In 1862 The Civil War was draining the Federal coffers. Money needed to be raised and The Revenue Act of 1862 was passed. It imposed steep taxes on many common goods and transactions. The stories behind these stamps show how American businesses were conducting themselves, particularly with regard to advertising. They also show how consumers were reacting and which products they bought. The Private Die Proprietary Stamps, commonly known as Match and Medicine stamps, reveal the techniques used over 100 years ago and, even though there are many more safeguards in place now that were non-existant in the 1860's, the fears and anxieties of individuals cause many of us to respond to current ads.

TAXES, REVENUE, PRIVATE DIE PROPRIETARY STAMPS & THE CIVIL WAR
"...you'll learn how to have wrinkles reduced without anyone knowing."

This was a statement in a recent ad for a Laser Collagen Replenishment. It appeared in a newspaper in June 2001. It is advertised as another anti-aging solution and sounds very much like ads that were prevalent over 100 years ago.

Today we have many protective laws in place to be sure that the advertising is accurate, contains appropriate cautionary and warning labels and lists the side affects that can be expected.

This wasn't true over 120 years ago when the medicines that were sold were not regulated by any agency. In 1880 Hunt's Remedy was advertised as "The best Kidney and Liver Medicine. Cures all Diseases of the Kidneys, Liver, Bladder, and Urinary Organs; Dropsy, Gravel (who knows what that is?), Diabetes, Bright's Disease, Pains in the Back, Loins, or Side; Retention or Non-Retention of Urine, Nervous Diseases, Female Weaknesses, Excesses, Jaundice, Biliousness, Headache, Sour Stomach, Dyspepsia, Constipation and Piles." It came in 2 sizes $.75 and $1.25. That's really a small price to pay for a medicine which "...is a safe, sure and speedy cure ...when physicians and friends had given them up to die."

The stamp that accompanied a bottle of this patent medicine showed death, in skeleton form, losing a battle. Interestingly enough this is the same image that the United States Postal Service chose to use on its $.32 stamp of the 1900's sheet commemorating the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act. The point made here is that today's advertisements play on the same desires for youth and fears of pain, suffering and death that the "quacks" of yesteryear practiced. Moreover several of today's companies such as Eli Lilly and Johnson and Johnson, were in business when the taxes were imposed.

This all came about because of the CIVIL WAR. The Revenue Act of 7/1/1862 was enacted because the Union needed money to fund the War. As an aside Revenue Acts have been needed to fund many of our wars--The Spanish American War of 1898 and both World Wars. How much money did these revenue taxes raise? In the foreward to Henry W. Holcombe's book, "Patent Medicine Tax Stamps" George B. Griffenhagen says that 8 billion revenue stamps were produced between 1862 and 1883 when the Revenue Act was repealed. Furthermore, he states, that nearly 5.3 billion were Private Die Proprietary stamps of which 2.7 billion were medicine stamps. According to the Boston Revenue Book of 1899 about 4 billion of them were Match Stamps. (The Boston Revenue Book does not include any information about the Revenue Stamps for the 1898 War so these numbers only apply to stamps issued between 1862 and 1883.)

The taxes were raised by issuing stamps that had to be affixed to various products such as bank checks, telegrams, documents, mortgages, playing cards, matches, medicines, perfumes, photographs and a host of other items that people used in the course of conducting their lives. What were the rates of some of these taxes?

On matches the tax was 1 cent per 100 matches.

On medicines it was 4% of the retail price of the proprietary medicine.

On photographs it was 2 cents for photographs which cost up to 25 cents, 3 cents for photographs costing 26 cents to 50 cents, 5 cents for photographs costing 51 cents to $1.00 and 10 cents for photographs costing more than $1.00.

Those were pretty heavy taxes since they ranged from 4% to 10% or more depending on the purchase price.

A question arises as to how much money was raised by the imposition of these taxes?

I estimate that about 8% of the cost of operating the war was raised by taxes from these stamps. How do I arrive at this figure? First of all the cost of the Civil War was estimated at $6.2 billion to the Union and $2.9 billion to the Confederacy who did not issue any revenue stamps. Some Confederate stamps were used as currency but none were specifically used to raise money for the war. By 1906 another $3.3 billion had been spent on Northern pensions and other veteran benefits. These figures do not include the cost of lives and physical devastation such as burned or plundered homes, crop and farm animal losses, ruined buildings and bridges. Source for this information is "Historical Times Encyclopedia of the Civil War" edited by Patricia L. Faust.

