'Cutting Through the Red Tape'

What’s the Real Story Behind the Phrase ‘Cutting Through the Red Tape’?
What’s the Real Story Behind the Phrase ‘Cutting Through the Red Tape’?
What’s the Real Story Behind the Phrase ‘Cutting Through the Red Tape’?
When you have to ‘cut through the red tape,’ it means your have to slog through lots of bureaucratic mud in order to achieve the goals you set out to achieve. How did tape — colored tape at that — come to represent the headaches that mounds of paperwork, unpleasant clerks and by-the-book functionaries cause us when we’re trying to get something done?