Old POCO Letter

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#198815 - 02/05/11 02:02 AM

Old POCO Letter

Admin

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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 3,450
NY, USA

Quote

This is a letter a friend of mine found in his grandfather's papers. His grandfather was subbed out by by the power company to install the "New" Wiring jobs in a house. If you look at the date at the top of the letter, I believe it was dated 3/2/1916, and I guess they were sending out these letters to everyone that they could in order to get them to wire up their houses. Enjoy

Harold Endean

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#198820 - 02/05/11 11:10 AM

Re: Old POCO Letter [Re: Admin]

wire_twister Offline

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Joined: Jul 2007
Posts: 265
Georgia USA

A 5 room house for $12.50, I will take it!! Always neat to see stuff like this, thanks for posting it.

Jimmy

Life is tough, Life is tougher when you are stupid

#198831 - 02/05/11 04:14 PM

Re: Old POCO Letter [Re: Admin]

geoff in UK Offline

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Joined: Dec 2002
Posts: 183
UK

Manual typing too! Couldn't just churn out a thousand on the computer then.

#198851 - 02/05/11 11:59 PM

Re: Old POCO Letter [Re: Admin]

HotLine1

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Joined: Apr 2002
Posts: 6,857
Brick, NJ USA

Can't determine if "JPW" wants 2000 or 20,000 copies. Postage back then was .02 for a normal letter, and .01 for a post card. So the advertizing cost for the direct mail was probably between .08 and .12 total.

Nice find Harold!!

John

#198854 - 02/06/11 12:41 AM

Re: Old POCO Letter [Re: HotLine1]

Admin

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NY, USA

I think we have a printed ad with similar pricing.

If I find it I'll post it here.

Bill

#198856 - 02/06/11 12:54 AM

Re: Old POCO Letter [Re: Admin]

Admin

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Found some...

A little Pricier though...

#198880 - 02/06/11 10:15 PM

Re: Old POCO Letter [Re: Admin]

Texas_Ranger Offline

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Joined: Dec 2001
Posts: 2,400
Vienna, Austria

I suppose they didn't type each letter - more likely they typed it onto a sheet of wax or special carbon copy paper and made a bunch of prints (some systems could produce up to 500 copies from one original I think).

It would be interesting to put those prices into perspective - what did an average worker make per week back then? If he made say $3/week, wiring a house was still quite expensive for him!