Volume 23, Number 6

June 2009

U.S. 2¢ “Black Hardings”

On August 2, 1923, during the return leg of a voyage to Alaska and the American west, President Warren G. Harding suffered a heart attack and became the sixth U.S. president to die in office. The Post Office Department (POD) rushed a 2¢ black mourning stamp into production.  

Clair Aubrey Huston, a twenty-one year veteran of the BEP, designed the stamp in one day—August 16—using a modified version of the Fourth Bureau Issue frame and a copperplate etching of the late president. Only six days elapsed from design until the stamp went to press. Two large die proofs were pulled and approved on August 21; the first plates, #14853 and 14852, were certified and went to press the next day. The first printing of 300,000,000 stamps was released on Saturday, September 1 at Marion, Ohio (Harding’s home town) and Washington, D.C. Two hundred people were in line when the Marion office opened at nine o’clock, and by the time it closed its entire allotment of 200,000 Harding stamps was sold out. The Washington Post reported that in the first week, $58,250 worth of the stamps—or approximately 3 million copies—had been purchased at Marion and Washington alone! Recognizing that the first printing would not satisfy the public demand for the stamp, the postmaster general ordered another 1.3 billion copies.  

A dizzying array of varieties soon became available to collectors: the original, perf. 11 flat-plate stamps issued on September 1 (Scott #610); the perf. 10 rotary press printing released September 12 (Scott #612); and the flat-plate imperforate variety issued on November 15 (Scott #611). In addition, the Black Hardings produced two important twentieth century rarities: the rotary press stamps that were perfed 11 on the flat-press perforator (Scott #613); and the Schermack Type III coils, created when the Mail-O-Meter company of Detroit pasted together strips of the imperforates and privately perforated them for use in vending machines.  

The ‘Black Hardings’ appearance gave a boost to two fledgling collecting specialties: first day covers and precancels.  

First day cover (FDC) collecting in the modern sense was not really possible until the early 1920s. In December 1921, a Philatelic Agency was established at Washington, D.C. to cater especially to collectors. At roughly the same time, the POD began communicating information about new stamps to the philatelic and national press in advance of their release. For the first time, average collectors could know when and where stamps would be issued and prepare their own envelopes to be cancelled on the first day.  

Ohio philatelist George Ward Linn seized just that opportunity with the Harding issue. On September 1, he mailed himself about 200 envelopes franked with the stamps and cacheted with the typeset inscription “IN MEMORIUM [sic] / WARREN G. HARDING / TWENTY-NINTH PRESIDENT / BORN / NOV. 2, 1865 / DIED / AUG. 2, 1923.” He advertised the resulting covers, today widely regarded as the first modern FDCs, for 50¢ postpaid  

Precancelled stamps (stamps cancelled before being used, typically by overprinting) were intended to eliminate the facing and canceling of individual mail pieces at the post office. Although the practice began informally during the 1870s, the POD, concerned that precancelled stamps could be easily reused, did not officially sanction them until 1903. A variety of methods were used to create precancel overprints, including typesetting, hand stamps, and even mimeograph machines. The Black Hardings were only the fourth non-definitive series to be widely precancelled, and this attracted a great deal of attention from collectors. Throughout late 1923 and early 1924, extensive lists of Harding precancel varieties ran in the philatelic press, as did advertisements seeking and selling them.  

As the first mourning stamp for a sitting U.S. president since the 15¢ Lincolns of 1866, the Black Hardings captured the public imagination. Although they were only distributed to post offices for ninety days, they were promoted more heavily than any previous stamp and gave impetus to two new philatelic specialties. The Black Hardings’ release ushered in the modern era of U.S. philately, which attained its golden age under another president, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Highway Post Office

The first Highway Post Office bus was inaugurated on February 10, 1941, on a route running from Washington, D.C. to Harrisonburg, Virginia. However, a second route was not established until 1946 due to the outbreak of World War II. Every time a new route was established, there would be a special "first day cover" cancellation created for the philatelic mail carried that day. The first post office bus was designed and built by the White Motor Company of Cleveland, Ohio.

Intended to replace the Railway Mail Service, these sorting facilities built on bus chassis remained almost identical to those built into railway cars. Windows were screened and barred to provide security for the cargo and postal employees. The postal workers would sort mail by artificial light into letter cases as the bus moved along its route. Storage space was located at the rear of the bus; an average of 640 square feet was set aside, and capacity was approximately 150 mail sacks. 

Highway post office bus service was designed as a response to declining railroad traffic in the early 1940s. With its sleek design (for a bus) and stylishly patriotic red, white and blue paint job, a Highway Post Office bus would have been a common sight along the rapidly expanding highways of the 1950s and 1960s. As the United States was growing, use of the highway system was growing as well, meaning fewer passengers for the railways.  

The changing character of cities and of the mail itself eventually led to the death of the Highway Post Office. Business mail, once a small portion of all correspondence, had grown to 80 percent of the total volume of mail in 1963. Centralization of both business accounts and social centers highlighted mechanization problems in the system that were addressed by the presidentially appointed Advisory Board of the Post Office Department in June 1962. The advice of this board was to adopt a coding system for the mail, requiring a complete reorganization of the postal system already in place. The adoption and expansion of the "Metro system," with its ZIP codes (1963) and sectional centers (1960), spelled the end for the Highway Post Office system. Although the bus in the Postal Museum's collection was decommissioned in the 1960s, the Highway Post Office service ran until June 30, 1974.

APS Free Topical Album Pages  

Title Page of the Pennsylvania Album

The APS has made free downloadable topical pages available for a number of subjects listed below:

2008 Stamp Album

Abraham Lincoln

Alaska

Arizona

Black Heritage Series

Connecticut

Flags of Our Nation I

Flags of Our Nation II

North Carolina

Pennsylvania

Texas

U.S. Baseball Stamps

U.S. Stamps of Chris Calle

Women on U.S. Stamps

Women on U.S. Stamps 1958-2008

Go to: http://www.stamps.org/Education/edu_AlbumPages.htm  to download your copy.  One of these would make a great exhibit for our show.