1. For historians' views on the transformation of rural life, see Swierenga, Robert P., ‘Theoretical Perspectives on the New Rural History: From Environmentalism to Modernization’, Agricultural History 56 (July, 1982), 495–502Google Scholar; Barron, Hal S., Those Who Stayed Behind: Rural Society in Nineteenth-Century New England (Cambridge, Eng., 1984), pp. 4–14Google Scholar; The Countryside in the Age of Capitalist Transformation: Essays in the Social History of Rural America, ed. Hahn, Steven and Prude, Jonathan (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1985), pp. 3–21Google Scholar; and Buttel, Frederick H. and McCichael, Philip, ’Sociology and Rural History: Summary and Critique’, Social Science History 12 (Summer, 1988), 93–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Though dated, Hays, Samuel P., The Response to Industrialism, 1885–1914 (Chicago, 1957)Google Scholar, retains considerable value.

2. ‘The “Parcel Post Question” remained for some decades one of the hottest issues in national politics’, according to Boorstin, Daniel J., ‘A. Montgomery Ward's Mail-Order Business’, Chicago History n. s. 2 (Spring-Summer, 1973), 151.Google Scholar Yet none of the 1,656 studies listed in Buenker, John D. and Burckel, Nicholas C., Progressive Reform: A Guide to Information Sources (Detroit, 1980)Google Scholar, deals centrally with the issue. The only comprehensive discussion is Fuller, Wayne E., RFD: The Changing Face of Rural America (Bloomington, Ind., 1964), pp. 199–233Google Scholar; see also Fuller, , The American Mail: Enlarger of the Common Life (Chicago, 1972), pp. 181–8.Google ScholarBoorstin, Daniel J., The Americans: The Democratic Experience (New York, 1973), pp. 109–45Google Scholar, relies heavily on Fuller. Noss, Theodore K., ‘Resistance to Social Innovations as Found in the Literature Regarding Innovations Which Have Proved Successful’ (Ph. D. diss., Univ. of Chicago, 1940), pp. 31–52Google Scholar, sketches the reasons for opposing parcel post. Parcel post was a favorite scholastic debate topic. For debating handbooks, see Phelps, Edith M., comp., Selected Articles on the Parcels Post (Minneapolis, 1911)Google Scholar; and Parcels Post, rev. ed., Extension Division Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, No. 458 (Madison, 1911).

3. Samuel P. Hays is a key exponent of abroad organizational interpretation of American history for the period 1880 to 1920. Hays, , American Political History as Social Analysis (Knoxville, Term., 1980), chapter 10Google Scholar. See also Berkhofer, Robert F. Jr, ‘The Organizational Interpretation of American History: A New Synthesis’, Prospects 4 (1979), 611–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a good articulation of ideas in this vein. For an intriguing recent study that deals with the tensions between rural localism and cosmopolitanism, see Barron, Hal S., ‘And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight: Public Road Administration and the Decline of Localism in the Rural North, 1870–1930’, Journal of Social History, 26 (Fall, 1992), 81–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Barron looks at the construction of physical conduits that linked small towns and farms with the larger society; my study looks at a service that does much the same. One notable difference, however, is that road building remained a local and state concern; parcel post involved a federal service and federal policymaking and connected towns and families with institutions far outside their state.

4. On the tensions between farm families (customers) and townspeople (merchants and bankers), see Atherton, Lewis E., ‘The Midwestern Country Town – Myth and Reality’, Agricultural History 26 (July, 1952), 73–80Google Scholar; Dykstra, Robert R., ‘Town-Country Conflict: A Hidden Dimension in American Social History’, Agricultural History 38 (Oct., 1964), 195–204Google Scholar; and Dykstra, , The Cattle Towns (New York, 1968), esp. pp. 362–4.Google Scholar

5. Harger, Charles M., ‘The Country Store’, Atlantic Monthly 95 (Jan., 1905), 91–8, quote at 91.Google Scholar

6. Sen. Doc. No. 485, 62d Cong., 2d Sess. (1912), 3; Parcel Post: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Parcel Post of the Senate Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads under S. Resolution 56, 62d Cong., 2d Sess. (1911–12), p. 882 (testimony of Ward's general manager) [hereafter cited as 1912 Senate Hearings]; Sears catalogue quoted in 46 Cong. Rec. (1911), p. 2006.

