Mobilization and the Mail: Voter Turnout and the
Expansion of the U.S. Postal Service, 1876-1896∗
Jon C. Rogowski†
Washington University in St. Louis
January 16, 2016
Abstract
Patronage politics and high voter turnout are two defining political characteristics of the
Gilded Age. To what extent were these features related? The Post Office Department was
the most important source of patronage positions during this period, and anecdotal evidence
suggests local post offices were often used to serve the political goals of local parties. I subject this account to empirical scrutiny using a new dataset on the distribution of county-level
post offices from 1876 to 1896. Overall, I find that the provision of post offices yielded small
but persistent increases in voter turnout rates, with the potential to influence the outcomes
of substantial numbers of state and federal elections. The findings presented in this paper
raise important questions about the relationship between the politics of state-building at the
national level and electoral politics at the local level and suggest one explanation for how the
control of patronage benefitted political parties.
This is a preliminary draft prepared for presentation at the 2016 meeting of the
Southern Political Science Association. Comments and criticisms are welcome.
∗I
thank Alex Bluestone, Michael Byrne, Madeline Josel, Sophie Schuit, Joe Sutherland, and especially Chris
Gibson for research assistance, and the Office of Undergraduate Research at Washington University in St. Louis for
funding. I also thank Cameron Blevins, Dan Carpenter, Justin Fox, Sandy Gordon, Jeff Grynaviski, Richard John,
Sam Kernell, Andrew Reeves, Wendy Schiller, and Charles Stewart for helpful discussion and comments.
† Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Campus Box 1063, One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO
63130; [email protected].
The expansion of the American state during the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era was one
of the most important developments in U.S. history. Scholars have argued that the transformation
of federal institutions and the development of altogether new ones during the latter half of the
nineteenth century produced a newly energized and efficacious American state by the turn of the
twentieth century (e.g., Carpenter 2001; James 2000; Skowronek 1982). Though Congress was the
dominant American political institution during this time period (e.g., Jacobson 1987; Kernell and
McDonald 1999), these institutional transformations were largely the product of the cultivation
of reputations and expertise within the bureaucracy (Carpenter 2001; Gailmard and Patty 2012;
Skowronek 1982). As a result, political decisionmaking with respect to the arms of the American
state often reflected the incentives of executive branch personnel (Carpenter 2001; Gailmard and
Patty 2012; Whittington and Carpenter 2003). A related, and growing, body of scholarship studies the growth of the American state during this period through the lens of distributive politics
and examines how the patterns of development reflected the electoral incentives of members of
Congress and the president
But the story of American statebuilding does not end there. At the macro level statebuilding
and the expansion of the bureaucracy certainly led to a more muscular national political apparatus by the early twentieth century. A more complete understanding of American statebuilding,
however, would also include an account of the effects of statebuilding at a more granular level.
Thus, while scholars have presented a number of explanations for how and why the American
state was built as it was, considerably less is known about the consequences of these decisionmaking processes and statebuilding efforts.
In this paper, I address this question by examining how the expansion of the national government created new opportunities for state and local political parties. Studying the growing
U.S. Post Office department between 1876 and 1896, I argue that local post office locations were
important sources of political mobilization. In addition to distributing political information and
partisan flyers through the mail that were designed to mobilize local constituents, post offices
1
were community gathering centers which enabled local postmasters to forment personal relationships with residents. Because postal appointments were largely made on the basis of partisan
ties, the properties of local post offices provided prime opportunities for increasing voting rates
among local constituents.
Data on county-level voter turnout and the distribution of post offices from 1876 to 1896
provides support for this account. Using a county and year fixed effects design, I find that the
provision of additional post offices yielded small yet persistent increases in voter turnout. Increasing the number of post offices by one per thousand residents yielded an increase in voter
turnout of approximately one percentage point. The magnitude of the effect also increased with
the size of post office locations. These results have important implications for theories of American political development and suggest that national politics played an important role in helping
craft networks of local and state party organizations.
