’s disconnect with reality.

SOVIET UNION, 1934–1941

Stalin’s attitude toward his own cult of personality was 

much more shrewd and farsighted, although hypocritical and 

driven by political considerations. From time to time he protested the overuse of his name, but these protests remained on 

paper only.8

 All kinds of institutions, thousands of streets, towns, 

cities, and even the highest mountain in the USSR were named 

after the Great Leader, and it was hard to find a place without a 

monument to Stalin. 

It is unclear how the decisions to issue particular Soviet 

stamps were made before 1965, when a special decree created a 

public committee in charge of the new issues.9

 In any event, there 

is evidence that all visual representations of Stalin and members 

of politburo in the media were tightly controlled at the highest 

level of power, often using oral directives only.10 Those responsible for the design of Soviet stamps always realized that propaganda on stamps could reach larger international audience than 

probably any other media and were mindful not to overdo it. 

This is one of the reasons why Stalin never appeared on 

Soviet definitive stamps. Another reason was that, paradoxically 

enough, from 1934 and up to the beginning of the war, Stalin 

was not the head of the USSR in any official capacity, but just 

one of the technically equal secretaries of the Central Committee 

(first there were four of them, then three, then five, and so on). 

Thus, there was no formal justification to put him on definitive 

stamps. In addition, the Soviet government from the very beginning wanted to distance itself from the image of monarchic Imperial Russia, and Soviet definitives portrayed generic workers, 

peasants, and soldiers as well as the deceased Lenin. The first live 

person depicted on Soviet commemorative stamps was the writer 

Maxim Gorkii in 1932; then a group of aviators appeared on a 

set of ten stamps in January 1935. Finally, the nominal head of 

the Soviet Union, President Kalinin, appeared on stamps on the 

occasion of his sixtieth birthday in November of the same year. 

This was in line with the practice of other European republics, 

which had been issuing stamps with portraits of their formal 

heads of states since the 1920s.

Of course, in the ideologically charged atmosphere of the 

1930s, some commemorative stamps incorporated Stalin’s 

image, although they were not dedicated to him personally. One 

such instance was the eighty kopeck stamp from the set “Twenty 

Years of the Red Army” of 1938 (Figure 4). The stamp reproduced the painting Stalin Greets the First Cavalry Army by M. 

Avilov (1933) and thus illustrated a major falsification of the history of the Red Army, according to which it was created by Stalin, whereas in fact it was founded by Trotsky. This falsification 

had been initiated in 1929 by Voroshilov’s article in Pravda.

11

The set was issued after the execution of two-thirds of the top 

officers of the Red Army during the Great Terror, so anyone who 

knew the true history was either dead or afraid to say a word.

The third prewar stamp that indirectly featured Stalin was 

included in the set “All-Union Agricultural Exhibition” (1940; 

Figure 5A). The monument to Stalin by S. D. Merkurov, one of 

the largest of its kind at 30 m, stood in front of one of the major 

pavilions. It is interesting to compare the composition of the 

stamp intended for both domestic and international propaganda 

with the composition of a contemporaneous postcard showing 

the same subject (Figure 5B). On the stamp, the monument is 

shifted aside, and the pavilion, symbolizing Soviet economic success, is placed at the center of the composition. On the postcard, 

on the contrary, the monument is at the center and dominates 

the composition—a visual cue to ascribe the economic success 

to the wise leadership of one man.12 Actually, the pavilion occupies about as much space as the tractor in the foreground, which 

further emphasizes the primacy of the monument. Postcards circulated mostly within the country and therefore were directed at 

a domestic audience.

In addition to stamps whose design had easily recognizable 

images of Stalin, his likeness or his name is inconspicuously present on many more issues. These could be defined as “cryptic appearances.” They played only a marginal role in propaganda, 

but rather reflected the realities of everyday life in the Soviet 

Union. One example of such a cryptic appearance was a 1938 

stamp from the set dedicated to the twentieth anniversary of 

Komsomol. Young members of the Komsomol held books with 

the names of Lenin and Stalin on their covers, which one can see 

FIGURE 4. Stamp from the set “Twenty Years of the Red Army” 

(1938). “Stalin Greets the First Cavalry Army.” From the collection 

of Alexander Kolchinsky.
number 56 • 4 9

with proper magnification. But we can safely assume that Soviet 

people did not need a magnifying glass to find out what books 

Soviet youths were supposed to read. Such cryptic appearances 

became especially common after the war.

THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR

A few days after the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in 

June 1941, Stalin became the military dictator not only de facto, as 

he had been before, but also de jure. The country was in a critical 

situation, and beginning from July all planned stamp issues were 

evidently cancelled. Instead, only two more stamps were produced 

in 1941. The first—“Be a Hero!”—appealed to the most basic 

national values, showing a mother sending her son to the battle. 

The second showed a group of volunteers and a long, virtually 

unreadable, slogan: “In response to the appeal of the great leader 

of the peoples comrade Stalin, the sons of Soviet motherland join 

volunteer militia.” During the initial period of the war, when the 

Red Army suffered disastrous defeats, Soviet propaganda avoided 

the association of Stalin’s personal image and official policies with 

the losses. Especially revealing in this respect was the 1942 year 

set. Only twenty stamps were issued, as compared with sixty in a 

typical prewar year. Not one of these stamps displayed any signs 

of official ideology. The stamps showed mostly heroes of the war, 

battle scenes, and workers of the rear. Even the official symbol of 

the USSR, the sickle and hammer, was displayed on one stamp 

only. Moreover, one could rarely find Stalin’s name, portrait, or 

profile on any of the innumerable propaganda postcards and letter sheets issued before January 1943.13

Judging by this rather radical change of official symbolism, 

the leadership of the country realized that the communist ideology and even Stalin’s personal popularity did not provide good 

enough initiatives to fight. The commander in chief appeared on 

Soviet stamps only when the immediate mortal danger for the 

Soviet Union had passed. For the first time during the war Stalin 

was depicted on stamps together with Lenin in the set commemorating twenty-five years of the Bolshevik revolution (Figure 6). 

FIGURE 5. Stalin monument at the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition (A) on a stamp (1940) and (B) on a postcard published in 1940 in Leningrad. From the collection of Alexander Kolchinsky.

FIGURE 6. Stamps from the set “25 Years of October Revolution” 

(January 1943). From the collection of Alexander Kolchinsky.
5 0 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

The set was issued two months after the actual celebration, in 

January of 1943.

One of these stamps showed the workers of the military 

industry; another, which paid the most common letter postage, 

included portraits of Lenin and Stalin, Moscow Kremlin towers 

as the embodiment of the national unity, and rays shining from 

behind the Kremlin, symbolizing the bright communist future. 

By that moment, Soviet victory at Stalingrad determined the 

outcome of the war, and Soviet ideology refocused on building 

Communism: only four stamps in the set of eight were related 

to the ongoing war; others could be categorized as general communist propaganda. 

In 1944, the set “Ten Years without Lenin” from 1934 was 

reissued with new dates and two new values, one of them being 

another Lenin–Stalin stamp (similar to Figure 1A) in different 

colors. Now these two stamps were the lowest and the highest 

values of the issue. The set was probably intended primarily for 

international philatelic market because it could have been nicely 

arranged on an album page and the new high value of three rubles was way too high for any standard rate. 

In January 1945, the Lenin–Stalin profile appeared on the 

stamp depicting a medal awarded to Soviet partisans (Figure 

7A). It was the first of several stamps that showed Stalin indirectly on various medals and awards. The original design of this 

particular medal was commissioned for the award “Twenty-Five 

Years of Soviet Army,” which has never been issued, so the design was reused. This explains why the double profile appeared 

first on a medal of relatively lesser importance.

After the Partisan medal, Stalin’s profile was put on the most 

common medals awarded to all who fought in the war and on a 

similar one for those who worked in the rear, both inscribed with 

the words “Our cause is just, we have won” (Figure 7B). The victory was achieved at the cost of about twenty-seven million lives 

and enormous heroism and suffering of the Soviet people, but it 

was appropriated by a single man. We now know that none of 

a dozen essays of the victory medals submitted by major Soviet 

artists portrayed Stalin.14 These projects showed foot soldiers, 

pilots, tank men, nurses, and other rank and file heroes of the 

war. It was definitely Stalin’s personal decision to put his profile 

on the medals instead.

Stalin as the sole representative figure of Soviet victory was 

probably the most persistent myth created by Soviet propaganda. 

After the war, it was readily accepted by other Stalinist regimes 

and communist parties elsewhere. To some extent, it was propagated through philately. 

In the next few years Stalin appeared on other medals, 

which were also depicted on stamps. Moreover, designers of 

Soviet stamps began portraying Stalin as if cast in bronze even 

when the images were not related to any existing awards. Thus, 

almost identical stamps commemorating anniversaries of the revolution in 1951 and 1952 imitated sculpted bas-reliefs of Stalin 

and Lenin (Figure 7C). These designs conveyed a sense of lasting, 

if not eternal, power. It is noteworthy that Lenin, the founder of 

Soviet state, never appeared on stamps without Stalin in such a 

visual context. Lenin usually looked like a kind and caring person, a civilian intellectual rather than a military commander—

“the most human of men.”15

THE AFTERMATH OF THE WAR AND 

STALIN’S SEVENTIETH ANNIVERSARY

As noted by many historians and contemporaries, after 

the war, ideological pressure in general and Stalin’s cult of personality in particular increased substantially. Nevertheless, it 

seems that Stalin kept tight control over the use of his images. 

One striking example is his absence from stamps dedicated to 

the thirtieth anniversary of the October Revolution. A recently 

FIGURE 7. Medals (A) To the Partisan of the Great Patriotic War (1945) and (B) For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War and For Outstanding Work Effort during the Great Patriotic War (1946); 

(C) thirty-fifth anniversary of the October Revolution (1952). From the collection of Alexander Kolchinsky.
number 56 • 5 1

published catalog reproduces essays of these stamps with Stalin 

portrayed on each of them (Figure 8).16 The set actually issued 

did not have Stalin. The most probable reason for his absence 

was the catastrophic famine in the USSR, which killed up to 1.5 

million people in 1946–1947 and was caused to a large extent 

by government policies, in particular massive expropriation and 

export of grain. Stalin did not want to be associated with this 

tragedy, all the more because some stamps of the set displayed 

the slogan “USSR is the country of advanced agriculture” and 

showed a field with abundant harvest. It has to be stressed that 

the decision to change the design could only have been made by 

Stalin personally; nobody else would have dared to do it. This 

strongly suggests that at least in some cases Stalin was personally 

involved in the decisions concerning stamp design.

Another approach of Soviet stamp designers to create a visual concept of Stalin’s leadership and popularity was a display 

of a large group of demonstrators carrying Stalin’s portraits. Such 

stamps were issued in July 1946 and June 1947 to commemorate 

a parade of physical culture and Labor Day, respectively (Figure 9). On both issues, the artists succeeded in conveying the 

feeling of youth, energy, dynamism and popular admiration. At 

that time, the composition seemed to be unique for Soviet propaganda: no other totalitarian regime of the era came up with a 

similar idea. It only appeared 20 years later, in 1966, on a stamp 

of People’s Republic of China (PRC) glorifying Mao Zedong. 

Ironically, his portrait was also carried by the activists of physical culture.

In December of 1949, Stalin officially turned 70. To celebrate his birthday, Soviet postal authorities issued a well-known 

souvenir sheet of four stamps (Figure 10). This is, strictly speaking, the only Soviet issue dedicated to Stalin personally during 

his lifetime. The first stamp of the sheet showed a hut in Gori, 

Georgia, where Stalin was born to the family of a poor cobbler. The second stamp reproduced a drawing by Evgeny Kibrik, 

FIGURE 8. (A) Unissued essays “30 Years of October Revolution.” From Liapin, Catalog of Postal Stamps of Russia (1856–

1991); and (B) issued stamps (1947). From the collection of 

Alexander Kolchinsky.

FIGURE 9. (A) Parade of physical culture (1946) and (B) Labor Day 

(1947). From the collection of Alexander Kolchinsky.

FIGURE 10. Souvenir sheet “70 Years of Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin” issued in January 1950. Only the central part of the sheet is 

shown. From the collection of Alexander Kolchinsky.
5 2 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

Lenin Arrives in Smolnyi during the Night of 24 October (1947). 

The Bolshevik coup occurred on 25 October 1917, and the headquarters of the uprising were located in the Smolnyi Institute in 

Petrograd. The picture was fictional, both in general composition and in details.17 Most importantly, the actual leader of the 

Bolshevik coup was Trotsky. This falsification was exploited by 

Stalinist propaganda in other countries as well, and its goal was 

to establish the direct continuity of Marxist leadership from 

Lenin to Stalin at the exclusion of everybody else. The third 

stamp was based on a photograph of Stalin visiting a gravely 

ill Lenin, and it was used to prove their closeness. Finally, the 

fourth stamp showed Stalin in his office in full military uniform 

as the victorious generalissimo (portrait by B. Karpov).

The design of the souvenir sheet was supposed to induce a 

warm feeling of personal loyalty to the Great Leader. It presented 

a brief narrative of Stalin’s life, and unlike most Soviet stamps of 

the period, it lacked any symbols of the Soviet state, the hammer 

and sickle, a star, or the Kremlin towers. By that time, Stalin’s 

image itself had acquired a strong symbolic function: the follower of Lenin and the leader of world Marxist movement, the 

victor in World War II, and the national symbol of the USSR.

Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania 

commemorated Stalin’s anniversary on stamps as well. Especially 

interesting was the appearance of Stalin on stamps of the Port 

Arthur and Darien area of China, which was still occupied by 

the Red Army but had an independent postal administration. 

Although the People’s Republic was proclaimed by Mao Zedong on 1 October 1949, Port Arthur and Darien did not issue 

any stamps with Mao. Instead, a stamp with a double profile 

of Lenin and Stalin appeared in November to mark the thirtysecond anniversary of the Russian Revolution, and then a set 

of two stamps in December commemorated Stalin’s birthday in 

December of the same year. It was a strong demonstration of the 

pro-Soviet politics of local leaders.18

Yugoslavia never put Stalin on its stamps. By 1949, its dictator, Tito, had already had a major confrontation with Stalin, and 

its relations with the USSR were extremely hostile. It is not clear 

why Poland failed to commemorate Stalin’s anniversary, although 

he did appear on Polish stamps both before and after 1949. 

FROM 1949 TO STALIN’S DEATH 

AND DENUNCIATION

At approximately the same time, the end of 1949, Soviet 

propaganda began the so-called world peace campaign, which 

was promoted in part through philately. “The struggle for peace” 

was carried out as an initiative coming directly from Stalin, and 

this notion dominated the campaign. It is no wonder that Stalin 

was represented on peace stamps, either as a portrait on a wall 

or as the author of a slogan or a quotation. Thus, on one of these 

stamps there is a quote from an interview with Stalin in Pravda: 

“Peace will be preserved and consolidated if the peoples will take 

the cause of preserving peace into their own hands and defend it 

to the end.”19 This rather tautological quote immediately became 

the staple of the international peace campaign and was endlessly 

cited in propaganda materials. Other communist countries issued their own peace campaign stamps, and some artists proved 

to be more ingenious than their Soviet colleagues. For example, 

a dove of peace was added to the well-known portrait of Stalin 

on a Bulgarian stamp (Figure 11).

From an ideological point of view, an important stamp was 

issued in the USSR in 1950 to commemorate Labor Day. This 

was the first image of the foursome of communist saints, Marx, 

Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, on a Soviet stamp. Although this arrangement was probably first introduced on a Soviet poster in 

1939 and was later used on stamps of Poland in 1948, its appearance on a stamp of the USSR had a special ideological meaning. The composition emphasized the direct continuity of the 

world Marxist leadership from Marx through Engels and Lenin 

to Stalin. Back in 1939, the USSR had only one Marxist satellite, 

Mongolia, and its leading role in the movement was self-evident. 

By 1950, the victorious USSR promoted or established communist regimes in a dozen new countries, including the giant China, 

and one of them, Yugoslavia, had already deviated from Stalin’s 

“general line.” At that point, Soviet control should have been 

enforced by a strong propaganda message personified by Stalin 

as the follower of his communist predecessors.

The commemoration of certain events on stamps or, on the 

contrary, the disregard of certain events of significant ideological importance not only reflects the undercurrents in politics but 

in some cases anticipates coming changes. This is particularly 

true in the case of totalitarian regimes. One of the most remarkable examples of this phenomenon was the fact that the Soviet 

Union did not issue any mourning stamps upon Stalin’s death on 

5 March 1953. When Lenin died in 1924, mourning stamps were 

FIGURE 11. (A) Peace campaign stamp issued by Bulgaria in 1949. 

From the collection of Alexander Kolchinsky. (B) The original painting by Alexander Gerasimov. Portrait of I. V. Stalin. 1939. Oil on 

canvas, 137 × 112 cm.
number 56 • 5 3

designed, printed, and made available throughout the country 

within five days. When Soviet president Kalinin died in 1946, the 

mourning stamp was issued just two days later. Nothing of this 

sort happened after Stalin’s death. The reason for that was that 

Stalin did not appoint his successor, and the struggle for power 

among the members of the politburo had already begun at his 

deathbed. The direction of the country was not clear, and since 

there were virtually no Soviet stamps free of ideology at that 

time, the confusion was reflected in the number of new issues: 

there were 48 new Soviet stamps in 1952, only 28 in 1953, the 

year of Stalin’s death, and 55 in 1954. Meanwhile, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland did issue mourning stamps 

immediately after Stalin’s death, and Hungary even added a souvenir sheet. 

An astute political observer could not miss a set of two 

stamps issued in the USSR in November–December of 1953. 

The set commemorated 50 years since the Second Congress of 

the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party, during which the 

Bolshevik faction emerged as a separate movement. Stalin was 

nowhere to be found on those stamps. His conspicuous absence 

from such an ideologically important issue forestalled the emerging changes in the official attitude toward Stalin’s legacy. 

In March 1954, the Soviet Union issued a stamp to commemorate one year since Stalin’s death (Figure 12A). He was depicted in the military uniform that he wore after 1943, when the 

shoulder straps were introduced in the Red Army uniform, to 

emphasize his role in the victory. The design of a monochrome 

dark brown stamp was rather reserved. The next Soviet set of 

two stamps with Stalin was issued in December of 1954 to commemorate seventy-five years since his birth (Figure 12B). Here he 

was shown in civil clothes at the age of about 40–45. The message 

could be interpreted as follows: the most important period of Stalin’s career was in the 1920s, when he was one of the Bolshevik 

leaders. There is a remarkable difference between the designs of 

these two Soviet issues and the East German stamp commemorating one year since Stalin’s death (Figure 12C). Here three colors 

and a much more aggrandizing style were used, in line with the 

East German Stalinist political course. At about the same time, 

the last Soviet stamp with a strong Stalinist ideological message 

was issued in commemoration of the October Revolution (Figure 

12D). Here Stalin appeared within the group of the four Marxist 

saints for the second time. Arguably, at least some members of the 

Soviet political elite sponsored this issue still considering Stalin as 

the true follower of the Marx–Lenin line.

The last Soviet stamp featuring Stalin was included in another set celebrating the October Revolution in 1955. The stamp 

reproduced a painting by Dmitry Nalbandian, Power—to the 

Soviets, Peace—to the Peoples (1950).20 In this complex composition, Stalin is standing behind Lenin in a group of Bolshevik 

leaders and is not very prominent. Thus, Stalin disappeared from 

Soviet stamps well before February 1956, when Khrushchev 

disclosed the so-called violation of socialist legality by Stalin 

and started the process of partial de-Stalinization of the USSR. 

This provides further support to the argument that ideological messages of postal stamps often precede important political 

developments.

STALINIST COUNTRIES AND 

STALIN’S LEGACY

The leadership of most communist countries was sensitive 

enough to these changes, and Stalin disappeared from the stamps 

of the corresponding countries (with the exception of the People’s Republic of China and Albania) even earlier, in 1953–54. 

One rarely noticed exception was East Germany, where Secretary General of the Social-Democratic Party Walter Ulbricht remained an unrepentant Stalinist until his death in 1973. It was 

FIGURE 12. Soviet and East German stamps with Stalin from 1954. (A) USSR, one year since Stalin’s death; (B) USSR, 

seventy-fifth anniversary of Stalin’s birth; (C) German Democratic Republic, one year since Stalin’s death; (D) USSR, 

thirty-seven years since the October Revolution. From the collection of Alexander Kolchinsky.
5 4 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

no coincidence that in 1953 East Germany was the only country that issued a definitive stamp with Stalin’s name on it (Figure 13A). This stamp showed Stalinallee, an exemplary socialist 

urban development project in Berlin. It paid the basic domestic 

letter rate, was reengraved and reprinted many times, and was 

demonetized only in December of 1962. The picture on the stamp 

shows the side of the street opposite the monument to Stalin: even 

for the East German regime it would be too much to put the head 

of another state on definitive stamps. The design of the Stalinallee 

stamp was used by underground anticommunist groups to create 

propaganda forgeries in which the name of the country was stated 

as “Undeutsche Undemokratische Republik” and the street was 

named after the popular uprising on 17 June 1953 (Figure 13B). 

After the unification of Germany, this name was assigned to another street in central Berlin. Finally, Stalin appeared on one more 

East German stamp commemorating twenty-five years since the 

Potsdam Conference as late as 1970 (Figure 13C), the only such 

occurrence in European communist countries after 1956.

With the relaxation of ideological constraints after Stalin’s 

death, people began using stamps with his image to create postal 

arrangements expressing their political views. For instance, in 

June 1956 a Mr. Anastassov from Bulgaria combined three different stamps, two with Stalin and one with pigs, to pay the correct 

postage to Turkey and to show his attitude toward the late Stalin 

(Figure 14A). Such audacity would have been severely punished 

just a couple of years earlier. However, most postal items of this 

sort were produced by hard-core Stalinists, who found themselves excluded from the ideological mainstream. For instance, 

in 1960 a Stalin sympathizer from Leningradskaya oblast’ sent 

an old postcard with a monument to Stalin and paid registered 

postage with an old Stalin and a newer Lenin stamp, emphasizing the continuity of Soviet leadership (Figure 14B). Because of 

FIGURE 13. Last East German stamps with Stalin. (A) Stalinallee definitive (1953), (B) propaganda forgery based on A, and 

(C) Stalin at the Potsdam Conference, issued in 1970. From the collection of Alexander Kolchinsky.

FIGURE 14. Use of stamps with Stalin’s portraits for political expression. (A) Cover sent from Bulgaria to Turkey and (B) domestic Soviet 

postcard. From the collection of Alexander Kolchinsky.
number 56 • 5 5

the monetary reform in the USSR introduced on 1 January 1961, 

it was the last opportunity to use Stalin stamps for postage. The 

sender had enough courage to create this composition but not to 

sign his name legibly.

Meanwhile, two countries, the People’s Republic of China 

and Albania, remained strongholds of Stalinism long after 1956, 

resulting in an ever deepening disagreement with the USSR. The 

timing and meaning of Stalin’s images on their stamps were always closely associated with political developments.

In the People’s Republic of China, the first stamp with Stalin was issued in 1950, about one year after the proclamation 

of the People’s Republic. Mao travelled to Moscow to attend 

Stalin’s jubilee and negotiate a Sino-Soviet treaty. The resulting 

treaty was commemorated in a set issued almost a year later 

(Figure 15A). Although other communist dictators were shown 

on stamps together with Stalin, here the closeness of Stalin and 

Mao is emphasized by their handshake. The close personal relationship between the leaders was illustrated once again (posthumously for Stalin) on a stamp commemorating five years of 

the treaty and based on the painting The Great Friendship by 

D. Nalbandian (1950; Figure 15B).

Another Chinese set with Stalin was dedicated to the thirtyfifth anniversary of the Russian Revolution (1953; Figure 16A). 

The first stamp reproduced the well-known painting Lenin Declares Soviet Rule by Vladimir Serov (1947), in which a young 

Stalin stands right behind Lenin. This was a complete fiction, 

and after 1956 the artist produced a new painting without Stalin. 

The green stamp shows Stalin and Mao strolling in the Kremlin. 

It seems to be an original design suspiciously similar to a prewar portrait of Stalin strolling with Voroshilov. The third stamp 

reproduces the central part of a mass-produced Soviet poster, 

“Under the leadership of the great Stalin—Forward to communism!” The last stamp depicts Stalin’s granite statue near the entrance to the Volga-Don canal. At 36 m, it was one of the tallest 

in the world. The most interesting feature of this set is that out 

of four stamps, only the first one is related to the revolution and 

shows its leader, Lenin. This reflects a major shift in Soviet ideology that was not explicitly spelled out by Soviet propaganda: 

after World War II, Stalin gradually replaced Lenin as the main 

figure in the hierarchy of the greatest communists. The set was 

issued a full year after the actual anniversary, after Stalin’s death, 

and reiterated the strict adherence to Stalinist ideology.

The primacy of Stalin over Lenin was even more evident in 

another Chinese stamp issued in 1954 (Figure 16B). Here Lenin 

is shown in a submissive position listening to an overbearing 

Stalin. This sculpture was unveiled in 1949 in Moscow to great 

FIGURE 15. Stalin and Mao on stamps of the People’s Republic of 

China (A) in 1950 and (B) in 1955. From the collection of Alexander 

Kolchinsky.

FIGURE 16. Stalin on stamps of the People’s Republic of China 

in (A) 1953 and (B) 1954. From the collection of Alexander 

Kolchinsky.
5 6 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

critical acclaim,21 but the general ideological tendency it manifested was hardly noticed at that time outside the Soviet Union. 

After 1956, Stalin was often placed on stamps of the People’s Republic of China to express dissent or even a direct confrontation with the Soviet Union. Thus, the foursome of Marxist 

saints appeared on Chinese stamps in 1964 on the minor occasion of Labor Day (Figure 17A). The relationships between the 

People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union at that time 

were rapidly deteriorating. The main points of contention were 

Mao’s thesis denying any possibility of peaceful coexistence with 

capitalist countries and the inevitability of a new world war and 

his personal animosity toward Khrushchev. Soviet communists 

openly accused the leadership of the People’s Republic of China 

of deviation from orthodox Marxism–Leninism. As the result, 

almost all relations were broken, and Chinese authorities used 

the first convenient occasion to display their faithfulness to the 

cause of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin.

Albania also used Stalin’s image on stamps to express its 

opposition to Soviet politics. Such was the purpose of the stamp 

commemorating twenty years since the Battle of Stalingrad (Figure 17B). The communist dictator of Albania, Enver Hoxha, 

sided with the People’s Republic of China in its conflict with 

the Soviet Union. By 1963, even diplomatic relations between 

Albania and the USSR were broken, and Hoxha’s regime used 

a relatively obscure date to demonstrate its disagreement with 

Soviet leadership. However, Albania nominally remained a member of the Warsaw Pact. Therefore, even more interesting was 

the issuing of a set of four stamps commemorating an unusual 

date—Stalin’s ninetieth birthday—in 1969. After the occupation 

of Czechoslovakia in 1968 by the armies of the Warsaw Pact, 

Albania withdrew from the pact to avoid occupation for its own 

deviation from the Soviet general line, although its direction was 

an exact opposite to Czechoslovakia’s. The set displayed the determination of Albanian leaders to continue on their own path.

Interestingly, Stalin was never depicted on stamps of North 

Korea. Even its nominal ideological father Karl Marx appeared 

only four times and Lenin only seven times in sixty years, with 

the last Lenin stamp issued forty years ago. These statistics, together with ideological content of other stamps of North Korea, 

strongly support the notion that North Korea is not, and never 

has been, a true communist state, but rather a nationalistic 

dictatorship.22

EUROPEAN VIEW: 2000

As to the Western European countries, only one stamp was 

ever issued with Stalin on it. It was included in a large Belgian set 

commemorating significant events and personalities of the twentieth century. The artist created a visual representation of Stalin’s 

role in the history of the twentieth century as viewed from Brussels, the capital of the European Union (Figure 18). The design 

consists of two layers. In the background, there is a photograph 

of the “big three” during the Yalta Conference of 1945, when 

the leaders of Western Europe essentially surrendered Eastern 

Europe to Soviet domination and political differences between 

the major Allies made the cold war inevitable. The foreground is 

a contour map of Europe with bold red dots showing the border 

that would divide Europe for the following forty-five years and 

representing a visual metaphor for the iron curtain. Although the 

overall design looks somewhat busy, it presents a historic fact 

and its consequences in a compelling way.

CONCLUSION

The use of Stalin’s image and name on stamps provides valuable insights into the history of the world Marxist movement, especially its Stalinist version. These stamps were often targeted at 

FIGURE 18. The “big three” during the Yalta Conference (1945), 

Belgium, 1999. From the collection of Alexander Kolchinsky.

FIGURE 17. Use of Stalin’s image by (A) the People’s Republic of 

China (1964) and (B) Albania (1963) as a symbol of dissent with the 

USSR. From the collection of Alexander Kolchinsky.
number 56 • 5 7

international audiences, reflected major political events, and in 

many cases elucidated hidden political developments. Over time, 

Stalin’s philatelic image went through several stages of development. First an iconic symbol of the Soviet leadership, after World 

War II it became the central symbol of Soviet victory. Later, his 

image was used to promote the worldwide communist movement and to support the communist regimes in Eastern Europe 

and in China. 

Current public polls in Russia indicate that Stalin is again 

considered by many respondents as the most successful national 

leader. This myth encompasses nationalism and nostalgia for social order and lost status of a superpower. Today’s Russian political leadership seems to distance itself from this view. Notably, in 

2010, Stalin did not appear on any Russian stamps commemorating seventy-five years of victory. Let us hope that this omission 

was not accidental. 

Acknowledgment

I express my deep gratitude to Alexander Pantsov (Capital University, Columbus, Ohio) for a critical reading of the 

manuscript.

NOTES

1. Evgeny Dobrenko, “The Cultural Topography of the Stalin Era,” in The 

Landscape of Stalinism: The Art and Ideology of Soviet Space, ed. Evgeny Dobrenko, and Eric Naiman (Seattle, Wash.: University of Washington Press, 2003), 

163–182.

2. In fact, he was born on 6 December 1878, but in the early 1920s, he falsified his date of birth. Simon S. Montefiore, Young Stalin (New York: Alfred A. 

Knopf, 2007), 23 and references therein.

3. The set was designed by Naum Borov, Grigorii Zamskoi (also Zamskii), 

and Iulii Ganf. Zamskoi worked as a designer and artist on posters and Soviet 

exhibits abroad and as interior decorator of the Moscow subway (the latter with 

Borov). After the war, he specialized in anti-Western caricatures in the genre of 

black propaganda. 

4. Dobrenko, “Cultural Topography,” 163–182.

5. Michel catalog of German covers and postcards, no. P250. See also Albert 

L. Moore, Postal Propaganda of the Third Reich (Atglen, Pa: Schiffer Military 

History, 2003), 50–55.

6. Frederick Lauritzen, “Propaganda Art in the Postage Stamps of the Third 

Reich,” Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, 10 (Autumn 1988): 62–79.

7. The abundance of Hitler’s portraits on stamps might have been driven in 

part by his personal greed: he received royalties for every reproduction of his likeness on stamps. Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs (New York: Simon 

& Schuster, 1970), 87.

8. For instance, in 1925 Stalin protested against the renaming of the city of 

Tsaritsyn to Stalingrad: “I found out that Tsaritsyn is going to be renamed Stalingrad . . . I did not and do not insist on renaming Tsaritsyn to Stalingrad . . . I strive 

neither for glory, nor for tribute, and don’t want do create a wrong impression.” 

Stalin to B. P. Sheboldaev, the secretary of Tsaritsyn regional party organization, 

25 January 1925, in Kommersant-Vlast’, no. 4 (858), 1 February 2010, http://

www.kommersant.ru/doc.aspx?DocsID=1311514 (accessed 3 November 2010). 

Despite the protest, the city was renamed. In another case, Stalin wrote in response 

to a plan to publish a collection of stories from his childhood for children: “I am 

decisively opposed to the publication of ‘Stories of Stalin’s Childhood’. The author 

has been misled by . . . sycophants . . . Most important is that the book has a tendency to inculcate in the consciousness of Soviet children (and people in general) 

a cult of personalities, great leaders and infallible heroes. That is dangerous and 

harmful. The theory of the ‘heroes’ and the ‘mob’ is not a Bolshevik theory but an 

SR [social-revolutionaries] one . . . This little book will assist the SRs. Every such 

book will contribute to the SRs and will harm our general Bolshevik cause. I advise you to burn the book. I. Stalin. 16.11.1938.” Quoted in David Branderberger, 

“Stalin as Symbol,” in Stalin: A New History, ed. Sarah Davies and James A. Harris 

(Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2005) 249–270.

9. Decree of the Ministry of Communications of the USSR, No. 733 of 4 October 1965 “On the improvement of production and marketing of postal stamps.”

10. Ian Plamper, Alkhimiia vlasti: Kul’t Stalina v izobrazitel’nom uskustve [The 

alchemy of power: Cult of Stalin in visual arts] (Moscow: NLO, 2010), 204–205.

11. Kliment E. Voroshilov, “Stalin i Krasnaia Armiia” [Stalin and the Red 

Army], Pravda, 23 December 1929. 

12. The monument had to be demolished at the beginning of World War II as 

it was a perfect landmark for German pilots; see Vesti, 16 June, 2009. http://www

.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=293874&m=1 (accessed 7 June 2012).

