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THE BEGINNINGS 
 
 OF THE TRUE 
 
 RAILWAY MAIL SERVICE 
 
GEO. B. ARMSTRONG, 
 Founder of the United States Railway Mail Service. 
 
THE BEGINNINGS 
 
 OF THE TRUE 
 
 RAILWAY MAIL SERVICE 
 
 AND THE WORK OF 
 
 GEORGE B. ARMSTRONG 
 
 IN FOUNDING IT 
 
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 PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION 
 1906 
 
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 A Word of Comment 
 
 The object in printing these pages is to show that to the fertile 
 brain and intense energy of the late George B. Armstrong of 
 Chicago, this country is indebted for the efficient Railway Mail 
 Service as it exists to-day. The volume is composed of ex- 
 tracts taken from the official history of the Railway Mail Service, 
 prepared by the Post Office Department in 1884 and published 
 in 1885, together with other matter that is especially relevant 
 in this connection; to wit, an historical letter written by 
 Postmaster Samuel Hoard of Chicago in 1865; the address 
 of Ex-Vice-President Schuyler Colfax at the unveiling of 
 the Armstrong monument at Chicago in May, 188 1; and the 
 address delivered by Postmaster E. W, Keyes of Madison, 
 Wisconsin, one of Mr. Armstrong's heartiest coadjutors in the 
 early days of the Railway Mail Service, at the banquet given 
 to Postmaster- General Charles Emory Smith in Chicago, in 
 April, 1900. There are also reminiscences of the railway 
 postal clerks, and other postal officers, who were associated 
 with Mr. Armstrong in the beginnings of the service that 
 have a specific interest. 
 
 This testimony is of the highest value as contemporanec^us 
 proof. Especially so is the letter of former Postmaster Francis 
 A. Eastman, of Chicago, which shows that Mr. Armstrong 
 had a correct conception of the necessities.of the postal ser- 
 vice as early as 186 1. In that year he told Mr. Eastman 
 with emphasis that he was "going to put the post office on 
 wheels." 
 
 Mr. Armstrong was peculiarly fortunate in enlisting at 
 an early stage of his labors the hearty co-operation of the 
 Hon. Schuyler Colfax, afterwards Vice-President of the United 
 States, then Speaker of the House. Mr. Colfax's support was 
 
 3 
 
 197620 
 
4 A Word of Comment 
 
 of inestimable benefit, because, knowing intimately all of Mr. 
 Armstrong's plans for this grand postal reform, he was in a 
 position where he could accomplish an infinite amount of 
 good. His address is of great value from an historical point 
 of view. General Grant was fully acquainted with Mr. Arm- 
 strong's successful efforts to secure the best and speediest dis- 
 tribution of the immense mails for the western armies, and 
 knew also of his plans in regard to the general improvement 
 of the postal service. After General Grant had been installed 
 in the presidential chair, one of the first important moves on 
 the part of his Postmaster- General, the Hon. J. A. J. Creswell, 
 was to give a wider scope to the system of railway post offices 
 by making it a separate bureau of the Post Office Department, 
 with George B. Armstrong as its head. 
 
 The main facts concerning the establishment of the Railway 
 Mail Service and of Mr. Armstrong's connection therewith 
 are to be found in the official history, but they are arranged 
 without regard to their cumulative value, so that too much 
 time and patience are necessary to pick them out and place 
 them in proper and logical order. In this print these facts 
 are sifted and given their natural sequence. They show be- 
 yond question that the three exhaustive ''Letters on Postal 
 Reform" which were addressed by George B. Armstrong, while 
 Assistant Postmaster at Chicago, to the Third Assistant Post- 
 master-General under Postmaster- General Montgomery Blair, 
 in the months of May and June, 1864, and which were 
 published in pamphlet form and widely distributed by Mr. 
 Armstrong, were really the foundation-stones of the service as 
 it exists to-day. These letters are printed in the official history 
 of the Railway Mail Service as Appendix M, on pages 1 65-171. 
 They also appear in full in this book, on pages 60-73. 
 
 Each extract from the official history here used is credited 
 to the page from which it was taken. 
 
 Geo. B. Armstrong, Jr. 
 
 Chicago, April, 1906. 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 (Ofl&cial History, issued in January, 1885, page 59) 
 In one sense the history of the Railway Mail Service covers 
 the period from the day the first pouch was carried by rail, but 
 for the first thirty years it is a history of transportation merely, 
 — how much mail was carried, how far, and how fast or how 
 slow. The true Railway Mail Service is recent, its history 
 being comprised within the last twenty years, (i 864-1 884.) 
 
 Mr. Armstrong's First Commission 
 
 (Ofl&cial History, page 92) 
 
 The first mention we have of George B. Armstrong in 
 connection with the Railway Mail Service is in 1864. In the 
 summer of 1864, Mr. Armstrong addressed three letters to 
 A. N. Zevely, then Third Assistant Postmaster- General. 
 
 These letters from Mr. Armstrong to the Third Assistant 
 Postmaster- General are dated Chicago, May 10, May 14, and 
 June 10, respectively. The letter commissioning Mr. Arm- 
 strong to test by actual experiment the plans proposed in these 
 letters, is dated July i, 1864, and is as follows: 
 
 Post Office Department, July i, 1864. 
 
 Sir: You are authorized to test by actual experiment, upon 
 such railroad route or routes as you may select at Chicago, the 
 plans proposed by you for simplifying the mail service. You 
 will arrange with railroad companies to furnish suitable cars 
 for traveling post-offices; designate "head offices," with their 
 dependent offices; prepare forms of blanks and instructions for 
 all such offices, and those on the railroad not ''head offices;" 
 also for the clerks of traveling post offices. 
 
 To aid you in this work, you may select some suitable route 
 
 5 
 
6 The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 agent, whose place can be supplied by a substitute, at the ex- 
 pense of this Department. 
 
 When your arrangements are complete, you will report them 
 in full. 
 
 M. Blair, 
 George B. Armstrong, Postmaster-General. 
 
 Chicago, 111. 
 
 Mr. Armstrong's Achievements in Detail 
 
 (Official History, pages 178-179) 
 H. L. Johnson, principal clerk in the Mail Equipment 
 Division of the Post Office Department, under date of July 22, 
 1884, contributed an interesting article to the official history 
 on the early days of the Railway Mail Service. The follow- 
 ing extract gives much detailed information of a valuable 
 nature in relation to George B. Armstrong's work: 
 
 A short time after Mr. Waller had undertaken to make the 
 arrangements with the Atlantic and Great Western Railway, 
 Mr. Armstrong, who was then Assistant Postmaster of Chicago, 
 appeared before the Department in the character of a zealous 
 and intelligent advocate of the "traveling post-office system," 
 as he then styled it. 
 
 He was received by the chief clerk of the contract office, to 
 whom the preliminary consideration of the subject properly be- 
 longed, with coldness and disfavor. But in the Third Assistant 
 Postmaster- General (A. N. Zevely), who was then giving his 
 attention largely to the development of postal reforms and im- 
 provements, he found friendly encouragement and wise counsel. 
 At his request Mr. Armstrong communicated his views in writ- 
 ing, addressing to him a series of letters setting forth principally 
 his plan of improving the regularity and dispatch of the mails 
 by the use of the traveling post office. 
 
 These letters, three in number, were written successively in 
 the months of May and June, 1864, and in the latter month 
 Mr. Armstrong caused them to be printed at Chicago, in very 
 small pamphlet form, for circulation. 
 
 In one of the letters referred to, Mr. Armstrong pointed out 
 
^ The True Railway Mail Service 7 
 
 objections to the then existing method of mailing direct, and 
 made a suggestion which, having afterwards been adopted, 
 proved to be of incalculable benefit to the service. 
 
 It was simply to dispense with wrappers for letters or packets 
 of letters, and, instead, to tie them together so that one of the 
 letters of legible address be faced outside. By this simple 
 method not only paper, labor, and the time of wrapping and 
 writing were saved, but the commission of many errors in 
 writing the directions was entirely prevented, and the means 
 afforded of quickly detecting and correcting errors in bagging; 
 whereas with the wrappers, which it was forbidden to open 
 except at the place of address, errors were perpetuated from 
 hand to hand, in transit, without the opportunity of correction, 
 and letters were thus continually being miscarried and de- 
 layed in reaching their proper destination. 
 
 His project discountenanced by the contract office, Mr. Arm- 
 strong sought again the friendly support of the Third Assistant 
 Postmaster-General, who undertook its presentation to the 
 attention of the Postmaster- General, but, however, not without 
 obtaining the consent of the Second Assistant Postmaster- 
 General, to whose bureau of duties the matter properly belonged . 
 
 The Postmaster- General (Judge Blair) was found to be 
 favorably disposed to experiment with the traveling post office. 
 
 Animated by the approval of the Postmaster- General, sus- 
 tained by the patronage of the Third Assistant Postmaster- 
 General, and accredited by a traveling commission as special 
 agent of the Department, Mr. Armstrong, while yet Assistant 
 Postmaster at Chicago, addressed himself with assiduity and 
 tact to enlist the good will of railroad companies for his 
 project. He prevailed on the officers of the Chicago and 
 North-Western Railway (shortly before known as the Galena 
 & Chicago Union), who it is said were distinguished for liberal 
 views and public spirit, to consent to alter, enlarge, and fit up 
 their mail cars for the traveling post office business. 
 
 Soon afterward other railroad companies manifested a will- 
 ingness to follow their example; and through the efforts of the 
 Third Assistant Postmaster- General those between Washing- 
 ton, New York, and Boston consented to provide suitable 
 accommodations for the traveling post office. 
 
 In that year (1864) experiments were successfully made 
 
8 The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 on those roads. Besides retaining for their local knowledge 
 and experience the route agents already on those roads, the 
 traveling post offices were further manned by distributing- 
 clerks transferred from post offices. 
 
 This second and greatly enlarged experiment with traveling 
 post offices having achieved surprising improvement, as far as 
 it was extended, in the dispatch of the mails, and the expedi- 
 ency of permanently incorporating the system in the postal 
 service being no longer a matter of doubt, the Postmaster- 
 General (Governor Denison), in his report of November, 1864, 
 recommended that express provision, by law, be made for the 
 employment of clerks and superintendents for that service. 
 
 On the 2 2d of December, 1864, Mr. Armstrong was 
 appointed a special agent of the Department to further organ- 
 ize and superintend traveling post offices, and Harrison Park 
 and Charles E. Wheeler were also appointed special agents to 
 assist in that work. 
 
 By the act of March 3, 1865, the traveling post office was 
 recognized by law, under the name of "railway post office," 
 and the Postmaster- General was authorized to employ clerks 
 for the same; also two special agents to superintend that 
 service. 
 
 On the ist of May, 1865, Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Park were 
 appointed special agents for that purpose, the former stationed 
 at Chicago to superintend the railway post offices of the West, 
 and the latter stationed at Washington to superintend those of 
 the East. 
 
 A plan of organization, drawn up and proposed by Mr. 
 Armstrong, was adopted by the Postmaster- General (Hon. 
 J. A. J. Creswell) and promulgated to go into effect July i, 
 1869, consolidating the railway post offices with all other rail- 
 road mail service in the United States, under the title of 
 ''Railway Mail Service." 
 
 By this plan the whole railway mail service was divided into 
 six divisions, each embracing several States, and each division 
 was subdivided into districts embracing one or more States 
 and parts of States. 
 
 To each five of the six divisions an assistant superintendent of 
 railway mail service was assigned, under the general direction 
 and control of a "superintendent of railway mail service," 
 stationed at the Department in Washington, and Mr. Armstrong 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 9 
 
 was, by the Postmaster- General, made that superintendent, a 
 position which be held until May 3, 187 1, when he resigned, 
 and very shortly afterwards died. 
 
 The railway post office system was now firmly established 
 as a permanent institution in the postal service of this 
 country. 
 
 Perfected Organization 
 
 (Official History, page 63) 
 In 1869 ... the railway post office, which for several years 
 had been under the double supervision of George B. Arm- 
 strong in the West and Harrison Park in the East, in this year, 
 under Postmaster- General Creswell, received a new impetus. 
 Mr. Armstrong was called to Washington and given entire 
 control of the railway post office service. Mr. Creswell re- 
 ports in 1869 the railway post offices as indispensable, and 
 promises that as the population and wealth of the country shall 
 increase, this new system of handling the mails will be 
 extended to keep pace with the wants and demands of the 
 people. 
 
 (Official History, page 95) 
 
 In the year 1869 we come upon the first outlines of the 
 present system of divisions and division superintendents. Up 
 to this time the superintendence of this branch of the service 
 was performed by men designated and paid as special agents, 
 but as Congress refused in the appropriation for 1869 to 
 give more than $100,000 for special agents, the Department 
 was compelled to reorganize this branch of the service so far as 
 the Railway Mail Service was concerned. The following 
 scheme was the result, which was adopted to take effect July 
 I, 1869. Six divisions were created, as follows: 
 
 1. Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode 
 Island, and Connecticut. 
 
 2. New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Mary- 
 land, and the eastern shore of Virginia. 
 
10 The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 3. Virginia (excluding the eastern shore), North Carolina, 
 South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi. 
 
 4. Ohio, West Virginia, Michigan (excluding the upper 
 peninsula), Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee. 
 
 5. Illinios, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, 
 and the upper peninsula of Michigan. 
 
 6. Embraces all that territory west of the ninety-sixth merid- 
 ian and Louisiana. 
 
 To each of five of these divisions was assigned one special 
 agent, with the designation of "Assistant Superintendent of 
 Railway Mail Service, " charged with the special supervision 
 of the transportation of the mails. 
 
 Undoubtedly this arrangement of the country into divisions 
 was a part of the first work done by Mr. Armstrong in his at- 
 tempts to systematize the service. He had been made General 
 Superintendent April 4, 1869, and continued in office until he 
 resigned, May 3, 187 1, when he was succeeded by George 
 S. Bangs. 
 
 Departmental Correspondence 
 
 (Official History, pages 148-149) 
 
 Finance Office, August 10, 1864. 
 
 Dear Sir: Your letters of the 7th are received. I am glad 
 to know that you are getting matters arranged for the new 
 service. The suggestion in regard to the appointment of the 
 clerks for the railway post office has been submitted to the 
 Postmaster- General, and he fully agrees with you that these 
 appointments should be filled with persons of accurate knowl- 
 edge and experience in postal matters. 
 
 The Postmaster- General will not listen to the question of 
 additional compensation in connection with the construction 
 of the cars for railway post offices. That must be brought up 
 separately. I inclose you a copy of a letter addressed to the 
 
The True Railway Mail Service ii 
 
 postmaster at Philadelphia on same subject in which the Post- 
 master-General's views are fully set forth. 
 Yours, respectfully, &c., 
 
 A. N. Zevely, 
 G. B. Armstrong, Third Assistant Postmaster-General. 
 
 Chicago, 111. 
 
 Finance Office, August i6, 1864. 
 Dear Sir: Your letters of 12th, accompanied by various 
 forms of blanks, &c., prepared by you, are received. 
 
 A great portion of the blanks had been previously prepared 
 here, and are now in the hands of the printer. They are sub- 
 stantially the same as you send. As soon as we get proofs of 
 them, we will forward to you. 
 
 We are also preparing instructions to postmasters and 
 railway post office clerks in regard to that branch of business. 
 I wish you would send what you have prepared, so that we may 
 compare them, and get them, if possible, similar. The stamps 
 named in your letter have been ordered, and will be sent you 
 as soon as received. I also have to say that I have ignored 
 the name " traveling " post office and have adopted " United 
 States Railway Post Office. " 
 
 I am, very respectfully, 
 
 A. N. Zevely, 
 G. B. Armstrong, Third Assistant Postmaster-General. 
 
 Chicago, 111. 
 
 (OflScial History, page 86) 
 Harrison Park, who was selected as Mr. Armstrong's assistant 
 under the authority given in Postmaster- General Blair's letter 
 dated July i, 1864, wrote in September, 1867, to a New 
 York postal official : 
 
 This meeting was held in the Post Office Department about 
 the middle of June, 1864, the result of which was that the 
 
12 The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 Department determined upon the experiment. George B. 
 Armstrong, then Assistant Postmaster at Chicago, and C. E. 
 Wheeler of the Cleveland post office, were selected to super- 
 intend and put the improvement to the test — Mr. Armstrong 
 upon certain railroad lines in the West, and Mr. Wheeler in 
 the East. Mr. Armstrong, however, was then the Assistant 
 Postmaster at Chicago, and as the duties of that position re- 
 quired his whole time and constant attention, he asked for 
 and obtained permission to employ a competent assistant. 
 From my experience in postal affairs and knowledge of its 
 workings upon railroad lines, and because I was a believer in 
 and advocate of the proposed new service, I was selected to 
 assist him in the West. 
 
 The first line of railway postal service inaugurated and put 
 in operation was upon the Galena division of the Chicago 
 and North- Western Railway, between Chicago, and Clinton, 
 Iowa, August 28, 1864. The next line put in operation was the 
 New York and Washington line, which was immediately fol- 
 lowed by its introduction on the Chicago and Rock Island, and 
 the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy railroads in the West, 
 and on the Pennsylvania Central and the New York and 
 Erie railroads in the East. 
 
^ OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 CF 
 
 Impressive Personal Testimony 
 
 In the year 1895, a publishing house in St. Louis, Missouri, 
 conceived the idea of preparing in elaborate form a history 
 of the present Railway Mail Service, to include, with other 
 matter, reminiscences of the clerks who were associated with 
 George B. Armstrong in his great work of establishing the 
 existing service upon a firm and expansive foundation. The 
 project progressed quite a way towards completion, when the 
 financial panic that paralyzed the country in 1894 forced the 
 firm into bankruptcy. A number of personal reminiscences 
 were gathered in manuscript form for use in that connection. 
 The salient points of a part of these tributes, as many as 
 space will allow, presented in this volume for the first time 
 to the public, furnish impressive corroborative evidence of 
 the great value of Mr. Armstrong's work, and also to the 
 fact that he was the one man who conceived the plan of the 
 present Railway Mail Service and carried it to an eminently 
 successful culmination. 
 
 All the early correspondence in relation to the establishing 
 of the railway mail service was destroyed in the Chicago fire 
 of 187 1, so that these reminiscences of the postal clerks and 
 other officials possess a double significance. 
 
 These reminiscences are now in the possession of the Chi- 
 cago Historical Society. 
 
 Francis A. Eastman 
 
 Ex-Postmaster y Chicago^ III. 
 Among the great inventions and improvements in the 
 postal service, perhaps the greatest of them all was that so 
 laboriously and patiently thought out by George B. Arm- 
 
 13 
 
14 The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 strong, which converted all the railway mail trains in the 
 country into distributing post offices. 
 
 George B. Armstrong was a native of the north of Ireland. 
 His mother was a Buchanan, and she traced a relationship 
 to James Buchanan, a fact which brought the Armstrongs 
 over to this country. While his eminent relative was a United 
 States Senator, young Armstrong made use of the Senator's 
 influence to get himself a place in the Post Office Depart- 
 ment. There, in the capacity of clerk in the contract office, he 
 labored intelligently and faithfully, and it was there that he 
 acquired that kind of knowledge of postal business which 
 early distinguished him as an expert. His proved executive 
 ability obtained for him the recommendation of his superior 
 to the Postmaster at Chicago, who was at that time in quest of 
 an experienced man to be his assistant. This was in 1854. 
 In the position of Assistant Postmaster, he remained through 
 successive administrations, and until 1865, when, at his own 
 request, he was relieved to give his entire time and energy 
 to the railway postal system. 
 
 It was in 1864 that he made known to the Department at 
 Washington the outline of his scheme for mail distribution 
 on the railways. His presentation of the scheme was so 
 plain and attractive that it received the unhesitating indorse- 
 ment of Postmaster- General Montgomery Blair. 
 
 The first I can remember of ever hearing of the idea of 
 a railway postal service was in the summer of 1861. Mr. 
 Armstrong was still the Assistant Postmaster, and his duties 
 were then particularly arduous, owing to the change of ad- 
 ministration and the illness of the new postmaster. His 
 residence was on the next street to mine, and in the corre- 
 sponding block, and it so happened that we two frequently 
 fell in with each other in our walks to and from business. 
 It was not long before I observed that he was disinclined to 
 talk by the way on miscellaneous topics. His speech and 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 15 
 
 thoughts were all upon the work at the post office. ** I tell 
 you," he said on one occasion, '*we do not yet know what 
 to do with our post offices. We have but a village here, com- 
 pared to the city we shall have. This vast western country 
 is still almost empty of settlers, and even so, the mails that 
 are hourly dumped into the post office fill up the entire 
 space and paralyze the men. Unless something is done 
 towards relief, the post office system will break down of its 
 own weight." 
 
 Perhaps it was a year after this, possibly not six months, 
 that I had another casual talk with Mr. Armstrong on the 
 subject that was uppermost in his mind. He informed me 
 that he had about thought out a way to relieve the post offices 
 of the country and save an immense amount of money to 
 the government in new or enlarged buildings, and to work 
 a notable economy of time in the transportation of mails. 
 Under this plan he thought the post office buildings would 
 not for many years require to be much enlarged, and the 
 time it took to transport the mails from one side of the country 
 to the other would be reduced to a very few days. This 
 latter he did not expect to accomplish immediately, or all 
 at once. " I am going," he said, excitedly, '' to put 
 the post office upon wheels." I did not ask him if he 
 was crazy, but I had my suspicions. Still later, Mr. Arm- 
 strong called upon me at my office to ask my assistance as 
 a newspaper man to set before the public in a favorable light 
 the fact that he had invented a railway postal-car. He 
 then first made known to me that his plans were complete, 
 and that upon a day named and fixed he would run it out 
 upon the Chicago and North-Western Railway. It was to 
 be a trial trip, and a number of merchants and bankers would 
 go along with him, and he would be glad to have some repre- 
 sentatives of the press also to be of the party. This was in 
 August, 1864. 
 
l6 The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 The trial trip was made, Mr. Armstrong was pleased with 
 it, and the clerks of the Chicago post office that assisted 
 were confident that the scheme was a good one. But the 
 merchants and bankers had their doubts. They had fears 
 that the mail would not be handled in the cars without too 
 great danger of loss of valuable letters. My own report in 
 my newspaper was not too favorable; while the reports of 
 one or two others of the city journals were almost fiercely 
 hostile. Now and ever after, more and more of Mr. Arm- 
 strong's time was taken up with the early workings and the 
 improving of the new service. There were constantly new de- 
 mands upon his time and energies, in the urgent interest of 
 his great and still enlarging undertaking. Truly, his whole 
 soul was in his work. 
 
 Chicago, III., 1895. 
 
 John B. Harlow 
 
 Ex-Postmaster, St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 I entered the railway postal service in September, 1866, and 
 was assigned to the Chicago and Centralia railway post 
 office by George B. Armstrong, who, at that time, was the 
 directing and controlling spirit of that (then) new branch of 
 the postal service. 
 
 The character of the service was such that, in this 
 country at least, there was no precedent to be guided by, 
 and necessarily each and all advances made were the 
 result of the individual thought and action of Mr. Armstrong. 
 That his foresight and judgment were correct is proved 
 by the fact that the principles and characteristics of the 
 service are to-day virtually the same as at the time of its 
 inauguration. 
 
 Even the system of checking ''errors in distribution" was 
 introduced by him, as is evidenced by the following order, 
 received by me on the date of issue: 
 
The True kailway Mail Service 17 
 
 Post Office, Chicago, III., Nov. 10, 1868. 
 Sir: You are hereby detailed to run for one week from 
 Thursday, November 12th, from Mattoon to Centralia, and 
 examine all mail thrown or pouched in the car each day by 
 the R. P. O. clerks running from Centralia to Cairo, and 
 report to me, in writing, all errors in said mail. 
 
 G. B. Armstrong. 
 J. B. Harlow, Railway Postal Clerk. 
 
 The only service at all similar that preceded the intro- 
 duction of the service under Mr. Armstrong in 1864, of which 
 I have either heard or read, was on the Hannibal and St. 
 Joseph Railway, placed there, I am informed, on the rec- 
 ommendation and under the supervision of a Mr. Davis, at 
 that time Assistant Postmaster at St. Joseph; and as I under- 
 stand, it was born of necessity. 
 
 The St. Joseph office, being at the time mentioned the 
 receiving-office for all mails for dispatch west, found it im- 
 possible, with the space and time at their disposal, to distribute 
 and dispatch the same on schedule time; hence the origin of 
 the thought, '' How can the time and space be gained ? " 
 The sequel naturally was the preparation of the mail, in part 
 at least, not by the route agents on that line but by clerks 
 sent from the post office at St. Joe to meet the trains and 
 work this mail while in transit to the Missouri River. 
 
 I have never heard that even so much as a thought was 
 given to working the mails east-bound, and, necessarily, the 
 arrangement can only be looked upon as a "makeshift" — 
 solely for the relief of the overcrowded St. Joe office, 
 and therefore not to be considered as in line with the idea 
 conceived and carried into effect by Mr. Armstrong, whose 
 inception, it is evident, embraced the whole country through- 
 out which railway post offices were to be established, and 
 the mails to be distributed and forwarded as rapidly as in 
 the case of passengers. 
 
 In conclusion, I will state that with my knowledge and 
 
1 8 The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 information on the subject, I have never for a moment enter- 
 tained a doubt that to George B. Armstrong, and to no other, 
 belongs the credit of being known as the founder of the 
 present Railway Mail Service. 
 St. Louis, Mo., 1895. 
 
 James £. White 
 
 General Superintendent Railway Mail Service 
 The first railway post office in the United States was estab- 
 lished August 28th, 1864, upon the Chicago and North- 
 western Railway, and ran between Chicago, 111., and Clinton, 
 Iowa, in an apartment car improvised for the purpose, with 
 Percy A. Leonard as head clerk, and Asa F. Bradley assist- 
 ant. Mr. Bradley, an old surveyor, aided Mr. Armstrong 
 in drawing plans for the car, and the arrangement of letter- 
 cases in angles instead of circles was Mr. Bradley's idea. 
 The first full railway post office cars were built by the Chicago 
 and North- Western Railway, on plans furnished by George B. 
 Armstrong, in 1867, and were placed in service between Boone 
 and Council Bluffs, Iowa, at a time when that railway post 
 office distributed the overland letter mail. I assisted in 
 labeling the letter and paper cases in these cars. 
 
 Mr. Armstrong was unquestionably the father of the Rail- 
 way Mail Service in the United States. The idea of dis- 
 tributing the mails while in transit, thus expediting their 
 delivery, and practically sweeping out what was then known 
 as distributing post offices, was his conception. He lived to 
 see his dream realized. Enough had been accomplished to 
 demonstrate that the plan he had worked out was not only 
 practicable, but essential to the business interests of the 
 country. 
 
 Mr. Armstrong was appointed General Superintendent of 
 the Railway Mail Service in 1869, though he had been the 
 real head of the service, with headquarters in Chicago, from 
 
THE FIRST RAILWAY POSTAL CAR IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 Built by the Chicasro and North- Western Railway in May, 1867, after plans drawn by 
 
 Geo. B. Armstrong:. 
 
Paper Case. 
 
 INTERIOR VIEWS OF THE FIRST RAILWAY POSTAL CAR. 
 Built alter Plans Drawn by Geo. B. Armstrong:. 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 19 
 
 the date of its establishment in August, 1864. The writer 
 remembers distinctly of meeting him in Iowa, Illinois, and 
 Nebraska while he was making tours of inspection, and of 
 holding conversations with him respecting the service and his 
 plans for the future development of it; and from these could 
 but reach the conclusion that he then anticipated that the 
 service would ultimately become exceedingly important and 
 useful. 
 Washington, D. C, 1895. 
 
 James £. Stuart 
 
 Post Office Inspector in Charge 
 
 In the fall of 1866, I was appointed by Postmaster- Gen- 
 eral Alexander W. Randall, route agent on the Chicago and 
 North-Western Railway from Chicago to Green Bay, Wis- 
 consin. On receiving my appointment, I was instructed to 
 report for duty to George B. Armstrong, of Chicago, my 
 home then being at Oshkosh. 
 
 I well remember the day that I reported to Mr. Armstrong 
 and the conversation that I had with him on that occasion. 
 He was very particular in making inquiries as to who I was 
 and what had been my previous occupation. He expressed 
 himself as glad to know that I was young and strong, and 
 that I had served throughout the war. He informed me then 
 that he intended soon to establish a railway postal service 
 on the Chicago and North-Western Railway from Chicago 
 to Green Bay, Wisconsin; that of the appointments made 
 quite a number were young men who had served in the army, 
 and, said he, ''that is the kind of material that lam anxious 
 to get into this service. I feel that they are the kind of men 
 on whom I can rely for assistance in developing the railway 
 postal service of the West, and I believe that this class of 
 men should be appointed." 
 
 I continued the run upon this line of the railway post a 
 
20 The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 service until the fall of 1866, when I was called to the office 
 by Mr. Armstrong and was informed by him that he had 
 selected a number of clerks on several of the lines on which 
 the railway postal service had been established, and that it 
 was his intention to send these men to run over the Chicago 
 and North-Western Railway through the state of Iowa to 
 Omaha, and that I was one of the number selected for this 
 run. Up to this time, it had been the custom to send all 
 mail for that country west of the Missouri River to the large 
 distributing offices, such as Salt Lake City, Sacramento, 
 San Francisco, and Denver, and all mail from all sections 
 of the country east of the Missouri River, for this western 
 country, was put in pouches and marked to these distrib- 
 uting offices. The result was, that the mail which accumu- 
 lated at the Missouri River amounted to an immense number 
 of pouches, some containing a large quantity of mail, while 
 others, perhaps, contained but a single letter. To prevent 
 the transportation of that unnecessarily large number of 
 pouches over that long stretch of country to reach Salt Lake 
 City, Sacramento, and San Francisco, many of which pouches 
 contained only a single letter, or at most a handful of letters, 
 Mr. Armstrong conceived the idea of consolidating this 
 mail and therefore established a service for that purpose 
 on the line of the Chicago and North- Western Railway from 
 Boone to Council Bluffs, Iowa, and issued an order directing 
 that all pouches from the eastern country and eastern lines 
 marked for those western cities be forwarded via the Chicago 
 and North- Western Railway to Omaha. 
 
 These clerks, in running west, had to unload their mail 
 at Council Bluffs oftentimes having to take from one to 
 three large double wagon loads of paper mail out of the bag- 
 gage car into wagons, which they had to accompany for three 
 miles, the greater part of the way over corduroy roads. In 
 wet weather, oftentimes the wagons would get stuck in the 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 21 
 
 mud and the mail would have to be unloaded, and the wagon 
 pulled out of the mud, and the mails loaded up again before 
 the Missouri River was reached opposite Omaha. I have 
 seen the day when this had to be done from two to three 
 times in one trip. In summer weather the wagons would 
 cross the river on the ferry boat, and in winter on the ice, 
 but oftentimes in winter the mails would be unloaded and 
 left on the eastern bank of the Missouri River, there to re- 
 main all night, or until it was possible to get across to the 
 Omaha shore. I have known postal clerks many times to 
 remain with their mail on the bank of the Missouri River 
 the whole night long, and oftentimes when they had to bury 
 themselves under their mail to keep from freezing. Mr. 
 Armstrong thoroughly understood the hardships which these 
 clerks had sometimes to undergo in handling the mails be- 
 tween Council Bluffs and Omaha, for he had on more than 
 one occasion witnessed it, and on one occasion came out 
 with us to see what could be done towards the better trans- 
 mission of the mails from Council Bluffs to Omaha. On 
 this visit, Mr. Armstrong and the clerks could not get across 
 the Missouri River until the following morning. On reaching 
 the bank of the Missouri River through snow and mud, the 
 open mail-wagons were unloaded, the mail was deposited on 
 the bank of the river, and the wagons were taken back to 
 Council Bluffs. A camp fire was built and our superintendent, 
 Mr. Armstrong, with the clerks, sat around that camp fire 
 in the mud guarding the tons of large mails for the West 
 and talking over the situation all the night long. At break of 
 day, when the storm had subsided sufficiently to allow the 
 ferry boat to land, these clerks, assisted by Mr. Armstrong, 
 carried the mail to the boat by which it was transported 
 to the other shore, when it had to be unloaded again and 
 re-loaded on wagons for the Omaha office. 
 
 The primitive postal-car was to the well-equipped rail- 
 
22 The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 way post office of to-day what an ordinary freight-caboose 
 is to a Pullman palace-car. But George B. Armstrong, who 
 had the practical judgment to recognize at that time the 
 public need of a railway postal service, and gave it its crude 
 beginning, had also the prophetic vision to foresee its pos- 
 sibilities. Too much credit cannot be given to Mr. Armstrong, 
 who, nothing daunted by lack of faith on the part of the high 
 officials of the Post Office Department, and the doubts and 
 taunts of an incredulous public, had still the courage of his 
 convictions to press steadily on until he gave to the commercial 
 world the greatest boon it has received within the last half- 
 century. 
 
 In the Government Building in Chicago stands a modest 
 bronze bust erected to the memory of the father of the 
 Railway Mail Service, in 1881, and bearing mute and humble 
 testimony to the appreciation and esteem in which George B. 
 Armstrong was regarded by the loyal postal clerks in the 
 West. It is passing strange that the commercial world has 
 never stopped long enough in its mad rush of money-getting 
 business to pay a fitting tribute to the memory of this man, 
 the direct fruits of whose labor they so universally enjoy. The 
 thought has often occurred to my mind that in our beautiful 
 city of Washington, whose parks and circles are adorned by so 
 many plain and equestrian statues of the heroes of the war, 
 it would only be keeping abreast of civiUzation to erect an 
 occasional statue to the the memory of some hero of civil 
 and every-day life, and first and foremost among this number 
 should be found a testimonial to George B. Armstrong, who 
 gave to the business and social world the inestimable 
 advantage of the Railway Mail Service. 
 
 Chicago, III., 1895. 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 23 
 
 William P. Campbell 
 
 Ex-Asst. General Superintendent Railway Mail Service 
 I entered the railway post office service as a clerk, be- 
 tween Chicago and St. Louis, in January, 1868, and after 
 remaining upon the line a short time, at the earnest request 
 and repeated solicitations of Mr. Armstrong entered the 
 office with him as his clerk. George B. Armstrong was the 
 founder and the father of the Railway Mail Service, and 
 all the arguments and irrelevant statements already printed, 
 and all that may be adduced, cannot alter the fact. I have 
 no desire to take from the memory of William A. Davis of 
 St. Joseph, Missouri, one jot, or tittle of what is due him of 
 credit in his idea for having the overland mail distribution 
 made on the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railway. But it 
 was a conception so marred in detail that to call it the first 
 of the Railway Mail Service, as seen and planned by Colonel 
 Armstrong, is simply to trifle with truth and fact. Mr. Davis' 
 idea originated from an emergency; Colonel Armstrong's, 
 to render impossible any emergency. The first, to relieve 
 an over-crowded post office; the second, to relieve all post 
 offices. The first, to distribute one certain mail going in one 
 certain direction; the second, to distribute all mail going in 
 all directions. The first died with an altered course of the 
 mail; the second has grown and expanded from month to 
 month and year to year, and only long after his death did 
 it reach that full fruition and degree of usefulness which, I 
 know, its founder saw from the start, and which was not, 
 I am sure, seen by any other man at that time. 
 