Distributive Politics and the Expansion of the American State
Parochial affairs dominated national politics during the latter half of the nineteenth century
while controversial policy debates were generally left to the states. As Lowi (1972, 301) writes,
during this period “the federal government turned out little but land disposal programs, shipping subsidies, tariffs, internal improvements, and the like.” These parochial affairs and internal
improvements, however, were central to the expansion of the federal government during this
time period. Moreover, the national emphasis on internal improvements and state expansion was
driven at least in part by constituent demand and thus influenced patterns of congressional behavior. Bryce (1995 [1888], 197) observed that “[a]n ambitious congressman is therefore forced to
think day and night of his renomination” and attempts to secure it with “grants from the Federal
treasury for local purposes.” However, while “[d]istributive decisions may have been roughly
what the American people wanted, [the] details of such policies perpetually fueled conflict” (Mc2
Cormick 1979, 286). Intense partisan and regional competition over the distribution and siting
of federal resources were closely connected with debates over the nature of institutional power
and the organization of political institutions. These debates resulted in institutional reforms to
the president’s removal powers, civil service, and the location of appropriations authority within
Congress (see, e.g., Bryce 1995 [1888]; Mashaw 2012; Schickler and Sides 2000; Stewart 1989).
The American government expanded its reach dramatically as a result of constituent and congressional demand for federal resources. For instance, expenditures for rivers and harbors improvements, generally considered the quintessential pork barrel expenditure (see Ferejohn 1974;
Wilson 1986), increased dramatically over the late nineteenth century. Aggregate appropriations
from 1870 to 1880 increased from $3,975,900 to $8,976,500, and more than doubled again by 1883
to $18,743,875.1 Similarly, the size of the post office doubled between 1876 and 1896, and increased
from approximately 35,000 locations to nearly 70,000. Post office expenditures likewise comprised
an increasingly large portion of the domestic budget, increasing from approximately 10 percent
in 1876 to about 18 percent by 1895. These increases in state capacity similarly characterized
other agencies whose responsibilities were not primarily distributive in nature. For instance, by
the early part of the twentieth century, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, with its newly crafted
reputation for policy innovation and reliance on social scientific principles, “took its place as the
central representative organ of American agriculture” (Carpenter 2001, 291).
Though the vast majority of empirical evidence on distributive politics is produced from data
that covers the last thirty year period (e.g., Berry, Burden and Howell 2010; Christenson, Kriner
and Reeves 2016; Dynes and Huber 2015; Kriner and Reeves 2015a,b; Levitt and Snyder 1995;
Mebane and Wawro 2002; Stein and Bickers 1995), scholars have increasingly used the lens of
distributive politics to study the expansion of the American state. Recent research in this area
has used this approach to study the determinants of tariff rates (Lowande, Jenkins and Clarke
1 See “Veto of Rivers and Harbors Act,” August 1, 1882, Chester A. Arthur; transcript available at
http://millercenter.org/president/arthur/speeches/veto-of-river-andharbors-act (accessed December 29, 2015).
3
2015), construction of federal buildings (Finocchiaro 2015), siting of post office locations (Rogowski 2015, 2016), and distribution of rivers and harbors projects (Wilson 1986). This emergent
body of scholarship generally focuses on how institutional arrangements may have conferred
disproportionate advantages to some communities over others. For instance, Lowande, Jenkins
and Clarke (2015) show that presidents used unilateral authority to protect industries concentrated among valuable constituencies, while Rogowski (2016) shows that counties represented by
copartisans of the president were disproportionate beneficiaries of federal post offices.2
Despite the emphasis on distributive approaches to understanding statebuilding activities,
however, scholars have paid less attention to the consequences of state expansion. Research in the
contemporary era emphasizes how distributive good such as federal outlays and earmarks affect
congressional (Stein and Bickers 1994) and presidential (Kriner and Reeves 2012) elections, constituent perceptions of elected officials (Grimmer 2013), and state economic performance (Levitt
and Poterba 1999). The effects of distributive decisions in earlier periods of American history,
however, have gone largely unexplored. One notable exception is research by Folke, Hirano and
Snyder (2011), who study the effects of patronage authority. Though not directly linked to the
argument presented in this paper, Folke, Hirano and Snyder (2011) demonstrate that state parties used patronage appointments in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to secure
subsequent electoral success. These patronage appointments often accompanied the provision of
projects such as post offices, postal routes, and rivers and harbors projects. Given the centrality of statebuilding activities for the political development of the U.S., identifying the political
effects of these activities has important implications for theories of the expansion of the federal
government.