13. See, for instance, Albert Pflüger, Vorwärtz zum Sieg! Illustrierte sowjetische Feldpost des zweiten Weltkrieges, (Frankfurt, Germany: Philatelistische Arbeitsgemeinschaft Russland/UdSSR, v. 1, 2007; v. 2, 2009; v. 3, 2011).

14. Academy of Russian Symbolism, “Mars.” http://www.simvolika.org/mars

_035.htm (accessed 7 June 2012).

15. “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin,” in Mayakovsky, trans. and ed. by Herbert Marshall, New York: Hill and Wang, 1965, p. 249.

16. Victor A. Liapin, Catalog of Postal Stamps of Russia (1856–1991) (Moscow: V. I. Balabanov, 2008), 284.

17. In particular, Lenin was virtually unrecognizable because he was still a 

fugitive and wore a wig, whereas Stalin donned a leather jacket and a cap; Montefiore, Young Stalin, 341.

18. The head of Darien organization of the Communist party, Gao Gang, 

was loyal to Stalin and critical of Mao, provided his services as an informer on 

Mao, and in 1949 even proposed to join the USSR as the seventeenth republic. Several years later, these political mistakes led to Gao Gang’s arrest and death. Dieter 

Heinzig, The Soviet Union and Communist China, 1945–1950: The Arduous Road 

to the Alliance (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 2004), 215; Alexander Pantsov, Mao 

Zedong (Moscow: Molodaya Gvadiia, 2007), 535. 

19. Stalin’s interview with newspaper Pravda. Pravda, 17 February 1951.

20. Curiously, this picture is an almost exact symmetrical copy of the same 

subject painted in 1947 by Vladimir Serov and reproduced on several Soviet stamps 

(Robert F. Minkus, “Retouching History,” Rossica Journal, 113/114 (1990): 83). 

21. The sculpture V. I. Lenin and I. V. Stalin in Gorki by V. Pinchuk and 

R. Taurit. See David King, The Comissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin’s Russia (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1997), 84, 87.

22. Brian R. Meyers, “North Korea’s Race Problem,” Foreign Policy, no. 178 

(March/April 2010): 1.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Golomshtok, I. Totalitarian Art in the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, Fascist Italy, 

and the People’s Republic of China. London: Collins Harvill, 1990.

Scott, David. European Stamp Design: A Semiotic Approach to Designing Messages. London: Academy Editions, 1995. 

Montefiore, Simon S. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. New York: Alfred A. 

Knopf, 2004. 

———. Young Stalin. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007.

Bearing Philatelic Witness: 

Victims of Stalinism on Stamps

Robin Gates Elliott

Introduction

The topic of this paper is the changes in stamp design that took place in Eastern Europe and the successor states to the Soviet Union following the collapse of Communism 

and the USSR. Specifically, the purpose is to examine one subset of the stamps issued 

over the last two decades: those commemorating victims of Stalinism. The designs are 

divided into two categories: explicit design and implicit design. Explicit design leaves no 

doubt as to who is being commemorated and why. Implicit design makes clear who is 

being commemorated but offers few clues as to why. The events commemorated on these 

stamps as well as the designs themselves bear witness to the changes that have taken place 

in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union during the past twenty years, specifically, 

the break with the Communist past. 

Postage stamps have come a long way since the Penny Black and the Two Penny 

Blue made their debut in Great Britain in 1840. Since then, governments have realized 

that stamps could serve additional purposes, above and beyond their primary function of 

paying to send an item through the mail.1

 One such purpose is propaganda. Stamps can 

be an effective medium for propaganda for several reasons. First, since postal services are 

a government function, governments have complete control over stamp design: a government can, quite literally, send any kind of message it wants on its postage stamps. Second, 

the vast majority of stamps are relatively inexpensive, which makes them easy to obtain. 

Therefore, third, they are ubiquitous. They travel throughout their country of origin and 

to foreign countries as well, as postage or to stamp collectors.2

Although governments have always been aware that postage stamp design could transmit explicit and implicit messages, the first European countries to truly appreciate and 

systematically utilize the propaganda potential of postage stamps were the major dictatorships of the 1930s: Mussolini’s Italy, the Third Reich, and the Soviet Union. Mussolini, 

Hitler, and Stalin all ruled through a combination of persuasion and coercion. One form 

of persuasion was propaganda, and one medium for propaganda was the postage stamp.3

When World War II ended, the Red Army occupied most of Eastern Europe, which 

was recognized as a Soviet “sphere of influence.” Within five years the predictions that 

Churchill made in his Iron Curtain speech had come true: Communist parties took power 

throughout Eastern Europe and speedily dispatched the political opposition. Then, on 

orders of and with assistance from the Kremlin, they began to turn their countries into 

carbon copies of the Soviet Union. They did so through a combination of persuasion and 

coercion. As in the Soviet Union, one form of persuasion was propaganda, and propaganda extended to postage stamp design. 

Robin Gates Elliott, Arlington, Virginia, USA. 

Correspondence: rmgrge@gmail.com. Manuscript 

received 27 March 2012; accepted 7 May 2012.
6 0 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

As a result, the stamps of the People’s Democracies of Eastern Europe have several themes in common. One is the history of 

the country’s Communist Party. The People’s Democracies issued 

stamps to commemorate the founding of the Communist Party, 

the founder of the Communist Party, other milestones in the party’s history, such as the first issue of the party newspaper and the 

organization of the party’s youth group, and the heroes and martyrs of the Communist resistance movements during World War 

II. A second theme is the goals and achievements of the five-year 

economic plans, frequently represented by stamp designs depicting 

heavy industry. In addition, stamps appeared that paid homage to 

Lenin, Stalin, local Communist Party leaders, and Soviet cosmonauts, plus the occasional commemorative of the Paris Commune.

But what came next philatelically, after the Soviet Union itself and Communist hegemony in Eastern Europe landed in the 

proverbial “dustbin of history”? What did the countries of Eastern Europe and the successor states to the Soviet Union choose 

to put on their stamps—once they had the choice? Obviously, 

an analysis of more than two decades’ worth of stamp design 

in approximately thirty countries (including the successor states 

to Yugoslavia) would be a vast undertaking. The subject of this 

paper, therefore, is one subset of stamp designs: stamps that 

commemorate the victims of Stalinism. Tragically, that, too, is a 

broad theme, so the stamps presented constitute a representative 

sample rather than a comprehensive survey.

The stamps are divided into two groups according to their 

design: explicit and implicit. Explicit design leaves no doubt 

about what it commemorates and why. The examples of explicit 

design are stamps that commemorate the victims of the Ukrainian famine of 1932–33; the Polish prisoners of war (POWs) 

executed in the USSR in the spring of 1940, known as Katyn 

(the location of the first mass grave discovered); the Lithuanians 

deported from the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic in June 

of 1941; and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.4

 Implicit design 

is not so obvious. The stamps are standard commemoratives: a 

picture of the deceased plus his name and dates. It is clear whom 

the stamp commemorates, but the design contains few, if any, 

clues as to why. The examples of implicit design commemorate 

three church leaders on the centenary of their birth: Cardinal 

Joseph Slipyj (Ukraine), Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty (Hungary), 

and Cardinal Stefan Wyszyn ́ski (Poland).5

EXPLICIT DESIGN: UKRAINIAN FAMINE

During the First Five-Year Plan in the USSR (1929–34), Stalin completed his control over the Soviet economy, including the 

agricultural sector. Every region of the country was obligated 

to sell a specified amount of its annual grain crop to the government at the government’s price. What was unique about the 

Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1932 was that its grain 

quota was deliberately set so high that fulfilling it would lead to 

starvation in the countryside. Ukrainian Party officials explained 

this to the Kremlin and argued for a reduction, but to no avail. 

The grain quota was enforced rigorously, and famine ensued.

When the grain was gone, peasants slaughtered whatever 

farm animals had not already starved. Then they ate cats and 

dogs, then rats, mice, birds, earthworms, and insects. To make 

matters worse, the government failed to provide any kind of 

famine relief. Peasants were even forbidden to go to cities and 

towns in search of food; instead, local officials were specifically 

instructed to prevent them from leaving their villages. A conservative estimate of the resulting death toll is five million.6

 Currently, estimates range from seven to as high as ten million.7

The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic became an independent country upon the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. 

Two years later, on the sixtieth anniversary of the famine (1993), 

Ukraine issued a stamp in memory of the victims (Figure 1A). The 

stamp design pictures a memorial to the famine victims in Kiev, 

the Symbol of Sorrow, and the release of the stamp coincided with 

the unveiling of the memorial. The memorial is in the shape of a 

Cossack cross, with the figures of a Madonna and child superimposed on it.8

 The inscription on the stamp reads “Sixtieth Anniversary of Mass Murder by Starvation [Holodomor] in Ukraine.”

Holodomor is a Ukrainian compound word: holod means 

hunger or famine and mor is the first part of the word for mass 

murder (translated here as mass murder by starvation). Ukrainians regard the famine of 1932–33 as deliberate and avoidable 

and therefore as mass murder by starvation: holodomor is the 

term they use to refer to it. The term shows up more clearly on a 

commemorative issued ten years later (2003) to coincide with observances of the seventieth anniversary of the famine (Figure 1B).9

Once again, the stamp design shows a Cossack cross. In the 

middle of the cross is the figure of a famine victim. Lest there be 

FIGURE 1. (A) Ukrainian famine sixtieth anniversary and (B) Ukrainian famine seventieth anniversary. From the collection of Robin 

Gates Elliott.
number 56 • 6 1

any doubt that the victim is Ukrainian, little colored dots at the 

victim’s throat suggest traditional Ukrainian folk embroidery on 

a peasant blouse. The word holodomor appears in bold black 

lettering, and the dates of the famine years are in bright red. To 

the left of the cross are a few stalks of grain, symbolizing what 

the famine was all about.10

KATYN

World War II began on 1 September 1939, when the Wehrmacht invaded Poland. On 17 September the Red Army, in accordance with the terms of the Hitler–Stalin Pact concluded the 

previous month, invaded Poland from the east. Even though a 

formal declaration of war was lacking, about 40,000 Poles were 

taken captive by the Red Army; 15,000 of them, the majority 

of whom were members of the officer corps of the Polish Army, 

were deported to POW camps in the USSR: Kozelsk, Ostashkóv, and Starobelsk. In accordance with Red Cross protocols, 

a limited amount of correspondence was allowed between the 

POWs and their families. In March of 1940 the correspondence 

stopped: letters no longer arrived from the POWs, and mail sent 

to them was returned, marked “addressee unknown.” Inquiries 

were made, but to no avail.

In June of 1941, regardless of the Hitler–Stalin Pact, Hitler 

invaded the USSR. Two years later German soldiers discovered 

a mass grave containing several thousand corpses in the Katyn 

forest, located near the city of Smolensk in western Russia. The 

victims were Polish Army officers (subsequently determined to be 

the POWs from the Kozelsk prison camp), identifiable by their 

uniforms and artifacts in the grave. Each had been executed with 

a bullet to the back of the head. Radio Berlin announced the 

discovery and blamed the deaths on Stalin. The USSR denied the 

accusation and blamed the deaths on the Germans. It is said that 

losers do not write history, so the Soviet version prevailed—in 

spite of forensic evidence from the bodies and the grave site indicative of Soviet responsibility—and became the party line: for 

decades Katyn was a Nazi war crime.11

The change came in 1990. Poland was in the process of transitioning from a Communist government to a non-Communist 

one, and Gorbachev had come to power in the USSR and instituted the policy of glasnost. That spring he admitted that Stalin 

and the NKVD (Soviet secret police), not the Germans, were responsible for the deaths of the missing Polish POWs (referred to 

simply as Katyn).12 A few months later, Poland issued a stamp 

commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Katyn. The design was 

a simple cross with “Katyn 1940” inscribed on it (Figure 2A).

The news triggered an emotional explosion in Poland: the 

official lies about what the Poles had always suspected were over. 

The surviving relatives of the murdered POWs formed an organization, the Society of Katyn Families. Their advisor was a 

prelate, Monsignor Zdzisław Peszkowski, who, while serving in 

the Polish Army in the fall of 1939, had been captured by the 

Red Army and imprisoned at the Kozelsk POW camp along with 

the families’ loved ones. For whatever reason, his life had been 

spared; when the prisoners were transported to their death, he 

was simply moved to another POW camp. The Society of Katyn 

Families had several purposes: to publicize the truth about Katyn 

at home and abroad, after so many years of official lies and complicit silence; to create a proper military cemetery at the Katyn 

grave site (nothing could bring their loved ones back, but at least 

they could receive a proper burial); and to erect a memorial in 

Warsaw honoring those who had died “in the East.” 13

In December of 1993 Polish President Lech Walesa designated 1995, the fifty-fifth anniversary of Katyn, as the International Year of Katyn; in his proclamation he reiterated the goals 

of the Society of Katyn Families.14 In 1995 Poland issued a second commemorative (Figure 2B). The inscription reads “International Year of Katyn.” The design is an artifact from the Katyn 

grave site, a button from a Polish army officer’s uniform, identifiable by the eagle, the emblem of the Polish state, lying on the 

ground in the dirt.

Poland subsequently issued a pair of commemoratives memorializing the victims of Katyn in 1999. The designs of both 

stamps are reproductions of icons. The first, a Madonna and 

child, is inscribed “Our Lady of Victories: Kozelsk”; Kozelsk was 

the POW camp where those buried at Katyn were held before 

their execution (Figure 3A). The second is inscribed “Our Lady 

of Katyn” (Figure 3B).15 The design, intentionally or by chance, 

is evocative of a passage from the Prayer of the Katyn Families: 

“Our Lady of Katyn, Mother of Mercy and Reconciliation, Into 

Thy hands we commend all those murdered in the East. With 

steadfast belief in the communion of saints we pray . . . that 

Thou willst embrace them and entrust them to Thy Son.”16

In 2000 Poland issued an additional pair of commemoratives.17 The inscription on both stamps reads “the 60th Anniversary of the Crime of Katyn.” By then the goals of the Society of 

Katyn Families had been realized. Volumes of documents from 

both Polish and Soviet archives regarding Katyn had been published, including a communication from the Kremlin to the NKVD 

specifically ordering the execution of the Polish POWs.18 A proper 

military cemetery at the mass grave in the Katyn forest was officially opened on 28 July 2000, with the participation of the Premier 

of Poland, Jerzy Buzek, and the Deputy Premier of the Russian 

Federation, Viktor B. Khristenko.19 The first commemorative 

FIGURE 2. (A) Katyn fiftieth anniversary and (B) International Year 

of Katyn. From the collection of Robin Gates Elliott.
6 2 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

portrays Monsignor Peszkowski standing in front of a gigantic 

wooden cross at the Katyn grave site (Figure 4A).20 The second depicts Pope John Paul II during a visit to Poland kneeling in prayer 

at the memorial in Warsaw that commemorates “those who died 

and were murdered in the East” (Figure 4B). People’s Poland had 

erected numerous memorials to victims of Nazi atrocities, but few, 

if any, to commemorate the victims of Stalinism.

DEPORTATIONS FROM LITHUANIA

In June of 1940, in accordance with the Hitler–Stalin Pact, 

the Red Army invaded and occupied the three Baltic republics 

of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which were subsequently annexed to the Soviet Union as constituent republics. A year later 

the NKVD deported numerous Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians. The procedure was similar in all three republics: a knock 

at the door in the middle of the night, a limited amount of time 

to pack a few essentials, and a long journey to an unknown destination in a packed cattle car. Families were separated: men were 

deported north and east to Soviet labor camps, and women and 

children were deported east to northern Kazakhstan. The numbers of the deported could have been far higher than they actually were because Hitler invaded the Soviet Union one week after 

the deportations began.21

Fifty years later the Baltic republics declared their independence, and Lithuania issued a set of three triangular stamps 

commemorating the events of June 1941. All three are inscribed 

with the dates 1941–1991. The first stamp commemorates the 

deportations (Figure 5A). The design is a candle surrounded by 

either a circle of barbed wire, symbolizing imprisonment, or a 

crown of thorns, symbolizing suffering.22 The stamp includes the 

date the deportations began, 14 June. The second stamp commemorates the Nazi invasion (Figure 5B). Lithuanians welcomed 

the Germans as liberators, hoping that their independence would 

be restored. An independent Lithuania, however, was not part of 

Hitler’s plan for his Thousand-Year Reich.23 The stamp design is 

the Sacred Heart pierced by seven swords and includes the date 

of the invasion, 22 June.24

FIGURE 3. (A) Our Lady of Victories: Kozelsk and (B) Our Lady of 

Katyn. From the collection of Robin Gates Elliott.

FIGURE 4. (A) Monsignor Peszkowski at the Katyn grave site. 

(B) Pope Paul II at the memorial in Warsaw. From the collection of 

Robin Gates Elliott.

FIGURE 5. (A) Deportations of Lithuanians, (B) Nazi invasion of 

the Soviet Union, and (C) the Lithuanian resistance movement. From 

the collection of Robin Gates Elliott.
number 56 • 6 3

The third stamp honors the Lithuanian resistance movement, the Forest Brotherhood, which began when the Red Army 

invaded and lasted well into the mid-1950s (Figure 5C). It survived as long as it did because of the severity of Soviet repression following the reconquest of Lithuania in 1944. Lithuanians 

joined the resistance movement because they felt that they had 

nothing to lose, even though the average life expectancy of a 

member was only two years.25 The stamp design is a sword surrounded by a wreath of green foliage. The inscription reads simply “For Lithuania.”26

Subsequently, Lithuania issued three additional stamps commemorating the deportations. The designs on all three are Lithuanian folk art. The first, released on 14 June 1995, pictures a Pieta 

with a sword piercing the chest of the Virgin Mary. The inscription reads “Day of Mourning and Hope,” probably referring to 

nationwide observances of the anniversary of the deportations.27

A series of two commemoratives appeared a year later, the fiftyfifth anniversary of the deportations. The inscriptions are identical, 

“June 14, Day of Mourning and Hope” (again, probably a reference to nationwide observances), and the designs are reproductions of wooden folk art carvings. The design on the first stamp is 

a “Man of Sorrows” (head of Christ), symbolizing mourning; the 

design on the second is an angel, symbolizing hope.28

THE HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION

The decade following World War II was a difficult one for 

Hungary. Hungary had been an ally of the Third Reich, and 

Hungarian soldiers had participated in the invasion of the Soviet Union. As a result, Stalin regarded Hungary as an enemy 

combatant, and the Red Army acted accordingly, pillaging and 

raping its way across Hungary en route to Berlin.

Following the war, the Soviet Union expropriated massive 

amounts of Hungarian property as war reparations. Expropriation extended to entire factories, which were taken apart and 

shipped, complete with their contents, east. Joint HungarianSoviet companies were established to exploit Hungary’s natural 

resources for the benefit of the Soviet Union. By 1950 Stalin’s 

handpicked government of Hungarian Communists had taken 

power and eliminated the political opposition. To consolidate its 

power and terrorize the population into submission, it carried 

out numerous purge trials. Thousands were arrested by the Hungarian Secret Police (AVO) and tried on trumped-up charges, 

found guilty, and imprisoned or executed. By October of 1956, 

when the Hungarian Revolution erupted, three generalizations 

could be made about Hungarians: they resented the Russians, 

they resented Hungary’s Communist government, and they resented the Hungarian Secret Police.29

Three decades later, Hungary regained its de facto independence with a non-Communist government in 1989. In 1991 it 

commemorated the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution with an overprint of a previously existing postage stamp. 

The overprinted stamp was released on 22 October, the day before 

the anniversary of the beginning of the revolution; 23 October had 

become a national holiday in 1989. The overprint is two concentric circles that resemble a postmark, and the inscription reads 

simply “In Memory of the Revolution, 1956–1991.”30

To commemorate the fortieth anniversary in 1996, Hungary 

issued a series of five stamps, four regular stamps plus a souvenir sheet, that tell the story of the revolution. The designs of all 

five stamps utilize reproductions of photographs and newspapers 

from the period, so the color scheme is overwhelmingly black, 

white, and tan.31 The only additional colors are the Hungarian 

flag, a red, white, and green tricolor that appears somewhere on 

each of the stamps. In addition, the first four of the five stamps 

include the dates 1956–1996.

The revolution began on 23 October 1956 with massive student demonstrations in Budapest, pictured on the first stamp in 

the series.32 The second stamp shows demonstrators carrying a 

Hungarian flag with a hole in the middle. The postwar Hungarian flag had a Soviet-style coat of arms in the center: a hammer 

and cycle surrounded by stalks of wheat, topped with a star.33

As one of the initial acts of protest, demonstrators cut out the 

postwar coat of arms, symbolic of so much that was resented, 

from the Hungarian flag. The Hungarian flag with a hole in the 

middle became a symbol of the revolution.34

One of the demonstrations took place at a massive statue 

of Stalin, a “gift” from the Soviet Union, which the demonstrators attacked and tried to pull down. When the vandalism was 

reported to the Budapest police, the police chief replied that he 

and his men were not paid enough to protect a statue of Stalin. 

Initially, it appeared that Hungarians were not going to open fire 

on Hungarians, except for the secret police, attempting to disperse a demonstration at the local radio station, which did. Several demonstrators were killed, and several more were injured.35

If the demonstrators were going to be attacked, they were 

determined to fight back, and they rapidly obtained weapons 

from all over Budapest: police stations, military installations, 

and the local secret arms factory (disguised as the United Lamp 

Factory on Csepel Island in the Danube). When tanks from Soviet military garrisons (Soviet troops were stationed in several 

of the Eastern European countries, including Hungary, following World War II) arrived the next day to “restore order,” they 

encountered an unexpectedly effective guerilla-style resistance 

mounted by the demonstrators. The third stamp in the series 

shows two armed demonstrators.36 The fourth pictures Imre 

Nagy, who became prime minister during the revolution, addressing the nation over the radio.37

The final item in the series, a souvenir sheet containing one 

stamp, includes elements from the previous four stamps and 

summarizes the story of the revolution (Figure 6). The design 

includes a crowd of demonstrators (top), an armed demonstrator (lower right foreground), the Hungarian flag with a hole in 

the middle (red, white, and green, diagonal across the souvenir 

sheet), newspapers published during the revolution (lower left 

foreground), and the revolutionary government (eleven men in 

the lower half, with Imre Nagy in the center). In addition, the 
6 4 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

design includes the traditional Hungarian coat of arms, located 

in the lower right corner.

The revolution did not last. After several days of vacillation in the Kremlin, Khrushchev ordered a massive invasion 

of Hungary. Soviet troops stationed in Hungary (who refused 

to engage in further military action without the necessary reinforcements) were augmented with troops from the USSR 

plus Soviet troops stationed in neighboring Eastern European 

countries. At least one member of the government managed 

to escape and fled to Austria; the rest were arrested. Several, 

including Imre Nagy, were sentenced to death; the others received prison sentences.38 The Latin inscription at the top left of 

the souvenir sheet, “Gloria Victis” (white lettering against the 

black background), alludes to the fate of the revolution: “Glory 

to the Vanquished.”

IMPLICIT DESIGN: PATRIARCH CARDINAL 

JOSYF SLIPYJ, 1892–1984

In September of 1939, the Red Army invaded and occupied 

the eastern half of Poland, an ethnically diverse area. The southern section, heavily Ukrainian, was annexed to the Ukrainian 

Soviet Socialist Republic. The Ukrainians in the annexed territory were overwhelmingly Uniate (also known as Eastern Rite 

Catholicism), a combination of Roman Catholicism and Eastern 

Orthodoxy dating from the Union of Brest in 1596 (an attempt 

to reunite the two branches of Christianity). Uniates followed 

Eastern Orthodox doctrines and practices but recognized the authority of the Roman Catholic Pope.

Stalin feared that the Uniates could be an obstacle to the 

smooth integration of the annexed territory, so in 1945 he ordered the arrest of the Uniate hierarchy and priests, the Union 

of Brest was declared invalid, and the Uniates were placed under 

the authority of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (which Stalin 

had well under control). The Uniate hierarchy, including the patriarch, Josyf Slipyj, was deported to the gulag. Eighteen years 

later, the patriarch was the only member of the hierarchy still 

alive. He was released in 1963, at least in part due to the intercession of Pope John XXIII and President Kennedy, and was 

deported to Rome.39

Independent Ukraine issued a single stamp commemorating 

the centennial of his birth in 1993 (Figure 7). The stamp design 

includes his portrait, his name and titles, and his dates. The only 

reference to his persecution is a small circle in the upper left corner. It symbolizes the Crown of Thorns, a reference to his suffering and, by extension, that of the imprisoned hierarchy and 

priests, as well as the persecution of the Uniates under Stalin.40

CARDINAL JOZSEF MINDSZENTY, 

1892–1975

Cardinal Mindszenty became primate of the Catholic 

Church in Hungary in October of 1945; in December of 1948 

he was arrested in the purges that took place in the late 1940s. 

Tortured, and possibly drugged, he confessed to the trumped-up 

charges leveled against him and was sentenced to life in prison. 

At the time of the Hungarian Revolution he was living under 

house arrest near Budapest. During the revolution he was officially rehabilitated by Prime Minister Nagy, and he returned to 

his residence in Budapest. When the Red Army invaded, he fled 

and sought asylum in the American embassy, where he remained 

FIGURE 6. The Hungarian Revolution. From the collection of 

Robin Gates Elliott.

FIGURE 7. Cardinal Josyf Slipyj. From the collection of Robin 

Gates Elliott.
number 56 • 6 5

for the next 15 years. In 1971 he was granted safe passage to 

Western Europe and settled in Austria, where he died in 1975.41

Hungary honored the centenary of his birth with a single 

commemorative stamp, issued in 1992 (Figure 8). A reproduction 

of a portrait of Mindszenty, painted by Bela Schmidt in 1977, is 

in the foreground, with a drawing of the interior of the cathedral at Esztergom in the background. The significance of the cathedral is twofold. First, Esztergom is preeminent in Hungarian 

Catholicism. As primate of Hungary, Cardinal Mindszenty was 

also Archbishop of Esztergom. Second, Cardinal Mindszenty is 

buried there. In 1991 his remains were returned to Hungary and 

interred in the crypt of archbishops in the cathedral.42

CARDINAL STEFAN WYSZYn ́SKI, 

1901–1981

Cardinal Wyszyn ́ski was appointed primate of the Catholic 

Church in Poland in 1948. Arrested in 1953, he spent time under 

house arrest in various Polish religious establishments. Upon his 

release in 1956, he was allowed to return to his position as primate and spent the rest of his life making as much space for the 

Church in Polish society as possible under difficult conditions 

and defending the Church against party and state.

Poland issued a single commemorative marking the centenary of Wyszyn ́ski’s birth in 2001. The stamp design consists of 

a photograph of the cardinal and a reproduction of his signature against a Polish landscape. It includes an inscription, which 

reads “Primate of the Millennium, 1901–1981.” The millennium 

referred to is not the millennium of 2000 but the millennium of 

Polish Christianity, 1966. Party and state did their best to drain 

the millennium of its religious significance by co-opting it, claiming that it represented the millennium of the Polish state. Poland 

did not even issue a stamp commemorating the millennium of 

Christianity (that was left to the Vatican and the United States), 

but it did issue a series of four red and gold stamps to commemorate the millennium of the Polish state.43 To the extent that the 

millennium of Polish Christianity was remembered and observed 

in Poland, it was due to the efforts of Cardinal Wyszyn ́ski.

CONCLUSIONS

What can we conclude from these stamps that honor the 

victims of Stalinism? What, if any, is their message? They signify 

the break with the Communist past. Between 1989 and 1991 

Communist rule ended in the Iron Curtain countries of Eastern 

Europe, and the Soviet Union itself collapsed and disintegrated 

into its component parts. Otherwise, the stamps would not—

could not—have been issued. The momentous political changes 

that took place during those three years—from Constituent Republic to independent country and from dictatorial Communist 

Party rule to a multiparty system based on democratic principles—triggered countless subsequent changes, and the stamp designs reflect some of those additional changes as well.44

One break with the Communist past was the rewriting of 

history after decades of manipulation to fit the party line: the 

Ukrainian famine was not simply the unfortunate result of collectivization plus bad weather, Katyn was not a Nazi war crime, 

the Lithuanians deported were not “enemies of the people,” the 

Hungarian Revolution was not a fascist counterrevolution, and 

Cardinal Mindszenty was not an agent of either the United States 

or the Vatican. Not only had the party line manipulated history, 

it had dictated that the national tragedies mentioned above, since 

they officially did not exist, could neither be publicly recognized 

nor properly mourned. 

A second break with the Communist past occurred as the 

calendar began to change in accordance with the history books. 

Long-delayed national observances began to take place, complete with commemorative stamps. Thus, the stamps were not 

issued in a vacuum; they appeared in the context of national and 

local events that preceded, coincided with, and followed them. 

Such events include the public observances of tragic anniversaries, memorials to famine victims in Kiev and to the Poles 

who had died “in the East” in Warsaw, military cemeteries at 

the grave sites of the Polish POWs executed in the USSR and 

the publication of official documents about their fate, an NKVD 

museum in Lithuania and a holodomor museum in Ukraine, and 

the reburial with honor of Imre Nagy’s remains. The first set 

of Lithuanian stamps commemorating the deportations, for example, was issued on 14 June for the fiftieth anniversary, even 

before Lithuania was legally an independent country (Lithuania had unilaterally declared its independence before the Soviet 

Union collapsed).

A third break with the Communist past is a cultural one, 

the increased presence of religion in society. Religion had been at 

best tolerated, at worst suppressed, in the Soviet Union and the 

People’s Democracies. The resurgence of religion is reflected in 

stamp design. Some stamps directly honor church leaders who 

had suffered for their faith. Others contain religious imagery: depictions of Christ, the Madonna, angels, crosses, and crowns of 

FIGURE 8. Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty. From the collection of 

Robin Gates Elliott.
6 6 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

thorns. Several of the stamp designs are reproductions of actual 

works of art, some of which were created specifically in memory 

of victims of Stalinism. 

For decades party and state had sought to indoctrinate citizens with the party line, employing a combination of persuasion and coercion. One form of persuasion was propaganda, and 

propaganda extended even to stamp design. In contrast, what 

these stamps signify is, for however brief a moment, government 

united in solidarity with the nation and expressing it through 

bearing philatelic witness to the victims of Stalinism.

Notes

1. See Jack Child, Miniature Messages: The Semiotics and Politics of Latin 

American Postage Stamps (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2008); Donald 

M. Reid, “The Symbolism of Postage Stamps: A Source for the Historian,” Journal 

of Contemporary History, 19, no. 2 (April 1984): 223–249; David Scott, European 

Stamp Design: A Semiotic Approach to Designing Messages (London: Academy 

Editions, 1995). 

2. Montgomery Mulford, “Postage Stamps as Propaganda,” Mechanix Illustrated, October 1938:86, 135; Daniel A. Piazza, “Perforated Propaganda,” (lecture, Smithsonian National Postal Museum, 18 September 2009); Carlos Stoetzer, 

Postage Stamps as Propaganda (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1953).

3. See, for example, Alf Harper, Philately of the Third Reich: Postage and 

Propaganda (Raleigh, N.C.: Album, 1998); Jeremy Busch, “Early Soviet Iconography,” Rossica: The Journal of the Rossica Society of Russian Philately, no. 152 

(Spring 2009): 20–25; Albert L. Moore, Postal Propaganda of the Third Reich

(Atglen, Pa.: Schiffer Military History, 2003); William Moskoff and Carol Gayle, 

“Soviet Propaganda during World War II: The Use of Postal Material to Rally the 

Nation,” Rossica: The Journal of the Rossica Society of Russian Philately, no. 152 

(Spring 2009): 28–33; Mulford, “Postage Stamps as Propaganda,” 135; Piazza, 

“Perforated Propaganda”; Stoetzer, Postage Stamps as Propaganda.

4. The Scott Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue, issued annually, is the standard reference book for postage stamps in the United States. American practice is 

to identify individual postage stamps by their Scott numbers. The Scott numbers 

for the first group of stamps are Ukraine, Scott 188, 526; Poland, Scott 2975, 3323, 

3444–3445, 3557–3558; Lithuania, Scott 393–395, 517, 547–548; and Hungary, 

Scott 3320, 3549–3553.

5. Ukraine, Scott 166; Hungary, Scott 3342; and Poland, Scott 3598.

6. The authoritative study of the Ukrainian famine in English is Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine (New 

York: Oxford University Press, 1986).

7. “The Great Hunger in Ukraine, 1932–33,” Trident-Visnyk, 32, no. 115 

(January–February 2003): 3.

8. George D. Fedyk and Ingert J. Kuzych, Handbook of Modern Ukrainian Philately: A Catalog of Stamps, Stationery, and Cancellations, 1991–2000 

(Springfield, Va.: Ukrainian Philatelic Resources, 2002), 25; “New Issues,” TridentVisnyk, 12, no. 58–59 (September–December 1993): 105.

9. “The Great Hunger in Ukraine, 1932–33,” Trident-Visnyk, 32, no. 115 

(January–February 2003): 3; “A Philatelic Trip to Kiev,” Trident-Visnyk, 32, no. 

121 (December 2003): 136.

10. “Holodomor Stamp,” Trident-Visnyk, 32, no. 120 (October–November 

2003): 130; “A Philatelic Trip to Kiev,” 136.

