Neither Snow Nor Rain
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92 The typeface for the famous quotation from Herodotus above the entryway is now believed to have been chosen by Ira Schnapp: Todd Klein, “Ira Schnapp and the Farley Post Office,” http://kleinletters.com/Blog/ira-schnapp-and-the-farley-post-office/.
93 he was a segregationist who transferred black clerks in Washington to the Dead Letter Office: Boyd and Chen, “The History and Experience of African Americans in America’s Postal Service.”
93 (During the war, Burleson did take them over with disastrous results): Richard B. Kielbowicz, “Postal Enterprise: Postal Office Innovations with Congressional Constraints, 1789–1970,” prepared for the Postal Rate Commission, May 30, 2000, 62.
94 “Pupils talked about him in whispers”: Moses Koenigsberg, King News: An Autobiography (Philadelphia: F. A. Stokes, 1941), 35.
94 “He has suffered starvation, and has been well nigh crazed with thirst”: “Through Mexico on a Cycle, Otto Praeger Returns Safe from His Venturesome Trip,” New York Times, July 7, 1892.
95 “You know, we have a lot of it in the winter months”: Otto Praeger, “Moss from a Rolling Stone,” unpublished memoir.
96 “One instant, the plane became a tremendous elevator”: Barry Rosenberg and Catherine Macaulay, Mavericks of the Sky: The First Daring Pilots of the U.S. Air Mail (New York: William Morrow, 2006), 78.
97 “I am afraid that the officers who are flying these routes are laboring under the attitude of mind that this aerial mail service is merely for the purpose of carrying a handful of mail”: William M. Leary, Aerial Pioneers: The U.S. Air Mail Service, 1918–1927 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985), 44.
97 “I’ve covered as much as 300 to 400 miles a day, only stopping for gasoline and oil or necessary repairs”: Ibid., 52.
98 “There is no guess work about it”: Rosenberg and Macaulay, Mavericks of the Sky, 109.
98 they called Hell’s Stretch: Ibid., 195.
99 “What do you mean follow?” he asked: Lipsner, The Airmail: Jennies to Jets, 106.
102 “The metropolis was wonderful—lights twinkling everywhere”: Ibid.
102 “You made a great flight”: Rosenberg and Macaulay, Mavericks of the Sky, 129.
102 “START THE MAIL SHIP WITHOUT A MINUTE’S DELAY”: Leary, Aerial Pioneers, 63.
103 “All that remains of New York to Chicago air mail service, which began life fresh and full of vigor yesterday morning, is a trail of broken or lost airplanes”: Ibid., 70.
103 “The Areo mail of this country is doomed to failure”: Ibid., 76.
103 “Max Miller was the best pilot who ever sat in a plane”: Ibid., 124.
104 “When he said, ‘By Golly, that’s what we’ll do,’ there was no appeal”: Ibid., 116.
104 “Commercial aviation has arrived”: Ibid., 95.
104 “a maze of canyons, deep narrow [gorges], and sharp crest ridges”: Ibid., 129.
106 “I felt as if I had a thousand friends on the ground”: Rosenberg and Macaulay, Mavericks of the Sky, 236.
107 “By this time I was flying over territory that was absolutely strange”: Ibid., 238.
108 “I feel fine,” he told a reporter: “Knight’s Story of Trip; Pilot Tells of Flight in Dark Through Snow and Fog,” New York Times, February 24, 1921.
109 “I wish everyone could have the pleasure and excitement of those first hesitant probes across the dark plains”: Dean C. Smith, By the Seat of My Pants: A Pilot’s Progress from 1917 to 1930 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1961).
109 “The U.S. Post Office runs what is far and away the most efficiently organized and efficiently managed Civil Aviation undertaking in the world”: Leary, Aerial Pioneers, 203.
110 “There is a revolutionary fact abroad in the land: aircraft have gone to work”: J. Parker Van Zandt, “On the Trail of the Air Mail,” National Geographic Magazine, January 1926.
112 “Someone has got to solve this problem, or we are going to have a collapse of the passenger-carrying industry in this country”: F. Robert van der Linden, Airlines and Air Mail: The Post Office and the Birth of the Commercial Aviation Industry (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2002), 122.