2 In related work, Skocpol (1993) shows that decisions to provide pensions to military veterans and their families
were often driven by electoral concerns.
4
Statebuilding and the Opportunities for Political Parties
The expansion of the American state near the turn of the twentieth century created new
opportunities for political parties, officeholders, and entrepreneurs. The distribution of federal
resources into states and local communities was accompanied by job opportunities and valuable
federal contracts. But while these opportunities resulted largely from the work of federal officials in Washington, D.C., state and local political parties likely stood to wield the largest political
gains. Local political officials were likely to be familiar with eligible candidates and firms for political appointments and contracts, respectively. The influence of state political parties, however,
waned near the end of the twentieth century, as progressive reforms such as the secret ballot and
civil service reform were implemented around the country and decreased the hold of state parties
over political officials (see, e.g., Primo and Snyder 2010). The arms of the expanding federal government offered appealing resources to state parties who sought to maintain their relevance and
importance. In particular, by providing resources that enabled the construction of a nationwide
party infrastructure, statebuilding activities could have played a pivotal role in transforming the
party system from the heavily fragmented and regional system in place for much of the nineteenth century to a national network that took hold in the early twentieth century.
Presidents were likely to have played an important part in the development of national party
networks. The federal bureaucracy became the repository of considerable expertise during the
late nineteenth century (Carpenter 2001; Gailmard and Patty 2012), and extant research identifies bureaucratic expertise as an important advantage for presidents (e.g. Howell, Jackman and
Rogowski 2013). Presidents of this era were the putative agents of their parties (Galvin 2014;
Skowronek 1982) and as such may have been likely to work to achieve party goals. During the
late nineteenth centuries, presidents began to exercise leadership over (rather than in response
to) their parties (Galvin 2014) and was part of a broader pattern in which political parties became nationalized (Klinghard 2010). The leadership presidents exercised during this time period
resembled what other scholars have identified as party-building efforts by presidents in the post5
World War II era. While presidents in this period had few of the formal tools available to their
successors, and though Congress has been considered the dominant American political institution in the nineteenth century (Jacobson 1987; Lowi 1972; Wilson 1885), their position as head of
the executive branch enabled them to accomplish one objective that neither Congress nor state
parties could achieve on their own: build national party networks.
Political Mobilization and the Post Office
I use the case of the federal postal service between 1876 and 1896 to study the foregoing
account. The expansion of the post office during the late nineteenth century was both a clear
indicator of American statebuilding (Carpenter 2001; John 1995) and a case in which presidential
influence was an important factor in its trajectory (Rogowski 2015, 2016). Moreover, post offices
offered presidents prime opportunities for engaging in party-building activities. According to
Galvin (2010, 5), presidential party-building includes efforts “to enhance the party’s capacity to
provide campaign services; develop human capital; recruit candidates; mobilize voters; finance
party operations; and support internal activities.” I focus here particularly on the role of post
offices in mobilizing voters in national elections, which also would have been an important indicator of the capacity of political parties to engage in campaign services.
Post office locations were likely to be important sources of voter mobilization for several reasons. First, local postal locations were run by postmasters with deep partisan ties. As Carpenter
(2001, 66) describes, “Presidents and parties appointed [postmasters] far less for service than for
electoral fidelity.” Historians have detailed a variety of ways in which local postmasters used their
jobs to further party goals. “Appointed through political influence, [local postmasters] learned
the rules of the game quickly, knew what was expected of them, and understood that their survival depended not only on how well they handled Uncle Sam’s mail but also on how well they
handled voters; and in this many of them became adept,” Fuller (1972, 294) wrote. Post office
locations served as local bases of political campaigns and party operations, and postmasters were
6
likely to have used their position to encourage local residents to vote.
