2022 Articles

Power, Privilege, Precedent: Opponents of the U. S. Postal Monopoly from Anne Royall to Frank Chodorov

John, Richard R.

This essay considers the opposition of journalists, jurists, and merchants to the legal expedients that protected the U. S. Post Office Department from competition in the period between 1792 and 1950. It is organized around five individuals: reporter Anne Royall (1769-1854); editorialist William Leggett (1801-1839); abolitionist Lysander Spooner (1808-1887); anarchist Benjamin R. Tucker (1854-1939); and libertarian Frank Chodorov (1887-1966). Each opposed the postal monopoly from a distinctive perspective. For Royall, monopoly was a power grab that perverted electoral politics; for Leggett, Spooner, and Tucker, it denoted a special privilege that threatened equal rights; for Chodorov, it became an insidious precedent that endangered free enterprise.