Americans once paid to receive their mail, not send it.

Popping to the post office to purchase a book of stamps is a routine task for many Americans, though it wasn’t the norm until 175 years ago. At one time, American letter senders didn’t pay postage — the recipient of their message did. That is, until 1847, when Congress allowed the U.S. Postal Service to issue its first official stamp. Although mail service had existed in America since the Revolutionary period, by the 1840s the USPS was operating at a budget deficit, in part because delivery fees weren’t always paid upon delivery. Postage upon delivery was not cheap — the cost of sending a letter from New York City to Buffalo, New York, was as much as 25 cents at a time when many workers barely earned $1 a day. Mail recipients could refuse letters, meaning the postal service was on the hook for the round-trip delivery cost. Many Americans were skeptical of prepaying postage, believing it an insult that suggested the recipient was too poor to cover the fee, but by 1855 Congress’ mail reforms made stamps mandatory, while also standardizing and lowering the cost of mail delivery.