Second, postmasters during these era generally were copartisans of the president and understood that continued employment depended upon their party’s control of the White House. As
a consequence, not only did postmasters handle the mail in ways intended to advantage their
parties, but postal workers devoted much of their time to party work, rather than to postal activities (Fowler 1943, 146). Fuller (1972, 296) further explained that “Postmasters were largely the
chairmen of ward, township, county, or district committees. They handled the mails with a view
to party advantage.” Upon assuming the presidency in 1885, Grover Cleveland complained that
Republicans used their vast network of local postmasters for electioneering purposes. Perhaps in
validation of Cleveland’s complaint, Kernell and McDonald (1999, 796) observed that local postmasters often inserted campaign literature into local residents’ mail. In addition, regardless of
a local postmaster’s partisan proclivities, opening a local post office location meant that community residents had increased and expanded mail access. Though research in the contemporary
period generally finds relatively small effects of partisan mail on voter turnout (Gerber and Green
2000; Gerber, Green and Green 2003; Gerber and Green 2008), political communication distributed
through the mail may have had an important means of voter mobilization in this earlier period.
By having regular face-to-face interaction with residents, moreover, postmasters could have also
effectively increased turnout by reminding constituents of the upcoming election (on the effects
of interpersonal interaction, see, e.g., Gerber and Green 2000; Green, Gerber and Nickerson 2003;
Michaelson 2003; Niven 2004).
Third, local post office locations were important community centers and modes of social interaction. Post offices were gathering places for and facilitated conversation among local residents.
These conversations could have included information about upcoming elections. In addition, both
through these conversations and the communications enabled through the mail, post office locations could have increased social capital. Post offices likely created ties both within and between
communities and facilitated information exchange and embeddedness (Evans 1995), particularly
7
for weak ties which are useful for exchanging information and resources within or across communities (Granovetter 1973). These increases in social capital and increased political discussion
(Leighley 1990; Sinclair 2013) could have been another contributor to increased turnout from
postal locations.
Finally, local postmasters could have increased voter turnout in several other more nuanced
ways. For instance, by establishing relationships with local residents, postmasters could have
applied social pressure to residents who may have otherwise been reluctant to vote. Because
voting was often a public affair, especially before the introduction of the secret ballot, postmasters
may have been able to monitor which of their constituents turned out to vote (on the effect of
social pressure on turnout, see, e.g., Gerber, Green and Larimer 2008). Perhaps more nefariously,
local postmasters could also have been used as informants to local party operatives about which
local residents’ votes could be bought (for a discussion of party machines and turnout-buying, see,
e.g., Nichter 2008), in turn providing a mechanisms through which parties could closely monitor
participation levels at relatively granular levels.
Data and Methods
I evaluate the mobilizing effect of post office provision using data on county-level voter
turnout from 1876 to 1896. The dependent variable is the percentage of votes cast divided by
the number of persons eligible to vote and is collected for each congressional election year during this time period. These data were obtained from ICPSR Study #8611.3 The use of historical
elections data may raise concerns about the reliability of the figures. For instance, the number of
votes cast could have been inflated by fraudulant ballots, or the number of eligible voters could
have been measured with error due to issues with Census reliability. Engstrom (2012, 378-379)
provides a detailed discussion of these and other issues associated with this historical measure
3 Jerome
M. Clubb, William H. Flanigan, and Nancy H. Zindale, Electoral Data for Counties in the United States:
Presidential and Congressional Races, 1840-1972.
8
of voter turnout. So long as overall levels of fraud were relatively low and errors in the Census
counts were not correlated with the provision of post offices, the resulting coefficient estimates
should be relatively free of systematic bias.