 Mr. Armstrong was located in Chicago. Why? Because 
 the great West was then the rapidly growing portion of this 
 country; its railways building, its business expanding, its 
 towns increasing in size and importance more rapidly than 
 in the East, and here he had greater scope for his work. 
 
 ^ OF THE 
 
24 The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 At his own request, a second officer was selected to take 
 charge of the railway post offices in the East. This was 
 Harrison Park. When chosen by Mr. Armstrong for this 
 work, he was a route agent between Chicago and Centralia. 
 Chicago, III., 1895. 
 
 M. J. McGrath 
 
 Ex- Assistant Superintendent Railway Mail Service 
 
 Among other things, I desire to say : 
 
 First: That George B. Armstrong is, in my opinion, 
 entitled to the entire credit of inaugurating the Railway 
 Mail Service. 
 
 Second: That it is only by his persistent efforts that the 
 Railway Mail Service became an accomplished fact. 
 
 Mr. Armstrong's right to the credit of this great improve- 
 ment was never questioned by those who were closely 
 identified with him in the work, and who knew of their own 
 knowledge how hard he toiled in the development of the 
 scheme and practically applied it to the mail service of the 
 United States. The claim put forth by some few persons 
 that W. A. Davis, Assistant Postmaster at St. Joseph, Mis- 
 souri, was the first one who thought of these improvements, 
 I do not think deserves serious consideration; that is, so far 
 as it relates to the present railway postal system. 
 
 Entering the service myself in May, 1867, the first railway 
 post office, as I remember it, was established on the Chicago 
 and North- Western Railway, between Chicago and Clinton, 
 Iowa, in the summer of 1864. Asa F. Bradley and P. A. 
 Leonard were the first clerks appointed in the service. The 
 former gentleman, under the supervision of Mr. Armstrong, 
 drew the plans for the original postal-car. The idea of a 
 post office on wheels attracted public attention, and excited 
 great interest among the business men of Chicago before 
 its first and official departure. The successful operation of 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 25 
 
 the service on this line was so clearly demonstrated that author- 
 ity was given to Mr. Armstrong by the Department to estab- 
 lish railway post office service on the principal western trunk 
 lines out of Chicago. It was soon after the establishment of 
 the service between Chicago and Clinton, Iowa, that the De- 
 partment authorized the experiment to be tried on a few of 
 the eastern trunk lines. While the new service in the West 
 had reached a fair state of efficiency, in the East it was still 
 little better than route agencies, and the eastern men en- 
 gaged at that time in the work readily acknowledged the 
 superiority of this service in the West. This difference was 
 undoubtedly due to the fact that Mr. Armstrong gave his 
 whole time and personal supervision to the improvement of 
 the western service, and coming into personal contact with 
 the men, inspired them with his own zeal and enthusiasm. 
 
 It was the practice at this time to wrap every package of 
 letters in wrapping-paper. Even a single letter was so treated 
 and then the package directed in ink. Every postal-car was a 
 warehouse for this brown paper, as it was necessary to have a 
 large supply on hand. The car floor would be so littered 
 with discarded wrappings that many times the clerks stood to 
 their knees in waste paper. Mr. Armstrong conceived the 
 idea of doing away with all this paper and tying the letters 
 in bundles with a plainly addressed letter faced outside. 
 This was an important step towards the improvement of the 
 service, resulting in a great saving of time, labor, and money. 
 
 The next important step after the service had been thor- 
 oughly established was its formation into a separate bureau, 
 and the calling of Mr. Armstrong to Washington as its head. 
 His first act was to organize the service on a systematic basis, 
 and to this end he divided the country into six districts or 
 divisions, with an official designated "Assistant Superin- 
 tendent " at the head of each. 
 
 Chicago, III., 1895. 
 
26 The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 Charles R. Harrison 
 
 Railway Postal Clerk 
 
 My first acquaintance with George B. Armstrong, formerly 
 General Superintendent of the Railway Mail Service, com- 
 menced in April, 1861, at which time he was Assistant Post- 
 master in the Chicago office, and I was running as mail route 
 agent between Chicago and Oshkosh, Wisconsin, the initial 
 and terminal of a railroad mail route at that time. 
 
 In the summer of 1861, I had my first conversation with 
 him relative to the changing or reforming of the system of 
 making up letter mails dispatched from the Chicago post 
 office. He told me at that time that he had asked the Depart- 
 ment at Washington for permission to abandon the way- 
 billing of all letters dispatched direct from Chicago to other 
 offices, and that consent had been granted. He was very 
 enthusiastic over it, and made the remark that it "would 
 benefit the boys," meaning the route agents. Their quarters 
 were in the basement of the post office at that time, and the 
 way-bills were stored there for future reference. 
 
 During the summer of 1862, 1 heard him first speak of his plan 
 for distributing mails on railroad cars in transit. He frequently 
 called route agents, who were not on their runs, into his office 
 and submitted to them his grand idea and talked about how it 
 would work. Following some suggestion he had made, he 
 would remark, "Theoretically, it will work, but you boys can 
 tell better than I whether it is practical or not. " During the 
 summer of 1864, I saw the plan in manuscript form and 
 heard him read it. It was later printed in pamphlet form by 
 him and submitted for consideration and approval to his old 
 acquaintance. Third Assistant Postmaster- General Zevely. 
 Mr. Armstrong gave me a copy of this pamphlet, and it is now 
 the only one in existence that I have knowledge of. 
 
 During the summer and fall of 1862, Mr. Armstrong was 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 27 
 
 using his best efforts to induce the Department to allow him to 
 try his scheme on some of the railroad lines leading out of Chi- 
 cago. "But," as he expressed it, ''this cruel war requires all 
 their money and time at Washington, and we will have to wait 
 coming events. This war ended, mail will be distributed on 
 railroad cars in transit from Maine to California, and from the 
 Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. The men will do their work in 
 protected cars, and be as safe as if working in the Chicago post 
 office." 
 
 In 1865, Mr. Armstrong asked me to assist Route Agent 
 Johnson in planning a mail-car for the Chicago to Green Bay 
 route. I complied, and from these plans the Chicago and 
 North- Western Railway built five convenient full-width 38 feet 
 cars. These cars are in use on their lines to-day. The 
 paper-boxes have been removed and Harrison racks sub- 
 stituted, otherwise they are intact. Mr. Armstrong told me 
 that these were the first cars in the United States built ex- 
 pressly for the railway post office service, although he had 
 ordered cars for the Railway Mail Service improvised out of 
 old cars on the Chicago to Clinton, Iowa, and the Washing- 
 ton to New York lines. 
 
 After the death of Mr. Armstrong, his ideas as outlined in 
 his pamphlet were carried out to the letter by Mr. Bangs, as 
 will be seen by reference to that document. In conversation 
 Mr. Bangs always gave Mr. Armstrong the credit of originating 
 the present Railway Mail Service. 
 
 OsHKOSH, Wis., 1895. 
 
 Jerome B. Johnson 
 
 Superintendent of Mails, Milwaukee, Wis. 
 I regret that I do not wield a ready pen to convey to you, in 
 suitable terms, what I know of those incipient days of the Rail- 
 way Mail Service, and the struggles and difficulties which 
 George B. Armstrong encountered during a series of years, be- 
 
28 The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 fore he enlisted the full co-operation of the Department and 
 Congress in his scheme of establishing the Railway Mail Service 
 and putting it on a firm foundation. 
 
 The writer was appointed as a route agent on the Chicago 
 and North- Western Railway from Green Bay to Chicago in 
 November, 1863, shortly after which time I became acquainted 
 with Mr. Armstrong, then Assistant Postmaster at Chicago, 111. 
 
 I believe that the inception of the Railway Mail Service in 
 the mind of Mr. Armstrong was due to the receipt in Chicago 
 of the immense army mails coming via Cairo and Louisville. 
 I remember in the spring of 1864, as wagon-loads of No. i 
 pouches were unloaded at the Chicago post office, of his re- 
 marking, "If we had letter-cases in the mail-cars and an extra 
 clerk, this mail would be all worked up in transit, ready for 
 dispatch on arriving here," and I think that he commenced 
 to work out the scheme then and there. 
 
 I cannot give dates, but during the summer of 1864 Mr. 
 Armstrong succeeded in getting letter-cases put in the route 
 agents' cars on the Chicago and North-Western Railway (Chi- 
 cago to Clinton, and Chicago, Freeport, and Dubuque). 
 Postmasters on these lines received instructions to discontinue 
 making up wrapped packages of letters, but to tie up the way or 
 state mail in one package, marking it No. i and the rest No. 2. 
 
 During this time, the government was engaged in putting 
 down a gigantic rebellion, or recovering from the shock, and 
 the Department, or Congress, could give Mr. Armstrong but 
 little encouragement or help. The railroad companies acceded 
 to Mr. Armstrong's request by putting in cases for handling the 
 letter mail, but this was the extent of increased car facilities. 
 During the winter of 1866 and 1867 the Department and 
 Congress, under a strong pressure of public opinion for the 
 extension of the Railway Mail Service, seemed to awaken to 
 its importance, and from this time on the success of the 
 service and its ultimate adoption all over the country was 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 29 
 
 fully assured. During the winter of 1866 and 1867, the 
 Chicago and North-Western Railway (Fort Howard and Chi- 
 cago), the leading line north and northwest, after more than 
 a year's agitation on the subject, made terms for an equip- 
 ment of full postal cars for this line, and I received in- 
 structions from Mr. Armstrong to prepare the plans for the 
 same. These cars, 38 feet in length, were built, and the 
 service was established on the line May i, 1867. These cars, 
 I was told by Mr. Armstrong, were the first entire railway 
 postal cars in the service; and I remember the pride which 
 he manifested in showing them to the Second Assistant Post- 
 master-General, George W. McLellan, who was in Chicago 
 at that time. 
 Milwaukee, Wis., 1895. 
 
 Percy A. Leonard 
 
 The First Railway Postal Clerk Appointed 
 When, in the year 1864, George B. Armstrong, at that time 
 Assistant Postmaster at Chicago under John L. Scripps, sug- 
 gested the abandonment of the old method of billing letters 
 and a direct distribution of all incoming and outgoing mails on 
 the train, the mossbacks laughed incredulously. The vast 
 surplus of mail, estimated to be 500,000 letters, that had ac- 
 cumulated in the distributing department of the Chicago post 
 office during the months of December, 1863, and January and 
 February', 1864, made some extraordinary effort imperative and 
 demonstrated to the analytical mind of Mr. Armstrong the 
 necessity for a radical change in the system then in vogue. 
 By putting on some forty extra distributing-clerks the " block- 
 ade "of letters was broken, but the expense and trouble inci- 
 dent to the system remained. 
 
 Accordingly, in July, 1864, after much argument and a 
 good deal of negotiation between the Department and the rail- 
 ways, the Chicago and North-Western Railway was induced to 
 
3© The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 remodel some old cars and put in a rack of pigeonholes for the 
 sake of permitting the experiment of "traveling post offices," 
 as they were at first called. In about sixty days, the required 
 arrangements having been perfected, the foreman of what was 
 known as the ''Eastern Room" in the Chicago post office was 
 called upon to detail two of his clerks to go on the road. Mr. 
 Armstrong exacted but two qualifications, accuracy and rapidity 
 of distribution. James Converse and the writer were chosen, 
 and in the latter part of August, 1864, the first car in the United 
 States, equipped and dubbed a traveling post office, left the 
 Wells Street station of the Chicago and North-Western Rail- 
 way, destined for Clinton, Iowa. 
 
 An old mail agent named Bradley, whose hair had grown gray 
 wrestling with mail-bags, was the paper clerk and the writer was 
 the letter clerk. He was not called " head clerk " at that time, 
 probably out of deference to the feelings of the old mail agent. 
 The letters were stacked up in a generous pile on the case. The 
 principal stations only had been put in separate packages. The 
 first series of stations, Austin, etc., were put in a package num- 
 ered i. Distribution began about an hour before the train was 
 due to leave, but, owing to the fact that the arrangement of the 
 boxes was somewhat strange to the distributer, he carried a 
 few letters by some of the nearer stations on the first trip. 
 
 It required but a very few trips, however, to demonstrate 
 the immediate success of the scheme, and soon arrangements 
 were perfected for introducing the system on all the railway 
 lines leading out of Chicago, more particularly those running 
 east and west. It was, however, in the summer of 1865 be- 
 fore the railway post office system received the formal official 
 sanction of the Department, and it was introduced on the North- 
 Western, Rock Island, Burlington, Michigan Southern, Fort 
 Wayne, and Michigan Central railroads, in the order named. 
 
 From this small beginning in a crude way has grown the 
 present gigantic Railway Mail Service. To George B. Arm- 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 strong belongs the sole credit of its conception. The details 
 were originated and wrought out by him. He was a quick, 
 keen man, full of nervous force and energy. He was a man 
 who could not travel in ruts, but was constantly seeking some 
 better and shorter way of accomplishing the aims of the Post 
 Office Department than the clumsy and slow-going methods in 
 vogue when he entered the service. 
 Denver, Col., 1895. 
 
 R. F. McCullough 
 
 Railway Postal Clerk 
 
 George B. Armstrong was the organizer of the Railway 
 Mail Service. To this work Mr. Armstrong gave his personal 
 attention, often going over the routes in the postal-cars, that 
 the experience of the clerks and his own observations might 
 be of benefit to the service. I was among the first appointed 
 to this service, my appointment being dated September 6, 
 1865, beginning service September loth, same year, on the 
 Quincy and St. Joseph railway post office. 
 
 I enclose my original appointment papers herewith. It is 
 an odd paper and will be of value in your history. As you 
 will see, we had no instructions then, only those written. 
 
 QuiNCY, III., 1895. 
 
 Office of the Superintendent, R. P. O., 
 Chicago, III., September 6, 1866. 
 
 Sir: You are selected as clerk in the railway post office 
 on the railway line from Quincy, 111., to St. Joseph, Mo. 
 
 You are selected for this responsible position upon the 
 condition that the duties belonging to the railway post office 
 are satisfactorily performed, and the efficiency of the service 
 promoted by a faithful devotion of your personal skill, energy, 
 and intelligence to the work; that the rules, regulations, and 
 instructions of the Post Office Department are strictly obeyed; 
 that a correct distribution of the mails is made in such a 
 manner as you may be instructed, from time to time, by the 
 
32- The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 General Supt. of Railway Post Offices, or by his assistant, 
 or the head clerk in charge of the Railway P. O. for the time, 
 and that due connecting of the mails distributed by you be 
 made as far as practicable in order that the public may 
 have the full benefit originally contemplated by the intro- 
 duction of the system. 
 
 As clerk you will accompany the head clerk, and with him 
 take charge of the mails to and from the respective offices at 
 the termini of your route, and register your name in the "Re- 
 gister of Arrivals" and "Register of Departures" of railway 
 clerks, with the actual hour and minute of your arrival at 
 and departure therefrom, unless when, in case of departure, 
 it is a necessity that you should precede the mails to the train, 
 which must first be sanctioned by the postmaster where the 
 necessity occurs. It is, however, laid down as a rule that 
 all R. P. O. clerks shall accompany the mail to and from 
 the ends of their respective routes, to record their names as 
 having been actually on duty at the time specified, excepting 
 in such cases where the Department, the Gen'l Sup't, his 
 assistant, or a P. M. at either one of the terminal offices 
 of route may, for sufficient reasons, make an exception for 
 the time being. 
 
 It is especially enjoined upon all Railway P. O. clerks 
 to observe, in their official intercourse with the public and 
 with each other, the strictest courtesy, and to obey the official 
 instructions of their respective head clerks in charge. 
 
 Railway P. O. clerks, of whatever grade, must endeavor, 
 by intelligent effort, to promote the positive interests of the 
 service and the public. 
 
 Disobedience or neglect of rules and instructions, or depart- 
 ure from official propriety, will subject the offender to removal. 
 
 The P. M. at St. Joseph will arrange the order in which 
 the clerks are to run, and designate the head clerk with 
 whom you will be associated, to whom you will report for duty. 
 
 The railway distributing service will be commenced on 
 this route September loth, and you will be governed accord- 
 ingly. Very truly yours, 
 
 G. B. Armstrong, 
 R. F. McCuLLOUGH, SpH Ag't 6r= Gen'l Supt. 
 
 St. Joseph, Mo. R. P. 0. 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 33 
 
 John A. Montgomery 
 
 Superintendent of Mails, Chicago, III. 
 
 I first met George B. Armstrong in the winter of 1865, in 
 company with Colonel J. H. Wickizer. We called upon 
 him at the old Government Building in Chicago. After 
 passing a few commonplace remarks, Mr. Armstrong began 
 telling us of the great revolution the distribution of the mails 
 in transit would make, the vast relief it would be to all dis- 
 tributing post offices and that he had gone far enough with 
 experiments to be fully satisfied of the entire practicability 
 of the new service, but that his only fear was that Congress 
 would not appropriate sufficient money to enable him to 
 establish the service on a sufficient number of lines to fully 
 convince the department and the business public of the 
 benefits sure to follow. 
 