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113 “Don’t go, Wilbur,” he said. “Wait until the others have gone”: Katherine Crane, Mr. Carr of State: Forty-Seven Years in the Department of State (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1960), 308.
114–15 When the St. Louis Times mentioned Tiffany in an article about the growing popularity of stamp collecting and wrote of his collection of 13,000 stamps, it withheld his name: Alvin F. Harlow, Paper Chase: The Amenities of Stamp Collecting (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1940), 46.
115 The American Journal of Philately called it “the meanest looking stamp we have ever seen”: Ibid., 4.
116 like the postmaster of Newport, Rhode Island, who refused to fill a dealer’s order for stamped envelopes. “If you want them for business purposes, I’ll get them for you,” the postmaster said. “But if it’s for collectors, I can’t bother with them”: Ibid., 199.
117 “Do you know you can learn history and geography and the strange customs of strange places just by studying stamps?”: Richard Logan, “We Need Another Captain Tim,” American Philatelist, February 2010, 150–51.
117 Colonel Ned Green, a one-legged sybaritic millionaire, traveled to stamp dealers in a chauffeured limousine and stored his purchases in a New York apartment: Stanley M. Bierman, The World’s Greatest Stamp Collectors (Sidney, OH: Linn’s Stamp News, 1990), 114–30.
119 “From the view point of the collector per se, the victory of Governor Roosevelt at the polls this November would be the most desirable ever in philatelic history”: Robert. L. D. Davidson, “APS: The First Century,” American Philatelist, August 1986, 740, http://stamps.org/userfiles/file/history/FirstCentury/1011-History.pdf.
119 the Hoover campaign wrote to the society to tell it that the incumbent had “a high opinion of philately”: Ibid.
120 “Some people have memories for figures, some for books,” he said: S. J. Woolf, “Farley, 50, Tells How to Win Friends,” New York Times Magazine, May 29, 1938.
120 “Jim Farley passes fall like snowflakes on the deserving and the grateful”: Alva Johnson, “Big Jim,” New Yorker, November 28, 1931.
120 “I do not see how Mr. Roosevelt can escape becoming the next presidential nominee”: James A. Farley, Behind the Ballots: The Personal History of a Politician (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1938), 62.
120 “Get ready to move to Washington”: Ibid., 188.
121 “I virtually had to slip back and forth to the office like a man dodging a sheriff’s writ”: Ibid., 228.
121 “Dear Jim, have we a Democratic postmaster appointed at Newberry, South Carolina?”: James A. Farley Papers, Library of Congress.
122 For Farley, it was “like a fantastic tale from the Arabian Nights”: Farley, Behind the Ballots, 285.
122 Roosevelt also had to read a lot of mail: Jonathan Alter, The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 220.
123 “By all means, authorize the stamp immediately before those ardent ladies reach the White House,” Roosevelt joked: Brian C. Baur, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Stamps of the United States 1933–45 (Sidney, OH: Linn’s Stamp News, 1993), 112.
123 he had a complete collection of “original Roosevelts”: Farley, Behind the Ballots, 338.
124 “The summary, autocratic and dictatorial manner of canceling the air mail contracts without a hearing is worthy of fascism, Hitlerism or Sovietism at their best”: Virginia Van Der Veer Hamilton, Hugo Black: The Alabama Years (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1982), 228.
124 “The continuation of deaths in the Army Air Corps must stop,” he said: Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Age of Roosevelt, vol. 2, The Coming of the New Deal, 1933–1935 (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1958), 453.
124 Farley pointed out that the Post Office got a better deal; its yearly airmail costs fell from $19.4 million in 1933 to less than $8 million in 1934: Farley, Behind the Ballots, 268.
125 “I do not think that this should be continued, even if such sheets are regarded merely as samples and not available for postage in the regular way”: Baur, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Stamps of the United States, 73.
125 Farley had already given a sheet of Mother’s Day stamps to William Wallace Atterbury, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad: Ralph L. Sloat, Farley’s Follies (Federalsville, MD: Bureau Issues Association, 1979), 57.
125 “When that Mother’s Day stamp came out, I think Mrs. Roosevelt got one of the sheets and another got loose”: Ibid., 13.
126 “The real question at issue is not whether certain philatelists or stamp dealers have been injured, but whether Mr. Farley or any official of the United States has used his official position to show favors and bestow valuable gifts upon a special group of people”: Ibid., 32.
