Say what you want about AOL and Goodmail, but their plan to charge mailers to have their e-mail delivered intact and certified is not a new idea. Pundits have said for years that the solution to the spam problem is to collect “postage” for messages.
Historical analogies often are off the mark, but there’s a precedent for charging for formerly “free” delivery. The same thing happened in postal mail more than 150 years ago.
Except for letters announcing that a relative had died, most people got little mail of any sort in those days. And they didn’t want any, because they had to pay a whopping 25 cents per piece to receive it. At the time there was no requirement that the sender pay the postage in advance.
When they did pay, farmers frequently found themselves opening an envelope full of manure, a common practical joke at the time.
The result is that much c.o.d. mail was declined, and it wasn’t only farmers who rejected it. Baltimore lottery operator B.B. Mars & Co. warned its customers: “No unpaid letters received in our office.” And Gen. Zachary Taylor refused to pay for the letter telling him that he had been nominated for the presidency.
Congress, aware that the post office was a sieve, responded with the Postal Reform Act of 1855, which required that postage be paid in advance. The few direct mailers around, mostly scam artists and lottery agents, now had to pony up.
But there’s no record of them complaining, since they knew recipients now were more likely to read their mail (and they sure didn’t want to call attention to themselves). And they no longer had to worry about paying for their own incoming mail. At least one lottery firm advised its customers that, “From and after 1st April 1855, prepayment, either by stamps, stamped envelope, or in money, is compulsory.”
What’s more, the same act established a registered letter service, another boon to distance selling. This was necessary because postmasters had been pilfering mail since the early days of the republic, when it was a flogging offense.
“So keen was the scent of the robber, that, like an animated ‘divining rod,’ he could indicate unerringly the existence of gold, or its equivalent beneath the paper surface soil,” a postal agent wrote of one such thief.
The result of these innovations is that direct mail grew as a medium. It took off even more after the Civil War, during which Congress reduced and standardized rates and postal money orders were introduced.
We’re not saying it will. But if this analogy holds up, outbound e-mail may soon enter its greatest period.
Network