 Mr. Armstrong talked with great fervor and seemed very 
 enthusiastic over what he repeatedly termed " his plan." 
 Colonel Wickizer, at that time a special agent of the Post 
 Office Department, observed that it seemed to him the cost 
 would be so great that Congress would hardly be justified 
 in appropriating the necessary money to place the traveling 
 post office on a large number of lines. 
 
 Mr. Armstrong took from his desk a package of letters 
 and papers, and read aloud from several of the letters, which 
 were from one or more of the Assistants Postmaster-General; 
 all of them giving assurance of aid, and offering suggestions 
 and asking questions regarding the new service. In nearly 
 every one of those letters the subject of cost was referred to, 
 and Mr. Armstrong was asked if it would not be feasible to 
 take a greater number of clerks from the distributing post 
 offices and place them in the traveling post offices, and thus 
 keep the cost of this particular branch of the service within 
 what it would be practicable for the Postmaster-General to 
 
34 The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 use from the general appropriation for the department, for 
 the gradual extension of this service. After reading from 
 these letters, Mr. Armstrong quoted from letters v^^hich he 
 had v^ritten in answer (copies of v^hich he had), showing, to 
 his satisfaction at least, how the increased expense was to 
 be met. 
 
 After this meeting I did not se» Mr. Armstrong again 
 until early in February, 1866, when I was appointed a rail- 
 way postal clerk, and had the pleasure of seeing him fre- 
 quently. As I was now a member of the service, I took 
 a deep interest in its workings and development; hence, every 
 word he had to say on that subject was of great weight and 
 importance to me. How clear his conception of the needs 
 of the time, and what was necessary to fully meet those needs, 
 is evidenced by the almost perfect service of to-day. His 
 orders to us, as clerks, comprehended a mastery over details 
 which seemed impossible to one who had not had an actual 
 experience as a clerk. His talks to us all showed that he 
 was not experimenting as to results, but he knew beyond 
 doubt what he wanted done, and was able to tell us how to 
 doit. 
 
 The foundation of all the regulations covering the Rail- 
 way Mail Service to-day can be seen in the orders issued by 
 Mr. Armstrong as Superintendent and General Superintend- 
 ent. 
 
 The time was propitious, the necessities pressing, and Mr. 
 Armstrong, with his energy, intelligence, and creative genius 
 was the Moses who was to lead the government to better 
 things. To him, and him alone, is due the organization, first 
 practical trial, and development of a system that has broad- 
 ened and grown in the esteem and confidence of the Ameri- 
 can people until it is justly recognized as the most important 
 branch of the greatest and best post office establishment extant. 
 
 Chicago, III., 1895. 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 35 
 
 Hiram J. Skeels 
 
 Railway Postal Clerk. 
 
 At the time of the conception of the Railway Mail Service 
 I was Assistant Postmaster at the post office of Onarga, Illinois. 
 My duties while in that position gave me a fair knowledge 
 of the postal business as performed under the old route agent 
 system, and I was frequently called upon by the agents on 
 this line to fill their runs. In doing this service I was often 
 obliged to remain over a day in Chicago, and in this way 
 became personally acquainted with George B. Armstrong. 
 Being often thrown in personal contact with him and hearing 
 his plans discussed at length, I was deeply impressed with 
 the idea of a post office on wheels, as advanced by him. 
 
 About the month of July, 1864, if I remember correctly, 
 Mr. Armstrong received instructions from the Department 
 to detail a route agent from one of the lines terminating at 
 Chicago, to assist him in preparing plans for his work. For 
 this purpose he assigned Harrison Park as his assistant, and 
 I in turn received an appointment in July of that year, as 
 distributing clerk in the Chicago post office, to act as route 
 agent, vice Mr. Park, transferred. I remained on the Illi- 
 nois Central run until January, 1864, at which time I re- 
 ceived at the hands of Mr. Armstrong a regular appointment 
 as route agent, Mr. Armstrong remarking at the time, that 
 in the event of a failure in his plans for ''a post office on 
 wheels" on this line, I should resign my appointment as 
 route agent, provided Mr. Park desired to resume his old 
 place on the road. 
 
 I was afterward appointed railway postal clerk on the 
 same line when the service was established thereon in 1865. 
 I could not fail to become impressed with the earnestness 
 and intrepidity with which the founder of the service entered 
 upon its organization. Obstacles which seemed insurmount- 
 
36 The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 able were surely overcome, but not without the hardest work 
 on his- part. The greatest obstacle which presented itself to 
 Mr. Armstrong in his endeavors to secure recognition for 
 his plans was in the Post Office Department at Washington. 
 At the same time, the railroad companies approached with 
 a view to securing proper equipment could not or would not, 
 with one or two exceptions, see the utility of the system and 
 the benefits to be derived therefrom. The Department could 
 not see a satisfactory return for the outlay involved, and 
 it took much argument and persuasion, together with the 
 assistance of influence, to secure the consent of the Depart- 
 ment for the trial of the service that was granted. Only 
 one railroad company, the Chicago and North-Western, had 
 sufficient confidence in Mr. Armstrong's project to consent 
 to fit up a car after plans furnished by him, this car being 
 placed in service between Chicago, 111., and Clinton, 
 Iowa. If I remember rightly, the letter-cases in this car 
 were taken from the Chicago post office for this trial. Neces- 
 sarily the appointments of this infant service were crude 
 and imperfect, but with its natural growth and development, 
 conveniences not then obtainable have been applied. I cannot 
 see, however, that the service of to-day differs from the service 
 as first organized, only as affected by minor details. The 
 great and central idea, that of a distributing post office on 
 wheels, as instituted and developed by Mr. Armstrong, and 
 the fundamental principles governing the service, are still the 
 same. 
 Chicago, III., 1895. 
 
 Maurice Crean 
 
 Railway Postal Clerk 
 I entered the postal service in October, 1853, when the late 
 Isaac Cook was Postmaster in this city. Shortly afterwards 
 George B. Armstrong became the chief, Mr. Cook's time being 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 37 
 
 so much occupied with politics and affairs that he found it 
 impossible to attend to all the duties devolving on him. Mr. 
 Armstrong soon brought order out of chaos by his superior 
 knov^ledge of the business. 
 
 When I entered the service a part of my route was the Lake 
 Superior region, in the mining districts surrounding that great 
 inland sea. I made up the mail for the upper peninsula of Michi- 
 gan and tagged the pouches once a month. The mail matter 
 was loaded at the Green Bay post office, and thence was taken 
 on dogs-sleds under the care of a route agent, in snow-shoes 
 and arctic boots, over glare ice to the point of destination. 
 On one occasion as the sled was unloaded at Ontonagon a nest 
 of mice was discovered therein. No doubt, the parental couple 
 burrowed themselves into the pouch in the Green Bay post 
 office while waiting the departure of the agent, and it took him 
 four weeks after his departure to reach the town of Hancock. 
 
 I remember vividly how heartily Mr. Armstrong laughed 
 when he was informed the following month that the mail matter 
 was delayed so long at the Green Bay post office that a pair of 
 mice had time to propagate their kind in the pouches. It was 
 then he said to me that he thought he would have to 
 devise some plan by which the mails could be moved so rapidly 
 that mice would not have time to breed in transit. I have no 
 doubt in the world that this mouse incident did a great deal in 
 calling^his attention to the unnecessary delays that were expe- 
 rienced in transporting the mails in the then unsettled localities. 
 He then and there said to me that he was determined to give 
 the little depredators no other chance in the future for a recur- 
 rence of such a violation of the rules of the Post Office Depart- 
 ment. Mr. Armstrong at once secured a change in the method 
 of serving the people of the Lake Superior country and caused 
 the mail to be made up twice, instead of once a month, and had 
 the old foot-messenger abolished and his place taken by a 
 mounted horseman, who carried the letter mail from the Green 
 
38 The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 Bay post office to Ontonagon. After this incident Mr. Arm- 
 strong devoted every moment of his spare time to the organ- 
 ization of plans to secure a more rapid transmission of mails. 
 
 He unfolded to me a plan over which he had brooded for 
 many months, by which the mails could be delivered all over 
 the country in much less time than was then required. Long 
 after this, an experimental postal car over that branch of the 
 Chicago and North-Western Railway known as the Chicago and 
 Clinton, Iowa, line was put on and the success of his idea was 
 immediately conclusively demonstrated. This was in 1864. 
 
 After the outbreak of the Rebellion, Mr. Armstrong took me 
 to Cairo, 111., which the late Montgomery Blair, then Postmaster- 
 General, had raised to the rank of a distributing post office 
 to accommodate the vast army and navy mails, and gave me 
 charge of the western room. From time to time as some 
 new idea suggested itself to him, Mr. Armstrong would discuss 
 with me the emanations of his teeming brain. Many a sleep- 
 less night did he spend in his room in the St. Charles Hotel at 
 Cairo elaborating the details of his plans, and during the weeks 
 of his sojourn in Cairo I often wondered how he maintained 
 his health in the ''dismal swamp" for want of much needed 
 and invigorating repose. During those weeks of unremitting 
 toil he perfected his arduous labors so completely that a letter 
 mailed in Chicago for any one in the western or southwestern 
 armies reached its terminal point as soon as a passenger on the 
 fastest train could reach it; so that a letter for Admiral Porter 
 from the Navy Department in Washington was made up in 
 the Chicago distributing post office in a separate pouch and 
 reached his flag-ship, via the Illinois Central Railway, as soon 
 as the admiral's gunner himself could have reached him from 
 this city. 
 
 Chicago, III., 1895. 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 39 
 
 Nelson G. Summerfield 
 
 Railway Postal Clerk 
 
 We should all do honor to the memory of George B. Arm- 
 strong, for to his untiring energy and fruitful mind are we 
 indebted for the magnificent system of Railway Mail Service 
 in operation throughout the length and breadth of our land 
 to-day. 
 
 I remember well his early struggles with the skeptical minds 
 of others who were slow to see the dawn that was already break- 
 ing over the firmament, and which was to establish a new era 
 in the mail service of the country, and at the same time stamp 
 George B. Armstrong as one of the greatest benefactors of his 
 time. Though slow to act, the government finally recognized 
 the importance of this measure, and it w^as my good fortune to 
 be among the first railway mail employes selected to illustrate 
 Mr. Armstrong's theory, the success of which is now a matter 
 of history. And as an evidence of the thorough mastery of the 
 subject in the mind of Mr. Armstrong, it is a remarkable fact 
 that very little improvement, or necessity for improvement, in 
 this service has been made since his time. 
 
 I make this statement from an intimate knowledge of the facts 
 in the case, as at the time Mr. Armstrong was making the most 
 strenuous efforts to have his theory given a trial he held the 
 position of Assistant Postmaster at Chicago, and I was a clerk 
 in the distributing department of the Chicago post office. 
 I was consequently brought in daily contact with him, and he, 
 upon several occasions and in a most enthusiastic manner, out- 
 lined his theory as to the requirements of the service and the 
 incalculable benefits to be derived therefrom. 
 
 I was appointed a clerk on the Chicago and Centralia railway 
 post office line, January 23, 1866, and commenced duty with 
 the establishment of the service on that line, the clerks being 
 selected by Mr. Armstrong as the lines were put in operation. 
 
40 The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 While connected with the service, I witnessed its growth, 
 from two clerks to 5,000 clerks or more, and during that time 
 have seen many important changes; but I fail to note in a single 
 instance a radical departure from the theory as promulgated 
 by Mr. Armstrong, and I therefore repeat, that we should all 
 do honor to the memory of George B. Armstrong as the 
 founder of the Railway Mail Service. 
 
 Chicago, III., 1895. 
 
 Manning S. Poole 
 
 Railway Postal Clerk 
 
 I was appointed to fill the position of postal clerk on the run 
 between Chicago, 111., and Burlington, Iowa, in December, 1864. 
 Prior to that date George B. Armstrong had spent some time 
 in Washington laboring with the Department in his endeavors 
 to secure recognition for his plans for the establishment of a 
 complete Railway Mail Service in the United States, and finally 
 secured authority to start three lines in the West, as an experi- 
 ment. The first and really experimental line was placed on 
 the Chicago and North- Western Railway, between Chicago, 111., 
 and Clinton, Iowa. One of the lines early chosen was the Chi- 
 cago, Burlington and Quincy Railway. After the service on the 
 C. B. & Q. had been in operation a few months, a pro- 
 nounced opposition and hostility arose against it among 
 the members of Congress through whose district the line 
 passed, arising from a feeling that they would not be allowed 
 a fair political representation among the men selected to fill the 
 appointments on this road, and who opposed the measure on 
 purely political grounds. 
 
 With the appointment of Governor Denison to the office of 
 Postmaster- General, the attack on Mr. Armstrong was renewed 
 and in order to ascertain if the service was really a benefit 
 to the people of the country served thereby, instructions were 
 issued to Mr. Armstrong to communicate with the Postmaster 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 41 
 
 at each head office served by the new system, and to secure by 
 letter his opinion of the results, practical or otherwise, derived 
 from the service. Blanks were accordingly prepared and 
 issued to each Postmaster at the offices concerned. On my 
 return to Chicago the week following the time at which these 
 inquiries were instituted, I found that the replies received from 
 all offices were eminently satisfactory to Mr. Armstrong, and 
 as afterwards proved, to the Post Office Department. The 
 reply from the Postmaster at Burlington, Iowa, Fox Abra- 
 hams, I remember, was very enthusiastic and emphatic in its 
 praise of the new service. 
 
 Previous to the time of the actual installation of the service, 
 I was a clerk in the distributing department of the Chicago post 
 office, Mr. Armstrong being at that time Assistant Postmaster. 
 For a long time prior to the actual realization of his plans, Mr. 
 Armstrong had been agitating the advancement of the postal 
 service in the United States, knowing that this country was far 
 behind other countries in respect to its postal facilities. In a 
 conversation with me he once remarked that when explaining 
 his ideas and methods before both Congressional committees, 
 be urged a greater liberality in the establishment of a railway 
 postal system as adapted to our republic than was granted 
 under the monarchies of the old world. 
 
 Some time in Feburary, 1865, I was ordered to accompany 
 Mr. Armstrong on a trip to Cairo, 111. His purpose was the 
 organization of postal service on the main line of the Illinois 
 Central Railway between Columbus, Ky., and Freeport, 111., 
 and also on the Chicago branch of the same railroad from 
 Cairo to Chicago, 111. An experimental line was then in opera- 
 tion on the CHnton division of the Chicago and North- Western 
 Railway, as I have before stated. 
 
 My close and intimate acquaintance with Mr. Armstrong 
 gave me a clear insight into his character, and a perfect concep- 
 tion of his desires in conjunction with the workings of the Rail- 
 
42 The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 way Mail Service. He was satisfied that this system was the 
 only one that could be adapted to this country. 
 Chicago, III., 1895. 
 
 John E. Thomas 
 
 Railway Postal Clerk 
 
 I entered the postal service in August, 1864, and I have been 
 in the service continuously since to the present day. As one 
 of the oldest clerks in the service (there are few of the men who 
 were associated with Mr. Armstrong in the early days of his 
 great work that are yet alive) , I take pleasure in contributing 
 what I may to a eulogy of his useful life. 
 
 In the year 1868, I received notice from him that I had been 
 promoted from a route agency, the position to which I was 
 originally appointed, to a head clerkship on the railway post 
 office line from Bloomington to Freeport, 111. I was brought in 
 close association with Mr. Armstrong during the establishment 
 of the railway post office on this road. He was truly one of 
 nature's noblemen, broad-minded, large-hearted, and with a 
 sympathetic nature for all. There was not an obstacle too 
 large for him to overcome in his labor of pushing his plan to a 
 successful culmination, and the enthusiasm that he showed 
 on every occasion inspired every one with the same quality. 
 He seemed to have, at the time I became acquainted with him, 
 but one aim in life: to make the Railway Mail Service a 
 complete success. He talked about it continuously; was 
 always devising improvements; was ever ready to receive 
 suggestions and was a living example at all times and in all 
 places of the power of an earnest man whose life was di- 
 rected to the achievement of a grand result. 
 
 But more can be said, and this more is the greatest praise 
 that can be paid to Mr. Armstrong's perspicacity and his in- 
 tellectual breadth. The service of to-day is the same ser- 
 vice that he left when he died. In general outline, in its larger 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 43 
 
 phase, in its fundamentals, no improvements, that I can see, 
 have been made. And if they had been, I am sure they would 
 have been brought to my attention. Indeed, the large and 
 expansive brain of George B. Armstrong seemed to cover not 
 only all the necessities of the early times but to take in the 
 future development of the service. 
 Bloomington, III., 1895. 
 
 Edgar Isbell 
 
 Railway Postal Clerk 
 
 I entered the Railway Mail Service in April, 1865, receiving 
 rav appointment through the hands of George B. Armstrong, 
 then Superintendent, with head quarters at Chicago. I was 
 appointed to the run between Chicago and St. Louis, being one 
 of the crew to take the first run made on that hne. Previous 
 to receiving an appointment as mail agent, the term then used, 
 I was for a time a letter-distributer in the Chicago post 
 office. Our accommodations on the Chicago and St. Louis 
 line were of the most meager kind, the postal apartment be- 
 ing limited to a portion of a baggage-car fixed up to suit the 
 demands of the service, even this space being secured through 
 hard work on the part of Mr. Armstrong. As I remember 
 the relations between the Department and the railroad com- 
 panies, the latter were not inclined to put much confidence in 
 the scheme for handling and distributing the mails en route. 
 The concessions granted by the railroad companies would not, 
 I am sure, have been granted at that time but for the un- 
 tiring efforts and indomitable spirit exhibited by Mr. Arm- 
 strong in his official intercourse with them, this spirit finally 
 overcoming the opposition under which the service was started. 
 