7. Parcel Post in Foreign Countries (Washington, D.C., 1912)Google Scholar; Annual Report of the Postmaster General (1912), 7Google Scholar [hereafter cited as PMG Annual Report]. On reasons why the big catalogue companies remained aloof from the parcel post debate, see Emmet, Boris and Jeuck, John E., Catalogues and Counters: A History of Sears. Roebuck and Company (Chicago, 1950), pp. 187–9.Google Scholar Shortly after parcel post started, however, Sears was its biggest user. Weil, Gordon L., Sears, Roebuck, U.S.A.: The Great American Catalog Store and How it Grew (New York, 1977), p. 67.Google Scholar

8. Gardner, Charles N., The Grange: Friend of the Farmer (Washington, D.C., 1949), pp. 116–17Google Scholar; PMG Annual Report (1891), pp. 113–14.Google Scholar

9. The Grange, founded in 1867, claimed 223,702 families as members in 1910, with 73 per cent living in the Northeast and 21 per cent in the Midwest. The Farmers' Union, established in 1902, represented 116,504 families in 1910, with 79 per cent in the South and 12 per cent in the West. The seeming lack of support in the Midwest, a key parcel post battlefield, is more apparent than real. The Midwest had been a Grange stronghold until members gravitated to the more activist People's Party (Populists) in the early 1890s. The Populists and their predecessors, the Farmers’ Alliance, put strong parcel post planks in their 1889–92 party platforms. By 1912, the Grange was aggressively rebuilding in the Midwest, and the Farmers' Union was extending its southern base into the region as well, tripling its membership there by 1914. See Tontz, Robert L., ‘Memberships of General Farmers' Organizations, United States, 1874–1960’, Agricultural History 38 (July, 1964), 143–56Google Scholar; Hicks, John D., The Populist Revolt: A History of the Farmers’ Alliance and the People's Party (1931; Lincoln, Neb., 1961), pp. 427–44.Google Scholar

10. Parcels Post: Hearings Before the House Committee on the Post-Office and Post-Roads, 61st Cong., 2d Sess. (1910), p. 3 (Rep. Hardwick) [hereafter cited as 1910 House Hearings]; Walker, John Brisben, ‘The People versus the Express Companies’, Pearson's Magazine 24 (07, 1910), 56–60Google Scholar, and advertisement section pp. 28–30; Parcels Post: Hearings Before Subcommittee No. 4 of the House Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads, 62d Cong., 1st Sess. (1911) [hereafter cited as 1911 House Hearings]; 1912 Senate Hearings. A bibliography suggesting the scope of the debate is Meyer, Hermann Henry Bernard, comp., Select List of References on Parcels Post (Washington, 1911).Google Scholar

11. For parties’ platform statements, see Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr, ed., History of U.S. Political Parties (New York, 1973), 3:1845, 2488, and 2594.Google Scholar Key players and their philosophies are discussed in Moon, Anna M. and Phillips, Joe, John A. Moon: Father of the Parcel Post (N.p., 1941), chapter 11Google Scholar; Scott, Anne Firor, ‘A Progressive Wind from the South, 1906–1913’, Journal of Southern History 29 (02, 1963), 53–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pike, Albert H., ‘Jonathan Bourne, Jr., Progressive’ (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Oregon, 1957), pp. 1–3, 190–6, 248–9.Google Scholar House discussion of parcel post can be found at 48 Cong. Rec. (1912), pp. 5641–52, 11749–61, and appendix pp. 107–9, 137–57, 156–7, 194–5, 254–5, 583–6, 669, 742–5, 918–20. Senate deliberations are at 48 Cong. Rec. (1912), pp. 9448–65, 11673–77, and appendix pp. 128–30, 254–5, 669–75. When lawmakers introduced parcel post bills in previous Congresses they sometimes held forth on the subject even though their bills made no legislative headway. See, e.g., 40 Cong. Rec. (1906), pp. 3476–82; 41 Cong. Rec. (1907), pp. 3465–8; 42 Cong. Rec. (1908), pp. 2831–40, 2846–8, 3289–91; 43 Cong. Rec. (1909), 2331–6; 46 Cong. Rec. (1911), pp. 1026–8, 1033–5, 1134–40, 1249–53, 1832–3, 2003–7.

