United States Fourth Bureau Definitives

Part III
by Michael Mills

The most popular Fourth is the red, white, and blue five-dollar statue of America issue. Sometimes it's also called the "Freedom" or "Columbia" statue. There are no straightedge issues as it was produced in sheets of 100. (The others in the series were printed in sheets of 400 and cut into panes of 100.) However when the five-dollar was in general circulation, it was used extensively by financial institutions, so that a majority of the used examples were privately perforated, as an anti-theft device.

Rotary Issues

By the time the Fourths was issued, the Bureau's rotary press had been used to print only coil issues, but trials were conducted with rotary one-cent sheets and then later with the two-cent. The initial problem was with gum curling, which was soon solved by the system of gum breakers, which allowed the rotary sheets to remain relatively flat throughout production, handling, and use.

Further technical refinements at the Bureau led to the rotary press gumming, printing, and perforating entire print runs from the roll without handling, saving as much as sixty-five percent of costs and boosting output immensely. It marked a significant advance in mass production at the Bureau.

The first rotary issues of the Fourth were issued in 1922, and expanded to include values up to the ten-cent in 1925. At first they were perf 10's, but were deemed hard to separate, so that with further tinkering the Bureau wound up with perforations of 11 x 10.5, which seemed to work for everyone, from printers to customers.

It was also in April 1923 that the Bureau began precanceling the Fourths on the rotary press with their newly developed electrotype plates. Previously, this process had been handled by local postmasters, but now the Bureau could precancel during the press run. Later in 1931 the Bureau turned over the entire output of the series up to the fifty-cent value to their rotary press, and the series continued in use up until 1939 without any notable changes in production.

Gum Breakers

The rotary press led to a round of experiments to stop the gummed sheets from curling as the gum dried. A series of horizontal bars, called "gum breakers," were placed against the paper as the glue was applied during production that resulted in strips in the paper of the paper remaining uncoated by adhesive.

The paper in the ungummed area counteracted the shrinking of the paper in the gummed area. Without the breakers fully coated stamp would shrink and curl as the gum dried. Several different horizontal arrangements of parallel bars were used throughout the rotary printings, which now provide clues as to individual printings and aid forgery detection. Spacing between breakers ranged from 5.5mm, 12mm, and 22mm. The breaker sizes also provide major clues to detecting false overprints, as genuine overprints were applied only to certain printings with recognizable gum breakers.

Imperforates

Until 1927, the Post Office also issued the one-, one-and-a-half-, and two-cent Fourths in imperforate sheets of 400, which were destined to the private coil company Mail-O-Meter, the former Shermack Company. Naturally, some sheets found their way into the deliveries to regular post offices. However, many were precanceled and used on large business mailings, and issues with the Shermack III type perforation are a much sought after.