Overall, turnout levels during this period were quite high. The average county turnout rate in
presidential years was 71.0 percent (SD=19.5) compared with 61.4 percent (SD=20.6) in midterm
election. Though county turnout rates varied from state to state due to factors such as election
timing and ballot format, turnout rates also varied substantially within states. Figure 1 shows
county turnout rates in Iowa from 1876 to 1896. Counties shaded with darker colors turned out
to vote at higher rates. Not only does the figure show that turnout generally was higher during
presidential elections years than in midterm elections, but it also shows that turnout varied widely
across the state. For instance, in the 1876 presidential election, only 36.6 percent of eligible voters
cast ballots in Ida County in west-central Iowa compared with 97.1 percent of eligible voters in
Fayette County in the northeast corner of the state.4
The key independent variable in this analysis is drawn from a dataset on the number of post
offices per county from 1876 to 1896. The nineteenth-century post office was “the only state
organization that interacted with all citizens” (Carpenter 2001, 66) and the most visible marker
of the American state in local communities (John 1995). Data on the county-level distribution of
post offices were obtained from the United States Official Postal Guide in even years from 1876
to 1896.5 In contrast with federal grants and outlays that could be distributed to counties yet
spent on projects that are unknown to or unused by local residents, the provision of post office
locations is a clear and discrete indicator of federal intervention into local communities.
Figure 2 displays the distribution of the raw number of post offices over the entire time period.
4 Turnout figures are missing for four counties in 1876, one county in 1878, one county in 1884, and four counties
in 1896.
5 However, guides could not be located for the years 1884 or 1888, and thus in their place we used information
from the guides published in January 1885 and January 1889, respectively. In addition, the first page of the listings
of post offices is missing from the only Postal Guide that could be located for 1876. Thus, data are missing for about
half of the counties in Alabama for that year.
9
Figure 1: Voter Turnout in Iowa Counties, 1876−1896
1876
1878
1880
1882
1884
1886
1888
1890
1892
1894
1896
Less than 50%
50 to 60%
60 to 70%
70 to 80%
80 to 90%
More than 90%
Voter turnout figures were obtained from ICSPR study #8611.
The post office expanded dramatically post-Reconstruction, from approximately 36,000 post office
locations in 1876 to more than 69,000 by 1896. Across the entire time period, the mean number
of post offices per county was just over 20, and the median county had 16. The county-level
distribution is positively skewed, however, owing largely to population differences; while each
county had at least one post office, several counties had well over 100.
To generate a measure of the distribution of post offices that adjusts for population differences,
I divided the number of post offices by county population in thousands. County population data
were obtained from ICPSR study #2896 and were linearly interpolated for intercensal years.6 The
mean number of post offices per thousand residents was 1.4 and the median was 1.1.
6 Michael
R. Haines, Historical, Demographic, Economic, and Social Data: The United States, 1790-2002.
10
Figure 2: Distribution of Post Offices in U.S. Counties, 1876−1896
Distribution of County−Level Post Offices
1000
Observations
750
500
250
0
0
50
100
150
200
Number of post offices
Data on the number of post offices were obtained from the United States Official Postal Guides,
various years.
Empirical Strategy
Based on the panel nature of the data, I estimate linear regressions with county and year
fixed effects. This design allows me to isolate the effects of post office provision on voter turnout
while accounting for other time-invariant characteristics of counties, both observed and unobserved, that also influenced turnout. The coefficient estimates for the provision of post offices are
thus identified with within-county changes in the values of this variable. Standard errors were
clustered on county.
Of course, the distribution of post offices is explained by other, potentially confounding, fac-
11
tors as well. Thus, I also estimate models with a broad set of control variables. First, though
the key independent variable characterizes the number of post offices per thousand residents,
sheer population differences may also account for variation in the provision of post offices. Thus,
I include a measure of county population (logged) in all models. Voter turnout may also have
depended on the degree of electoral competition at the county and state levels. I include State
presidential margin and County presidential margin that describe the margin of victory in the
last presidential election at the state and county levels, respectively. I also account for differences in state party competitiveness using the difference in seat shares between Democrats and
Republicans in the lower chamber of the state legislature. Larger values of this variable indicate
states that more closely approximate one-party control. If voter turnout decreases with electoral
competitiveness, I expect the estimates for these three variables to be negatively signed.
