FOOTNOTE:

The author wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to the studies of Mr. Davied J. Lewis, the one man in official public life in the United States during the last decade adequately to realize the need for investigation and agitation in the field of a Government express service.

B. B.

January 25, 1919.

ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT

The development of the express business in the United States serves perhaps as admirably as the development of any other single public utility to hold up the mirror to the economic ideology which prevailed among the American people up to August 1, 1914.

The origin of the express business in this country is usually assigned to 1839, but the Davenport and Mason Company claims to trace its beginnings back to 1836. In July of that year, a railroad was opened between Boston and Taunton, Massachusetts, a distance of 36 miles; and with its opening Charles Davenport and N. S. Mason delivered valuables and small packages to customers at those two towns. Even before this time, however, the picturesque and half-legendary stage-driver had often called for, transported and delivered articles entrusted to him for persons living along or near his route. Similar service had been frequently rendered also by steamboat captains and even by the conductors on the first railroads, often, if not usually, as an unremunerated personal favor. A. L. Stimson, one of the early expressmen and the author of the most comprehensive history of the express business in the United States, states that the need for some form of transportation by express was so intense before 1840 that a person could hardly make a trip between two cities without being deluged with requests to deliver parcels, and that these requests would come not only from friends and acquaintances, but even from total strangers.