We have no objection to this, although a strange fancy on the part of those who are seized with the mania, because it opens a new trade for the enterprising speculator on the infirmity of human nature. A house in New York advertises for “correspondents all over the world,” for furnishing and supplying it with stamp news. Another in Montreal advertises “stamps cheaper than ever:” these consist of foreign, British colonial, and European stamps of all kinds. The number of North American is enumerated at fifty varieties.
Connected, however, with the various stamps now in use in this country is the necessity of teaching to our youth their use and application to banks, custom-houses, railroads, post-offices, pawnbrokers, and, in fact, as stamp tax to every trade, business, and department of government.
In several of our commercial colleges an actual stamp department is invented, and mock-banks, custom-houses, steamboat-offices, post-offices, &c., are fitted up for the purpose of familiarizing youth with their use in the various mercantile and governmental departments of the country. This is what we term the best and most useful knowledge that the stamps can impart to those who are so anxious to treasure them up in albums and cabinets.[55]
We annex the following article from Appleton’s “United States Postal Guide”[1864]:—
“By the Sonora, a few days since, says a Californian correspondent, some two hundred of Uncle Sam’s orphans arrived, and were distributed around. Some were sent to Fort Alcastra, some to the barracks at the Presidio, and the remainder were quartered at Benicia barracks, preparatory to being assigned to the different companies of the regiments in this department. They will soon be scattered from Oregon to that most delightful post, Fort Yuma, in Arizona,—a place where they have to put rocks on the roofs to keep the ends of the boards from curling over like little dogs’ tails. It is a wretched place to live at, and to be ordered there is enough to make any officer resign, unless a Catholic, who acknowledges the justice of being sent to purgatory. They have a little fun even in that awful place sometimes, and an officer was telling me the other day of how he lost his postage-stamps. He had sent up here for some twenty dollars’ worth, and had left them on his table. Now, the habits, manners, and customs thereabouts are considerably on the free-and-easy style, and the Indians are allowed to roam around the garrison ad libitum, if they behave themselves and do not steal. On this occasion a young squaw, who had the run of the quarters, and was very much at home anywhere and everywhere, happened to stray into my friend’s room, and, seeing the postage-stamps, began to examine them with great curiosity. She discovered they would stick if wet, and forthwith a happy idea struck her. Now, the fashionable dress of the ladies of her class in that warm climate is of the briefest description. She was ambitious to dress up and excite the envy of the other Pocahontases. So she went in on the postal currency, and, much to the astonishment of the garrison, made her appearance presently on the parade-ground entirely covered over with postage-stamps. She was stuck all over with Benjamin Franklin, and the Father of his Country was plastered all over her ladyship’s glossy skin indiscriminately, regardless of dignity and decency. The ‘roar’ that greeted her, from the commanding officer down to the drummer-boys, was loud enough to be heard nearly at head-quarters in San Francisco; but, Indian-like, she preserved her equanimity, and did not seem at all disconcerted, but sailed off with the air and step of a genuine princess, while my friend rushed into his quarters to discover himself minus his twenty dollars’ worth of postage-stamps, and that what was intended for the mail had been appropriated to the female. She might have been put in the overland coach and gone through: she certainly could not have been stopped for want of being prepaid.”
REPORT OF MR. GEORGE PLITT.
Amos Kendall, postmaster-general from 1835 to 1840, anxious to have the postal department as perfect as human efforts can avail towards such a state of things, sent the gentleman whose name heads this article to Europe for the purpose of adding to our store of knowledge on postal matters. Mr. Plitt was well calculated for this mission, having served seven years in the New York post-office, and was familiar with its operations. He left New York in the month of June, 1839, and returned in August, 1840, after having visited “the post-office departments of England, Scotland, France, Belgium, Saxony, Prussia, Austria, Bavaria, Wirtemberg, Baden, and the free Hanseatic cities of Frankfort, Hamburg, Bremen, and Lubeck.”
Among other reforms and suggestions made in Mr. Plitt’s report are the abolition of the franking privilege, the prepayment of all letters, as well as of newspapers and all printed matter. He strongly urges the reduction of postage, and quotes the English postal law as an evidence of its pecuniary advantages. As many of the reforms suggested, based on the European system, have been introduced into ours, and nearly every other improvement carried into the department, it is not necessary for us here to name them; but, at the same time, it is due to Mr. Plitt to state that his report met with a cordial response from the department, whose instructions he had so ably carried out, and whose ideas on and about foreign mail arrangements afforded it an opportunity to improve those of our own.