The Coaster. Vol. IV, Number 1–26.

San Francisco:: [The Company],.. 4to, brown pebbled cloth, black leather spine and tips; company’s name on front cover in gilt as well as “Earl V. Burke”. Six-month run of an in-house organ of a company that provided large advertising cards used in electric street cars on the West Coast. It was published every Saturday and did not have a set number of pages per issue. Paging is erratic and at a certain point there are two numbering systems: one typed at the head of the page (at one point dropping some 20 pages) and the other, rubberstamp numbering at the point of error to the end.The masthead to each issue has the following text: “The coaster is issued every Saturday for the exchange of ideas and news between our offices. It must not be circulated outside of our Organization. Contributions desired for publication should each San Francisco Office not later than Thursday of each week. If you benefit by reading the articles of others in the coaster, you should reciprocate by letting us have some of your own ideas.The text is a mixture of social news: happenings in the various branches; retirements; encouraging rhetoric and express business instructions on the placement of cards, some are returned to the client after the agree and instructions for ordering supplies.The first issue of this volume contains two pages outlining the United States eminence in many fields. With only 6% of the world’s population and 7% of the land, the United States produced in 1920: 25% of the agricultural supplies; 40%of the mineral products; 34% of the manufactured goods.Earl Vincent Burke (1885–1963) was a graduate of UC Berkeley and is listed in the 1930 census as “Business Manager Advertising”. He was a member of the Book Club of California; John Henry Nash printed an invitation for Burke’s lecture at the San Francisco Public Library on Master Printers. By the 1949 census, he and his wife both listed themselves as “Free Lance Writers”.