11. The authoritative works on Katyn in English are Anna M. Cienciala, 

Natalia S. Lebedeva, and Wojciech Materski, eds., Katyn: A Crime without Punishment (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007); J. K. Zawodny, Death in 

the Forest: The Story of the Katyn Forest Massacre (New York: Hippocrene Books, 

1962).

12. Cienciala et al., Katyn, xv.

13. Ks. Zdzisław Peszkowski, Pamie ̧c ́ Golgoty Wschodu [Remembering the 

Golgotha of the East] (Warsaw: Wyd. “Soli Deo,” 1995).

14. Peszkowski, Pamie ̧c ́ Golgoty Wschodu, 7–8.

15. Bogdan Michalak, “Polish Report,” The Coros Chronicle, 305 (June 

1999): 89; “Gabriel’s Trumpet,” The Coros Chronicle, no. 309 (February 2000): 15.

16. Peszkowski, Pamie ̧c ́ Golgoty Wschodu, back cover.

17. “John Paul II: All 2000, part II,” The Coros Chronicle, no. 317 (June 

2001): 84.

18. Cienciala et al., Katyn: A Crime without Punishment, is an anthology of 

some of those documents. Included also are documents given to Polish President 

Lech Walesa by Russian President Boris Yeltsin in 1992 that identify the grave sites 

of the POWs from the other two prison camps, Ostashkóv and Starobelsk.

19. Cienciala et al., Katyn, 258.

20. Tragically, the 95 passengers on the Polish plane that crashed on its approach to Smolensk in April 2010 were en route to Katyn, to the site pictured on 

the stamp, to observe the seventieth anniversary. There were no survivors. Among 

the victims were numerous members of the Polish government, including Polish 

President Lech Kaczynski and his wife and five members of the Society of Katyn 

Families. In 2010 Poland issued a souvenir sheet commemorating the seventieth 

anniversary of Katyn (Scott 3978). The design on the stamp is a combination of the 

designs on the first two commemoratives (1990 and 1995): several buttons from the 

grave site arranged in the form of a cross. “Scott New Issues Update,” Scott Stamp 

Monthly, 28, no. 11 (November 2010), 66. 

21. Romuald J. Misiunas and Rein Taagepera, The Baltic States: Years of 

Dependence, 1940–1990 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1993), 

15–30, 39–43. As a note of Shakespearian comic relief in an otherwise tragic situation, subsequently a list of categories of people to be deported surfaced in Lithuania. It included “all those with personal foreign ties” and specifically mentions 

philatelists (Misiunas and Taagepera, The Baltic States. 41).

22. Descriptions in the literature vary. See Filatelistu ̧ Draugijos Lietuva Biuletenis [“Lithuania” Philatelic Society Bulletin], 1:212 (1992), back cover; Andrew 

Kapochunas, “Postage Stamps of the Independent Republic of Lithuania, Part II,” 

Bulletin of the Lithuanian Philatelic Society of New York, no. 160 (June 1991): 

9089; Scott 2010 Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue, 4:590; Ricardas Vainora, 

“Lithuanian Correspondent,” The Coros Chronicle, no. 264 (August 1992): 113.

23. Misiunas and Taagepera, The Baltic States, 46, 48.

24. Kapochunas, “Postage Stamps,” 9089; Vainora, “Lithuanian Correspondent,” 113. According to Vainora, the design is a biblical reference, the Gospel according to Luke, chapter 2, verse 35: “Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own 

soul also.”

25. Misiunas and Taagepera, The Baltic States, 43–44, 46, 66, 73, 83–84, 

88–91, 93.

26. See references in footnote 22.

27. Andrew Kapochunas, “New Postage Stamps of Lithuania—Part XII,” 

Bulletin of the Lithuanian Philatelic Society of New York, no. 174 (December 

1995): 9365; John D. Schmidt, “The Blessed Virgin and Philatelic Sacred Art, 

part III,” The Coros Chronicle, no. 309 (February 2000): 11.

28. “Anniversary of Grief and of Hope,” The Coros Chronicle, no. 288 (August 1996): 80; Andrew Kapochunas, “New Postage Stamps of Lithuania—Part 

XV,” Joint Bulletin of the Lithuanian Philatelic Society of New York and the Toronto Lithuanian Philatelic Society, no. 176 (June 1996): 9408; Anatol Lieven, The 

Baltic Revolution: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Path to Independence (New 

Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993), 27.

29. Csaba L. Kohalmi, “The 1956 Hungarian Freedom Fight in Philately,” 

The News of Hungarian Philately, 27, no. 4 (October–December 1996): 3; Victor 

Sebestyen, Twelve Days: The Story of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution (New York: 

Pantheon Books, 2006), 7–103. 

30. “1991 New Issues,” The News of Hungarian Philately, 23, no. 1 

(January–March 1992): 21.

31. “1996 New Issues,” The News of Hungarian Philately, 28, no. 1 

(January–March 1997): 29–30.

32. Sebestyen, Twelve Days, 102.

33. The postwar flag is pictured on a series of Hungarian stamps, Scott 

856–858.

34. Kohalmi, “The 1956 Hungarian Freedom,” 9–10; Sebestyen, Twelve 

Days, 111, 304. For the fiftieth anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution in 2006, 

Hungary issued one commemorative. It pictures a Hungarian flag with a hole in the 

center (Hungary, Scott 4005).

35. Sebestyen, Twelve Days, 118, 122.

36. Sebestyen, Twelve Days, 123, 126–127; Kohalmi, “The 1956 Hungarian 

Freedom,” 7.

37. Sebestyen, Twelve Days, 125.

38. Sebestyen, Twelve Days, 216–217, 268, 292.

39. Conquest, Harvest of Sorrow, 210, 212–213; “Dr. Smyk in Ukraine,” 

The Coros Chronicle, no. 277 (October 1994): 111; Fedyk and Kuzych, Handbook of Modern Ukrainian Philately, 24; Hansjakob Stehle, Eastern Politics of the 

Vatican, 1917–1979 (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1981), 231, 246–247, 

306, 308–309, 366–367; “What’s New,” The Coros Chronicle, no. 272 (December 

1993): 147–148.

40. “New Issues,” Trident-Visnyk, 12, no. 55 (March–April 1993): 28.
number 56 • 6 7

41. Kohalmi, “The 1956 Hungarian Freedom,” 22; Sebestyen, Twelve Days, 

34–36, 204, 266; Augustine H. Serafini, “The Prisoners,” The Coros Chronicle, no. 

262 (April 1992): 40; Stehle, Eastern Politics, 269–270.

42. The Coros Chronicle, no. 262 (April 1992), front cover; “Hungarian Postal 

Stationery Features Religion,” The Coros Chronicle, no. 262 (April 1992): 59–60; 

Kohalmi, “The 1956 Hungarian Freedom,” 22–23; Serafini, The Prisoners,” 40.

43. Poland, Scott 1423–1426; United States, Scott 1313; Vatican, Scott 433–

438.

44. Postage stamp design serves some of the same purposes in marking the 

break with Communism as the reburial of corpses. See Katherine Verdery, The 

Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 1–53.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cienciala, Anna M., Natalia S. Lebedeva, and Wojciech Materski, eds. Katyn: A 

Crime without Punishment. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007.

Conquest, Robert. The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the TerrorFamine. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Misiunas, Romuald J., and Rein Taagepera. The Baltic States: Years of Dependence, 1940–1990. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1993.

Peszkowski, Ks. Zdzisław. Pamie ̧c ́ Golgoty Wschodu [Remembering the Golgotha 

of the East]. Warsaw: Wyd. “Soli Deo,” 1995.

Scott 2010 Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue. Volumes 1–6. Sidney, Ohio: Scott 

Publishing, 2009.

Sebestyen, Victor. Twelve Days: The Story of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. New 

York: Pantheon Books, 2006.

Stehle, Hansjakob. Eastern Politics of the Vatican, 1917–1979. Translated by Sandra Smith. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1981.

Zawodny, J. K. Death in the Forest: The Story of the Katyn Forest Massacre. New 

York: Hippocrene Books, 1962.

Postage Stamp Images as Cultural Markers

Jack Trammell

S

ociologists often make use of so-called cultural artifacts to better understand a given 

culture and its comparative context. Moreover, they often focus on the ordinary objects of everyday life, rather than the exotic or the extreme, so as to gain insight into 

the experiences of the average person at a given point in time and then to eventually paint 

a more vivid picture of the larger patterns of ordinary existence within the overall culture. Postage stamps and the visual representations they spawn qualify as unique cultural 

artifacts that give myriad insights into our contemporary culture and the broader Western experience. In fact, stamps and images of stamps are arguably more useful than many 

other cultural artifacts in clarifying who we are and what we value as a collective group.

Perhaps ironically, it is the seemingly most ordinary of artifacts that often reveal 

the most about a culture and a people, and so it is with postage stamps and the myriad 

imagery they spawn in popular culture. In the literal sense, they are no more than small 

pieces of ordinary paper that are often cancelled and thrown away without a care (not 

by philatelists, of course). From a sociological perspective, however, stamps and stamp 

imagery are extraordinary social objects that reveal much about industrialism, modernism, consumerism, group behavior, Western history (and sometimes hegemony), and the 

near universal human striving to remain in touch with people physically removed from 

our immediate presence (Figure 1).

The story of the postage stamp is the modern story of humans—a story involving industrialization, mass communication, and globalization. Stamps, and perhaps even more 

so stamp imagery, serve quite readily as revealing Western cultural markers, telling us 

much about the people we have become and the cultures that we live in. They are arguably much more useful than many other cultural artifacts that might alternatively be examined, in part because they are so ubiquitous and recognized around the world, but also 

because they are much less presupposing than other universal objects like automobiles or 

televisions. They hint at Western obsessions with identifying, categorizing, and labeling 

that define much of our recent history and the phenomenon of modernism.1

They also reveal a modern interpretation of egalitarianism most typified in the American experience, as most earlier postal systems dating back to ancient times were limited 

to the rich, the privileged, or the enthroned; they were not accessible to the masses; they 

were dependent on labor-intensive and very expensive processes; they did not have access 

to mechanization or mass transportation; and they were primarily aimed at supporting 

the state, rather than giving individuals access to personal communication across great 

distances. Postage stamps and the modern postal system remain more accessible than 

any previous iteration. They represent the modernist desire to bring order, progress, and 

convenience to the entire world. Coupled with accessibility, they literally represent the 

opposite of primitivism.

In more practical terms, stamps are miniature displays of what we prioritize, what 

we debate over, and what we value, even revealing much about what is arguably human 

Jack Trammell, Sociology Department, RandolphMacon College, P.O. Box 5005, Ashland, Virginia 

23005, USA. Correspondence: jtrammel@rmc

.edu. Manuscript received 27 March 2012; accepted 7 May 2012.
7 0 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

nature. Philatelists are usually aware of this on some level, although personal pleasure and individual interests often obscure 

the real significance. In point of fact, stamps have become so 

much a part of our culture (and Western culture in general) that 

they now hold status similar to other ubiquitous phenomena, 

like Coca Cola, McDonald’s, or the American flag (objects representing American culture that are instantly recognized from villages in Africa to the streets of Tokyo, Japan). Yet few stop to 

think what they really symbolize.2

Stamp imagery has crept into diverse venues: a trip to the 

home improvement store reveals that stamp wallpaper is available. Many stationery items at the office supply store have stylized or modified artwork representing stamps and stamp cancels, 

essentially signaling to the user and viewer their purpose for 

communication and ordinariness. In their nineteenth century 

prime, stamps were part of a modern wonder: a hand written 

letter delivered thousands of miles to another recipient, costing 

only pennies, and arriving within a matter of days. (It still might 

be argued that this is a wonder in 2010.) In the twenty-first century, stamps and stamp imagery are ubiquitous and synonymous 

with modern life.

Stamps and stamp imagery continue to represent ordinariness and an absolute acceptance of convenience in our lives. Even 

Styrofoam cups at convenience stores can be found with generic 

stamps and cancellations on them, signaling that getting a cup 

of coffee as you move about your business is as commonplace 

as a stamp carrying a message in a letter (or now, one supposes, 

as sending an email). We are shocked and dismayed on the rare 

occasion when a letter is actually “lost” in the mail (Figure 2).

Because the industrial age was fostered in part by business 

tycoons, stamps often portray the tools of the new industrial 

epoch: trains, automobiles, planes, industrial machines, factories, superhighways, warships, and iconic (often giant) architecture. The famous inverted Jenny airmail stamp appears on 

everything decorative from lamp shades to drink coasters and 

even computer wallpaper. They can even be found on men’s silk 

ties. It is ironic, indeed, that America’s most famous stamp is in 

fact an error, a plane accidentally printed upside down, perhaps 

mocking on some level the so-called perfection of mass production and progress, the individual crying out to be recognized as 

unique in a mass of manufactured sameness (Figure 3).3

Stamps are also stars in media venues. A recent Indiana 

Jones video game featured postcards with stamps and cancellations representing every exotic setting Indy traveled to in the 

game. In fact, many Lucas films, including Indiana Jones, make 

blatant use of stamp props. If you account for more subtle uses 

(which the philatelist in the audience usually catches), hundreds of movies portray the “ordinary” use of stamps as part 

of daily life. PBS, another American media mainstay, recently 

aired a documentary on stamps entitled American Stamps that 

explained some of the ubiquity of stamps. In that documentary, 

it is made clear that stamps are American superstars: “Postage 

stamps carry the messages most important to us: our declarations of love, our job applications, and congratulations to our 

friends and family. In depicting and honoring their subjects, 

stamps play a significant role in memorializing national icons 

and showcasing important features of our culture and history.”4

Stamp collecting has, rightly or wrongly, come to be seen as 

a nerdy pastime or the playground for those with leisure time, 

often bespectacled millionaires, stereotypes that stamp collectors 

occasionally play into inadvertently with their own enthusiasm 

for the hobby. It probably reinforces the notion to see that doctors, pharmacists, chemists, physicists, writers, artists, historians, and lawyers and other potential “nerds” all have topical 

collecting groups they endorse or support and in many cases 

even have publications about themselves on stamps. The message 

is clear—if they are on stamps, then the overall message must be 

widely accepted as important.5

The magnifying glass, a timeless symbol of the hobby, is 

itself a marker that implies patience, studiousness, and attention to detail. The hallmark tool of fictional detective Sherlock 

Holmes, a character plucked right out of the positivist revolution, this symbol of the hobby is also a broader symbol of enlightenment. Under the glass, mysteries are revealed and another 

layer of meaning uncovered. Of course, the magnifier is also necessary to see the tiny errors and imperfections that make some 

philatelic rarities unique or compelling, those outliers that defy 

Warhol-like repetition.

The modern era may be broadly defined as occurring from 

1750 to 1950, but in terms of speed and impact, the greatest 

changes to human existence arguably occurred between 1850 

and 1950. This so-called modern era, concurrent with the golden 

FIGURE 1. Stamp imagery is utilized in advertising to show connectivity and accessibility or the “ordinariness” of a product or service 

that represents an absolute acceptance of convenience in our lives. 

Photo by the author.
number 56 • 7 1

FIGURE 2. Can you spot the stamp? The message is dependability, uniformity, and delivery. Photo by the author.
7 2 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

age of the postage stamp, brought with it a strong compulsion 

to organize, to order, and to conquer, in which stamps played a 

prominent role. The royal visage of King George, to cite an obvious example, has accompanied letters out of the most remote 

areas of Africa, the cold war competition has flown on stamps 

with Soviet rockets and satellites on them, and the slogans of 

revolutionaries have been engraved in marble on stamps quoting 

everyone from Ben Franklin to Karl Marx. Stamps are openly 

representative of that order, efficiency, and global economy that 

we now take almost for granted.

Of course, stamps do not just remember the revolutionary; 

they can be revolutionary too. The newly struggling Soviet authorities attempted to bring order out of the Communist Revolution by using postage stamps and the attendant imagery on 

them. Stamps of Cuba in the last fifty years portray a stubborn 

and persistent ideology of revolution. Stamps are, in fact, propaganda items. The Nazis made very deliberate use of stamps and 

national socialist imagery during the Second World War era.6

Stamps have been world travelers almost from the beginning. 

Particularly in an era before global satellite television, phones, 

and Internet, they were a primary means of spreading cultural 

information to new places. According to communications professor Xin-An Lu, “stamps travel and thus may have a dynamic geographic salience.”7

 In laymen’s terms, this means that the images 

and references on stamps change (and educate) the viewer who 

sees them. Thus, stamps carry their respective cultures literally 

everywhere around the world. They are like small advertisements 

or posters that, instead of being stapled to the telephone pole on 

the street corner, pass from one region or country to another in 

waves, disseminating subtle and not so subtle information about 

the sender and the country of origin (Figure 4).

Stamps are also diplomats. Very often, pen pals begin their 

correspondence by carefully choosing the stamps they send each 

other on their letters. Sometimes, pen pals begin stamp collecting as a result of such exchanges. Many countries issue stamps 

with English and native language phrases side by side, thus 

spreading greater knowledge of language as well. Perhaps less 

so now with the Internet, in previous eras stamps were often 

a young person’s first initiation to another culture (before they 

even opened the letter).

Stamps and stamp collecting are used in literature and in 

Hollywood as a mechanism to portray a character as fastidious, cerebral, or organized and methodical. Laurence Block, a 

popular author and stamp collector who now appears in Linn’s 

Stamp News regularly, has used this technique to develop some 

of his characters. In the music world, John Lennon made reference to stamp collecting while taking a break from recording a 

version of “A Hard Day’s Night” (and no one called him nerdy). 

According to National Postal Museum assistant curator Daniel 

FIGURE 3. The Eiffel Tower, a symbol of man’s ability to express 

artistic ideals on an industrial scale, is also accompanied by a stamp. 

Photo by the author.

FIGURE 4. French stamps and stamp imagery are often found on 

mail-order catalogs, emphasizing the beauty and convenience of 

mail-order products and demonstrating connectedness with a global 

culture. Photo by the author.
number 56 • 7 3

Piazza, President Franklin D. Roosevelt intentionally used postal 

designs and stamps as a means of subtly addressing Americans 

and his political opponents about his agenda (and this would be 

perfectly in keeping with other efforts Roosevelt made to steer 

public opinion in certain directions).8

Taken as a whole, stamps must be seen as unique artifacts 

of our modern era (though they have predecessors such as tax 

stamps, postal markings, etc.). “Neither snow, nor rain, nor 

heat, nor gloom of night, stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds,” Herodotus originally said. 

When computerized postage or e-mail or other changes threaten 

to change the way mail is delivered, collectors should not be too 

nervous about the fate of philately. Stamps are literally stamped 

into our popular culture and will not be going away any time 

soon. In fact, many e-mail software programs show an animated 

icon of an envelope with a stamp on it when you send an e-mail.

Postage stamps are subtle reminders that we are all (in the 

West at least) products of a modernist paradigm that takes for 

granted convenience, speed of communication, and an egalitarian right to freedom of speech and communicative connection. 

These assumed rights are relatively new concepts in the grand 

scheme of history, unique to the modern era, and, like postage 

stamps, subject to the possibilities of an uncertain future. As 

such, postage stamps are not only collectible but also memorable and significant cultural artifacts that provide a constant 

reminder of the privileges we enjoy.

NOTES

1. R. Kearney, Strangers, Gods and Monsters: Interpreting Otherness (London: Routledge, 2003).

2. Kristi S. Evans, “The Argument of Images: Historical Representation in 

Solidarity Underground Postage, 1981–1987,” American Ethnologist, 19, no. 4 

(1992): 749–767; Peter Jones, “Posting the Future: British Stamp Design and the 

‘White Heat’ of a Technological Revolution,” Journal of Design History, 17, no. 2 

(2004): 163–176; M. P. Moffatt and S. G. Rich, “Postage Stamps, Past and Present, as Avenues of Learning,” Journal of Educational Sociology, 24, no. 2 (1950): 

110–119.

3. John Walton, “Theory and Research on Industrialization,” Annual Review 

of Sociology, 13 (1987): 89–108.

4. Nori-zso Tolson and Terry Green, American Stamps, video documentary 

(San Franciso: twenty2products, 2008).

5. M. T. Koenig, “Nursing in Stamps,” The American Journal of Nursing, 41, 

no. 3 (1941): 254–260; R. A. Jones, “Heroes of the Nation? The Celebration of Scientists on the Postage Stamps of Great Britain, France and West Germany,” Journal 

of Contemporary History, 36, no. 3 (2001): 403–422; “Black Academics Honored 

with Postage Stamps,” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, 18 (1997): 78.

6. P. Raento and S. D. Brunn, “Visualizing Finland: Postage Stamps as Political Messengers,” Geografiska Annaler, 87, no. 2 (2005): 145–163; Jack Child, 

“The Politics and Semiotics of the Smallest Icons of Popular Culture: Latin American Postage Stamps,” Latin American Research Review, 40, no. 1 (2005): 108–137; 

Frederick Lauritzen, “Propaganda Art in the Postage Stamps of the Third Reich,” 

The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, 10 (1988): 62–79.

7. Xin-An Lu, “Dazhai: Imagistic Rhetoric as a Cultural Instrument,” American Communication Journal, 5, no. 1 (2001): 1–26. http://ac-journal.org/journal/

vol5/iss1/articles/lu.pdf (accessed 4 June 2012). 

8. Cheryl Ganz, Daniel Piazza, and M. T. Sheahan, eds., Delivering Hope: 

FDR and Stamps of the Great Depression (Washington, D.C.: National Postal 

Museum, 2009). Published in conjunction with the exhibition “Delivering Hope: 

FDR and Stamps of the Great Depression” shown at the National Postal Museum, 

Washington, D.C.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

“Black Academics Honored with Postage Stamps.” The Journal of Blacks in Higher 

Education, 18 (1997):78.

Blodi, F. “Blindness and the Eye in Mythology and Religion as Represented On 

postage Stamps.” Documenta Ophthalmologica, 68, no. 3–4 (1988):401–

421. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00156446.

Child, Jack (2005). “The Politics and Semiotics of the Smallest Icons of Popular 

Culture: Latin American Postage Stamps.” Latin American Research Review, 

40, no. 1 (1988):108–137. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/lar.2005.0003. 

———. Miniature Messages: The Semiotics and Politics of Latin American Postage 

Stamps. Raleigh, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2008.

Davidson, C., and L. Diamant. “Stamping Our History: The Story of the United 

States Portrayed on Its Postage Stamps.” American Heritage, 41, no. 8 

(1990):109–110.

DeYoung, G. “Postage Stamps and the Popular Iconography of Science.” Journal of 

American Culture, 9, no. 3 (1986):1–13. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1542-734X

.1986.0903_1.x. 

Dorfman, J. “The Envelope, Please: How Art Makes It onto Postage Stamps.” Artnews, 98, no. 8 (1999):142–143.

Evans, Kristi S. “The Argument of Images: Historical Representation in Solidarity Underground Postage 1981–1987.” American Ethnologist, 19, no. 4 

(1992):749–767. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/ae.1992.19.4.02a00070. 

Foss, C. “Postal Propaganda: Promoting the Present with the Past (Archaeological 

Themes on Postage Stamps).” Archaeology, 52, no. 2 (1999):70–71.

Ganz, Cheryl, Daniel Piazza, and M. T. Sheahan, eds. Delivering Hope: FDR and 

Stamps of the Great Depression. (Washington, D.C.: National Postal Museum, 2009). Published in conjunction with the exhibition “Delivering Hope: 

FDR and Stamps of the Great Depression” shown at the National Postal 

Museum, Washington, D.C. 

Jeffery, K. “Crown, Communication and the Colonial Post: Stamps, the Monarchy 

and the British Empire.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 

34, no. 1 (2006):45–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03086530500411290. 

Jones, Peter. “Posting the Future: British Stamp Design and the ‘White Heat’ of a 

Technological Revolution.” Journal of Design History, 17, no. 2 (2004):163–

176. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jdh/17.2.163. 

Jones, R. A. “Heroes of the Nation? The Celebration of Scientists on the Postage 

Stamps of Great Britain, France and West Germany.” Journal of Contemporary History, 36, no. 3 (2001):403–422. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022009

40103600301. 

———. “Science in National Cultures: The Message of Postage Stamps.” Public 

Understanding of Science, 13, no. 1 (2004):75–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/ 

0963662504042692. 

Kearney, R. Strangers, Gods and Monsters: Interpreting Otherness. London: Routledge, 2003.

Koenig, M. T. “Nursing in Stamps.” The American Journal of Nursing, 41, no. 3 

(1941):254–260. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3414780. 

Kyle, R. A., and M. A. Shampo, eds. Medicine and Stamps. Chicago: The American 

Medical Association, 1970.

Lark, E. L. “Hawaiian Hero (Who Gets to Be on U.S. Postage Stamps).” Smithsonian, Letters, 34, no. 1 (2003):13.

Lauritzen, Frederick. “Propaganda Art in the Postage Stamps of the Third Reich.” 

The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts, 10 (1988):62–79. http://dx

.doi.org/10.2307/1504019. 

LeMonnier, B. (1990). “Postage Stamps, an English Invention.” Histoire, no. 136: 

78–80.

Lu, Xin-An. “Dazhai: Imagistic Rhetoric as a Cultural Instrument.” American 

Communication Journal, 5, no. 1 (2001): 1–26. http://ac-journal.org/journal/

vol5/iss1/articles/lu.pdf (accessed 4 June 2012).

Moffatt, M. P., and S. G. Rich. “Postage Stamps, Past and Present, as Avenues 

of Learning.” Journal of Educational Sociology, 24, no. 2 (1950):110–119. 

http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2263799. 

Nuessel, F. “Territorial and Boundary Disputes Depicted on Postage Stamps.” Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, 11 (1992):123–141. 

Raento, P., and S. D. Brunn. “Visualizing Finland: Postage Stamps as Political 

Messengers.” Geografiska Annaler, 87, no. 2 (2005):145–163. http://dx.doi

.org/10.1111/j.0435-3684.2005.00188.x. 

Reid, D. “The Symbolism of Postage Stamps: A Source for the Historian.” Journal of 

Contemporary History, 19, no. 2 (1984):223–249. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/

002200948401900204. 

Roach, M. “Going Postal: If I Can’t Be on a Stamp, Can I at Least Put in My 37 

Cents’ Worth?” Smithsonian, The Last Page, 33, no. 11 (2003): 104. 
7 4 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

Sommer, Mark. “Advertisers See Stamps as Things of Beauty.” Linn’s Stamp News, 

30 November 1992:32.

Swan, G., T. Meade, J. Klein, and D. Serlin. “Licking Disability: Reflections on the 

Politics of Postage Stamps.” Radical History Review, no. 94 (2006):228–232. 

http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/01636545-2006-94-228. 

Trammell, J. “Postage Stamps Will Endure as Artifacts of Western Culture.” Linn’s 

Stamp News, 12 July 2010:48.

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of Sociology, 13 (1987):89–108. http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev

.so.13.080187.000513. 

Walz, J. “Archaeopolitics and Postage Stamps in Africa.” African Arts, 38, no. 2 

(2005):8, 88, 96.
Introduction to the 2011 Symposium

The Smithsonian National Postal Museum, American Philatelic Research Library 

(APRL), and the American Philatelic Society jointly sponsor the symposia, which 

have been held annually since 2006. The format of the 2011 symposium was similar to past symposia held at the American Philatelic Center in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, 

with the paper presentations distributed across two days, allowing ample time between 

sessions for viewing the 150 frames of invited stamp and postal history exhibits, purchasing stamps, covers, and ephemera from the philatelic dealers, researching in the APRL, 

and conversing with fellow attendees. Five select papers from the 2011 symposium on 

“How Commerce and Industry Shaped the Mails” follow.

David Hochfelder’s keynote address, “Do We Still Need a Postal System? Thoughts 

on a Twenty-First-Century Federal Communications Policy” (see pp. 1–7), was presented 

at the symposium banquet on Saturday evening where the United States Stamp Society 

(USSS), a symposium cosponsor for 2011, celebrated their eighty-fifth anniversary. The 

USSS is a nonprofit, volunteer-run association of collectors that promotes the study of 

the philatelic output of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and postage- and revenuestamped paper produced by others for use in the United States and U.S. administered 

areas. Once concerned exclusively with the production of the Bureau of Engraving and 

Printing, the USSS has expanded its field of study to include all United States issues, both 

classic and modern, regardless of printer. 

Rural Americans, Postcards, and the Fiscal 

Transformation of the Post Office 

Department, 1909–1911

Daniel Gifford

The post office deficit is “a scandal and a public disgrace,” ensuring “postal 

reform [is] bound to come” with a glaring need “to abolish inefficiency and 

introduce still further modern business methods.”1

Although the above collection of quotes describes a situation that we might find 

very familiar today, it is actually a narrative that played out across countless 

newspapers and magazines in 1909 and 1910. When the Post Office Department 

closed the books on the fiscal year ending 30 June 1909, a deficit of more than $17 million was reported. At the time, it was the largest deficit ever recorded by the department, 

and investigations, recriminations, and proposed solutions began almost immediately. 

Two years later, when the fiscal year ended on 30 June 1911, the Post Office announced 

that the deficit had been entirely wiped clean, and it could now report a surplus of just 

over $200,000.2

Although the numbers were documented in official annual reports, each of these announcements was met with some skepticism and revisionism from various interests, both 

at the time and since. Some claimed there was no deficit, much less a record-breaking 

one, in 1909; others claimed there was no surplus and that the math was just a game 

of smoke and mirrors. As is so often the case, the truth probably lies somewhere in the 

middle. However, in this particular instance it can be argued that the actual numbers are 

less relevant than recognizing an important overarching fact: in the course of twenty-four 

months some sort of significant transformation occurred.

That significant transformation of the Post Office Department, whatever the actual 

numbers, is made all the more interesting when placed in a historical context. It occurred 

with notable synchronicity to the peak of the postcard-sending craze of the early twentieth century, a popular phenomenon deeply connected to the business of the post office. 

This historical coincidence is notable in part because it was almost entirely overlooked or 

ignored by the department and its attending commentators at the time. But the evidence 

reveals even more than a simple oversight. By teasing out the connections between three 

distinct elements—the Post Office Department’s fortunes, the postcard craze of the early 

twentieth century, and the Rural Free Delivery (RFD) system—it is possible to revise our 

understanding of this particular episode in postal history. Such a revision illustrates both 

a historically significant confluence of people and events and the importance of looking 

at history from the bottom up.

Daniel Gifford, Office of Advancement, Smithsonian Institution, P.O. Box 37012, MRC 527, 

Washington, DC, 20013-7012. Correspondence: 

giffordd@si.edu. Manuscript received 27 March 

2012; accepted 7 May 2012.
7 8 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

From the very beginning in 1909 when the $17 million 

shortfall was announced, Postmaster General Frank Hitchcock 

kept the blame on two specific causes: “Recent investigations 

have shown that the two great sources of loss to the postal revenues are second-class mail matter and rural delivery. The loss 

on second-class mail matter has been increasing for many years 

until it now amounts to more than $64,000,000. The loss from 

rural delivery, a service begun hardly a dozen years ago, and of 

unprecedented growth, reaches nearly $28,000,000.”3

 Critics on 

both sides quickly began sparring over the question of secondclass mail and America’s prodigious consumption of magazines 

and periodicals, but few demonstrated an inclination to attack 

the Rural Free Delivery. As the Independent suggested in language that was exemplary of the discussion: “The deficit is credited to the rural free delivery and the carrying of second class 

mail matter at ruinous rates, but there is no sign of a reduction in 

the rural free delivery service, which is so greatly appreciated.”4

The conventional wisdom surrounding the Rural Free Delivery (Figure 1) was that it helped boost revenue through patterns that flowed from city to countryside. Testifying before a 

1908 House subcommittee, Postmaster General George Meyer 

pointed out, “it seems that the rural delivery, while not strictly 

self-sustaining, does add largely to the receipts. In other words, 

the correspondence comes from the centers to the people in the 

rural deliveries, and that is credited to the large post-offices.”5

The topic came up again in a post office–specific appropriation 

hearing. First Assistant Postmaster General Granfield told his 

subcommittee that rural routes had much more incoming mail 

than outgoing, suggesting that a postmaster with rural-delivery 

routes “will handle four or five times as much mail” than his 

peers without such routes.6

This was, perhaps, a fairly common-sense assumption, that 

mail would flow out from concentrations of people to more 

sparsely populated areas. In fact, specific analysis in the 1909 

FIGURE 1. Amateur photograph postcard of Atwater, a coal mining town in Portage County, Ohio. This scene emphasized its postal connections: situated right by the railroad line of the Pennsylvania Company, it had three Rural Free Delivery routes and one Star Route. The people at 

the post office door were posed handing off a registered package envelope. Several copies of this postcard image have survived, indicating that 

some local entrepreneur reproduced it, perhaps for sale at Henry L. Matti’s store. From the collection of Richard D. Sheaff.
number 56 • 7 9

annual report seemed to demonstrate exactly that. Looking at 

the increase of mail, both collected and delivered along Rural 

Free Delivery routes between 1905 and 1909, the report showed 

an increase in every category of mail delivered along those routes. 

