Rapid Travel Chai

“Unless the office digs up some forgotten law there appears to be no reason why babies under fifty pounds and not over eighty-four inches in combined length and girth, cannot be plastered with postage and put in a mail box,” concluded then Washington Postmaster Merritt O. Chance.

Frugal parents from the 1913 introduction of parcel post to the practice’s banning on June 13, 1920 did just that. Why pay full train fare when a sufficiently small child can be sent for pennies on the dollar via post and ride the same train?

The birth of American travel hacking?

See the full WSJ Weekend piece, When the U.S. Postal Service Also Delivered Babies, for the amusing story.

from Smithsonian Photographs, no copyright restriction