The New International Encyclopædia/Express

EXPRESS (Lat. expressus, distinct, p.p. of exprimere, to express, from ex, out + premere, to press). A business which has grown within the past quarter of a century to be of enormous importance. It was in the spring of 1839 that William F. Harnden advertised to take charge of money and small parcels to transmit between Boston and New York, and from his single carpetbag has risen a system of intercommunication between places and persons that, for numbers of stations and length of route, is surpassed only by the post-office department. The most valuable articles are sooner intrusted to a responsible express than to Government mails; for, in addition to ever-increasing care, there is a system of package insurance which secures the owner in almost any case of loss. A large proportion of the business is the collection of small sums for merchants. To these familiar features the express companies have generally added in the last decade a money-order business, which has led some of them into international banking and the issue of checks for the use of travelers—a modified form of the letter of credit (q.v.). Corresponding institutions do not exist in Europe, where the parcels post and the postal service as a rule fulfills acceptably the functions which in the United States are in the hands of the express companies.