12. Kielbowicz, Richard B., News in the Mail: The Press, Post Office, and Public Information, 1700– 1860s (New York, 1989)Google Scholar, suggests how early postal laws became a surrogate for economic and cultural policies. McCormick, Richard L., The Party Period and Public Policy: American Politics from the Age of Jackson to the Progressive Era (New York, 1986), p. 224Google Scholar, notes the growing importance of cause-and-effect calculations in federal policymaking of the Progressive era.

13. Harger, ‘The Country Store’; Clark, Thomas D., Pills, Petticoats and Plows: The Southern Country Store (Indianapolis, 1944)Google Scholar; Atherton, Lewis, Main Street on the Middle Border (Bloomington, Ind., 1954), pp. 43–55, 222–33Google Scholar; Carson, Gerald, The Old Country Store (New York, 1954)Google Scholar; Johnson, Lawrence A., Over the Counter and on the Shelf: Country Storekeeping in America, 1620–1920 (Rutland, Vt., 1961).Google Scholar

14. Ransom, Roger L. and Sutch, Richard, One Kind of Freedom: The Economic Consequences of Emancipation (Cambridge, Eng., 1977), pp. 132–7Google Scholar; Atherton, ‘Midwestern Country Town’; Dykstra, ‘Town-Country Conflict’.

15. Herbert A. Hodge to C. E. Townsend, Mar. 18, 1912, S62A-J71, Records of the U.S. Senate, RG 46 (National Archives) [hereafter cited as Senate Records]; 1912 Senate Hearings, p. 962 (Atkeson).

16. This compressed discussion of traditional nineteenth-century retailing is based largely on Porter, Glenn and Livesay, Harold C., Merchants and Manufacturers: Studies in the Changing Structure of Nineteenth-Century Marketing (Baltimore, 1971)Google Scholar; Tedlow, Richard S., New and Improved: The Story of Mass Marketing in America (New York, 1990), 12–19Google Scholar; Strasser, Susan, Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market (New York, 1989)Google Scholar, chapters 1–3, esp. p. 83.

17. Wanamaker, John [firm], Catalogue and Guide for Shopping by Mail (Philadelphia, ca. 1879), pp. 1–3Google Scholar; Weil, , Sears, Roebuck, pp. 64–5.Google Scholar

18. 1912 Senate Hearings, pp. 851–75, quote at p. 860 (Hampton); 1910 House Hearings, p. 59 (Atkeson).

19. Oskaloosa, Iowa, Commercial Club to J. P. Dolliver, Feb. 1,1904, S58A-J62, Senate Records; 1912 Senate Hearings, p. 572; Moffat, , The Economy of Consumption: An Omitted Chapter in Political Economy (London, 1878)Google Scholar. Although the small storekeepers opposing parcel post invoked Moffat, his prescription hardly helped their cause; Moffat recommended ‘a policy of abstention and self-denial’ – i.e., not consuming (viii).

20. Wanamaker, , Shopping by Mail, p. 1Google Scholar; Berkwitz, William L., The Encyclopedia of the Mail Order Business (New York, 1908), pp. 42–3Google Scholar; Gardner, The Grange, pp. 1314–15Google Scholar; 1912 Senate Hearings, p. 880 (Ward's general manager); The Menace of a Parcels Post (N.p., ca. 1911), pp. 24–5.Google Scholar

21. Petition from citizens of Minot, N. D., to North Dakota senators, Jan. 20, 1904, S58A-J62, Senate Records. For a sense of the power merchants gained from conferring credit, see Ransom, and Sutch, , One Kind of Freedom, pp. 127–31Google Scholar; Strasser, , Satisfaction Guaranteed, pp. 167–9.Google Scholar

22. Smalley, Orange A. and Sturdivant, Frederick D., The Credit Merchants: A History of Spiegel, Inc. (Carbondale, Ill., 1973), pp. 44–8, 83–5.Google Scholar

23. 1912 Senate Hearings, pp. 627–45 (W. J. Pilkington); 1910 House Hearings, p. 172 (Weeks); Wanamaker, Shopping by Mail, p. 3; Tedlow, , New and Improved, pp. 267–9Google Scholar; 1912 Senate Hearings, p. 878.

