Canada: Its Postage Stamps and Postal StationeryHowes, Clifton A. (Clifton Armstrong)
History
Canada: Its Postage Stamps and Postal Stationery
Howes, Clifton A. (Clifton Armstrong)
Postage stamps -- Canada; Postal stationery -- Canada
With the 12-1/2 and 15 cent stamps we find no successors, but we do find
that none of the former was delivered after 1871, so that our total of
2-1/2 millions is correct, barring our first approximation. From the
lists of "Issues to Postmasters" it is evident that the stamp was
regularly used, but in decreasing quantities, down to 1888, when the
last figures "1100" appear. A summing up of these issues to postmasters
(again allowing for the first approximation) gives us a total of
1,944,100 issued; but of these there were 44,086 returned by the
postmasters as unfit for use, the last return (84 copies) being received
in 1893. The result for the 12-1/2 cent stamp is therefore approximately
1,900,000 issued and used, and some 634,000 probably destroyed.
The 15 cent stamp, after the amount received in the 1869 account, needed
no further supplies until the 1875 account, although it was issued to
postmasters each year. The changes in rates in 1875 made it again useful
as a multiple of the 5 cent stamp and in connection with registration.
From that time until 1893 it was regularly printed and delivered, but
this was evidently the end of its usefulness, as the only receipt
thereafter was of 400 in 1896--undoubtedly a small remainder which the
engravers wanted to get rid of. It was regularly issued to postmasters,
however, up to 1900, the last amount, 21,350 appearing in that year's
accounts, though 70 copies were turned in for destruction in 1901. Some
31,000 all told were returned as unfit for use, but the rest were
probably all used in the course of business.
Of the large 5 cent stamp we can only judge as with the preceding. The
Report for 1876 includes the deliveries of both large and small stamps,
the total being 2 millions. As succeeding deliveries of the small stamp
averaged a million or more for several years thereafter, it is highly
probable that the above total was evenly divided and that the large 5
cent was at least printed to the number of a million copies.
* * * * *
Turning now to the Postmaster General's Reports for the several years
during which the large sized stamps were the general issue, we find in
the _First Report of the Dominion of Canada, for the Year ending 30th
June, 1868,_ the following remarks concerning the new order:--
The Post Office Laws and Regulations of the several Provinces of the
Dominion, in force at the date of the Union, remained in operation
under the authority of the Union Act until superseded by the statute
known as "_The Post Office Act 1867_", passed in the first session
of the Dominion Parliament, for the regulation of the Postal
Service, and which general Act took effect from the 1st. April,
1868.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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