And that increase in the mail delivered always exceeded the increase of the amount of mail collected along those same rural 

delivery routes in every category of mail except for one. The exception to the rule was postcards. Between 1905 and 1909 there 

was a 410% increase of postcards delivered to rural routes. But 

there was an 846% increase in the number of cards collected 

along those same routes, more than double the increase of those 

delivered. It is worth reemphasizing that of the six categories of 

mail, it was the only one that showed a larger jump in collected 

than delivered.7

Postcards were a huge national phenomenon in the early 

twentieth century. Post Office figures for the year ending 30 June 

1908 cite more than 667 million postcards mailed in this country 

(Figure 2).8

 On the basis of 1910 census numbers, that would 

be seven postcards a year for every man, woman, and child in 

the nation, and that does not even count postcards collected in 

albums and boxes and never mailed. Further, postcards extended 

far beyond pictures of courthouses, public squares, and hotels.

These so-called view cards were joined by countless greeting 

cards for every possible occasion, including all major holidays 

(Figure 3). Bjarne Rogan of the University of Oslo, in looking at 

all types of postcards on a global scale (indeed, the fad stretched 

beyond the United States to Canada, Great Britain, the European 

continent, and parts of Asia and South America), suggests that 

“roughly estimated, between 200 and 300 billion postcards were 

produced and sold” during the golden age of the phenomenon.9

However, new research into postcard distribution patterns 

here in the United States suggests that postcard use skewed in 

favor of rural and small-town Americans. A survey of 2,000 

postcards in “To You and Your Kin: Holiday Images from 

FIGURE 2. Published photograph postcard of Healdsburg, California. Large printing companies such as M. Rieder of Los Angeles canvassed 

small towns to find both a potential market for selling postcards and a local publisher, such as Mervyn D. Silberstein in Healdsburg, willing to 

front the costs. Silberstein, who until 1909 owned a photographic supply store in Healdsburg, was also the photographer of this and a wide 

range of other postcards. From the collection of Diane DeBlois and Robert Dalton Harris.
8 0 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

America’s Postcard Phenomenon, 1907–1910” helps to illustrate 

these trends.10 In this survey, the addresses on the backs of early 

twentieth century postcards were compared to census records. A 

tabulation of the demographic information from these records 

(seen in Figure 4) suggests that 69% of recipients were from communities of less than 10,000 individuals (the first three columns 

of Figure 4 show rural populations, i.e., less than 2,500, 2,500–

4,999, and 5,000–9,999). Had that figure been proportional to 

national demographics it would have been closer to 64%. Looking at communities of less than 10,000 is significant because this 

formed the Post Office Department’s population-based threshold 

for free city delivery. Only communities of 10,000 or greater 

were guaranteed free delivery service.

Again, one might assume that this reflected a flow into rural 

areas from urban centers; however, it is important to remember 

postcard collection along rural routes increased eightfold as the 

postcard fad grew. A variety of period articles, quite often in 

passing or casual references, strengthens the case that postcards 

were the exception to the from-city-to-country rule. An article on 

the flow of mail into and out from New York City is a representative example: “Uncle Sam never before reaped as rich a harvest 

as the result of the post card fad during this Easter season. Out of 

town trains have carried here 40 per cent more than the average 

amount of mail, and have taken back [i.e. from the periphery to 

the center] even a larger percentage of increase.”11 Even stronger 

evidence comes from one exasperated postcard dealer in Waterloo, Iowa, who wrote, “We have tried for a long time to drum it 

into the heads of the producers of post cards that a majority of 

the business is done in country towns.”12

As this rural connection to postcard use thus becomes more 

defined,13 the question still looms as to how postcard use—rural, 

small town, or otherwise—could affect Post Office Department deficits and surpluses (Figure 5). Part of the answer lies 

in the fact that the twenty-four months that defined the fiscal 

FIGURE 3. Amateur photograph postcard of Buffalo, Wyoming. The image was taken by Mrs. Kennedy, one of many sent to her daughter 

Helen at St. Mary’s Academy in Notre Dame, Illinois. The camera was probably a Kodak No. 3A Brownie, the least expensive of the models 

available in 1910 at $12. The size 122 film could be developed on postcard stock by mail or locally by entrepreneurs at home or in shops such as 

pharmacies. This widely available camera greatly increased the number of postcards emerging from small towns. From the collection of Diane 

DeBlois and Robert Dalton Harris.
number 56 • 8 1

transformation of the Post Office Department included half of 

1909 and all of 1910. This also corresponds to the peak of the 

postcard phenomenon as illustrated by additional analysis of the 

aforementioned 2,000-card survey. Postmarks from those cards 

show the peak occurring in either 1909 or 1910.14 Post office statistics likewise show the peak in sales of 1¢ stamps, the postage 

needed for mailing a postcard, occurring in the fiscal year that 

included half of 1910 and the beginning of 1911.15

One can thus begin to see the contours of this historical coincidence. The overlay of the fiscal turnaround of the Post Office Department did not just match the postcard fad generally. 

The timing of the transformation between 1909 and 1911 corresponded to the actual peak—the commercial apex—of one of the 

greatest postal-based phenomena of the twentieth century. But it is 

worth explicitly asking if there is anything more substantial than 

that. Can any true cause and effect between the two be related 

when post office reports and records are surprisingly mute on the 

topic? Popular columnist Frederic Haskin certainly thought so and 

walked his readers through the mathematics: “It requires an average of 120 post cards to weigh a pound, and thus the Post Office 

Department receives $1.20 a pound for carrying post cards, as 

against an average of transportation of 9 or 10 cents a pound. The 

post card business is very profitable to the Post Office.”16

The Post Office found itself in fiscal trouble in 1909 and 

was out of it by 1911, the same spread of months that a national 

craze boosted the very profitability of processing, transporting, 

and delivering the mail. If Post Office Department documents 

from any number of departments (finance, stamps, or even the 

postmaster general himself) failed to note this rather obvious coincidence, there was one lone voice whose official record hinted 

at the possibility. And this voice belonged to Fourth Assistant 

Postmaster General Peter De Graw, the man in charge of nothing less than the Rural Free Delivery. Writing his annual report 

for the fiscal year ending 30 June 1909, the very same one in 

which the dreaded deficit was announced, De Graw concluded 

that the Rural Free Delivery routes had seen a 96% increase in 

the amount of mail handled, an increase that could be attributed 

“especially to letters and postal cards, the latter due to the enormous use of souvenir and picture postcards.”17

Paired with the other evidence, there is much significance 

that can be drawn from this passage. Of all the postal officials 

who could discuss postcards as one of the most significant postal 

phenomenon of the day, it was the man most intimately involved 

with rural users’ patterns of mail who chose to do so. It is also 

worth pausing to consider the irony of this 1909 annual report. 

On the one hand, it announced a record deficit and suggested 

that the cause of that deficit rested (at least partially) within the 

Rural Free Delivery System. And yet, on the other hand, one 

finds the man in charge of that very same “excessive” system 

noting that “the enormous use of” postcards was, in fact, nearly 

doubling the amount of mail within that system. As Frederic 

Haskin pointed out, such a doubling of mail by postcards in particular must have represented some sort of profit-boosting center 

for the very Post Office Department that seemed to be struggling. 

FIGURE 4. Results of the 2,000-postcard survey versus the 1910 census, population.

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

Rural (<2,500)

2,500-4,999

5.000-9,999

10K-24,999

25K-49,999

50K-99,999

100K-249,999

250K-499,999500K-999,999

1Mill+

Postcards

USA, 1910
8 2 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

FIGURE 5. U.S. Post Office Department form 5502, the daily record of substitute Rural 

Delivery Service carrier Fritz Dunkmann on Rural Route 1, Augusta, St. Charles County, 

Missouri, for January 1911. Records for the first five months of 1911 show that 2,738 postcards were delivered on the route and 1,761 postcards were collected (versus 3,126 letters 

delivered and 2,767 collected). Easter was on 16 April in 1911, and 881 postcards were delivered in April versus 373 in May and 447 in March, holiday cards being especially popular. 

From the collection of David L. Straight.
number 56 • 8 3

By April 1910, ten months after the fiscal year when De Graw 

credited postcards as raising the bulk of the RFD, the fourth assistant postmaster general was able to bask in the glow of good 

news. In a speech to a gathering of postmasters in Florida, De 

Graw made an announcement that is worth quoting at length:

The enormous cut in the so-called postal deficit during 

the last quarter of the year 1909, as shown by the report 

of the Auditor just issued, developed a most healthy surplus as well as breaking all records for the largest three 

months of business in the history of the postal service. 

These results following the harsh and unfounded criticisms which have recently been hurled at the Post Office 

Department and its personnel by persons endeavoring 

to divert attention from certain facts in connection with 

the service and to create an impression that rural delivery is the principle source of expense to the Department, 

are, to say the least, proof of the soundness of the old 

adage: “He who laughs last laughs best.”18

It is interesting to note that De Graw does not make any suggestion of what might account for those “largest three months 

of business” within the postal service or the Rural Free Delivery specifically, which was, after all, under his purview. Indeed, 

cost-cutting measures and organizational consolidation were the 

most often cited reasons for the turnaround. But those very same 

months were the ones that the Boston Globe had noted (again, 

somewhat casually): “The Christmas increase in the volume of 

mail is fully as great and in many instances greater, in the rural 

districts than in the city.” It was within this same article that 

it had reported, just a few paragraphs earlier, that “now that 

the Christmas sentiment is conveyed by the picture postcard the 

holiday avalanche of these souvenirs is most decidedly a force 

to be reckoned with. Millions upon millions of these cards are 

transmitted every December” (Figure 6).19

The evidential links are there: during the months that postcards reached their zenith of popularity, the Post Office went from 

deficits to surpluses, all while contemporaries noted the huge flow 

of mail, and profit-boosting postcards in particular, into and out 

from rural America. However, none of these links suggest that 

postcards single-handedly saved the Post Office Department. 

Rather, their purpose is to increase—perhaps even complicate—

our understanding of the narrative by introducing an important 

agent of historical change that De Graw conspicuously omitted 

in his 1910 remarks: the actual users of the Rural Free Delivery. 

It is the flow of “millions upon millions” of postcards sent by 

real people, “greater in the rural districts than in the city,” that 

deserves at least some of the credit for the fiscal transformation of 

the Post Office Department between 1909 and 1911. 

Even though the Rural Free Delivery was blamed as a source 

of record Post Office Department deficits, most Americans were 

willing to bestow a certain paternalistic largess upon their country cousins. As one period source put it, “The rural public is 

isolated, lonely, and wishes the social pleasures of printed matter, pictures and the like frequently renewed. Each postal-card 

arrival is a surprise, a little mystery, a change from routine.”20

And if the RFD was never truly in danger (even as the Post Office Department searched for answers to their deficit dilemma), 

then perhaps it is also possible to dismiss the role of the “rural 

public” in helping facilitate a fiscal turnaround, just as they were 

dismissed in 1910 and 1911 from the narratives that described 

that turnaround. 

Still, nothing was a given in those months of financial transformation. Fourth Assistant Postmaster General Peter De Graw 

himself acknowledged “harsh and unfounded criticisms” when 

behind closed doors and among friends in Florida. Commentators in periodicals such as Life and Banker’s Magazine hinted at 

discontent by pointing out that “cities are taxed to build country 

roads and to pay for rural delivery” and gently mocking those 

who “contend that the post office is a great educational agency, 

and no one should object if its expenditures are greater than 

its income.”21 What has been lost in this dominant narrative of 

urban benevolence is that it was the rural public who ultimately 

silenced such critics by actually helping to erase the offending 

deficit through their patterns of postcard use. It was rural and 

country town Americans who, through their embrace of a popular fad, built a lifeline to a struggling Post Office Department. It 

was a lifeline built one postcard at a time. 

NOTES

1. Quotes, in order of placement, are from “Secular News,” Christian Observer, 

12 January 1910, 23; “Postal Department Bitterly Attacked,” New York Times, 

30 November 1910, 20; “Post Office Reform,” Outlook, 5 February 1910, 285.

FIGURE 6. Christmas postcards like this one were what the Boston Globe described as “a force to be reckoned with.” The trope of 

Santa in an entirely rural setting was dominant during the fad. In this 

image, he is so isolated he needs a megaphone to convey his Christmas wishes. A great many holiday greeting postcards were published 

in Germany for the American market in the first two decades of the 

twentieth century. From the collection of Dan Gifford.
8 4 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

2. Post Office Department Annual Reports for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 

1909 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1910); Post Office Department Annual Reports, 

1911 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1912); Diane DeBlois and Robert Dalton Harris, 

“Geographic Distributions of the Postal Economy: U.S. in 1900,” Postal History 

Journal, No. 142 (February 2009): 27–38

3. “Report of the Postmaster General, December 1, 1909,” in Post Office 

Department Annual Reports, 1909 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1910), 6

4. “Postal Affairs,” The Independent . . . Devoted to the Consideration of 

Politics, Social and Economic Tendencies, History, Literature, and the Arts, 67, 2 

September 1909, 497–498.

5. Hearings Before Subcommittee of House Committee on Appropriations, 

Consisting of Messrs. Bingham, Gillett, Brick, Livingston, and Burleson, in Charge 

of the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Appropriation Bill for 1909 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1908), 407.

6. Committee on Post Office and Post Roads, United States Congress, Post 

Office Appropriation Bill, 1910 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1908), 29.

7. “1909 Report of the Postmaster-General; Fourth Assistant—Rural Delivery,” in Post Office Department Annual Reports, 1909, 352. It should be noted 

that in terms of sheer numeric volume of cards, those delivered still outstripped 

those collected; however, unlike other categories of mail such as periodicals and 

packages, this does not necessarily indicate patterns that flowed from city to country. In fact, postcards fostered connections between networks of community and 

kin that likely kept postcards circulating in tightly confined circles of rural and 

small-town America. 

8. Dorothy B. Ryan, Picture Postcards in the United States, 1893–1918 (New 

York: C. N. Potter, 1982), 22.

9. Bjarne Rogan, “An Entangled Object: The Picture Postcard as Souvenir and 

Collectible, Exchange and Ritual Communication,” Cultural Analysis, 4 (2005): 1.

10. The survey pulled from a national random sample of postcards made 

possible by monitoring eBay auctions of postcards and comparing scans of mailed 

postcard backs (i.e., recipients and their addresses) to relevant census records. 

The remarkably consistent results were tabulated across four surveys of 500 and 

then aggregated in a final total of 2,000. For complete information on how the 

survey was constructed and executed as well as additional findings (beyond rural 

and small audiences, other emergent demographics include northern populations, 

white women, and Anglo-Saxon and Germanic heritages), see Daniel Gifford, “To 

You and Your Kin: Holiday Images from America’s Postcard Phenomenon, 1907–

1910,” (Ph.D. diss., George Mason University, Fairfax, Va.), especially chapter 1, 

“We Gather Together: Finding Audiences within the American Postcard Fad.” 

11. “Easter Post Card Craze Swamps Gotham Offices,” Chicago Daily Tribune, 19 April 1908, 6. Emphasis added.

12. “Says Best End of the Business Comes from Small Country Merchants,” 

Novelty News, December 1911, 100.

13. Still more evidence is available. For example, many period commentators 

noted the shift from postcard use to telephone use. Such interchangeability was 

possible in part because the audiences were so similar: early telephone adoption 

was also primarily a rural phenomenon. See Claude S. Fischer, America Calling: A 

Social History of the Telephone to 1940 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California 

Press, 1992); Gifford, “To You and Your Kin,” 175–177.

14. Gifford, “To You and Your Kin,” 45–46. 

15. See “Division of Stamps” section of Annual Reports, 1909–1913. 

16. Frederic Haskin, “Post Cards,” Washington Post, 22 June 1910, 5.

17. “1909 Report of the Postmaster-General; Fourth Assistant—Rural Delivery,” 351–352.

18. Address of Assistant Postmaster General DeGraw to postmasters of 

Florida at Ocala, 13 April 1910. Division of Rural Mail, entry 184, no. 6, box 1, 

National Archives and Records Administration, 2.

19. “Handling the Christmas Mails,” Boston Daily Globe, 19 December 

1909, SM3. Emphasis added.

20. Arthur H. Gleason, “The Investors’ Viewpoint,” The American Review 

of Reviews, October 1912, 470.

21. “How Cities Help the Country,” Life, 1 December 1910, 981; “Comment,” Banker’s Magazine, October 1909, 504.

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R. G. Badger, 1918.

Life. “How Cities Help the Country.” 1 December 1910, 981.

Madison, James H. “Reformers and the Rural Church, 1900–1950.” The Journal of American History, 73, no. 3 (December 1986):645–668. http://dx.doi

.org/10.2307/1902981. 

Neth, Mary C. Preserving the Family Farm: Women, Community, and the Foundations of Agribusiness in the Midwest, 1900–1940. Baltimore, Md.: The Johns 

Hopkins University Press, 1998.

New York Times. “Postal Department Bitterly Attacked.” 30 November 1910, 20.

Novelty News. “Says Best End of the Business Comes from Small Country Merchants.” December 1911, 100.

Outlook. “Post Office Reform,” 5 February 1910, 285.

Post Office Department. Post Office Department Annual Reports, 1909. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1910.

———. Post Office Department Annual Reports, 1911. Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1912.

Rogan, Bjarne. “An Entangled Object: The Picture Postcard as Souvenir and Collectible, Exchange and Ritual Communication.” Cultural Analysis, 4 (2005): 

1–27.

Reynolds, David R. There Goes the Neighborhood: Rural School Consolidation at 

the Grass Roots in Early Twentieth-Century Iowa. Iowa City, Iowa: University of Iowa Press, 1999.

Ryan, Dorothy B., Picture Postcards in the United States, 1893–1918. New York: 

C. N. Potter, 1982.

Swierenga, Robert P. “The Little White Church: Religion in Rural America.” Agricultural History, 71, no. 4 (Autumn 1997):415–441.

U.S. Congress. Hearings before Subcommittee of House Committee on Appropriations, Consisting of Messrs. Bingham, Gillett, Brick, Livingston, and Burleson, in Charge of the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Appropriation Bill 

for 1909 (Washington, D.C: Government Printing Office, 1908).

———. Committee on Post Office and Post Roads. Post Office Appropriation Bill, 

1910. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1908).
Order No. 10: Post Office Protection 

of the Express Cartel

David L. Straight

When magazine publisher and bank president E. G. Lewis sought to revolutionize American mail-order commerce by offering free postal checking, the 

postmaster general accused him of mail fraud. Lewis was denied the right to 

receive mail, forcing his bank into receivership. The express cartel, which had blocked 

any post office improvements that threatened their monopoly, was also opposed to 

Lewis’s bank. By closing the bank, postal officials favored the express companies, their 

competition, over an entrepreneur who was generating postal revenue.

On 6 July 1905 Postmaster General George B. Cortelyou signed his tenth administrative order of the new fiscal year, “It having been made to appear to the Postmaster 

General, upon evidence satisfactory to him, that the People’s United States Bank, its 

Officers and Agents as such, and E. G. Lewis at Saint Louis, Missouri are engaged in 

conducting a scheme or device for obtaining money through the mails by means of false 

and fraudulent pretenses, representations, and promises.” He instructed the St. Louis 

postmaster to “return all letters, whether registered or not, and other mail matter which 

shall arrive at your office directed to said parties to the postmasters at the offices at 

which they were originally mailed, to be delivered to the senders thereof, with the word 

‘Fraudulent’ plainly written or stamped upon the outside of such letters or matter.”1

 The 

fraud order took effect upon being issued, meaning that Lewis and the bank immediately 

stopped receiving their mail (Figure 1).This decision by the postmaster general presumed 

guilt until innocence could be proven. For the People’s Bank, or any business dependent 

upon the mails, such a loss of service was fatal.

Lewis was primarily a publisher of women’s magazines (Figure 2). Postmaster General Cortelyou also intended to revoke the second-class mailing permits for his magazines 

on the same day he issued the fraud order. The loss of favorable postage rates would make 

publication of the magazines unprofitable. Postal Inspector Robert M. Fulton, heading 

the investigation of the People’s Bank, linked the two businesses in a telegram to the Post 

Office Department, “Situation quite acute on account of its importance and because 

Woman’s Magazine now receiving second-class privileges largely by sufferance of department is, and has been, the vehicle for promotion of bank and for Lewis schemes. I suggest 

concerted action part of Assistant Attorney and Third Assistant.”2

 It was the responsibility of the assistant attorney general for the Post Office to recommend fraud orders to the 

postmaster general; the third assistant postmaster general was responsible for issuing or 

revoking second-class mailing permits. Internal strife within the Post Office Department 

delayed revocation of the second-class permits until March 1907. This delay of twenty 

months in suppressing The Woman’s Magazine provided Lewis with a national platform 

from which to fight back against the Post Office and draw attention to the injustice of the 

attacks on his business enterprises. Fraud orders, to protect the public from unscrupulous 

David L. Straight, St. Louis, Missouri, USA. 

Correspondence: dls@mophil.org. Manuscript 

received 27 March 2012; accepted 7 May 2012.
8 6 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

use of the mails, and classification decisions as to the suitability 

of publications for favorable second-class rates were routine administrative actions undertaken a few hundred times each year 

in the early twentieth century. However, no fraud order or mail 

classification decision of that era was rendered with such defamatory publicity, resulted in widespread public and press speculation about political intrigue, generated books and articles by 

the participants, or received such lengthy congressional scrutiny. 

Cortelyou’s two-year tenure as postmaster general was defined 

by his relentless pursuit of the Lewis case.3

George Bruce Cortelyou (Figure 3) was descendent from 

an old New York Dutch family. He worked as a stenographer 

and court reporter before going into government service, first 

as a clerk in the Post Office Inspector’s Office for New York in 

1889. In making his hiring recommendation, Inspector William 

D. Wheeler noted that Cortelyou was “a staunch Republican.”4

Two years later, he transferred to Washington as the private 

secretary to the fourth assistant postmaster general. Cortelyou 

advanced rapidly. After completing a bachelor of law degree at 

Georgetown University in 1895, he was appointed President 

FIGURE 1. A 1906 letter addressed to E. G. Lewis returned to the sender, as instructed by the postmaster general, 

rather than delivered to him. From the collection of David L. Straight.

FIGURE 2. By 1904, Lewis was mailing 1.5 million copies of The 

Woman’s Magazine each month. Courtesy of the Archives of the 

University City Public Library, University City, Missouri.
number 56 • 8 7

Cleveland’s chief clerk. The next year Cortelyou earned a master of law degree at George Washington University. With the 

change of administration, Cleveland recommended him to President McKinley as a private secretary. Following McKinley’s assassination, Theodore Roosevelt made Cortelyou his chief of 

staff, where he transformed the White House staff into a more 

professional organization. After serving as the first secretary of 

commerce and labor, Cortelyou became chairman of the Republican National Committee to secure Roosevelt’s election in 

1904.5

 Following the election, Cortelyou began the precedent 

of the chairman of the national committee becoming the postmaster general. While in that job, he continued his political 

activities, recommending “strong Republicans” for federal appointments. He did not resign from the national committee until 

January 1907.6

In publishing, Edward Gardner Lewis (Figure 4), the son of 

an Episcopal rector, found a line of work that suited his promotional talents. He had dropped out of Trinity College to go on 

the road selling watches, patent medicine, and insecticide. Having suffered a business failure, he arrived in St. Louis in 1899 

with no money. Always the promoter, he talked a local bank 

into loaning him $5000 to purchase a small magazine, The Winner, which he renamed The Woman’s Magazine. He added the 

companion, Woman’s Farm Journal, in 1901. By lowering the 

subscription price to only 10¢ per year, which more than covered the cost of postage, and the advertising rates to a uniform 

$6 per line per issue, Lewis profited from high-volume circulation and strong advertising revenue. By 1904, he published one 

of the highest-circulation American women’s magazines, mailing 

a million and a half copies a month from his printing plant in 

University City, Missouri, the town he founded on the edge of St. 

Louis. Although he aspired to emulate the Ladies Home Journal, 

his magazine was among many dime-a-year publications during 

the early twentieth century. Each monthly issue of The Woman’s 

Magazine contained short stories, melodramatic romances, practical articles for homemakers, and pithy sayings. Lewis’s own 

“Heart to Heart Talks with the Editor” served as the pulpit for 

his reform ideas, including women’s suffrage, education reform, 

and postal banking. The last would be his undoing.7

FIGURE 3. An engraved die proof of George Bruce Cortelyou 

(1862–1940), postmaster general, 1905–1907. Courtesy of the U.S. 

Postal Service.

FIGURE 4. Edwin Gardner Lewis (1869–1950), publisher of 

Woman’s Magazine and president of the People’s United States 

Bank. Courtesy of the Archives of the University City Public Library, University City, Missouri.
8 8 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

That Lewis, a populist magazine publisher, would venture 

into the seemingly unrelated field of banking reflects the lack of 

financial services available to his mostly rural Woman’s Magazine and Woman’s Farm Journal subscribers. This problem was 

not unique to his readers. Data compiled in 1909 show one bank 

in America for each 5.4 post offices (each one representing a 

town). Although the average post office served an area of 50 

square miles, each bank served 270 square miles. Since these statistics do not reflect the concentration of banks in urban areas, 

most rural areas actually had far less than one bank for each 

5.4 post offices or towns.8

 Even for those with access to a bank, 

the lack of a national clearinghouse made checks mailed out of 

town unwelcome or accepted only subject to large collection fees 

that paid an express company to transfer cash or gold from one 

bank to another. Although the Post Office had introduced money 

orders in 1863, by 1904, the year the People’s Bank was chartered, they were available at fewer than half of the post offices 

in the country.9

 The Post Office did not provide a secure, convenient means for many Americans, especially rural households, 

to transmit money when purchasing products from the mailorder houses that advertised in magazines. The other payment 

option, in towns having an agent, was the express companies, 

who specialized in transporting gold and currency. For Lewis, 

the People’s Bank was simply a means to serve his readers while 

increasing business for his advertisers, who in turn would boost 

the profitability of his magazines. 

By 1905, there was already a long history of legislative attempts to remedy this banking shortage through emulation of 

the postal banking services offered in most European countries. The first postmaster general to recommend postal savings 

in the United States was John A. J. Creswell in 1871.10 Eighty 

bills were introduced in Congress, with the first in 1873, before 

postal savings legislation was finally enacted in 1910.11 There 

were 1,319 savings banks in the United States in 1906, compared with 65,600 towns large enough to have a post office. 

Seventy percent of the savings banks were concentrated in just 

four states, whereas 24 states had no savings banks at all.12 The 

Post Office was keenly aware that although postal money orders 

paid no interest and cost the depositor a small fee to purchase, 

they were being used as form of savings. The Emporia, Kansas, 

postmaster reported a record number of uncashed money orders 

subject to payment at his office: “we attribute this to the purposely holding of the orders by the payees, thus make us a place 

of deposit.”13 For the year ending 1 March 1908, the Post Office 

reported 127,623 money orders, totaling $8,054,894 sold for 

savings purposes at first- and second-class post offices.14 Those 

large post offices in towns more likely to have banks represented 

less than 3% of the total. With the growth of mail-order business during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the lack 

of a means to transmit money easily through the mail became a 

growing concern. In 1902, Postmaster General Henry C. Payne 

observed that a large proportion of the population was “not able 

to buy money orders or bank drafts without great inconvenience. 

It is not unreasonable to expect from the Government that it will 

provide an easy, convenient, and safe method to transmit small 

sums.” Noting the rapid growth of rural free delivery, “the use 

of postal checks would go far to provide the relief so urgently 

demanded, as it would conveniently serve those sections of the 

country not heretofore covered by or adjacent to money-order 

offices or the banks of the country.”15 C. W. Post, the inventor of 

Grape Nuts cereal, observed these difficulties first hand. He had 

given testimony to Congress in favor of postal checking and in 

1905 wrote to Postmaster General Cortelyou, “the average, so 

far as we have been able to compute, from examination and investigation of commercial mail, shows that only about one letter 

in twenty, that contains some form of small remittance, contains 

a postal money order. The remaining 19 letters contain loose 

silver, paper money, or stamps, liable to be abstracted, or checks 

on small inland banks, subject, of course, to collection charges 

to be paid by the recipient. All of this inconvenience creates a 

serious obstacle to the transaction of business, so far as it relates 

to small sums.”16

Had Lewis merely used his editorial columns to call for 

postal banking services, he would have joined a long parade of 

postmasters general, editors, postal reformers, businessmen, and 

rural grass roots organizations whose voices had been largely 

ignored by Congress. Instead, he took the innovative step of organizing a postal bank (Figure 5).

Lewis negotiated with five major banks, strategically located 

in New York, Chicago, New Orleans, Seattle, and San Francisco, 

to accept and clear checks drawn on his bank, for up to $10, 

without service charges. These checks, freely accepted anywhere 

in the country without a service charge, were the most revolutionary feature of the People’s United States Bank.17 In 1904, 

through lectures during the St. Louis World’s Fair and in his 

Woman’s Magazine editorials Lewis actively promoted his bank. 

His readers immediately began mailing currency and gold 

coins (Figure 6) for both deposit accounts and shares of stock. By 

the time the bank opened in March 1905, more than $1 million 

had been received (Figure 7).

Was the People’s United States Bank a fraudulent scheme, 

as charged by the postmaster general? Evidence gathered by the 

postal inspectors in their fraud investigations normally resides 

in the Fraud Order Case Files at the National Archives. The file 

box for 1905 held a neat row of numbered, gray legal jackets, 

folded in fourths and standing on edge under a layer of dust.18

Most jackets contained the postmaster general’s fraud order, 

a statement from the U.S. attorney handling the case, and the 

original evidence gathered in the investigation, such as patent 

medicine ads, lottery tickets, or fake gold watches. For the Lewis 

case (Fraud Order Jacket No. 2277), the original file contents 

from 1905 had been replaced with pages 130–148 cut from “Relief of the Lewis Publishing Company” published in 1911 by the 

House Committee on Claims, wrapped in a sheet of typewriter 

paper. These pages reprint a 26 June 1905 memorandum from 

Russell P. Goodwin, assistant attorney general for the Post Office 

Department, recommending the fraud order against Lewis and 

the People’s Bank. Goodwin quotes extensively from numerous 
number 56 • 8 9

Lewis publications; reports by Inspectors Fulton, Stice, and Sullivan; and Lewis’ statements during his 16–17 June 1905 hearing before Goodwin. The picture of Lewis that emerges is of a 

dreamer or promoter, not overly attentive to administrative details. The several Lewis business enterprises are entwined and 

all suffer from chaotic bookkeeping. As none of the investigators’ original reports or transcripts of the hearing have survived, 

there is no means to evaluate Goodwin’s interpretation of his 

sources. The loss or destruction of the original documents in the 

Lewis case and this substitution probably occurred shortly after 

the congressional committee investigated the Post Office Department’s handling of the Lewis case, long before the files were 

transferred to the National Archives.

Sources outside the Post Office Department strongly support 

a conclusion that the People’s Bank, although not well managed, 

was not a fraudulent enterprise. On 12 June 1905, the Missouri 

secretary of state, John E. Swanger, wrote to Postal Inspector 

Fulton that the board of directors of the People’s Bank had been 

reorganized with his approval, stock certificates were being issued, and irregularities were being corrected. Of the $2.5 million 

in capital, all but $100,000 had been paid, and the deadline required by law was not until November.19 The state bank examiners believed that the People’s Bank was solvent and operating 

within the banking laws of the state of Missouri. When the fraud 

order prevented the People’s Bank from communicating with 

their account holders, they were forced into receivership. With 

funds available in the bank, the state-appointed receiver paid the 

depositors 100% of the money in their accounts and stockholders received back 85% of their investments.20 Finally, when Lewis 

was tried for mail fraud in the U.S. District Court in St. Louis in 

May 1908, Judge Riner directed a not guilty verdict and wrote in 

his judge’s memorandum, “after carefully reviewing the evidence 

the court is of opinion that the evidence of the good faith of the 

defendant is overwhelming, and that the charge of a fraudulent 

purpose in devising and carrying this scheme into effect is not 

FIGURE 5. Checks, freely accepted anywhere in the country without a service charge, were the most revolutionary feature of the People’s United 

States Bank. Courtesy of the Archives of the University City Public Library, University City, Missouri.

FIGURE 6. Gold coins, wrapped in newspaper and a flannel shirt 

and tied with a pair of suspenders, mailed to the People’s Bank. 

Courtesy of the Archives of the University City Public Library, University City, Missouri.
9 0 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

sustained.”21 The next day the Cleveland News opined, “The 

verdict has corroborated everything that was said about Lewis in 

a book recently published by Edwin C. Madden . . . that Lewis 

was the innocent victim of persecution instigated by express 

companies upon whose money order business Lewis’ bank had 

encroached.”22

If the People’s Bank was not a fraudulent enterprise, was 

the prosecution of Lewis an honest mistake by overzealous public officials? Perhaps, as Lewis had a prior record of questionable business practices. Four times between 1899 and 1901, The 

Winner magazine was investigated as to the legitimacy of its 

subscribers. When the magazine reorganized as The Woman’s 

Magazine, a temporary mailing permit was granted, and there 

was no further investigation until 1905.23 In 1903, James N. 

Tyner, the assistant attorney general for the Post Office, and Harrison J. Barrett, his assistant from 1897 until the end of 1900 

and a relative of his wife, were indicted for conspiracy to defraud. When Barrett left the Post Office, he entered private law 

practice, including representing clients at Post Office hearings. 

Rather than recommending fraud orders to the postmaster general, the pair was “extorting large amounts of money from these 

fraudulent institutions under the guise of fees for legal services in 

preventing the issue of fraud orders against them.” One of those 

firms, the Progressive Watch Company, owned by Lewis, was accused of offering watches for 10¢ in an “endless chain” scheme. 