24. Weyl, Bertha Poole, ‘The Rural Delivery Man’, Woman's Home Companion 37 (July, 1910), 20Google Scholar; Maxwell, George H., Perils of Parcels Post Extension (Chicago, ca. 1912), p. 34Google Scholar; 42 Cong. Rec. (1908), 2833; resolutions adopted by the National Grange, Nov. 19, 1908, S62A-J110; petitions from local Granges, S62A-J72, Senate Records; Fuller, RFD, pp. 206–10.

25. In two works, David Thelen argues that the consumer revolt of the Progressive era grew from contemporaries’ awareness of their diminished place in the new economic order and represented an effort to reassert control; see Paths of Resistance: Tradition and Dignity in Industrializing Missouri (New York, 1986), p. 219Google Scholar; and ‘Patterns of Consumer Consciousness in the Progressive Movement: Robert M. La Follette, the Antitrust Persuasion, and Labor Legislation’, in The Quest for Social Justice, ed. Aderman, Ralph M. (Madison, Wis., 1983), 19–47.Google Scholar See also Horowitz, Daniel, The Morality of Spending: Attitudes toward the Consumer Society in America, 1875–1941 (Baltimore, 1985)Google Scholar; Leach, William R., ‘Transformations in a Culture of Consumption: Women and Department Stores, 1890–1925’, Journal of American History 71 (09, 1984), 319–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Schudson, Michael, Advertising: The Uneasy Persuasion (New York, 1984)Google Scholar, chapter 5, ‘Historical Roots of Consumer Culture’.

26. Batesville, Ark., store owners to Rep. Stephen Brundidge, Jan. 19, 1905, HR58A-H19.3, Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, RG 233 (National Archives) [hereafter cited as House Records]; merchant quoted in ‘Parcels Post and the Country Merchant’, Mail Order Journal 14 (July, 1911), 21.Google Scholar

27. 1912 Senate Hearings, pp. 765–79, quote at p. 765 (Hifton); Selah, Frank A., A Practical Way to Reduce the High Cost of Living (N.p., 1911)Google Scholar. See also ‘Practical Effects of the Parcel Post’, Literary Digest 45 (Dec.18, 1912), 1210–11Google Scholar; Thelen, , ‘Consumer Consciousness’, pp. 26–7.Google Scholar

28. According to a flier, ‘The tendency of the time is to eliminate middlemen.’ Retail Merchants’ Association of Illinois, ‘Why Parcels Post Should be Opposed’, Nov. 18, 1907, S62A-F20, Senate Records. See also Fuller, RFD, pp. 219–21.

29. Cross Bros. & Co. [wholesale harness dealer] to Sen. Thomas C. Platt, Dec. 2, 1907, S60A-J111, Senate Records.

30. 1910 House Hearings, p. 127 (Frederick F. Ingram); Thelen, ‘Consumer Consciousness’.

31. Lubin, David, A Novel Proposition: Revolutionising the Distribution of Wealth. Farm Products Moved as Mail Matter at a Uniform Rate for All Distances (Sacramento, 1893)Google Scholar; Postal Progress League, Postal Progress: Record of the Postal Progress League for the Year Ending February lst. 1912 (New York, 1912), pp. 2–3Google Scholar; Fuller, RFD, chapter 10; Dunster, Henry P., ‘An Agricultural Parcels Post’, Nineteenth Century 25 (June, 1889), 894–901Google Scholar; 48 Cong. Rec. appendix (1912), 156 (Rep. Pepper); ‘Parcels Post and Farmers’, Mail Order Journal 15 (Nov., 1912), 46.Google Scholar

32. Flohr, Lewis B., ‘Shipping Eggs by Parcel Post’, U.S. Department of Agriculture Farmers' Bulletin No. 594 (Washington, D.C., 1914)Google Scholar; Tarman, Grover C. and Leer, Lawrence, The Producer's Marketing Guide: The Connecting Link Between Producer and Consumer (New Paris, Ind., 1915)Google Scholar; West, Hamilton H., Parcel Post Profit from Farm Produce (Rockford, Ill., 1915)Google Scholar; St. Louis Post Office, United States Parcel Post Produce List: The Farm to Table Plan (St. Louis, 1917).Google Scholar

33. 1912 Senate Hearings, pp. 1070–2, quote at 1071; Socialist Party, Union City, Ind., to Congress, Feb. 5, 1912, S62A-J71, Senate Records; Tontz, , ‘Farmers' Organizations’, pp. 146–50.Google Scholar

34. Thelen, , ‘Consumer Consciousness’, p. 33Google Scholar; Act of Aug. 24,1912, 37 U.S. Statutes at Large 550.

35. U.S. Post Office Department, United States Domestic Postage Rates, 1789 to 1956 (Washington, D.C., 1956).Google Scholar

36. Sawyer, Samuel, Secrets of the Mail-Order Trade (New York, 1900), pp. 113–22Google Scholar; Berkwitz, , Mail Order Business, pp. 238–9Google Scholar; Harger, Charles M., ‘The Country Editor of To-Day’, Atlantic Monthly 99 (01, 1907), 89–96Google Scholar; ‘Rural Free Delivery’, PMG Annual Report (1899), pp. 196–250Google Scholar; Atwood, Roy Alden, ‘Routes of Rural Discontent: Cultural Contradictions of Rural Free Delivery in Southeastern Iowa, 1899–1917’, Annals of Iowa 48 (Summer/Fall, 1986), 264–73Google Scholar; Nixon, William Penn, ‘The Forty-Two Years of the W.P.A. [Wisconsin Press Association]’, National Printer-Journalist 11 (03, 1894), 91Google Scholar; Kielbowicz, Richard B., ‘Postal Subsidies for the Press and the Business of Mass Culture, 1880–1920’, Business History Review 64 (Autumn, 1990), 451–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kielbowicz, Richard B. and Lawson, Linda, ‘Protecting the Small-Town Press: Community, Social Policy and Postal Privileges, 1845–1970’, Canadian Review of American Studies 19 (Spring, 1988), 26–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37. Burrows, , ‘Parcels Post’, Freight 9 (03, 1908), 45Google Scholar; see also Burrows, , Further Thoughts on Parcels Post (Cleveland, 1908)Google Scholar; Burrows, , One Cent. Letter Postage, Second Class Mail Rates and Parcels Post (Cleveland, 1911).Google Scholar

38. Bogardus, W. P., Post Parcels (N.p: ca. 1912), p. 3.Google Scholar

39. Wilson, , ‘The Rhetoric of Consumption: Mass-Market Magazines and Demise of the Gentle Reader, 1880–1920’, in The Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History, 1880–1980, ed. Fox, Richard Wightman and Lears, T.J. Jackson (New York, 1983), pp. 39–64, quote at 43Google Scholar; Cohn, Jan, Creating America: George Horace Lorimer and the Saturday Evening Post (Pittsburgh, 1989), pp. 8–9, 13, quote at 9.Google Scholar See also Strasser, , Satisfaction Guaranteed, p. 252Google Scholar; Ohmann, Richard, ‘Where Did Mass Culture Come From? The Case of Magazines’, Berkshire Review 16 (1981), 85–101Google Scholar; Horowitz, , The Morality of Spending, pp. 71–3Google Scholar; and Lears, T.J. Jackson, ‘Some Versions of Fantasy: Toward a Cultural History of American Advertising, 1880–1930’, Prospects 9 (1984), 349–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40. Walker, John Brisben, ‘The Aid Which the Post-Office Department Might Render to Commerce’, Cosmopolitan 36 (02, 1904)Google Scholar, the three unnumbered pages following p. 378 (this was the first of a three-part series); Heaton, J. Henniker, ‘Governmental Parcel-Post in Great Britain’, Cosmopolitan 35 (05, 1903), 3–10Google Scholar; Stockbridge, Frank Parker, ‘When We Get the Parcels Post’, World's Work 24 (06, 1912), 161–72Google Scholar; Curtis, Isabel Gordon, ‘Housekeeping by Parcels Post: Its Advantages and Satisfactions, as Witnessed by an American Housewife’, Good Housekeeping 53 (06, 1911), 2–10.Google Scholar

41. Bowker, R. R., ‘The Post Office: Its Facts and Its Possibilities’, Review of Reviews 31 (03, 1905), 325–32Google Scholar; ‘The Parcels Post’, Independent 63 (11 14, 1907), 1185–7Google Scholar; Walker, , ‘The People versus the Express Companies’, pp. 56–90, advertising section pp. 28–30Google Scholar; ‘Express Monopoly versus a Parcels Post’, Outlook 96 (11 12, 1910), 567Google Scholar; Benson, Allan L., ‘Why We Have No Parcels Post’, Pearson's Magazine 25 (03, 1911), 388–97.Google Scholar

