Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 160, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 July 1910 — POSTAGE STAMPS ARE ODD. [ARTICLE]

POSTAGE STAMPS ARE ODD.

Too Conservative and Cannot Be Licked Into Civilised Habits. Postage stamps constitute one of our national products which refuse to yield to civilizing influences. They have several bad habits of which they ought to be cured, a writer in Success thinks. In the first place, they do not rise in price with that airy ebulliency for which our national products have become justly famous. They don’t even fluctuate. Almost any professor of political economy will admit that this is a gross error. There ought to be seasons of the year when postage stamps fluctuate violently, so that the poor men could not afford them at all. In that way postage stamps would now and then provide an outlet for some ambitious soul to make hls name forever revered by securing a corner In them, to say nothing of the smaller fry who could make handsome livings year In and year out by buying and selling stamps on margin.

Another difficulty is that one knows exactly what one Is buying, for they cannot j>e adulterated. Anything that Is properly civilized ought to lend Itself readily to adulteration. Furthermore, the price of postage stamps does not yield readily to car shortage, strikes, tariffs, free coinage of silver, big sticks, political oratory, Investigating committees, sectional jealousies or yellow journalism. Our postage stamps have been altogether too conservative and our leniency with them has almost reached the breaking point.