typographic work. These three letter cards are known only with the perforation A.
The reduction in domestic postage to the 2 cent rate on the 1st January, 1899, rendered the 3 cent letter cards useless as well as the envelopes of like denomination. We have already recounted the story of the surcharged envelopes and the two types of the handstamp which were used in doing the work.[239] Suffice it to say, therefore, that we have but to add the letter cards to the same story to make it complete. Both the 3 cent letter cards of 1893 and 1898 were turned in for surcharging purposes, and the former not only received both types of the rubber hand-stamped surcharge in the usual blue-black or gray-black color, but is found also with the second and common type in a violet color.[240] The surcharging was begun and the letter cards so treated were issued as early as February, 1899. The perforation, so far as known, is always A.
In its issue for 27th January, 1900, the Weekly Philatelic Era notes the receipt of the 1 cent and 2 cent letter cards of the maple leaf type in new colors, conforming with the requirements of the Postal Union, the one cent in green instead of black and the 2 cent in carmine instead of green. In all other respects these letter cards conformed to their predecessors. They were doubtless issued early in January, 1900.
The letter cards had been used in considerable quantities each year, particularly after 1895, when the 1 cent and 2 cent values were added to the previous 3 cent; but in 1902 they were withdrawn without any particular reason having been given that we have been able to discover. The stamp accounts for the Report of 1902 give the numbers issued in that fiscal year as 195,100 for the 1 cent and 352,000 for the 2 cent. The only item of information we have to quote concerning their demise is confined to the dates: the last issue of the 1 cent letter card is recorded as the 4th April, 1902, and of the 2 cent letter card as the 28th June, 1902.
[238] Weekly Philatelic Era, XVII: 149.
[239] See [page 240].
[240] Monthly Journal, IX: 175.