The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1880-03-27
Postage Stamps.

| The question of a correspondent who
wishes to know when postage stamps
first came into use in the United States,
recalls recollections of one of the most
hotly contested battles for public well
fare and convenience ever fought in the
United States. In Great Britain the en-
tire change in the rates of postage, and
the improved facilities for the prompt
transmission and delivery of letters,
proposed by Rowland Hill, went into
operation in 1910. Penny postage across
the Atlantic stood at once in strong
contrast with the rates charged in the
United States, where it cost six and a
quarter cents to send single letter not
over thirty miles, between thirty to
eighty miles, ten cents; between eighty
and one hundred and fifty miles, twelve
and half cents; over one hundred and
fifty and less than four hundred miles,
eighteen and three-quarter cents; four
to five hundred miles, twenty cents, and
over five hundred miles, twenty-five
cents. These rates were for single
piece of paper. Each additional piece
added one rate, and a letter that weigh
ed one ounce was made to pay four
rates.
Every year when Congress met its
table was loaded with. petitions for
cheap postage. State Legislatures were
induced to pass resolution after resolu-
ton in favor of reduction, and par
tial reform was effected in 1916, against
the earnestopposition of many who held
that as the Post-oflice Department was
not self-sustaining at these high rates,
reduction would result in its becom-
ing a heavy charge upon the Govern
| ment.
The partial measures of 1845 only
whetted the desire of the people for a
wholesale reduction, and the agitation
continued until March. 1851, when
law was passed by Congress reducing
the rates to three cents on letters weigh
ing not more than half an ounce, and
carried not more than 5000 miles, if
the postage was prepaid. If not pre-
paid the rate was five cents for half
ounce; and these rates were to be in
creased according to the weight, as at
present.
Tofacilitate the prepayment of this
postage, the Unconstitutional was
directed to prepare and furnish Deputy
Postmasters for sale to the public,
suitable stamps of the denomination
of three cents" 1t was left optional
to use stamp, or to pay the three cents
at the Post-ofiice, and, as a further fa-
cility for such prepayment, the same
bill provided for the coinage of three
cent piece-the forerunner of long
series of " fish-scale" money. The
three-cent piece came into favor at first,
however, being voted " decidedly neat
and tasty" which, perhaps, it was COM
pared with the broad and cumbrous
copper cents, for which in measure it
furnished convenient substitute.
The three cent pieces and the three
cent stamps were ready for delivery by
the time the new law took effect on
July LIST, 1851.
When the first reduction was passed
in lS45, the pieces of mail matter an
nually handled in the United States
numbered about twenty nine millions;
the beneficial effect of the many re-
forms of which it was the harbinger
may be imagined from the fact that
thirty years afterwards the number OF
letters and pieces of transient matter
handled in Boston alone was thirty
nine millions, or one-third more than
the whole postal business of the coun-
try generation earlier.
Now, in the free delivery cities alone,
elghty-eight in number, more than