A stamp featuring the Polish flag whose release event featured a notable omission, petty politics, and an unusual (for the times) privatization of a key government service, is today’s #stampoftheday. Issued on June 22, 1943, the stamp is the first in a series of 5-cent stamps that honored each of the 12 European countries occupied by Axis powers during World War II.
The stamp’s design, which features the Polish flag, was based on ideas offered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, an avid stamp collector who apparently spent a fair bit of time suggesting and reviewing designs for stamps. According to one, unattributed account I found online, “after receiving several designs from artists who felt the current U.S. postage stamps were unattractive, [Roosevelt] began to consider the types of stamps he wanted to issue. He sought to show the world that America was in this war to achieve world peace, not military dominance.
With this in mind, the President suggested the U.S. issue a series of 5-cent stamps—the foreign rate for first class postage—picturing the flags of all the overrun nations in Europe. In the border surrounding each flag, Roosevelt suggested picturing the Phoenix – an ancient symbol of rebirth. He believed, [the uncredited author wrote] ‘it might tell those suffering victims in Europe that we are struggling for their own regeneration.’ The other side of each flag pictured a kneeling woman ‘breaking the shackles of oppression.'”
Portraying the flags required printing in multiple colors, which was beyond the capacity of the machines used by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, which since 1894 had printed all U.S. stamps. Consequently, the Bureau (which also prints our money) contracted with the American Bank Note Company, a private firm that had been one of several entities that had printed US stamps before 1894 and which, among other things, also began printed American Express Traveler’s Cheques in 1891.
The Polish flag stamp was released in both Washington, DC and in Chicago, where a huge crowd gathered in the lobby of the main post office.to hear dedication speeches by Postmaster General Walker and Dr. Karol Ripa, consul general of Poland. Sadly, while the stamp was supposed to honor “the people of Poland,” no one mentioned that the doomed month-long uprising by Jews in the Warsaw ghetto had ended a little more than month before the stamp was released. Moreover, according to Max Johl, a noted stamp collector and writer about stamps, “it was reported in the Philatelic Press that petty politics among various groups in Chicago had almost ruined the first day celebration. It is believed that this fact caused the Department to limit the first day sale of all other of the ‘flag’ stamps to Washington.”
The Post Office (and later the Postal Service) did not use private firms to print stamps again until 1978, when began giving private printers contracts to produce some commemorative stamps. The private printers’ share of stamp production grew steadily as postal officials moved away from the hand-engraved stamps that were the bureau’s hallmark and toward cheaper, lithographed stamps. The bureau, with its elaborate security system, unionized printers and large government payroll, could not compete with private printers whose market share accelerated when the agency turned to self-adhesive stamps in the early 1990s. Over the next decade, the Postal Service phased out the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, which on June 13, 2005 produced its last stamps – rolls of 37-cent American Flag stamps that became less desirable six months later when the price of a first-class stamp rose to 39 cents.
Rob Haeseler, an official of the American Philatelic Society, the nation’s largest organization for stamp collectors told The Washington Post that the shift was “the end of an era that reflected some of finest workmanship in government stamp design.”
Stay well, be safe, fight for justice and work for peace.