When Parcel Post Carried Children
When the U.S. Postal Service introduced Parcel Post in 1913, it made shipping ordinary packages easier and cheaper, especially for people in rural areas. The new service prompted a few parents to test a boundary no one had clearly drawn: they sent their children through the mail.
These were not children tossed onto a conveyor belt with parcels. In the reported cases, postal workers transported them along routes, sometimes to nearby relatives. Parents paid postage, and the children traveled under a carrier’s care. But the postal system had been designed to move packages—not to take responsibility for passengers.
A Rule Had to Catch Up
At first, postal regulations did not expressly say that a person could not be mailed. That gap left local postal employees facing an absurd practical question: if a child fit the rules for a parcel, should the carrier accept the “package” and deliver it?
The answer soon became no. The Post Office Department prohibited mailing people, closing off the loophole. The episodes were rare, but they exposed a basic weakness in any new service: rules written for objects do not automatically account for every way customers might use them.
The memorable part is not that the mail system routinely transported children—it did not. It is that, for a brief moment, the line between a parcel and a passenger had to be made explicit.