42. Sullivan to A. W. Prescott (Bourne's secretary), Aug. 16, 1912, box 28, file 1; J. W. Slack to Bourne, Aug. 15, 1911, box 33, file 10; Bourne telegrams to Collier's and Saturday Evening Post, Oct. 26, 1911, box 28, file 1, all in Jonathan Bourne Papers (Univ. of Oregon Library); various letters from magazines to Bourne, 1912, S62A-F20, Senate Records. On the alliance between lawmakers and journalists, see Thelen, David P., Robert M. La Follette and the lnsurgent Spirit (Boston, 1976), pp. 75–6.Google Scholar

43. 1911 House Hearings, p. 296 (National Retail Hardware Association). See the editorial, ‘Let Us Have a Parcels Post’, Hampton's 26 (02, 1911), 261–4Google Scholar, for an example of an article that presented only enough of the opponents’ case to rebut it.

44. 1910 House Hearings, p. 286.

45. ‘The People's Prayer’, Independent 72 (03 21, 1912), 637–8.Google Scholar

46. Sullivan, Thomas J., Merchants and Manufacturers on Trial (Chicago, 1914), p. 9, quote at 121Google Scholar; Atwood, ‘Routes of Rural Discontent’; Kielbowicz, and Lawson, , ‘Protecting the Small-Town Press’, pp. 26–36.Google Scholar See American League of Associations, Parcels Post [,] the Home Town and Home Trade (N.p., ca, 1912)Google Scholar for articles from small-town newspapers and retailers’ trade journals, printed in galley form, perforated at the top, ready for the typesetter.

47. For a good review of mail-order catalogues’ place in rural life, see Schlereth, Thomas J., ‘Country Stores, County Fairs, and Mail-Order Catalogues: Consumption in Rural America’, in Consuming Visions: Accumulation and Display of Goods in America, 1880–1920, ed. Bronner, Simon J. (New York, 1989), pp. 339–75, esp. pp. 364–72.Google Scholar See also Pope, Daniel, The Making of Modern Advertising (New York, 1983), pp. 8, 68, 80–81Google Scholar; Smalley, and Sturdivant, , Credit. Merchants, pp. 49–51, 102–104Google Scholar; Cohn, David L., The Good Old Days: A History of American Morals and Manners as Seen Through the Sears, Roebuck Catalogs 1905 to the Present (New York, 1940), pp. 510–17.Google Scholar

48. 1912 Senate Hearings, p. 802 (Burrows); 1910 House Hearings, p. 167 (Bloomingdale).

49. My earlier work on postal policy and the press emphasizes the urban-rural cleavages. See Kielbowicz, ‘Subsidies for the Press’; Kielbowicz and Lawson, ‘Protecting the Small-Town Press.’

50. Zelinsky, Wilbur, ‘Changes in the Geographic Patterns of Rural Population in the United States 1790–1960’, Geographical Review 52 (10, 1962), 492–524CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Barron, , Those Who Stayed Behind, pp. 10–14Google Scholar; Hahn, and Prude, , eds., Countryside in the Age of Capitalist Transformation, p. 5Google Scholar; ‘Rural Mail Service Wipes Out Many Small Towns’, flier, S62-F20, Senate Records. For examples of anti-parcel post petitions from these states, see H56A-H21.4, House Records.

51. Phillips’ quote imprinted on letterhead used by the American League of Associations. See, e.g., E. B. Moon, executive secretary, ALA, to Rep. Oscar Underwood, Feb. 27, 1912, H62A-H24.1, House Records.

52. 1910 House Hearings, p. 286 (ALA statement). For other statements about values endangered by parcel post, see 1911 House Hearings, pp. 369, 547 (ALA); 1912 Senate Hearings, pp. 464 (wholesale druggist), 524 (federation of retailers); 48 Cong. Rec. (1912), pp. 11674–76 (Sen. Heyburn).

