The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1901-06-08
The Making of Postal Cards.

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lions of postal cards each and every month
for this country is located in little West
Virginia mountain town, high up in the
Appalachian range, not far from the bor
der line of Maryland.
The town is Piedmont, Mineral county,
w Va, and here the busy factory is at
work six days in the week making the
little oblong sheets of cardboard on which
so many messages, all sorts and kinds, are
written by all conditions Of people. Here
the cardboard is made from the fresh,
sweet spruce trees, here it is cut into the
requisite sizes, and here the cards are
printed, packed and shipped, eventually
finding their way into every State, city
and hamlet in the country, and to Cuba,
Porto Rico, Hawaii and the Philippine
Islands
The paper out of which the postal cards
are manufactured is all made at the large
sulphte and paper mills located there,
and adjoining the postal works.
The postal card works are located in a
two-story fire proof brick building, with
cement roof, and in which are patent au-
tomato fire sprinklers, with an abundant
supply of water at all times for fire pro-
lection. The building is not large-10U
by so feet.
Neither matches or smoking of pipes or
cigars are allowed on the premises. The
front door of the works is always under
lock and key. During the summer months
large lattice doors, are used, with lock
and key during the day. A time regis
tering clock is used at night, which the
watchmen have to touch at regular inter
walls in their rounds.
The first floor of the building is used
for pressroom, casing room and dry
room for the printed postal cards. There
are two presses in the room and each press
has capacity of 1900 impressions an
hour
The size Of the sheets Of paper used on
these presses is so by 30 inches, and each
sheet contains ninety postal cards ready to
be cut and packed when it comes from the
press. The dies used on these presses are
furnished by the government. Four men
work at the presses The men all work
eight hours day. One man is used in
the casing part of the room to put together
the knock down pine boxes in which the
cards are packed for shipment. The boxes
vary in size holding 5000, 10000, %,
600 and 100, 900 cards, respectively.
The largest shipment ever made from
the Piedmont works was on June Is, 1900,
when it reached the large number of "a,
600, 900.
The cards were shipped to various large
city postofices and to sub agencies The
b-postal card agencies are located in
Cincinnati, St. Louis, Troy, New York
and Washington, D. c.. and are techni-
cally known as distributing offices, where
acquisitions are filed on orders of the
stamp division of the Third Assistant Post
master General.
The number of employees necessary to
run this plant is only forty, of which num-
Der twenty are men and twenty are wo-
men-a small number when the value and
volume of this vast business are taken into
consideration. All are expert at their
work
The postal cards for use in the Philip
pines are also manufactured at this plant,
and are like the domestic cards, but are
surcharged with the word philippines
just below the vignette. 1t is the same
with the postal cards manufactured for
use in Cuba and Porto Rico. Those in
use in the island of Hawaii are now the
same as the domestic cards.
The buff stock used in the manufacture
of all the cards is made at Piedmont by
the paper company out of spruce wood, by
what is technically known as the ''sulphite
process. This process is so rapid that
cards have been made from the fibre with
in two days after the trees had been cut
from the West Virginia forest.
Less than full CARROTS of cards are shipped
through the postoffice at Piedmont, and
all are registered This is also the case
with shipments for the insular possessions.
The full CARROTS are shipped to the larger
postoffices and to the sub agencies pre-
viously mentioned, 4,O00,0 900 cards to
the car, and they are valued at $40, 600
per car. Every car is sealed with spec
ial seal by Inspector Shook.