126 “It was the biggest turnout since the opening day of Congress”: Ibid., 30.
126 The Washington Post called it “the greatest stamp rush in history”: Baur, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Stamps of the United States, 77.
126 “To Hon. James A. Farley, Master Salesman of the World”: Sloat, Farley’s Follies, 101.
128 “As long as the critics felt that I should be purer than the pure Anthony Comstock in regard to souvenir stamps, I had no wish to disappoint them”: Farley, Behind the Ballots, 263.
128 “The United States has become the stamp-collecting wonder of the world,” wrote the New York Times: “Insatiable Is the Collector,” New York Times, March 24, 1935.
129 “Hitler to the contrary notwithstanding, art can know no dictation”: “Kent’s Eskimo Letter,” Washington Post, September 18, 1937.
130 “The mural is a picture which, to speak frankly, depicts a group of fat women, scantily clad, disporting themselves on a beach”: Marlene Park and Gerald E. Markowitz, Democratic Vistas: Post Offices and Public Art in the New Deal (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984), 25.
130 “The only trouble with the pictures is that they are so good they call for more of the same”: Ibid., 27.
131 “I never knew anyone to take as much interest in the public buildings of the neighborhood as my husband”: Eleanor Roosevelt, “My Day,” May 31, 1938, http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1938&_f=md054967.
131 “I think you’ll find, my boy, they are exactly one inch across,” he replied: Bernice L. Thomas, The Stamp of FDR: New Deal Post Offices in the Hudson Valley (Fleischmanns, NY: Purple Mountain Press, 2002), 59.
131 “We are seeking to follow the type of architecture which is good in the sense that it does not of necessity follow the whims of the moment”: Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Address at the Dedication of the New Post Office in Rhinebeck, New York,” May 1, 1939, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=15756.
132 “Someone once asked me if I thought I had 50,000 friends,” Farley said: S. J. Woolf, “Farley, 50, Tells How to Win Friends.”
133 “Jim Farley has done more favors and made more friends than any politician in American history”: Joseph Alsop and Robert Kintner, ‘Farley and the Future,” Life, September 19, 1930.
133 “I’ve got as good a chance to be president as anybody in the world”: “Roosevelt or Farley in 1940? Jim Farley Goes to Sound Out the Country,” Life, May 22, 1939.
133 “This is going to be a huge job, but I feel sure it will be worth it,” he wrote: Daniel Scroop, Mr. Democrat: Jim Farley, the New Deal and the Making of Modern American Politics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006), 162.
133 “Jim, I don’t want to run and I’m going to tell the convention”: James A. Farley, Jim Farley’s Story: The Roosevelt Years (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1948), 249.
134 “I should like to see any of you any time. . . . Only don’t crowd in at the same time”: Remarks of Hon. James A. Farley to the officials and employees of the Post Office Department in farewell, August 30, 1940, U.S. Postal Service Library.
134 “Let’s get this straight. . . . I am the postmaster general, despite the fact that a lot of people think Jim Farley still has the job”: “Postal Employees Hear F. C. Walker; He Reminds 1,200 Here That He Is Postmaster General, Even If Few Believe It,” New York Times, April 24, 1944.
134–35 “They’re mighty fine designs”: Baur, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Stamps of the United States, 292.
135 “It might tell those suffering victims in Europe that we are struggling for their own regeneration”: Ibid.
135 “An air-mail sack weighs about 70 pounds,” Walker said: Everett Smith, “Walker Praises Mail as Morale Builder,” Christian Science Monitor, September 24, 1942.
136 “It seemed like it was the only way to stay out of trouble”: Nate Sullivan, “The ‘Vargas Girl’ Trials: The Struggle Between Esquire Magazine and the U.S. Post Office and the Appropriation of the Pin-Up as a Cultural Symbol” (thesis, University of Nebraska at Kearny, 2013).
136 “sole dictator over the nation’s reading matter”: Laurence Burd, “Lashes Walker ‘I Am’ Complex in Esquire Ban,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 1, 1944.
137 “The design has to be as simple as possible,” Roosevelt said: Baur, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Stamps of the United States, 319.
137 “Yes,” Roosevelt said, brightening. “I certainly did”: Ibid., 317.
