44,000,000 STAMPS A DAY.

Matamata Record, Volume II, Issue 82, 16 May 1918, Page 3

44,000,000 STAMPS A DAY.

Remarkable statistics regarding th* output of postage stamps in the United States have been given by Mr. Joseph E. Ralph, the director of the Government Printing and Engraving Bureau at Washington. Each day, 44,000,000 postage stamps are printed in the factory, the yearly output being nearly 11,000,000,000 stamps, with an aggregate face value of £185,000,000. The paper required for the manufac- ... ture of the postage stamps for the fiscal \ year just ended amounted to 48,0001 b., and to make this paper 1,500 > spruce trees were ground to a pulp. .» These trees are cut on the mountains of western North Carolina, and cover-ed-an area of sixty acres. Had the- , trees been converted into lumber, over fifty well-appointed bungalows could . have been built, and the paper itself would make over 1,500,000 twentypage seven-column newspapers. About 500 men are engaged in th*' pulp mills in North Carolina, which supply the stamp paper, and the same number is employed in the paper mills at Hamilton, Ohio. Six hundred men and women find employment in the bureau in the manufacture of the stamps. Four plates are used in order that the operation of inking, wiping, polishing, and taking the impression may be done simultaneously. This press requires the services of a printer to polish the plates, one girl to lay the sheets in. position, and another girl to take it off after printing. The printed sheet of 400 stamps is now fed through a rotary perforator that perforates the stamps in one direction and cuts the sheet in half. Another perforator of the same construction perforates the stamps crosswise and makes another cut, thereby quartering the original sheet. !. After a close and rigid i r these sheets are counted and made into packages for final packing for shipment to the post-offices. ] The gum on the back of the stamps is made by scientifically roasting the highest grade of tapioca starch, such as is used for making puddings. Of this 450,1501 b. were used in one year, so that all the inhabitants of New York might have been given their fill of tapioca pudding for one meal with the material used. '! The sheets of 100 stamps each, as gent to the post-offices during the fiscal year 1913, piled upon each other, would make a shaft over six miles high, and placed end to end would make a strip over 16,000 miles long. As there are ten rows of stamps in each sheet, a atrip of single stamps would Jbe ovir 160,000 miles long, or more than enough to oacjrsle the gif time*.