Also, while he had worked for the Post Office, Barrett had accepted a gold watch from Lewis for the “kind and courteous 

treatment he had received at the hands of Barrett in disposing 

of the case.”24 In 1903, the Post Office investigated the World’s 

Fair Contest Company, a Lewis scheme in which contestants 

purchased opportunities to guess the total attendance at the St. 

Louis World’s Fair for 25¢ each. The prize for the most accurate 

guess was $25,000, with prizes totaling $85,000 to be awarded. 

In response to the investigation, the attorney general ruled that 

guessing contests were not lotteries and were lawful in the mails. 

As the fair was near to closing, on 28 November 1904 Attorney 

General W. H. Moody reversed the opinions of his predecessors, 

ruling that guessing contests were the same as lotteries and were 

therefore barred from the use of the mails under the fraud statutes. The World’s Fair Contest Company awarded the prizes and 

concluded with a profit.25 All of these cases were well known to 

the postal inspectors in St. Louis.

Alternatively, was the prosecution of Lewis a conspiracy 

as charged in books written by two participants? Lewis’s own 

FIGURE 7. A certificate for $100 worth of stock in the People’s United States Bank. Courtesy of the Archives of the University City Public 

Library, University City, Missouri.
number 56 • 9 1

book, Order Number Ten, certainly could not be considered an 

objective source (Figure 8).26

The second, The U.S. Government’s Shame, by former Third 

Assistant Postmaster General Edwin C. Madden is a bit more 

complicated to assess.27 Mail classification, specifically whether 

a magazine qualifies for mailing at the greatly reduced secondclass rates, was one of the duties of the third assistant. Cortelyou 

and the postal inspectors sought to revoke the second-class mailing permits for the Lewis magazines, effectively barring them 

from the mails, at the same time the fraud order was signed. 

Madden refused to sign such an order, arguing that Lewis had 

not violated the second-class mail regulations and furthermore 

that a fraud order against a publisher for another business did 

not automatically disqualify their magazine from second-class 

mail rates. Their disagreement continued until Cortelyou forced 

Madden to resign and then signed the order revoking the secondclass mailing permits himself, just before he became Secretary 

of the Treasury. Although Madden may not be objective about 

Cortelyou, his former boss, the book asks the important question, who benefited from the destruction of the People’s Bank? 

Madden makes thinly veiled references to the role of the 

express companies in the attack on the People’s Bank. Express 

companies played a vital role in America financial affairs from 

the destruction of the Second Bank of the United States in the 

1830s until the creation of the Federal Reserve Banks in 1913. 

They moved gold and currency to balance accounts and complete financial transactions. The Postal Act of 1845, by declaring 

a postal monopoly on letter mail, barred the express companies 

from carrying letters. At the same time, the Post Office agreed 

not to compete with them for the transportation of packages 

or the secure delivery of gold, currency, and valuables. Following the Civil War, the five largest express companies organized 

an express cartel that not only set rates and stifled competition 

but also manipulated Congress to prevent the passage of legislation allowing the Post Office to compete with them by offering 

postal banking or parcel post services.28 The express companies 

had blocked postal savings and parcel post legislation for over 

three decades. 

In 1905, the key to their legislative defense was one of their 

own, the powerful New York Republican Senator Thomas Collier 

Platt (Figure 9). Born in Owego, New York, in 1833, Platt combined politics and business at an early age. He rose rapidly after 

allying himself with Roscoe Conkling in 1870. Platt became a 

director of the United States Express Company in 1879 and their 

president the following year; he held that post until his death in 

1910. During that time, he served two terms, 1897–1909, in the 

U.S. Senate. Senator Platt was the New York Republican power 

broker. An 1899 letter to Governor Theodore Roosevelt, instructing him to veto a certain piece of legislation in the state assembly, 

reveals Platt’s strong bias, “The Republican party now stands and 

must stand for the next few years as the only barrier between the 

business interests of this country and a deluge of ruinous Populism.”29 When Roosevelt consistently declined to follow advice, 

Platt had him sidelined as the vice-presidential candidate on the 

Republican ticket in 1900. In the letter quoted earlier, C. W. Post 

reports that the forces opposed to postal banking legislation “include the express companies, headed by Senator T. C. Platt, of 

New York, President of the United States Express Company.” He 

continues, “We have met heretofore serious opposition by Senator Platt’s appointee, Ellis H. Roberts, Treasurer of the United 

States.” Although no documentary evidence has been found in 

the Platt Papers at the Yale University Library or the Cortelyou 

Papers at the Library of Congress, I believe, as Madden did, that 

Senator Platt could easily have asked the postmaster general to 

look into the Lewis matter for him.

It was not actually necessary for the Post Office to prove 

mail fraud in order to discredit Lewis. Loss of mail delivery 

along with the defamatory publicity accompanying the fraud 

order were sufficient to destroy the People’s Bank long before 

FIGURE 8. E. G. Lewis told his version of the events in Order Number Ten; Postmaster General Cortelyou is at the bottom of the cover. 

From the collection of David L. Straight.
9 2 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

any fraud case would come to trial. The afternoon that Lewis 

received his summons to appear at the Post Office Department in 

Washington to answer charges against him and the bank, the St. 

Louis Post-Dispatch broke the story under the headline “State 

Officers Investigate $2,500,000 Mail Order Bank of Edward G. 

Lewis; Postal Inspectors Ask Fraud Order.” Nearly two pages 

of the newspaper were devoted to stories about Lewis and the 

bank.30 One story suggested that Lewis had an ulterior motive in 

establishing the bank, “The inspectors say in their reports that 

some of the other companies organized by Lewis are in debt; 

hence, the necessity of organizing a bank, in order to have ready 

cash from which to supply the needs of these companies.”31 Curtis A. Betts, the Post-Dispatch reporter who broke the story, testified under oath that Postal Inspector W. T. Sullivan had leaked 

the confidential report of the Lewis investigation to him and that 

it had been set in type at the Post-Dispatch for over a week, waiting for the appropriate time to run. When Betts visited Sullivan 

in the his office in May 1905, the inspector held up the copy of 

the report on the Lewis investigation for Betts to see, placed it in 

a half-closed desk drawer, and left the room saying, “Excuse me, 

I have to go out into the other room a moment.” Under questioning, Betts explained, “If I had not thought that Col. Sullivan intended me to get that report—by his actions and everything that 

happened there that day—I would not have taken the report.”32

Responding to the national press attention surrounding Lewis 

and the People’s Bank, the Post Office Department published 

two pamphlets in 1905 defending the People’s Bank fraud order 

and one in 1907 defending its Woman’s Magazine decision.33 No 

other fraud orders or second-class permit decisions were the subjects of published government documents before the cases were 

brought to trial. 

Although the People’s Bank met an urgent national need, 

was not fraudulent, and did not compete with any postal service, it challenged the long-standing relationship between the 

Post Office, the private express companies, and Congress. If the 

People’s Bank succeeded in establishing a national checking system without service charges, the express companies stood to lose 

two important sources of revenue: fees from the sale of express 

money orders and the fees from clearing checks for banks. The 

People’s Bank was competing in a business arena that had been 

the exclusive province of the express companies for six decades. 

The People’s Bank, or any mail-order business that generated a 

volume of letters, would have produced revenue for the Post Office. The express companies, on the other hand, were competitors, who sought to keep a lucrative business away from the Post 

Office. In their destruction of the People’s Bank, the Post Office 

Department appears to have placed political considerations for 

a senator and the protection of his industry from a rival business above its own revenue stream. Self-serving business interests 

that controlled Congress not only prevented the Post Office from 

providing banking and parcel services common in other industrialized nations but also manipulated the Post Office into attacking Lewis and People’s United States Bank. Within six decades, 

the Post Office had moved from not competing with the private 

express companies in 1845 to suppressing a business that threatened express company profits in 1905.

Not content to leave matters entirely in the hands of the Post 

Office Department, the express cartel sacrificed its own revenue 

to embargo the People’s Bank. In 1912, Sidney Morse, writing 

in The Siege of University City: The Dreyfus Case of America, 

reported that after the Post Office fraud order had been issued, 

the express companies, although in no way required to do so, 

instructed their agents to refuse to accept packages or sell money 

orders addressed to Lewis or the People’s Bank.34

In March 1913, after publishing more than 10,000 pages of 

testimony regarding all aspects of the life and business ventures 

of E. G. Lewis and the Post Office conduct toward them, the 

House Committee on Expenditures in the Post Office Department 

FIGURE 9. Thomas Collier Platt (1833–1910), president of the 

United States Express Company, 1880–1910, and U.S. Senator from 

New York, 1897–1909. From History of the Express Business by 

Alexander L. Stimson (New York: Baker and Godwin, 1881).
number 56 • 9 3

concluded, “The Government has been ill-served in this whole 

matter.”35 They further concluded that Lewis did not commit 

fraud, only that he was “imaginative” and that the Post Office 

should cease all investigation of Lewis and his business ventures. 

They recommended that the power to determine whether a publisher was entitled to a second-class permit mail should be better safeguarded and that persons charged with mail fraud might 

know the charges against them and have access to the postal 

inspector’s reports.36 Impoverished but unbroken, E. G. Lewis 

salvaged a little cash from his property in University City and 

moved to Atascadero, California, in 1914 with a scheme to establish a new town. In 1928, he was convicted of mail fraud and 

sentenced to five years in a federal penitentiary (Figure 10).

However, University City, Missouri, continues to thrive and 

uses the Lewis Publishing Building as its city hall. After becoming secretary of the treasury, George B. Cortelyou published an 

article defending his actions without naming Lewis specifically: 

“Over 2,400 fraud orders have been issued by the Department, 

but in less than thirty cases has the propriety of the order been 

challenged, and in none has the Court held that it was erroneous 

or unwarranted.”37 In a letter to a critic after Lewis was found 

not guilty of mail fraud, he wrote, “I had nothing whatever to do 

with any indictments secured against Mr. Lewis. My sole relation 

to the case was in issuing the fraud order against the bank, which 

I believed at the time was justified, and have seen no reason to 

change my opinion.”38 When Roosevelt’s term ended, Cortelyou 

retired from government service to become president of the Consolidated Gas Company of New York. Senator Thomas C. Platt 

declined to stand for reelection in 1908, retired from the Senate 

in 1909, and died in 1910. Without his Senate protection, the 

Post Office encroached on the express business. Postal savings 

began in 1911 and Parcel Post in 1913. The Federal Reserve 

Banks created a national clearinghouse for checks, eliminating 

the need for express companies to move cash and gold to clear 

checks and balance accounts. Mailing checks became the most 

common form of payment in America until the advent of electronic payment services. 

NOTES

1. The original “Order No. 10” is bound into Miscellaneous Orders of the 

Postmaster General, page 640, in the United States Postal Service Library. The 

document is reproduced in Sidney Morse, The Siege of University City: The Dreyfus Case of America (St. Louis, Mo.: University City Publishing Company, 1912), 

450–451

2. Robert M. Fulton to Chief Post Office Inspector, telegram, 31 May 1905, 

reproduced in Hearings before the Committee on Expenditures in the Post Office 

Department House of Representatives on House Resolution 109 to Investigate the 

Post Office Department, part 12, 12 July 1911 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1911), 811.

3. Although it is difficult to separate the two actions, this paper will focus 

primarily on the People’s Bank and the fraud order. The second-class mailing permit 

was covered in David L. Straight, “E. G. Lewis, Edwin C. Madden, and the Destruction of The Woman’s Magazine” (paper presented at the Missouri Conference 

on History, Kansas City, Mo., April 2011).

4. William D. Wheeler to E. G. Rathbone, chief post office inspector, 12 October 1889, George B. Cortelyou file at the National Personnel Records Center in 

St. Louis, Missouri.

5. Biographical Directory of the United States Executive Branch, 1774–

1971, ed. Robert Sobel. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1971), 67–68; Daniel Y. 

Meschter, “The Postmasters General of the United States: XLII. George Bruce Cortelyou, 1905–1907,” La Posta, no. 237 (July 2009): 28–30.

6. Dorothy Ganfield Fowler, The Cabinet Politician: The Postmaster General, 

1829–1909 (New York: Columbia University, 1943), 287.

7. Susan Waugh McDonald provides a good analysis of Woman’s Magazine 

in “Edward Gardner Lewis: Entrepreneur, Publisher, American of the Gilded Age,” 

Bulletin of the Missouri Historical Society, 35 (April 1979): 154–163. 

8. Edwin W. Kemmerer, Postal Savings: An Historical and Critical Study of 

the Postal Savings Bank System of the United States (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton 

University Press, 1917), 10–11.

9. For the fiscal year ending 30 June 1904, Postal Statistics of the United 

States, 1789–1911 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1911) shows 71,131 post offices, with 

only 35,094 providing money order service.

10. Annual Report of the Postmaster General (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 

1871), XXVIII.

11. Postal Savings Depositories, 61st Cong., 2d sess., 1910, S. Rep. 125, Appendix G, 63–66, lists all of the bills introduced.

12. To Establish Postal Savings Depositories, 60th Cong., 1st sess., S. Rep. 

525, 1908, 146.

13. Postal Savings Depositories, 60.

14. Postal Savings Depositories, 93.

15. Annual Report of the Postmaster General (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 

1902), 19.

FIGURE 10. The five-story octagonal building that appears on the 

People’s Bank checks and stock certificates was the offices of the 

Lewis Publishing Company. Today it is the city hall for University 

City, Missouri. From the collection of David L. Straight.
9 4 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

16. C. W. Post to Postmaster General Cortelyou, 5 December 1905, George B. 

Cortelyou Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

17. “The Certified Check System,” The People’s United States Bank Reporter,

1, no. 2 (April 1905): 13.

18. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 28, Post 

Office Department, Entry 50, “Fraud Order Case Files.” The Lewis case is box 26, 

Jacket 2277.

19. John E. Swanger to Robert M. Fulton, 12 June 1905, reproduced in Hearings before the Committee on Expenditures, 750–751.

20. Frederick Essen, receiver, People’s United States Bank, to Alexander Del 

Mar, 5 February 1906, reproduced in Alexander Del Mar, Report on the People’s 

United States Bank of St. Louis (St. Louis, Mo., 1906).

21. United States vs. E. G. Lewis, No. 5315 Judge’s Memorandum, box 39, 

George B. Cortelyou Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

22. “Dangerous Authority,” Cleveland News, 18 May 1908, box 39, 

George B. Cortelyou Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

23. James J. Britt, “The Lewis Publishing Company v. the Post Office Department,” in Hearings before the Committee on Expenditures, 9745–9747.

24. Joseph L. Bristow, Report of the 4th Assistant Postmaster General in 

Matter of Investigation of Post Office Department (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 

1903), 36–37, 66–67.

25. Britt, “The Lewis Publishing Company,” 9752–9753.

26. Edward Gardner Lewis, Order Number Ten: Being Cursory Comments 

on Some of the Effects of the Great American Fraud Order (St. Louis, Mo.: University City Publishing, 1911).

27. Edwin C. Madden, The U.S. Government’s Shame: The Story of the 

Great Lewis Case (Detroit, Mich.: National Book, 1908).

28. Peter Z. Grossman, “Contract and Conflict: A Study of the Express Cartel” (Ph.D. thesis, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, Mo., 1992).

29. Senator Platt to Governor Theodore Roosevelt, 6 May 1899, Thomas C. 

Platt Papers, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.

30. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “State Officers Investigate $2,500,000 Mail Order 

Bank of Edward G. Lewis; Postal Inspectors Ask Fraud Order,” 31 May 1905:1, 4.

31. Curtis A. Betts, “Details of Report Asking Fraud Order,” St. Louis PostDispatch, 31 May 1905:4.

32. Testimony of Curtis A. Betts, in Hearings before the Committee on Expenditures, part 44, 4377–4380.

33. These were Opinion of Smith McPherson, Judge of Circuit Court, Eastern 

District of Missouri, in case of People’s United States Bank v. Henry J. Gilson, Henry 

P. Wyman, and Frank Wyman no. 5192, in Equity (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1905) 

and Memorandum of Postmaster-General, as Embodied in Statement to Press, July 9, 

1905, in Relation to Issuance of Fraud Order, July 6, 1905, Against People’s United 

States Bank and E. G. Lewis of St. Louis, Mo. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1905), both 

of which were reprinted in 1907, and Statement in Matter of Withdrawal of 2d-class 

Mailing Privilege from Woman’s Magazine and Woman’s Farm Journal Issued by 

Lewis Publishing Company of St. Louis, Mo. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1907).

34. Sidney Morse, The Siege of University City: The Dreyfus Case of America

(St. Louis, Mo.: University City Publishing, 1912), 522–524.

35. Report on the Lewis Publishing Co. and Various Lewis Enterprises by the 

Committee on Expenditures in the Post Office Department House of Representatives under H. Res. 109 to Investigate the Post Office Department, 62nd Cong., 3d 

sess., H. Rep. 1601, parts 1–2, 1913, 3.

36. Report on the Lewis Publishing Co., 4–7.

37. George B. Cortelyou, “Frauds in the Mail: Fraud Orders and Their Purposes,” The North American Review, 184 (19 April 1907): 815.

38. George B. Cortelyou to G. B. Hische, 23 May 1908, box 39, George B. 

Cortelyou Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cortelyou, George B. “Frauds in the Mail: Fraud Orders and Their Purposes.” The 

North American Review, 184 (19 April 1907):808–817.

———. Papers. Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress.

Del Mar, Alexander. Report on the People’s United States Bank of St. Louis. St. 

Louis, Mo., 1906.

Fowler, Dorothy Ganfield. The Cabinet Politician: The Postmasters General, 1829–

1909. New York: AMS Press, 1967.

Grossman, Peter Zigmund. “Contract and Conflict: A Study of the Express Cartel.” 

Ph.D. thesis, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, Mo., 1992.

Harris, Nini. Legacy of Lions. University City, Mo.: Historical Society of University 

City, 1981.

Kemmerer, Edwin Walter. Postal Savings: An Historical and Critical Study of the 

Postal Savings Bank System of the United States. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1917.

Lewis, Edward Gardner. Order Number Ten: Being Cursory Comments on Some 

of the Effects of the Great American Fraud Order. St. Louis: University City 

Publishing Company, 1911.

———. Papers. Archives of the University City Public Library, University City, Mo.

Madden, Edwin C. The U.S. Government’s Shame: The Story of the Great Lewis 

Case. Detroit, Mich.: National Book Company, 1908.

McDonald, Susan Waugh. “Edward Gardner Lewis: Entrepreneur, Publisher, 

American of the Gilded Age.” Bulletin of the Missouri Historical Society, 35 

(April 1979):154–163.

Morse, Sidney. The Siege of University City: The Dreyfus Case of America. St. 

Louis, Mo.: University City Publishing Company, 1912.

Platt, Thomas Collier. Papers. Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.

People’s United States Bank Papers. Archives of the University City Public Library, 

University City, Mo.

Post Office Department. Record Group 28, National Archives.

U.S. Congress. Hearings before the Committee on Expenditures in the Post Office Department, House of Representatives on House Resolution No. 109 

to Investigate the Post Office Department. Washington, D. C.: Government 

Printing Office, 1911–1913.

———. Report on the Lewis Publishing Co. and Various Lewis Enterprises by the 

Committee on Expenditures in the Post Office Department House of Representatives Under H. Res. 109 to Investigate the Post Office Department. 

62nd Cong., 3d sess., House Rep. 1601, parts 1–2, 1913.
Postmarking Records, Cancellations, 

and Postmaster Pay

Erick Lee Erickson

Fourth-class post offices were required to keep a record of the impressions of their 

postmarks. This paper analyzes postmark records from three fourth-class offices of 

the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, paying special attention to looseleaf sheets recovered from an archaeological investigation of an abandoned post office 

building in eastern Colorado. These sheets contain a unique and significant record of 

the value of stamps cancelled at the post office from 1941 to 1945. This paper analyzes 

these records in the context of the celerity and certainty of mail service and the role that 

cancellations played in determining postmaster pay. 

The U.S. Congress instructed the Post Office to let contracts for carrying the mail 

in the Star Route Act of 1845. Contracts were to be awarded to the lowest bidder who 

could guarantee satisfactory performance and provide rapid and secure service. The 

words “certainty, celerity and security” were so often repeated in bidding forms for these 

routes that a symbolic abbreviation of three stars or asterisks was used in their stead. 

Assistant Postmaster General Daniel Roper wrote of this in 1917, “The bids, which were 

considered as offering such guarantee were indicated by three stars to symbolize ‘celerity,’ ‘certainty’ and ‘security’. In this way, the routes came to be known as star routes.”1

The stars symbolized the commitment of the Post Office Department to industrial age 

commerce. “Celerity,” from the Latin celaritas for swift or quick, connoted rapidity, 

swiftness, and speed. Business thrives on speed. An economy grows only as fast as money 

can change hands. “Certainty” and “security” are necessary for an efficient system of 

transferable property rights. Businesses needed to contract through the mail. The stars 

encapsulated the department’s operational philosophy that shaped the postal service.

Making time an input in the production process was fundamental to the quest for celerity, certainty, and security. As the railroad business had led the way in the development 

of time zones in the 1840s,2

 the Post Office demarked the business day in terms of the 

times of arrival and dispatch of mail. Recording the time at which the mail would leave 

an office fixed the starting point of a letter’s timeline. The record of that fix was the dated 

postmark that was stamped on its cover. In the twentieth century, postmarking stamps 

also included killer bars to cancel postage stamps. With postmarks in place, celerity could 

be measured, certainty could be verified, and security could be enforced. 

Some small offices dispatched mail two or more times a day, as carriers came in from 

and left for different distribution offices and railway mail stations. Most of the small, 

fourth-class post offices, whose postmasters, by definition, earned less than $1,000 in a 

year, received mail in and sent mail out only once a day. Nonetheless, the time of the dispatch of mail was so important to a system committed to commerce that every office was 

required to keep a record of the impressions of their postmarking stamps. “As a check on 

Erick Lee Erickson, Department of Economics, 

Metropolitan State University of Denver, 1201 

5th Street, Denver, Colorado 80204, USA. Correspondence: ericksoe@msudenver.edu. Manuscript 

received 27 March 2012; accepted 7 May 2012.
9 6 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

the correctness and legibility of the postmarking, the postal regulations require the postmaster to make an impression of the postmark on an office record every time any change is made in the 

die.”3

 These records of postmarking impressions were to be kept 

on file at the office to be made available to authorities in the case 

of an inspection. The regulations insisted that “a record of postmarks showing every change made in the postmarking stamps 

shall be kept in chronological order in suitable record books or 

on loose leaf sheets supplied by postmasters. Immediately following a dispatch the postmarking stamp shall be changed to 

show the time of the next dispatch.”4

The Post Office Department instituted this practice to reduce errors and discourage outright fraud. In particular, it 

wanted to prevent the practice of backstamping, applying a 

previous date to outgoing or incoming mail. The practice was 

prohibited “whether for the purpose of fraud or deception or 

to conceal delay or detention of mail matter.”5

 An offence could 

result in the dismissal of the postmaster. Postmarking records 

would not, of course, prevent backstamping by unscrupulous 

postmasters, but these records revealed much about a postmaster’s business practice. They gave inspectors an objective tool to 

use in their quest for celerity and certainty. Bad or incomplete 

records betrayed sloppiness and could ignite an inspector’s suspicions. Besides providing insulation from such suspicion, good 

postmarking records could help honest postmasters resist pressure from nefarious customers. They were physical proof that 

the department took certainty, celerity, and security seriously and 

had adopted procedures to enforce its rules. 

At the turn of the twentieth century, star route carriers delivered mail to and collected mail from over 70,000 offices of 

the fourth class. These offices compiled records of postmark impressions for each business day for over a century, but because 

they were repetitive and unremarkable, very few examples have 

survived. A record book of postmark impressions from the Milford, Iowa, office covering the business days between 15 July 

1909 and 20 March 1912 is archived at the American Philatelic Research Library.6

 Impressions of postmarks for the days 

between 14 February 1891 and 15 July 1898 have been found 

in an outdated, incomplete account book from the Trego, Maryland, post office.7

 And over 1,000 loose-leaf pages of postmark 

impressions representing parts of four decades from the 1920s 

through the 1950s have been recovered from an archaeological 

dig at the site of an abandoned post office building in Fondis, 

Colorado.8

 Other examples may be found in private collections, 

but there has been no systematic study of such records. Figure 1 

displays the Milford record book and a sample of the loose-leaf 

records from Fondis. These artifacts provide a unique view of 

postal business in what historian Wayne Fuller has called the 

“old system” of rural mail that predated and in isolated places 

continued concurrent with Rural Free Delivery until the system 

was reorganized in the1970s.9

The Milford, Iowa, record book contains seventy-nine pages 

of impressions generally arranged in ten rows of six circular date 

stamps, with each row representing one day of postal business. 

Two postmarks were in use at Milford; one of them was for dispatching mail that simply bore the name of the office on the top 

of the dial above the month, date, time, and year plugs in the 

center of the dial. The name of the state appears at the bottom of 

the dial. The other stamp had both city and state on the top of 

the dial and the abbreviation REC’D on the bottom beneath the 

month, date, time, and year plugs. This was clearly used to mark 

incoming mail. Mail was dispatched from Milford at least twice 

each day, probably in the morning and evening. Mail that arrived 

at the office or that was posted in the morning was stamped 

with the time set to 6:00 am in the center of the dial. After the 

morning mail went out, the time plugs were changed to read 

11:00 am on both stamps. Once the afternoon mail went out, 

the time plugs were set to the end of the business day, 6:00 pm. 

Thus, each row of six stamp impressions represents one day of 

business, with impressions of two stamps for each of the three 

units of time. 

Figure 2 displays a detail from the pages of the Milford 

postmark record book. The year plug on the receiving postmark 

has been inserted in such a way as to leave a blurred impression. 

Though this error must have been obvious to the postmaster, the 

year plug remained blurred through the first five months of 1911. 

Also, although the year stamp was changed to 1911 from 1910 

on the first business day of 1911, the year was set back to 1910 

on the posting stamp for the rest of the days in the first week of 

the new year. These and other errors, only one corrected with 

a hand strike from a pen, display a caviler attitude on the part 

of the postmaster to the accuracy of his postmarking stamps. 

Almost 20% of the postmarks in the Milford record book are 

in error. The same is true of the Trego postmark records, which 

were kept in the unused pages of an old “Millers”-style account 

book. The Trego records display many upside-down numbers 

and incorrectly set date, time, and month plugs. Furthermore, 

the marks from many days when the office was in operation are 

missing. The error rate in the Trego book is about 10%. The 

abundance of errors in these records support the contention of 

Richard Helbock that “unlike stamp collecting, where an inverted design causes great excitement, inverted dates, or portions 

of dates, are rather common in postmarks.”10

The loose-leaf postmarking records recovered from an archaeological investigation of the trash from a building that once 

housed the Fondis, Colorado, post office are very different in 

this regard.11 Only three errors have been detected in over 3,366 

postmarks impressed on 1,122 sheets of paper, and the postmaster corrected one of these errors (an incorrect date) by hand. This 

accuracy is surely due to the diligence and care of the postmaster, 

but it may also owe much to the way these sheets were used. 

Besides simply impressing stamps on these sheets, the postmaster 

used them to record the actual times of the arrival and departure 

of mail, the identity of the carrier, business conditions, and a running tally of the value of stamps cancelled by the office each day. 

They were not just an artifact to be stored and produced in the 

case of inspection; they were a vital accounting tool to be used in 

the preparation of quarterly reports. 
number 56 • 9 7

Fondis was a small, rural “post office town” founded in 1897 

to serve homesteading dairy farmers. In 1920, 348 people resided 

in 78 households. Its population fell to 280 people in 58 households in 1940. This depopulation continued until the post office 

was closed in 1954. The building in which it was housed was abandoned in 1969 and has remained unoccupied ever since. Looters 

and vandals have removed all personal effects and furnishings, but 

the paper trash left behind was preserved by the arid climate of the 

high plains of eastern Colorado. This trash contained a wide collection of postal documents and forms, including money order receipts, registered mail tags, official correspondence, and loose-leaf 

postmarking records. Twenty-eight sheets have been recovered 

from the years 1920 and 1921 and five from 1931. Twenty-one 

sheets survive from 1953 and 1954. But fully 1,068 sheets have 

been recovered from the years 1941 through 1945. 

The postmaster at Fondis during the decades in which the 

forms in Figure 3 were produced was Charles Newton Tripp. His 

tenure was from 1916 through 1934. His postmarking records 

evolved over time to accommodate changes in the mail carrier’s 

route. Those from the 1920s contain one outgoing mail postmark, impressed in the top left corner in black ink. This circular 

date stamp includes the time designation, am, at its center. The 

contract granted for carrying the mail at that time specified that 

the carrier should leave from Fondis at 7:00 am and arrive in 

the town of Elbert by 11:30, a distance of 15 miles. The return 

trip was scheduled out of Elbert at 1:40 pm to arrive back in 

Fondis by 5:40.12 These times were sufficient to admit travel by 

horse over poorly maintained dirt roads. Since the carrier was 

not likely to return until after business hours, there was no need 

to reset the postmarking stamp during the day; hence, only one 

FIGURE 1. Postmarking records. (left) Milford, Iowa, record book. Source: Milford (Iowa) Post Office Documents, American Philatelic Research Library, Bellefonte, Pa. (right) Fondis, Colorado, loose-leaf records. From the collection of Erick Lee Erickson.
9 8 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

primary postmark was impressed on the sheet. All mail postmarked on that day was dispatched to Elbert the next morning. 

The office’s money order business postmark is impressed in the 

top right corner in red ink, and the stamp that was used to date 

received mail is recorded in the bottom center of the sheet, also 

in red ink. These sheets include three columns of handwritten 

numbers, one beneath each stamp impression.

Only six sheets have been recovered from the 1930s, but 

they show significant differences from those of the 1920s. The 

primary postmarking stamp has been changed. Its font is different, and the spacing is wider between letters. These sheets contain two postmarks. The stamp impressed on the top left registers 

the hour of 9 am and that on the right 11 am. The department 

had changed the terms of the delivery contract to specify that 

mail was to be carried by automobile when “road and weather 

permitted.” Also, the pattern of carriage now accommodated 

railroad timetables. The carrier was to leave from Elbert daily 

after the mail train arrived from Denver at about 10:45 am and 

arrive in Fondis in 1.25 hours, where he would drop off the mail 

to that office and pick up any from it, leaving within a half hour 

after arriving. Mail that arrived at the Fondis post office before 

the daily dispatch to Elbert bore the 9 am postmark. Mail that 

came in after the carrier left was cancelled with the 11 am stamp 

and was dispatched on the next business day. On these sheets, 

the money order business mark is impressed in red in the top 

center beneath the postmarks, and a red date stamp followed by 

the designation REC, which was used to stamp received mail, 

is fixed at the lower center of each sheet. Like those from the 

1920s, the sheets from the 1930s include three sets of handwritten numbers, one beneath each cancel and one at the lower right. 

The numbers beneath each postmark may denote the value of 

stamps cancelled with each mark. The pair of numbers recorded 

on the bottom left side of the sheet must represent the actual arrival and departure times of the carrier. In the example shown in 

Figure 3, the carrier arrived at 9:29 am and departed at 9:54 am. 

Charles Newton Tripp kept a check on the celerity and certainty 

of the carrier. These records would be useful to him in making up 

reports on the performance of star route contractors.

FIGURE 2. Detail of the Milford postmark records. Source: Milford (Iowa) Post Office Documents, 

American Philatelic Research Library, Bellefonte, Pa.
number 56 • 9 9

This is confirmed by the large number of sheets recovered 

from the 1940s. They are separate pages of paper 8 cm wide and 

11 cm high (31⁄8 in by 41⁄4 in.). They show no traces of gum along 

their edges. They were never bound but may have been stored 

in envelopes or boxes. The paper quality resembles newsprint. 

It is thin, brown, and has yellowed with age. One thousand and 

sixty-eight daily postmarking sheets from the years between 

1941 and 1945 have been recovered from the Fondis post office 

building. No sheets have been found from the first six months of 

1941. Sheets are also missing for the entire months of November 1942, March 1943, and October 1943. It may be that the 

records of these months were removed, disposed, or lost. In the 

fifty-one months represented in this collection, there were 1,324 

potential business days. This means that 77% of the records produced over this period of time have been recovered and analyzed. 

See Figure 4.

These records were produced by a different postmaster, 

Newton’s sister, Mary Tripp, who operated the office from 1934 

until 1954. Her loose-leaf impressions, though, are similar to 

those her brother kept in the 1930s. However, a big change had 

occurred in the manner in which the office was served. The mail 

contract for this period specified that the carrier was to “leave 

Elbert on receipt of mail from train at 9:45 but not later than 

11:30” and “arrive at Fondis in 11⁄4 hours.”13 The Colorado 

and Southern Railroad, which served Elbert, had changed their 

schedule from the last star route contract. Now, mail would be 

expected in Fondis at about 11:00 am. An imprint of the postmark with the type slugs on the device set to the current day 

and the time of dispatch set to 10:00 am is stamped in the top 

left corner of each form. Another black ink impression of the 

postmark with the same date but with the time set to 11:00 am is 

stamped on the top right corner. These sheets also contain an impression of the money order cancellation stamp of the office, set 

to the current date and pressed in red ink onto the middle of the 

form, below the stamp cancellation impressions. This imprint 

is made in red ink. This stamp has the month and day (but not 

a time-of-day mark) in its center and the specification “Fondis. 

