The American Railway: Its Construction, Development, Management, and Appliances

by Thomas Curtis Clarke

The Overland Mail Coach—A Star Route.

At first the facilities for mail services were very limited. Postmaster-General Kendall, in 1835, suggested that the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company might be asked to close in some portion of their baggage-cars, a strong lock being placed on the apartment, to which only the postmasters at Washington and Baltimore should have keys. In the same report he adds: "If wheels can be constructed which can be used alike upon the railroads and the streets of the cities respectively, the Department will furnish an entire car containing the mail to be delivered at one depot, and received at the other, asking nothing of the company but to haul it." It was even proposed at this time that the Government should have its own locomotives, everything else on the road giving the right of way to the mail train. This proposition was not adopted. The fear was expressed, however, that if the Department did not have absolute control over the road, the people would have to depend on stage or other horse transportation for mail service. All these early troubles in time passed away, and, through concessions on both sides, the railways soon became the most important agent of the Post-Office Department.

Mail Carrying in the Country.

This, of course, was not accomplished without many trials and tribulations. It seems strange, in the light of the present, to read in an official report a remonstrance from route agents that nearly every night dead bodies were placed in the mail crates between Philadelphia and New York, and the mails packed around the coffins. This breach of good order disappeared after that time, and with it came to an end the freight methods and the old stage-coach ideas of dealing with the mails.

A separate compartment in a baggage-car, fitted up with few conveniences necessary for the distribution of local way-mail, was the beginning of the system which has developed into the luxurious postal cars of the present time. As a matter of history, however, it is only fair to say that the system which we then adopted had been in use for some time by our northern neighbors of Canada, who had taken it from the mother country.

The credit of suggesting the first step toward the present system has generally been given to Colonel G. B. Armstrong, who in 1864 was Assistant Postmaster at Chicago. This is incorrect; Mr. W. A. Davis, a clerk of the St. Joseph, Mo., Post-Office, where the overland mail was made up, conceived the idea, in 1862, that if the letters and papers could be assorted on the cars between Quincy and St. Joseph, the overland mail could start promptly on time. He was given permission to carry out this idea, and there are vouchers on file in the Department at Washington showing that he was paid for that specific work. In 1864 Colonel Armstrong was authorized and encouraged by the Hon. Montgomery Blair, then Postmaster-General, to undertake the difficult task of arranging and introducing the service. On August 31, 1864, he wrote: "To-day I commenced the new distribution." Subsequently, Colonel Armstrong became the first General Railway Mail Superintendent, and held this office until ill-health compelled him to resign, in 1871. To Colonel George S. Bangs, of Illinois, and his successors, Theodore N. Vail, William B. Thompson, and John Jameson, is due the excellence of the present system. Colonel Bangs was a thoroughly equipped post-office man, energetic, courageous, and progressive. Brimful of ideas, he was ever on the lookout for improvement. Never satisfied with old ways, he was constantly striving to simplify and better the service. He forgot himself in his work, and died a martyr to his duty, leaving the Travelling Post-Office of to-day a monument to his memory. While to Colonel Armstrong is due the credit for the skeleton of the system, it was the genius of Colonel Bangs that clothed the bones with flesh, developed the sinew, put the blood in circulation, and breathed into its body the breath of life. Colonel Bangs found, in 1871, that everything was disjointed, disconnected, and sluggish. There was no attempt at "certainty, security, or celerity." It was a "go-as-you-please" condition of affairs. He grappled at once with it and brought order out of chaos. He introduced a system of emulation among the employees, rewarding those who displayed proficiency by promotion over the sluggish, and thus, in fact, was probably the father of what is now known as Civil Service Reform. In 1874 he discussed the propriety of establishing a fast and exclusive mail train between New York and Chicago, "this train" (quoting his report to the Postmaster-General) "to be under the control of the Department, so far as it is necessary for the purposes designed, and to run the distance in about twenty-four hours. It is conceded by railway officials that this can be done. The importance of a line like this cannot be overestimated. It would reduce the actual time of mail between the east and west from twelve to twenty-four hours. As it would necessarily be established upon one or more of the trunk lines, having an extended system of connections, its benefit would be in no case confined, but extended through all parts of the country alike."

This report met with the approval of Postmaster-General Jewell, who ordered Bangs to negotiate with the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad and the Lake Shore Railroad for a fast mail train, leaving New York at four o'clock in the morning, and arriving at Chicago in about twenty-four hours. It was the old story of making bricks without straw. The Post-Office Department had no appropriation to pay for such facilities, hence it had to depend at first on the public spirit of the railroad authorities. Commodore Vanderbilt, the president of the companies whose lines were to be used, had had dealings with the Department, and was perhaps not altogether sanguine as to the practical issue of the experiment, or in respect to the countenance it would receive from Congress; but Mr. William H. Vanderbilt, the vice-president, lent a willing ear to Mr. Bangs's proposition, and did his utmost to aid him in putting it into effect. There being no special appropriation available for the purpose in hand, "the devil was whipped around the stump" by Colonel Bangs stipulating that if Mr. Vanderbilt would have twenty cars built and the service performed, all matter originating at or coming into the New York Post-Office, which could reach its destination at the same time by this line, should be sent by this train, and that the railway companies could have the right to demand a weighing of the mail matter at will, all railroads being paid according to weight. When the details of the plan were communicated to Commodore Vanderbilt, he is reported to have said to his son: "If you want to do this, go ahead, but I know the Post-Office Department, and you will, too, within a year." Mr. Vanderbilt did "go ahead." He constructed and equipped the finest mail train ever seen on the planet, ran it for ten months, never missed a connection at Chicago, and was always on time at New York. He did not have to wait a year, however, for a realization of the sagacious old commodore's prophecy. Within three weeks, despite the indignant protest of Colonel Bangs, the mails of three States were ordered to be taken from this and given to another route. A grosser and more wanton breach of plighted faith it would be hard to find, and its results were far-reaching and disastrous.

This train was a marvel of completeness and efficiency. It was manned by picked men, and the only complaint ever made against it was that it ran so fast that the clerks had not time to sort the mails for the post-offices between New York and Poughkeepsie. To obviate this, Colonel Bangs requested the postmaster at New York to have two hundred mail-bags dyed red, which should contain the mail for those offices nearest together, so that the crew in the train could distribute them first. There was no complaint after that. But when the dyer's bill was sent by the postmaster to the Department, it was disallowed by a clerk of the Second Assistant Postmaster-General, who, in a letter announcing the fact, said that there was no necessity for the outlay if the postal clerks did their duty. Bangs, who had just arrived at the post-office from a day and night's ride on his favorite train, was lying on a sofa half asleep in the postmaster's private office, as that official was opening his mail. When he came to that letter he handed it to Bangs. He was wide-awake in an instant. "Mr. Postmaster," said he, "do you know the man who signed this letter? He is a wheezy priest, a fool, and a Baptist, at that. Give me the letter." The bill was allowed as soon as Bangs reached the Department. He was wrong, however, in crediting the subordinate to the Baptist faith. He was an ornament of another persuasion.