This is an I-Heart podcast.

And we return to our American stories.

And up next, another story from our rule of law series. Christopher Warren of the

Smithsonian National Postal Museum is here to share about how some bizarre rules came to be,

like why you can't send your child through the mail. Here's Christopher.

Our postal history is very diverse in this country. It really touches on every aspect of American history.

There's not an event, a person in American history that hasn't been affected really by mail delivery over the years.

Now, during the 19th century, through the 19th century,

deliveries of packages was not part of the postal department's purpose. Really, they would only deliver things that were four pounds or less.

So there was no real package delivery from the United States government.

If you wanted to mail packages anywhere, you had to use private carriers,

companies whose rates were constantly in flux.

There was no regulation on how much sending a package from one

location to another, how much that would cost. It was relatively expensive, so mainly it was used

by businesses sending things back and forth. Other nations, especially in Western Europe,

had instituted government-funded package delivery, and the United States was kind of late to the game in this

regard. But by the 1880s, 1890s, this was becoming a big topic of conversation. Lots of people

wanted this postal delivery to be upgraded to more than four pounds. It was controversial in

Congress because many of the senators in Congress were big investors in these private carrier

companies.

So they didn't want the competition from the government because the government would regulate the

rates. I just said they had regulated the rates on regular mail delivery. So it was a contentious

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