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On this episode of Our American Stories, when the U.S. Postal Service introduced Parcel Post in 1913, Americans suddenly had a cheap new way to ship packages across the country. What postal officials didn't anticipate was how creatively people would use it. Families mailed eggs, butter, bees, and even entire building supplies through the postal system. In one famous case, a bank in Utah was shipped brick by brick through the mail.

Then came the children. Taking advantage of a loophole in the rules, some parents discovered it was cheaper to mail their sons and daughters than buy them train tickets. For our Rule of Law series, Christopher Warren of the Smithsonian National Postal Museum shares one of the strangest and most surprisingly true stories in American postal history.

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When Americans Sent Their Kids Through the Mail

Our American Stories

When Americans Sent Their Kids Through the Mail