 The beginnings of the great service seem, to look back from 
 the present, very crude and simple, but in the minds of those 
 who took an active part in its organization and commencement 
 the possibilities of the future warranted the brightest and most 
 
44 The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 sanguine expectations. It must be remembered that the use 
 of a whole car for postal purposes was hardly dreamed of by or- 
 dinary minds, but I know that Mr. Armstrong had, as a part of 
 his scheme, the idea of a full postal-car as we find it to-day; 
 and it is surprising to note how few changes there have been 
 in the details of the service during the twenty-four years that 
 have elapsed since his death. The plans of the service were so 
 carefully elaborated and improved by him before he made 
 the practical test, that with but few minor alterations and ad- 
 ditions the service to-day in its larger aspect is no more and 
 no less than the service that he gave to the country during his 
 useful life. 
 
 Chicago, III., 1895. 
 
 Isaac A. Crane 
 
 Railway Postal Clerk 
 
 I first became acquainted with George B. Armstrong, October 
 15, 1865. At that time I received notice from Mr. Armstrong 
 to the effect that I had been appointed a railway postal clerk, 
 and was requested to report at his office for instructions as soon 
 as possible. I called on Mr. Armstrong personally, and from 
 him received instructions as to my duties in the new position 
 that I was to occupy, and was assigned to a run on the Chicago, 
 Rock Island and Pacific Railway, between Chicago, 111., 
 and Davenport, Iowa. I remained on this run four or five years, 
 and from there was transferred to the Chicago and St. Louis 
 line, performing service thereon some six or seven years. 
 
 During my early connection with the Railway Mail Service I 
 was thrown in frequent personal contact with Mr. Armstrong, 
 and had many conversations with him in regard to the service 
 as then constituted, and its future development. In his con- 
 versations, in which were outlined his plans for the extension 
 and development of the system, Mr. Armstrong seemed to have 
 the grandest conceptions of all that should constitute a perfect 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 45 
 
 postal service, and I am constrained to say that in my opinion 
 the method and appliances of the present day are simply an 
 expression of the original plan as conceived in the brain of Mr. 
 Armstrong, and inaugurated by him as the first Superintendent. 
 Chicago, III., 1895. 
 
An Historic Letter 
 
 (From the Chicago Post Office Bulletin, November 4, 1899.) 
 
 The very interesting letter, of which the following is a copy, 
 was loaned to the Postmaster by George B. Armstrong, eldest 
 son of the late George B. Armstrong, founder of the Railway 
 Mail Service. Samuel Hoard, the writer of this historic letter, 
 was appointed Postmaster of Chicago on March 9, 1865. ^^ 
 was a warm friend of Mr. Armstrong, who was first appointed 
 Assistant Postmaster of the Chicago office in 1854. In 1856 
 Mr. Armstrong resigned that position to go into business with 
 Rufus Hatch, of New York. In the great panic of 1857 the 
 firm failed. In 1858 Mr. Armstrong again became Assistant 
 Postmaster, and held that office uninterruptedly until 1865. 
 
 Post Office, Chicago, III., April 20, 1865. 
 Hon. William Denison, Postmaster- General, 
 
 Washington, D. C. 
 
 Sir: Permit me to address you in regard to a subject I deem 
 very important to the postal service of the United States on 
 railroads. You may not be personally acquainted with George 
 B. Armstrong, of this city, nor aware that he has acted for many 
 years as Assistant Postmaster at Chicago, in which position his 
 mind was directed to the question of the feasibility of effecting 
 a distribution of mail matter on railroad trains, so that such 
 matter would reach its destination from twelve to twenty-four 
 hours in advance of the time required if the matter should be 
 distributed according to the ordinary established mode. I 
 have no hesitancy in saying that the plans devised by Mr. Arm- 
 strong have been of very great public utility, and if they could 
 be generally extended throughout the country the value and 
 importance of the system could be fully appreciated and as 
 fully approved by the public. 
 
 Mr. Armstrong has been Assistant Postmaster at this place, 
 
 46 
 
V ^^ 
 
 
 The True Railway Mail Service 47 
 
 and at'the same time^held^the^appointment of special railroad 
 agent, and in assuming the duties of Postmaster here I con- 
 sidered that the two positions were so far incompatible with 
 each other that I could not, with any sense of propriety, 
 permit their being combined in the same person; and though 
 I felt that Mr. Armstrong's services would be very desirable 
 as Assistant Postmaster here, yet they would be indispensable 
 to the postal service in perfecting the railway system. 
 
 With the corps of efl&cient clerks now in this office, educated 
 under Mr. Armstrong's able supervision, I do not deem it very 
 difficult to find a gentleman competent for the position of Assist- 
 ant Postmaster, while his loss to the postal service in perfecting 
 the railroad system would be almost irreparable. 
 
 I would, therefore, most earnestly recommend that Mr. Arm- 
 strong be retained in the position of special railroad agent, or 
 that he be appointed to one of the places designed to be 
 filled pursuant to the provisions of subdivision 5 of the act 
 relating to postal laws, approved March 3, 1865, and that his 
 salary should correspond to the importance of the position and 
 the eminent, if not unequaled, ability that Mr. Armstrong will 
 bring to its performance. 
 
 I have the honor to be, 
 
 Very respectfully yours, 
 
 Samuel Hoard, 
 
 Postmaster, 
 
Schuyler; Colfax's Address 
 
 Oration of the Ex-Vice-President of the United States at the 
 
 Dedication of the George B. Armstrong Monument 
 
 in Chicago, in May, 1881 
 
 (Reprinted from the Chicago Inter Ocean, May 20, 1881) 
 Fellow-Citizens: I come with great pleasure from my 
 Indiana home to join with these postal officials and the busi- 
 ness men of this great city of the Northwest in the dedication 
 of this bust and monument. We have monuments in our 
 Republic for the great commanders of the army and navy, for 
 distinguished statesmen and eloquent orators, for the heroes 
 of science and art, for daring leaders in discovery, and for bril- 
 liant exemplars in philanthropy; and we come together to-day 
 to attest to the present and the future, to our own generation 
 and to posterity, how much we owe to George B. Armstrong, of 
 Chicago, whose bronze bust, erected by the postal clerks of the 
 Railway Mail Service, we inaugurate in this most appropriate 
 place. 
 
 The vast army mails came into the Chicago distributing post- 
 office, of which Mr. Armstrong was the Assistant Postmaster, 
 in immense masses, filling its rooms and bags to overflowing. 
 And sometimes, with its heavy office- work proper, they were one, 
 two, and even three weeks behind in their distribution and 
 forwarding. To remedy this glaring defect, so full of sadness 
 to our soldiers so far away, and to their families suffering the 
 agonies of distress at home, was the idea which suggested itself 
 to Mr. Armstrong's active and fertile mind. Indeed, it took 
 possession of him literally, and for months he gave nearly all 
 of his waking hours and sleepless nights to the problem. One 
 plan after another was conceived, considered, and rejected 
 
 48 
 
THE GEORGE B. ARMSTRONG MEMORIAL 
 At the Adams Street Entrance of the Government Buildin&r. Chicago. 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 49 
 
 as impracticable or inadequate. But at last the true thought 
 flashed upon him, and the germ of the present system came into 
 existence in his mind. Slowly but surely, patiently but persist- 
 ently, he elaborated and perfected it and then, full of this new 
 idea, he determined to submit it in person to the President and 
 Postmaster- General, Vice-President and Speaker [who was 
 Schuyler Colfax], Senate and House of Representatives. 
 Some few finally yielded to his enthusiastic explanations of it. 
 But at first he met obstacles in every direction that would have 
 cooled down any one less determined. The greatly increased 
 expense, the tendency of officials to adhere to what had been 
 tested, the common disposition to doubt the untried, all were 
 against him. How many weary journeys he made to Washing- 
 ton during the closing years of President Lincoln's first term, 
 how many arguments he submitted for his new scheme before 
 the Senate and House post office committees and government 
 officials, how his quenchless enthusiasm at last enlisted Mr. 
 Lincoln's admiration and support, how he finally triumphed 
 over all the multitudinous objections that were such stumbling- 
 blocks in his pathway, I can only refer to in this single sentence. 
 
 Fortunately, his indomitable will sustained him. His zeal 
 was supplemented and reinforced by his most admirable char- 
 acter; and the indisputable merit of his plan, which he was 
 able to vindicate and maintain triumphantly, against all cavil 
 and opposition, carried it through Congress. And with the 
 authority he had thus fairly extorted from our law-makers by 
 his persuasive appeals and energetic determination, he returned 
 to Chicago to organize what he feared might be the still 
 more difficult task of putting it into successful operation. 
 
 The first experiment of Railway Mail Service, under Mr. 
 Armstrong's new idea, was in August, 1864, and to the Chicago 
 and North-Western Railway belongs the credit of the first op- 
 portunity for its practical exemplification. The railway com- 
 panies, at that time, looked with undisguised disfavor on the 
 
50 The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 new plan. It needed more than one man in each postal car; 
 and would evidently require more elaborate cars with enlarged 
 space and better accommodations. But the officers of the 
 Chicago and North-Western Railway finally yielded to Mr. 
 Armstrong's persistent importunities. A letter-case was put 
 into an old route agent's car in which to distribute letters in- 
 tended for the East, and two men were detailed from the eastern 
 room of the Chicago distributing post office, to see if Mr. Arm- 
 strong's theory would really work well in practice. And this 
 route agent's car, fitted up to meet the emergency, and those 
 two clerks, detailed without extra pay from the Chicago post 
 office, formed the feeble beginnings of the great service which 
 to-day extends from ocean to ocean, over the entire railway 
 system of the country. 
 
 No sooner had the first experimental line been put into opera- 
 tion than the Post Office Department, the railway companies, 
 and the business men of Chicago, especially, realized that Mr. 
 Armstrong's idea was all that he had claimed it to be; and the 
 obstacles that at first beset him on every side rapidly disap- 
 peared. From every mouth came praise and encouragement 
 and good wishes for the grand improvement he had conceived 
 and executed. The new system rapidly proved its great value 
 to the public, and especially to commercial interests. Two 
 cars, imperfect in their conveniences, and really laughable when 
 compared with the handsomely furnished postal cars of to-day, 
 were placed on the Chicago and North- Western Railway, be- 
 tween Chicago and Clinton, la., and immediately the service 
 upon that line and connected roads became more complete than 
 had ever been enjoyed, or even thought of, except in the mind 
 of the originator of the Railway Mail Service. Then followed 
 the service on the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railway, 
 that being the second western railroad that gave hospitable 
 welcome to this great postal improvement. 
 
 Mr. Armstrong now insisted that, as in the old cars the clerks 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 51 
 
 were cramped for room, there must be new ones specially built 
 and arranged for the service. The railroad companies needed 
 no argument at that time to induce them to build nev^ cars, 
 models indeed of comfort and convenience, which quickly super- 
 seded the renovated route-agent cars. The first of these new 
 cars was built by the Chicago and North-Western Railway in 
 1867, after plans especially prepared by Mr. Armstrong, and 
 the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy, the Chicago and Alton, 
 and Illinois Central soon after did likewise. 
 
 The same progress being made in rapid succession on the 
 trunk lines at the East, the administration acquiesced in Mr. 
 Armstrong's suggestion that this great work, which was too 
 much for one man to be responsible for, should be made into two 
 divisions, and Mr. Armstrong was placed at the head of the 
 western division, being all the country Northwest of the Ohio. 
 However, he remained practically at the head of the service, 
 constantly planning to increase its efficiency and being daily 
 consulted about the numberless details of the expanding 
 work. W hatever was done to perfect it was done by him. 
 The impress of his active mind, his ambitious will, his energetic 
 labor was stamped upon the whole growth of the Railway 
 Mail Service. 
 
 No longer a theory, it had by this time become a grand fact; 
 not merely an idea, but a necessity of our postal system. And 
 when General Grant became President in 1869, the greatness 
 and indispensable character of the service was given by his ad- 
 ministration more complete and unreserved ofiicial recognition 
 than it had received since its birth. That administration 
 happened to have in its official membership one that had warm- 
 ly supported Mr. Armstrong's plan from its first revelation by 
 him [this was Mr. Colfax's modest way of referring to his own 
 valuable assistance in securing recognition for the new ser- 
 vice], and President Grant had also quite early become con- 
 vinced of its great value. Mr. Armstrong was summoned to 
 
52 The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 Washington, and by his plans for the future increase of the 
 efficiency of the system, the United States was subdivided into 
 six divisions, at the head of each of which was placed an 
 Assistant Superintendent, all to be under the direction of a 
 General Superintendent, with headquarters at Washington. 
 Mr. Armstrong was made the first General Superintendent 
 in the spring of 1869. Congress made more generous appro- 
 priations, and the work was pushed vigorously forward, so 
 that before his death the railway postal system was on every 
 trunk line in the United States. It had been a favorite idea 
 with Mr. Armstrong to have a fast mail service placed upon the 
 trunk line from New York to San Francisco, shortening the 
 mail schedule across the continent at least two days. But 
 while he was elaborating the details of what he intended 
 should be the crowning feature of his system, death overtook 
 him, and his labors were brought to a sudden close. He died 
 in Chicago, May 5, 187 1, ten years ago this month, from over- 
 work in his too close application to the wants of the public, and 
 to the service which was the foremost thought and the personal 
 pride of his useful life. 
 
 As a postal official Mr. Armstrong was acknowledged by all 
 who knew him to be the ablest of our century. He was in- 
 tensely alive to the wants of the people, full of energy in every- 
 thing he undertook, thoroughly acquainted with the workings 
 of the Post Office Department, and generally consulted on all 
 important postal questions. President Lincoln had such 
 faith in his practical wisdom that he urged him personally to 
 go to Europe as our Postal Commissioner, so that the Ameri- 
 can postal service might have the benefit of his observations 
 and study there. But Mr. Armstrong's own project, the 
 ambition of his life was the Railway Mail Service; and he was 
 too devoted to its success to accept any other honor. 
 
 With a nobility of character that impressed all who came in 
 contact with him, he had a mind of great originality and force; 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 53 
 
 and these grand characteristics, conjoined to his remarkable 
 executive ability, fitted him admirably for the great work 
 which he planned, and which he fortunately lived to see so 
 successfully carried into execution throughout our continental 
 domain. . . . 
 
Early Days of the Railway Mail Service 
 
 Address Delivered by Postmaster E. W. Keyes of Madison, 
 Wisconsin, at a Banquet Given to Postmaster- 
 General Smith in Chicago 
 
 (From the Chicago Post Office Bulletin, April 25, 1900.) 
 Postmaster E. W. Keyes, of Madison, Wisconsin, in re- 
 sponding to the toast, ** Early Days of the Railway Mail 
 Service," said: 
 
 The Post Office Department is of very great importance to 
 the people. It can almost be said to be the most important 
 department of the government. It is nearest the people. Its 
 great advantages are realized, and are constantly before the 
 minds of the people. The people appreciate highly the favors 
 they receive through this source. This branch of the govern- 
 mental service is more popular than any other department of 
 the government. 
 
 We hardly realize the tremendous forward strides which have 
 been made by the post office and mail service since i86t, when 
 Abraham Lincoln became President. The War of Secession 
 succeeded that event; yet the general interests of the people 
 during that period were not neglected. The great interests of 
 the postal service kept on apace and developed into the splendid 
 system which now prevails. There was a wide difference be- 
 tween the old methods and the new methods. The time had 
 arrived when great change was impending, when the needs of 
 the service demanded relief. That relief came almost in the 
 twinkling of an eye. It was decreed that the service with one 
 bound should be placed upon the highest pinnacle of efficiency. 
 The old methods of railway mail transportation were to be 
 relegated to the rear, and a system was to be inaugurated 
 upon a new plan of operation. 
 
 54 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 55 
 
 One man only had this grand scheme in his mind. He was 
 the late George B. Armstrong, Assistant Postmaster of Chicago. 
 He was the Moses who led the service out of the wilderness into 
 the promised land. And he became the originator of the Rail- 
 way Mail Service of to-day. 
 
 The early days of this service were not always bright and 
 promising. Mr. Armstrong found obstacles in his pathway; 
 prejudices had to be overcome, and the doubters had to be con- 
 vienced of the practicability of the scheme which he had orig- 
 inated and commended. I was familiar with his struggles, 
 embarrassments, and the difficulties which he encountered. 
 In fact, I was a co-worker with him in pushing the matter for- 
 ward. His enthusiasm was unbounded; his confidence in his 
 plan was never shaken, and his determination to make it a suc- 
 cess never abated. He realized that some one must solve the 
 problem of a better and speedier means for the distribution of 
 the mails. He saw the great necessity for improvement in the 
 transmission and distribution of mail matter. He was equal to 
 the emergency. After he had become fully convinced of the 
 practicability of his scheme of railway mail service, he applied 
 to the Postmaster-General for assistance. After frequent con- 
 ferences with the authorities on the subject, it was decided to 
 give him an opportunity to test the merits of his project. In 
 pursuance of this decision this letter was addressed to him: 
 
 Post Office Department, 
 Washington, D. C, July i, 1864. 
 George B. Armstrong, Chicago, 111. 
 
 Sir: You are authorized to test by actual experiment upon 
 such route or routes as you may select at Chicago the plans 
 proposed by you for simplifying the mail service. You will 
 arrange with the railroad companies to furnish suitable cars for 
 traveling post-offices, designate head offices, with their depen- 
 dent offices, prepare forms of blanks and instructions for all 
 such offices and those on the railroad not head offices; also for 
 clerks of traveling post-offices. 
 
