Post Office Goes Live

For all of its history the Post Office has had a tradition (then a rule) that prohibited living persons (and the recent dead) from being pictured on postage stamps. The rule required a ten year grace period after death before being on a stamp except in the case of deceased Presidents, who were eligible immediately upon death. This rule was originally a policy that grew out of tradition. The first United States postage stamps pictured the first Postmaster General, Benjamin Franklin, and the second postage stamp pictured our first President, George Washington. New issues of stamps were unusual during the Nineteenth Century and the tradition of  picturing only deceased people on our stamps was easy to establish and maintain. Lincoln was the most recently departed to grace a stamp when he appeared on the 1869 issue, only four years after his assasination. The tradition of only portraying the deceased was finally codefied in the 1930s after the Arbor Day issue. The Arbor Day stamp seemed innocent enough, a young boy and girl planting a tree. But soon the furor errupted. They were real children with real names. The spector of postal propaganda was raised-postal issues being used by a dominant political party to advance their agenda. To mitagate this fear,  a rule was drafted that has remained in effect for over eighty years. The purpose of the ten years after death componant of the rule was to insure that the person commemorated had stood the test of time and was not just enjoying their fifteen minutes of fame.  It was this internal Post Office rule that was waived this week and now we will see new issue postage stamps featuring living people. The effect of this change on our hobby will be profound and long lasting.