138–39 “Before man reaches the moon,” Summerfield said, “mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, to England, to India or to Australia by guided missile”: “Missile Mail,” U.S. Postal Service historian, July 2008, https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/missile-mail.pdf.
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141 In the fall of 1963, when people went to their local post office to purchase stamps, many encountered a wide-eyed, orange-faced figurine: Smithsonian Postal Museum, “Flashing Across the Country: Mr. Zip and the ZIP Code Promotional Campaign,” http://postalmuseum.si.edu/zipcodecampaign/p4.html.
141 The acerbic Washington columnist Drew Pearson once received a letter addressed to “S.O.B., Washington”: J. Edward Day, My Appointed Round: 929 Days as Postmaster General (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965), 47.
142 The Post Office wanted Mr. Zip to become as familiar as Smokey the Bear: Smithsonian Postal Museum, “Flashing Across the Country: Mr. Zip and the Zip Code Promotional Campaign.”
143 “I’m tired of the image of the American Letter Carrier being held up for public ridicule”: Ibid.
143 “Even if they’re not using it, . . . they’re talking about it”: Ibid.
144 Harry Semrow, the postmaster of Chicago, was known in the city as “the world’s happiest postmaster”: “Biggest ‘Thank You’ Party: Chicago Postmaster Hosts Night for 13,000 Workers,” Ebony, February 1964.
144 Some even called him “the swingingest postmaster we’ve ever had”: Ronald M. Chizever, “They’re Wild About Harry Semrow,” Chicago Daily News, May 8, 1964.
144 A handsome six-foot-four conservatory-trained pianist: Ibid.
144 Semrow’s Chicago post office was the largest mail processing facility in the world: Charles Remsberg, “The Day the Mails Stopped,” Saturday Review, December 17, 1966.
145 “We were really in a bind,” said Clairborne Bolton, Semrow’s assistant director of operations: Associated Press, “Zip Code Plays Santa Claus Part,” December 22, 1964.
146 “We had mail coming out of our ears,” McGee lamented: The United States Postal Service: An American History, 38.
146 The magazine Saturday Review called it “the most incredible snarl in the mail movement since the inauguration of the U.S. postal system—and, in the view of some experts, a nightmarish preview of mail service horrors that lie ahe
ad”: Remsberg, “The Day the Mails Stopped.”
147 “There’s no doubt they slow things down,” a union leader claimed: Ibid.
147 “The conditions that produced chaos and the mail logjam are not confined to Chicago,” O’Brien said. “We are trying to move our mail through facilities largely unchanged since the days of Jim Farley”: The United States Postal Service: An American History, 38.
148 “Larry, Jack is a man of destiny”: Lawrence F. O’Brien, No Final Victories: A Life in Politics—From John F. Kennedy to Watergate (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974), 50.
148 Time magazine put him on the cover in September 1961, calling him “one of the most important of New Frontiersmen”: “White House and Congress: Power, Patronage and Persuasion,” Time, September 1, 1961.
149 “I need you more than you need me—and more than Jack Kennedy needed you”: O’Brien, No Final Victories, 163.
149 “Well, what do you think about this?” Johnson told her. “Your brother’s got two jobs now”: Ibid., 201.
149 “I want you to meet your new boss, the postmaster general”: Ibid., 203.
150 “Time is running out and trouble is spreading,” Fortune wrote. A Reader’s Digest article bore the headline, “Crisis in the Post Office.” U.S. News and World Report asked, “Can Anything Be Done About U.S. Mail Service?”: “A New Design for the Postal Service,” Address by Postmaster General Lawrence F. O’Brien Before the Magazine Publishers Association and the American Society of Magazine Editors, April 3, 1967.
151 “If we had run the telephone system in this way, the carrier pigeon business would still have a great future, and I would sell my shares in AT&T—if I had any”: Ibid.
152 “A.T.&T is a pure meritocracy, run by men who started at the bottom and worked up, step by step, winning the nod of many bosses along the way,” Time magazine wrote: “The Bell Is Ringing,” Time, May 29, 1964.
153 “How do I manage this operation? My friend, I don’t manage it, I administer it”: Towards Postal Excellence: The Report of the President’s Commission on Postal Organization, June 1968.