56 The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 To aid you in this work, you may select some suitable route 
 agent whose place can be supplied by a substitute at the expense 
 of the Department. When your arrangements are completed 
 you will report them in full. 
 
 M. Blair, 
 Postmaster-General . 
 
 Armed with this authority, he was not slow in arranging for 
 the test service, though in a primitive manner. His first ex- 
 periment was tried upon the Chicago and North-Western Rail- 
 way line from Chicago to Clinton, Iowa, during the summer 
 of the same year. The experiment worked so well and gave 
 such grand satisfaction that in the two years following the 
 service was extended to all other railroads in Illinois. 
 
 While this great improvement was going forward and being 
 introduced upon the lines of railroad in Illinois, I was serving 
 my first term of five consecutive terms as Postmaster at Madi- 
 son. Its great importance attracted my especial attention, and 
 I concluded that if it was a good thing for our neighboring 
 state of Illinois, it was likely to prove a benefit and advantage to 
 my own state, Wisconsin. I had watched the experiment with 
 a great deal of interest. Mr. Armstrong was an old friend of 
 mine in the service, and we worked together in this matter with 
 a hearty co-operation. I realized that it would require a strong 
 pull to introduce the system into Wisconsin, and I went to 
 work in earnest in behalf of the project. And my first step was 
 to draft a memorial adressed to the Postmaster- General, to 
 be passed through our legislature, as follows : 
 
 A memorial to the Postmaster- General for the early estab- 
 lishment of the new railway distributing post-ofifice system 
 upon the principal railroads in the state of Wisconsin. 
 
 The memorial of the legislature of the state of Wisconsin 
 respectfully represents : 
 
 That the important and rapidly increasing business interests 
 of the state of Wisconsin demand the early introduction and 
 establishment of the new railway distributing post ofl&ce system 
 upon the leading railroads of this state. That under the present 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 57 
 
 system of distribution of letters at post offices a delay of twelve 
 hours and upwards is necessarily incurred at the Chicago office 
 in the transmission of letters from Wisconsin to eastern cities 
 and other points in the country. That, in the opinion of your 
 memorialists, the new railway mail system is of great practical 
 utility; that its success, whenever and wherever introduced, is 
 beyond question: and that it will confer a great and incalculable 
 benefit and advantage upon the business interests of our state, 
 we fully believe. 
 
 Therefore your memorialists would respectfully and ear- 
 nestly ask its application to the principal railroads in the state 
 of Wisconsin. 
 
 It was passed by the legislature of Wisconsin, April 8, 1865, 
 without opposition and was doubtless the first action taken on 
 the subject, and the first indorsement given by any state legis- 
 lature commending the adoption of the new system. In the 
 mean time I was in frequent communication with Mr. Arm- 
 strong as to the best course to pursue. I saw him often and 
 wrote him frequently. I advised him that a memorial had 
 passed the legislature. I read copies of letters received from 
 him at that time : 
 
 Post Office, Chicago, III., April 8, 1865. 
 Friend Keyes : Thanks for your kind favor this morn- 
 ing received. Did you send copies of the legislative memorial 
 to the Postmaster- General and the Assistant Postmaster- Gen- 
 eral ? If not, why not ? If not, do so immediately; it will help 
 along amazingly. Flood the Department with them. I go to 
 Washington in a few days. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 G. B. Armstrong. 
 
 On April 14th, he wrote me again, in answer to my sugges- 
 tion that he forward the memorial : 
 
 Post Office, Chicago, III., April 14, 1865. 
 Dear Keyes : I feel a delicacy in sending the memorial as 
 coming through me. It may look as if I were making capital 
 for the new work. Please forward it yourself to the Postmaster- 
 
58 The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 General, marking the envelope inclosing it 'Personal. ' I will 
 be in Washington nov^r very soon. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 G. B. Armstrong. 
 
 These letters show the great interest which Mr, Armstrong 
 took in the project, and that we pushed it to the fullest extent 
 possible. Mr. Armstrong conferred with the Department on 
 the question of the extension into Wisconsin, and I followed the 
 memorial with correspondence and with personal interviews 
 with the Postmaster-General, and finally received assurances 
 from that official that as soon as practicable this service should 
 be extended into Wisconsin, and on May i, 1867, the service 
 was put on the Northwestern Railway from Chicago to Green 
 Bay. 
 
 Thus it was that Wisconsin became the second state in the 
 Union to receive the advantages of the new system of railway 
 mail distribution. It was not until July i, 1869, that this ser- 
 vice was put upon any railroad running east of Chicago. As 
 I have stated, the first service was put upon the railroad line 
 from Chicago to Clinton. A crude car was prepared and the 
 first trip was begun, and, in the words of Postmaster- General 
 Blair, in his letter of authority to Mr. Armstrong, "the traveling 
 post office " was under full headway. The value of the service 
 was so quickly demonstrated by these experiments that the rail- 
 roads promptly furnished better and more suitable cars for the 
 purpose. As soon as practicable after the first introduction of 
 the railway distributing post office service, it was made to in- 
 clude the whole country in its benefits and advantages. Con- 
 gress was not slow to recognize its great value. In 1869 the 
 Railway Mail Service was organized into a separate bureau, 
 and Mr. Armstrong was placed in full control, and so continued 
 until his death, in May, 187 1. 
 
 No project of so much importance to the people was ever 
 carried forward more rapidly to such grand results, as less than 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 59 
 
 four years elapsed between the running of the first railway 
 mail-car and the general adoption of the service by the depart- 
 ment. 
 
 There were not a few others entitled to great credit in heartily 
 supporting Mr. Armstrong in his efforts. I only refer to the 
 early days of the service. Its great accomplishments and splen- 
 did results are as familiar as household words to the people. 
 I will not attempt to point out in detail its great triumph. I only 
 speak hurriedly and in a reminiscent way of its early days. 
 
 I was an eye-witness, so to speak, of the inception, growth, 
 development, and expansion of this most marvellous addition 
 and improvement of the post office service — the greatest that 
 has been seen in a century. Without it, it would be impossible 
 to transact the great volume of business which floods the mails 
 at the present time. 
 
 Mr. Armstrong had been so devoted to this work and so im- 
 pressed with its magnitude, that his labors in connection there- 
 with overcame him, and he became broken down in health, 
 which wa^ clearly attributable to the nervous energy and atten- 
 tion which he had devoted to it. His name should always be 
 kept in grateful remembrance by the American people. 
 
 A large bronze bust on a granite pedestal has been erected 
 by the clerks in the Railway Mail Service to the memory of 
 George Buchanan Armstrong, the founder of this service. 
 
Letters on Postal Reform 
 
 A Proposed Change in the Economy of the Postal Service 
 
 of the United States, by George B. Armstrong, 
 
 Chicago, 111. 
 
 (Official History, pages 1 65-171, inclusive) 
 
 The following letters, originally addressed to A. N. Zevely, 
 Third Assistant Postmaster- General, on the subject of reform 
 in the " economy of the postal service in the United States, " are 
 published in this form with a view to obtaining an expression 
 of opinion as to the merits of the plan proposed therein and 
 its adaptability to the wants of the service. That a reform is 
 needed is evident to every one practically acquainted with 
 our postal arrangements. In what way this reform is to be 
 attained, these letters are designed to point out. There 
 may be other plans elaborated, if any at all have been, 
 better designed to accomplish the end proposed. However 
 that may be, the author claims a careful consideration of his 
 plan as the partial result of a critical study of the present 
 system during a long experience in the service. 
 
 These letters treat only of the disposition and arrangement of 
 the postal system to insure the utmost attainable celerity in the 
 transmission of correspondence through the mails. Other 
 questions are left out of view. 
 
 Chicago, June, 1864. 
 
 No. I 
 
 Chicago, May 10, 1864. 
 
 Sir: It is a matter of congratulation that an effort is to be 
 made to introduce a reform in the postal system of this country. 
 What this effort will be and what result is contemplated, I am 
 not precisely informed. It is fortunate, however, that what- 
 ever effort is made is to be under your able and experienced 
 management. 
 
 60 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 6i 
 
 The present postal system, no doubt adapted to the simple 
 requirements of the service in its early days, when the accounts 
 of the Department were comprised in the £ s. d. ledger kept by 
 the Postmaster- General, is inadequate to the enlarged demands 
 of the advanced civilization of the present day. It ought to be 
 replaced by a system combining greater simplicity with cheap- 
 ness and adaptability to the avowed ends to be accomplished 
 by its introduction. Although it would doubtless be difficult 
 to a certain degree to introduce a system under the present pre- 
 carious tenure of office which would at once violently revolu- 
 tionize the order of things, yet such changes may be made as 
 would gradually, yet effectually, accomplish the purpose, 
 retaining so much of the present system as would not bring 
 improvements into too sudden conflict with long habit and 
 practice. 
 
 Among those practically conversant with the present method 
 of making up mails, some of the objections against its continu- 
 ance are a want of compactness, a diffuseness, so to speak, in 
 the system of mailing direct to the extent required by the existing 
 regulations of the Department, the length of time required for 
 post-billing, filling out and completing the records, wrapping 
 and directing the packages, and in bagging, especially in the 
 large offices; the necessity, therefore, of closing the mails at the 
 post-office to the local public at an unseemly length of time 
 before the actual time of departure of the mails from the post 
 office, and the consequent liabihty to make errors in distribut- 
 ting and directing packages in haste, which generally attends 
 the operation. The latter objection has the more force from 
 the fact that no small amount of misdirected packages, as is 
 well known to the post ofl&ce, daily travel in the mails, which 
 under the regulations may be opened only at the post offices 
 addressed. Add to these the cost of wrapping paper used, 
 post-bills, and other blanks in enormous quantities, with the 
 unavoidable waste attending their use, and the objections 
 gather weight on the score of economy of time and cost. These 
 may be regarded as minor points in a comprehensive plan, 
 but on the score of economy of time and cost, one of sufficient 
 importance to start the inquiry whether such changes in the 
 arrangement, regulation, and government of the system can 
 be introduced as would bring about a permanent benefit in 
 these respects, and for the greater purpose of freeing the 
 
62 The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 system of its present perplexities and hindrances, for the 
 public welfare. The great fact of reform, however, lies 
 beyond these, and may be reached, probably, only through 
 progressive steps in the work of improvement. 
 
 Certainty and celerity in the transmission of letters are 
 primary considerations. No postal system may be regarded as 
 perfect that does not give to the whole public the largest possible 
 facilities in extent and frequency of communication between 
 all important places and rapid frequent local deliveries. All 
 parts of our country are closely identified with each other in a 
 great common interest — the fullest development of commercial 
 and social prosperity. In the attainment of this grand result 
 the post office performs an important part; to it are committed 
 great trusts and from it are expected the highest advantages to 
 the people. The working out of this reformation in the service 
 is second in universal interest to no other measure touching the 
 welfare of the public at large. This final result may be attained 
 by wise planning and patient, persistent effort, beginning the 
 reform with the simplest changes, for the reason hereinfore 
 named, and gradually introducing the more radical improve- 
 ments till the end is accomplished. 
 
 No. 2 
 
 Chicago, May 14, 1864. 
 
 Dear Sir: The outline of the plan which I submit for 
 your consideration for a change in the present postal system 
 to secure greater efficiency, certainty, and celerity therein, I will 
 state as briefly as I can to be rightly understood. I premise it 
 by saying that the improvements I propose look to the abolition 
 of the system of mailing direct to the extent now required by the 
 existing regulations of the Post Office Department, and the 
 substitution therefor of a system of distributing on the lines of 
 railroads by railway clerks for offices on railroad routes, and by 
 those offices for other offices supplied from them; the intro- 
 duction of a system of multiplied and frequent interchange of 
 mails between places of important intercommunication, and, 
 finally, a full transfer of distributing duties, as near as may be 
 to traveling railway post offices, in order to secure the utmost 
 dispatch and frequency in the transmission of letters. I 
 elucidate under the following heads, viz.: 
 
 I. Classification of post offices. 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 63 
 
 2. Traveling post offices. 
 
 3. The duties of each class of offices. 
 
 4. The duties of traveling post offices. 
 
 5. The method of making up and post-biUing mails. 
 
 I. — Classification of Post Offices 
 
 Post offices should be divided into four classes, viz. : 
 
 Distributing offices. 
 
 Assorting offices. 
 
 Head (or supply) offices. 
 
 Route Cor intermediate) offices. 
 
 Distributing offices shall be such post offices as may be desig- 
 nated by the Postmaster- General, to be determined by geo 
 graphical situation, with reference to population, the frequency 
 of local supplies to and from such offices, and the importance 
 of the correspondence, the frequency of communication with 
 other important offices, and such other considerations bearing 
 on the case as may be deemed of sufficient consequence to make 
 them serviceable to the greatest practicable extent in the design 
 of their selection. 
 
 Assorting offices shall be those post offices which are the 
 initial and terminal offices of railroad routes, not distributing 
 offices, and such other offices and railroad routes as may be 
 located at railroad crossings or connections, and such other 
 offices on other routes, not railroad routes, as may be deemed 
 expedient by the Postmaster- General. 
 
 Head {or supply) offices shall be all post offices which are the 
 initial and terminal offices of routes, not railroad routes, not 
 distributing or assorting offices, excepting such terminal offices 
 as are not the offices of supply for any route, and excepting 
 also such offices, either head or terminal offices, of such routes, 
 as may be deemed expedient by the Postmaster- General. 
 
 Route {or intermediate) offices shall be all other post offices 
 situated on railroad, and other routes which are not offices of 
 supply for any other route. 
 
 II. — Traveling Post Offices 
 
 The classification of offices above given is for the twofold 
 purpose of arranging a system of mailing combining more com- 
 prehensiveness and simplicity than the present one, and thereby 
 to attain greater accuracy in the dispatch of letters. And in 
 
64 The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 the case of distributing offices the design in the classification 
 is so to relieve them of the vast amount of letters now necessarily 
 throv^rn upon them under the present system as to enable them, 
 together with the assorting offices in the classification given, to 
 make more extended and frequent interchange of mail with other 
 offices of the same classification, both for local delivery and 
 distribution. But the main feature of the plan which after its 
 introduction and final adaption to the service would undoubt- 
 edly lead to the most important results is the system of railway 
 distribution. To carry out the true theory of postal service, 
 there should be no interruption in the transit of letters in the 
 mail, and, therefore, as little complication in the necessary 
 internal machinery of a postal system as possible, to the end that 
 letters deposited in a post office at the latest moment of the de- 
 parture of the mails from the office for near or distant places 
 should travel with the same uninterrupted speed and certainty 
 as passengers to their places of destination as often as contracts 
 with the Department for transportation of the mails permit. 
 It is well known to the public that passengers traveling over 
 railroad routes generally reach a given point in advance of 
 letters, when to that given point letters must pass, under the 
 present system, through a distributing office; and when letters 
 are subjected to a distributing process in more than one dis- 
 tributing office, as is largely the case now, the tardiness of a 
 letter's progress toward its place of destination is proportion- 
 ately increased. But a general system of railway distribution 
 obviates this difficulty. The work being done while the cars 
 are in motion, and transfers of mails made from route to route 
 and for local deliveries on the way as they are reached, letters 
 attain the same celerity in transit as persons making direct 
 connections. This is obvious; but to reach this perfection 
 would necessarily be a work of time. The plan I now submit 
 looks to that end in time; and if it be proved by trial to be 
 adapted to the service in a new form, the time may not be 
 distant. 
 
 In passing, however, to this final improvement, I remark that 
 the classification of offices above given would be so far changed 
 as to abolish the distinction between distributing and assorting 
 offices, reducing the former to the character with the simple 
 functions of the latter. The other question of frequent local 
 deliveries in cities and towns by carriers I will not touch upon, 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 65 
 
 only so far as to say that the two questions are correlative; and 
 that the success of one depends upon the perfection and thor- 
 oughness of the other. To carry out the design, therefore, 
 each railroad corporation under contract with the Post Office 
 Department, or otherwise, employed in transporting the mails 
 shall furnish for the exclusive use and occupancy of the railway 
 clerks a sufficient number of cars suitable in dimensions and 
 conveniences as may be deemed necessary for the proper dis- 
 charge of distributing and other duties; these cars, or railway 
 post offices, to be under the direction and control of the De- 
 partment while the corporation is engaged in carrying the mail. 
 
 III. — The Duties of Each Class of Offices 
 
 Adopting the classification proposed above, the duties of the 
 several offices therein will be readily understood. 
 
 The duty of route offices will be very simple. Postmasters 
 of such offices not on railroad routes will post-bill and mail 
 direct all letters for offices on other routes (without refer- 
 ence to any indorsement thereon by the writers to the contrary) ; 
 they will post-bill and mail on the nearest head office on the 
 proper route to the place of their destination. 
 
 When route offices are situated on railroad routes the post- 
 masters thereof will post-bill and mail letters for other offices 
 on their own routes, as well as letters for offices on other routes 
 on the traveling post office through which they should first pass 
 to the office of delivery. 
 
 The duty of head offices will be equally as simple as that of 
 route offices. 
 
 Postmasters of head offices will post-bill and mail all letters 
 deposited therein for mailing and received from other offices 
 in the manner following: 
 
 All letters for offices on the routes of which such offices are 
 the head offices will be mailed and post-billed direct; and all 
 letters for offices on other routes will be post-billed and mailed 
 on the traveling post office, the nearest assorting office, or head 
 office on the proper route to the office of delivery, as the case 
 may be, in the same manner as route offices. 
 
