Canada: Its Postage Stamps and Postal Stationery

by Clifton A. Howes

Postal Arrangement
Between the Dominion of Canada and the United States.

Art. I. Correspondence of every kind, written and printed, ... [mailed in each country and addressed to the other], shall be fully prepaid at the domestic postage rates of the country of origin, and the country of destination will receive, forward and deliver the same free of charge.

Art. II. Each country will transport the domestic mails of the other by its ordinary mail routes in closed pouches through its territory, free of charge.

Art. III. [Patterns and samples, weighing not over 8 oz., unsealed, 10 cents each, prepayment obligatory.]

Art. IV. [No further accounts to be kept between the two countries.]

Art. VIII. The existing arrangements for the exchange of registered letters between the two countries shall continue in full force; but the registration fee on registered letters sent from the United States to Canada shall be the same as the registration fee charged in the United States for domestic registered letters.

Art. IX. This arrangement, except so far as it relates to letter postage, shall take effect from the first of January, 1875. The reduced letter rate will come into operation on the first of February, 1875....

Done in duplicate and signed at Ottawa the 27th day of January, 1875.

From the above it is seen that the double domestic postage rate on letters between the two countries, and the keeping of accounts of the total correspondence passing through the exchange offices, were done away with on the 1st February, 1875, and since that date all such mail matter has passed freely between the two countries at the ordinary domestic rates of each. The figures given in this Report were the last for the total correspondence between Canada and the United States, and were presumably for the seven months from 1st July, 1874, to 1st February, 1875: they were $478,516.91, which would represent some eight million letters were that the only class included, and all of them single letters; this would be at the rate of some thirteen million letters per year, a very respectable figure for the intercommunication of the two countries.