A Brief History of Children Sent Through the Mail

A tote without a tot is just an 'e'. :-)

It is unlikely there has ever been a "everyone trusted everyone" moment in human history, but even today we rely on "random strangers" to move children to and fro every single (school) day. Such trust in people isn't out of the ordinary even now.

I doubt parents put their children on the school bus because "something bad is apt to happen anyway", rather "it is just what you do" without any further thought. The postal service carrying humans isn't what we do these days, so it stands out as a curiosity. If it the story was, instead, about a bus line or taxi service, it wouldn't seem unusual at all.

I suspect this is more true than we realize.

I have this idea that if one of us were talking to a bill and ted from 2200 or so, one of their questions would be something like "so 40,000+ people died in america alone from car crashes, and everyone knew this and just ignored it???"

It's amazing what you get used to.

I think it's more that communities were smaller and more consistent. People didn't move that much. Your neighbors were your lifelong neighbors, and the postman was your lifelong postman, so you knew him, and your neighbors knew him, so they didn't lack trust in anybody—they had trust in their local "social network," both toward specific individuals, and because of the implicit "peer pressure" that kept everybody in line. I.e the postman would have not been able to run away with your child without the whole community being after him.

For this old timey example I agree, but from like 2000 to 2025, I have noticed a decline in trust in the US. People are also more trusting today in certain parts vs others, or in some other countries, and it's not because of lower standards.

I have a similar thought re "work sucks"/"nobody wants to work anymore", where actually maybe work and people are the same as ever but being at home is more entertaining than it used to be.

>"Well, you didn't get any help in those days, you just had to deal with it, haha!"

I can't help but wonder sometimes if that's healthier. Probably better for some people in some circumstances and worse in others.

I think they just called it shell-shock

> Today if a child would see a friend blow up in front of him people would be talking about PTSD, (life-long) trauma, etc. During the war my grandfather had a friend blow up in front of him. "Well, you didn't get any help in those days, you just had to deal with it, haha!"

... and carry that shit for the rest of their lives. A lot of Boomer kids are absolute dogshit parents because they never worked through the trauma they experienced back during their childhood (or during the rest of their lives), and they never learned how to properly manage their emotions (and yes I am talking both about men and women here), plainly because they didn't know better, there was no research, no nothing available. There's a reason why "break the cycle" has become a thing.

That seems like a wildly questionable conclusion to draw. 60 years prior to that act, there was a huge influx of immigrants who would have been considered non-white at the time: Italians, the Irish, Germans, Eastern Europeans, etc. To the people of the time, that was a very non-homogenous period.

I think there is something more than that. India is fairly homogeneous. Was high trust decades (5+) ago. Trust getting lower today. Similar practices (trusting a stranger with your child) would have been conceivable in the same timeframe as mailing kids but not today. I think the other sister comment makes sense: protecting children had a very different definition back then than it is today.

I think there is something more than that. India is fairly homogeneous. Was high trust decades (5+) ago. Trust getting lower today. Similar practices (trusting a stranger with your child) would have been conceivable in the same timeframe as mailing kids but not today.

Maybe it stops recurring when we realize we are all human. Will it take the discovery of an alien race to realize we are one?

Savages.

thats not very convincing. you should also show that it wasnt say, inequality that killed the trust

canada is a high trust society because of its ethnic diversity, and the competition between french and englisg culture. europe is in a much higher trust state as the EU than it ever was as a set of competing great powers.

greece has plenty of homogeny, but is very low trust.

keeping racists happy is probably pretty uncorrelated to trust, compared to say, government services rendered, and democratic participation.

It's a recurring bullshit just-so story peddled by people who reject the complexity of actual history, which is why you provide no sources: you have learned Spengler and Hanania are unwelcome in polite society but not why, and there is no one else to whom you could turn. - well, Steve Sailer, I suppose.

I think you can still get a real sense of overall societal trust from such stories. Not too long ago I horrified a relatively-young person by explaining how in the not-too-distant past, people used to have their names, phone numbers and home addresses automatically listed in a large, White-covered book whose Pages were distributed freely to everyone in the city.

Both with people the parents know, as well. Back then you knew your mailman.

No it wasn't. Famously so. America was a melting pot.

In the 1920s when this happened 15% of the population was immigrants. IE first generation Americans. With backgrounds from all over. Primarily European countries, but not the ones you think. Russia, for example, was a major portion of that number.

America at the time was way more heterogenous than it is today.

A major portion of that homogenation happened due to 1950s era racism and redlining which turned neighborhoods from mixed cultures into homogenous cultures.

Many of the highest crime places on earth are ethnically homogenous. Culture is not determined by skin color. Rather, Japan places a high value on the rights of and responsibility to the collective good. People in the US are culturally much less willing to suppress any rights of the individual, even if it supports a collective good. You can be much more confident that others will do what's in your best interest if society will come down on them hard if they don't.

This TIL struck like a laxative!