This week the U.S. Senate is debating the 21st Century
Postal Act of 2011, a proposal to reform the U.S. Postal Service and change the
way the USPS does business in order to make it more profitable. In December,
the Postal Service proposed to cut Saturday delivery, close half of its 500
processing centers around the country and dozens of local post offices, and lay
off thousands of workers. The bill under consideration this week would delay
closures and require studies to determine how best to proceed with any
reductions in delivery.
Although those are laudable goals, they will not solve the
fundamental problem: Congress assumes that this vital government service will
somehow become profitable. In the midst of a long decline in the volume of
mail, the demise of the Postal Service -- at least as a public institution with
universal service throughout the United States -- often seems inevitable. Yet
the critiques and suggestions offered as solutions for what ails the Postal
Service see the problem only in terms of commercial and financial concerns.
The circumstances of the Post Office's founding suggest a
far broader and more important mission: guaranteeing the sanctity of civic
participation and political debate.
During the American Revolution, the post was a crucial point
of contention between colonists and the Crown because it was the means for
circulating not only correspondence but also newspapers, the lifeblood of
intercolonial political cooperation. When British officials threatened the free
circulation of news, newspaper publishers led the charge in 1774 to replace the
British imperial system with a "Constitutional Post." Without a
government structure, the post would be privately funded, but newspaper
publishers and allies like the Boston Committee of Correspondence made sure
that reliable, safe, and secure circulation of political intelligence was a
primary function.
Shortly after Lexington and Concord in April 1775, the
Continental Congress took up a post office as one of the earliest institutions
of national reach -- making the U.S. Post Office older than the Navy, the
Marines, and the Declaration of Independence. Congressional delegates therefore
believed that ensuring safe communication throughout the colonies was vital to
the colonies' efforts for military, political, and commercial unity.
The delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 saw
the operation of information channels as a core function of government: the
power "to establish post offices and post roads" is one of the
explicitly named grants included among the enumerated powers of Congress. At
the same time, new political cleavages within the United States caused tension
about the Post Office's role as an impartial circulation mechanism. During the
debates over ratification in 1787 and 1788, some antifederalist printers
accused the Post Office of suppressing their publications and arguments against
the Constitution.
William Goddard, the mastermind of the 1774
"Constitutional Post," ominously suggested he would once again start
his own postal system. The complaints of Goddard and other printers forced
Congress to re-assert that the Post Office would circulate all news and
information equally. In 1792, the new Federal Congress confirmed that promise
in the first Post Office Act, setting the stage for a massive explosion in the
newspaper industry and providing for the circulation of information to the far
reaches of the country.
Understanding the core mission of the Post Office -- as part
of a communications infrastructure for political debate and civic participation
-- should lead us to reframe the questions we ask about the future of the USPS.
Making changes to the USPS's structure are clearly necessary in order to ensure
its ability to meet its obligations. But the historical context should lead us
to ask much larger questions about government's role in protecting the free
circulation of information. In the 18th century, the government committed
itself to guaranteeing the free flow of information throughout the nation as
part of a project to ensure mass participation in civic life, linking the Post
Office with the protection of a free press.
The decline in mail volume points to a certain inevitability
about the commercial success of the USPS. But more broadly we must carefully
consider the value of publicly owned, freely available channels of
communication. Should the Post Office cease to exist, we will lose the last
public guarantor of free communication in the United States.
A B O U T THE A U THO R JOSEPH M. ADELMAN is a historian of
the politics and media of the American Revolution. He is a National Endowment
for the Humanities fellow at the American Antiquarian Society.
