The evening times. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1895-1902, 1901-05-28
The POSTAGE STAMP BOOK
Popularity Of the Device Extends
to All Glasses of People.

Large Sums Cleared by the Govern
ncnt and Corresponding Amounts
saved by Those Who Use the Leaf
Iet-The Man at the window Talks
1t was the noon hour and. business be
ing slack, the clerk at the retail stamp
window in the Postoffce building leaned
against his counter and chatted through
the narrow aperture to one who was lott
ering outside The clerk was tapping the
bIOuer covering the counter with a book
OF stamps, and. taking up the converse
ton where he had interrupted it to attend
to a customer. he remarked:
Uncle Sam is quite as thrifty as You
would imagine him to be from his pic
lures He has the same propensity for
squeezing the dollar out OF the situation
and the opportunity that the old Connect
cut or Massachusetts Yankee farmer has
These little books are q good sample of
what he and his advisers can do to turn,
so to speak, an honest penny In the end
it results in turning many a thousand
honest dOllarS-perhaps in the end q cool
million when all Is counted in Small
economy or small gains on a large scale
are what makes the fortunes. and Uncle
Sam makes himself Independently rich
every year by the sale Of these little
stamp books. He ought to be grateful to
the man who conceived the scheme The
general public is the gamer. and have no
doubt that much more than a million dol
lars a year is saved to business men in
the stamps they would have lost and
thrown away, stamps that would have
stuck together or to something else in
damp weather you understand, if they
had not been in this nice oiled paper
packet
Tt is pretty sure thing that the
United States M kes nearly Six-eighths of
a cent on every one of these packets Ger
tainiy it makes that much on every %
cent packet On the larger ones. in
which there is a little more oiled paper
and probably a little more labor, you can
cut down the profit to five-eighths of a
cent You see the book contains an even
dozen. two dozen or four dozen stamps.
The dozen-stamp book costs you . cents
i more cent than the value of the
stamps The tyo-dozen coIored a light
yellow. costs 80 cents. 1 more cent than
the stamps are worth, and the four-doZen
costs 81 cents. again I more cent than
the stamps are worth. Now. it costs moth
ing like a cent to put the sittIe books to-
gether, and to furnish the mater the
stuff that goes IL them is only a cheap
oiled paper two bits Of bristol board. and
2 pair of wire staples to hold the thing
together. There is some printing on the
book but I guess that the postmaster Is
only too glad to give out his information
on mail rates in that way It probably
saves d good deal Of time which would be
taken up by people asking clerks Ques-
tons, and it saves undeTpOstage and the
expense of putting on due stamps, as well
as the time spent in collecting the money
-.As to the labor in putting them togeth-
er, II is almost negligible. They are all
stamped out of a big sheet, and dozens OF
them made by one impression Of the cut
ting machine They don't have 70 go
through many hands and it costs much
less to make them than it does to make
the stamped envelopes which can be sold
so cheapIy-
sHTbat the books are convenience goes
without saving. and everybody uses them
think our greatest customers, taking all
the postoffices throughout the country, are
the commercial travellers They have to
have stamps and now that they can carry
them around without any danger Of hav-
ing them stick together, they buy them IN
larger lots. If I sell a. 97-cent package l
am pretty nearly sure 10 sell il TO a tray
elfre man. who expects 10 be out OF the
reach Of an Office for some time The
same Is true OF the yeilOw-back 49-cent
book. though sell most Of them to small
traders and business men with a large
private correspondence 1t is the private
individual with nothing 10 distinguish him
who BUYS the 25-cent book, and there are
may more of them sold than Of all the
Others put together
s.E,verv man needs stamps at some time,
and if he can have them handy in his
pocketbook, he'll buy enough at a time 70
014 he will a
needs I should sell more Of the larger
books. I guess if it were not for my COM
petitor down the line who runs the whole
sale department He takes IN all the big
orders from the business houses, which
want perhaps several hundred stamps a
day
I sell more stamp books in the summer
than in the winter for rather d peculiar
reason There is a man who comes to me
every week during June. July, and August
and buys two 4s-cent stamp books. I asked
him one day why he bought two 49-centers
rather than one g7-cent book, and he re-
piled: oh, I send enc to my wife, who 5
at the seashore, 10 be used by her and the
children That's quite a common custom,
I find. and the fact that stamps can be
so easily sent through the mails makes
certain small business transactions much
more easy. You can easily clear of 80
cent purchase by sending the stamps
through the mail IN one of the little books,
and if I read the advertisements Alright,
the business men are taking that idea up.
It was only a few days ago that I saw
in a magazine an advertisement saying
that something would be sent free by
post, on receipt OF a SI-cent stamp book
They 90 very easily through the mails
and arrive at the other end in good shape,
which was certainly not the case with
stamps sent in the old days by mail
You would be surprised, however, at