Referring once again to the Boston Revenue Book they state that the 1st Issue revenue stamps (1862-1871) raised $97.8 million through the sale of almost 1.5 billion stamps. That works out to an average $0.066 a stamp. Using that cost for the estimated 8 billion revenue and Private Die Proprietary stamps issued we obtain about $528 million. That is about 8% of the $6.2 billion cost of the war to the Federal Government. The question now arises as to how did the government raise the other 92% of the cost of the war? There was no income tax. Here comes the cop out. That's for an historian to answer .

It is difficult to reconcile the numbers given by Griffenhagen and the Boston Revenue Book. If anyone has numerical information about the quantities of these stamps please send it to me.

The Boston Revenue Book does not list the quantities of wrappers that were issued. Griffenhagen only talks about stamps. In both cases I believe they are both referring to adhesive stamps and neither includes wrappers. For example, Dr. E. L. Soule & Co. issued 2 wrappers and no adhesive stamps. This company is not listed in the Boston Revenue Book but it is in the U. S. Scott Specialized Catalogue--RS226 and RS227. Byam Carleton and Co. issued about 370 million wrappers (RO53-RO56) but there is no mention of them in the Boston Revenue Book. These were all tax producers so the number of $528 million dollars is probably low, but only by $25 million at the most.

The Revenue stamps were issued by the Federal Government. But the bulk of the stamps were printed and issued by the companies who produced the product. They had to pay for printing them and they had to pay the taxes to the Government (the Internal Revenue Service not the Post Office Department). They received a discount for printing them privately, the design had to be approved by the Government and they had to use a Government approved printer. But a tremendous benefit was that they received free advertising and often reproduced the stamp design on their packages.

Sometimes the wording on the stamps led the consumer to believe that the U. S. Government certified the product. The Brandreth 1 cent black stamp was in use from July 1863 until February 1875. Over 16 million of these stamps were issued. It had printed on it, "United States Certificate of Genuineness". A second stamp was issued in January 1875 and was used for only 1 month and only 220,000 were printed. However a third stamp was issued in March of 1875 and was used for 8 years. Over 33 million of these stamps were printed and they bore the changed inscription of the second stamp, which came about as follows.

It was at first intended that the second stamp should have the words "United States Certificate of Genuineness" as its predecessor had. But the Bureau refused to approve the model with those words. Brandreth then wanted to use the words "Guaranteed Genuine" but these also were not approved. Finally, "Allcock's Porous Plaster" was placed on the stamp and it was approved.

The Private Die Proprietary stamps form an important part of history in that they show how the manufacturers operated and advertised and the quantity of the products that consumers purchased in response to the advertisements. Much collateral material exists such as advertising cards, newspaper articles, posters, letters to potential agents, stationery and the packages themselves.

Since the population of the country during the 20 years these stamps were sold was about 60 - 70 million, the sale of over 49 million bottles of Brandreth's pills was quite an accomplishment. If you are willing to pursue the search for original packages or bottles with the revenue stamps still on them you can occasionally find them at on-line auctions. They are not very expensive but they are elusive. One person I know took over a year to find an item.

There are letters of Testimony from people who fervently wrote about the wonders of the medicines. Rewards of $500 and $1000 were offered by the companies to anyone "who will find a better cure" and the rewards were even offered to people who were not cured. I wonder how many of those reward amounts were actually paid out.

The advertising techniques used then are interesting to behold and one begins to wonder how people could have believed them. It was not just liniments for sore muscles, cough medicine, headache pills or soap to reduce the effects of aging that were sold. Cures for cancer, kidney and liver sickness and malaria and ague cures were touted as well. Swaim advertised a remedy for blood disease which "...reaches down to even hereditary traits". This was long before people knew about DNA or the Human Genome Project. Certainly we have many more controls today but if you examine the ads critically you will find many similarities with the intent of the wording used over 100 years ago.