regardless of the veracity of this story, my wife, who is a rural letter carrier for our local post office, sometimes delivers live chicks to people who raise chickens on her route.
Putting a Snopes link without comment tends to make me think something’s being refuted. But in this case… the Snopes piece seems to pretty much confirm what was said in the article. Yes, it did happen (though Snopes implies a lot of the time it was a publicity stunt) and the well known pictures of babies in mail pouches are fake.
Stil…better than RyanAir.
When is someone going to report on all the child faxing that occurred during the early 80’s?
Already a plot point in a popular anime, in which a small child is sent to an illegible address and ends up in the dead letter office. Of course, she later turns out to have superpowers and no panties, because Japan.
“It was once socially acceptable and surprisingly affordable to send children by parcel post”
and
“Between 1913 and 1920, many Americans sent their children around the country by mail”
I think this is clearly refuted by the snopes article.
What about all the children, hermetically sealed into the pyramids, employed to ensure the grain held a steady temperature and to prevent pharaoh zombie rot from setting in.
Wow, you’re sharp. Do you live in a pyramid?
I thought you had to drop a bulletin board on them first.
You can’t live in the pyramids. Everyone knows they’re full of grain.
Cory Doctorow doesn’t fact-check a post. A dog barks. The caravan moves on.
Super sharp people eat their way in so they can be eaten out later.
I’m just glad they cracked down on this. I was getting tons of junk children in the mail!
Did you try sending them back as “business replies” to the credit card junk mailers?
It’s not anymore? These are the kinds of important facts no one tells new parents. They’re all full of silly advice like vaccinate your kids against horrific, debilitating, life-threatening diseases, but nary a word to avoid this little faux-pas 
There were several incidents of kids getting mailed over some years. That’s not even close to being evidence that it was “once socially acceptable.” #clickbait What has been a trend is the mailing over non-mail stuff in flagrant violation of the postal regulations—like poached wildlife, explosive chemicals, illicit substances…