Finally, following Engstrom (2012), I also account for important differences in election administration and ballot format. Many states held congressional elections prior or subsequent to the
Tuesday after the first Monday in November, and thus I include an indicator for Off-November
election. Many states also changed their ballot formats during the latter part of the nineteenth
century, and thus I distinguish states who used Party column and Office bloc ballots. These data
were obtained from and are described in greater detail in Engstrom (2012).
Results
I first estimated a simple regression of county-level turnout on the distribution of post offices
and county population, along with the year and county fixed effects. The results are shown below
in Table 1. The estimated coefficient for the main independent variable is positive (0.98) and statistically significant, indicating that the distribution of post offices significantly increased voter
turnout. Each additional post office per thousand residents increased turnout by approximately
one percentage point. The coefficient for county population is also positive and significant, indi12
cating that increases in population were associated with increased turnout.
The measures of electoral competitiveness were added to the model shown in column (2).
The coefficient for the distribution of post offices is again positive and statistically significant
(0.88) even while controlling for the competitiveness of the electoral environment. As one would
likely expect, each of the measures of competitiveness is negative and statistically significant. The
coefficient for state presidential competitiveness increases that a ten percentage point increase
in the state margin of victory decreased turnout by about 3.8 percentage points. The effect of
increased margins of victory in the county results in presidential elections was about one half
as large; a ten percentage point increase in the county margin of victory decreased turnout by
about 1.7 percentage points. Increased party dominance also decreased county-level turnout. As
the difference between the percentage of seats held by each party in the state legislature increased
by ten percentage points, county turnout decreased by 1.1 percentage points.
The results are nearly identical when accounting for the indicators of election timing and ballot format, as column (3) shows. The coefficient for post office distribution is again positive (0.76)
and statistically significant at p = .052. The coefficients for population and electoral competitiveness are nearly identical to those shown in column (2). The coefficients for election timing and
ballot format are similar to those reported in Engstrom (2012). County turnout was approximately
3 percentage points higher when the elections were held outside of the traditional Election Day.
The introduction of the secret ballot, however, decreased turnout. Both party column and office
bloc ballots decreased turnout by approximately 2.5 percentage points.
On the whole, therefore, the results provide consistent evidence that the provision of post
offices was associated with small yet systematic and persistent increases in vote share. An increase of one post office per thousand residents increased voter turnout by between 0.75 and 1
percentage points. The results shown above are also robust to accounting for other potential
omitted confounders. Rogowski (2016) shows that political factors−namely, the partisan alignment between a county’s congressional representative and the president−played a significant
13
Table 1: Voter Turnout in U.S. Counties, 1876-1896
Independent Variables
(1)
(2)
(3)
Post offices per thousand residents
0.98
(0.30)
0.88
(0.38)
0.76
(0.39)
ln(Population)
6.25
(1.13)
4.80
(1.08)
4.47
(1.08)
State presidential margin
−0.38
(0.03)
−0.40
(0.03)
County presidential margin
−0.17
(0.02)
−0.17
(0.02)
State party competitiveness
−0.11
(0.02)
−0.12
(0.02)
Off-November election
3.06
(0.48)
Party column ballot
−2.53
(0.51)
Office bloc ballot
−2.71
(0.53)
(Intercept)
55.23
(2.99)
37.18
(10.35)
39.94
(10.39)
N (total)
N (units)
R 2 (within)
24914
2572
0.16
23401
2572
0.23
23401
2572
0.24
Data are from the 44th through 54th Congresses. Entries are linear regression coefficients and
standard errors, clustered on counties. The dependent variable is voter turnout in percentage
points. County and year fixed effects are also included but not shown.