Colo. M.O.B.” (money order business) on the dial. This impression has also been found on money order receipts that have been 

recovered from the trash in the building. A red day, date, and 

FIGURE 3. Fondis, Colorado, postmarking records from the 1920s and 1930s. From the collection of Erick Lee Erickson.
100 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

year stamp used for received mail is pressed on the lower center 

of each sheet. There are instances in which this stamp’s date or 

month was initially impressed in error and was later corrected by 

hand. Several sheets have multiple identical rubber stamp marks.

In the lower right-hand corner of the obverse side of each 

sheet are two time notations, one listed above the other. The first 

time represents the actual time of the arrival of the daily mail 

from the post office at Elbert, Colorado. The second time is the 

actual time at which the carrier left Fondis to return to Elbert. 

The average of the actual arrival time over 1,068 days is 11:30 

am. The carrier’s departure occurs, on average, 13 minutes later. 

Occasionally, other notes are added to these sheets near the register of actual arrival and dispatch times. These include initials 

or names of the mail carrier. Four carriers are identified in the 

recovered forms: J. H. Ehlers, Paul E., Mrs. J. H., and H. A. 

Eichoff. The last name, H. A. Eichoff, appears only once in December 1945. Although no names were recorded in 1941 and 

only a few were recorded in 1942, by 1944 and 1945, all sheets 

identified the mail carrier. 

A few sheets betray some uncertainty about the identity of 

the carrier. One records “Mr. or Mrs. J. H.” Another adds a 

question mark behind the name, “Mrs. J. H.?”. It may be the 

case that, on occasion, the carrier just dropped the mail bag off 

on the porch and sped away without meeting the postmaster, 

leaving her to guess his or her identity. Whatever the case, these 

records show an impersonal relationship between this postmaster and mail carrier.

Sometimes notes about road conditions, weather, and holidays are written on the forms, but these are infrequent. Only 100 

such notes have been found in over 1,000 forms. Nonetheless, 

they provide compelling proof that the time registers are indeed 

mail arrival and departure times. When notes of conditions that 

would likely delay mail delivery are included, the time entries are 

much later than average. On days when road conditions impeded 

the delivery of mail, the first time recorded on the forms averages 

one hour and eleven minutes later than the time recorded under 

normal conditions. On days when conditions were so bad that 

the mail could not get through, there is no time entry at all. Conclusive proof that these numbers record the actual time of mail 

arrival and departure is provided by a unique postmark record 

sheet shown in Figure 5.

The form shown in Figure 5 contains typical arrival and 

departure times, 11:29 and 11:35 in the morning. But, the note 

“no sack” is added and another pair of times is reported beneath 

the original register. When letter carrier J. H. Ehlers arrived at 

11:29 am, he discovered that he had left the Elbert post office 

FIGURE 4. Fondis, Colorado, postmarking records from the 1940s. From the collection of Erick Lee Erickson.
number 56 • 101

without the sack of mail destined for Fondis. He must have returned to Elbert, retrieved the misplaced sack, and took it with 

him back to Fondis. This would have been a one-hour round 

trip. The second pair of times recorded (12:23 and 12:39 pm) 

are one hour later than the first. This is the only form in the 

collection that shows two sets of time, and it is the only one 

to indicate an error in mail delivery. It verifies the assumption 

that these numbers are the actual times of mail delivery and 

departure. It also testifies to the celerity and certainty of rural 

mail service.

One of the most remarkable features of these postmarking 

record sheets is the columns of handwritten numbers that appear beneath each postmark impression. These sheets provided 

a convenient and obvious place for a postmaster to record daily 

business data. One of the most important bits of data to the 

postmaster was the value of stamps that she cancelled and admitted to the mail because her salary depended on cancellations. 

Postmasters of the fourth class were not admitted to the civil 

service and received no paycheck. Instead, the Post Office Department allowed them to keep a part of the money they earned 

from the sale of those stamps. The amount they were allowed to 

keep depended on the amount of stamps they cancelled at their 

office and increased at a diminishing rate. Postmasters submitted 

quarterly reports of their cancellations and, in the 1920s, could 

keep all of the first $80 of stamps that they cancelled plus 60% 

of the next $100, 50% of the $200 beyond that, and 40% of 

anything above $380 of cancellations. This pay scale was capped 

at a maximum salary of $250 a quarter, but most postmasters 

earned far less. Only small offices that cancelled less than $80 

worth of stamps in a quarter kept all of their cancellations. A 

postmaster that cancelled $175, for example, could only keep 

$137 of that in pay. A fourth-class office had to cancel about 

$364 of stamps in a quarter before its postmaster could top out 

at a maximum pay of $250. Beyond that, the office would be 

reclassified, and postmaster pay would fall under the civil service 

system and remain divorced from business activity. 

This declining pay scale assured that the fourth-class office 

system would be sustainable. Beyond $80 a quarter, the department got a cut of cancellations, but even at low rates of business, 

the postmaster could not earn more than he or she contributed 

to the mail. As long as postmasters at small offices were content with meager incomes from postal business, the office could 

continue to operate without contributing to postal deficits. So, 

many fourth-class offices were operated by merchants in their 

stores primarily as a way to attract customers. Those that relied 

on the office for their sole source of income became increasingly 

disgruntled. They complained that the amount of mail they cancelled represented only a small amount of the work they did in 

the course of their business, the bulk of which was taken up in 

handling incoming mail. The National League of District Postmasters commissioned a study in the 1920s that concluded the 

ratio of incoming to outgoing mail at fourth-class offices was 

nine to one.14 Postmasters also complained that the star route 

carriers who served their offices were paid more and worked less. 

Ellen Ramsey, the postmaster from Botna, Iowa, complained in 

1928 that “to be paid in the present almost prehistoric fashion 

seems to me, is a hard slap at the business ability of those who fix 

the manner and content of our compensation.”15

Congress responded in 1932 by relaxing the salary scale so 

that postmasters of the fourth class enjoyed salaries greater than 

the amount of stamps they cancelled. “On the first $75 or less 

per quarter the postmaster shall be allowed 160 per centum on 

the amount; on the next $100 or less per quarter, 85 per centum; 

and on all the balance, 75 per centum.”16 Under this generous 

scale, a postmaster that cancelled $175 would earn about $205, 

and it now took less business activity to maximize postmaster 

salary and trigger reclassification. A postmaster that cancelled 

$269 of stamps would now earn $275, the maximum allowed 

per quarter under this scale. “This high [initial] percentage of 

commissions . . . was fixed by Congress because these offices are 

largely distributing offices for incoming mail. The postmaster receives compensation on stamps cancelled on mail dispatched, but 

nothing on mail received for delivery.”17 Unfortunately for postmasters, this generous scale was simultaneously reduced by the 

Revenue Act of 1932 (which increased postage on first-class mail) 

to apply to only 85% of a postmaster’s cancellations.18 With one 

FIGURE 5. An error in mail delivery. From the collection of Erick 

Lee Erickson.
102 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

hand, Congress granted postmasters what they wanted. With the 

other, Congress took some of it away. Under this amended scale, 

a postmaster who cancelled $175 would earn $175. Postmasters 

who cancelled less than $175 would enjoy a subsidy; those who 

cancelled more would contribute part of their cancellations to 

the department (see Figure 6). The result was described by Representative Cochran of Missouri as “a very complicated system 

which nobody thoroughly understands. The system causes a 

great many honest errors in accounting.”19

Postal accounting was not only complicated, it was also inadequate throughout the first half of the twentieth century. A 

contemporary economics textbook observed in 1939 that “the 

United States Post Office does not have a system of cost accounting such as is considered essential in any up-to-date private enterprise.”20 The Post Office Department was more concerned 

with the flow of mail than the flow of cash. Department officials 

consistently resisted efforts to adopt modern methods. As late 

as 1950, Postmaster General Jesse Donaldson ridiculed a congressional claim that the incentive and productivity features of 

modern accounting could potentially save the department more 

than $25 million. “If we threw all our books and records into 

the river and maintained no accounts at all, it would be most 

optimistic to think that we could save in excess of 25 million. It 

does not cost us that much now to perform all our accounting 

functions.”21 One reason why accounting costs were low was 

that the department outsourced its fourth-class accounting to the 

Treasury Department and the General Accounting Office of the 

U.S. Congress. 

The Treasury printed and issued stamps and collected all the 

revenue from their sale. When a fourth class office was opened, 

the Department issued it a “fixed credit” of stamps. Postmasters 

were required to maintain this inventory by buying stamps directly from the Treasury to replace what they sold. They accounted for their stamp stock in their quarterly reports, but they 

did not remit revenue from stamp sales to the Post Office Department. Postmasters reported as “revenue” only the income 

the office earned from sales of money orders, stamped cards and 

envelopes, wastepaper, and twine, and box rents. Only “surplus” 

revenues in excess of the postmaster’s quarterly salary allowance 

were remitted to the General Accounting Office and only then 

if the surplus exceeded fifty dollars. If an office had less revenue 

during a quarter than its commission from stamp cancellations, 

the Post Office Department issued a warrant check to the postmaster to cover the difference.

This system balanced stamp sales with stamp revenue at the 

Treasury, but left the Post Office Department to balance nonstamp revenue with postmaster pay. To do this, the Department 

required postmasters to keep separate accounts or estimates of 

stamp cancellations. Fortunately, the difference between stamp 

sales and stamp cancellations was not likely to be very large at 

most rural offices. Some patrons might buy stamps at one office and mail them at another. Some might buy stamps and use 

them to pay fees or buy merchandise, never entering them in the 

mail. “In the ordinary course of business, the sales at fourth class 

offices should usually exceed the cancellations from 10 to 15 

percent.”22 With the margin of error so small, the Post Office Department allowed postmasters the option to either keep an actual 

account of the amount of stamps they cancelled or to prepare 

instead a “report made up from the amount of stamps sold.”23

This approximation, which Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield later called “stamp accounting,”24 was a cheap, simple, and 

efficient system, but it could be abused. An unscrupulous postmaster could profit by ordering more stamps than his or her office could use and profit by selling the excess at a discount while 

inflating the reports of cancellations to hide the deception. It was 

also possible to artificially increase cancellations so as to increase 

compensation. The department admitted that excessive cancellations could be due to “the mailing of large quantities of matter, 

probably circulars, sent in bulk by express or other conveyance 

from another place with the purpose of giving the postmaster the 

benefit of commissions authorized by law.”25

By the end of the nineteenth century, the Post Office Department considered “the fraudulent practices resorted to by 

many postmasters at fourth-class offices to unduly increase their 

compensation have become a great evil; they are growing and 

spreading, and unless effectually checked they will result in serious losses to the postal revenue.”26 As a check against such 

malfeasance, the department authorized its postal inspectors 

to investigate postmasters suspected of “having made false returns of the cancellation of postage stamps.”27 Inspectors were 

to surreptitiously count outgoing cancellations for one month 

and then compare their actual count with the record kept by the 

postmaster. The inspector was instructed to “ascertain by careful 

inquiry whether the record of cancellations kept in the post office 

is the result of an actual count or whether it has been made up 

FIGURE 6. Cancellations and postmaster pay.
number 56 • 103

from the amount of stamps sold.”28 In 1936, the department had 

about 5,000 complaints against postmasters of the fourth class 

for alleged padding.29

The threat of inspection created an incentive for fourthclass postmasters to keep actual records of the stamps that they 

cancelled on file at their offices. Still, the department did not 

require that they keep an actual count until the 1940s, and it 

never required them to submit those records to its central or district offices. Postmasters merely had to keep them on file at the 

office and could dispose of them after three years. Those postmasters who did keep an actual tally would only submit monthly 

sums of their cancellations in quarterly reports. Short of an 

inspector’s audit, there would be no way to tell if those sums 

represented actual accounts or estimates based on stamp sales. 

Also, the quarterly reports that were submitted to the department have since been destroyed. The department periodically 

removed microscale business records from the National Archives 

and disposed of them, saving only a few years’ worth of data 

compiled from the quarterly reports of individual offices. Modern researchers can only find data on “receipts” of individual 

fourth-class offices for the years 1923–24 and 1943–48. Receipts 

included stamp sales, box rentals, and sales of twine and paper. 

Neither the National Archives nor the National Postal Museum 

Library of the Smithsonian has an actual record of stamp cancellations in its collection. Historical archeology has been criticized 

as “an expensive way to find out what we already know,”30 but 

detailed cancellation records can now only be found through historical archaeology.

In a letter to the editor of the Postmasters Advocate in 1929, 

Postmaster S. C. Watkins advised his colleagues that “the same 

pad or book in which to take the daily impressions of the postmarking stamp may be used for recording the cancellations of 

outgoing matter.”31 Newton Tripp may have initiated this practice on his own and passed the system on to his sister, Mary, with 

whom he lived, but regardless of how she came to the practice, 

she obviously recorded her cancellations on these postmarking 

records. Figure 7 displays a representative sheet from the Fondis 

records.

None of the recovered forms contains a key to the nature of 

these numbers. Although they are in decimal units and are consistent with dollar values, no dollar or cent sign is recorded next 

to any number on any sheet. This supports the interpretation 

of the numbers as records of cancelled postage. Cancellations 

were not revenue to the office. They were, instead, a measure 

FIGURE 7. Cancellations tallied on Fondis, Colorado, postmarking record sheets: (left) obverse and (right) reverse. From the 

collection of Erick Lee Erickson.
104 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

of the office’s marginal product, the contribution of that office 

to the stream of U.S. mail. It is therefore not surprising to find 

no indication of currency value. These numbers account for the 

postmaster’s outgo, not her income. 

Beneath the postmarks, starting on either side of the money 

order stamp and running in columns down each side of the sheet, 

are series of numbers recorded by hand, usually in pencil. The 

numbers in the two columns are usually whole numbers, but occasionally a decimal point is introduced. When more than one 

entry is listed in the column beneath the 10 am mark on the 

left-hand side of the form, a sum is struck below the entries. This 

sum is repeated as the last entry before the addition strike bar 

in the column beneath the 11 am mark on the right-hand side. 

A sum total is recorded at the bottom of the right column that 

represents the total of all stamps cancelled on that day. 

On the top of the reverse side of each sheet is another tally 

of three numbers. The first is the total value of transactions in 

this month preceding the date of the sheet; the second is the sum 

total of postage sold on that day, which is the total from the bottom of the right-hand column on the front side. The third number, beneath a strike mark, is the sum of the two numbers above 

and represents a running total of monthly postage cancelled by 

the Fondis post office to that date.

Whole numbers are usually entered on the front of these 

forms, but the running total on the back always includes decimal 

points. It appears that transactions are typically entered in pennies on the front but are routinely converted to units of one hundred on the reverse. One half of a cent values are often recorded. 

A document discovered in the trash left behind in the old building verifies that domestic postage rates on second-class mail of 

books, catalogs, seeds, cuttings, bulbs, roots, scions, and plants 

was 11⁄2¢ for every two ounces.32 Newton Tripp operated a mailorder business in dahlia bulbs throughout the 1930s and 1940s, 

so these indications could have been records of his mailings.33 Or 

they could represent 11⁄2¢ third-class mailings of holiday greeting 

cards sent with no messages in unsealed envelopes. In either case, 

the appearance of half cent transactions strongly suggests that 

the tallies on these forms include records of cancelled postage. 

“No mail” is occasionally written beneath a postmark on 

these sheets. Usually, a handwritten note is included to describe 

inclement weather or bad road conditions. Sometimes, this notation is made beneath both postmarks on a sheet. On these occasions, there is no daily total of business activity and the previous 

day’s total is repeated on the back of the form. On days when the 

carrier was stopped by bad weather, there are no reports of the 

arrival and departure times. No mail does not mean no business, 

for on several no-mail days, cancellations are recorded beneath 

one or more postmarks, usually the 11 am mark. On holidays, 

the notation “No mail Holiday” is recorded beneath the 10 am

mark. It is a testimony to the certainty of mail service that the 

Fondis post office was open for business on holidays because 

cancellations are often recorded on holidays even though no mail 

was delivered or dispatched. In another instance, “no mail Holiday” is written beneath the 10 am postmark, and “no mail roads 

blown full” is below the 11 am mark. No cancellations were 

recorded on that day. Even though the office remained open for 

business, the bad storm could have kept patrons away. 

One sheet from 18 February 1944 has the word “papers” 

written before the first entry beneath the 11 am postmark. Another has “parcel” before the first number. A receipt from the 

Christmas season mailing rush of 1943 has the notations “airpkg” and “pkg” attached to the first two entries beneath the 10 

am postmark. Only a dozen sheets with “p,” “pp,” and “pkg” 

notes have been recovered. These notes support the case that the 

numbers represent the value of postage cancelled, for they delineate the type of mail posted, packages and parcel post. The numbers next to the notes must be the value of the stamps cancelled 

on the packages because they are not avoirdupois units and thus 

cannot represent the weight of the parcels.

The postmark record sheets recovered from the 1950s differ from those of all the earlier decades in one significant way. 

They contain no handwritten numbers or notes (Figure 8). Congress changed the rules of postmaster pay in 1945. Acting on 

a long-standing demand from postmasters, it altered the pay 

scale so that compensation depended on office revenues instead 

of cancellations.34 By the 1950s, cancellations no longer mattered to fourth-class postmasters. The lack of any notes on forms 

from the 1950s proves that notes from the 1940s are records 

FIGURE 8. Fondis, Colorado, postmark records from the 1950s. 

From the collection of Erick Lee Erickson.
number 56 • 105

of cancellations. Mary Trip still had to maintain postmarking records in the 1950s, but no longer needed to record her 

cancellations.

The daily value of the stamps cancelled by Mary Tripp for 

the years 1941–45, as gleaned from her Fondis postmark records, are displayed in Figure 9. The average amount of stamps 

she cancelled during these years amounted to about 88¢ per day. 

There is a clear peak in postal activity in December of each year 

from Christmas card and gift mailing, when the daily volume of 

mail more than doubled. Cancellations during December averaged $1.71 per day, whereas they averaged only about 78¢ per 

day for the rest of the year. Figure 9 displays these comparisons.

On the basis of these data, total cancellations during this 

period can be estimated to be about $267 per year.35 Although 

this business activity was modest, it was very consistent. Outside 

of Christmastime, there was little variation in daily cancellations, 

as illustrated in Figure 9 and the standard deviations reported in 

Table 1. Note that during the first eleven months of the year, the 

standard deviation in daily cancellations was less than one-half 

of the average. Business was remarkably predictable.

The Post Office Department did not retain records of fourthclass postal accounts. Archivist Arthur Hecht inventoried the 

postal material deposited in the National Archives and Records 

Administration (NARA) in 1959 and reported that “the relatively small volume of extant records . . . is accounted for by the 

fact that the Post Office department has taken advantage of an 

act of 1881 . . . and later acts, which provide for the disposition 

of useless papers. . . . The tendency has been to retain records in 

summary form and dispose of detailed records regarding individual offices.”36 In the case of the accounts of fourth-class post 

offices, even the summary records are incomplete. As a result, 

we have no official records of cancellations or postmaster pay 

to compare with those recovered from the archaeological dig at 

Fondis. The NARA does possess a postmasters salary record that 

reports receipts by quarter for the Fondis post office for 1943, 

1944, and 1945, even though it does not define what is included 

as receipts. When the recovered cancellations are compared to 

NARA records, as in Table 2, it is clear that what the Post Office 

Department recorded as receipts falls far short of what Mary 

Tripp recorded as cancellations. Because she kept a running total 

of cancellations on the reverse of each sheet, it is possible to construct fairly accurate quarterly totals.

The NARA data on “receipts” record income from the sales 

of money orders and money order fees, sales of stamped paper, 

FIGURE 9. The daily volume of stamps cancelled at Fondis, Colorado.

TABLE 1. Christmas cancellations verses the rest of the year.

Average daily Standard

Season cancellation deviation

All 0.879 0.634

December 1.712 1.337

January–November 0.777 0.375
106 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

waste paper, and twine, and box rents. Cash books from a contemporary fourth class office in Colorado reveal that the primary 

source of receipts for an office of this size would have been the 

revenue generated from money order sales.37 Receipts do not include income from stamp sales. As discussed previously, fourth 

class offices purchased stamps with cash directly from the U.S. 

Treasury. It is striking to note that this fourth class post office 

earned considerably less revenue in the form of official receipts 

than the commission its postmaster was paid, which was based 

on the value of the stamps that she cancelled. This means that 

the Department had to supplement Mary’s salary with warrant 

checks drawn on the Treasury every quarter in the early 1940s. 

Table 3 distills the data recovered from the Fondis cancellation 

records and the NARA data on receipts and compensation from 

Table 2 into comparable fiscal years.

The fourth-class post office at Fondis operated at a loss to 

the Department during the 1940s. Of course, fourth-class post 

offices were not expected to generate profits. Nor, for that matter, did Congress require mail delivery to cover its costs. It provided mail as a service to the nation. The Post Office Department 

operated at a deficit in almost every year of its existence, except 

during times of war when the military covered the cost of transporting the mail.38 Congress had decided to subsidize the mail 

in order to diffuse knowledge, create a bond of union, and serve 

local constituents. By the time of World War II, it had become 

clear to politicians that “the people first wanted service from 

their Post Office and afterward a balanced postal budget, if possible.”39 In calendar year 1945, the total deficit of the Post Office Department was $24 million. The Fondis Office contributed 

from $100 to $200 to that deficit, depending on whether we 

account for the marginal product or marginal revenue of the office. Mary Tripp earned about $100 more that the value of mail 

she entered into the system and about $200 more than she sold 

in stamps and services. Add to that the salary of Paul Ehlers, the 

star route carrier who supplied the office with mail on a $660 per 

year contract, and the annual deficit to operate this office could 

have been on the order of $800 (about $15 per household) in the 

early 1940s.

The Fondis postmarking records provide a unique insight 

into the certainty and celerity of service provided by a fourth-class 

TABLE 2. Actual cancellations, estimated postmaster pay, and reported receipts at Fondis, Colorado. NARA, National Archives and 

Records Administration.

Cancellations Commission on 85% Receipts

Fiscal End month from postmark of cancels at from NARA

year Quarter of quarter records 1940 scale records

1941 1 September 1941 $45.78 $62.26

1941 2 December 1941 $65.61 $89.23

1941 3 March 1942 $46.04 $62.61

1941 4 June 1942 $51.94 $70.63

1942 1 September 1942 $52.52 $71.42

1942 2 December 1942 $68.81 $93.57

1942 3 March 1943 $44.05 $59.91 $34.08

1942 4 June 1943 $59.75 $81.25

1943 1 September 1943 $56.68 $77.08 $34.65

1943 2 December 1943 $62.81 $85.42 $52.86

1943 3 March 1944 $61.63 $83.82 $36.00

1943 4 June 1944 $72.03 $97.96 $35.00

1944 1 September 1944 $74.97 $101.95 $48.00

1944 2 December 1944 $77.77 $105.76 $65.00

1944 3 March 1945 $68.76 $93.51 $32.00

1944 4 July 1945 $65.13 $88.58 $36.00

1945 1 September 1945 $58.81 $79.98 $34.00

1945 2 December 1945 $67.03 $91.15 $59.00

TABLE 3. Data from Table 2 distilled to comparable fiscal years.

Fiscal Commission

year Cancellations Commission Receipts

1943 $253.15 $344.28 $158.51

1944 $286.62 $389.90 $181.00
number 56 • 107

post office in the early twentieth century. Even though business 

was slight, it was constant. Barely a day went by when patrons 

did not post some letters or packages. There is only one day on 

record for which the post office was open and no stamps were 

cancelled. On every other receipt, even those for holidays and 

days on which the mail could not be delivered, there are recorded 

cancellations. On 17 July 1943, for example, only one sale of 6¢ 

(perhaps two first-class letter stamps) was made all day. Even 

though the earnings of this post office were meager, it provided 

consistent and prompt daily service to its patrons. Furthermore, 

these cancellations underestimate total activity at the office because it is likely that people came to check their mail even when 

they had nothing to post. Mary Trip lived at the beck and call 

of her patrons.

The need to provide certainty and celerity shaped post office business practices. These practices produced documents that 

describe the business life of postmasters like Mary Tripp. Her 

postmarking records gave her physical proof of her commitment 

to duty. The cancellations she wrote on the records document 

her contribution to postal output, and the actual delivery and 

dispatch times that she recorded on these records provided her 

with a check against the celerity of the mail carrier. This was 

probably the most important function of the documents to Mary 

Tripp, for the vast majority of miscellaneous notes she added to 

her postmarking records dealt with the performance of the mail 

carrier. One personal letter recovered from the trash of her office 

reveals that she took special pride in the celerity and certainty 

of her service and held that of mail carriers in contempt. She 

complained to a relative who was also a fourth-class postmaster of what she thought was unfair treatment by the department 

and closed her letter with an ironic reference to her loose-leaf 

postmarking records. “Jesse drove extra mileage without extra 

pay, then when returned to regular, tried deducting pay for same 

mileage, also he carried long while, months, I believe, before getting check. At another time, Denver carriers’ time changed twice 

from contract. My scraps of paper, huh?”40

NOTES

1. Daniel C. Roper, The United States Post Office (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1917), 98.

2. John Steele Gordon, An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American 

Economic Power (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 235.

3. Roper, United States Post Office, 114.

4. Post Office Department, Instructions to Postmasters of the Fourth Class,

1948, 252.

5. Frank C. Walker, Postal Laws and Regulations of the United States of 

America, Edition of 1940 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1941), 363.

6. Milford (Iowa) Post Office Documents, Postmark (Circular Date Stamp) 

Record Book, American Philatelic Research Library, Bellefonte, Pa. 

7. Private collection of Robert Horn.

8. Private collection of Ken Florey.

9. Wayne Fuller, The Post Office: Enlarger of the Common Life (Chicago: 

University of Chicago Press, 1972), 178.

10. Richard C. Helbock, Postmarks on Postcards: An Illustrated Guide to Early 

20th Century U.S. Postmarks (Scappoose, Or.: La Posta Publications, 1987), 14. 

11. From the personal collection of the author.

12. Post Office Department, Advertisement for Carrying the Mails, booklet 

(Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1902).

13. Post Office Department, Advertisement for Carrying the Mails, booklet 

(Washington D.C.: GPO, 1938).

14. House Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads, Hearings on 

Fourth-Class Postmasters’ Salaries, 74th Cong., 2d sess., 1936, 5. 

15. Ellen Ramsey, The Postmasters Advocate, 33, no. 7 (January 1928): 218.

16. Postal Laws and Regulations of the United States of America, Edition 

of 1940, 197.

17. House Committee, Postmasters Salaries, 2.

18. House Committee, Postmasters Salaries, 2.

19. House Committee, Postmasters Salaries, 2.

20. Fred Rogers Fairchild, Elementary Economics (New York: Macmillan 

Co., 1939), 143.

21. Jesse Donaldson, The Postmasters Advocate, 57, no. 5 (November 

1950): 58.

22. Post Office Department, “Instructions to Postmasters,” United States Official Postal Guide (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1899), 18.

23. Instructions to Postmasters, 1899, 19.

24. Arthur E. Summerfield, U.S. Mail: The Story of the United States Postal 

Service (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960), 222.

25. Post Office Department, “Instructions to Post Office Inspectors,” United 

States Official Postal Guide (Washington D.C.: GPO, 1889), 70.

26. Instructions to Post Office Inspectors, 1889, 72.

27. Instructions to Post Office Inspectors, 1889, 76.

28. Instructions to Post Office Inspectors, 1889, 69.

29. House Committee, Postmasters Salaries, 8.

30. James Deets, In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life (New York: Doubleday, 1977).

31. J. C. Watkins, The Postmaster’s Advocate, 34, no. 8 (February 1929): 

247.

32. Post Office Department, Domestic Postal Rates Effective 1 January 1949

(Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1949).

33. Terry Blevins, Our Heritage, A Collection of Tales of East Central Colorado (Burlington Record Printing, 1984),47.

34. House Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads, Hearings on 

Fourth-Class Postmasters Salaries, 74th Cong., 2d sess., 1936; 77th Cong., 1st 

sess., 1940; 79th Cong., 1st sess., 1945.

35. This is based on 312 business days per year, with 27 in December and 285 

during the rest of the year. Estimated annual cancellations=27×1.712+285×0.777 

=46.244+221.45=267.669.

36. Arthur Hecht, Preliminary Inventory of the Records of the Bureaus of 

the Third and Fourth Assistant Postmasters General, Preliminary Inventories 114 

(Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1959), 2.

37. Paoil, Colorado cash books, 1941–1945, collection of Marilyn Miller.

38. Gerald Cullinan, The Post Office Department (New York: Praeger, 

1968), 156.

39. Fuller, Post Office, 178.

40. Personal letter from the author’s collection. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Blevins, Terry. Our Heritage: A Collection of Tales of East Central Colorado. Burlington, Col.: Burlington Record Printing, 1984.

Cullinan, Gerald. The Post Office Department. New York: Praeger, 1968.

Deets, James. In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life. 

New York: Doubleday, 1977.

Furnas, J. C. The Americans: A Social History of the United States 1587–1914. 

New York: G. P. Putnam’s and Sons, 1969.

Gordon, John Steele. An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power. New York: HarperCollins, 2004.

Hecht, Arthur. Preliminary Inventory of the Records of the Bureaus of the Third 

and Fourth Assistant Postmasters General. Preliminary Inventories 114. 

Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1959.

Helbock, Richard C. Postmarks on Postcards. Scappoose, Or.: La Posta Publications, 1987.

Gebhart, Margee. Elbert County History. Dallas, Tex.: Curtis Media, 1989.

Milford (Iowa) Post Office Documents, Postmark (Circular Date Stamp) Record 

Book. American Philatelic Research Library, Bellefonte, Pa.
108 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

National Archives and Records Administration. “Post Office Receipts and Salaries 

of Postmasters, 1945–1956.” Record Group 28.

Ramsey, Ellen. The Postmasters Advocate, 33, no. 7 (1 July 1928):218.

Roper, Daniel C. The U.S. Post Office. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1917.

Scheele, Carl H. A Short History of the Mail Service. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1970.

Summerfield, Arthur E. U.S. Mail: The Story of the United States Postal Service. 

New York: Holt, Reinheart and Winston, 1960.

U.S. Congress. House. Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads. Hearings on 

Fourth-Class Postmasters’ Salaries. 74th Cong., 2d sess., 1936.

U.S. Post Office Department. Advertisement for Carrying the Mails. Booklet. Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1902.

———. Instructions to Postmasters of the Fourth Class. 1948.

Walker, Frank C. Postal Laws and Regulations of the United States of America, 

Edition of 1940. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1941.
“Live Chicks” Require First Class Treatment: 

The U.S. Special Handling Service

Robert G. Rufe

The Special Handling service was introduced in 1925 and flourished through the 

middle of the twentieth century, according fourth-class mail—parcels generally in 

excess of 4 oz. and up to 70 lb.—the speed and urgency of first-class mail service.

Special Handling: Forerunner of Priority Mail

One of the most popular and well-recognized services of the U.S. Postal Service 

today is Priority Mail, which moves parcels by air or surface, whichever is faster for the 

distance covered. Although Special Handling has never been viewed as a forerunner to 

Priority Mail in the philatelic community, its importance to commerce and industry during its heyday, 1925–68, was significant. 

Not long after the advent of Parcel Post in 1913, farmers began shipping day-old 

chicks and queen bees, among other “lives” (the Post Office’s term for live animals), 

through the mails. At first, there was little effort given to moving these parcels with any 

greater urgency than normally accorded Parcel Post, and such goods languished with the 

“time and space available” protocol normally given this less-than-first-class mail category. Over time, however, shippers and customers alike learned to petition mail clerks 

and carriers to give live chicks special treatment, moving them with the first class mail 

and thereby improving their prospects for survival at final destination. Call them opportunists if you will, but since the Post Office Department realized they were providing this 

“first-class” service anyway, they asked why not codify the service as “Special Handling” 

and charge a fee for this special treatment? And so the Special Handling service was born 

in 1925. When introduced, it provided the first means by which shippers of time-sensitive 

merchandise could specify expedited movement from the Post Office.

The Postal Service Act, approved on 28 February 1925, provided for a Special Handling stamp denominated at 25¢ (Figure 1) “for use on fourth class mail matter, which 

would secure for such mail the expeditious handling accorded to mail matter of the first 

class.” Now that this service was specifically required by the Post Office, all baby chicks 

(Figure 2) and queen bees (Figure 3) would have a good prospect of surviving their adventure in the mail stream.

Baby alligators (Figure 4) would be added to the regulation in July 1925. For a 25¢ 

flat fee, regardless of distance, parcels up to 70 lb. would be moved with the first-class 

mail from the post office of dispatch to the post office of destination. Parcel Post was distance and weight based, but Special Handling was not, at least when it was introduced. 

This new service was further promoted in 1928 with the introduction of significantly 

reduced fees for three new weight categories for Special Handling within the overall 

Robert G. Rufe, Brandywine Valley Stamp Club, 

Wilmington, Delaware, USA. Correspondence: 

rrufe1@aol.com. Manuscript received 27 March 

2012; accepted 7 May 2012.
110 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

FIGURE 1. The Special Handling service was introduced in 1925 with a 25¢ denomination stamp, 

which provided flat-rate service anywhere in the United States. From the collection of Robert G. Rufe.

