Kindly Mail One Rusty Nail

The tons of debris which were hauled away from the White House as reconstruction began looked exactly like the lime-whitened junk which wreckers create every time they tear down a moldering tenement. But to thousands of U.S. souvenir collectors it was rich ore, impregnated with history and presidential ectoplasm right down to the last chunk of plaster. It was hauled off across the Potomac to Fort Myer, to be dispensed, through a special mail order system, to the clamoring citizenry.

A crew of four warehousemen set to work dividing it up into "White House kits." The smallest (selling for 25-c-) consisted of one piece of hand-split lath twelve inches long; the largest (priced at $100) provided enough brick or stone to face a fireplace. After a certain amount of planning other mounds of debris were divided as follows:

Kit No. 1: enough yellow pine to make a gavel. No. 2: enough to make a cane. No. 3: a piece of old stone and an old lath nail. No. 4 (the most popular): a piece of stone and an old square nail. No. 5 (suitable for a plaque): piece of old pine, old nail, small piece of stone and old copper wire. No. 6: small piece of old metal. No. 7: small piece of old pine. No. 8: piece of lath. No. 9: small piece of stone. No. 10: old brick.

By last week, "Souvenirs, Fort Myer, Va." had received 45,000 inquiries, had mailed out 16,000 kits and taken in $29,500. An accountant, four women package-wrappers and the ever-toiling warehousemen were hustling more kits into the mails (only one kit to each applicant; no foreign orders accepted) as fast as they could get them ready. Deadline for orders: June 30. After that, the rest of the junk will be preserved for distribution by the official White House family.

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