1898 Revenues: Swift and Company Banking Department

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Swift and Company Banking Department

SWIFT AND COMPANY

MARCH 4 1901

CHICAGO.

BANKING DEPARTMENT.

Dave Thompson scan

The Swift meat-packing company revolutionized the meat business. Gustavus Swift developed refrigerated rail cars, and processes for fully utilizing the by-products of dressed meat production. Upon Gustavus Swift's death in 1903, his firm was valued at more than $125 million. Clearly, the business was large enough to have a "banking department". I don't know what this department did but would like to know. If a reader can provide any information, please write to 1898revenues@gmail.com

Gustavus Swift

Swift's daughter Annie May Swift died while she was a student at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Her father established Northwestern's School of Oratory in her memory which would become the School of Speach. I am a graduate of Northwestern, and spent 100s of hours in the basement of Annie May Swift Hall at the controls of WNUR, the student run radio station at Northwestern.

Annie May Swift Hall at Northwestern University

Home of WNUR 89.3 FM

During my years at Northwestern I never associated Swift meats with Annie May Swift Hall. My research for this site and this stamp made this association for me. Soon after I left Northwestern I joined the Peace Corps, and spent two years in Liberia helping to run a radio station near the Guinea border in the town of Voinjama. Many years later I am still in Africa, though now far across the continent in Kenya. So Mr. Swift's donation to Northwestern was in part responsible for where I live today. Thank you Mr. Swift.

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Unusual Ink on the 1898 Series Dollar Values

THESE STAMPS ARE BOTH SCOTT R191! From fugitive ink to color changelings with unknown origins. These are both copies of R191. Can only exposure to light produce the color changes you see in stamp on the right? Or possibly a soak in bleach or other chemical? I doubt it. These stamps have so many examples of changelings that there must be something else happening. The ink used on this dark green series of stamps was different than that known on any other BEP printed stamps, never mind the varnish square. It is likely the BEP was experimenting with ink on this issue. Inks are discussed further if you click on the stamps.

Collecting Cancels

Welcome to 1898 Revenues, a website that features the stamps used to pay the Spanish-American war taxes imposed by the US Government starting in July, 1898. But while this site features those stamps in general, a focus is on their cancels, and on the firms that applied them. Unlike US postage stamps, which were canceled by the US Post Office and now Postal Service, revenue stamps were ordered to be canceled by their users in such a way that the identity of the user and the date was included in the cancel. This makes the collecting possibilities nearly endless, so that a single variety of stamp, for example, the 2 cent battleship stamp intended to pay documentary taxes, had potentially millions of different users, and therefore as many different cancels. Please browse the site and discover the collecting possibilities, made so much more accessible now through online sales. Cancels on these stamps have become much more interesting and accessible with the massive amounts of archival and historical data available on line. Rather than hours spent in libraries or with heavy volumes to identify cancels, search engines allow for cancel sleuthing at home.

Battleship Proprietary Printed Cancels: Updating the Joyce/Chappell Lists

In the 1950s, Morton Dean Joyce updated a list of printed cancels on the battleship proprietaries compiled by Clarence Chappell. Joyce's is a very long list consisting of more than one hundred companies and thousands of cancel dates. In the years since Joyce completed his list, many new cancel dates have been demonstrated to exist, and an update of the 1950s list is needed.

This site is attempting that update. Using the Joyce/Chappell lists and the former collection of Henry Tolman (ARA #25) as a base, a gradual effort will be made to post updated lists to the best of my knowledge, making a call for those that can contribute new dates and new images of those cancels.

Following in this column are quick links to excel files of these lists by company. Also are links to the posts that I have made on this blog regarding these companies and their cancels.