An Old Time Newspaper Article (1917): Stamp Conservation

I was searching my library's newspaper archives and came upon this 1917 news article that I found interesting.

While conservation was always considered a patriotic duty during the war effort, I never knew that it trickled down to the use of less postage stamps!

Very interesting article.Like you,I would have never thought it had trickled down to the use of less postage stamps.

Interesting article, so in hard times things has domino effect altogether.
Thank wt1

This is so strange, you would think it would be natural for people to use one stamp instead of a couple!

I have to wonder, though, if this isn't more morale booster than an actual solution to a real problem.

In my experience, if I use multiple stamps, it's usually because I don't have the current first class stamps on hand, so I make up the rate with the postage I happen to have on hand. Or sometimes the missive is heavier than letter rate, so I add stamps from my stash to pay the postage.

I really can't see how even under wartime conditions, that the government wouldn't have had at least several months' supply of the most commonly used denominations, or that printing a few million more would place a serious burden on either the government's resources, or the national economy.

You're probably right. The article does say that the post office had no power to stop the sale of lower denomination stamps to customers, should they want them, they were just trying to plant the idea into people's heads that the use of one stamp versus multiple lower denomination ones would be more beneficial to all.

Remember, the date of the news article is World War I (1917) and it was before postage meters were commonplace, so the stamp sales to businesses and high volume mailers of that day would have had more of an impact than just the stamps used on personal mail from the average citizen.

By the way, adjusting for inflation, a 3c stamp in 1917 had the same buying power as 53c today, so first class postage in 2012 is still a bargain by that standard.

Time to look for that 1917 cover with six 1/2 cent stamps.

No 1/2 cent stamps, but here's a cover to Paris in 1917 that uses three stamps (two 2c and one 1c) when a 5c stamp should have been used (according to the above article, anyway):

A couple of more 1917 examples of using more than one stamp on an envelope: