Imperial Valley press., 1913-12-08
Haskin Letters
(By Fred J. Haskin.)

VINO invented Jne postage stamp, out
no one controverts the fact that VIII }
ever did so rendered service 10 hu
manity that reaches to the end, of The
earth; for wherever in all the world
civilized man may go a stamp will
carry him message and carr" back
his reply. And, eliminating the cum
bersome methods of hand-to-hand
accounting where the message must
pass through a dozen or a hundred
hands, it brings the cost of the SER
vice down to a point where the per-
son who is too poor to mail letters
is beggared indeed.
1t would be huge task to calcu-
late the proportions of the postage
stamp business of the world. There
are some grounds, however, upon
which a reasonable estimate can be
made. To begin WITH the postal SER
vice of the United States annually
handles seventeen billion pieces of
mail and this requires some thirteen
billion stamps. The mail of the civil
lized world now aggregates fifty bill
lion pieces year, so that, following
the proportions of stamps to mail
matter in the United States, the
worlds annual use of postage stamps
must demand the printing of nearly
forty billions of them.
About one-third of the mail matter
of the whole world is handled for the
one-eighteenth of the earths popu-
lation living in the United States, and
one-fourth of the worlds stamps are
used in the handling of their mail
The mail routes of the United States
approximate one-third of those of the
entire earth, and one mile out of
every four of telegraph wire in the
world is strung within the confines of
the United States. From all this it
will be seen that mere than fourth
of all the messages that are sent from
person to person over the entire earth
are handled in the United States,
whose area is only one-eighteenth of
that of the earth
1t will be interesting to note, in this
connection, that while the density of
population for the United States is
almost exactly that of the average of
all the lands of the earth, Uncle Sans
mails handle six out of every sixteen
pieces of printed matter that go
through the postal services of the
world. Where Americans get sixty
six pieces of printed matter per capita
Through the mails, the people of the
remainder of the world get less than
seven pieces. Likewise, where the
average American uses 144 postage
stamps a year, the average citizen of
all other countries together uses 18
stamps.
The face value of the stamps re-
quired for the handling of the mails
of the United States last year ap-
proximated $227,OOO,OOO. They are
made by the bureau of printing and
engraving, of the treasury depart
ment, under contract with the post
office department. Prior to 1894 they
were made by outside firms. Here
tofore stamps have been printed on
flat presses, with steel plates, and
after the paper was treated to a
wetting down process. The work of
perforating them required a separate
process, as did the cumming. Lately,
however, new press has been per-
fected which uses plates and which is
OF the rotary type, printing from
dry paper in continuous rolls, and
cumming the stamps as they pass
through. A very rapid perforating
device practically makes all three
operations one, the while eliminating
the wetting-down process. The
stamps are softer and more pleasing
in appearance, and the perforations
are so much more even that they can
be handled with greater success in
the various automatic vending and
affiXing machines on the market.
For the number of years the postal
service has been furnishing stamps in
spools for vending machines and au-
tomato stampers. 1t now requires
about half million coils, each with
500 to 1000 stamps on it, to supply
the demands, and the stamps thus
used are valued at about five million
dollars. A coil of 500 stamps costs
three cents more than face value.
The coils are made by pasting to-
gether strips, each containing twenty
stamps.
The constant bringing out of new
stamps and the search for rare ones
Of the past gives zest to one of the
most interesting pastimes in the
world-that of stamp collecting. lot