Imagine: instead of a train ticket – a brand on a jacket, and your child goes to his grandmother … by mail! Mel.fm (12+) told how the Americans sent children in postal service at the beginning of the 20th century, because it was cheaper.
In 1913, the post office in the United States launched the delivery of parcels, and the people quickly realized: why spend money on a train if you can send a child like a load? Weight up to 22.5 kg, brands for 15 – 50 cents – and ready! Parents glued the address, handed the baby to the postman, and he took him by train or cart to relatives.
Examples are amazing. In 1913, the baby was sent for 15 cents per 10 km in Ohio-the postman simply carried him in his hands. And the 6-year-old May Pirstoff in 1914 drove 120 km in a luggage car, feeding with cookies. Typically, children were sent not far to their relatives, and postmen, often familiar, followed them. No one threw the kids into the bags, everything was under control.
Why did it work? The train tickets were expensive, and the mail – a penny. Plus, in small towns, everyone knew each other, and to entrust the child to the postman was how to ask a neighbor to a lifting. But by the 1920s, the mail covered the bench: risks, questions, and the trains have fallen in price.
This story is about the trust and resourcefulness of people of that time. Today the situation looks wild, but then it was a common thing!