FIGURE 2. Mailing label glued on cardboard, 13 May 1935, from Zeeland, Michigan, to Middletown, New York, for day-old chicks, the living merchandise for which the Special Handling service 

was established. These lives were expedited and moved with the first-class mail. From the collection 

of Robert G. Rufe.
number 56 • 111

weight limitations for fourth-class matter (Figure 5): 10¢ up to 

2 lb., 15¢ from 2 to 10 lb., and 20¢ from 10 lb. to 70 lb., the 

maximum weight allowed for Parcel Post.

Special Handling versus

Special Delivery

Special Handling was not Special Delivery and vice versa. 

In the broadest sense, Special Delivery accorded immediate dispatch and delivery of all mail matter, regardless of class, upon 

arrival at the destination post office. Special Handling accorded 

first-class treatment of Parcel Post matter between the post offices of receipt and delivery. For Parcel Post matter the primary 

difference in practicality was that Special Handling assured the 

expeditious movement of packages between post offices, whereas 

Special Delivery provided for immediate delivery upon arrival at 

the post office of the addressee. 

Special Delivery could be, and often was, added to Special Handling parcels. The April 1925 Supplement of the Postal 

Guide was very clear: “Add the Special Handling (25¢) to the 

Special Delivery (10¢, 15¢, or 20¢) and one has the very best 

service possible for any article of parcel post”1

 (Figure 6). 

As part of the 1928 rate changes and all subsequent rate 

changes, Special Handling service was included as part of Special Delivery, but always at a higher cost. Conversely, Special 

Handling has never been accorded Special Delivery service from 

the destination post office, except that the “Special Handling fee 

FIGURE 3. Quarantine declaration card with address and handling information, 25 March 1944, 

to Redding, California (town of origin illegible), for live bees, the second category earmarked for 

expediting by Special Handling. The card is signed by the quarantine inspector. The 15¢ fee covered contents from 2 to 10 lb. From the collection of Robert G. Rufe.
112 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

should assure the most expeditious handling possible.”2 This 

meant that Special Handling parcels would be delivered with the 

next scheduled first-class delivery, but not immediately, as Special Delivery required.

Popularity and Practicality

of Special Handling

Although the service was developed for lives, numerous 

businesses and individuals outside agribusiness found this new 

mailing category perfectly suited to applications in their mailings. A few examples have been verified by the mailing wrappers that have survived these applications. The printing industry 

moved both printing plates and finished print jobs with Special 

Handling to meet press run and issue deadlines (Figure 7). Nonprofits, libraries, churches, and service organizations, including, 

for example, AA, shipped time-sensitive movie film and slides 

with Special Handling to assure arrival by publication or meeting schedule requirements (Figure 8). On a strictly personal level, 

college students and some military personnel were kept in clean 

clothes and tasty snacks by the movement and return of laundry 

FIGURE 4. Mailing label glued on wrapper remnant, 23 October 1932, from South Jacksonville, Florida, to Lyndhurst, New Jersey, for shipment of baby alligators, the third category of lives that were specifically identified as 

requiring Special Handling service. From the collection of Robert G. Rufe.

FIGURE 5. Fees were reduced in July 1928 to promote Special Handling services. The top rate was reduced from 

25¢ to 20¢ for parcels from 10 to 70 lb. The other new fees were 10¢ for less than 2 lb. and 15¢ from 2 to 10 lb. 

Special Handling fees were based on parcel weight, not distance shipped. From the collection of Robert G. Rufe.
number 56 • 113

cases between dorm or barracks and home with the speed provided by Special Handling (Figure 9).

Special Handling had both its supporters and detractors, 

but proponents and opponents alike took sides relative to the 

stamps and not to the service. Service-designated stamps were 

introduced in 1925 and updated in 1928 to reflect the new reduced rates. In fact, the 10¢, 15¢, and 20¢ stamps remained 

available until withdrawn in 1959, fully 31 years later, and arguably, they hold the record for the longest-running, regularly 

available postage stamps in U.S. history. Almost simultaneously, 

FIGURE 6. Mailing tag, 14 October 1926, from Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Buffalo, New 

York, assured the fastest delivery possible for a parcel: Special Handling to move between post 

offices with the first-class mail and Special Delivery to provide immediate delivery from the post 

office of the addressee. From the collection of Robert G. Rufe.

FIGURE 7. Mailing label, June 1931, from Cincinnati, Ohio, to Waverly, Iowa, for an expedited shipment of printing 

plates for advertising to the Waverly Independent newspaper. The 20¢ Special Handling stamp covered from 10 to 70 

lb. for any distance shipped. From the collection of Robert G. Rufe.
114 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

FIGURE 8. Preprinted address mailing card, dated 25 April 1944, Philadelphia intracity for a 5 lb. parcel to a Philadelphia 

photography laboratory. From the collection of Robert G. Rufe.

FIGURE 9. Address insert card, 22 October 1955, from Dayton, Ohio, to Cambridge, Massachusetts, 

placed in a reusable laundry case for a Harvard University student to have his weekly laundry done at 

home and returned with the speed of first-class mail. From the collection of Robert G. Rufe.
number 56 • 115

Special Handling rates were unchanged from 1928 to 1949, and 

only raised 5¢ in each weight category until their next advance 

in 1957. Opponents of the distinctive stamps claimed everyone 

knew that day-old chicks required special handling to survive 

and that dedicated stamps were unnecessary, regular stamps 

would suffice. Representing the other side of the argument, one 

postal inspector claimed this service was so critical that even 

more distinctive stamps were essential; he proposed the first triangular stamp design in U.S. postal history (Figure 10).

Suffice it to say, the public generally has never understood 

Special Handling or the advantages of using the service. First Assistant Postmaster General John H. Bartlett, in the January 1928 

Postmasters’ Advocate, recommended increased advertising for 

the service, pointing out that “Ordinary parcel post not having 

the special handling stamp thereon, and therefore not entitled 

to the special handling service, is . . . necessarily slower and less 

careful than the special-handling service . . . [wherein] a bundle 

is specially handled from beginning to end. It is not put into storage cars with other parcel post, but travels in the railway postal 

cars where men are employed.” And further, “The Department 

has recommended the consolidation of these two stamps, but 

that has not yet been enacted into law.”3

 Had Special Handling 

and Special Delivery services been consolidated, the result would 

have provided a means for parcels to move from the post office 

of origin to the addressee at the same speed as a first-class letter.

Transition to Priority Mail

The value of Special Handling itself has never been questioned, and its benefits have been acknowledged ever since its 

introduction; however, the service never really caught on with 

the general public. From 1925 to 2005, revenues grew from $0.7 

million to $10.3 million, relatively insignificant in terms of overall U.S. Postal Service operations. To put this into perspective, 

total package services revenue in 2010 was $1.5 billion. 

In the presence of competitive services, Special Handling 

revenue fell in 1948 when Air Parcel Post was introduced (Figure 11) and again in 1968 when Priority Mail and Parcel Airlift 

services were introduced (Figure 12). Air Parcel Post allowed the 

shipper to specify parcel movement by air but carried a higherpriced rate structure than Special Handling; however, Special 

Handling also required shipment via air if it were deemed faster 

than surface movement.

Priority Mail incorporated the best of both Air Parcel Post 

and Special Handling services, moving parcels with the speed 

and efficiency of first-class mail and incorporating both the 

weight and distance factors associated with Parcel Post, but at 

a lower cost than Special Handling. Shippers of lives still used 

Special Handling but transitioned to Priority Mail over time as 

they found clerks willing to accept their time-sensitive parcels—

live chicks, game birds, bees, and bait, for example—at the lower 

rates of Priority Mail. Today there are but a few shippers of lives 

who specify the Special Handling option, perhaps a result of tradition and confidence in the service.

Current Regulations

As of this writing, Special Handling still exists, although it 

would seem to be obsolete in the presence of Priority Mail and 

Express Mail services. It is unclear from extensive interviews 

with U.S. Postal Service (USPS) personnel exactly what service is 

provided for the fee charged, but the regulations are so brief as to 

allow the complete statement of what the current Domestic Mail 

Manual, section 503, part 13.0, says:

The Special Handling Fee is in addition to postage and 

other fees, per piece.

The applicable special handling fee must be paid in 

addition to postage for each addressed piece for which 

special handling service is desired. Except for official 

mail, the special handling fee must be paid at the time 

of mailing. For official mail, the special handling fee is 

collected under established reimbursement procedures.

Special handling service provides preferential handling, but not preferential delivery, to the extent practicable in dispatch and transportation. The service does 

not itself insure the article against loss or damage. Special 

handling service is mandatory for material that requires 

extra care in handling, transportation, and delivery.

Special handling service is available only for FirstClass Mail, Priority Mail (excluding Critical Mail), 

Package Services, and Parcel Select pieces.

The following extra services may be combined 

with special handling if the applicable standards for the 

services are met and the additional service fees are paid: 

COD, Delivery Confirmation, Insurance, PAL (for 

Package Services only), Return receipt for merchandise, 

and Signature Confirmation.

FIGURE 10. Author’s rendition of what a postal inspector’s proposed design for a distinctive triangular Special Handling stamp in 

1928 might look like.
116 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

FIGURE 11. Air Parcel Post service was introduced on 1 September 1948 at rates substantially 

higher than Special Handling. This is one of four covers prepared by Henry Hammelman to commemorate this new service. From the collection of Robert G. Rufe.

FIGURE 12. A new Parcel Airlift service was introduced for shipments up to 30 lb. to overseas military post offices. This had 

little impact on Special Handling revenues since very little international mail employed the Special Handling option. From the 

collection of Robert G. Rufe.
number 56 • 117

[Regarding] Bees and Poultry, unless sent at the 

First-Class Mail or Priority Mail prices, special handling is required for parcels containing honeybees or 

baby poultry. 

The marking “Special Handling” must appear 

prominently above the address and to the right of the 

return address on each piece for which special handling 

service is requested.

The Parcel Select nonmachinable surcharge is not 

charged on parcels sent with special handling.4

Accordingly, even the specific regulations written for Special Handling support the use of Priority Mail for honeybees 

and baby poultry, and the lower rate structure for Priority Mail 

seems to favor Priority Mail over Special Handling. First class is 

also supported, but with a 13 oz. weight limitation, this class of 

mail service is not really applicable for chicks and bees. 

Historically, Special Handling pieces were the last parcels 

loaded into a given shipping container or vehicle and the first 

offloaded upon arrival at each destination. Mail sacks containing Special Handling matter had their own special yellow tags 

for high visibility (Figure 13). The fee for this special treatment 

was, and is, in addition to the basic postage for any class of service and is not included in any class of service; further, Special 

Handling is specifically excluded from the new Critical Mail category, a reduced-cost commercial subset of Priority Mail.

Special Handling and

Insured Mail Forms

Another ambiguity regarding the intention of the U.S. Postal 

Service regarding Special Handling becomes evident upon examination of the current domestic insured mail receipt forms, 

both the black version for $200 and under (PS Form 3813) and 

the blue form for over $200 (PS Form 3813-P; Figure 14). Both 

forms provide check boxes for declaration to postal clerks as to 

whether parcel contents are fragile, liquid, perishable, or hazardous. The form indicates that items so marked are to be segregated from other parcels, but postal clerks differ as to whether 

FIGURE 14. U.S. Postal Service Form 3813-P, May 2007, offering postal patrons the opportunity to purchase Special Handling service (enlarged in inset). There is the perception, if not the implied guarantee, that special care and attention will be given to parcels so designated. 

From the collection of Robert G. Rufe.

FIGURE 13. Since 1928, distinctive yellow baggage tags have been 

used to alert postal workers that Special Handling parcels were enclosed, which required shipping with the first-class mail. From the 

collection of Robert G. Rufe.
118 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

this occurs in reality. Further, these are seemingly rhetorical 

questions—what difference does it make if one or all four boxes 

are checked? The questions appear on the receipt portion of the 

form, which is taken by the customer and is not even attached to 

the parcel. These same forms also provide the expected lines for 

declaring the amount of insurance to be purchased and the fee 

for the coverage.

There is another line on these forms, however, that is virtually unknown to postal clerks and the public and is never explored, much less requested or utilized. This line provides the 

option to specify Special Handling, available for first-class mail, 

Priority Mail (excluding Critical Mail), package services, and 

Parcel Select pieces, as cited in the Domestic Mail Manual. One 

could argue that Special Handling was intended to be required 

whenever one of the four boxes was checked: fragile, liquid, perishable, or hazardous. This is not nor has it ever been the case.

The ambiguity of Special Handling in the presence of the 

availability of Priority Mail is most evident in interviews with 

USPS personnel. At the local level, window clerks, postmasters, 

and carriers for the most part are not aware of the existence of 

Special Handling. At the national level, USPS personnel acknowledge its existence as a special service, primarily as a reporting 

category, and verify its justified continuation because of reported 

stable revenues of approximately $10 million per year. These 

same cooperative interviewees admit they have no idea what mail 

matter receives such service. One employee recalled hearing of 

custom-made canisters containing funerary ashes being shipped 

with Special Handling, “but that was many years ago.”5

Conclusion

Given today’s classes of mail and service options, Special 

Handling seems at best redundant and at worst obsolete. Even 

though the role of Special Handling in today’s postal system is 

questionable and its future uncertain, the importance of the Special Handling service is significant in the context of this year’s 

symposium theme: “How Commerce and Industry Shaped the 

Mails.” Initially it provided an upgrade to the Parcel Post system 

of 1913; for a small fee it allowed time-sensitive parcels or delicate lives to move with the speed of first-class mail. 

Special Handling was the Post Office Department’s first response to industry’s demand for expediting Parcel Post matter. 

As the earliest service of the postal system to satisfy this need, 

Special Handling should be recognized as the forerunner of, initially, Air Parcel Post and, ultimately, today’s Priority Mail.

NOTES

1. Post Office Department, United States Official Postal Guide, Monthly 

Supplement for April 1925, p. 3.

2. United States Official Postal Guide, Fourth Series, Vol. 11, No. 1, July 

1931, p. 14.

3. John H. Bartlett, First Assistant Postmaster General, “Advertise the Special 

Handling Stamp,” The Postmasters’ Advocate 33, no. 7 (January 1928): 220.

4. United States Postal Service, “Mailing Standards of the United States 

Postal Service,” Domestic Mail Manual, Chapter 500: Additional Services, Section 503: Extra Services, Paragraph 13.0: Special Handling. Latest revision May 7, 

2012. http://pe.usps.com/text/dmm300/503.htm#1064255 (accessed 6 June 2012).

5. Audrey Meloni, Business Systems Analyst, USPS, in a discussion with the 

author, August 14, 2009, Washington, D.C.

Bibliography

Bartlett, John H. “Advertise the Special Handling Stamp.” The Postmasters’ Advocate, 33, no. 7 (January 1928):220. 

Beecher, Henry W., and Anthony S. Wawrukiewicz. U.S. Domestic Postal Rates, 

1872–2011. 3rd ed. Bellefonte, Pa.: American Philatelic Society, 2011.

Brett, George W. “Dry Printing—Miscellany.” The Bureau Specialist, 32, no. 1 

(January 1961):6–7.

Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Annual Report of the Director of the Bureau 

of Engraving and Printing. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 

1925–1931, 1933, 1934.

Cleland, Wallace B. Printing History of Special Delivery, Parcel Post, Parcel Post 

Due, Special Handling, Registration, Official Mail and Postal Savings Flat 

Plates. BIA Research Paper 6. Madison, Wisc.: Bureau Issues Association, 

March 1994.

Harmer, Bernard D. The Postage Stamp Collection of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. 

New York: H. R. Harmer, 1946.

Griffith, Gary. “Special Handling Was Not Always an Option.” Stamp Collector, 

70, no. 51, 23 December 1996:6.

Hotchner, John. “Special Handling Stamps: Mystery Cover and Searching for 

Dated Covers.” Linn’s Stamp News, 80, no. 4084, 5 February 2007:6.

Klug, Janet. “How to Get Your Two-Bits’ Worth of Stamps.” Linn’s Stamp News, 

78, no. 3984, 7 March 2005:38.

Macdonald, David S. “Parcel Post, Dues, and Special Handling Stamps.” Stamp 

Collector, 73, no. 9, 26 April 1999:34.

Pagter, Daniel S. “Three Unusual US Series on Non-philatelic Cover Test of One’s 

Patience.” Stamp Collector, 60, no. 4728, 15 November 1986:33–34.

Peakes, Gilbert L. “The Relief Breaks on the 25¢ Special Handling Stamp.” The 

United States Specialist, 75, no. 6 (November 1972):487–501. 

“Special Delivery and Special Handling Service.” The Postmasters’ Advocate, 33, 

no. 6 (December 1927):187–188. 

Rufe, Robert G. “U.S. Special Handling Issues—Part I: Transfer Roll Break Varieties of the 1925 First Printing.” The United States Specialist, 78, no. 10 

(October 2007):468–475.

———. “U.S. Special Handling Issues—Part II: The 1928 Second Printing and New 

Rates.” The United States Specialist, 78, no. 11 (November 2007):485–494. 

———. “U.S. Special Handling Issues—Part III: The 1955 Experimental Printing on Dry Paper.” The United States Specialist, 78, no. 12 (December 

2007):537–542.

———. “U.S. Special Handling Issues—Update.” The United States Specialist, 79, 

no. 10 (October 2008):460–465. 

———. “First Day Covers—The Right Way.” The United States Specialist, 80, no. 

8 (August 2009):362–365.

———. “U.S. Special-Handling Service: You Get What You Pay For—Or Do You?” 

Scott Stamp Monthly, 28, no. 7 (July 2010):14–17.

———. “The First U.S. Special Handling Commercial FDC—A Stamp without a 

Service!” First Days, 55, no. 5 (15 July 2010):30–34.

Scott 2012 Specialized Catalogue of United States Stamps and Covers. 90th ed. 

Sidney, Ohio: Scott Publishing, 2011.

Stotts, J. B., “Special Handling Service, 1925–1949.” The United States Specialist, 

65, no. 4 (April 1994):165–166. 

U.S. Postal Service. “Special Handling.” In Domestic Mail Manual, section 503, part 

13. Washington, D.C. http://pe.usps.com/cpim/ftp/manuals/DMM300/503

.pdf (accessed 7 May 2012).

U.S. Post Office Department, Postage Stamps of the United States, Washington, 

D.C.: Government Printing Office, pp. 52, 57, 58, December, 1965.

U.S. Post Office Department, Postal Bulletin, 1925 // 1991, Nos. 14710, 14714, 

14724, 14763, 15139, 19187, 20033, 20053, 20637.
United States Parcel Post System: 

Postage Due Stamps and Proofs

Harry K. Charles Jr.

More than 30 years after the adoption of a Parcel Post System by the Universal 

Postal Union, the U.S. Parcel Post System was created in 1912 (operations 

to begin 1 January 1913) to address the growing need to send larger items 

(packages, parcels, and even farm produce) with the speed and safety of the U.S. mails. 

Although approved by an act of Congress on 24 August 1912, the Post Office Department was concerned about the profitability of the system and thus issued a special set of 

twelve stamps (Scott Q1–Q12) to postmasters.1

 These stamps would allow strict accounting of Parcel Post System revenues since only these stamps could be used to mail Parcel 

Post packages. In addition to the special stamps necessary to pay for parcel shipment, the 

Post Office Department issued five denominations (1¢, 2¢, 5¢, 10¢, and 25¢ values) of 

Parcel Post Postage Due stamps (Scott JQ1–Q5). These Parcel Post Postage Due stamps 

could initially only be used on insufficiently paid Parcel Post mail. Since the Parcel Post 

rates were based on weight, distance, and to some extent package size, most mailers had 

to take their packages to a post office to be weighed and the correct postage applied; thus, 

the Parcel Post Postage Due stamps were not needed. Only in the rare case of a Parcel 

Post package being placed in a drop box with insufficient postage (and no return address) 

would Parcel Post Postage Due stamps be needed. In fact, used Parcel Post Postage Due 

stamps on short-paid package wrappers are extremely rare.

This paper presents a brief history of the events leading up to the implementation of 

a Parcel Post System by the United States. The special stamps used by the Parcel Post System are described. Emphasis is placed on the Parcel Post Postage Due stamps, especially 

their essays and proofs. The unique photomodel essay, for the 25¢ value, is described 

as well as various proof printings. A set of large die proofs (Scott JQ1P1–JQ5P1) are 

illustrated. This set was prepared for and given to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The 

paper also illustrates the rare Panama-Pacific small die proofs; in addition, it questions 

the existence of other small die proofs despite their catalog listing. Example covers with 

Parcel Post Postage Due stamps are shown to help describe their use in the postal system. 

Later uses of the Parcel Post Postage Due stamp design by both the Bureau of Engraving 

and Printing and at least one foreign government are also discussed.

Parcel Post is defined as the delivery of packages (parcels) by the mail service. An 

international Parcel Post System was established by the Congress of the Universal Postal 

Union (UPU) in 1878. In 1882, Great Britain implemented a parcel post system that 

included domestic, foreign, and colonial services. Many other countries rapidly followed 

suit and established their own parcel post systems. The U.S. Post Office Department 

(POD) immediately recognized and delivered Parcel Post packages of foreign origin, but 

they refused to establish a domestic service. The POD reasons for refusal are varied 

and range from the weight and volume of parcels that would have to be carried by the 

Harry K. Charles Jr., Research and Exploratory 

Development Department, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, 

Maryland 20723, USA. Correspondence: harry.

charles@jhuapl.edu. Manuscript received 27 

March 2012; accepted 7 May 2012.
120 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

“letter” carriers to the poor road and bridge infrastructure that 

existed in many parts of the country (postal wagons could not 

easily be used). Also, parcel or package delivery was the province 

of the express companies, which were either owned or backed 

by the railroads or had special fee arrangements with the railroads. Hence, the proposition of the government being in the 

parcel delivery business was directly opposed by the railroads. 

The railroads had significant influence with Congress; thus, early 

attempts to establish a parcel post system were defeated.

In the late 1800s, more than half the citizens of the United 

States lived on farms or in other rural settings. There was no 

rural mail delivery; thus, farmers and other country dwellers had 

to pick up their mail and newspapers at the nearest post office. 

This often meant a trip of many miles duration, and sometimes 

it took a full day or more to make the round trip. Mail pickup 

was delayed by days, weeks, or even months until the post office 

trip could be coupled with the “trip to town” for supplies, food, 

and/or equipment. Wealthier rural individuals often paid private 

express companies for mail and merchandise delivery. Many 

express companies refused to serve rural areas because the distances and lack of customers were detractors from profitability.

Through farm organizations such as the National Grange, 

Farmers’ Alliance, and others, rural residents were able to lobby 

Congress for free home delivery of mail, just as it was being provided to city dwellers.2

 In fact, city dwellers had the benefits of free 

mail delivery since 1863. So important was the National Grange 

to the growth of our nation (and its mails) that the grange was 

honored on its 100th anniversary with a postage stamp (Scott 

1323, issued in 1967). Rural Free Delivery (RFD) was finally approved by Congress in 1896.3

 Soon thereafter the advertisements 

(mail-order catalogs) describing goods and products available 

from around the country (and the world) began to reach the rural 

residents’ mailboxes on a regular basis. This exposure to a seemingly unlimited stream of products increased the demand for the 

delivery of packages (parcel post) in addition to letters, newspapers, and magazines. The adoption of Parcel Post legislation was 

not only strongly supported by the mail-order houses but also 

the National Grange and the Farmers Union.4

 Parcel Post legislation was opposed by the express companies and the railroads, 

which heretofore had a monopoly on package delivery.5

 It was 

also opposed by rural merchants fearing that people would shop 

elsewhere by mail. Despite the opposition, the Parcel Post System 

was approved by an act of Congress on 24 August 1912 to take 

effect 1 January 1913.6

 Further ensuring the future success of the 

Parcel Post System was the adoption of the collect on delivery 

(COD) concept. The COD provisions of postal law went into effect on 1 July 1913. 

Despite passage by Congress and the positive projections by 

lobbyist and the mail-order merchandisers, the POD was worried about the financial viability of this new service and wanted 

strict accountability. This concern over the economics of the 

Parcel Post System, caused the POD to issue special stamps for 

use on Parcel Post mail only.7

 The Parcel Post stamps (twelve in 

number, Scott Q1–Q12) and the Parcel Post Postage Due stamps 

(five in number, Scott JQ1–JQ5) were issued for use on 1 January 1913. Since the stamps were sent to post offices beginning 

on 27 November 1912, early uses on fourth-class mail are possible. The Parcel Post stamps are all carmine or carmine rose 

in color, and the values of the twelve stamps range from 1¢ to 

$1.00. The designs illustrate items associated with mail transport 

as well as the strength of America’s industrial and agricultural 

might. Examples illustrating mail transportation, American industry, and agriculture are shown in Figure 1. The values and 

designs for the twelve Parcel Post stamps are given in Table 1. 

The airplane shown on the 20¢ value (Figure 1) is the first time 

an airplane was used as a vignette on a postage stamp (anywhere 

in the world).

An example of Parcel Post stamps being used on a registered 

letter to pay both postage (2¢, first-class rate) and the registration fee (10¢) is shown in Figure 2. The use of Parcel Post stamps 

to pay both postcard rates and regular letter rates was common 

after 1 July 1913, the end date of the exclusive period.

Dark green Parcel Post Postage Due stamps (1¢ to 25¢ 

in value) are shown in Figure 3. To ensure strict accountability, both sets of these stamps (Parcel Post and Parcel Post Postage Due) could only be used on Parcel Post packages and other 

fourth-class mail. The Parcel Post System was a resounding success. In the first week over six million packages were handled. 

During the first year of operation an average of forty million 

packages a month were being delivered. Thus, after 1 July 1913, 

FIGURE 1. Examples of Parcel Post stamps. (top left) The 4¢ (Scott 

Q4) illustrates a rural mail carrier with his horse and mail wagon, 

and (top right) the 20¢ (Scott Q8) features a Wright Flyer airplane 

carrying the mail. This was the first time an airplane was used as 

a postage stamp vignette anywhere in the world. (bottom left) The 

25¢ stamp (Scott Q9) pays tribute to American manufacturing (illustrating a steel mill and railway cars). (bottom right) The 75¢ stamp 

(Scott Q11) illustrates grain harvesting on a farm. From the collection of Harry K. Charles Jr.
number 56 • 121

regular issue postage stamps were allowed to be used on Parcel 

Post items, and in turn (to use up supplies), Parcel Post stamps 

were allowed to be used on regular mail. Similarly, the Parcel 

Post Postage Due stamps could then be used in place of regular Postage Due stamps, again to use up considerable inventory 

and provide a needed additional Postage Due stamp value (25¢). 

The period between 1 January and 30 June 1913, when the Parcel Post and Parcel Post Postage Due stamps could only be used 

on Parcel Post mail, was known as the “exclusive use period.”8

Also, during this exclusive use period the Parcel Post Postage 

Due stamps were practically useless. As already mentioned, most 

parcel senders took their packages directly to the post office to 

be sure the correct postage was applied, and only rarely was a 

package dropped off with insufficient postage that required the 

use of Parcel Post Postage Due stamps. Only in the rare case of a 

Parcel Post package being placed in a drop box with insufficient 

postage (and no return address) would Parcel Post Postage Due 

stamps be needed. In fact, used Parcel Post Postage Due stamps 

on short-paid package wrappers are extremely rare.

In spite of their intended original purpose (accountability 

for the Parcel Post System), they were almost instantly disliked 

by the stamp sales clerks. Because the stamps were made all the 

same color, at the insistence of Postmaster General Hitchcock,9

it became evident that the post office employees were making an 

increasing number of natural errors due to the single color of 

the series. This was especially true with the 1¢ and $1.00 value 

stamps in the series, where the clerks actually had to read the 

words to distinguish the value because both had the same style of 

1, as shown in the enlargements in Figure 4. Clerks who went by 

stamp color in a normal series of regular issue stamps now had 

to slow down their sales to actually read the word values. The 

TABLE 1. Values and design subjects for the twelve Parcel Post 

stamps.

Scott No. Value Vignette

Q1 1¢ Post Office Clerk

Q2 2¢ City Carrier

Q3 3¢ Railway Postal Clerk

Q4 4¢ Rural Carrier

Q5 5¢ Mail Train

Q6 10¢ Steamship & Mail Tender

Q7 15¢ Automobile Service

Q8 20¢ Aeroplane Carrying Mail

Q9 25¢ Manufacturing

Q10 50¢ Dairying

Q11 75¢ Harvesting

Q12 $1.00 Fruit Growing

FIGURE 2. Parcel Post stamps (2¢, Scott Q2, and 10¢, Scott Q6) used to pay both postage and the registration fee. The stamps 

are both plate number singles. From the collection of Harry K. Charles Jr.
122 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

Parcel Post stamps had other problems that contributed to their 

dislike: the stamp size was large (they did not fit conveniently 

into stamp drawer slots, and more importantly, the stamps were 

too big to fit in multiples on small parcels and parcel tags), the 

odd number of stamps to the sheet (45 instead of 50 or 100) 

made the end of day accounting more difficult, and there were 

seventeen extra stamps to handle.

Another problem associated with the single color issue was 

that red (or carmine) was universally recognized as the color for 

first-class letters (2¢ at the time of Parcel Post stamp introduction), so many 1¢ Parcel Post stamps were used illegally on sealed 

letters. Because of the stamps’ red color, these letters evaded detection by the operators of the mechanized cancelling machines 

employed in large cities.

In an effort to assist the stamp sales clerks, an inscription 

of the stamp value in words (plain capital letters) was added to 

the sheet margin of the plates. The adding of value inscriptions 

on existing plates was begun on 27 January 1913. As the plates 

were pulled from the vaults for printing, the value inscription 

would be added to the plate before it was put to press. New 

plates made after 27 January 1913 had the value inscription included. The last plate from the vault to have the value inscription 

added was plate 6262 for the $1.00 stamp. The value inscription 

was added on 24 March 1913. The last printing of $1.00 stamps 

from plate 6262 was done on 26 March 1913, so margin blocks 

with the value inscription from this plate are relatively rare. The 

50¢ value stamp was printed for the most part with value-inscribed plates. The 50¢ plate 6274 was printed without the value 

imprint for a three-day period from 10 to 13 December 1912. 

Thus, it is possible to find 50¢ margin blocks from plate 6274 

both with and without the value inscription imprint. Unlike the 

$1.00 value, it is the plain 50¢ margin blocks (without inscription) that are relatively rare. Only the 3¢ stamps were printed 

exclusively with value-imprint-inscribed plates. An example of 

a 3¢ plate block with the “THREE” in the margin is shown in 

Figure 5. For all the other stamp values, margin blocks readily 

exist, both with and without imprints. Figure 5 also illustrates 

a margin imprint value for the 5¢ stamp (Scott Q5) featuring a 

mail train. Wiley presents detailed information on which plates 

had the value imprint and when the imprint was added.10

The Parcel Post Postage Due stamps as illustrated in Figure 

3 all have a common design distinguished by the value displayed 

on the central circular tablet and surrounding circular band. The 

design measures 22.4 mm × 33.9 mm and was printed with dark 

green ink on white, single-line watermarked paper by the Bureau 

of Engraving and Printing (BEP). These stamps were design by 

Clair. A. Houston and engraved by the team of engravers listed 

in Table 2. They were printed in sheets of 180 subjects (subsequently divided into panes of 45) and are perforation 12. Plate 

numbers and other aspects of printing for these stamps are given 

in Table 3. The plate layout for the 180-subject sheet has been 

shown by Charles.11 Since the Parcel Post Postage Due stamps 

were green, contained a prominent value in a circle at the center, and were not sold to the public (just like other Postage Due 

stamps), they did not suffer from the general dislike stemming 

from a confusion in value. Despite the fact that they still had the 

stamp size and sheet configuration issues plaguing the other Parcel Post stamps, they actually became quite useful to the postal 

clerks, especially the 25¢ value which was not present in the 

FIGURE 3. Parcel Post Postage Due stamps (Scott JQ1–JQ5, 1¢ to 

25¢, respectively). From the collection of Harry K. Charles Jr.

FIGURE 4. Comparison of the 1s on the 1¢ and $1.00 stamps. 

The value circles on both stamps are identical as shown in the circle 

enlargements below the stamps. From the collection of Harry K. 

Charles Jr.
number 56 • 123

FIGURE 5. (left) An example of a 3¢ Parcel Post bottom plate block of six (Scott Q3, “Railway Postal Clerk”) illustrating 

both the plate number and the “THREE” imprint. (right) A 5¢ imprint margin single (Scott. Q5, “Mail Train”). From the 

collection of Harry K. Charles Jr.

TABLE 2. Die and engraving information for the Parcel Post Postage Due stamps. N/A indicates not applicable.

Scott Die Die Die Engraver Engraver

No. Value No. started hardened Designer frame lettering

N/A Frame 569 9 November 1912 14 November 1912 C. A. Huston E. E. Myers

JQ1 1¢ 570 14 November 1912 16 November 1912 C. A. Huston E. E. Myers E. M. Hall,

 J. C. Benzing

JQ2 2¢ 571 14 November 1912 18 November 1912 C. A. Huston E. E. Myers E. M. Hall,

 E. G. Rose

JQ3 5¢ 572 14 November 1912 17 November 1912 C. A. Huston E. E. Myers E. M. Hall,

 T. Lamasure

JQ4 10¢ 573 14 November 1912 18 November 1912 C. A. Huston E. E. Myers E. M. Hall,

 E. E. Myers

JQ5 25¢ 574 15 November 1912 18 November 1912 C. A. Huston E. E. Myers E. M. Hall,

 J. C. Benzing

TABLE 3. Plate numbers and other information about the printing of the Parcel Post Postage Due stamps.

