The American Stamp by Laura Goldblatt

Author:Laura Goldblatt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Columbia University Press

FIGURE 7.7  General Federation of Women’s Clubs stamp, 1966 (Scott no. 1316).

Source: National Postal Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

FIGURE 7.8  Bill of Rights stamp, 1966 (Scott no. 1312).

Source: National Postal Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

FIGURE 7.9  City mail delivery stamp, 1963 (Scott no. 1238).

Source: National Postal Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

The format of the law-and-order stamp is hauntingly similar. In this second instance, a smiling policeman looks benevolently down on a boy carrying his schoolbooks (figure 7.10). The boy holds the policeman’s hand and looks up to meet his gaze. Here, policing is a metonym for law and order, which is treated as a gateway to education and a better life: an institution designed to safeguard the vulnerable and ensure their advancement. As in the city-delivery stamp, policing here is treated as essential to a variety of democratic functions—education and human flourishing—well beyond its purview. In both cases, the stamps represent policing and postal work as essential to the future (embodied by the child) and as of paramount importance. Their iconographic similarity suggests a stable set of features to demonstrate those democratic virtues: the child, the gaze, admiration, and a purposeful gait.23

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