role in influencing where post offices were distributed. Including a set of indicators for whether
the county’s congressional representative was a presidential copartisan under unified or divided
government and estimating the same model shown in column (3) produces substantively similar results, with a statistically significant coefficient estimate of 0.95 for the distribution of post
14
offices.7
Accounting for Varying Effects
Not all post offices were alike, however, which raises the possibility that the effects of post
offices on turnout may vary with the nature of the post offices. The vast majority of nineteenthcentury post offices were rural outposts that were located in an existing structure such as a general
store. These post offices generally had no staff aside from the person employed as the postmaster
and as such were classified as fourth-class post offices. First-, second-, and third-class post offices,
however, were distinguished on the basis of the revenue they generated, and the stature of the
postmaster appointment increased with the post office’s designation. Appointments to these
locations also required a president’s nomination and Senate confirmation. Because appointments
to these postmasterships came with much larger salaries and thus went to the strongest party
loyalists, postmasters at these locations were likely to be more effective and better motivated to
mobilize local residents to vote. In addition, these presidential-class post offices often were staffed
by clerks and a variety of other employees, which could have expanded the breadth of the post
office’s mobilization operation.
To examine whether the nature of the post office conditioned the effect of the distribution
of post offices on voter turnout, I estimated the models shown in Table 1 but included separate
indicators for the distribution of presidential post offices and non-presidential (fourth-class) post
offices.8 The results are shown below in Table 2.
Across all three models, Table 2 plainly shows that the mobilizing effects of presidential post
7 Note:
In a future version of this paper I will use data from Sam Kernell to provide some suggestive evidence
on whether the mobilizing effects of post offices are due to an interpersonal mechanism from the interaction that
occurs between postmasters and residents, or to access to the mail itself. These data will enable me to distinguish
counties on the basis of whether they were recipients of rural free delivery routes or simply had access to a post
office location.
8 Presidential post offices were relatively uncommon. The modal county had zero presidential post offices, though
more than 51 percent of counties had at least one. The distribution was positively skewed as the mean (0.8 presidential
post offices) and standard deviation (1.4) indicate.
15
offices were substantially larger in magnitude than the effects of non-presidential post offices.
Each presidential post office per thousand residents increased turnout by between 19 and 25
percentage points. Increases in non-presidential post offices, however, increased turnout by approximatly one percentage point. While I am reluctant to make too much of the precise estimates
associated with presidential post offices due to the relative paucity of counties with more than a
couple of them, the results do clearly support the hypothesis that larger post offices with more
prestigious postmasterships had greater mobilizing effects than non-presidential post offices.
I also obtain consistent results when using an alternative approach by estimating the models
shown in Table 1 while also including an indicator for the proportion of a county’s post offices that
are first-, second-, or third-class and interacting this indicator with the distribution of post offices.
The coefficient for the constituent term for post offices per thousand residents is consistently
near 1.00 and statistically significant, indicating that an increase of one post office per thousand
residents in a county with zero presidential post offices increases turnout by about 1 percentage
point. The interaction between the number of post offices per thousand and the proportion of
presidential post offices is positive and statistically significant, indicating that the effect of post
offices on turnout was greater in counties with larger proportions of presidential post offices.9
Conclusion
American state development during the decades that bracketed the turn of the twentieth century fundamentally changed the course of the nation’s history. Scholars have made significant
progress in understanding the nature of the institutional changes that occurred during this period and its implications for the federal bureaucracy. Research has paid less attention, however,
to identifying the specific ways these patterns of development subsequently affected local communities and their politics.
9 These
results are shown in Table A.1.
