Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 January 1877 — The Green Three-Cent Stamp, and What Will Succeed It. [ARTICLE]

The Green Three-Cent Stamp, and What Will Succeed It.

By about tlie middle of next May the public will have seen the last of the present three-cent stamp and begin to get accustomed to something red or possibly a new tint. The best and fastest color known, the green three, has proved a placer for stamp-washers, who take off the oily cancellation without acid or alkali, and set the stamp afloat again. So far the Department has found noway out of the difficulty, and the long series of experiments just completed has resulted in nothing more than the assurance that the green is the poorest of stamp colors. At the time it was adopted no other nation used it for its unit of letter postage, and with its disuse the common stamps the world over will run to reds and browns. With the change of color, May 1, there will be a change in design. The medallion head of Washington will be retained, but it will be relieved by an open space of white, and the scroll-work will have a different pattern. Altogether the new stamp will bear some resemblance to a stamp of sixteen years ago, which most people have forgotten. The white background is adopted in the hope that any attempt to wash the stamp will leave this part irretrievably soiled. Some other general changes in the stamps are likely to follow the making of a contract May 1, and a new head is likely to be introduced in the shape of a medallion of Liberty, one step towards bringing more similarity between the designs of coins and stamps. There is some intention of putting this design on the five-cent stamp, used for the most part for foreign postage. Conference and correspondence with other postal authorities show that loss from the re-use of stamps is much more frequent here tlian abroad. It is scarcely known in England, and there the stamps offer the additional temptation of being easy to counterfeit. The practice has recently begun in India, and the frugal folk is giving the Anglo-Indian office serious loss by its skill in dealing with canceled stamps —W. F. World.