The Railway Express Agency provided small package express service by train between 23,000 American cities and towns. This booklet attempts to persuade people who attended the Chicago’s 1933 Century of Progress fair that this was an exciting and even romantic service.
Click image to download an 8.9-MB PDF of this 20-page booklet.
Nine pages of text in the booklet were written by Stanley W. Todd, who was director of REA’s “educational service bureau,” or in other words, public relations. Todd’s name was on versions of this book spanning at least three decades.
This version of the booklet also includes duotone reproductions of seven oil paintings that REA had commissioned for the fair. Although these oil paintings must have been in full color, neither this booklet nor postcards printed of the paintings show these colors. Possibly because another person of the same name is slightly more famous, I can’t find much information about a painter named Robert E. Lee other than another illustration he did for REA and the information that he was 36 years old at the time of the Century of Progress fair.
Click image to download a 193-KB PDF of this postcard.
Unfortunately, the booklet’s opening paragraph is written in such a passive voice that many would probably not continue beyond it: “In the extreme Southeast corner of the Travel and Transport Building in Chicago’s A Century of Progress Exposition is situated the exhibit of the nation’s Railway Express Service.” This may not have been written by Todd, as the nine pages of text under his name are somewhat better written. Still, other than a promise that REA was getting into air express service, there was little that Todd could have said that would make REA truly seem romantic.