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U.S. Stamp Notes by John M. Hotchner
The United States Postal Service Employees issue of 1973 (Scott 1489-1498) was ground-breaking, not because it honored postal workers, but because it was the first U.S. horizontal commemorative issue to have 10 different designs connected horizontally in five rows across the 50-stamp pane. Figure 1 shows the strip of 10 (1498a).
It was not the first U.S. issue to honor postal employees. One only needs to go back into the special issues that populate the back-of-the-book section of the Scott Specialized Catalogue of United States Stamps and Covers to find the 12-stamp parcel post issue of 1912-13 (Scott Q1-Q12). Figure 2 shows the 12 stamps.
Parcel post was a new service authorized by Congress on Aug. 24, 1912, and inaugurated by the U.S. Post Office Department on Jan. 1, 1913. Before then, private companies delivered packages.
The new service helped increase the popularity of mail-order catalogs, which had been around since the late 1800s and were especially important to rural postal patrons. Among the largest catalog producers were Montgomery Ward & Co. and Sears, Roebuck & Co.
Eight of the parcel post stamp designs (from the 1¢ through the 20¢) were directly connected to postal operations, showing various postal workers and means of mail transportation.
The three high values (50¢, 75¢ and $1) show scenes that rural people, the most likely to be mail-order customers, could relate to. The 25¢ parcel post stamp represents manufacturing and depicts a steel mill in South Chicago.
When comparing these two stamp sets, it’s clear that in a little over 60 years technology applied to postal operations had grown by leaps and bounds in ways undreamed of in 1912.
While postal improvements have continued since 1973, most stamps in that Postal Service Employees issue illustrate operations that are still instantly recognizable as an accurate portrayal of what most postal staff are engaged in every day.
This is not to say that improvements are not constantly being made. The computer alone has revolutionized mail handling. Perhaps, 51 years on, it is time for a new set of Postal Service Employees stamps to highlight how the USPS is meeting today’s challenges.
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