The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-11-18

and to the extensive circulation of cer-. tain periodicals, one of which. alone, furnishes us with about 150 sacks monthly. At times 400 and 5e0 sacks of newspapers have been piled up in this office, awaiting the distribution of the first-clnss mail
 At the Coney Island ofice, in the outgoing mail from September 1, to September 8. (Labor Day). inclusive. there were 175,00o souvenir cards, fig uring by the stamps, and the bulk Of the matter had to be sent to the Brook lyn main oflce. to be handled there by the mailing division On Friday, September 2. there were 100000 of the cards in the Coney Island oflce, partly Tn the week ending September g, there came to the Brooklyn once, addressed 70 one private house in the city, not less than fifty souvenir cards. all sent rom one neighborhood in Sullivan County, and probably posted by not more than half a dozen persons.
 All post cards regarded as indecent or improperly suggestive are stopped, and sent to the Dead Letter Office to be destroyed Formerly they were re- ceived in large numbrs. mostly in the foreign mails, but these have become comparatively few. and 1t is believed that they have been stopped by the postal authorities on the other side. Those received now. about one hun- dred and fifty a month, are chiefly posted in this country .bIit most of the worst were printed in Europe"
 At the New Pork postoffice, Assistant Postmastert Morgan said that immense numbers of souvenir cards had passed through the office during the last sum msr, the quantity having onadrupled since last year. but that the force had been able to handle them without de- laying other matter.
 Tn the ofiieiaLf language of the De- partment, he said. the term postal card was applied to the regular United States card, while post card" was the desfg- nation of the private mailing cards, recurring stamps, The New York of- flee had been getting from 800 to 1,- coo post cards a day, either without stamps or with insufficient postage, the greater number ot these bearing q 1-cent stamp, whereas the letter rate ot 1-cents as required by the reguia- Iions' because messages are written upon the face or address side, In such cases notice is sent to the ad- dresSees informing him that if the proper postage was remitted the card would be forwarded, and so many oc. eurrences of this kind had caused much extra work.
 An oflciaI Of the railway mail ser- vice said that regular letters averaged about forty-five or fifty to the pound. while the post cards averaged about l6o to the. pound. Hence the postage on pound of the former would De ninety cents or a dollar and that on pound of the souvenir cards, placing It at 1.cent apiece (with no writing on the face sides) would be S1.60 As the average cost of carrying one pound 0f o. Irf 1..zF IF.- A an q all postal operations--the entire ex. pense of collecting, handling. delivery, etc.--was seventeen or eighteen cents, t was easy to Sc how great e profit tnere was to the government in the extensive use of private post cards. There was no doubt, he remarked, that their use in Europe had been fostered Dy the postal authorities for this req son. As an instance of their vogue here. he said that at a very small ana. isolated village on Long Island, where his family had passed the summer, there were post cards On sale with a number of local views. which were bought by visitors by She haIf-doza at time. Postmasters at small sum- ner resorts. where there were fewer yisitors this year than usual had told him that the stamp cancellations were heavier, because of the souvenier cards.
 An officer of news company in this city. which does a great business Tn these cards, said that the pioneers in 1t were the Japanese, who began tn make them twenty or twenty-five years ago. Japan still produces very large quantities. both for home circu- lation ana for export, but Germany, which began their manufacture about ten years ago, is now the leading pro- ducer. For landscapes and buildings, the German cards are the best, but the Japanese excel in favor designs of figures and flowers, and Japan con- ttnues to make finer and more expen- slve cards than any otheF country in the world, including numbers which are hand-painted, Comparatively few of the Japanese cards are exported to the United States, the demand for them here being limited.
 The news company official said that his company alone has sent to Ger many For color printing from A,OO0 to 5000 photographs of views in this country. There are many other con. cerns in the same business in all parts of the United States, including from twenty-five to fifty in New York city alone. Demand for their output has been growing steadily. and rapidly for the last five or six years. The same speaker said that his own company had sold from 25.0o0,Ooo to 30, ,O0O, ,000 souvenirs from 10,O0o,o06 to 12,O00 COG cards behind on its orders.