Iowa Assessments Practice Test 15

Mail Comes to the Farm

¹In the early 1890s, most Americans lived in the countryside, yet most of them had no mail delivered to their homes. People in large cities had enjoyed free home delivery since 1863, but a farm family had to hitch up a wagon and travel to the nearest post office, sometimes many miles away, to find out whether a letter had arrived. During planting and harvest, a trip to town could cost a full day of work, so many families collected their mail only once a week or even less often.

²Farm organizations argued that this was unfair. Rural families paid the same postage as city families, they pointed out, but received far less service. After years of petitions, Congress paid for an experiment. In October 1896, carriers began delivering mail along three rural routes in Jefferson County, West Virginia.

³The experiment spread quickly, and in 1902 Rural Free Delivery became a permanent service. Its effects reached well beyond the mailbox. The Post Office would not start a route unless the road could be traveled all year, so communities that wanted delivery began grading, draining, and graveling their dirt roads. Daily newspapers now reached farmhouses, and farmers could follow crop prices and world events almost as closely as people in town.

⁴Not everyone welcomed the change. Some small-town shopkeepers worried that farm families would stop coming to town, and their fears were partly justified. When Congress added parcel post in 1913, large companies could mail packages straight to rural customers, and thick mail-order catalogs became fixtures in farm kitchens. A family could now order shoes, tools, or even a sewing machine without leaving home.

⁵Today, a mailbox at the end of a long country driveway seems ordinary. For the families who first received one, though, it was a sign that the countryside was no longer cut off from the rest of the nation.