 The duties of assorting offices will be of a more general char- 
 acter than those of either of the above offices; and, although 
 confined to narrow limits in their operations, they will have 
 many of the characteristics of distributing offices. 
 
66 The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 . Postmasters of assorting offices will post-bill and mail all 
 letters deposited therein for mailing and received from other 
 offices in the manner f ollow^ing : 
 
 All letters for offices on routes not railroad routes of which 
 such offices are the initial or terminal offices will be post- 
 billed and mailed direct. 
 
 All letters for offices on other routes not railroad routes, ex- 
 cepting routes supplied through head offices on railroad routes, 
 will be post-billed and mailed on the nearest head office on the 
 proper route to the offices of delivery. 
 
 All letters for offices on railroad routes for which such offices 
 are the assorting offices, and for offices supplied through head 
 offices on railroad routes, will be post-billed and mailed on the 
 traveling post offices. And all letters for offices on other routes, 
 railroad or otherwise, which should properly pass over such 
 railroad routes to the offices of delivery, excepting those which 
 should be sent to distributing offices, other assorting offices, or 
 other traveling post offices, as the case may be, with which 
 regular exchange of mail in through bags is made, will be post- 
 billed and mailed on the traveling post office. 
 
 It will also be the duty of this class of offices to make regular 
 exchange of mails in through bags with other principal assort- 
 ing offices, distributing offices, and traveling post offices, as 
 far as may be deemed expedient for the purpose — first, of 
 expediting the transmission of letters for such offices and for 
 offices supplied through them; secondly, to secure semi-daily 
 dispatch of mails, or as often as contract with the Post Office 
 Department for the transportation of mails permit it, between 
 important places; and, thirdly, to lessen the amount of distribu- 
 tion in the traveling post offices. 
 
 All letters, therefore, for places immediately supplied from 
 either of the offices with which regular exchange of mails in 
 through bags is made will be post-billed and mailed on the office 
 from which the supply is due; and letters for places beyond the 
 offices with which such exchange of mail is made shall be mailed 
 on the last exchanging office on the proper route to the offices 
 of delivery. 
 
 Postmasters of distributing offices will post-bill and mail all 
 letters deposited therein for mailing and received from other 
 offices for distribution in the manner following: 
 
 All letters for offices on routes not railroad routes of which 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 67 
 
 such offices are the initial or terminal offices will be post-billed 
 and mailed direct. 
 
 All letters for offices on other routes not railroad routes, ex- 
 cepting routes supplied through head offices on railroad routes, 
 will be post-billed and mailed on the first head office through 
 which they should pass on the proper route to the offices of 
 delivery. 
 
 All letters for offices on railroad routes for which distributing 
 offices are the office of supply, and for offices supplied through 
 head offices on such railroad routes will be post-billed and 
 mailed on the traveling post offices; and all letters for offices 
 on other routes, railroad or otherwise, which should properly 
 pass over such railroad routes to the offices of delivery, except- 
 ing those which should be properly sent to other distributing 
 offices, or assorting offices or traveling post offices, as the case 
 may be, with which regular exchange of mails in through bags 
 is made, will be post-billed and mailed on the traveling post 
 offices. 
 
 As in the case of assorting offices, it will be the duty of dis- 
 tributing offices to make regular exchange of mails in through 
 bags with all distributing offices, with all principal assorting 
 offices and traveling post offices other than those on railroad 
 routes of which they are the initial or terminal offices, or other- 
 wise. And the same method of post-billing and mailing letters 
 for the offices and for distribution, with which regular exchange 
 of mail in through bags is made, will be observed. 
 
 So far the duties of distributing offices are precisely similar 
 to those of assorting offices. The importance of the former 
 over the latter lies in the fact that they will necessarily handle 
 for distribution a greater number of letters, because being 
 selected for distributing duties with a view to centrality of 
 location to populous routes and concentration of correspondence 
 passing between distant points, greater accumulations in tran- 
 sit fall upon them, and hence the operations of such offices 
 must take a wide range; and in the other respect that it will be 
 their duty to make frequent and multiplied exchanges of mails 
 for delivery and distribution in through bags with all offices of 
 their own class (as well as for assorting and traveling post 
 offices, as far as they maybe instructed), with the end always 
 in view of expediting the transmission of letters between 
 distant places. The operations of a distributing office must 
 
68 The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 always be subservient to and controlled by the interest of the 
 correspondence committed to its care. The speediest trans- 
 mission of letters to places of their destination must be the chief 
 aim of their labors, and therefore must be observed in the 
 discharge of their responsible duties, the closest discrimination 
 in forwarding letters to other offices with which regular ex- 
 change of mails is made, so that they will not be subject to an 
 unnecessary distribution or retention on the way. 
 
 The number of this class of offices should be limited to the 
 present necessity for them in the working of the new system. 
 
 IV. — The Duties of Traveling Post Offices 
 
 More important than either of the foregoing offices in a 
 thoroughly efficient postal system is the traveling post-office. 
 
 It will be the duty of clerks of traveling post offices to 
 receive letters at railway stations up to the latest moment of 
 the departure of the trains, and all letters received at such 
 offices from other offices, as well as those deposited therein for 
 mailing, will be post-billed and mailed in the following 
 manner: 
 
 Regular exchange of mails will be made by the traveling post 
 office with each office on its route. Mails will be made up while 
 the cars are in motion. All letters for offices on the route will 
 be post-billed and mailed on them in order as they are reached 
 by the train, and all letters for offices on other routes, not rail- 
 road routes, supplied through head offices on such railroad route 
 will be post-billed and mailed on the head office from which 
 such supply is properly made. 
 
 All letters for offices on other routes, railroad or otherwise, 
 not supplied through either of the head offices on such railroad 
 route, excepting letters for offices which should properly be sent 
 to distributing offices, assorting offices, or other traveling post 
 offices with which regular exchange of mail in through bags is 
 made, will be post-billed and mailed on the assorting office at 
 the beginning or end of such railroad route, or at the rail- 
 road crossings or connections, as the case may be. 
 
 It will also be the duty of this class of offices to make regular 
 exchange of mails in through bags with distributing offices 
 and assorting offices, as far as may be deemed expedient, and 
 especially with other traveling post-offices in order to expedite 
 the transmission of letters to the greatest extent attainable on 
 their way to the places of their destination. 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 69 
 
 It will also be the duty of this class of offices to make regular 
 exchange of return bags with each other on their respective 
 routes, to the end that letters mailed on them in error by offices 
 on their own routes, or sent to them by other offices, while going 
 in one direction which should, on the proper route to the offices 
 of delivery be sent in the opposite direction, the correction may 
 be made and the letters returned at the point on the route where 
 the traveling offices meet. 
 
 No. 3 
 
 Chicago, June 10, 1864. 
 
 Sir: By reference to Chapter IV of the Regulations of 
 the Department in the edition of 1859, it will be seen that the 
 instructions to postmasters in regard to the manner of forward- 
 ing letters would be, by the system proposed, null and void. 
 Section 41 of the chapter named, reads thus: 
 
 " Every postmaster will mail and post-bill direct to the place 
 addressed: first, all letters for his own State or Territory; 
 second, all letters for post offiv.es in other States and Territories, 
 which should not pass through a distributing office on their 
 proper route to the office of delivery; and third, all letters on 
 which theinstruction ''mail direct" shall be written. Letters 
 not required by the foregoing provisions to be mailed direct 
 shall be post-billed and mailed to the distributing office 
 through which they should first pass on the proper route to 
 their place of destination — unless the mailing office be a 
 distributing office. 
 
 " All letters received at a distributing office for distribution 
 or deposited therein for mailing, and which are addressed to any 
 other distributing office or to places in the State or Territory 
 where such distributing office is situated, or to places not more 
 than 100 miles distant from such distributing office, or which 
 would not pass through a distributing office on the proper route 
 to the office of delivery, shall he mailed direct; but if the office 
 of delivery is more than 100 miles from such distributing office, 
 and the letters should properly pass through one or more dis- 
 tributing offices, they shall be mailed and post-billed to the 
 last distributing office through which they are to pa9s on their 
 routes to the office of delivery." 
 
 Mailing direct to the extent required by the above instructions 
 is one of the objections referred to in a previous letter, and for 
 
70 The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 the reasons therein given is entitled to weight. Other objections 
 not necessary to point out will be suggested by a comparison of 
 the method of forwarding letters described in the instructions 
 quoted with that proposed in these letters. It is proper to 
 repeat, however, that both in large and small offices misdirec- 
 tions of packages are known to be frequently made; and this 
 constant exposure to liability of misdirection of whole mails is 
 very objectionable. There is only one way to remedy this: 
 To dispense with the use of wrappers entirely, except in the case 
 of mails to distant places where they are required to protect 
 letters from attrition and separation in transit. In the plan 
 submitted, wrapping will be done away with, excepting in the 
 cases just named; and as the quantity of paper used for this 
 purpose will be comparatively trifling, the saving in this item 
 of expense will be considerable, while the objections to the use 
 of wrappers are removed. Another great item of tax on the 
 revenues of the Department is incurred by the use of enormous 
 quantities of post-bills and other necessary blanks in the present 
 system. It is not proposed to do away with post-bills and other 
 blanks altogether, but the quantities used will be very largely 
 reduced and the expenditures therefor of course will be re- 
 duced in proportion. The saving of cost, however, would 
 doubtless be secondary to the benefits to the people secured 
 by a simplified system, to which reference has been already 
 made. 
 
 V. — The Method of Making up and Post-billing Mails 
 
 The form of the post-bill now in use need not be changed (as 
 it is simple enough for the purpose designed), except a slight 
 alteration in size and arrangement. It is proposed to do away 
 with separate bills for delivery and distribution, excepting to 
 distributing offices and principal assorting offices, where sepa- 
 rate packages for delivery and distribution are essential to pre- 
 vent delay in the necessary assorting of letters for rapid local 
 deliveries, and in the distributing of letters for immediate out- 
 going mails, and to confine the entries in all other cases to one 
 post-bill for each mail. The alteration referred to will simply 
 be an elongation of the post-bill, and a division into two spaces 
 — the upper space to be headed "for delivery," and the lower 
 one ''for other offices." And for the sake of uniformity and 
 simplicity the two kinds of blanks — ''mails received," and 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 71 
 
 "mails received for distribution" — should be merged into one. 
 
 The different ofl&ces as classified, and in accordance with 
 their duties as elsewhere defined, will make up and post-bill as 
 follows: 
 
 Postmasters of route oflSces, after carefully assorting letters 
 deposited therein for mailing, will enter them on the post-bill 
 in the usual manner in the appropriate columns under the proper 
 head "for delivery," in the case of letters for other route offices, 
 and "for delivery" and "for other offices" in the case of letters 
 for head offices and offices supplied through them. 
 
 The post-bill being completed, the postmaster will carefully 
 fold it with the letters entered thereon and tie the whole securely 
 with twine in one compact bundle, taking care first to see that 
 the facing letters clearly indicate the office for which the package 
 is destined. Wrapping paper will not be used. 
 
 When a route office forwards letters for offices on other routes 
 supplied through a head office, on such head office the facing 
 letter should be one addressed to such head office, to indicate 
 the place of destination of the package; and in case there should 
 be no letter addressed to such head office in any particular 
 package, then the post-bill must be carefully wrapped around 
 the letters forming the package, and securely tied, so that 
 the name of such head office in the post-bill may be distinctly 
 seen instead of a facing letter. 
 
 Postmasters of head offices, after carefully assorting letters 
 deposited therein for mailing and received from other offices 
 for other offices, will enter them on the post-bill in the usual 
 manner in the appropriate column under the head of "for 
 delivery" in the case of letters for route offices supplied direct 
 by them, and "for delivery'* and "for other offices" in the 
 case of letters for delivery from other head offices and for 
 offices supplied through them. Letters deposited therein for 
 mailing and received from other offices for assorting offices 
 and for other offices, which should be mailed on assorting 
 offices for distribution, will be entered on separate post- 
 bills — letters for delivery from the assorting offices entered 
 under the head of " for delivery," and made up in separate 
 packages with the post-bill relating thereto and securely tied, 
 the facing letter indicating the assorting office, for which each 
 package is destined; and letters for distribution will be entered 
 under the head of "for other offices, " and made up also in sepa- 
 
72 The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 rate packages with the post-bill relating thereto and securely 
 tied, the post-bill itself indicating the place of their destination. 
 Letters for offices supplied by traveling post offices and for dis- 
 tribution v^ill be entered on the post-bill of course only under 
 the head of ''for other offices." Wrapping paper will not be 
 used. 
 
 Postmasters of assorting ojHices, after carefully assorting 
 letters deposited therein for mailing and received from other 
 offices for distribution, will enter them on the post-bill in the 
 usual manner, in the appropriate columns, under the proper 
 heads, "for delivery" in the case of letters for route offices 
 supplied direct by them, taking care, before the package with 
 the post-bill relating thereto is finally made up and tied, to see 
 that the facing letter legibly indicates the office for which it is 
 destined. And all letters for delivery from head offices not 
 on railroad routes, and for other offices supplied through 
 sucb head offices, will be entered on the post-bill in the 
 manner above described, if for delivery, and under the other 
 head if for other offices supplied through them, the packages 
 to be made up with the respective post-bills relating thereto, 
 and tied in the same manner as described above. Letters 
 thus made up for a head office will be comprised in one 
 compact bundle with one post-bill. Wrapping paper will not 
 be used. 
 
 All letters for offices on railroad routes, and for offices sup- 
 plied through head offices on railroad routes, and all letters for 
 offices on other routes which should properly pass over railroad 
 routes to the place of their destination, excepting those which 
 should be sent to distributing offices, or other assorting offices 
 with which regular exchange of mail is made, to be mailed, 
 as elsewhere stated, on the traveling post-offices, will be entered 
 on the post-bill under the head of "for other offices," and 
 with the completed post-bill, made up in compact bundles and 
 securely tied with twine. Wrapping paper will not be used. 
 
 All letters for other principal assorting offices and for dis- 
 tributing offices with which regular exchange of mails in through 
 bags is made, for delivery and distribution, will be entered 
 under the proper heads, " for delivery" or " for other offices," 
 on separate post-bills; and the letters for delivery and for dis- 
 tribution will be made up in a separate package or packages, 
 with the completed post-bill relating thereto, strongly wrapped 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 73 
 
 and tied, and each package plainly directed to the office to which 
 it is to be sent — that containing letters for distribution to be 
 distinguished by the addition on the wrapper to the name of 
 the office for which it is destined of the word "distribution " 
 or its abbreviation, ''dis. " 
 
 Postmasters of distribution offices, after carefully assorting 
 letters deposited therein for mailing and received from other 
 offices for distribution, will enter them on the post-bill and make 
 up the mails in the same manner precisely as assorting offices. 
 
 It is beUeved that the system herein set forth commends 
 itself to the judgment and experience of experts in the service. 
 It strips the service of its numerous hindrances for work, sim- 
 plifies the labor, and through this the end sought in all postal 
 reforms is arrived at. 
 
 With this reform, other questions intimately connected with 
 its machinery and regulation, will arise, but these are not, and 
 need not be, referred to here. They will be met as they are 
 presented. The principal work of the postal system is de- 
 scribed in these letters, and that is what is first most needed 
 to be provided for. 
 
 If the reform be adopted, or any part of it, it is proposed to 
 arrange a system of regular exchange of sealed bags or small 
 lock-pouches, for security of letters, by route offices with each 
 other and with head offices, and by head offices with each other 
 and route offices supplied by them, in such a manner as to 
 effectually check irregularities in the forwarding of mails. 
 
The Davis Claim 
 
 Its Utter Absurdity Fully Exposed 
 
 The authorship and establishment of the Railway Mail Ser- 
 vice, as the official testimony printed in these pages abundantly 
 proves, is a matter of record in the Post Office Department at 
 Washington. 
 
 It is claimed by the heirs of William A. Davis that the credit 
 of devising and instituting this great system is due to him. Mr. 
 Davis, in the early 6o's held the office of Chief Clerk in the post 
 office at St. Joseph , Missouri. The volume published under the 
 authority of the Post Office Department in January, 1885, in 
 pursuance of a resolution of the Senate of the United States, 
 under the title ''History of the Railway Mail Service: A Chapter 
 in the History of Postal Affairs in the United States," contains 
 all the evidence relating to this subject. 
 
 It does not appear from any well-substantiated source that 
 Mr. Davis in 1862 had either conceived the plan to establish 
 the present service or took any part whatever in the creative 
 work necessary to build it up and maintain it. If there had 
 been satisfactory prior railway service, would Postmaster- Gen- 
 eral Blair, under date of July i, 1864, have given George B. 
 Armstrong the formal authority "to test by actual experiment, 
 upon such railroad route or routes as you may select at Chicago, 
 the plans proposed by you for simplifying the mail service " ? 
 This letter is published in full on page 5 of this book, and 
 in itself effectually shows the utter absurdity of the Davis 
 claim. If there had been a railway postal service, there would 
 have been no need of conducting experiments at that time. 
 
