Envelope Bids

Experience has taught the U. S. Post Office Dept. that the public uses about 3,200,000,000 stamped envelopes each year. Accordingly, finding its supply low, it advertised last month for bids to supply envelopes over a period of four years, in the amount of 12,800,000,000.

Unusual attention met the appeal of the Post Office Dept. For the first time in 58 years, more than two companies submitted bids. And when the three offers were examined, last week, Postmaster General New found that low bid was 22% less than the present contract (with Middle West Supply Co., Dayton, Ohio), would add some $5,000,000 to the shearings and scrapings so insistently demanded by Budgeteer Herbert Mayhew Lord. Postmaster General New named a committee to study the bids, probably to recommend awarding the contract to the low International Envelope Corp., subsidiary of the (world's largest) International Paper Co.