Scott Number

No. Value Plate No. First printing Last printing Issue date printed

JQ1 1¢ 6225, 6226, 6227, 6228 20 November 1912 30 November 1912 27 November 1912 7,322,400

JQ2 2¢ 6241, 6242, 6243, 6244 25 November 1912 10 January 1913 9 December 1912 3,132,000

JQ3 5¢ 6229, 6230, 6231, 6232, 6239, 6240 21 November 1912 11 January 1913 11 November 1912 5,840,100

JQ4 10¢ 6250, 6251, 6252, 6253 27 November 1912 10 January 1913 12 December 1912 2,124,540

JQ5 25¢ 6246, 6247, 6248, 6249 30 November 1912 6 January 1913 16 December 1912 2,117,700
124 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

regular Postage Due series. As will be shown, these Parcel Post 

Postage Due stamps were still being used many years after their 

printing and official withdrawal date.

A postage due cover, with a mix of both regular Postage 

Due and Parcel Post Postage Due stamps, is shown in Figure 

6. The cover was double weight (note the blue crayon notation 

2/60) and was assessed 60 gold centimes due. The required postage was double the 21⁄2d rate plus 1⁄2d war tax (which went into 

effect 3 days before the postmark date) for a total of 51⁄2d. The 

letter was 3d underpaid, equivalent to 6¢, which was doubled to 

12¢ per UPU regulations. The Parcel Post and Parcel Post Postage Due stamps remained in use for several years (until inventory had been depleted), but no further printings were made. The 

total number of printed Parcel Post Postage Due stamps is given 

in Table 3. Table 3 also captures a brief printing history for the 

Parcel Post Postage Due stamps. All remainders in the hands of 

the BEP and/or the POD were destroyed in September of 1921. 

With the destruction of central supplies and no additional printings, supplies in postmasters’ hands dwindled, although residual 

usage continued for some time. Figure 7 illustrates part of a 

package wrapper with a block of six 5¢ Parcel Post Postage Due 

stamps (plus two 2¢ regular postage issue dues) used in 1922.

The cover shown in Figure 8 was mailed in 1927. The cover 

required 3¢ postage due, which was paid with a 1¢ Parcel Post 

Postage Due and a 2¢ regular issue Postage Due stamp. This 

1927 usage is a full 14 years after the Parcel Post Postage Due 

stamps were printed and introduced.

The cover in Figure 9 illustrates a rare usage of the 10¢ 

Parcel Post Postage Due stamp along with three regular Postage Due stamps (Scott J46) paying the postage and penalty on 

an unstamped envelope from Russia. The blue crayon notation 

2/80 indicates a double weight cover and that 80 gold centimes 

was due. It was rated double deficiency per UPU regulations, 

which was equivalent to the U.S. rate of 5¢ per first ounce plus 

3¢ per second ounce, or 8¢ (which was doubled to 16¢).This 

stamp is tied to the cover with a faint cancel. At this point it 

should be mentioned that Parcel Post Postage Due stamps tied 

to covers are scarce if not rare. Most often, the stamps were precanceled in sheet form, either with a stamping or roller device 

or by hand with a crayon to facilitate ease of use. The Parcel 

Post Postage Due stamps illustrated on the covers in Figures 6–9 

have all been tied.

As far as I know, only one model or essay exists for the Parcel Post Postage Due stamps. This essay for the 25¢ value is listed 

in the Scott catalog as JQ5-E1a and is described as a “retouched 

photograph of the design as adopted, officially dated and approved.”12 It was signed by Postmaster General Hitchcock. A description following the listing in Scott is “25¢ model, black.” It 

is believed this essay is unique. Gobie did not list this essay in his 

book on the Parcel Post System.13 This essay was also not listed 

FIGURE 6. Postage Due cover with a mix of a 2¢ regular issue Postage Due stamp and two 5¢ Parcel Post Postage 

Due stamps (Scott JQ3s). This cover from Australia was postmarked on 1 November 1918 and illustrates a typical 

mixed usage after the exclusive use period. From the collection of Harry K. Charles Jr.
number 56 • 125

FIGURE 7. Part of a Parcel Post package wrapper containing two 2¢ regular Postage Due stamps (Baltimore, Maryland precancel) plus six Parcel Post Postage Due stamps (Scott JQ3) for a total of 34¢. The 

Parcel Post Postage Due stamps are tied with a Baltimore, Maryland, oval hand stamp and the circular 

date stamp on the wrapper was applied on March 27, 1922. From the collection of Harry K. Charles Jr.

FIGURE 8. A Dead Letter Office envelope with the 3¢ Postage Due paid by a 2¢ regular Postage Due stamp and 

a 1¢ Parcel Post Postage Due stamp (Scott JQ1). The cover was canceled in 1927. From the collection of Harry K. 

Charles Jr.
126 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

by Brazer in his seminal work on essays in 1941.14 An illustration 

of this essay has been published recently by Charles.15

There are three types of die proofs listed in the Scott catalog 

for the Parcel Post Postage Due stamps. An illustration of the 1¢ 

Parcel Post Postage Due large die proof (Scott JQ1P1) is given 

in Figure 10. This proof is part of a set that was originally given 

by the Post Office Department to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. This set of proofs is unique, and each proof has a separate 

BEP control number in blue ink on the back, as listed in Table 

4. Table 4 also lists die numbers, die sinkage dimensions, and 

card sizes for the Roosevelt set. The remaining large die proofs 

(Scott JQ2P1–JQ5P1) are shown in Figures 11 and 12, respectively. These large die proofs came to my collection through the 

Babcock estate.16 Babcock had purchased these proofs from the 

Irvin Heiman sale of the Caroline Prentice Cromwell Collection 

in 1957.17 Cromwell acquired the JQ1P1 to JQ5P1 proofs from 

the Roosevelt Collection sale in 1946.18

Table 5 lists the BEP control numbers for the Parcel Post Postage Due proofs (presumably large die proofs) in the possession of 

both the POD and the BEP.19 The control number sequences for 

these proofs are high when compared to the control numbers on 

the Roosevelt set. Since proofs retained by BEP and POD were 

made in the 1912 time frame (rather than in 1933 for the Roosevelt set), their number sequences suggest they were assigned from 

the original BEP proving room books.20 The Roosevelt proof numbers are listed in the new series books and are consistent with the 

proof printings done in the 1933–34 time frame.

The second and third types of die proofs for the Parcel Post 

Postage Due stamps are small die proofs. The first of the small 

die proofs is listed by Scott as JQ1P2–JQ5P2. Since the Parcel 

Post Postage Due stamps were not developed or in use until the 

1912–13 time frame, these small die proofs are obviously not 

from the so-called Roosevelt Albums, which were produced in 

1903.21 A careful inspection of the Southgate Collection sold by 

Brazer22 in the early 1940s shows that it did not contain such a 

set of proofs. A similar statement can be made about the auction 

of the Roosevelt Collection in 1946. They also were not part of 

the Hackett or Cromwell sales in the 1950s.23 In fact, a careful 

examination of major auction catalogs over the last fifty or so 

years has failed to yield any reference to such proofs. 

By the time of the Panama-Pacific Exhibition in 1915, the 

Parcel Post Postage Due stamps were in use and included in 

the special printing of proofs for the Post Office Department’s 

display at the exhibition. A set of the Parcel Post Postage Due 

FIGURE 9. Unpaid overweight letter from Budapest, Hungary to Red Bank, New Jersey. The cover was rated 16¢ postage due 

by the New York port of entry (Penn. Terminal Station) on July 18, 1915. Postage due was paid by a 10¢ (JQ4) and 3 regular 

2¢ postage due stamps. From the collection of Harry K. Charles Jr.
number 56 • 127

FIGURE 10. Parcel Post Postage Due 1¢ large die proof (Scott JQ1P1) given to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The proof has BEP control 

number 330721 printed on the back in blue ink. The enlargement on the right illustrates the proof details. From the collection of Harry K. 

Charles Jr.

FIGURE 11. Parcel Post Postage Due 2¢ and 5¢ large die proofs (Scott JQ2P1 and JQ3P1) given to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The proofs 

have BEP control numbers (330740 and 330732, respectively) printed on their backs in blue ink. From the collection of Harry K. Charles Jr.

TABLE 4. Details of the Parcel Post Postage Due large die proofs in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Collection. Die sinkage and card size are

height × width, in mm. BEP, Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

Scott No. Value Die No. Die sinkage Card size BEP Control No.

JQ1 1¢ 570 74.9 × 99.6 152.4 × 201.9 330721

JQ2 2¢ 571 76.2 × 95.3 152.4 × 201.9 330740

JQ3 5¢ 572 73.4 × 99.6 152.4 × 202.7 330732

JQ4 10¢ 573 75.4 × 97.8 152.4 × 203.7 330728

JQ5 25¢ 574 76.2 × 96.5 152.4 × 201.9 330745
128 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

Panama-Pacific small die proofs (Scott JQ1P2a–JQ5P2a) is 

shown in Figure 13. This set of proofs was the set offered as lot 

number 355 in the Heiman sale of the Cromwell Collection in 

1958.24 These proofs are printed on a wove paper that has yellowed with time. The design of the Parcel Post Postage Due stamp 

measures 25.4 mm × 38.1 mm, and each proof has a 2–3 mm 

margin, which is consistent with the margins on the regular Panama-Pacific Postage Due small die proofs. According to the BEP 

proving room books, only six proofs of each value were printed, 

as shown in Table 6. Ruling out the Panama-Pacific set in the 

Smithsonian and the whereabouts-unknown mounted exhibition 

set, four potential intact sets are possible.25 Through careful study 

Table 5. Control numbers of the Parcel Post Postage Due 

proofs retained by the Post Office Department (POD) and the 

Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP). Whether these proofs 

were large die or small die is unknown.

Scott POD retained BEP retained

No. Value proof No. proof No.

JQ1 1¢ 559333 559330, 559331

JQ2 2¢ 559486 559488, 559490

JQ3 5¢ 559350 559346, 559348

JQ4 10¢ 559371 559357, 559358

JQ5 25¢ 559471 559468, 559470

FIGURE 12. Parcel Post Postage Due 10¢ and 25¢ large die proofs (Scott JQ4P1 and JQ5P1) given to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The 

proofs have BEP control numbers (330728 and 330745, respectively) printed on their backs in blue ink. From the collection of Harry K. 

Charles Jr.

FIGURE 13. Panama-Pacific Parcel Post small die proofs (Scott 

JQ1P2a–JQ5P2a). Three sets have been documented in the philatelic 

literature. From the collection of Harry K. Charles Jr.
number 56 • 129

of auction catalogs and private communications with collectors, I 

can definitely account for three sets. Three sets are consistent with 

the identified three sets of the large-numeral Postage Due Panama-Pacific small die proofs described in an article by Charles,26

where there were again only six proofs of each value-color combination printed. There is some indication that a fourth set may 

exist, but I have not been able to verify its existence.

Although it has been said that the Parcel Post Postage Due 

stamps were the most unnecessary and perhaps useless stamps in 

the world during the exclusive use period,27 they received significant usage as regular dues after the exclusive use period ended, 

and, in fact, they provided a 25¢ postage due stamp, which received considerable use on bundled return mail. Some postmasters 

even went so far as to allow them to be used in place of a regular 

issue stamps and may have sold them to the general public. Both 

these activities were strictly forbidden by postal regulations.

No other proofs or essays for the Parcel Post Postage Due 

stamps are known in private hands. The Bureau of Engraving 

and Printing did, however, dust off the 25¢ Parcel Post Postage 

Due stamp design for use on a souvenir sheet issued in 1993, as 

shown in Figure 14. The souvenir sheet measures 257 mm wide × 

203 mm high and was printed in dark green on white card stock. 

This sheet was issued for the Omaha Stamp Show, Omaha, 

Nebraska, September 1993. In addition to the 25¢ Parcel Post 

Postage Due stamp (Scott JQ5) the sheet features the 10¢ Special Handling stamp (Scott QE3), the “Merry Widow” Special 

Delivery stamp (Scott E7), and, finally, the 10¢ Newspaper and 

Periodicals stamp (Scott PR2a). The Parcel Post Postage Due (die 

number 574), the Special Handling (die number 736), and the 

Special Delivery (die number 440) stamps were all die-stamped 

intaglio reproductions from the original BEP dies. The Newspaper and Periodicals stamp was an offset printed reproduction 

TABLE 6. Proving room data for the Parcel Post Postage Due 

Panama Pacific small die proofs.

Proof Printing dates

Value Die No. 13 January 1915 14 January 1915

1¢ 570 6

2¢ 571 6

5¢ 572 7a

10¢ 573 7a

25¢ 574 6

Frameb 569 6

a

One proof destroyed on 31 January 1916.

b

Reasons for printing this die for the Panama-Pacific series is unclear.

FIGURE 14. Souvenir card issued by the BEP for the Omaha Stamp Show, Omaha, Nebraska, in September of 1993. The card features a die-stamped intaglio reproduction (from the original BEP die) of Scott JQ5, as shown in the enlargement. Other green back of 

the book issues associated with mail delivery are also pictured (see text). From the collection of Harry K. Charles Jr.
130 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

from the original National Bank Note Company die. No record 

of the engraver or die history exists for this National Bank Note 

Company stamp. Because these are excellent reproductions and 

could be cut from the card to form imperforate proofs, the BEP 

also printed small diagonal lines on these “proofs.” Such lines 

were discussed in connection with the Postage Due stamps depicted on the bureau’s 100th anniversary card issued in 1994 in 

an article by Charles.28

Their widespread use as regular Postage Due stamps contributed to the recognition of their classic design. At least one 

other nation, Senegal, modeled a series of Postage Due stamps 

(Senegal, Scott J22–J31) after the U.S. Parcel Post Postage Due 

stamps. Figure 15 illustrates the Senegal five centimes Postage 

Due stamp (Scott J22) in green. Both perforated and imperforate stamps are shown along with a United States Scott JQ3 (5¢) 

Parcel Post Postage Due stamp pair for comparison. Unlike the 

Parcel Post Postage Due stamps, Senegal printed each value in a 

different color to avoid confusion. The frame for all the values 

was printed from a master die that had the central numeral position blank. A die proof of this master die is also shown in Figure 

15. It is printed in a rose lilac color, which is the color of the issued fifty centimes stamp (Senegal, Scott J27).

In summary, the Parcel Post System was and still is a major 

contributor to the growth of our nation. Coupled with RFD and 

COD, Parcel Post allowed the rural population of the United 

States to engage in communication and commerce with the rest 

of the nation and the world. In the beginning, the Parcel Post 

System used special stamps to ensure strict accountability because of concerns over profitability (especially by the postmaster 

general). These concerns or fears soon vanished as the Parcel 

Post System rapidly grew into the robust service it is today, ranging from the handling of regular packages to urgent parcels that 

are shipped by express mail.

The Parcel Post Postage Due stamps were, at first, practically useless. Since most packages had to be taken to a Post Office to be weighed, there was little or no need for them during 

the exclusive use period. Once they were allowed to be used in 

place of or in conjunction with regular Postage Due stamps, their 

utility increased greatly. In fact, the 25¢ Parcel Post Postage Due 

stamp filled a significant void in the regular Postage Due stamp 

series, and thus, it saw widespread use until its limited supplies 

were depleted. Only a little over two million 25¢ Parcel Post 

Postage Due stamps were printed (see Table 3). Because of their 

limited numbers all values of Parcel Post Postage Due stamps are 

relatively scarce, especially on cover.

This article has traced the development of the Parcel Post 

Postage Due stamps while providing insight into the adoption 

and general operation of the Parcel Post System. The unique large 

FIGURE 15. (bottom) Senegal (Scott J22) perforate and imperforate five centimes Postage Due stamps in 

green. The design measures 36.4 mm wide × 21.2 mm high. (top left) A 5¢ Scott JQ3 plate number pair is 

included for reference. (top right) Proof of the master frame and background design for the Senegal (Scott 

J22–J31) series of Postage Due stamps missing the central number value (the central numbers were engraved 

separately on each working die created from the background master die). The proof is rose lilac in color and 

measures 54.2 mm wide × 39.4 mm high. From the collection of Harry K. Charles Jr.
number 56 • 131

die proofs of the Parcel Post Postage Due stamps have been described and illustrated. The rare Panama-Pacific small die proofs 

have also been shown. A later use of the Parcel Post Postage Due 

stamp design by the BEP on a souvenir card was described along 

with the adaptation of the same design by Senegal for use in a 

series of Postage Due stamps. 

NOTES

1. Scott Numbers can be found in the yearly Scott Specialized Catalogue of 

United States Stamps and Covers (Sidney, Ohio: Scott Publishing Company).

2. The National Grange (Order of Patrons of Husbandry) is a farmers’ fraternal organization that encourages farmers to unite for common economic and 

political purposes. It was founded in 1867, and by the 1890s it had over one million 

members. While forming the center of social life in many farming communities, the 

grange was also a very effective advocacy group fighting the railroad monopolies 

and lobbying Congress for the passage of Rural Free Delivery and Parcel Post. 

The grange still exists today, with about a quarter million members in thirty-seven 

states. The National Grange headquarters are in Washington D.C. The Farmers’ 

Alliance was an economic movement among farmers that was founded in 1876 and 

flourished during the 1880s. The alliance met its defeat at the hands of the commodity brokers (and the railroads), but its elements went on to form the Populist 

Party in 1892. The Populist Party was a major advocate for Rural Free Delivery.

3. Rural Free Delivery is said to have been created by an act of Congress in 

1896 during President Grover Cleveland’s administration, but in fact, it actually 

started several years earlier. In 1891, the Post Office Department began a series of 

experiments on rural mail delivery. They began with five routes covering 10 miles 

in rural West Virginia (Jefferson County). The experiments were a success, and 

by the time the RFD act was passed in 1896 the number of routes had increased 

significantly. In 1896 alone eighty-two rural routes were added. Nationwide RFD 

took several more years to implement. By 1902, the mileage logged by rural carriers was over 100,000 miles, and by 1910 it had risen to almost a million miles on 

an annual basis.

4. The National Farmers Union (Farmers’ Educational and Cooperative 

Union of America) is a federation of state farmers’ unions dedicated “to protect and 

enhance the economic well being and quality of life for family farmers and ranchers and their rural communities.” It was founded in 1902 and is the second largest 

farm organization in the country after the Farm Bureau. The current membership is 

about 250,000 distributed over 32 states. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C. 

The National Farmers Union has been very politically active from its beginnings. In 

the early 1900s, the union lobbied for Parcel Post, direct senatorial elections, and 

women’s suffrage.

5. Richard B. Kielbowicz, “Government Goes into Business: Parcel Post in 

the Nation’s Political Economy, 1880–1915,” Studies in American Political Development, 8 (1994): 150–172.

6. The act of Congress on 24 August 1912 authorized Parcel Post, a service that would “embrace all other matter, including farm and factory products 

not now embraced by law in either the first, second or third class, not exceeding 

eleven pounds in weight, nor greater in size than seventy-two inches in length and 

girth combined.” Full details of the Parcel Post System as implemented on 1 January 1913 may be found in a thirty-two-page pamphlet printed by the Government 

Printing Office, entitled Parcel Post Regulations, that is dated to be effective on 

1 January 1913. It was issued by Postmaster General Frank H. Hitchcock in connection with Post Office Department Order No. 6685 (Washington, D.C., 30 November 1912), which described the conduct of the Parcel Post System.

7. Henry M. Gobie, U.S. Parcel Post: A Postal History, Miami, Fla.: Postal 

Publications, 1979.

8. Gobie, U.S. Parcel Post, 47, figure caption.

9. There is evidence that Postmaster General Hitchcock actually received a 

recommendation from his Postal Advisory Committee to make all the Parcel Post 

stamps the same color; Gobie, U.S. Parcel Post, 17.

10. H. L. Wiley, United States Parcel Post Stamps, Stamp Booklets, Postal 

Savings Stamps, Handbook 7 (Boston, Mass.: Meekel-Severn Wylie, 1914), 3–16.

11. Harry K. Charles Jr., “United States Postage Due Stamp Essays and 

Proofs Part IX: Parcel Post Postage Due,” The United States Specialist, 83, no. 4 

(April 2012): 151–164.

12. Scott 2008 Specialized Catalog of United States Stamps and Covers (Sidney, Ohio, Scott Publishing, 2008), 712.

13. Gobie, U.S. Parcel Post.

14. Clarence W. Brazer was the foremost expert on essays (and proofs) during 

the first half of the twentieth century. His seminal book on essays is still the bible 

for essay and proof collectors today. Clarence W. Brazer, Essays for U.S. Adhesive 

Postage Stamps (Handbook Committee American Philatelic Society, 1941).

15. Charles, “United States Postage Due Stamp Essays, Part IX.”

16. Edward P. Babcock (1909–2000) was born in Geneva, New York. He 

soon moved to Rochester, New York, where he grew up. Edward started stamp 

collecting as a youth. He attended engineering school at Cornell during 1927–28, 

but he had to drop out because of financial issues associated with the stock market 

crash in 1929. He worked at many engineering jobs around New York City. Because 

of his continued interest in stamps, Edward was fortunate to meet Clarence Brazer 

in the late 1930s, beginning a long dealer-customer relationship that lasted until 

Brazer’s death in 1956. Edward Babcock was one of Brazer’s key outlets for back 

of book material, especially postage due proofs and essays. He was a philatelist and 

was not only interested in the stamps but also in every nuance of their design and 

history. Edward kept up a running correspondence with Clarence Brazer, and after 

Brazer’s death, he met and corresponded with another philatelic great, Walter McIntire. Between Babcock and McIntire, they solved several mysteries surrounding 

the bureau issue Postage Due stamps. Babcock was McIntire’s sounding board and 

offered him many cogent comments on his philatelic articles prior to publication. 

Edward worked behind the scenes asking probing questions of the experts to see if 

they would come to similar conclusions about philatelic postage due mysteries that 

he had already solved. His collection, his attention to detail, and his willingness to 

share his knowledge with other philatelists made him an important contributor to 

postage due stamp history. Edward died at the age of 91 in Wilmington, Delaware, 

his home for the last 50 years of his life.

17. The Caroline Prentice Cromwell Collection of United States Stamps, 

Proofs, Essays, (New York: Irwin Heiman, 7–8 November 1957), 68, lot no. 676.

18. The Postage Stamp Collection of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Part 1,

United States of America and Latin America, (New York: H. R. Harmer, 4–5 February 1946), 28, lot no. 87.

19. Gobie, U.S. Parcel Post, 165 (Scott JQ1P), 172 (Scott JQ2P), 177 (Scott 

JQ3P), 183 (Scott JQ4P), and 186 (Scott JQ5P).

20. Ronald A. Burns, A Study of the Production Records for the 1903 and 

1914–15 Printings of the “Roosevelt” and “Panama Pacific” Small Die Proofs, 

Bureau Issues Association Research Paper 7 (Arlington, Mass.: Bureau Issues Association, August 1994), 72.

21. Allan M. Thatcher, “The Roosevelt Albums of United States Die Proofs,” 

Essay-Proof Journal, 10 (1953): 67–71.

22. Clarence W. Brazer, “U.S. Essay and Proof Unit ‘The South Gate Collection,’” The American Philatelist, August 1942:725–726.

23. The “Robert P. Hackett” Proofs and Essays of United States Stamps

(New York: H. R. Harmer, 6–9 February 1956), 106–107.

24. The Caroline Prentice Cromwell Collection of United States Stamps, 

Proofs, Essays, Private Coils, Miscellaneous Foreign, Part 2 (New York: Irwin Heiman, 20 March 1958), 29, lot no. 355.

25. James H. Bruns, “The Scarcity of the Panama-Pacific Proofs: Part III,” 

The United States Specialist, 59, no. 9 (September 1988) 419–449.

26. Harry K. Charles Jr., “United States Postage Due Stamp Essays and 

Proofs Part II: Large Numeral Postage Due Die Proofs,” The United States Specialist, 83, no. 2 (February 2011): 61–70, 75–83.

27. George Wren, “Parcel Post Dues,” The American Philatelist, 10, no. 3 

(March 1996): 224–226.

28. Harry K. Charles Jr., “United States Postage Due Stamp Essays and 

Proofs Part VII: First Bureau Small Die and Plate Proofs,” The United States Specialist, 82, no. 12 (December 2011): 536–550.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brazer, Clarence W. Essays for U.S. Adhesive Postage Stamps. Handbook Committee American Philatelic Society, 1941.

———. “U.S. Essay and Proof Unit ‘The South Gate Collection.’” The American 

Philatelist, August 1942:725–726.

Bruns, James H. “The Scarcity of the Panama-Pacific Proofs: Part III.” The United 

States Specialist, 59, no. 9 (September 1988):419–449.

Burns, Ronald A. A Study of the Production Records for the 1903 and 1914–15 

Printings of the “Roosevelt” and “Panama Pacific” Small Die Proofs.” Bureau Issues Association Research Paper 7. Arlington, Mass.: Bureau Issues 

Association, August 1994.
132 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

The Caroline Prentice Cromwell Collection of United States Stamps, Proofs, Essays. New York: Irwin Heiman, 7–8 November 1957.

The Caroline Prentice Cromwell Collection of United States Stamps, Proofs, Essays, Private Coils, Miscellaneous Foreign. Part 2. New York: Irwin Heiman, 

20 March 1958.

Charles, Harry K., Jr. “United States Postage Due Stamp Essays and Proofs Part II: 

Large Numeral Postage Due Die Proofs.” The United States Specialist, 82, 

no. 2 (February 2011):61–70, 75–83.

———. “United States Postage Due Stamp Essays and Proofs Part VII: First Bureau 

Small Die and Plate Proofs.” The United States Specialist, 82, no. 12 (December 2011): 536–550.

———. “United States Postage Due Stamp Essays and Proofs Part IX: Parcel Post 

Postage Due.” The United States Specialist, 83, no. 4 (April 2012): 151–164.

Gobie, Henry M. U.S. Parcel Post: A Postal History. Miami, Fla.: Postal Publications, 1979.

Kielbowicz, Richard B. “Government Goes into Business: Parcel Post in the Nation’s 

Political Economy, 1880–1915.” Studies in American Political Development, 

8 (1994):150–172. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0898588X00000109. 

The Postage Stamp Collection of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Part 1, United States 

of America and Latin America. New York: H. R. Harmer, 4–5 February 1946.

The “Robert P. Hackett” Proofs and Essays of United States Stamps. New York: 

H. R. Harmer, 6–9 February 1956.

Scott 2008 Specialized Catalog of United States Stamps and Covers. Sidney, Ohio: 

Scott Publishing, 2008.

Thatcher, Allan M. “The Roosevelt Albums of United States Die Proofs.” EssayProof Journal, 10 (1953):67–71.

Wiley, H. L. United States Parcel Post Stamps, Stamp Booklets, Postal Savings 

Stamps. Handbook 7. Boston, Mass.: Meekel-Severn Wylie, 1914.

Wren, George. “Parcel Post Dues.” The American Philatelist, 10, no. 3 (March 

1996):224–226.
About the Contributors

Sheila A. Brennan (sbrennan@gmu.edu) earned her Ph.D. in history from George Mason 

University and wrote a cultural history of stamp collecting in the United States for her 

dissertation. She is the associate director of the public projects division at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media and research assistant professor in the History 

and Art History Department at George Mason University. Prior to coming to the Rosenzweig Center in 2005, she worked as the director of education and public programs at the 

U.S. Navy Museum for seven years.

Harry K. Charles Jr. (harry.charles@jhuapl.edu) holds bachelor and doctoral degrees in 

electrical engineering from Drexel University and The Johns Hopkins University, respectively. He is an expert in microelectronics and electronic packaging and is a principal 

staff engineer in the Research and Exploratory Development Department at the Johns 

Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. He is a fellow of the IEEE and a thirtyseven year member of the American Philatelic Society. His stamp collecting interests include U.S. Postage Due stamps, essays, and proofs, U.S. Postal Savings and War Savings 

stamps, and foreign America.

Diane DeBlois, M.A. education, and Robert Dalton Harris, Ph.D. theoretical physics 

(agatherin@yahoo.com), are independent scholars and editors who have, for over three 

decades, made communications history their vocation and passion. As independent 

scholars, they work together as antiquarians (aGatherin’ Historical Paper) and editors 

(Postal History Journal).

Robin Gates Elliott (rmgrge@gmail.com) holds a doctorate in history from Georgetown 

University. Her specialty is the history of Russia and Eastern Europe. She is a docent at 

the Smithsonian National Postal Museum. 

Erick Lee Erickson (ericksoe@msudenver.edu) is professor of economics at Metropolitan 

State University of Denver. He received his Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico and 

his B.A. from the University of Montana. His areas of interest are American economic 

history and postal operations. He has traveled widely and has taught as a visiting professor at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics and has published in many 

scholarly journals, including The Journal of Applied Business Research, The Journal of 

Foreign Exchange and International Finance, and The Journal of Mining Science and 

Technology. In 2008, he received Metro State’s Outstanding Teaching Award.
134 • smithsonian contributions to history and technology

Daniel Gifford (giffordd@si.edu) is a professional researcher at 

the Smithsonian Institution, supporting several of the history 

and culture museums. He received both his Ph.D. and master’s 

in American history at George Mason University, where he now 

also serves as a part-time faculty member. His dissertation, “To 

You and Your Kin: Holiday Images from America’s Postcard 

Phenomenon, 1907–1910,” was completed in 2011 and is currently being revised into a book manuscript.

Catherine J. Golden (cgolden@skidmore.edu) is a professor of 

English at Skidmore College. She is the author of Posting It: The 

Victorian Revolution in Letter Writing (2009) and Images of the 

Woman Reader in Victorian British and American Fiction (2003) 

as well as editor or coeditor of five books, including Charlotte 

Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper”: A Sourcebook and 

Critical Edition (2004) and Book Illustrated: Text, Image, and 

Culture 1770–1930 (2000).

David Hochfelder, Ph.D. (dhochfelder@albany.edu), is assistant 

professor of U.S. History at the University at Albany, State University of New York. He has published several articles in the 

history of technology and business, and his book, The Telegraph 

in America: A History (Johns Hopkins University Press), will appear in fall 2012. He earned his Ph.D. in history from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, and holds bachelor and 

master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Northwestern 

University, Evanston, Illinois.

Alexander Kolchinsky (alexkolc@gmail.com) has a Ph.D. in 

molecular biology and has worked in academia. He is currently 

retired and actively involved in philatelic research. His interests 

include propaganda on stamps and the social history of Russia 

and the Soviet Union as reflected in postal materials.

Thomas Lera (lerat@si.edu) was appointed the Winton M. 

Blount Research Chair at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum and has served as cochair of the Winton M. Blount Symposium since 2007. He published his first book, Bats in Philately, 

in 1995, edited The Winton M. Blount Symposia: Select Papers 

2006–2009, which was released September 2010 by the Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, and his book Cave Post Offices

was published in 2011. His book The G. H. Kaestlin Collection 

of Imperial Russia and Zemstvos Stamps will be published by 

the Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press in late 2012. 

Sune Christian Pedersen, Ph.D. (christian.sune.pedersen@

natmus.dk), is currently a curator at the National Museum of 

Denmark and has been a curator and head of the Research & 

Collections Department at the Danish Post & Tele Museum, Copenhagen. He has written numerous articles and one book on 

postal history, Broken Seals, based on his Ph.D. dissertation, on 

the subject of postal espionage and censorship in eighteenth century Denmark. Together with Robert Dalton Harris and Diane 

DeBlois he curated an exhibition in the Danish Post & Tele Museum on the imagery of Hermes. 

Robert G. Rufe (rrufe1@aol.com) holds an A.B. in economics 

and a B.S. in chemical engineering from Lafayette College. He 

is president of the Brandywine Valley Stamp Club in Wilmington, Delaware, and a thirty-eight-year member of the American 

Philatelic Society and has been awarded both the Hopkinson Literature Award and the Hopkinson Trophy for Exhibiting by the 

United States Stamp Society. He recently became the fifty-sixth 

recipient of the American Association of Philatelic Exhibitors’ 

Diamond Award for excellence in philatelic exhibiting for U.S. 

Special Handling, 1925–1959: The Stamps and the Service.

Tessa Sabol (tnsabol@gmail.com) holds a master’s in museum 

studies. While attending graduate school at The George Washington University, she worked as a contractor for the Historical 

Resource Center of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Her 

interests include history of the American West and collections 

management theory and practice.

David L. Straight’s (dls@mophil.org) boyhood stamp collection 

has grown into an adult fascination with collecting, researching, 

and writing about postal history, particularly the operation of 

the U.S. Post Office Department during the late nineteenth and 

early twentieth centuries. He is a retired librarian, vice-president 

of the Postal History Society, a fellow of the Royal Philatelic 

Society London, and a member of the Council of Philatelists for 

the Smithsonian National Postal Museum.

Jack Trammell (jtrammel@rmc.edu) is director of disability support and an assistant professor at Randolph-Macon College in 

Ashland, Virginia. Among his recent projects are a history of 

the Richmond slave trade (The History Press) and a forthcoming 

project on Romanian World War II postal markings.
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