 True, there had been, even prior to the year i860, some lim- 
 ited distribution of mail on the railways. This was particularly 
 
 74 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 75 
 
 so on the overland route running into St. Joseph, Missouri, 
 where it connected with the California stages, and this distri- 
 bution was necessitated by the crowded condition of the mails. 
 But, with due respect to the memory of Mr. Davis, whose 
 efficiency as a postal official is not questioned, it cannot be 
 claimed, except upon the unsupported statements of two friends, 
 made in his behalf more than twenty years later, and based 
 only upon what is declared they heard him say, that it was he 
 who took the initiative steps in the establishment of the system. 
 From the official history referred to, it appears (page 143) 
 that on August 5, 1862, Mr. Davis addressed a communication 
 to Second Assistant Postmaster- General McLellan, in words 
 following, to wit : 
 
 Sir: I have the honor to report that in obedience to verbal 
 orders received through Mr. Waller, special agent of the Depart- 
 ment, one of the clerks and myself left here on Saturday 26th, 
 so as to be in Quincy on Monday 28, ultimo, to commence the 
 distribution of the overland mail on the Hannibal and St. Joseph 
 Railway. Finding that the mail cars had not been arranged 
 according to promise made to Mr. Waller, instead of going to 
 Quincy I proceeded to Hannibal, and succeeded in getting cars 
 temporarily fixed in which (though with some inconvenience) 
 I think the work can be done until the new cars are ready. 
 The distribution was commenced on Monday at Palmyra, and 
 I assisted the clerk, going up as far as Clarence, at which place I 
 turned back with the clerk, who had come down to go up on 
 Tuesday; assisted up to the same point on Tuesday; turned 
 back and distributed the mail going up on Wednesday myself. 
 We have now got through with a week's service, and can con- 
 fidently report that when the accommodations are finished, 
 that are promised by Mr. Hayward, superintendent of the 
 road, the distribution can be done entirely to your satisfaction.' 
 Most respectfully, your obedient servant, 
 
 W. A. Davis. 
 
 It is here plainly admitted that Mr. Davis was merely carry- 
 ing out the "verbal" orders received through Mr. Waller from 
 
76 The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 the Department, and no intimation is made that he himself 
 suggested anything with reference to the introduction of a new 
 system of distribution. 
 
 On page 144 of the official history, we find two letters that 
 have a direct bearing on the subject. One signed by Guy C. 
 Barton, and dated Omaha, Nebraska, May 27, 1884, is as 
 follows : 
 
 Dear Sir: I have your favor of loth inst. concerning 
 claim of heirs of the late William A. Davis that he originated 
 the idea of the late (sic) Railway Mail Service, and will say in 
 reply that the claim is unquestionably a just one. 
 
 "At the time of the establishment of the overland mail service, 
 the coaches left Saint Joseph, Mo., in the morning, about 
 three hours after the arrival of the mail train over the Hannibal 
 and Saint Joseph Railway, Saint Joseph being the distributing 
 post-office at which the overland mail was made up. The 
 time between the arrival of the mail from the East and the de- 
 parture of the coaches for the West was found too short, and 
 Mr. Davis, who was at that time chief clerk of the mailing de- 
 partment in the Saint Joseph office, suggested sending clerks 
 from our office to Quincy, 111., to meet the mail, and with 
 authority to open the brass lock sacks and the Saint Joseph 
 delivery post office packages, taking therefrom all California 
 letters or letters going by overland stage route. These letters 
 were made up precisely as they would have been at our 
 office, and the records were a part of the records of the 
 office. The superintendent of the Hannibal and Saint 
 Joseph Railway had a car prepared under Mr. Davis' direc- 
 tions, and Mr. Davis, Thomas Clark, superintendent of 
 mails at the New York post office, and myself went to Quincy 
 with two clerks from the Saint Joseph office and rode from 
 Palmyra, Mo., to Saint Joseph, Mo., in the first railway postal 
 car that was ever built, so far as I know. 
 
 I have stated, as nearly as I can remember, the circumstances 
 connected with this matter as affecting Mr. Davis, but it would 
 be unjust to cease without saying that the success of the 
 experiment was made easy by the quick perception of its advan- 
 tages, and the prompt and energetic action of the Hon. J. L. 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 77 
 
 Bittinger, who was Postmaster at Saint Joseph at the time, and 
 to whom all credit is due for whatever action I took in 
 establishing the service as his representative. 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 Guy C. Barton. 
 
 Under date of June 25, 1884, J. L. Bittinger writes from 
 Kansas City, Missouri (official history, page 144) : 
 
 I am satisfied that Mr. Barton sets forth the facts concern- 
 ing the inauguration of the Railway Mail Service. I am as 
 well satisfied that W. A. Davis, who was my predecessor in the 
 office, was the originator of it as I am that I am living Mr. 
 Davis had been in the service of the Department, I think, over 
 forty years. He knew every detail of the service, and had hand- 
 led the overland mail from the start. The exigencies of the 
 war rendered the operating of the Hannibal and Saint Joseph 
 Railway exceedingly difficult, and almost every train would 
 be behind time. As the overland coaches were expected to leave 
 on their journey across the plains promptly, of necessity they 
 frequently had to go without a great portion of the eastern 
 mail. 
 
 Mr. Davis conceived the idea of distributing the mail on the 
 cars, and laid the plans before me. I was satisfied they were 
 good, and urged him to go ahead and request authority from 
 the Department to experiment. He was soon granted the 
 necessary authority, and with clerks detailed from the Saint 
 Joseph office under his personal supervision the railway mail 
 service between Quincy and Saint Joseph was soon in success- 
 ful operation. ... I suggest that possibly his corres- 
 pondence on the subject with the Department may yet be 
 preserved at Washington, which would settle the matter 
 definitely. If the Hon. Mr. Zevely, then Third Assistant 
 Postmaster- General is yet living, he could settle it at once. 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 John L. Bittinger. 
 
 The gist of the second letter is contained in the opening 
 lines of the first paragraph, to wit: 'T am satisfied that 
 Mr. Barton" (the writer of the first letter) ''sets forth the facts 
 
78 The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 concerning the inauguration of the Railway Mail Service. 
 I am as well satisfied that W. A. Davis, who was my pred- 
 cessor in the office, was the originator of it as I am that I am 
 living. " And the words designed to give special weight to Mr. 
 Barton's plea, are the following: ''I have your favor of the 
 loth inst. concerning claim of heirs of the late William A. Davis 
 that he originated the idea of the late {sic) Railway Mail Ser- 
 vice, and will say in reply, that the claim is unquestionably a 
 just one. " 
 
 In order to determine the value of these letters, it is important 
 to point out, first, that Mr. Davis was connected with the postal 
 service for over forty years. He died about 1875. This 
 was long after the credit for originating the great Railway Mail 
 Service had been given to another person; a fact of which Mr. 
 Davis, who could not have remained for forty years in the postal 
 service had he not been a wide-awake and highly intelligent 
 man, must have been fully aware. It is not known that he made 
 the slightest remonstrance against the recognition of this other 
 person as the originator of the service, and it is wholly incredible 
 that he would have slumbered on his rights and said nothing 
 about his claims, if he had any. 
 
 It seems that the only contemporaneous correspondence re- 
 lating to Mr. Davis' connection with this work is the very letter 
 from his own pen, quoted above, addressed to the Second Assis- 
 tant Postmaster- General, in which he freely admits that "in 
 obedience to verbal orders received from the special agent of 
 the Department, he and one of the clerks in his office commenced 
 the distribution"of the overland mail on the Hannibal and Saint 
 Joseph Railway." It is easy to see that with these "verbal" 
 orders in his mind, he discussed with his fellow-workers in the 
 postal service, Mr. Bittinger and Mr. Barton, the subject of 
 distributing the mails on the overland route running into St. 
 Joseph, and that after the lapse of twenty-two years, at the 
 time his two friends and well-wishers wrote the above letters, 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 79 
 
 the matter appeared to them precisely in the light in which they 
 represent it. 
 
 But such hazy testimony is wholly worthless as against 
 the claims of others, which are founded upon incontestable 
 contemporaneous proof of their connection with this 
 system. It is well known to every lawyer how deceitful the 
 human memory is when it is unsupported by contemporaneous 
 written data, and that the further it is removed in point of time 
 from the events to which it relates, the less credence it 
 deserves. 
 
 It is unfortunate for Mr. Davis' case that his friends cannot 
 present any "correspondence on the subject with the Depart- 
 ment " bearing out their claim, but it goes without saying that if 
 such correspondence had ever been in existence, it would have 
 been preserved in the Department. It is rather late in the day 
 now, after a lapse of over forty years, to undertake to make -it 
 appear that the laurels in this case have been placed upon the 
 brow of an undeserving man. 
 
 Let us analyze the letters of Mr. Davis' two friends, Mr. 
 Bittinger and Mr. Barton, written in 1884, a little further. Mr. 
 Barton says, "The claim that Mr. Davis originated the idea of 
 the late {sic) Railway Mail Service is unquestionably a good 
 one," because when it was first started, as he claims, in 1862, 
 a car was prepared under the direction of Mr. Davis, who 
 went to Quincy, Illinois, with two clerks, and rode from 
 Palmyra, Missouri, to St. Joseph, " in the first railway pos- 
 tal car that was ever built. " Mr. Bittinger, in corroborating 
 these statements, suggests that Mr. Davis' correspondence 
 with the Post Office Department in Washington should bear 
 him out, and calls on the " Hon. Mr. Zevely, Third Assist- 
 ant Postmaster- General, if yet living, "to settle the matter, 
 i. e., the question as to the authorship of the Railway Mail 
 Service. 
 
 Mr. Zevely, who was at that time still living, wrote in response 
 
8o The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 to this call (official history, page 179), under date of August 9, 
 1884, as follows: 
 
 At the suggestion of the Second Assistant Postmaster- Gen- 
 eral, I have read the statement prepared by Mr. Johnson relating 
 to the history of the United States railway post office. Many 
 of the facts given agree with my own knowledge and recollec- 
 tion, and I think the whole statement is substantially correct. 
 In one particular only would T make a change: that is, for the 
 purpose of crediting W. A. Davis, of Saint Joseph, Mo., with 
 first suggesting to the Post Office Department the distribution 
 of the California overland mails on the Hannibal and St. 
 Joseph Railway. This fact seems to be established by Mr. 
 Bittinger^s testimony — then Postmaster at St. Joseph, whose 
 letter on the subject is in the Post Office Department. 
 
 The statement of Mr. Johnson, principal clerk in the Mail 
 Equipment Division, to which Mr. Zevely here refers, and which 
 is quite an elaborate document, is found on pages 174 to 179 
 of the official history. Mr. Zevely says above that many of the 
 facts therein contained agree with his own knowledge and 
 recollection, but as for Mr. Davis being entitled to the honor of 
 having originated the Railway Mail Service, which Mr. Bittin- 
 ger asks Mr. Zevely ''to settle" at once, the latter evidently has 
 no knowledge or recollection. Quite the reverse; for, first of 
 all he reduces this honor, in express language, to the modest 
 claim of '' having first suggested to the Post Office Department 
 the distribution of the California overland mail on the Hannibal 
 and St. Joseph Railway"; and secondly, he will not assume 
 personal responsibility even for this assertion, but throws it up- 
 on the shoulders of Mr. Bittinger, because he distinctly states, 
 "this fact seems to be established by Mr. Bittinger's letter." 
 
 It has been seen that Mr. Bittinger clamors particularly for 
 Mr. Davis' "correspondence with the Department." but all he 
 gets is the scant comfort that what he claims for Mr. Davis 
 rests on his own words alone, and this only to a very limited 
 extent, for it is not the honor that his friend Barton claimed for 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 8i 
 
 Mr. Davis, that he had originated the idea of the Railway 
 Mail Service, but only that of " first suggesting to the Post Office 
 Department the distribution of the California overland mails 
 on the Hannibal and Saint Joseph Railway," and nothing 
 more. It is perfectly obvious, therefore, that there never was a 
 trace of correspondence on the subject in the Post Office De- 
 partment from Mr. Davis' pen. 
 
 A careful perusal of the official history of the Railway Mail 
 Service shows, however, very plainly that whatever Mr. Davis' 
 merits may have been, all that was accomplished with reference 
 to the distribution of the overland mails on the Hannibal and 
 St. Joseph Railway was a mere makeshift, designed alone to 
 serve a present need caused by the congestion of the mails 
 shipped West from the Missouri River, and lacking all the 
 characteristics of a great general postal reform. 
 
 It is distinctly stated in the letter written by H. L. Johnson, 
 of the Mail Equipment Division (page 178 of the official 
 history), that "Mr. Davis being regularly appointed in 
 December, 1862, a special agent of the Department to super- 
 intend it for the purposes of the overland mails it was 
 continued in operation until by the extension of railroads west- 
 ward to connect with the Union Pacific Railway, rapidly 
 approaching completion, the course and distribution of the 
 overland mails were changed." 
 
 In plain English, this means that the Davis experiment of 
 mail distribution on the cars was abandoned, because the 
 exigency having passed, there was no further need of this 
 makeshift. 
 
 This distribution was made only one way, while the east- 
 bound trains were absolutely without it. One mail only was 
 distributed going in one direction. And besides, the work 
 was irregularly performed, as well as subject to serious inter- 
 ruption. E. S. Childs, of the Post Office Department, under 
 
82 The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 date of July 25, 1865, writes as follows (official history, page 
 157) to the Postmaster at St. Joseph, Missouri. 
 
 This office is surprised to learn from letter just received 
 from Special Agent Branscombe, dated at Saint Joseph on the 
 19th inst., that the distribution of overland mail matter on the 
 cars of the Hannibal and Saint Joseph Railway has been dis- 
 continued and its distribution compelled to be made in your 
 office, which causes a delay of some twenty-four hours. Wil| 
 you please ascertain and report why the distribution on the 
 cars has ceased, and what has become of the agent and clerks 
 who were in charge of that duty. 
 
 To call this temporary makeshift the Railway Mail Service 
 of to-day is like calling an old-fashioned prairie-schooner a 
 modern California Limited. 
 
 The one man to whom the fame is due of having installed 
 the present perfect Railway Mail Service, and having not only 
 devised the minutest details for its successful establishment 
 and operation, but having placed it from the start, first 
 on the Chicago and Northwestern Railway, and later on the 
 other leading lines, upon an enduring footing, is George 
 B. Armstrong, who was the Assistant Postmaster at Chicago 
 in the 50's and the first half of the 6o's, and who died in 187 1, 
 after having served for two years as General Superintendent 
 of the Railway Mail Service when it was made a separate 
 bureau of the Post Office Department in Postmaster- General 
 CreswelPs administration. 
 
 We do not deny that the defects that existed in the system 
 of distributing the mails before the introduction of the Rail- 
 way Mail Service now in force were keenly felt by those who 
 had the handling of the mails in their charge. These defects 
 were more clearly apparent in the slow movement and crowded 
 condition of the California overland mails, and since neces- 
 sity is the mother of invention, it is doubtless true that Mr. 
 Davis was the first to have cars prepared for the distribution 
 of the California overland mails. 
 
The True Railway Mail Service 83 
 
 But it does not follow from this that it was he who first devised 
 the plan, or who in the least aided in establishing it upon a 
 broad and permanent basis. He was merely "carrying out 
 the verbal orders of the Department" in running the first 
 postal car. The system itself, in its inception and entire devel- 
 opment, is the creation of the broad and comprehensive mind 
 of George B. Armstrong. The official history leaves no doubt 
 whatever of this fact. We quote from page 83, as follows: 
 
 The handling of through mail on the cars without turning 
 it into distributing offices began, as has been shown, in a small 
 way with respect to the overland mails only, under the superin- 
 tendence of William A. Davis, in July, 1862. It was urged 
 upon the Department and elaborated into a more general 
 scheme by George B. Armstrong in 1864. It was conducted 
 at first as a doubtful, and afterwards a successful, experiment 
 under the double superintendence of Mr. Armstrong and Mr. 
 Park from 1865 to 1869. It widened into greater usefulness 
 under Mr. Armstrong from 1869 to 187 1. . . . 
 
 In order to show how profoundly Mr. Armstrong had 
 studied the imperfections of the system which was to be re- 
 placed by the Railway Mail Service, and had planned what 
 means should be adopted to remove them, it is only neces- 
 sary to consider carefully the three ''Letters on Postal Re- 
 form, " printed in full in this volume, which were addressed to 
 Third Assistant Postmaster- General Zevely in May and June, 
 1864. In general outline, the Railway Mail Service as it exists 
 to-day is exactly as it was designed in these now famous 
 letters. An examination of the letters will prove thi.= state- 
 ment to be absolutely true. 
 
 The evidence offered in these pages is conclusive that it was 
 Mr. Armstrong alone in whose creative mind this system was 
 first conceived. As early as 1861, he suggested it to his friend 
 and neighbor, Francis A. Eastman, a few years later Postmaster 
 of Chicago during President Grant's first administration, and 
 
84 The True Railway Mail Service 
 
 from that time he labored with enthusiastic ardor to secure its 
 establishment. In these efforts, the record shows, he en- 
 countered the severest opposition of incredulous and half 
 hearted superiors, who looked upon the scheme as impractical 
 and chimerical. But the greater the difficulties that sur- 
 rounded him, so much the greater was the energy he expended 
 in the accomplishment of the splendid work that he had 
 planned; until at last, after several years of incessant labors, 
 satisfied the most doubting by the admirable letters he wrote 
 to the Department, that his views on postal reform were correct 
 and should be carried into execution. 
 
 The efforts now put forth in certain quarters to make it 
 appear that the honors of devising and creating this system 
 were due, not to Mr. Armstrong, but to some other person, 
 amount to a gross distortion of the truth. Upon the evidence 
 here produced, which covers the entire ground so far as offi- 
 cial and private testimony is at all obtainable, we may safely 
 leave it to the unbiased reader to determine whether it is just 
 to pluck a single leaf from the laurel wreath placed by Vice- 
 President Schuyler Colfax, and other prominent men, upon 
 the brow of that distinguished American citizen, George B. 
 Armstrong, many years ago. 
 
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