The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1906-09-01
THE HOME OF THE POSTAL CARD.

Every postal card that is used in
the United States and its dependen-
cies, from Alaska to Porto Rico and
the Philippines, comes from a small
but busy manufacturing town in
Maine, called Rumford Falls. At
this point the Androscoggin river
takes a plunge of nearly one hundred
feet down into a precipitous gorge,
forming one of the magnificent
water-powers in the country, greater
than that of the combined energy of
fifty thousand horses. Huge steel
penstocks receive the water at the
brink of the fall, and conduct it to
mighty turbines, whose vibration
seems to shake even the solid cliff to
which they are anchored. At the
very brink of the precipice stands
the power. house, and from its spray
drenched walls goes forth constant
stream of electrical power to half a
dozen or more large manufacturing
plants, of which the Oxford Paper
Co., the present contract manufac-
turers of United States postal cards,
is the most important.
With such enormous and practi-
cally inexhaustible power furnished
by nature, the Oxford Paper Co.
was enabled to make bid for the
manufacture of government postal
cards that was lower than that of
any of its competitors. That the
postal card industry is one of enor-
nous proportions will be readily
seen from the following figures ::
Eight hundred million cards are
manufactured every year, this being
the number required by contract
with the Post Office Department.
This would be an output of two and
a half millions for every working
day of the week. One thousand two
hundred and thirteen reams of paper,
weighing five hundred pounds to the
ream, are consumed every month.
Simply for the narrow bands that
hold the cards in packets of twenty
five, one hundred and thirty-three
reams of thin binding paper are used
per month. The boxes in which the
cards are shipped require, monthly,
FIVE thousand pounds of wire nails
and eighty-6ve thousand feet of strap
wire. The boxes alone for the
months shipment cost eight hun
dred dollars. The presses that print
the cards consume one hundred and
sixty pounds of printers ink in thirty
days. Surely these are staggering
figures, especially when one COM
pares them with the individual pro-
duct.
The Government furnishes the
steel plates for printing the cards,
engraved by its own experts, and
there is a Government official in
charge of the postal-card department
at the Oxford Company's mills.
The cards are printed in sheets,
one hundred and twenty to the sheet.
They are then cut out by specially
designed machines and put up in
packages of twenty-five by young
lady employees. The engraved plates
furnished by the Government have
an average life Of about four years.
which is long term of service con-
sidering the hard and constant wear
to which they are subjected.
Every four years the Government
contract expires, and bids are again
called for. In this way the govern
ment manages frequently to reduce
the cost of the production of its po-
stal cards, as improved machinery
and facilities, and perhaps reduced
cost of labor and materials, may
enable a manufacturing concern to
underbid even its own former figures
in order to retain a contract of such
profitable magnitude. BnekAam.