A real strenuous job

President Roosevelt pulls at a “free rural postal delivery” snake comprised of mailbags tightening around a Republican elephant. The snake is labeled as “fraud” and lets out “hot air.”

Comments and Context

Universal delivery of mail was envisioned by Benjamin Franklin; much debated through the decades’ seriously proposed in the 1897s; tentatively introduced in 1896; and largely — but not universally — was implemented in 1902. “Rural Free Delivery service is no longer in the experimental stage; it has become fixed policy,” President Theodore Roosevelt declared in his Annual Address in December of 1902.

The practice however, was not universal, nor without many complications, nor even welcomed by the whole country.

Among the many complications and challenges were the ugly head of politics being raised — Rural Free Delivery (RFD) as a carrot-and-stick political football; favoritism shown toward choice of located routes; the demands of road builders and suppliers — the expensed of establishing new postal routes; the objections of private delivery services; and so forth. In addition were the factors, positive and negative, of the effects of rural routes: businesses, homes, and communities dying or thriving according to the presence of rural mail routes.

The Populist-tinged Senator Ben Tillman of South Carolina successfully managed to pass a law mandating universal RFD in 1902. President Roosevelt perceived more problems than many other officials did, and he also knew that the contemporary, and rather lurid, scandals in the regular Post Office bureaucracy would complicate implementation.

That the cartoon specifically portrays the Republican elephant — and not, say, Uncle Sam — indicates that the issue in all its aspects threatened the party’s management.

As with the federal government’s role in rural electrification, all the essential elements seemed to be at hand, yet it was years after this cartoon’s publication — and Charles Green Bush’s perceptive assessment of the situation — before RFD was indeed universal.       

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1903-06-13

Creator(s)

Bush, Charles Green, 1842-1909

Language

English

Period

U.S. President – 1st Term (September 1901-February 1905)

Page Count

1

Production Method

Printed

Record Type

Image

Resource Type

Cartoon

Rights

These images are presented through a cooperative effort between the Library of Congress and Dickinson State University. No known restrictions on publication.

Citation