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Letter. "Railway Mail Service/Boston 9, MASS./Seventh War Loan"

Letter. 05/07/1945. "Railway Mail Service/Boston 9, MASS./Seventh War Loan" at top. Text exhorts employees to purchase war bonds in honor of V-E day, to help provide funds to finish the war, defeat Japan by "Sweeping The Pacific Clear Of Fascist Hate." Refers to $178,000.00 quota to be met by the railway mail service. Printed signature "J.F. Dinand/Superintendent" at bottom. Mimeograph on buff stock. Light foxing. 3-fold lines.

From the Museum Collection: Letter. 05/07/1945. "Railway Mail Service/Boston 9, MASS./Seventh War Loan" at top. Text exhorts employees to purchase war bonds in honor of V-E day, to help provide funds to finish the war, defeat Japan by "Sweeping The Pacific Clear Of Fascist Hate." Refers to $178,000.00 quota to be met by the railway mail service. Printed signature "J.F. Dinand/Superintendent" at bottom. Mimeograph on buff stock. Light foxing. 3-fold lines. American Railway Post Office (RPO) clerks were the elite of the postal system. From 1864 to 1977, they traveled across the country to deliver mail. They faced everything from unpredictable weather, robberies, fire, and wrecks. The early wooden, and later steel, RPO train cars were a regular sight on American railroads. Teams of clerks worked to ensure that all the mail loaded into the car was canceled, sorted, and loaded into mail sacks for delivery to post offices across the nation. The first railway postal route originated on the Iowa division of the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad, on August 28, 1864. By the end of 1864, all mail in transit began to be distributed in railroad cars. As the lines grew and developed, the RPO continued to make advancements to further the progress of the Railway Mail Service (RMS) i.e., separating mail by states. Two clerks were assigned to distribute mail in each car, sometimes more on densely occupied routes. Clerks were given schemes showing maps of a state that helped in the memorization of post offices for mail distribution. Clerks were paid for a 48-minute hour, which compensated for the studying they did between shifts. They were expected to know the hundreds of post offices on their runs and those connected to the train line. They knew the fastest way to get mail to its destination by knowing which train lines intersected with theirs and when. The RPO used a mail bag catching device to transfer mail from a stationary pole to a moving train car. The Ward mail bag catcher, first used in 1869, consisted of a steel arm affixed to railway post office doors that would then be used to “grab” the mail bag from a fixed crane situated at each post office along the lines. Previously, the mail clerk would extend his arm out the railway post office door to catch the bag. Over 10,000 trains carried mail-sorting clerks across the country in 1930 alone. In the mid-1930s, at the height of RMS success, railway passenger service began a decline. Mail fees alone could not sustain railway lines.

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Steamtown NHS Museum Collection

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Steamtown National Historic Site, Code: STEA

Steamtown National Historic Site, Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania
Latitude: 41.407600402832, Longitude: -75.6704025268555

NPS.gov Collection

05/07/1945

01/01/0001

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