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2. Historians routinely treat parcel post – arguably the deepest federal thrust into public enterprise in the early 1900s – as an aside in the more interesting stories of railroad regulation and Taft administration politics. None of the nearly 1,700 studies in Buenker, John D. and Burckel, Nicholas C., Progressive Reform: A Guide to Information Sources (Detroit: Gale, 1980)Google Scholar, deals centrally with parcel post. The Populists' and the Progressives' efforts to redefine the relationship between government and business is one of the most thoroughly explored topics in American political history. Despite their inattention to parcel post, the following provide indispensable context: Wiebe, Robert H., Businessmen and Reform: A Study of the Progressive Movement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962)Google Scholar; Kolko, Gabriel, The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900–1916 (New York: Free Press, 1963)Google Scholar; Hays, Samuel P., American Political History as Social Analysis (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1980)Google Scholar; McCormick, Richard L., The Party Period and Public Policy: American Politics from the Age of Jackson to the Progressive Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Sklar, Martin J., The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890–1916: The Market, the Law and Politics (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Keller, Morton, Regulating a New Economy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990).Google Scholar Postal historians have shown somewhat greater appreciation of parcel post's novelty but have failed to locate it in a broader context. Only one, Wayne E. Fuller, noted the extent to which parcel post intruded into the private sector. See Fuller, , RFD: The Changing Face of Rural America (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1964), 199–233.Google Scholar This book provides the best overview of parcel post's general history, but Fuller focuses mainly on rural life, not parcel post's implications for political economy. See also Fuller, , The American Mail: Enlarger of the Common Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 181–88Google Scholar; Boorstin, Daniel J., The Americans: The Democratic Experience (New York: Random House, 1973), 109–45.Google Scholar

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4. The only comprehensive study of the postal clause is the now-dated book by Rogers, Lindsay, The Postal Power of Congress: A Study in Constitutional Expansion (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1916).Google Scholar

5. On federal agencies' increasing range of responsibility, see generally Skowronek, Stephen, Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982).Google Scholar On Progressives' interest in making government more efficient, which meant much more than just making administration cheaper, see Arnold, Peri E., Making the Managerial Presidency: Comprehensive Reorganization Planning, 1905–1980 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 11–51Google Scholar; efficiency, for instance, also meant maximizing the social good produced by administrative resources. And for a good critique of the literature on the government's gradual incorporation of private-sector expertise, see Balogh, Brian, “Reorganizing the Organizational Synthesis: Federal-Professional Relations in Modern America,” Studies in American Political Development 5 (Spring 1991): 119–72Google Scholar, though he argues that this development was most pronounced after the Progressive period.

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20. 1891 Annual Report 7, quote at 114; 1890 Annual Report 7–8. On the development of administrative capacities in the federal government generally, see Skowronek, , New American StateGoogle Scholar, and in the Post Office specifically, see White, Leondard D., The Republican Era, 1869–1901: A Study in Administrative History (New York: Macmillan, 1958), chap. 12Google Scholar; and Kielbowicz, , “Postal Subsidies for the Press,” 456–64.Google Scholar

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29. 24 I.C.C. 389.

30. 1912 I.C.C. Annual Report 3.

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35. A 1911 Library of Congress bibliography, probably prepared as background for the congressional debates, gives a sense of the media attention to the issue. See Meyer, Hermann Henry Bernard, comp., Select List of References on Parcels Post (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1911).Google Scholar

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37. Cowles, James L., What Women Might Do with the Ballot: Reasonable Postal Laws (New York: National American Woman Suffrage Association, n.d. [ca. 1911]), 6.Google ScholarParcels Post: Hearings Before the House Comm. on the Post-Office and Post-Roads, 61st Cong., 2d Sess. 3(1910) (remarks of Rep. Thomas W. Hard wick) [hereafter cited as 1910 House Hearings].

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41. Quoted in Moon, Anna M. and Phillips, Joe, John A. Moon: Father of the Parcel Post (n.p.: the authors, 1941), chap. 11, quote at 136.Google Scholar On the makeup of the House and its implications for reform issues, see Scott, Anne Firor, “A Progressive Wind from the South, 1906–1913,” Journal of Southern History 29 (02 1963): 53–70.Google Scholar

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45. 1972 Senate Hearings, 661. For the development of his ideas, see Cowles's writings, such as A General Freight and Passenger Post: A Practical Solution of the Railroad Problem (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1896)Google Scholar; “A United States Parcels Post,” August 24, 1894, reprinted in 32 Cong. Rec. App. 208–10 (1899); “What the Post-Office Might Do,” Outlook 74 (07 11, 1903): 666–69Google Scholar; Record of the Postal Progress League.

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52. 1911 House Hearings 82–108, esp. 85 (testimony of A.C. Shuford for the Farmers' Union ); 1912 Senate Hearings 1260–67 (T.C. Atkinson of the National Grange testifying for the eventual absorption of the express companies but willing to accept intermediate measures in the meantime); ibid., 1039–41 (testimony of I.S. Chamberlain for the Knights of Labor). Speech in Part of George J. Kindel on the Relation of Parcels Post to the Business Man and the Farmer Before the Trans-Mississippi Commercial Congress (Kansas City, MO: the author, 1911).

53. 1911 House Hearings 246–65, quotes at 248, 259.

54. Walker, John Brisben, “The Aid Which the Post-Office Department Might Render to Commerce,” Cosmopolitan 36 (02 1904)Google Scholar: third unnumbered page following p. 378. As an example of magazines' dubious ethics in advocating parcel post, Walker was writing for a Hearst-owned magazine, which stood to benefit, at a time when William Randolph Hearst, a congressman from New York, had introduced a parcel post bill.

55. “The Enormous Profits of the Express Companies,” Mail Order Journal 13 (12 1909): 30.Google Scholar

56. Bourne, , Parcels Post, 12.Google Scholar See also 1912 Senate Hearings 235 (remarks of Sen. Bourne).

57. R.W. Lynn, Agency, Iowa, to Sen. William B. Allison, Dec. 30, 1908, S60A-J110, Senate Records.

58. Bureau of Railway Economics, A Study of the Proposed Parcel Post as Affecting the Railways (Washington, D.C.: The Bureau, 1912).Google Scholar

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62. 1912 Senate Hearings 541–88, quote at 546.

63. 1911 House Hearings 290–97, quote at 293 (testimony of W.P. Bogardus).

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