American Letter Mail Company - Competition With The U.S. Post Office Department

Competition With The U.S. Post Office Department

Spooner's intentions were founded on both an ethical perspective, as he considered government monopoly to be an immoral restriction, and an economic analysis, as he believed that five cents was sufficient to send mail throughout the country. From its inception, the Company was a vehicle for legal challenge. "Mr. Spooner, the head of the American Letter Mail Company, has transmitted to the Department at Washington, a written admission of his conveyance of letters, &c., with all the necessary facts in the case, to make it a purely legal question, so that the Postmaster General has nothing to do but take the whole subject to the Supreme Court of the United States, as soon as it can be got there." The American Letter Mail Company was able to reduce the price of its stamps significantly and even offered free local delivery, significantly undercutting the 12-cent stamp being sold by the Post Office Department. The federal government treated this as a criminal act:

United States v. John C. Gilmore--This was action instituted by the Government of the United States, to recover the sum of $50 for an alleged violation of the laws regulating the Post Office Department, embodied in the act of Congress of 1825...

Calvin Case, another of the persons alleged to be in the office, or connected with "Postmaster General Lysander Spooner's American Letter Mail Company," was arrested and held to bail in the sum of $100, by the United States Marshal, in, on Friday, on the ground of conveying letters contrary to the laws of Congress.

Although the business was forced by the U.S. Government to close shop after only a few years, it succeeded in temporarily driving down the cost of government-delivered mail.