53. Emporia Gazette, Feb. 1, 1912, quoted in Quandt, Jean B., From the Small Town to the Great Community: The Social Thought of Progressive Intellectuals (New Brunswick, N.J., 1970), p. 17.Google Scholar For a good case study of William Allen White's ambivalent response to the inroads of national marketing and culture, see Griffith, Sally F., Home Town News: William Allen White and the Emporia Gazette (New York, 1989), p. 90, and pt. 3.Google Scholar

54. 40 Cong. Rec. (1906), p. 3476 (Rep. Haugen); 1910 House Hearings, p. 58 (Rep. Hamer); 1912 Senate Hearings, p. 407 (National Association of Retail Grocers); Menace of a Parcels Post, p. 26.

55. Ellsworth, Clayton S., ‘Theodore Roosevelt's Country Life Commission’, Agricultural History 34 (10, 1960), 155–72Google Scholar; Rohrer, Wayne C. and Douglas, Louis H., The Agrarian Transition in America: Dualism and Change (Indianapolis, 1969), p. 45Google Scholar; Quandt, , Small Town to the Great Community, pp. 17, 30–34, 51, 58, 75Google Scholar; Peters, John D., ‘Satan and Savior: Mass Communication in Progressive Thought’, Critical Studies in Mass Communication 6 (09, 1989), 247–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Boorstin, Democratic Experience, chapter 14.

56. Mathew S. Dugeon, secretary of the Wisconsin Free Library Commission, to Sen. Isaac Stephenson, April 30, 1912, S62A-F20, Senate Records; Charles F. D. Belden, Boston Free Public Library Commission, to Jonathan Bourne, Feb. 3, 1913, box 28, file 1, Bourne Papers; Lawson, Linda and Kielbowicz, Richard B., ‘Library Materials in the Mail: A Policy History’, Library Quarterly 58 (01, 1988), 30–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; 1911 House Hearings, pp. 166–8 (women's suffrage associations).

57. 42 Cong. Rec. (1908), p. 2846 (Rep. Smith of Calif.). See also 1910 House Hearings, p. 286 (ALA); Weyl, , ‘Rural Delivery Man’, p. 20Google Scholar; Cowles, James L., What Women Might Do with the Ballot: Reasonable Postal Laws (New York, ca. 1911).Google Scholar

58. 1911 House Hearings, p. 340 (retail druggists).

59. 1911 House Hearings, pp. 365–8 (ALA); 1912 Senate Hearings, pp. 541–88 (ALA), 476–86 (commercial travelers). The Library of Congress has several of the ALA pamphlets, most apparently published around 1911 and 1912. See, e.g., Leaflet No. 3: Shall Parcels Post be Established in the United States? (N.p., ca. 1912)Google Scholar, which lists the objectives of the ALA quoted above. See Wiebe, Robert H., Businessmen and Reform: A Study of the Progressive Movement (Cambridge, Mass., 1962).Google Scholar

60. Cong. Rec. (1911), pp. 1033–5,1134–40 quote at 1137 (Rep. Mondell). ALA-inspired petitions can be found in file H61A-H28.2, House Records.

61. Proceedings of the Washington State Grange, 1913, quote at pp. 35–6; Crawford, Harriet Ann, The Washington State Grange, 1889–1924: A Romance of Democracy (Portland, Ore., 1940), pp. 191–201Google Scholar (Washington state led in organizing the Progressive Granges); Hansen, John M., ‘Creating a New Politics: The Evolution of an Agricultural Policy Network in Congress, 1919–1980’ (Ph.D. diss., Yale, 1987).Google Scholar

62. See, e.g., Hampton to Jonathan Bourne, Jr., chairman of the Senate post office committee, June 14, 1912, plus attachment, ‘Statement of Provisions Essential to a System of Parcel Post Adequate to Meet the Service Requirements of Producers and Consumers by the Farmers” National Committee on Postal Reform’, S62A-F20, Senate Records; 1912 Senate Hearings, pp. 961–74 (Atkeson). For a sampling of early letters and petitions, see S57A-J57, S58A-J62, S60A-J110, Senate Records, and HR59A-H21.4, House Records. For a flurry of communications in the months before passage, see S62A-J72, Senate Records.

63. Memorial of Legislature of Wyoming to Congress, Feb. 27, 1905, S58A-J62, Senate Records; 1911 House Hearings, pp. 80–4 (Frederick C. Beach, editor of Scientific American and president of the Postal Progress League); ibid., pp. 158–61 (Postal Express Federation); ibid., pp. 365–8 (ALA); 1912 Senate Hearings, 541–88 (ALA).