Carl Hartnagle, age 13, of Indianapolls, Ind,,

How do they make postal stamps?

Every year, the post offices around the country sell about 23,000,000,000 stamps. This is enough stamps to stick a band around the equator almost ten inches wide. These pretty rectangles of gummed paper range from:half a cent to five dollar denominations for ordinary mail plus a variety of air mail stamps,

All these stamps are created at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington, D;C. This Bureau is in the Treasury Department of the U.S. Government. Our Uncle Sam is very particular about this stamp making job. He insists that the government and only the government can make our postal stamps. No private citizen can go into this business for himself. This Bureau also makes paper money, customs and savings stamps, bonds, certificates and Federal notes. This fine work is done by highly skilled artists and government workers.

The sale of postage stamps brings the government around two billion dollars a year. This mountain of money is not quite enough to pay for all the help and services we get from the Post Office Department. This biggest of all public utilities handles some 56 billion pieces of mail each year with the help of more than half a million employees and about 38,000 post offices.

Aside from the everyday stamps, the Post Office issues around 15 special stamps a year. The selection of some worthy p roject, some historical event or some person who has served mankind is made by a committee of seven. A person chosen must have been dead for 25 years, but a special case will be made in a stamp issue released this month. This issue will honor John Foster Dulles who was President Eisenhower‘s Secretary of State.

The picture for a new stamp is done in careful detail by atop artist. The border or frame of the picture may be done by another artist. The picture will then be prepared for printing by engraving, by photoengraving or by photolithography. In a stamp printed from an engraving! the fine lines are slightly raised on the paper. In a stamp made b y topography, the fine lines are slightly depressed. On a stamp made by lithography~the lines are less clear and more fuzzy than either of these other methods,

The paper for stamps must be fine and durable. It is called wove paper and made according to government instructions. Great sheets of identical stamps run through the multicolored presses. The backs of the sheets are then covered with gum. Now the stamps are surrounded by borders of perforations which make it easy to tear them apart without tearing them to pieces. This job is done by a machine which works with an electric eye.