Junk mail's early origins

First, let me start out my saying I love getting mail. There's something so wonderful about holding a person's letter in your hands right before you open it to see what they had to say.

Now let me say that I hate junk mail. Despise. Detest. Can't stand. It takes away the magic of getting mail. There's nothing really useful there, and I have to shred any junk mail from credit card companies so people can't go through my trash to get useful information. Too much work for something that I care nothing about.

Did you know that junk mail mailed in the United States accounts for one third of all mail mailed in the world? That's just too much. A new article by the New York Times takes an interesting look to junk mail and how it "really" started.

In today's day and age, it's easy to get everything now. I want it now. I need it now. I have to have it now. Apparently, Victorian Londoners felt the same way about their mail. According to the article, "in Victorian London, though service wasn’t 24/7, it was close to 12/6. Home delivery routes would go by every house 12 times a day — yes, 12. In 1889, for example, the first delivery began about 7:30 a.m. and the last one at about 7:30 p.m. In major cities like Birmingham by the end of the century, home routes were run six times a day."

The article goes on to explain that people would send old newspapers that they had read to their friends and relatives so they wouldn't have to actually write them letters detailing events. Legislation led the British and United States governments to popularize low costs of stamps. Advertisers took advantage and began mass mailing pamphlets and fliers by the dozens.

So, now you know where junk mail began. And you know when the now, now, now mindset began to take place. Interesting, huh?