16
Table 2: Voter Turnout in U.S. Counties, 1876-1896: Accounting for Presidential Post Offices
Independent Variables
(1)
(2)
(3)
Presidential post offices per thousand residents
25.04
(4.63)
19.11
(4.33)
19.15
(4.42)
Non-Presidential post offices per thousand residents
1.06
(0.30)
0.95
(0.38)
0.82
(0.39)
ln(Population)
6.32
(1.16)
4.80
(1.10)
4.46
(1.10)
State presidential margin
−0.38
(0.03)
−0.40
(0.03)
County presidential margin
−0.17
(0.02)
−0.17
(0.02)
State party competitiveness
−0.12
(0.01)
−0.12
(0.01)
Off-November election
3.05
(0.47)
Party column ballot
−2.58
(0.50)
Office bloc ballot
−2.72
(0.53)
(Intercept)
10.69
(11.00)
36.67
(10.52)
39.49
(10.57)
N (total)
N (units)
R 2 (within)
24914
2678
0.17
23401
2572
0.24
23401
2572
0.24
Data are from the 44th through 54th Congresses. Entries are linear regression coefficients and
standard errors, clustered on counties. The dependent variable is voter turnout in percentage
points. County and year fixed effects are also included but not shown.
This paper takes an initial step toward tracing the impact of state building activities and understanding their larger importance. Post office locations were one of the clearest symbols of the
state in the nineteeth-century U.S. and played an important role in the country’s nationalization.
17
Post offices also played an important political role due to the patronage appointments they afforded and the possibilities they offered for political mobilization. Using a county and year fixed
effects design, this paper provides evidence that increases in local post offices increased voter
turnout. Due to the parties’ control of local post offices and postmaster appointments, these
increases in voter turnout may have been especially likely to benefit the local party in power.
The findings represent one way in which the federal government played an important part
in the trajectory of American political parties. Post office locations helped local and state parties
mobilize their supporters and create party networks. The findings represent one way in which
presidents through their role as party leaders may have contributed to party building activities. The evidence presented here also suggests that though parties may have transformed from
patronage-based to service-based by the end of the nineteenth century (e.g., James 2006; Kernell
and McDonald 1999), parties did not give up opportunities to take advantage of federal resources
that benefited their aims. Instead, parties may have used the expanding arm of the American
state to appeal to and mobilize local communities at precisely the time when Progressive reforms
sought to disempower American political parties.
The data and findings presented here have some important limitations, however. Post office locations represent a clear yet rather coarse measure of American state development. Future research could explore more fine-grained measures of state development using either post
office-based measures or indicators of statebuilding in other domaines. Additional research is
also needed both to trace the specific mechanisms by which the growth of the American state
affected local communities and to understand its implications for American political parties. Sustained attention to questions such as these will fruitfully enhance scholarly understandings of the
nature and consequences of American political development and statebuilding more generally.
18
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A
Supplementary Materials
Table A.1: Voter Turnout in U.S. Counties, 1876-1896: Accounting for Presidential Post Offices
Independent Variables
(1)
(2)
(3)
Post offices per thousand residents
1.09
(0.31)
0.99
(0.38)
0.87
(0.39)
Proportion of presidential post offices
7.48
(7.12)
8.05
(7.38)
8.27
(7.33)
Post offices per thousand residents ×
Proportion of presidential post offices
19.22
(6.41)
12.70
(6.42)
12.72
(6.50)
ln(Population)
6.26
(1.16)
4.76
(1.10)
4.42
(1.10)
State presidential margin
−0.38
(0.03)
−0.40
(0.03)
County presidential margin
−0.17
(0.02)
−0.17
(0.02)
State party competitiveness
−0.12
(0.01)
−0.12
(0.01)
Off-November election
3.05
(0.47)
Party column ballot
−2.59
(0.50)
Office bloc ballot
−2.72
(0.53)
(Intercept)
11.14
(11.02)
36.92
(10.54)
39.77
(10.58)
N (total)
N (units)
R 2 (within)
24914
2678
0.17
23401
2572
0.24
23401
2572
0.24
Data are from the 44th through 54th Congresses. Entries are linear regression coefficients and standard errors,
clustered on counties. The dependent variable is voter turnout in percentage points. County and year fixed effects
are also included but not shown.
25